El Salvador - We Didn't Get Shot

We had no expectations for El Salvador. In fact, our plan was to drive through it only because we had to so we could get to points further south, otherwise we would have skipped it altogether. R has too many clients who have told her things about the gang situation in El Salvador that if we had any expectations at all, it was that we would be held up at gunpoint. R also has a Salvadoran client in Virginia who insisted that we stay at his “rancho” when we got to El Salvador. After we learned that staying at a rancho did not mean we would be playing city slickers, but instead meant we would be lounging in hammocks by the beach for free, the safety issues that loomed so large seemed trivial after all, so we made plans to contact him as we got closer.

When we got to the Guatemala-El Salvador border on Monday afternoon after making better than expected time driving from Antigua along the coastal highway to the border town of Ciudad Pedro de Alvarado, there didn’t seem to be any line formed of cars and people waiting to get into El Salvador, so we figured we would just keep going. We left Guatemala where we had been since last year (we entered on December 19) without any fanfare, and frankly, with only a short look back over our collective shoulder.

Even though the bureacracy was very efficient, and the border people very helpful, by the time we were stamped out of Guatemala and stamped into El Salvador the sun was sinking in the west so we pulled into an auto hotel recommended on our iOverlander app. An auto hotel offers its guests complete anonymity - the building is hidden inside a walled compound and each room is like a small apartment with an attached garage to park your car. When I asked the owner of the auto hotel where we stayed on Friday night, our last night in El Salvador before we crossed the border to Honduras, whether it would get busy that night because it was a weekend, he said, “No. It’s not that kind of business. Most couples come in during the afternoon for just an hour or two.”

We stay in auto hotels because they are generally clean, low cost, come with a plentiful supply of tissues, and we like to watch ourselves sleep in the big mirror that is on the wall opposite the bed. The kids also like the slide drawer to the outside where the wait staff puts our food and takes our dirty dishes and where we can pay our bill without making eye contact with anyone.

R wasn’t able to get in touch with her client in enough time for his caretaker to immediately get the rancho ready for us, so we spent Tuesday night in El Tunco. El Tunco is a popular surfer hangout along El Salvador’s Pacific Coast which boasts some of the best waves in Central America, so there are a lot of young people walking around barefoot. It is also as hot as Christie Brinkley in “National Lampoon’s Vacation,” so J and I alligatored ourselves over the softball size boulders that washed around our ankles with each breaking wave for a high tide swim but decided to get out after we found ourselves about 40 meters from our entry point after only a few minutes in the water.

During low tide on Wednesday, R and I were able to easily walk over the rocks that were submerged during high tide and then cross about fifteen meters of hot black sand to the water, where we frolicked happily for an hour in the warm, rolling surf while Coconut and J absorbed as much hotel Wifi as they could with hopes they could emit a signal as their own personal hotspots at the rancho.

Wifi access aside, we had high hopes for the rancho. On the one hand, the owner works in the U.S. as an apartment manager, decidedly lower middle class on the pay scale, but on the other hand, things are cheaper in El Salvador so it wasn't out of the realm of possibility that he could have built the Taj Mahal.

Well, he didn’t. Coconut and J took one look at the house and went, “Eh.” J sat on one of the beds and said it felt like it was made out of hay. They both slept in Wesley while R and I braved the rustic accommodations which did not include running water - we flushed the toilet by dumping a bucket of water into it.

But the whole point was that this was a house built by a beach, and with a pool that had a table built into it so we could sit in the pool, instead of around the pool, and play cards, which we couldn’t do in the ocean because the waves were pretty relentless. We loved it.

The one weird thing was that the caretaker and his family lived on the property as well and they must have been under orders to not let us out of their sight because they followed us to the beach and watched us swim, took us to the store when we needed milk, and even served our meals at the restaurant one day when we went for lunch. We felt like celebrities in town with a Secret Service escort.

After spending a couple days at the rancho, we made a beeline for the border with Honduras, so we could buzz across that country and into Nicaragua to meet friends on Monday who are flying down from Los Angeles. We would have liked to spend more time in El Salvador because it surprised us with its order and civility - the intersections were all well signed and even the cows ate from troughs, not from trash piles as we’ve seen in other places. The two beaches we visited - El Tunco and Majahual - were great, and are not even the best beaches in the country, and the other small piece of the country we saw while driving through was beautiful and mostly clean. And the people were all very friendly. Not one of them pulled a gun on us.

