Lockdown Day 55, sometime late April. Life here is all becoming a big blur with each day just like the other. Good news is that we have use of the lake again, limited for just swimming & jumping off the dock, but it feels really great to be back in the water. The kids spend more time in the water than out of it. The lake is clean, clear & a lovely temperature. The dive from the dock to the water is roughly 15 feet or 4.5 meters, and Jaxon swan dives off it like it’s nothing. Charley prefers to dive from the underside frame work that isn’t quite as high.

Both Charley & Jaxon really love it here. They work hard at their school work first thing in the morning so they can get down to the water to play. Our friend Martin snapped these great photos of them in diving action. After lunch we just hang out and watch the grass grow.

May 10th. Today i’m bored, it’s a blah kinda day. Cooler than normal, grey & windy and too hazy to see the volcano. Kids are a little grumpy too, I’ll chalk it up to the weather. I’ve indulged with 3 cups of tea and it’s only 2pm, normally not a big deal, but with good quality tea unavailable I’m worried I’m going to run out. I told Tim that we have as many days left as cups of tea. I’ve just opened my last box of tea, Irish Barry’s tea, every cup is savoured.

The rainy season has started. In Central America they typically have 2 seasons, wet and dry. It’s nice to have the cleansing, life giving rains. Each morning is the same beautiful blue sky, then around three in the afternoon the clouds start to gather and darken. By nightfall we have spectacular lightening shows and torrential rains. For the first few nights the rains brought a couple of insect plagues with them. First we had the small flying ants that came in their thousands, thankfully we had the windows closed and lights off. Others who had their open were infested with these harmless flying bugs. A couple of nights later another plague of flying ants, only these ants were HUGE, the biggest ant i’ve ever seen and there were millions of them. Again we kept our windows closed.

One cool change is that we’ve been able to travel to Panajchel, one of the bigger towns up the lake. We have to first go to the Municipal hall and put our name down on a list for the public boat. The next day return for the ticket. Then on the scheduled day we crossed to Pana. Just Tim & I went, we left the kids home with Grandad & Jen. We first went to catch up with Shannon and Greg, they are a family we’ve met on the road, who are camped on the edge of Pana. It was great to catch up and have that time together before heading into town. Pana was buzzing, we had to get used to all the movement, traffic and activity. Life at Pasaj-Cap is a lot quieter! I was able to pick up a pair of flip flops for Charley, some Guatemalan style masks and 3 delicious rotisserie chickens before heading into the full size supermarket and filling our trolley. Oh what a treat, all the foods we can’t get in San Marcos. We stocked up on meat, New Zealand butter and cheese! Cookies, crackers, mushrooms, yoghurt, fresh milk, tonic and best of all Chocolate!!! With so much food we had to get a tuk-tuk back to the boat. That night and the next 2 days we feasted on finger lickin’ chicken.

May 15th Late last night the President announced a nation wide total lockdown. Covid numbers have increased 200%. This was his all out effort to try and reduce numbers. Inter-department travel has also halted. So if we wanted to leave we couldn’t. We heard the next day that there were protests all over the country. Guatemala is a very poor country, with the majority of people living each day in survival mode, they are protesting to have to country reopened so they can sell their crops & wares. The raising numbers are a result of Trump deported hundreds if not thousands of illegal Covid positive, illegal immigrants!! To date, Guatemala has 2,743 confirmed, with 231 new cases and 51 deaths.

May 24th. Another month has passed, and we’ve been locked down 11 weeks. Word on the web is that countries won’t be opening their borders for another couple of months. I don’t think we can sit around for another 8-10 weeks. We’ll decide at the end of this month and be moving in one direction or the other.

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