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(This email bounced back from all Skagit Valley Herald people except for Marta, members of Levi's family and a few others. Therefore, I post it here.)

Dear families and friends,

Levi and i miss reporting. we miss writing and pressing unwilling people for details about their lives. which is why, this morning, we went on a mission to find out about the howlers of san marcos la laguna, a quiet lakeside town.

here´s what happened: levi and i were completely freaked out when, around 8 p.m., howling erupted from all over this tiny tropical village. at first we thought the new age people were to blame, then we thought it might be a cult. as the howling continued, we agreed it had to be a religious mob intent on breaking into our thatched-roof cabin and, most likely, killing us. levi put a chair against the door and to relieve our anxiety, we listened to ¨Meet the Press¨ on Levi´s ipod. I have never felt more soothed by the sounds of Dick Cheney´s voice, assuring us that there was plenty reason to invade Iraq.

The howling, magnified through loudspeakers, went on until about midnight and started up again at 6 a.m. come morning, i asked the hotel manager what had been going on -- this involved me doing an imitation of the howling and repeating ¨noches¨ -- but she denied having heard anything.

Levi and I headed to the small pebbled beach on the lake and found a very tanned woman in an itty-bitty orange bikini who explained. It turned out this woman was a former British journalist who had followed the hippie trail to San Marcos in the 1970s and had since retired to San Marcos. She explained that U.S. influence in the 1980s included turning Mayans into evangelicals. The government had associated Catholics priests with the guerrillas, and many people switched their religious allegiances to evangelical sects, which were pro-government and pro-business in Guatemala. Not surprisingly, Guatemala has become the least Catholic country in Central America, with just 60 percent claiming Catholicism and 40 percent claiming evangelism.

After swimming with the retired reporter and picking her brain (¨Frankly, darling, I´m retired. I try not to get my head into these things¨), we headed to the Moonfish Cafe to ask more people. But just as we were getting the juicy stuff, a small group of local and gringa woman ran by with machetes, determined to catch a purse snatcher. When I mused aloud that it was a funny form of justice, a French hippie woman snapped at me that the Guatemalan police couldn´t give a care about San Marcos.

Anyhow. Enjoy the photos. I included two of Antigua -- pretty and dull -- to show you what I meant when I said that Antigua reminded me of the north side of Dublin on a sunny day. Maman and Dad: please forward this onto Hana and Rob. I don´t have their emails at my fingertips. A public thank you to my parents who have been so helpful after I got all my money and credit card stolen, not to mention my skirt slashed opèn with a razor blade.

Bisous bisous,

Isolde