Your internets are broked

No post yesterday! Blogger was in "read only" mode for some maintenance stuff ... so no, I didn't get bit by some kind of crazy tropical snake.

Ayer (yesterday) Stefan the Austrian (no, I don't know any other Stefans, I just like calling him that) and I toured a coffee farm called Al Azteca a few miles outside of Antigua. They told us about how they harvest, prepare, and roast their coffee, and then showed us one of their fields. It was pretty interesting. The entire process was explained and there were also instructions on how to roast, grind, and percolate the ideal cup. I didn't really pay attention to that part since I don't really drink coffee ...

They also had a museum of Mayan music, which I found a bit more interesting. A lot of their post-conquest instruments have African and Arabic roots.

After the tour, they gave us samples of their coffee, and it was muy fuerte (very strong). I needed a bit of a pick-me-up, though; the buses that roar past our house woke me up at about 5:30 that morning.

So, I was wandering the garden the other day, and at the very back of the garden, right next to the wall I found this (the flip-flop is for scale) ... What's does this look like to you? Cause it looks like a grave to me ... I kind of want to ask what it is, but I'm afraid they might say that that's where they put people who ask too many questions! But my hosts are very kind ... and too old to drag my body all the way back there. I'm confident nothing nefarious is afoot.

All the same, if I don't make it back to the States in August, put this on your list places to check :)

Dad, check out this picture - looks like a normal shower right? Well, check this out! Zoom! Enhance!

This is how they heat showers in Antigua! It's a little electric doo-dad that has three settings: high, low, and off. The way you control the temperature (besides the obvious "high" and "low") is by increasing or decreasing the water flow. The way I understand it, this device can only put so much heat in the water, and the faster the water moves through it, the less heat it picks up ... or whatever the sciency terms are.

Dad, I thought maybe this could be a decent system for the outdoor shower you're putting together.

In other news, Erin is here! She got here yesterday, but we haven't figured out how to find each other yet ... Hopefully we'll get to hang out tonight, so she can continue to tell me she's Irish, not Scandinavian.  I'm still skeptical ...