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In order to familiarize myself with Garrett Murray’s excellent, writing-oriented CMS, SimpleLog, I created a free Simplelog theme. It is stripey and red, and named “Stripes”. You can see a screenshot below, and download it.

“Stripes” is meant to be a baseline theme, if people need solid CSS base from which to start. I spent lots of time working out the vertical-rhythm, a pretty sweet em-based scaling system and other design-minded flourishes. In that regard, it works pretty well, save Safari and list-item fake bullets with Floats. I hope to fix that soon.

I’m currently running Stripes on a “project” URL—www.tapandpint.com—if you’d like to click around. But really, Simplelog is so simple, you should just install it on your version, try it and then choose.

aka UX Engineerette

Design, development: which is your focus, you ask? Both. Both are puzzles; opportunities for problem-solving. My focus has been in technology problem-solving, where problems come in a wide variety of sizes. Some problems are wide-ranging, like confusing information organization. Other problems are narrowly focused, like aesthetic effects that obscure a message. Despite the difference in scales and solutions, I firmly believe design thinking can be brought to problems of any size and shape. Sometimes the identified problems require solutions in graphic design, solutions in code, solutions within IA, or even solutions calling for more multi-disciplinary “hats”. But those solutions are only truly successful if they keep focus on the user experience. In my work, I try to keep the user-experience a living part of the discussion, whether that’s individually or within a team of colleagues.

In 2004-2005, I completed a graduate-level certificate in user-centered design at the University of Washington. We studied a wide variety of problem-solving techniques, focusing on how and why people use things, and how we could change the design process to keep a people-oriented focus in mind at all times. The strength of the program was that I learned how to move design thinking beyond “usability” and “intuitiveness”, both of which have become misaligned terms in the technology industry. Design thinking can bind the traditional separation of design & development into one user-centered effort, which I like to think of as UX Engineering.

As designers, we might geek out on flow, analytics, use cases and tools, but for the people using things we’ve designed, it boils down useful “magic”. Adaptive Path’s Todd Wilkins recently showed a diagram that struck a chord with me, in its simple expression of user-centeredness, during his recent presentation on “User Experience Design” at WebVisions (from my notes):

UX Experience

Run.com ~ Hillclimb Media, a Demand Media company (Spring 2007)

Recently, Run.com evolved from a parked domain into a running-oriented tool, which running enthusiasts use to build a library of mapped running routes around the world. Run.com was the first project within Hillclimb Media where UX was given some priority within the schedule, as an experiment in adding user-centered processes to other projects.

User Experience Design

• With project manager, conducted competitive assessment, exploring existing tools for runners and informally interviewing running enthusiasts within the company and outside the company
• With project manager, developed UI wireframes and flow charts around an existing prototype
• Led low-fidelity, paper prototyping of improvements, for task-oriented role playing with team members
• Led education session on tags as supplemental IA methods
• Led discussion of adopting judicious AJAX technical solutions, as a way to simplify the experience for users
• Injected an awareness of interactivity barriers into team, which developed a degree of empathy during development, unique within Hillclimb projects
• Within the mapping tool itself, single-handedly developed type, classification and organization of marker system, to add meta information to routes

Graphic Design

• Designed logo, marker iconography overlaying map and “bare-bones utility” website UI, with a strong focus on minimal barriers to entering a route

Code

• Worked within ASP framework
• Wrote supplemental Google Maps API integration (adding to the core work of a contractor on the map creation and display)
• Wrote web-standard HTML & CSS

GardenGuides.com & RunThePlanet.com ~ Hillclimb Media, a Demand Media company (Winter 2006-2007)

Hillclimb Media’s specialty is acquiring and converting “distressed” recreation- and hobby-minded websites into new, monetized websites, which could then be tailored toward community-oriented features like social networking and user-generated content.

User Experience Design

• Part of informal team (3-8 people) developing associative groupings of content types
• Led informal team in development of grouping and display scheme for a taxonomy tree/scientific name hierarchy from database information
• Led informal team in development of usability and IA heuristics for use during “migration process” and unit testing
• Participated in and guided re-organizing content types into a coherent information architecture, via a home-grown method akin to card sorting

Graphic Design

• Dissected and coded from design comps provided by design team, supplementing design components as needed

Code

• Worked within ASP framework
• Wrote web-standard HTML & CSS
• Selective work with regular expressions, as part of migrating content from the original site into new templates

User-centered Design Certificate ~ University of Washington (2004-2005)

Within the UCD program at UW, I had a unique chance to work with my colleagues through a variety of design thinking tasks. I continue to try to bring many of these tasks into my work, as appropriate to the team, time and project.

Out of the program, two projects stand out: the full usability finding report on an early iteration of iTunes (test designed, conducted and written up by myself and two classmates) and a visual analysis for an Audi vehicle instrument panel, written by myself alone in a class focused on cognitive visual perception and information gathering.

User Experience Design

• Persona development
• Card sorting / affinity diagramming
• Site mapping
• Flow diagramming
• Usability test design
• Running a usability test
• Report-writing for usability findings, results
• Report-writing and statistical analysis for a statistically relevant sample usability study
• Developing and applying usability heuristics and web-content-writing heuristics
• Physical prototyping
• Paper prototyping, with varying degrees of fidelity
• Writing up persona-based use cases

WhitePages.com (2002-2005)

Within my ~4 years at WhitePages.com, the role of design shifted continually, covering many different teams and team compositions. I completed my study at UW during my employment, so UX efforts were more on a toe-hold than a full initiative.

