Mi dos casas

I thought I might show you where I live. Well, actually I have two homes; one is with the formidable Carmen, in her spacious town- (or rather village-) house in Chiché, which is filled with kitschy trinkets and souvenirs and religious slogans and images, complete with one room dedicated to her saints. My room is rivalling with the house now as I am building up a collection of masks which are displayed on my wall.

In the patio garden there stands in pride of place the pila, an indispensable resource in every Guatemalan home, and its function is to store water (in a vast quantity, which is vital considering we sometimes do not have running water for days on end), as well as sink (in Carmen`s house there is no other sink) for washing clothes (Guatemalan style, i.e. scrubbing against the built-in washboard) and washing everything else. There is also a lime tree heavy with budding limes and another tree which is simultaneously losing its leaves and sprouting new buds, under which is my hammock (vital for post-lunch siestas).We are moving from summer, which traditionally lasts the months of March and April, (although this year it seems to have gone a bit haywire and summer has only just arrived), straight into winter, which is the rainy season and lasts for six months (well I shouldn`t complain I suppose!).

My other home is in Antigua, and is where I hang out at weekends. It is the home of three marvellous Peruvians, Rafo, Pancho and Margarita. This house is pretty special. It is at the very top of one of the main avenues in Antigua, nestling under the wooded hills above, with spectacular views over the volcano Agua and beyond. It is incredibly capacious, with very little furniture and therefore lots of space. The gardens are the pride of the property; imagine a luscious verdant haven dotted with avocado trees laden with fruit, lime trees on the way, the air filled with birdsong and a resident pair of large rodents (tacuasin) which show themselves when we turn on the floodlight, leisurely ambling up a stem to the wall (their escape route) in true laid-back Latin-American style. The ambient temperature always seems to be very agreeable (the coldest months in Guatemala are November and December, which are the only months I will miss) and some evenings we take all the cushions and mattresses out into the garden and stay there, wrapped up in lovely Peruvian blankets, watching the stars slowly blinking their way into the darkening night sky.