A Hundred Dollars in Water Bottles

On the second to last day before we left our rented house on the shores of Lake Atitlan, R and her friend went for a massage and Alan took two of his girls horseback riding. That left me home with Coconut, J, and their friend. I suggested that we take the kayaks to the nearby town of Jaibilito to replenish our milk, potatoes, and to get a treat for ourselves in the form of a 12-ounce carbonated drink. Before anyone agreed to this voyage, though, they all wanted to know how far it was and since I didn't know, I told them it was ten minutes. When we got there we pulled our kayaks onto the shore and there was a gaggle of young kids running round in their underwear which they use as swim trunks and a woman washing clothes and I was a little concerned that someone would take the kayaks, but only a little because I generally have faith that people are honest and really, what the heck are they going to do with a kayak since they can’t use it to till a field? We walked across a grassy patch with a dirt trail worn through it, past some chickens, and up a few narrow streets to what amounted to the town - three stores selling junk food, soda, and powdered milk, a woman selling shaved ice, and an art gallery that was closed. We didn't want powdered milk and we couldn't find any store selling potatoes, but there was one guy set up under an awning selling fried chicken and french fries and he had just pulled the fries out of the oil so they were nice and fresh and we got two orders to share for only 10 Q, which is about $1.30 USD.

I sat the kids down in the shade to eat the fries and went back to check one last store and it turned out they had real milk and potatoes so we got what we had come for, but when we got back to the kayaks, Coconut let me know that our two expensive Thermos water bottles were missing. Now, it hadn’t occurred to me to bring the water bottles with us into town, or to hide them, even though it should have because the water bottles are shiny and when the Spaniards came to this land they were able to trade shiny beads and jangles for large swaths of land, and allegiances, and gold, and shiny water bottles have a use, which is to hold water, so they are actually something that can be purposefully used, unlike a kayak or a shiny bead or jangle.

After I sternly talked to the group of boys running around about the missing water bottles in a voice that Coconut described as yelling at them and her friend described as talking loudly, the bottles did not appear. I next spoke with the woman who was washing clothes; she looked amused, but shrugged her shoulders. She said something to the boys in a language that was not Spanish but was probably one of the Mayan languages that is still spoken by many of the folks around here. Chances are I wouldn’t have understood her even if she spoke in Spanish, and the boys started rooting around in all the trash that was scattered here and there and found my water bottle. They thought this was very funny. I got the impression they were playing a game of hide and seek, and when I asked for the other bottle, they thought that was even funnier. At that point, some of them left to go swimming, but a few others said something that J translated as “An older boy took it.”

Two of the boys walked me to the house of the older boy - I forget his name. I knocked on the gate and asked someone who I think was his mother if so-and-so lived there and she pointed at a boy cutting wood with a machete in the front yard, then she got up and started speaking sharply to the two boys who had brought me there in that Mayan dialect. I asked Machete Boy if he had taken our water bottle and he said no. I told him that the two boys in the street had told me that he did, and he said he didn’t. I asked him if he was telling the truth and he said he was, so I apologized for bothering him and J and I walked back to the kayaks where Coconut and her friend were guarding the other water bottle, and our milk, and potatoes.

There was still a bunch of hustle and bustle around the shore from the boys, and now some girls had wandered over too, and to add insult to injury, some guy who was digging a hole nearby dumped a shovel of dirt and gravel into one of our kayaks.

I wish that I could speak Spanish better, because the only words I could think of to describe my frustration were to say that the town was full of thieves, but I didn’t think that was going to be helpful so I just kept my mouth shut and we all got back into the kayaks and paddled off. By this time, the afternoon winds across the lake had kicked in and it took us quite a bit longer to paddle back to our house than ten minutes and when we got back we were all hot and tired so we went for a swim from the dock.

We’ve now spent over a hundred dollars on water bottles on this trip. We left Alexandria with six water bottles, including three for R.

The first water bottle we lost was a new, insulated Thermos that R got as a gift at our going away party and that we left at Busch Gardens two days after we left Alexandria. We estimate it cost about $25.

The second water bottle we lost was J’s Sigg and we left it on my cousin’s kitchen table in Tulsa after he and his wife had gone to work and we couldn’t get back inside. That one cost $20.