User Experience Design

• Observer/advisor role within 6-person usability testing team in Product Management, which infrequently ran in-house usability tests
• Occasionally led low- and high-fidelity cognitive walk-throughs of co-brands and prototypes with team members
• Long-term member of an informal group that frequently looked at improving internal processes and deliverables between teams
• Part of 3-person technical team (me, lead technical architect and a PM) that redesigned system architecture in XML/XSLT to better fit business rules and how people within the company used the tool set—a major advance in productivity

Graphic Design

• Designed 2 older UIs for WhitePages.com, since replaced
• Designed numerous co-branded solutions, frequently following branding standards
• Numerous “mockup”, comp and component design projects

Code

• Worked within XSLT site-templating framework
• Wrote XSLT system allowing sites to be a series of template-driven components
• Wrote HTML & CSS, approaching web-standards

SeaCoast Vitamins (current freelance project)

Working as a consultant with SeaCoast, I’m part of a small team planning a large “realignment” project for SeaCoast Vitamins.

Planned UX Design

• mind-mapping
• mental model/alignment diagramming (a la Indi Young’s upcoming book with Rosenfeld Media)

Digital Web Magazine (2006-present)

As a volunteer staff member of Digital Web Magazine—an online publication for web professionals from a wide range of disciplines—I keep up-to-date on as wide a variety of web topics as I can manage. Digital Web features some of the best, most-current writing on design and design-thinking issues, along with many other topics within website and web-application design. In my position, I’m fortunate to get a chance at advance reading, as well as a opportunity to connect with our authors.

The essayesque ramblings of Tiff Fehr

• The Oktoberfest Pilgrimage
  ‘Wies’n in Minga’—a Baptism for the Beer Devotee, 2004, by Tiff Fehr
• Heads in the Clouds
  Guatemala 2007, by Tiff Fehr

‘Wies’n in Minga’—a Baptism for the Beer Devotee, 2004, by Tiff Fehr

Over the past 7 years¹, Oktoberfest has been an event I faithfully observe. Either in the Seattle district of Fremont, the Bavarian-themed town of Leavenworth in the Cascades or a random bar promotion. They are all microcosmic tributes to the original world-famous Oktoberfest held in Munich, Germany. But my observance didn’t really take on ‘faith’ proportions until I started attending Leavenworth’s Oktoberfest, which over 4 years evolved from an evenings’ entertainment into a 3-day retreat, complete with scheduled time off work.

Mid-”Leavenworth” in 2003 (it’s now just “Leavenworth”, due the pale comparison it offers and the tyrannical door-pricing/beer-pouring schemes of late), the proposal was put before the faithful to—effectively—”put our money where our mouths are”. We would pilgrimage to the real event in Germany. Armed with a limited concept of what that meant, a core group of beer-drinkers planned and bought tickets. Some serendipitous factors came into planning, namely the relocation of two dear friends to London; two other dear friends dividing their honeymoon into two trips—one amongst a group of friends, even; and the selection of our token minor, which everyone knows is a prerequisite to any beer-drinking overseas adventure, taking along a minor. So, long planning story short, in various waves we shoved off for Europe.

The UK

[Photo from FluidFoundation.com] I can’t account for the adventures of my traveling group before I joined them. They spent 8 days in England while I suffered through the usual Q3 onslaught of work. But most of their adventures seemed to revolve around a pub called “The Ship“, just behind the Underground Station of Holburn.

I joined the group at—you guessed it—”The Ship” and promptly met my buddy Jeff’s co-workers, some of whom would figure into Oktoberfest itself. After pints of bitter (glorious bitter!), we moseyed to a club in Covent Garden, led by the late-night enthusiasms of a German duo named Till and Ena. But weighing over the evening was an 8 a.m. flight out of Gatwick—an hour from London by taxi—plus your average two-hour airport padding, more padding for waking and packing, etc. So here’s a chronology, after we made lame excuses and left the club around midnight:

• 5 a.m.–wake
• 9 a.m.–flight from London to Geneva
• 12 p.m.–train from Geneva to Bex, in French-speaking southwest Switzerland
• 2 p.m.–bus between Bex and Bévieux
• 2:20 p.m.–cog-train from
• Bévieux to Gryon, nearly straight up the Alp(s) where Gryon clings to the mountainside
• 3 p.m.–hike between station and hostel, about 50′ horizontally and 200′ vertically at 2000m (6500′) elevation.

Around 3 p.m. we arrived at the much touted Hostel Chalet Martin of Gryon, Switzerland. I mildly freaked out when a hobbit opened the door.

Gyron

[Photograph by walknboston on Flickr] Chalet Martin rules. As far as hostels go, it’s more like a co-op ski lodge than your average eastern-bloc dormitory hostel. Gorgeous Swiss woodwork, impossible mountain vistas even with fog, cozy rooms, friendly people sitting about kitchens, music, puzzles, warm comforters and an instant invite to participate in the next night’s BBQ. But within a few hours of arriving, we headed back down the mountain to Les Baines de Lavey, a thermal spa resort with a hostel-guest discount: Three hours of all-the-spa-you-can-, well, -absorb for 25 Swiss francs and a few “frankencents” (or “beans²“; we couldn’t decide which was more amusing). Recall we got up at 5 a.m. the same day, then consider peppermint-infused steam rooms, massaging pressure showers and jets, a current pool, what can only be described as “bubble mats”, a light misty rain, saunas at volcanic temperatures, 5-degree kick-a-hole-in-the-ice nordic plunge baths…. You know, just like your bathroom at home.

