Back in the Land of the Chocobanano

Out of the jungle and amoeba-free!! Heaven!! There was even this gorgeous rainbow right after we passed into the rainshadow of the hills. This was maybe the biggest rainbow I've ever seen! Maybe not. Maybe they were bigger at Victoria falls. But maybe not.

We stopped at Estanzuela to look at a dinosaur museum - this part of Guatemala was once home to heaps of dinosaurs. The museum was tiny and kind of rustic, but had really excellent bones, including a giant sloth about 10 feet tall. They also had a fair amount of early mayan pottery - mugs in the shape of faces, and some containers big enough for me to disappear in. cool stuff.

We spent the night in Chiquimula, preparing to cross the border into Honduras. The contrast between this region and the Peten is *sharp* - the city was so wealthy we felt like we were back in the US. The supermarket was chock full of tasty goodies, including guanabana flavored yogurt (the perfect flavor for yogurt), powdered soymilk (which is actually good, and really handy since we abandoned the fridge), and things for preparing chocobananos. It's nice to have a change from avocados and plantains!! Although, if I had to choose just 2 foods to eat, those might be the two I'd pick. Fried plantains, mmmmm

I have to say something about chocobananos - they're a phenomenon. Even hardware stores and cellphone stores sell them - they just stick a piece of paper on the wall saying "and we have chocobananos!!" It's basically a banana on a stick, covered in chocolate. Aside from tortillas, I'd say it's Guatemala's national food. Amazing. In the grocery store you can even buy special sticks, just for chocobananos. Special chocolate, too. I haven't seen the special chocobanano bananas yet, but I'm still looking.

O, and at the hotel we met a family from Quebec who sailed here from Quebec via Cuba. How cool is that? They took the kids out of school and put them on a boat. Excellent. They think it'd be easy for us to find a sailboat to Ireland, and gave us some websites and contact info. We've met an amazing number of Canadians on this trip - far more than any other nationality. Germans are a close second. Douglas even saw a newspaper headline declaring that there are "hordes" of Canadians in La Ceiba, Honduras.