The irony of this kills me. Well, almost - my cold is doing the rest.

After more than four months in Mexico, four weeks of travel and midway through my self-imposed odyssey, I find myself in a place that reminds me so much of Doctor’s Inlet, of home, that it’s almost overwhelming. Let me explain: after two lovely, if uneventful, days of moderately successful ¨water therapy¨ in Flores, I decided today to relocate south, to the largest of Guatemala’s lakes, Lago Izabal. Which is all well and good, but what I didn’t know before I arrived is that Lago Izabal has an outlet on the Caribbean Sea and is therefore the safest place in the region for boaters to wait out hurricane season. Thus, as I sit here, thousands of kilometers from home, I am nevertheless reminded intensely of it, surrounded as I am by [largely American] boaters of all stripes (and even jet skis!) and enjoying a view not unlike that of my dock at home. So, given all that, and given my cold, which has steadily worsened,* as well as a long-delayed bout of homesickness that has set in with Kim and Kristen gone, I have to say, as sad as it is, today I miss home more than ever.

* More water therapy is clearly needed.