Monday was Bethany's 9th birthday. She wanted to have a picnic on her birthday since she has never celebrated a birthday outside (it is winter in Nebraska right now!) The Fickers showed us the way to another ruins spot. It is called "La Lagunita" which means "little lagoon". We don't know why they call it this. There wasn't any water at the site that we could see.
It is different from the other site in that these ruins are mostly burial mounds and then a really cool cave. Here are a couple of the mounds.
According to the Fickers, the legend of the site is that the Mayan people were afraid of the Conquistadors and their horses so they hid in this cave and starved to death. Supposedly the cave had gold in it but not very long ago some Europeans came to the site and stole all the gold. The kids loved the cave. They had their headlamps on and went in to explore!
We all climbed down into the cave, but I did not go all the way down into the big room like the others did. Leslie had told me that there were bats. I stayed a little ways out but the flashes from the kids' cameras scared a bat. It flew out to where I was which, of course, made me scream. The kids thought this was hilarious (especially Caleb). After the first explore of the cave, we had our picnic of peanut butter and jelly.
After we ate the kids had to go explore some more. Then we tried to take a quick family picture. Here is the "best" one. We are all very dirty!
We have published our December newsletter on our other site (click here). Also we are publishing this blog entry from Guatemala City. We left early Tuesday morning so we could get to Immigration early. We have to renew our 90 day tourist visa before the 16th of December. We made it to the City in good time but the people at Immigration told us that we needed the kids' birth certificates or a notarized letter from a lawyer (The lady at Immigration spoke a little English and kept saying "liar" for lawyer. Don was having a hard time keeping a straight face!) before they would believe that they were our children. Don's response was "I came all the way to Guatemala and found some kids that look like me. Now I would like to renew the visas for these kids that aren't mine!" Yes, it was a little frustrating. Thank goodness for my sister! She went to our house and got the kids' birth certificates. Scanned them into her computer and sent them to us in several e-mails. Don is going to head back to Immigration first thing in the morning.
We are staying in the City until Friday so we are hoping to get this paperwork done and then we can head to the Zoo! We will keep you posted!
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