A few things you should know...

If you ever venture down to Antigua Guatemala, here are a few things to keep in mind and some of my brilliant words of wisdon.  

One way streets
Don't be fooled. Just because the sign says "ONE WAY" ("Una Via") doesn't mean that someone won't come barreling down the street going the wrong way. The streets are a little confusing to begin with and can suddenly become one way mid-street. (Yes, it makes no sense.) So, when crossing a street, be sure to look both ways or you might get plowed over.

Cobblestones

I swear to you, this is not a joke. This is really what the
weathergirl on tv wears during the news. She is
a good example of what the hoochie mamas who
flock to Antigua on the weekends look like.

Oh yes, they are so cute and charming and make the town look so picturesque and colonial, but trust me, no matter what kind of shoes you are wearing, THEY ARE A BITCH TO WALK ON. Not only that, but the sidewalks also leave something to be desired. They are patched together with cement, stepping stones, and yep, some are even made of the dreaded cobblestones. And some of them turn into hellish slip-n-slides when it rains. Oh, what fun!

One of the best things about the streets (probably the only good thing about them) is the "it sucks to be you" entertainment factor of watching the hoochie mamas that come from Guatemala City on the weekend  as they try to walk around in their high-high-high hoochie mama heels and their skin tight clothes. It’s pretty amusing.

What's for sale at the grocery store?

It's hard to see, but there's a
 packet of chicken soup
taped to the bottle of
SUPERIOR soy sauce.
(We only buy the best.)

Look for the clear packing tape. Yep. The grocery store (called "La Bodegona") is notorious for taping items together to indicate they're on sale.

For example:

• Buy one 4-pack of toilet paper, get three free (that used up a lot of tape)
• Buy a bag of laundry detergent, get a plastic bowl for free (Obviously you will need to eat a bowl of cereal while you do laundry.)
• Buy a bottle of rum, get a free 2-liter bottle of Pepsi (They encourage mixed drinks here.)
• Buy three boxes of milk, get a free package of cookies (Yum!)

…and so on.

They usually package items together that go together, like the milk and cookies, but quite often the combos don't make much sense. It’s like they look at their inventory and say, “Oh what the hell -- let’s put that bag of Doritos with the box of tampons.” Huh? My favorite "freebie" so far is the green plastic cutting board we got from buying -- ready for this? -- a box of corn flakes. (In case we needed to chop them up into tiny little pieces.)

Skinny jeans
Should not be worn. By anyone. Anywhere. Ever. Unless you are in a famous rock band and are under the age of 25. But ONLY then. And your band has to be REALLY famous.

Puddles

It rains so much, things grow out of old,
abandoned buildings like this.

It rains here. A LOT. I know my dear family and friends in Texas are in a drought and I feel bad about hogging all of the rain. (I’d sent some to you if I could.) Anyway, this explains why it’s so green in Guatemala. It rains about every day.

Lotsa rain = Lotsa puddles. I walk everywhere and take it from me, as a pedestrian it is very important to think ahead while walking. Gauge where you are in comparison to where cars are along the road – if a car is coming, slow down so they hit the puddle before you get near, otherwise you’ll get hosed. This has happened to a friend of mine. Luckily, it hasn’t happened to me yet (QUICK -- knock on something wooden) but with the amount of walking I do, I’m probably overdue for a nasty rainwater splash bath.

Slashers
Nope, I’m not giving a shout out to the “Friday the 13th” movies. I’m talking about the people (male and female) who seek out unknowing tourists and slash their purses/backpacks. These unscrupulous folks are clever – they will “accidentally” bump into you in the park or in the crowded market and the next thing you know, your bag has been gutted and the innards removed. So watch out! This hasn’t happened to me (keep on knockin’ on that wood) but I know several smart people who have fallen victim to this crime. I keep an eye on the crowd and carry a thick, knife-proof crocheted purse. It would take someone quite a while to saw their way through my bag -- and if I caught them doing it, I’d give them a hearty karate-chop to the jugular. Ka-POW! Do not mess with the little white girl and her crocheted purse.