We bought J a new water bottle before we crossed the border into Mexico for $5. A cheap thing that he doesn't like because the water tastes funny if left inside for longer than a few minutes.

The third water bottle we lost was a purple Sigg that R had for years and we left it in the back of a collectivo that was taking us to market in Puerto Escondido. It cost $20 at Whole Foods.

The fourth water bottle we lost was Coconut’s Sigg and it got smushed when we were bouncing over a tope in Mexico and the slider door of the van opened, the water bottle fell out, and I ran over it. Cost $20.

When my in-laws visited in October, they brought us two more Thermoses, one for R and one for Coconut, that we ordered from Amazon for $45.

The fifth water bottle we lost was my Sigg. I filled it at the beach in San Augustinillo and left it in the freezer overnight and it split its sides. It cost $20 at Whole Foods.

When our friends visited us in Guatemala in January, they brought me a Thermos insulated water bottle that we ordered from Amazon for $25.

The sixth water bottle we lost was R’s insulated tea carafe from Teavana that she got as a gift. We estimate the cost to be $25. It was the last of the original bottles we brought with us and we called it the last of the Mohicans. It vanished without a trace.

The seventh water bottle we lost was the $20 bottle that Coconut got in October. It was stolen by some boys in Jaibilito, Guatemala.

The Battle for Guatemala

My wife, two kids, and I spent the last week squinting into the sun glistening off the waters of Lago de Atitlan, a caldera lake set in the central highlands of Guatemala. Before that we were a week around Lago de Izabel, a vast lake connected by river to the Caribbean Sea and encompassing wetlands, rainforest, and beach, and the week prior to that we spent at Lago Peten de Itza, near Tikal, that mystical jungle nirvana of crumbling stone temples and mosquitoes. No one is more qualified than we are to rate, in two thousand or more words, Guatemala’s major bodies of water as a family vacation destination so that you can know best how to spend your hard earned Quetzales. Based on our own customer satisfaction surveys, we have assessed each of the three lakes for whether they are swimmable, campable, drinkable, and on intangibles.

Swimmable is just what it seems - you see a large body of water on a sweltering hot day in the jungle and you want to know, “Am I going to be eaten by crocodiles, or worse, if I jump in?”

Campable relates to the point that we are travelling in a VW camper van and we want to be able to sleep in our van, or in tents around it, so we don't have to lug all of our important stuff, like scissors, loose change, and soda crackers, to a hotel room. Despite the rules being somewhat more relaxed in Guatemala, it still seems awkward walking through the hotel dining room with your fishing tackle. Then again, how many hotels do you know where the back porch to your room overlooks a swamp?

Drinkable. Lake swimming involves horseplay, which involves laughter, which involves open mouths and swallowed lake water. How sick can you expect to get?

Intangibles includes random thoughts about life on the lakes from a slightly twisted but mostly rational mind.

LAGO DE PETEN ITZA

Lago de Peten Itza is in the northern lowlands of Guatemala, surrounded by mostly dense, tropical rainforest. We spent ten days bouncing between El Remate, a hamlet on the eastern shore of the lake, Flores, a small island in the lake which is a popular gringo base camp for visiting Tikal and which is connected to the mainland by a causeway, and Tikal, the vast Mayan ruins which are not actually on the lake but are close enough that we consider it to be a part. Everyone from Hernan Cortes to Charles Lindbergh has visited this lake, you can read their reviews on TripAdvisor, so it is not a secret destination, but that just means you have more options of hotels, restaurants, and places to buy chachkeys.

We found a lot of things to do for families in this area - you can take boat rides around the lake, visit a zoo and wildlife rehab center, or hike through protected wildlife reserves and through minor Mayan ruins. And then of course, there is the grand daddy of all Mayan sites in Guatemala - Tikal.

Swim. Yes! There are lots of nice spots in El Remate where you can see the lake bottom and the water temperature is warm enough so that even R took a dip. The lake water around Flores is less clean, but people swim there and we could easily have joined them on one of the hot afternoons if we had been wearing our bathing suits. One afternoon we took a lancha to the middle of the lake and jumped in and swam around.

Camp. If you turn off the main road in El Remate onto the other road, keeping the lake on your left, there are several options for camping, including in the Biotopo Cerro Cahui, a wildlife conservation area where I didn’t actually see any wildlife, but I did take in some nice lake views from the mountaintop miradors. The owners of the hotel and restaurant Mon Ami - which was the focal point for most of what we did when in El Remate (eat, swim, and WiFi) - let us camp in their parking lot one night for free and use their toilets.

