Correction:  Anna turned out to be a wonder.  I did her a disservice by suggesting that ‘her ways were weird’ (as are the ways of all foreign cultures) simply because she disappeared for a few days.  Turns out she was ‘gone’ because she was turning the local internet company upside down getting our internet line fixed!  Anna showed up yesterday evening with a ‘lineman’ in tow and he climbed trees and strung us a new cable on the spot!  Anna to the rescue with her trusty and diminutive 5 year old daughter in tow.

Anna would be competent in whatever country she was in.  But she might be hard to find now and then.  Just sayin………

During our ‘down time’ and Anna’s walk-about, Greg had also sent Rhet.  Rhet is a bit of a techie and did a few tests to determine that it was not the house system but that a line was down.  Before he left, he called the cable company and they opined that, with luck, we might get some one to look at it within the week.  Probably not.  We were resigned to no service with that message but, of course, we had not yet factored in the ANNA element.

But Rhet was an interesting fellow, too.  Seems he had recently witnessed some bad deeds being done to tourists and took the unusual action of reporting on them to the police.  Since then he has had a low-grade fear for his life in Antigua so he decided to move to Guatemala City for improved personal safety reasons!

He was reluctantly in town for just a few hours and was keeping a very low profile (grey clothes, hoody, staying in the shadows).  I picked him up in a shadowed doorway and, after he had tried to fix the connection, I drove him back to another out-of-the-way spot…………all the better to avoid being a conspicuous target on the streets!

“Was it really that bad?!”  I don’t think so.  Rhet figure it would ‘blow over’.  He was just being a bit cautious.  Still, he was adamant that we be careful and described several common deceits inflicted on tourists that left them hurt, raped and robbed.  He was pretty condemning of the ‘milieu’ of hangers-on that frequent the central park.

Central park is truly the town’s place for congregating, ambulating and people-watching.  Yesterday there was a mini-concert in the park and I would estimate that about 250-300 people milled about.  Including me, R&P.  But this kind of event, according to Rhet, was an ideal time for the hustlers, hawkers, pick-pockets and worse.  He figured several robberies would take place and a lot of scams would be pitched to maybe-too-innocent tourists.  “Don’t ever accept a date to teach you Salsa dancing.  It is a rape scam!”  He made the park sound pretty unsavoury.

Not to mention ruining my plans for dancing Latin that evening.

“Black Thursday, a few months back, was the worst!” he said.  “A pick-up truck full of knife-wielding thugs stopped near a group of tourists and between 8 and 12 gringos were stabbed and robbed!  It was pretty bad.  Really, you must be careful here, too.  This country is still very dangerous.”

I don’t disbelieve him.  He did have some horrible stories.  But danger and accidents fall into the same category – they are surprises.  In other words, you can’t plan adequately for them.  Despite what Worksafe BC claims, accidents cannot always be prevented.  Nor can crimes.  Life is a crapshoot (and literally so if Montezuma gets involved).

We take reasonable precautions, trust our instincts, stay observant and don’t push the limits.  And in our previous travels we have still been robbed (petty theft), violently confronted (some thug in China) and found ourselves on the wrong side of the tracks on the wrong side of the wrong town not just a few times.  Once I found myself in a packed drug den full of red-eyed, stoned, surly black men after midnight in Belize City.  By accident, of course.  I attribute my safe retreat to my blazing white skin.  I think I temporarily blinded them.

Our friendly neighbourhood security guard

The point is: there is no point.  Life happens.  Some of it is bad.  There is barely a day that passes back home that I don’t start bleeding, burning or hurting myself.  When you play, you get dirty.  That happens everywhere.  That happens in Harlem.  That happens in Antigua.

Abuela going undercover

Having said all that brave stuff, Sally and I have decided to spend the rest of our winter vacation in bed in some safe, huge hotel.  We’re thinking the Holiday Inn, perhaps?  Then we’ll sneak to the airport at the right time disguised as Mayans.  Pray for us!