Pee
It’s not just for bathrooms anymore! Men will do it anywhere, anytime. If it’s sunny and there’s a strange puddle on the sidewalk, STEP AROUND IT. That’s not water. I’m just sayin’…

I passed a group of guys who were relieving themselves on a truck one afternoon – and if that wasn’t bad enough, I don’t believe it was their truck. Oh, the humanity! I can only imagine how awful that must’ve been for the owner. I mean, it’s one thing to have your car vandalized and your stereo stolen or your tires slashed. But to come back to a pee-soaked vehicle? Eeeeeeeew. Just sell it on the spot and buy something new.

Volcanoes and earthquakes

This was a pretty rare sight. Fuego erupted and sent ash
and debris rushing down the side of the volcano. I was
 lucky to find my camera and get this shot in time.

Don't be afraid and don't freak out. Experiencing these forces of nature is very cool. The earthquakes are pretty random, so if you feel one, you’re lucky. Fuego Volcano erupts day and night. During the day, you’ll see clouds of ash billowing out, which is cool. If you are staying at a place with a rooftop terrace, grab a beer and sit up there at night. If it’s clear, you will see lava flying in the air and rolling down the sides, which is SUPER COOL. If you’re reeeeally lucky, you will hear the deep rumbling booooom beforehand.

Words to know
If you’re like me and your skin tone doesn’t match that of the locals, you will be inundated with people trying to sell you things on the street. You’ll be offered everything from carved wooden flutes, necklaces, ice cream, scarves, table runners, bracelets and even… pot. Yes, there are a few people in town (usually young guys, carrying backpacks) who will boldly walk up to you and say, “Hey lady, you looking for pot? Good stuff!” Even if you’re not wearing a Bob Marley shirt or sporting a knitted Rasta hat, it’s always good to know there are herbal entrepreneurs out there.

So! Here are a few things you can say when people are offering their goods.

“No gracias.” (No thanks)

“Otro dia.” (Another day.)
“Posible mas tarde.” (Maybe later.)
“Yo tengo no dinero.” (I don’t have money.)
“Yo soy policia.” (I’m a cop. This will scare the pants off a pot dealer.)
“Lo siento, mi espanol es malo.” (I’m sorry, my Spanish is bad. This is helpful if you want to play dumb when someone is rambling on and on – I use this one a lot.)
“Yo vivo aqui.” (I live here – as in “I’m not a tourist so I’m not an easy target for your overpriced goods.”)

Ok, that’s it for this time around. Until we meet again, stay thirsty my friends!

I feel like I've been chewing on razor blades...



This about sums up my experience today,
except my dentist wasn't wearing a tie.



HOLY MOLARS, BATMAN!
The dentists here are evil!

I just went to my first-ever dental appointment in Antigua. Since I have no money and no insurance, I went to the low-cost hospital called Hermano Pedro. Yep, it's a hospital attached to Hermano Pedro Catholic Church. (Hermano Pedro [St. Peter] is a BIG deal here -- I think he lived in Antigua for a while and was also buried here at one point. Well, he might still be buried here. I'll have to look into that. I'm a little rusty on my "Name that Saint's Burial Location" trivia.) Anyway, this hospital covers everything from x-rays, surgery, pediatrics, cancer treatment, psychology, and yes, even dental care.

I was not blessed with good teeth. My mouth is what you'd call an "Orthodontic Wonderland." I've had braces and bridges and retainers and fillings and caps and root canals and the whole shebang BUT I am lucky in one tiny way -- I have no wisdom teeth. Not even one. And due to being an Orthodontic Wonderland, mouth pain doesn’t bother me. When I had braces during my teenage years, I’d double or even triple the number of rubber bands the orthodontist told me to wear to move my teeth. (God, I was such a dork with my Stainless Steel Sex Appeal braces.) Anyway, blah-blah-blah, I must have a high threshold for mouth pain.


I don't know what the little
multicolored things are, but I
remember seeing them today.



I loved the dentists I went to at Advanced Smiles Dental in Austin. They were so nice and their office was so clean and inviting. And clean. They had the prerequisite aquarium in the waiting room AND a supply of mouthwash and toothbrushes in the bathroom AND you could even get a paraffin hand treatment while you were getting your teeth cleaned! How cool is THAT? Plus, every exam room had a TV and a massage chair! Needless to say, it was run by women and had that special female flair to it. And did I mention how clean their office was? Cleeeean. Clean is gooood.

