Thanksgiving to Christmas, whoa

After the adventure to Angel Falls, I immediately went up to Houston for a three days of Christmas shopping and seeing my friends from 13 years ago when we all met with babies and were new mothers.  As usual, it was like 10 years had not passed....we had a blast catching up and I look forward to seeing them all again, without such a long break.

Of course, no rest on the trip, i began to feel achy and sore, but still hosted 12 for a "holiday" dinner with turkey and all the trimmings a few days later and then we had plans the next day to go out on the boat and snorkling, picnic et al.  I thought that i was coming down with something, but Victor thought I should try to get some fresh air....that didn't last long, within 2 hours I was hurling over the side of the boat and could barely walk.  Seven hours later I was in the hospital diagnosed with Dengue Fever (nickname: bone crushing disease), kidney infections and lung infection.  I probably contracted it in Angel Falls when we stood in the jungle for a long time without our protective clothes during the rainstorm or it could have been here. Who knows.  This was the second time I have had Dengue (before in Colombia, 20 years ago) so it was pretty bad. I always said, that was the worse sickness I ever had, well I bested myself this time. I was in the hospital twice and my temps were over 106.  It SUCKED.  Plus it makes your joints feel so sore and out of it.

In the meantime, Isabella was dying to get to her first FORMAL Quince birthday party. Which is basically a coming out party for Latina girls. Quite something, over the top entertainment (grammy nominated Regaton band) food galor and hundreds of people.  Even security wrist bands so no party crashers.  Poor Victor wsa dealing with me in the emergency room and trying to find rides for Isabella.  Thank goodness our neighbor's son was invited also, and the dad was going to be driving them to and back from the party.  Of course, the party goes until 5am but they were picked up at 3am....crazy. See picture below, our friend's gave us the picture, obviously, we were not there to see her off.

 I managed to fly out on Thursday to Guatemala because we would NEVER had made it out of here due to the crazy Venezuelans who travel like madmen during the holidays.  I just sat whenever I could...couldn't read due to the pain behind the eyes but I managed and slept hard those first few days in Guatmala.  More on Guatemala and Cuba in the next entry.