Does anyone else remember that just three weeks ago Utah was a chilly wintry wonderland, snow was still falling in the mountains and my apartment was the loveliest of temperatures and then all of a sudden as if over night it’s 92° outside and my apartment feels like the impact zone of a nuclear blast? Well it’s strange, and now I can’t sleep very well because our windowless apartment is just too dang hot. For the last two weeks Kate and I have been battling it out each night over whether to sleep with our tiny street-side bedroom window open or closed. Kate sleeps best when she’s wrapped in quilted blanked and the room temperature is right around fresh magma. I, on the other hand, can only sleep when naked in a bath of liquid nitrogen. Needless to say, this has been a source of contention in our family resulting in sleepless nights, me on the couch, late night showers and early morning runs. I’m just hoping I will get used to this because if we end up moving to Arizona I will perish.
The ruins looked just like this except not a blue in the sky and darker and with a lot of rain.
So here’s the scoop. The killer hurricane, Dean, forced us to cancel the Kelly family trip to Cancun. Kate and I were suposed to meet her family in Cancun tomorrow afternoon but Cancun officials have asked tourists not to come. So tickets have ben canceled and plans changed. As of now we are meeting in San Diego. Lucky for us BYU has changed our tickets so we can meet them there.
In the meantime Kate and I we have decided to visit Palenque, a famouse Mayan city that trived during the Early and Lateclassic periods (425 – 725 AD). Yesterday we arrived by bus…and by bus I mean food processor. I get car sick about as often as Bush admints he makes mistakes, but by the end of the ride I was ready to give up the morning meal. To make matters worse they ran a 6 hour “Die Hard” marathon…and the bus ride was only 5 hours…go figure. We crashed in the first hotel we could find (with a pool) and had a nice dinner, a lovely swim, and a crapy sleep on crappy beds. I will let Kate tell you more about this in her forthcoming entery.
This mroning we went to the ruins and man are they amazing. The only problem is we are experaancing a little of Dean’s furry and it has been raining all day. Just after we entered teh park some tourists were walking through the jungle when a giant tree branch nearly fell on them. Luckly they ran to safty, but it was crazy.
As I am sure you have not heard, another earthquake hit Mesoamerica and once again we found ourselves caught in the backlash. This time we were in the middle of watching “Ocean’s 13″ of as they called it in Mexico, “Now There Are 13,” when the screen started to bounce up and down and the chairs started to shake . We dashed for an exit but it had stopped by the time we got outside. After 10 minutes of confusion the cinema staff let us back in and on we went with the film. The funny thing is in the movie they are try and create a false earthquake to scare people out of a hotel and it is was about this far into the plot that the real earthquake hit. If these things get any more regular we might start waring hard hats anytime we’re inside.
Here is a copy from the USGS website taken about an hour after the quake, it was a 6.1.
Map Centered at 15°N, 95°W
2:30, Kate and I were watching an episode of Lost during our siesta when I started to feel the bed shake. I asked Kate is she felt it too. She thought it was just me paying a trick until I pointed out the swinging curtains, Kate’s purse, and everything else hagging on the walls. We got out of the house just in case something bad was coming on but nothing else did. Turns out there was a major earthquake int he ocean outside Guatemala and we were just ridding the waves. Read more about it at www.kateandneil.com
At 2:30 Mexico standard time (Central), while Kate and I were in a deep lost induced trans I started to feel the bed shake (we don’t have a couch). I asked Kate if she felt the shaking because I was scared my body was just doing it in response to this morning’s workout (more to come on that). She just thought I was playing a trick until I pointed out that everything on the walls including the curtains were rocking back and forth. We jumped out of the bed, turned off the TV, and moved outside in case things got worse. They didn’t. No one else in the complex mentioned anything so I was begging to doubt anything had happened until I checked my email a few hours later and a friend asked me if I was affected by the earthquake. A quick search on the Google, CNN, and the USGS site revealed that a 6.8 earthquake struck 70 miles outside Guatemala City in the Pacific Ocean. According to news feeds many people were shaken up but serous damage and causalities have yet to be reported, but we won’t be able to see the full extent of the damage until communication lines are fixed.
Well just in case anyone was worried, we are safe, San Cristobal was not affected, and Kate now knows I don’t have a sense of humor.
I was going to add a map and some links but once again the linking software is not working. Alas you will just have to search for more information yourself.
While Barbara never made it to hurricane status, we still have felt its affects. It has been raining in San Cristobal for a week and yesterday when whats left of the storm hit, we had rain and hail for hours. There is nothing like the sound of rain and hail on a tin roof and thunder to help you focus on your work project. Actually, I have really enjoyed the rain and lightning, reminds me of storms back in Kenya. The only downside is the neighborhood doesn’t drain very well, so we basically have to boat out of the compound.
Tropical Storm Barbara was supposed to be the first of the hurricanes this season, but before it hit the Mexico -Guatemala border it shrunk to small storm status. Lets just say if what hit us yesterday was just a small storm I can’t imagine what would happen if a hurricane or its remnants hit San Cristobal. Well they say “9 Hurricanes Expected in Revised Forecast” so we’ll see what happens.
A few shots from the storm
We have had rain the last few days…and lots of it. Apparently San Cristobal doesn’t handle rain very well. I was told that a few years ago the entire city flooded because the main drainage pipe was blocked with garbage. There was so much water the military had to blow up the drainage pipe with a bomb to get the water draining. I was told this in Spanish so please question its accuracy…but it did happen. There are some photos of the New World Archaeological Compound Kate and I live & work in with 4 feet of water in some rooms.
Today the sun is out and the clouds aren’t so menacing. The rain has been fun, especially soothing at night. The sound is very lulling. The say the mosquitoes come out when the rainy season starts but they go away as the rain continues. I am just glad Kate and I aren’t living down the mountain where it is hot and mosquitoy all the time.
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