After two days solid traveling with barely a nap in the UK, it was bliss. Half-comatose, warm bliss. After the spa, we returned to the hostel via death-wish mountain driving and applied wine therapy internally with fellow hostellers until some absurd hour, when I realized I was hallucinating from sleep-deprivation.

When we first checked in, Gaz the hostel admin (our own private Frodo!) expressed skepticism that we planned to only stay a day. Most guests stay for weeks at a time, which seemed to be true of 90% the current hostellers. But following the trend, the place was so phenomenal we duly wrote off Sunday. Sunday we tried to find a grocery store, but only found a smattering of pasta ingredients from Bex and a thoroughly harassed kebab-making family. Which would be the first of an entire kebab-related theme. By evening we were back up in the mountains with excellent steaks (thanks, boys!), more wine, music, a puzzle, books, a banana-bread bake-off and an opportunity to harass high-school PIRGies. All the hallmarks of a good Sunday.

I wish we’d had time to go uphill to Glacier 3000 and the Diablerets in the clouds (the most badass name for a glacier; add reverb and laser effects in your head). But Monday morning as we left—sad-hearted—the sun broke through and we found ourselves surrounded by freshly snow-kissed Alps, panoramas bigger when you look up-and-down than side-to-side. So, the long and the short of it: Gryon rules and I highly suggest you go there. Now. They have Internet access, you can finish reading this there.

Interlaken to München

Monday we loosely planned to venture into the Jungfrau region of the Alps in central Switzerland above Interlaken, via the Golden Pass between Montreax and Gstaad. Unfortunately, we didn’t have enough time; we arrived just before dusk with overcast skies. So we stayed in Interlaken at the “world famous” Balmer’s hostel. I wasn’t all that impressed, but it did offer 2-for-1 VB beers. Good stuff, nice flavor. After beer, travel, a nice meal and many jokes about a stinky fellow roomer, I fell asleep laughing for reasons I don’t really recall clearly now. Probably beer-related. Good times.

Tuesday night we had reservations at a hostel in Munich. So most of Tuesday was traveling by train from Interlaken through Bern, the lakes, Zurich, southern Germany and into Munich. In Munich (München in German, Minga in Bavarian), the hostel we booked worked out well:

1. only a 15 minute walk from the Hauptbahnhof (train station and transportation hub)
2. the hostel was formerly a Ford dealership and recently converted to a hostel—mere weeks before—and we got a locking 6-bed room with private bath (no lock on the bathroom, but we’re geniuses with string) for the entire 3 nights
3. only 10 minutes from Oktoberfest. Which theoretically meant crawling distance.

And for your hangover-magnifying hoppy stank in the mornings, the hostel sat across the street from the Augustiner brewery. Overall, a choice set-up. We unpacked, hydrated and headed for Teresienplatz, the fairgrounds where Oktoberfest throws down every year.

Oktoberfest in München, Day One

“Sweet Jesus.”

As a kid, I visited the Hofbrauhaus in München and feel a natural comfort in beer halls (probably genetic). Childhood, Leavenworth, the Hofbrau-recreation in Vegas or other other imitation beer halls all covered the basic rituals of any Oktoberfest. All are various degrees of a “great time”. But now I know the scale is ALL wrong. Oktoberfest in München is Mecca; at a basic level, seven giant tents with a full amusement park around them, on the scale of your average state fairgrounds. Though you should note, by “giant tents” I mean airplane-hanger sized buildings with no canvas in sight, complete with kitchens, balconies and decorations as elaborate as holiday department store trappings in a big city. Oh, and seating for 10,000 people per tent. But if 70% of those people are standing on the endless rows of benches and tables, I expect you could easily double or treble that number per tent. Which they do.

By the official stats, on weekends 700,000 people visit Oktoberfest, or Wies’n as the locals call it. Completing the atmosphere, mentally add raised bandstands with 20-piece oompah bands playing pop medleys or traditional tunes and so much heat from the collected humanity that a tank top is comfy. But in fact, it’s nearly impossible to describe. Within 10 minutes of arriving, we sat at an outdoor biergarten table with Maß’es (the 1 Liter tankards) of festival bier for everyone and the first of many renditions of the two 2004 Wies’n songs: “Hey, Baby” and “Country Road”. I’m not joking. An Australian family later told me “Hey, Baby” won a Wies’n theme song contest. And some cold-hearted (or dark-humored) bastard told Germans that “Country Road” is fun to sing in inebriated groups. Which—let’s be honest—it is. So imagine 10,000-30,000 Germans, many in lederhosen, standing on tables with giant festival biers and torso-sized pretzels, gustily singing along to John Denver.

Country roads, take me home,
To the place where I belong!
West Virginia, mountain mama,
Take me home, country road.

It’s hard to convey the absurdity at a proper scale.

