Greg has a photo of me taking this photo, of course. But I think I had the better view! Heh. I love this old structure with the wild vegetation growing inside.

Tuk Tuk’s were our main source of transportation. I seriously want one of these, but I could safely bet that after I park it in my neighborhood that it’d be stolen within 12 hours. Thing is, it shouldn’t be that hard to find since I’ve never seen one in SF, right? Still, I don’t want to test my luck.

Color color color. This town is a photographer’s dream come true! So, if I told you one of the below buildings was a McDonald’s, would you believe me? No? I probably wouldn’t either, but it’s safe to say I have a McDonald’s in one of these shots. One of the most amazing things about this place, other than the people, is that there’s no major billboards or advertisements on the buildings so your everyday fast food stop is not apparent. We saw a Domino’s Pizza, Subway, McDonald’s, and each time had to take a second look and think… “is that a…”, and come to find out, it was indeed what we thought we saw.

Okay, I said I’d show some ‘chicken bus‘ photos, and here they are! They are called chicken busses because on most days you can expect to find Guatemalan ladies bringing their chickens to sell at the farmer’s market. We didn’t have such luck, which I was slightly bummed about. But the busses themselves are all different and very much their own art pieces.

Of course I was thrilled to find this bus come buzzin by. I’m making this my last photo from the trip, because I’d like to think it’s my bus home (though it doesn’t go anywhere near California!).

oxoxo,
Debra

So we brought the puppies back to the house we were staying at in Antigua and we were hoping to get a nice portrait of all of them together – how silly were we? They were running all over the place and all over Greg!

It was hard to pick a favorite, but if I had to choose one it would of been this cutie below with Greg.

Time for dinner!

You missed one!

After picking up the puppies and having crazy fun with them that evening, we had to get a good night sleep since we were being picked up at 4am in the morning to head to the airport.

We got the pups all checked in with no problems; four were checked in with baggage and one went on board with us. I was worried that he’d be hyper on the plane, but it was the opposite. The plane seems to have the same affect on dogs as it does me, it puts us to sleep! Yes, being on a plane puts me to sleep instantly, I feel lucky about that. He was so great, he didn’t complain or budge once.

Unfortunately we had a bit of a problem once we arrived at LAX; the fella who re-checks in your luggage after you’ve cleared customs wouldn’t take the pups and made us go crazy out of our way to check them in someplace else. This is not how it’s typically done, they are suppose to take them at that point, and since he didn’t, we barely made our flight by just a few minutes, and unfortunately the pups didn’t have the same luck. Our hearts were broken when we arrived at SFO and found they didn’t make the flight. The pups eventually made it 3 flights later that evening. So while we waited all night for the others to arrive, we took the one we had on board with us to take to the SPCA. This is our guy…

So now we’re at the SPCA and I’m nearly in tears at this point, it’s amazing how attached I get in such a small amount of time. It was soooo hard to say goodbye.

The good news is, all the pups have been adopted and are now living in loving homes. Don’t you just love a happy ending?

oxoxo,
Debra

Our journey out to Aware was quite an adventure. We took several “chicken buses” to get there (photos coming later). We got dropped off on the side of the freeway and headed up a dirt road. We walked for about 10 minutes before we could hear the dogs barking in the distance, I was so happy to hear them as I wasn’t sure we were on the right path. It took us about 20 minutes to reach the front gate of Aware and other 10 minutes to walk down their driveway, and it was only about 90 degrees!

We were so happy to reach the gate, now only if we had brought water.

No one was there when we got there so we jumped the fence and went and said hello to some of the dogs. I wish I could show you pictures of all of them, but they had around 200 (!). It was quite loud with all the barking, they all wanted us to come give them some love and play with them. This guy is so stunning, I really wish I could of brought him home with me, but alas, my cat wouldn’t have any of it.

Seriously, I was holding back the tears and still have a hard time looking at some of these photos. These dogs were so sweet and deserve a good home. I will say that Aware does take really good care of their dogs and has wonderful volunteers and vets on site helping take care of them.

We did see a lot of stray dogs on our trip, it seems to be a bit of a problem in Guatemala.

A post about the puppies is next, so stay tuned.

oxoxo,
Debra

Here’s a few pics from our trip:






Mmmm fog…

Okay, I did a little house hunting while we were in the North Bay neighborhood. This one is my favorite homes, though I can’t seem to decide which I’ll ultimately settle on (wink). Manuel calls this the ‘Harry Potter House’. I love it!

The yellow home is my second choice, but really, if I’m going to spend that much money I don’t want a neighbor that close unless it was my mother’s home (I love my mom!).

But honestly, how does one choose?


Thank you Manuel, we love you!

oxoxo,
Debra

Debra