Flores is a concrete jungle and has no formal campgrounds. However, there are plenty of hotels and every night we rented a room either R or I slept in Wesley in the street. If it was just R and I and we didn’t have to pop the top for the four of us to sleep in the van we probably could have slept for free every night. As far as food, there are plenty of restaurants that have good grub for cheaper than you would pay in the States so you don’t have to get the camp stove out and cook in the streets as well, even if you decide to sleep there. Plus, each night comedores set up along the waterfront sell cheap, cold tacos, and crunchy tostados with a variety of toppings to choose from, including beet salad.

You can camp in the large, grass parking lot at Tikal, or stay in one of the two overpriced hotels on site. You can not bribe the guard to sleep at the top of Temples I through IX.

Drink. I peed in the lake a few times, but I would still have a glass. We did see a cow jaw bone at waters’ edge near San Andres, but chances are you won't visit this town on the northern edge of the lake so won’t have to wrestle with this uncomfortable fact of life.

Intangibles. We heard this area is one of the more expensive places in Guatemala, but we have been hemorraghing money every place we’ve been so we didn’t really notice much difference. Nobody drowned when we rented paddle boards on Christmas Day so it was memorable in a good way.

LAGO DE IZABEL

This lake is enormous, requiring more than 3 hours and a hundred dollars to hire a boat to take you from the wetland habitat of the Reserva Bocas del Polochic at the western edge, through the river gorge around the town of Rio Dulce in the east, and to the town of Livingston, which lies at the mouth of the waterway, where the river meets the Caribbean coast.

Because we were not impressed with Rio Dulce, we visited the town of El Estor, at the western edge, and hired a boat to take us to see manatees, monkeys, and the Russian nickel mining operation which is dumping toxic chemicals into the lake and pumping colorful smoke into the sky. This was a highlight of our visit.

We also stayed at a jungle lodge at the mouth of the river gorge which had a rope swing, a ping pong table, and bed bugs. It was also a jumping off point to visit Livingston, which is supposedly a cultural experience unique in all Guatemala because the residents are more similar in appearance and custom to their Caribbean island neighbors, but it didn’t feel all that different than walking around by the city courthouse near 7th and Pennsylvania, N.W., in Washington D.C.

Swim. No one likes gas trails in their lake water but rope swings are cool even if you come out of the water feeling like an oil slick. We did not swim at the Livingston beaches and although the word was that swimming at the opposite end of the lake near the wildlife reserve was good, the water there was dirty as well because villages along the rivers that feed into the lake use the rivers for things like trash disposal.

Camp. The only place we found to camp in our van was a muddy, noisy marina parking lot in Rio Dulce. We skipped it. There are lots of neat sounding jungle lodges tucked here and there around the lake but most are only accessible by boat. For us, this meant finding secure parking and the hassle of packing all the stuff we might need into overnight bags. The other annoyance about this arrangement is that you are subject to the monopoly of the hotel over food, drink, and what not.

Drink. You would have to pay me a lot of money to drink eight ounces of this stuff.

Intangibles. If I ever die, I want to come back as a boat operator on this lake, as it gives meaning to the phrase - nothing in life is free. Even the jungle lodge hotel where we stayed charged us a boatload of money to shuttle us to and from Rio Dulce. I was afraid to mention to the management that I got attacked by bed bugs for fear they might charge me per bite. El Estor was one of the dirtiest towns I’ve seen in Guatemala, with trash lining either side of the street, dogs with open wounds roaming the fields, and lots of plastic bottles and diapers washed up on the shore. The waterfall at Finca El Paraiso, near El Estor, had natural hot springs feeding into the falls and we got to jump off the waterfall, which was fun, but the beauty of the place was underwhelming.

LAGO DE ATITLAN

This lake may or may not have been formed 85,000 years ago due to volcanic activity and tectonic plate shifting. What is known though, is that the lake is filled with water, and that population growth, the proclivity of the people to enjoy unhealthy snack foods like barbecued, pig-flavored, Tortrix, the introduction of non-native species into the caldera to promote sport fishing, and wastewater runoff from agricultural and tourist endeavors, have caused the lake waters to become susceptible to increased production of algae spores which require the formation of NGO’s to raise awareness among the many rich Americans that visit the area.