Jeff’s company just opened a new office in München, so close to last call we joined his co-workers in their reserved box of the “hipster” tent, Schottenhamel. It was too late for more beer—Wies’n closes at 11 p.m.—so after sloppy introductions, drunken planning and magically hailing a minivan cab, most of the party wound up at a local bar, Alter Simpl (”Old Simpleton”, sort of, and birthplace of the satirical magazine Simplicissimus) on Türkenstraße. Fantastic food; go late. Wiener Schnitzel the size of your entire plate, I kid you not. Somehow Kyle, our 19-year-old, got into a beer-chugging contest drinking quality German bier against a real German. Till is probably twice his age and four times his drinking experience. But Kyle held his own after an initial ass-kicking; it was quite impressive. We have video. The second attempt resulted in an unfortunate incident I will only refer to as Blackmail Item #2043. I personally entertained myself speaking a 3-year-old’s German at the extremely patient and boisterous Ena. It was a trend I would continue—stuttering German at native speakers, assuming the conversation must be fun for them.

Day Two

The group was largely hangover-free the next morning. Well, at least we all could walk. We toured the Altstadt (old city) and strategized some shopping at Europe’s H&M chain, but coincidence and mobile phone ran us into my Seattle-side roommate Rob and his native companion ³ Daniel. Rob was on his own overseas adventure—staying with Daniel—and both detoured into München to join us, along with another local friend, Babsi. I’m sure it was the company they wanted and not the beer. But our intentions being the same—beer—the whole crew touristically trooped over to the legendary Hofbrauhaus for some historic bierhall action. After a few Maß’es, delicious food and watching DJ eat an entire pork knuckle, we were prepped for even more drinking. Back to Wies’n!

Day Two at Wies’n was less auspicious, because it was raining. Every tent filled to the brim with half-drunk and half-soaked people, putting most over-capacity. We squeezed under an eave outside one tent (or, in Daniel’s case, under a flowerbox on the wall under the eave) while the group fully assembled. The rain let up, but the halls stayed full for the rest of the evening. We found one of the smaller halls and an entire table to ourselves. The tent sported awesome hops-themed decorations, a large portion of which came home in my hair and hoodie. We put in a long evening of true Oktoberfesting. We sang “Country Road” at least three times; “Hey, Baby” nearly incessantly (with or without the band depending on what drunken individual started up) and many others I can’t recall. Oddly enough, no “Birdie/Chicken Dance” which is, I suppose, only an American beerhall standard. Go figure. Also—a retrospective low point—at some point I decided to chat at Daniel, at shouting volume as we stood on benches, about various aspects of European history. Some having nothing to do with Germany at all. In a 3-year-olds’ German. Daniel, my apologies.

After Wies’n closed, our bar-hopping group rapidly dwindled, along with my recollection of events in their full detail. We found a bar serving Augustiner bier in Maß sizes. Something about the waitress not serving us food. Babsi drank a full stein of white wine which thoroughly impressed me. Overall I recall laughing a lot, often at my own German. Or Rob’s, who sounds like Babelfish translations read aloud by a Canadian child. At a random sports bar around 3 a.m., I fell asleep at the table. Had the day NOT been a beer-drinkers’ equivalent of (blasphemy alert) prayer before the temple, I would be ashamed of myself. Very bad form. Our collective benevolence somehow got me home to the hostel. I recall falling asleep feeling sad that the evening had to end at all.

Day Three

Rob’s description of how he felt the next morning on his way to the airport involved violence and baseball bats. I’m sure I was not much better. But given my vaguely masochistic enthusiasm for the darker side of human nature and history, my hangover and I went to Dachau. After years of studying WWII history, I would have been plenty pissed if I missed visting a concentration camp memorial site. A nasty head-hangover seemed appropriate. Dachau was riveting and inexpressibly hard. I’ll offer twisted thanks that my visit was limited by closing hours. Everyone else rallied to finish the shopping plans, which I regretted right up until I saw how many extra bags everyone bought. Regrouping back in the city, we moved slowly for dinner. Which ended up being on the hallowed grounds of Wies’n again.

Our party-karma being 99% exhausted, I took a full Maß of beer onto my lap, courtesy of a wasted German local. Thankfully the saucy waitress liked my slaughtered German efforts and made the bastard pay for a new bier. Or, rather, his woman-companion paid and at that point resentfully stopped her half-English, half-German anti-Bush diatribe (irregardless that we fully agreed with her). I mopped myself back to tolerably damp and suffered the rest with a plate of spätzle. God bless spätzle. Two local girls gave Kyle a chance to flirt via my German, which was abstractedly amusing. We spent a good deal of time waiting through Penny’s bathroom-finding adventures. The bathroom situation at Wies’n was its own event entirely.

After closing, Kyle left to pack since he, DJ and Rena had a flight back to the States the next morning. Jeff, Penny and I tried out the bierhall at the Augustiner brewery, across from the hostel. Great find! What a fantastic place. Excellent bier and the hall had stables for their draft horses built right into the side of the hall. The creatures were coal black and had to be nearly 24 hands high. After a nice visit, we went home a bit “early”. I wrapped my beer-soaked jeans in a plastic bag. Where they still are today.

Salzburg

Compared to the ruckus of Wies’n, Salzburg seemed like an empty movie set. A goddamned gorgeous movie set with nicely scaled medieval, rococo and renaissance attractions placed along convenient walking routes. I wish I had a more intelligent reason to visit Salzburg besides sight-seeing, but honestly we were in detox. I go to the home of Stiegl beer to detox; as you could guess, that worked out well. We ambled around the Altstadt, situated directly below their awesome medieval castle. Jeff and I pondered what castle aspects we’d prefer to figuratively defend during pre- and post-gunpowder warfare: I’m a gate-person; Jeff seemed inclined to forward ramparts. Penny preferred a windowed room somewhere high above our hypothetical warfare, which was the most intelligent answer.

