Last weeks at the Iguana Perdida and leaving it

Typing this from my phone so sorry if this isn't well edited. 

My last few weeks at the Iguana were, as before, a blur. But there were some fun things that might be worth the telling. In no particular order, here we go. 

Let's start with a bit of humor and a bit of drama. It became a joke at the iguana that I would never get to go paragliding because I tried for literally my last month to go and never succeeded. If I called in the morning, the weather wasn't good for it. If I had the day off, there was no wind, or it was from the wrong direction. If I was working or had other plans, guests would come to dinner that night gushing about how awesome paragliding was and how they were so happy they were able to do it on their one or two night stay on the lake. If I had the day off and gave up on trying, I would look up in the afternoon and see some paragliders happily hanging in a peaceful thermal. It was uncanny and, honestly, pretty funny. 

Finally I got Jeff to agree to go and see if he could tip my luck. It was my last week, and I had the day off. I called in the morning, and conditions were looking good. But I couldn't get an appointment until 3:30pm. Part of me knew this was the beginning of the end. 

I took a boat to Panajachel after lunch and went to my favorite coffee shop.

The two Korean guys, Diego and Martin, had been moving around opening shop all over Central America and the Caribbean. They had been in panajachel for a year and made the best coffee I've ever tasted. Really interesting guys. 

Anyway Jeff showed up around 2 and shared the quick turn in events of the past hour since I left. Due to an accounting error, 600 quetzales had been unaccounted for during one of his shifts, and he was accused of stealing and asked to leave. That bugged me because I knew he was trustworthy and any of us could have been on shift and accused of the same thing, and I hate it when people call my character into question. He did too, so it was a bummer, but we grabbed some coffee and some beers and checked in to go paragliding. 

The gliding was running behind half an hour, so we went to grab one more beer before heading up. Then we went and watched all the para gliders in the air finish up their flights neatly while we waited in the back of the pickup. 

Time to roll. 

Started up the mountain and hit rain. Let me explain something. It is the dry season. It doesn't rain in the dry season. Period. And yet. It was raining. 

So we turned around. "We tried." Then part way down it stopped raining, mostly. So the crew stopped, indecisive. Then were heading back up the mountain, overcast as it is. 

We get to the top, and the little kid who had missed his chance to go earlier straps in and jumps off with the owner if the company. We're up next. Our harness are on, we're going through the takeoff procedures, all set to go, and the wind dies. Then it starts raining. 

You can't fly properly in the rain. Abort. 

So close. But it was beautiful up there. 

The good thing was the ride down, standing in the back of the pickup and holding into a bar. The road was so windy, it almost felt like snowboarding. 

Got to the bottom, got our refund, and hit up Pollo Campero for a couple dozen chicken wings. By then it was seven and the last boat home is loosely at 7-7:30, so we sprinted full out to the docks and wheezed onto the last boat at altitude. What a day. 

Didn't get to go gliding, but when we got back, they had figured out that Jeff was innocent after all and asked him if he would consider staying. I wouldn't have blamed him either way, the whole thing left a pretty bad taste in my mouth for a couple days. He decided to think about it, and I rejoined the other volunteers to finish up the day with some normal partying. 

Another thing that happened in the last few weeks was that scorpions started turning up way more frequently, and I became somewhat of a scorpion go-to guy. Some of us got stung, but when someone found one in their room, they'd come to me, and I'd catch them. They weren't so bad, either. Only defensive if they felt threatened. 

Won some points with the ladies taking care of them though. 

Also got certified for open water scuba diving. So fun Oli was a phenomenal instructor and I got one on one lessons that turned into some really great dives. Since the lake has risen so much, we swam through old houses and bars and into saunas and down steep volcanic walls and even cooked an egg in one if the underwater vents along the fault line. Lots of fish including carp and crappies, bass, and tons of funny crabs with attitudes. As one guest put it, diving is kind of like checking out another world in zero gravity with a slow motion jet pack. I loved it, and was super happy to get certified and be able to have that skill in the future. 

By the time our last night roles around, everyone was on good terms again, and we had probably the best open mic night in memory. Tons of guests stayed up with us, so many that they had to create rows going back from the fire pit, and we had great crowd participation and just a lot of good fun. Everyone was feeling celebratory, and the night in itself was a nice gesture since we normally had open mic on Wednesday but they through it on the Tuesday in honor of us Boston kids leaving. Great night, and a wonderful way to leave the iguana, which was an experience that deserved to be ended on a high note. 

I felt really good about leaving, sending that I had spent an amount of time that was somewhere between "just enough" and "too long," and I was very content to move on at that point. There were tons of unchronicled adventures and misadventures at the iguana, and a rare sort of atmosphere and combination of characters that will probably stay with me as long as I live. 

Next it was off to Lanquin, but that it is a story for another day. Perhaps tomorrow.