Ahhh, but I digress...



So we get to Hermano Pedro at 7am. Things work soooo differently here. You get to the hospital, find the area you need (dental, x-rays, pediatrics, etc.) tell them your name and what you need done, and they give you a little piece of paper with the cost of your procedure. You take the little piece of paper to the cashier, pay for your procedure, then go back to the office and show them your receipt. Very efficient, right? My question was what if you go in for a cleaning and they find you have a cavity that needs a filling? Then what? Do you rush over to the cashier with drool running down your chin from your halfway-completed check-up and stand in line to pay, then run back to the dental area and wait your turn again? No one had a good answer.



Hermano Pedro Church is on the left, the hospital is
on the right. It's beautiful from the outside, huh?

Joel went with me because he also needed a check-up and because mi espanol es maloooo (my Spanish is baaaad). So it was Q75 for each of us to get a check-up and cleaning (about $10 each). You then take the little piece of paper down to the cashier at the other end of the hospital and pay for what you are having done. (I use the term "hospital" loosely -- it's a giant old rustic building that has been pieced together bit by bit and many areas don't have a roof and you have to go up-up-up and down-down-down ramps that are in NO WAY wheelchair accessible and through courtyards and dodge the ladies who are breastfeeding their babies in the hallway and the kids who are sitting on the floor and the people who are so obviously so sick you are afraid to breathe as you walk past them…. Get the idea?) And there was NO toilet paper or soap in the bathroom! EEEEEEW! Sorry, I just had to throw that in.

Although we arrived at 7am, there’s a weird “whoever is there first when the dentist arrives” rule to actually getting IN to see the doctor. Needless to say, due to the long line at the cashier and due to us being told to come back when the dentist arrived at 9am, we didn’t get called in until after 10am. So a mere 3 hour wait. And you guys in the USA complain about waiting an extra 30 minutes in a nice air conditioned germ-free doctor’s office with fun “Highlights” and “Redbook” magazines for your entertainment? Pshaw! We sat on cheap plastic chairs in a long, crowded hallway with only one window. Count your blessings. I mean it. COUNT THEM.

I knew going in that I had cavities. When eating causes little lightning bolts of pain in your teeth, it’s time to have ‘em checked out. I brush. I floss. I’m a good little girl when it comes to making sure I have clean teeth. But cavities have been my enemy since I was a little kid. I actually thought it was so cool to get a filling in my younger days because I looooved having my mouth injected with that super-fun numbing stuff. What can I say? I was weird even when I was a kid. But in my defense, I was never, ever, ever afraid to go to the dentist.


Put long hair and mascara on
this guy and you'll know what
Dr. Cruella DeVille looked like
holding the Dremel Tool of Torture



Well, today’s experience has changed my feelings toward dentistry.

And fear.

And pain.

I now truly believe there are people in the world who enjoy causing pain in others. The dentist I went to – let’s called her Dr. DeVille, as in Dr. Cruella DeVille – hurt me in ways I only thought were possible in horror movies or at Guantanamo Bay. I think her first career was as an insane chicken bus driver, but her boss probably fired her and said, “Whoooah now, Cruella! Must you be so EVIL to the passengers?” So when that didn’t work out, she took a long, hard look in the mirror and asked herself, "How else can I cause extreme pain and human suffering?" And so, she became a dentist.

Ok, and let me backtrack a bit. First, Dr. DeVille was bad at what she did in purely a “does she know what a cavity looks like” sort of way. I told her (rather, I told Joel and he relayed it to her in Spanish) that I had pain on both sides of my mouth, waaay in the back. She found Cavity #1 right away by using some torture device to blow air on my tooth -- when I jumped, she said, “Yep, it’s a cavity” (but in Spanish). She never even looked at the other side of my mouth, even when Joel told her I had pain on the left side, too. I thought, “Screw this, I didn’t come here and wait all this time to only get ONE tooth fixed,” so I finally had to get her attention and POINT to the other tooth that was hurting. She took out the air-blowing device, put it on my tooth, I jumped and – ta-daaa! -- Cavity #2 was discovered. Oh, and she also mentioned that the two bridges I paid over $2,000 for (with insurance!) a few years ago needed to be removed and redone. WHAT? Seriously?