On Saturday before our flight , we walked 5k south of town to Hellbrunn Palace. My former-expat cousins told me about the place as a kid. The palace is a whimsical yellow tribute to megalomania, but Hellbrunn has a unique feature—it is full of springs. The builders created an entire water-works, including raining grottos, pools, fountains, etc. But they also used hydropower to booby-trap as much as they could. And the tour makes thorough use of the booby-traps: doorways that gleek water up your pants, elk statues that shower whole plazas from their antlers, etc. One phenomenal item used water to power a whole mechanical theater, simulating the city square during the construction of the renaissance cathedral. 200+ moving figurines and a water-organ to cover the noise, all powered by water. Then, of course, water jets into the back of the crowd watching the theater during the finale. It was a quality touristy thing to do. And then we went back to London.

The UK II

My parents happen to be passing through London on Sunday en route to South Africa, so met them for lunch. And their entire tour squad, which took up so much time I missed my big London goal—visiting the Imperial War Museum again. Very sad. But I consoled myself with a dork-tour of fixtures referenced in O’Brien’s “Master and Commander” series. Jeff made chili for dinner with homemade tortillas, to ease me back into being from the Western US. At 7 a.m. the next morning I left for home. The rest of the trip can be summed up with: travel, travel, travel, laundry, bed. And frantic keep-the-straining-gates-of-hell-shut work the next morning.

All in all, a fantastic trip. The next pilgrimage (possibly the Winter Olympics in Torino in 2006?), we’re going to finish in Gryon’s mountain spa retreat. Detox there. But there’s so much to do, I could plan 10 trips and barely cover all the places I want to go. So, until next time, a big thanks to all involved who made the trip fantastic!

¹ This is a truthful number, and more amusing as I’m only 26 at time of writing, in 2004. (click to go back up the page)
² The real unit is “centimes”
³ Everyone loves a completely obscure David Foster Wallace reference. Don’t lie, you do.

Eight Days in Guatemala, Fall 2007, by Tiffany Fehr

(Photos courtesy of Jackie Fehr’s Flickr account)

In 2001, my parents retired. Naturally, being from the strains of Fehr or Breckenridge, neither parent is good at being retired. My dad works “part time” in “retirement”, as the CTO of a company named Raser Tech. Raser seems to require endless weeks in Detroit, the armpit of Amerika. In the meantime, mom volunteers with more causes and groups than I can count: she teaches at the National Ability Center, Rock-something National Park, at least three community associations and both parents volunteer ski patrol throughout the winter at Park City Mountain. Not including their endless, year-round patrol training classes (a majority of which they teach), you get the “workaholic” picture. And, being our parents’ kids, my brother and I display the same tendencies.

In order to make sure my family takes time off from work, our newest family tradition is to take international vacations, preferable out of the reach of mobile phones. The most recent adventure found the family—plus our childhood friend, Byron—in Guatemala, which was, in fact, a pretty arbitrary choice. After a wonderful vacation to Costa Rica in 2005 (not including the turtles¹), the family attention span is gradually moving up the pacific coast of Central America. So, on the agreed-upon date, the family showed up in the Guatemala City airport, with just a smattering of “Lonely Planet” chapters to give us any hint of the week to come.

Arrival

Guatemala City, the new capital, looks like any other mostly Westernized, non-English-speaking city. I did not actually see it—Byron and I landed at night, cleared customs² and zipped out of the city in a turismo van without so much as a bathroom break. As we drove through the city, visibility was further obscured by a rainstorm best described as a heavenly deluge. Now, it’s important to note that Guatemala City sits in the basin of ring of mountains. Driving out of the city involves driving over a mountain pass. On the night we arrived, the regularly steep drive also included unmarked construction obstacles, traffic, low visibility and road submerged under storm-fed rapids rushing down the median and gutters. The rain on the roof of our turismo van was so loud we couldn’t talk, but that made it much easier to sit politely as the driver picked up and dropped off five different people in random villages along the drive to the beach. It seems if you don’t expressly say “no (thank you)”, your turismo taxi fee pays for any local along your route.

Two hours and ten stops later, the beach appeared out of the sheets of rain. Well, less a beach and more a town with “Puerto” in the name, followed by a road lined with palm trees and undercarriage-scraping speed bumps. In effect, the beach. After the 18th speed bump, we arrived at our hotel to find sleepy check-in attendants, our cabana number, more rain and the news that there was no food after 10 p.m. Since it was midnight, there would be no food until morning. Taking in our miserable expressions and audible stomachs, the night staff suggested, via pantomime, that we go to the club and get drinks, at least. After ditching our stuff in our cabana, we walked over to the club. Immediately a major theme of the trip became apparent: this wasn’t really a gringo resort. The club was full of sweaty, young locals, doing their best to make “Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights” look like a middle school grub tolo. We politely took our beers—“beer is liquid bread, right?”—into the shadows by the pool, downed them to shut up our stomachs, oogled the dancers, then went to bed.

