Santo Tomas, Guatemala

I'm pretty sure that there is more to the name of this port stop, but

 this is all I can remember at this time and I'm feeling too lazy to look it up online at this time.  We have an excursion planned here through a local company and get off the boat in good time to meet our tour group and get bracelets, get our passports stamped, and shop some in the

local market that is part of the port here.  In fact, we have flummoxed the tour company a little because we paid for half of our tour and emailed them about the fact that there would be four adults and four kids, so now then need a bigger van for our group to go because they

  thought that we had paid in full for the four adults.  Or, I assume that they are going to expect us to pay when we get back.  We have a lot of US dollars on us in order to pay for the other half of the tour for this reason.  But they finally get a van for us and we head off to

see the Las Escobas waterfalls in the rain forest.  Driving through Guatemala is like driving through Panama and brings home the incredible poverty of some parts of these countries.  The tour guide answers my question about bananas being the main export

and says that locals can't quite understand why America and Germany love them so much.  He states that they don't eat them there, but this is the home of Chiquita and Dole.  Not that you can tell that the money has trickled down to the population.  I'll have to ask Julie for some

  of her pictures as we were driving through town to give an idea of the shanties that we were driving past.  We first stopped at a tiny thatched house where a woman made homemade tortillas for us and I'm the first one to get up there and eat on and I even put her homemade black beans on there.  Those of you who know that I have never gone to Mexico

 without getting a violent intestinal bug, know that this is the height of me being polite to someone being hospitable to us.  From here, after I have successfully said a sentence in Spanish to the woman who made us food to the point that she answers me in a fast clip 

 back that I barely catch, keep Oscar from actually touching the mangy animals everywhere, and get back into the van, we head off to the waterfalls park.  Our tour guide doesn't seem to know much or spend much time explaining things to us, but 

 does make it clear that they have gotten a lot of rain recently and the waterfalls are the biggest that he has ever seen them.  He's like a tourist with us and taking pictures at the same time.  We wade out to the middle to say that we got in the water because this tour is supposed to include us getting 

to swim in the water, but after some of the sites of this country, we're not sure that we want to bathe in the river water that becomes their water supply.....So, we don't argue when the tour guide says that the water might be too high for swimming.  We head back to the van and then back to the ship and have some lunch.  While John lies down with Oscar, I get

 to return to the port shopping bazaar without the kid which makes for a more enjoyable and productive time.  I get some great homemade things while I'm there and get some actual Guatemalan coins for the kids who want to get a little money

 from each country.  We decide later that we paid fair money for an excursion that last half the time it was supposed to, a tour guide that didn't know anything, and no swimming.  So, we didn't feel like we had to return to the tour office to pay them the rest of the tour money which they obviously weren't expecting anyway....a local tour that didn't go as well as we are used to....