Based on my experience, I’ve been here a week, the villages around the lake are inhabited by traditional Mayan peoples who continue to practice the trades of deforestation and subsistence farming, while the fancy houses that dot the hills are owned by rich people who rent them on AirBnB for hundreds of dollars a night. We stayed in one of those places.

Swim. Yes, but only because we’ve spent hundreds of dollars a night on a lake front villa and there is nothing else to do. The lake is deep, averaging over 600 feet, and the water temperature ranges from “freezing”, to “quite a bit colder than freezing”, to “I can’t believe I’m swimming in this”, to “Hey, do I still have a face because I can’t feel it anymore?” There is one spot in San Marcos, one of the lake villages that is accessible by a long strenuous hike or by a short expensive boat ride, where you can pay to jump off of a wooden dock into the lake thirty feet below. Of course, we paid to do this, but only J and I jumped.

Camp. Many of the villages are built on the side of the mountain and are only accessible by boat so we had to leave Wesley parked in a field in Panajachel, which is the nearest big town that has a road going to it. There is tent camping at the Reserva Natural Atitlan in Panajachel, but since we were staying at a fancy AirBnB place, we only did the zip lines. You can catch boats to all other parts of the lake from Pana and the villages each have their own identity - drug town, meditationville, old, rich, white people place, etc..

Drink. There are certain areas of the lake where it is not recommended that you allow your body to touch the water, but in other areas, swimming is okay. I take this to mean, drink the water at your own risk.

Intangibles. If I die and I can’t come back as a boat operator on Lago de Izabel, I want to come back as a boat operator on Lago de Atitlan. The lake is beautiful, hemmed in by three volcanoes and countless other less threatening peaks, and hikes around the mountains offer some truly spectacular views that make you think about whether your life has amounted to anything more than a hill of beans. Kayaking is a water activity, but around midday the heat rises from the Pacific Coastal plain and creates a westerly wind that blows white caps across the lake making boating not much fun, and probably dangerous. If you are not into hiking or freezing your ass off in the lake, there isn’t much else to do after noon except laundry and check your bed for scorpions.

And the winner is . . . Lago de Peten Itza! In our view, this lake has it all and is  the best spot to visit if you've only got a week in Guatemala. You can swim in it, drink it, camp around it, and completely ignore it to visit Tikal. And the nice thing is that it will still be there waiting for you to come back from wherever you've wandered off too - just like the scorpions we found in Coconut's bed.

The sick times of our lives

Coconut started coming down with what ails us before New Years’. She was running a high fever, and had muscle aches and a hacking cough. We were camping at the time at a tranquil place on the Rio Chiyo owned by a guy from Philadelphia and his Japanese wife. While we were all having fun swimming in waterfalls, fishing, and jumping off of bridges, poor Coconut was curled up in Wesley’s top bunk.

We were worried that she had chikungunya, a relatively new-to-the-Americas mosquito transmitted virus which may or may not cause those infected to scratch in the dirt looking for insects, or Dengue Fever, which is just as horrible. We met a guy from Canada who had both viruses within a few weeks of each other and he didn’t prefer either – said they both made him feel worse than a turd stapled to a garbage can lid.

We got out of the campground after two nights and headed towards Rio Dulce, a crossroads town on Lago Izabel, so that we could get Coconut to a doctor and checked into a hotel so she could be more comfortable. We never found a doctor, but we did find a pharmacy with a nurse on duty who was able to quickly rule out our worst fears - though, we don’t know how - and prescribe some medications for inflammation and congestion - though, we don’t know why.

We had planned to visit the lake anyway because our research indicated it was centrally located for water activities, to visit the Caribbean coast town of Livingston, which is home to the Garifuna people who are descended from African slaves, and to visit some other unique natural sites around the lake. We also heard Bruno’s Marina would be a great place to camp.

Whoever wrote that research needs a good talking too - Rio Dulce is horribly hot, congested, noisy, and dirty and Bruno’s Marina was a muddy wreck – there was no chance we could camp there, even if Coconut felt up to it. The more interesting places to stay in the area are situated around the lake and are only accessible by lancha, so to do any water activity on the lake requires paying enormous sums of money to people with boats. We had to pay nearly $60 USD to get to one jungle lodge where we stayed for two days so that, with no other eating or drinking options, we could pay to drink their bottled water and eat food prepared in their kitchen. Plus, even though J and some boys from the Czech Republic didn’t seem to mind, you came out of the water feeling like an oil slick.