Day Two

As with any good beach holiday, on Day Two we tackled the difficult schedule of exploring the pool, breaking in a set of lounge chairs and finding the best combination of ocean breeze + shade progression + proximity to bar, as well as tolerable distance from the pool speakers, blaring salsa. Dad began a book of those damned math puzzles I can’t spell, I sprinted through another wonderful O’Brian book, Mom worked on her “Spanish in 30 Minutes a Day” (which she’s made last three years), Adam read a collection of books and we forced Byron to read our beloved “War of Witches”. “Witches” is a must-read for anyone looking for some immersion in modern day Aztec culture. Yes, Guatemala is nominally Mayan country, not Aztec, but it’s close, okay? Mel Gibson doesn’t distinguish.

Sure, you’re thinking Day Two sounds nice and peaceful, but in fact the major theme came back into play. Villas del Pacifico is less of a tourist resort and more like a weekend beach hangout for the more well-to-do from nearby cities. So, Day Two being a Sunday, the pool featured about 300 Guatemalans and five gringos. We were definitely a curiosity, and liberally stared at. We idly tossed around an American football, to heighten the effect.

Another interesting fact about the Villas del Pacifico: it’s located along a 30-mile-long volcanic black sand beach. Naturally, another Day Two duty was try to stand on the beach without sandals, which our guidebook said was impossible during the hot season. Standing on the sand (in the rainy season) was easy…until we attempted to walk without sandals. Toasty—about the same as I would expect the beaches in hell. The beach was, sadly, covered in trash, tangled amongst the usual Pacific flotsam and jetsam. In fact, the entire country was covered in trash. It was a striking contrast to our Central American adventures, really. Costa Rica has ruined roads and hideous traffic, but pristine scenery. Guatemala has roads a driving enthusiast (me) would love, but trash drifted across the entire country, even on the nearly vertical sides of volcanos.

The last interesting fact about the Villas del Pacifico, and Guatemala in general (which I’ve alluded to before): we visited during the rainy season. Around three or four in the afternoon, the wispy clouds obscuring the volcano tops gathered their timeless anger and stormed down to the Pacific. The only downside was the possibility of lightning, which meant we had to get out of the pool. Otherwise the rain was a lovely mid-80s in termperature, with a light drizzle followed by a quick curtain of harder rain, just enough to tickle your spine. On Day Two, the rain continued into the evening, through dinner, pool at the pub, and some lazy reading until we all fell asleep.

Day Three

At the start of Day Three, we thought we had the resort routine down. But in fact we did not. The hotel and beach club was virtually deserted, and the various buffets, games and friendly locals we enjoyed the day before were gone, never to return (during our trip). So, too, were the salsa dancers, the games led by the pool staff, the giggling Guatemalan children, the water polo area of the pool, the outdoor ping-pong table equipment, the $3-rental ATVs on the beach and the sand volleyball court equipment. And 2/3rds the hotel staff. Thankfully, the main restaurant kept a small section open for all five of us week-long guests.

Despite the ghost-town feeling, we found that the sun, beer and a raucous pool volleyball game with adorable local boys made the day less eerie. But the highlight of Day Three was easily our evening spent drinking with the top-selling women’s undertaker team of all Guatemala City. How, you ask? No idea. As the top-selling team, they won a day at the pool; they were the only other guests in our hotel bar, so we joined forces playing pool. Those ladies knew their rums, tequilas and peppers. My downfall was the rum. Byron and Adam fell for tequila and a chica named Muffin. And Dad took the gastrointestinal stomping that was the pepper. It’s worth a note to the wise: should you think that Guatemala women shy away from jalapeños, with fearful expressions, you might want to make the conclusion that it’s not a jalapeño. A pepper that scares the locals is indeed something to be feared. Dad, with a table full of women, ate the whole thing in one bite. Their raised eyebrows turned into shocked expressions, but Dad managed to mute his reaction to turning bright red, with a single tear escaping down the cheek facing away from the women. The other side of his face was simply red and smiling. A remarkable display of will. I tried a micro-bite and lost all feeling in my face for an hour.

Day Four

I mentioned the drinking on Night Three. But I didn’t mention that on Day Four, we had a 7 a.m. wake-up call to drive around all southwestern Guatemala in a turismo van³. I was not in good shape. Byron and Adam were hurting too. Dad’s stomach was still pissed at him about that pepper. I recall snippets of rainy countryside and the inside of my eyelids until about 2 p.m. local. We drove to a town called La Democracia to see under-whelming Mayan ruins. I managed to get out of the van, then back in. Then we drove around and up a volcano shrouded in clouds, trying to find an active lava field. After six mountain-side towns and stops for directions, we vetoed mom’s idea of a rainy three-hour hike up to the lava. There was more driving, and when I finally recovered enough wits to participate in the day’s events, we were in the old capitol of colonial Guatemala, Antigua.

