Night hawks

A new and very lovely guest house on Lake Atitlan, but I continue to be dismayed by the New World Yoga Order that has taken over--we can't stay anywhere without being exhorted to go to a yoga class. Even the locals are being forced to go--I overheard an American woman say that she volunteers at an after-school programme. 'We have them do yoga,' she says, then pauses before adding, 'they enjoy it'. I think it's a secret plot to enforce quiescence among the poor.

Speaking of 'volunteering,' that's another plague around here. The place is overrun (and I am not even exaggerating) with young Americans padding their CVs by 'volunteering in Central America', by which they seem to mean depriving under-employed Guatemalans of jobs.