Livingston turned out to be a ramshackle town providing ample living quarters for pelicans but not much else of obvious cultural significance. The Garifuna culture, at least, has been Westernized enough to give the white oppressors who enslaved its ancestors its comeuppance in the form of overpriced, mediocre soup.

The natural beauty of the Finca El Paraiso, a hot spring waterfall, was underwhelming, and the Reserva Bocas del Polochic, one of the richest wetland habitats in the country, is being threatened by a Russian nickel mining operation that pollutes without sanction by the Guatemalan government.

To top off our week, at one of the hotels where we stayed, bed bugs had me for breakfast, lunch and dinner, J beat me at ping pong, and R started coming down with the same symptoms that Coconut was finally shaking loose.

Needless to say, we were happy to leave the area, and were intent on getting R someplace where she could rest comfortably. Our next attempt at nirvana was to head to an abandoned eco-resort set on a waterfall that a motorcycle overlander we met shortly after we left Oaxaca described as paradise on earth. Unfortunately, to get to Eden, you first have to drive through Puerto Barrios, which is the port town where the major U.S. fruit companies ship pineapples to the rest of the world, but apparently fail to give back to support the city’s infrastructure – the two-lane country road in use by the heavy duty and high volume of truck traffic, when not covered in dirt, is like driving on a trampoline it’s so cracked and uneven.

After getting through Puerto Barrios, the road to Eden becomes an extremely steep and rocky ascent and all I needed to hear from R was let’s find another place to stay, but she was fading fast – she failed to even comment on my exceptional conduction of our vehicle as I bounced it over boulders and through mud pits or on my witty opinions of our motorcycle-driving friend. Plus, since we had already committed more than an hours’ worth of driving in the wrong direction from where we planned to spend the rest of our time in Guatemala in order to get as far as we had - there was no turning back. When we finally arrived nobody liked the place. R immediately went to sleep, Coconut proclaimed the water too cold for swimming, J wouldn’t sit on the toilets, and the camping turned out to be expensive, not free like I expected. We spent one night.

We planned to spend the next few nights at a Japanese guesthouse so that R could rest in clean white-sheeted bliss, Coconut and J could catch up on homework, and I could visit some nearby ruins, but after we found the place on a street so narrow we had to move to the side just to let ourselves pass, we learned the guesthouse was full so we changed our plans to push on to Guatemala City. I was the most disappointed with this turn of events as my sole experience with Japanese guesthouses is gleaned from the novel “Shogun” - the protagonist of the story is visited repeatedly in the night by unsolicited women - and I was curious to know if this protagonist could expect the same treatment. Alas, fate can be cruel.

Fate can also decide that we aren’t going to make it to Guatemala City on a particular day, and along about the time the town of Santa Cruz rolled around, we were all hot, cranky, and tired of being in the van. Santa Cruz wasn’t on any map that we had or in any guidebook, but it turned out to be an okay place because it had a waterpark, and the hotel, though not much from the street, was like a small neighborhood – but like one of those weird, spooky dreams, there was nobody home but us.

We decided to hang around for a few days anyway so that R could get back on her feet, and like an exorcism, the demon bacteria could worm their way into me. Sure enough, by Sunday, after two-days’ worth of chlorine-soaked thrills, I was beginning to feel achy, feverish, and after taking the medications prescribed for Coconut that we didn’t give her, just well enough to drive to Antigua and crash into a hotel bed for the week. And that’s what I did. R and the kids might be able to speak of Antigua, but they didn’t do much different. So, we leave after a week in Antigua without knowing much about it other than it has big, wide cobblestone streets and the workers doing construction next door thoughtfully don’t start work every day until 7 a.m., on the dot.

So far, the month fits into the category of misery loves company and is similar to those first days with a newborn when you tell everyone how wonderful and rewarding it is. You are tired and cranky because the kid keeps waking up at night crying, you’re not having sex with your wife, and you can’t hang out with your friends because of the guilt of leaving your wife on her own with the cute, little monster. In this case, I’m tired and cranky from tossing and turning all night with worry and sickness, I’m not having sex with my wife, and I feel guilty because we’re dropping serious coin on fancy hotels and laying around like sloths. Overall, it’s been a wonderful and rewarding experience. You should try it.