Antigua was amazing. It’s a mix of ancient capitols—the Mayans had a major market in the area, off and on for centuries, and the Conquistadors built their own terrifying capitol in the 1500s on the backs of those same Mayans. In the middle of the human tug-of-war over the city, Mother Nature wiped it out a few times with a liberal application of volcano eruptions and floods. In the early 1900s, after the fifth or sixth cataclysm, they moved the city/capitol to the geologically (more) secure Guatemala City, 30km away. In effect, that means the rich people moved their city, even to the point of pulling the guilding off church roofs and putting in up on new churches. The poor people stayed in the remains of the old capitol, and it gradually developed again into a city again. Antigua thrives, even in half-demolished buildings. Current city buildings exist on top of layers of cataclysmic ruins. Functional, modern walls trail into ancient, ruined walls, which then descend into lush, tropical grass. The city also has a rich, ornate Catholic/Mayan history, which resulted in an endless number of shrines, meeting places, public squares, large stone façades and elaborate decorations, all in various stages of beautiful ruin or stubborn repair. We toured around Antigua, marvelling at the life of the city, and even went up to a sketchy park to pick up a local geocache before heading back to the beach.

Day Five

I should mention, as an aside, that we brought along a SuperNES to Guatemala in Byron’s luggage. And one esoteric game—“The Lost Vikings”. Since we had the childhood crew together and late evenings to kill once everyone else was asleep, a decade-removed go at our favorite game might be a good addition to the vacation. Call it nostalgia, but it was rad. We were shocked to find we knew the music, the passwords, timing on certain difficult elements, solutions to puzzles…in short, we laughed our asses off. Totally worth the 3lbs packing excess for Byron.

Day Five largely consisted of pool, pool volleyball, pool water polo, pool backward beer dives, lots of food, a nice walk on the trashy beach, and other resort-area entertainments. Oh, one other thing: a 500+ person convention of sugar cane workers had a one-day event at the hotel, right around us. 500 Guatemalan men, six long-suffering Guatemalan women, five gringos and team-bonding events. We saw a towel ‘n waterbaloon relay on the black sand beach. We saw a bike relay across the futbol field. We saw an innertube relay foisted on the unsuspecting workers who went into the pool fully dressed. And we saw “tank”—a team of twenty or so people, enclosed in a cylinder of black plastic sheets on poles, about 15’ high. The team can’t see where they’re going inside the cylinder, so one person rides on shoulders to guide the entire team—without speaking. That game was my favorite, because it looked ridiculous, and it was right next to our lounge chair station and they didn’t make a sound.

After team bonding, the convention-goers (some still soaked from the innertube relay) retired to the outdoor auditorium for some loud video messaging and inspirational speeches. The Day returned to normal. After the previous excesses and busy afternoon, we took it easy on the bar in the evening, but did try out best to drink them out of lemonade and horchata. Delicious, delicious horchata. All-in-all, Day Five was much needed relaxation, in both standing and supine positions, because on Day Six….

Day Six

At 6 a.m., we got back into our sturdy turismo van, to drive even further that our first trip. On this excursion—with our faithful translator, Jeremy, and our driver, Hector, he of impressively large earlobes—we headed north toward Lake Atitlán, Panajachel, and the formerly authentic Mayan market town of Chichicastenango, deep in Quiche Mayan territory. Fourteen hours on bench seats in a van. A van in the clouds.

First we visited a real, functioning market in Chimaltenango, a fairly major city on the edge of the Guatemalan highlands. The highlight, besides an authentic market experience, was seeing multiple camionetas, buses, loading and unloading passengers in the center of town. We’d seen a few on the road, but only blurring past us. Tourists call them “chicken buses”, based on good ol’ developing world transport stereotypes from PBS, but it’s strikingly apparent that they’re formerly American school buses, serving a demonic afterlife in Guatemala. Locals call them camionetas, a word that Hector would not translate for me, but the Internet tells me means “auto”. Hmmm.

Public transportation in Guatemala is limited to certain urban areas. To fill the gap, some enterprising locals bought, shipped and customized “retired” American school buses in ways that would make the best Long Beach custom shops proud. Every bus featured a ton of chrome, intricate paint jobs, pin-up girl names across the back and an awesome amount of creativity and love. All that being said, if a flame-n-skull-pattern custom grill rode up on the tail of your small turismo van, outlined in glowing purple neon and the diver, all the while, leaned on a horn that would best suit an aircraft carrier, you might not find them so cool.

Camionetas, as best I could construct from spanish, are privately owned, so they cover no assigned routes. They just head off to one city or another and pick up people along the way, until they get there. Then they head back. The profit is in the number of people the drivers pick up, and that’s dictated by how far they travel and how fast. Hence, amazingly reckless driving. Did I mention that Guatemala is not flat? Overloaded camionetas regularly force other vehicles off roads, or they themselves lose control passing on the outside of a mountain switchback⁴. During our short week, a camioneta plunged off just such a cliff by Quetzaltenango, killing 36 Guatemalans. According to Jeremy and Hector, Guatemalans are totally okay with death-by-camioneta, due to their deep, Mayan-tinted Catholicism. Camonietas are God’s favorite way to call you back to his bosom.

After Chimaltenango, we headed into the Guatemalan highlands. By the word highlands, I expected mountain plains at high altitude. But, in fact, there wasn’t a level surface to be seen, except the two-lane road. The Guatemalan highlands mostly resemble, to my mind, a serrated labyrinth of steep mountain ridges, with villages perched randomly along the tops. We cruised for a remarkable amount of time along the top of the serration—deep valleys on both sides, just a stone’s throw away—until the ridgelines ran out. Then we dropped into deep jungle canyons, and came back up the other side onto a new ridge system. Our turismo van got quite a workout on the descents and ascents. Dad enjoyed his altimeter watch, which logged descents over 1,000’ into valleys and general elevations of 5,000-7,000’ on the ridge tops. While we marveled at the terrain in vehicular comfort, local honest-to-God Mayans walked the shoulders the same roads, carrying absurd loads for their tiny size. The closer we got to Chichi(castenango), the more absurd the terrain, load size, numbers of Mayans and our feeling of interloping became.

