Gaia Theory

We went back to the beach last weekend. (Note: It's been over a week since this was composed - ed.) The beach here is kind of an un-Guatemalan experience. Which can't really be true, because technically, we were in Guatemala. But the beach in Guatemala feels a lot more like Getting Away from It All than the beach in the U.S. often does, as many sunny beaches in the U.S. are overflowing with people Getting Away from It All and the people selling things to the people Getting Away from It All.

Here, the beach at Las Lisas is pleasantly close to the middle of nowhere. Maybe because the sea helps to keep fellow leisure-seekers at bay by killing someone in the undertow a few times a year. Nevertheless, the stars at night were fabulous, and there wasn't much to do except lounge around and take pictures of the wrecked buildings that would never fall into such disrepair on a prime stretch of beachfront property back home.

Of course, it was too good to last, and on the way home, we got to get back into it all with a taste of Guatemalan traffic. In one stretch of a few miles, the two city-bound lanes merged into one three separate times, but rather than just close one lane and leave it closed, they let the traffic un-merge each time, causing yet another bottleneck as impatient drivers refused to yield. To add insult to injury, the last merge was the result of a "police checkpoint" that served no ostensible purpose and was right next to a twenty-foot wide shoulder that would have worked just as well. Somebody needs to get to work on a teleportation device so relaxing beach weekends aren't instantly dissolved by traffic jams on the way home.