Fillings cost Q100 each (about $12.50) and they handed Joel another little piece of paper for my Q200 worth of cavities and sent him back to the cashier.

You know how I said when I was a kid I liked getting the numbing stuff when I had a filling? Wellll, they don’t do that here. Or at least Cruella didn’t. She just drilled away at the tooth while my eyes bugged out of my head from the pain and then she globbed some white filling stuff on my teeth. I wanted to puke. Plus, at one point I had so many globs of cotton and instruments in my mouth, I thought my jaw was going to crack. The corners of my mouth felt like they would split open from being pulled so tight.

It was not fun. Not fun AT ALL.

And then it got worse.

She took a drill – and I mean DRILL – similar to a Dremel tool but with a single, pointy drill bit on the end, like a nail. I looked on in horror as I realized THIS was what she was going to use to CLEAN MY TEETH.

This is close to
the actual size of the
pointy end of the
Dremel Tool of Torture

I am sooo going to have nightmares about the look and SOUND of that tool. Yeeeeikes.

Remember how I said I had a high threshold for mouth pain? Well Dr. DeVille picked me up by my teeth and personally carried me across that threshold and kept on running. By the time she was finished, the threshold was just a tiny dot on the horizon.

All I could think was CODEINE. Just one. Maybe two. Just give me a pill and the pain will float awaaay. But no, there was no codeine in my future. Only PAIN. (By the way, you can get ANY drug here without a prescription. Yes, ANY DRUG. Just ask the pharmacist and they’ll hand over as many as you want, as long as you have money. It’s amazing there aren’t more drug addicts here.)

She did not try to make it pleasant. I may have even heard her laughing demonically as she worked (but it could have been my imagination, being delirious from the pain and all). She used the pointy-tipped Dremel Tool of Torture to go BETWEEN my gums around each and every tooth. Did I bleed? Oh hell yes, I bled. Joel, who was back from the cashier and watching me being tortured, said he was concerned about the amount of blood in my mouth, but was afraid that if he said anything, Dr. DeVille might make it worse.

Mmmm, what's for lunch?

Finally, it was over. I was handed a paper cup of water and told NOT to drink it, but to swish and spit. I swished. I spat. And I spat blood. Looooovely. And I paid money for this? Really? I could have chewed on a handful of razor blades and gotten the same experience. And it wouldn’t have cost me 4 hours of my life and $35.

So next it was Joel’s turn. Joel had no cavities that she could find, even though he asked her to please look at a tooth that was hurting him. Nope. According to Dr. DeVille, no cavities. Whatever. It was near lunch time and she probably didn’t want the hassle of doing another filling. So Joel got his teeth cleaned. NOT with the Dremel Tool of Torture, but with that nice polishing thing and that gooey pastey fluoride stuff they put on your teeth when the clean them in the US. I asked her why she hadn’t polished my teeth like that and she gave me a load of BS about how I needed to come back for another visit because they had to remove tartar from my teeth. WHAT? I told her that in the US you get the tartar removed AND your teeth cleaned in one sitting. Nope, she told me to come back. I asked if I had to pay another Q75 for the visit and when she said yes, I responded with a snort, saying, “SCREW THAT! It ain't gonna happen.” I couldn’t help it – those semi-hick words just flew out of my bleeding, miserable mouth before I could stop them.



Well, no I haven't... But I've run
screaming out of one's office today.

So please, friends and neighbors, if you think you can come here and get high quality, painless dental care for a low price, think again. I encourage all of you to get on the phone and schedule a cleaning with a nice, gentle, knowledgeable dentist in your area RIGHT NOW. And while you are there, hug your dentist and dental hygienist for being kind and not using the Dremel Tool of Torture on your teeth.

Until we meet again, stay thirsty my friends!

P.S. Ha ha haaaa! When searching online for dental tool images, I came across this text: For painful dental procedures, the dentist will need tools, like syringes and disposable needles, that provide anesthesia.

Anesthesia, my ass! They don’t believe in it here!