re-upping

Ok, friends have pointed out that I have not blogged for a good long time. I don't know why I go into these blog slumps, but life comes at me fast sometimes, and after months slip by, I feel all awkward about starting again. How about I start with Mexico? We went to the Oaxaca region on the Pacific side last month, about twenty miles north of Guatamala. There were iguanas all over the place--two foot long critters who were black with white patches and looked a little worse for the wear. This fine fellow, however, was the pet of a guy who let you hold him and take your picture with him for five bucks. I decided that that would be a fine use of my souvenir dollars because I really wanted to get my hands on that iguana. He was a beautiful creature, very heavy, very scaly, and very warm. I may not get the chance to hold an iguana that big for a very long time. (No, that was not sexual innuendo, although it certainly sounds funny now that I've typed it :)

While we were there, we experienced an earthquake, 6.0 on the Richter scale. It was quite a good shaking, going on for probably 30-45 seconds or so. We had just awakened when I felt a little shake, shake, shaking, followed by very hard shaking, then it eased up again, then was over. Wow. One never knows how a hotel built into the side of steep, dry, rocky cliffs is going to withstand something like that, but things held together and there seemed to be no damage in our area. I'm adding it to the list of Vacation Natural Disasters which we seem to be accumulating. Hurricane while we were on Grand Cayman. Floods and landslides, leading to our evacuation to higher ground, while we were on Kauai. And now an earthquake. Between the earthquake and holding the iguana, breaking my toe on this vacation seemed rather anti-climactic. Never a dull moment. As always, we had a grand adventure.