Chichi was a controlled, calculated riot. Like other Guatemalan towns we visited, the streets felt deserted, with only a shrug at sidewalks and small, barred windows and heavy wooden doors facing the street. Without traffic, it felt abandoned. But if you went inside the homes, you found interior courtyards full of light, gardens, arches, ornate woodwork and friendly people. It was beautiful. As a contrast to the forbidding streets, the market itself spilled out of the narrow alleys circling the city square. Originally it was a real market, but now it caters to tourists—rainbow textiles, carvings, clothing, nicknacks, paintings, etc. We didn’t get a lot of time in Chichi; our translator Jeremy was somewhat controlling about where we could go. My guidebook said Chichi holds very strong ties to a local god who crosses the bridge between Catholicism and ancient Mayan religions, but I didn’t get to see the main shrine on the small hill above the city. The only echo we saw was incense shakers on the steps of the churches in the town/market center. In fact, they’re a secretive brotherhood of community elders, much closer to mafiosa-like Mayan shamans than Catholic volunteers. Ooooooh. Aahhhh.

Did I mention Mayans are tiny?

After our whirlwind tourism indulgence at Chichi, we continued ridge-hopping down to Lake Atitlán and its artist-colony, Panajachel. I’m not sure why Panajachel was the destination, other than the fact it was on the side of the lake closest to our trajectory, and it was vaguely Western, due to an artist-colony history. Unfortunately, it was still cloudy, so Mom’s picture-postcard photo-op of the volcanoes ringing the caldera didn’t entirely come through.

Just as we tipped over into full tourist mode, the drive out of Panajachel re-aligned out priorities. Just outside of town, we crossed the damage of Huracán Stan, which hit Guatemala in 2005. It was shocking, since no mention of Huracán Stan was made during the previous days of the trip in any shape or form. Somehow, in all our driving around the highlands, mountains and towns, one deep river valley around Lake Atitlán showed the effects of a massive hurricane, just one short year prior. The road along and out of the river valley was a ruin, and the Panajachel boat launch was missing entirely, leaving the shore and the town disconnected by a 30’ cliff. The most poignant damage was along the river that joins the lake at Panajachel, where we saw a badly situated expat home destroyed by the massive flash-flooding along the river. The home used to be connected to the main road and hillside, but Stan left it a mangled island, isolated about forty feet from the ruined road. On the walls of the ruined homestead, the bitter residents wrote, “Island in paradise. Thank you STAN. Están listos oooo?”.

Despite the sudden shock of extreme hurricane damage, the drive out of Panajachel was amazing. The mountains were terrifyingly steep along the Lake, but the lake itself was beautiful. Hours later, we returned to the resort amid another heavenly deluge, which lasted into the evening. Long day. We played more “Lost Vikings”, then went to bed.

Day Seven

Day Seven had a big cloud hanging over it—we hand to leave the next day. Adam’s flight was at 7 a.m., Byron’s and my flight was at noon, and Mom and Dad had the awful task of trying to decide where to spend the next six days of their extended vacation: Tikal and the most famous set of Aztec ruins, or Copán and the second most famous set of Aztec/Mayan ruins ⁵. I know, tough choice.

We spent the morning by the pool until three o’clock, when we loaded up in our sturdy turismo van for the trip to Guatemala City. The trip was quiet and morose, until the last highway mountain pass before the city. Some nasty accident shut down the highway. We thought we’d be stuck in the inside lane for hours, but an enterprising camioneta unloaded its passengers to push the highway dividers out of the way⁶ so traffic could turn around. All my orderly, line-waiting American manners were (silently) protesting, as all three lanes, including us, cut through the open barrier and went back down the pass. Along the way, we saw the interesting sight of the uphill outside lane turned around against traffic in its own lane, with a group of drivers forcing their way back down lane, shoulder and the closest on-ramp.

Our erstwhile driver, Hector, knew a shortcut over the pass, which was in fact the old 1.5-lane road over the top of the mountain. But so did a majority of local drivers, as well as the ambulances trying to go to or from the massive accident. That detour was interesting, to say the least. The accident back-up triggered gridlock in Guatemala City, too, so the city driving to our hotel was equally entertaining. But in the end, we arrived, only 40 minutes behind our estimated time of arrival.

Day Eight

Adam vanished from our airport hotel at some early hour of the morning, for his trip home. Byron, Mom, Dad and I met for breakfast. During breakfast, we encountered the last interesting fact of the trip—the Guatemalan orphan baby trade. No less than 15 lilly-white American couples (some with white children in tow) were breakfasting with their brand-new Guatemalan babies. We learned some about the local trade, but not enough for me to comment accurately about what we saw. But one final, telling detail played out in the shuttle to the airport—a paisley- and fur-covered American mom allowed her 7- or 8-year-old daughter, Madison, hold her new, adopted baby brother David Francis, a anonymous Guatemalan newborn swaddled in a cashmere blanket. David Francis Something, formerly of Guatemala, now of New York City’s posher areas. Go figure.

All in all, a surreal, cloudy, dream-like vacation in Guatemala.

Footnotes