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Tag Archives: Central America

Diver Down

  Guatemala City — I remember my first time.  That first time sinking under the water and thinking, I can’t do this, I can’t breathe underwater, and on faith in the equipment taking that first breath. The dry air flowed through the regulator and filled my lungs.  I heard the hiss of the inhalation and […]

Six Views from a Return to Atitlan

 

The Fountain

The Long Central American Goodbye Part II: Bienvenido a Guatemala

GUATEMALA CITY — There may be no place in the world more familiar to me than where I am now, here, back in Central America.  At this point I have lived abroad longer than in my hometown (at least in recent years) and anyway, my hometown isn’t my hometown. I first came to Central America, […]

Portraits of Grace, House of Hope

To see a digital preview and to buy the book Portraits of Grace, House of Hope, click on this link:  http://www.blurb.com/books/5960660-portraits-of-grace-house-of-hope# ARLINGTON–I first saw Casa Esperanza in the fall of 2006. I spent no more than an hour there, on my way to somewhere else, but it remained etched in my memory. My thoughts would […]

Books From the West and the East of Honduras

It has been a busy year, and while there was a three week trip with Missionary Air Group into La Mosquitia, teaching, Scouting and having a beautiful baby boy named Henry, a huge part of the past year (or two) has been spent cataloging, archiving, scanning, collating, collecting, organizing, publishing and putting some of the […]

Puerto Lempira

  PUERTO LEMPIRA—We rose into the clear morning sky from the air-strip at Rus Rus and headed nearly due east. The Cessna was on a sort of Dr. Doolittle mission, taking a planeload of pets along on the supply run to be spayed and neutered by a visiting missionary veterinarian. Puerto Lempira is a place […]

Three Planes to Rus Rus

RUS RUS, La Miskitia, Honduras—On my first trip to Honduras, more than 12 years ago, we were on another plane full of missionaries and Hondurans returning home. As the jet banked to descend into San Pedro Sula there were thatched huts and fields of palms and a river dark with red silt curving over the […]

Holy Week in Santiago: In Which I Explore the Largest Town on Lake Atitlan, Photograph Processions Both Catholic and Pagan and End up in the House of Maximon at Night.

PANAJACHEL—I stepped off the boat onto the floating dock at Santiago and clapped my wide-brimmed Panama hat tightly onto my head. I slung the light NorthFace Recon pack over one shoulder and the Domke F3X camera bag over the other and began the uphill hike up the main street to Hotel Ratzan. To my right was […]

F.A. Mitchell-Hedges describes Lake Atitlan

From “Land of Wonder and Fear”   by F.A. Mitchell-Hedges, The Century Company, 1931. Page 113-114. “I shall never forget the next morning. Five thousand one hundred and fifty feet above sea-level lay Lake Atitlan, seventeen miles long, without a ripple, green-blue in colour, and completely surrounded by gigantic mountains. Rising sheer from the edge […]