I've never had an entourage before. You always see important people and movie stars with all these people around them who follow wherever they choose to go. Not being a terribly important person myself I didn't generally find myself in this situation till I wanted to go to the Mirador near Santiago de Atitlan, Guatemala.

"Two armed police officers."
The Mirador is a beautiful lookout on Lake Atitlan, which I described a bit in a previous entry. It's ringed by like four volcanoes and small lakeside towns. I'd been told from this lookout you could see much of the lake in one direction and the slope down to the Pacific. The only problem... bandits. So since this isn't really the most popular hike around Lake Atitlan and I couldn't find anyone who wanted to go with me... I decided to take a guide. And the guide decided to take two armed police officers. So here we go down the streets of Santiago... me and my guide, flanked by two uniformed gun-toting cops. I felt quite important.

It turned out to be a shorter hike to the lookout than I'd thought, so I was a bit disappointed. But the view was fantastic. Look for photos. The company was pretty good, too. The guide was a nice guy and the two cops turned out to be cool as well, despite questionable beginnings with one of them. In fact, the nicer one of the two is leaving next month on a vacation to Minnesota.

Me Looking Silly at the Mirador

In my halting Spanish I tried to ask him why, if he's going to vacation in the US, go to Minnesota in the winter. I'm not sure I asked the question correctly and I know I didn't completly understand the answer, but I think it may have something to do with someone he's visiting in Minneapolis or environs.

"I was able to see American network television."
I'm going to digress for a moment to address something I observed in my hotel room. It had a television with lots of American channels. I assume that's because of all the Americans and other English speakers in town. There was regular American CNN, the BBC, and feeds from WNBC in New York, WKRN in Nashville and WSEE in Erie, Pennsylvania. So with those I was able to see American network television.

I was pleased that in the midst of one of the most important stories of our time... as the nations of the world wrestle over how to deal with terrorism and rogue states, as economies falter and frantic citizens stock up on duct tape... three of the four major networks decided to devote huge chunks of their air time to pressing news of the day.

Tempting Fate in the Shadow of Volcan San Pedro

Three hours on ABC. Two hours on NBC. Who knows how long on Fox. All dedicated to..... good God.... Michael Jackson?

"A has-been since that "I'm Bad" thing."
What the hell has happened back there? I leave you guys alone for two months and we're fixated on a weirdo who's been a has-been since that "I'm Bad" thing? Are you serious? I must admit, though, that there was one piece of that documentary on NBC that I made sure I saw. That photo of him in court where you can see the plastic parts of his fake nose sticking out through his skin? Now that was cool.

Apart from that, I didn't do much else around Lake Atitlan. I heard ravings about the place that got as ecstatic as "fairies live there." Unless that means something other than the fantasy-like initially understood definition, the place didn't strike me as quite so unbelievable. Beautiful to the point of disbelief at points, but I ran into neither flying Tinkerbell-like fairies nor any more human varieties. I moved on after about four days.