On Sunday a big chunk of Avenida Las Americas is shut down to traffic and opened up to pedestrians. They do this in every major city we visit now and there is usually a good time to be found.

Blue corn tortillas are possibly the greatest single food item on earth. I don’t even care to know what exactly this lady stuffed these with, because they were awesome no matter what it was. Already looking forward to next Sunday.

We rode bikes, ate, rode a rollercoaster, walked miles, drove bumper cars, grabbed some groceries, and headed home. Sunday Funday in the books.

We expected a lot more rain than we have gotten. The weather has been surprisingly beautiful, with only the occasional rain shower to disrupt our 75-80 degree sunny days—the beauty of creeping up to 4500 feet of elevation during the summer. Reminds us a lot of our travels to Mexico City during hurricane seasons past.

We tend to convert every space into our own. Letters and numbers on the wall. English to Spanish translations taped to the fridge. Dozens of markers and packs of paper. This is our kids’ classroom.

Reading. Ouest is always reading. We’re very routine oriented in our family, so just about each night Lowe showers, then Ouest showers, then she comes out and asks, “Papa, are you showering tonight?” She asks this eagerly, because if I say yes, it means she’s got five or ten more minutes of reading to do. Reading she can squeeze in before I spend the next 45 minutes reading a different book to them. Currently reading Anne of Green Gables right now, and we’re all in love with it.

Ali found this urban park not too far away that is a sort of reclaimed canyon in between neighborhoods. It’s too steep and narrow for any housing, so a group got together and turned it into a park. It was sort of a creepy place to begin with, way down a long series of steps into muddy dark jungle, but we were having fun when we found this swing fashioned out of a vine. Then we heard a couple loud bangs on a tin roof far above us. Then a rock hit the ground next to us. Then our feet carried us quickly right back up the way we came. Fun over for the day. We have no way of saying what happened for sure, but it was obvious there was no reason to stick around and try to find out.

Plaza Espana. Yet another nice plaza to spend a little time hanging out in while walking around town.

The Children’s Museum. I doubt we could count how many different Children’s Museums we’ve been to over the years. The weird thing is, the museums in the countries south of the border—despite their laid back rule-free attitudes—have never been big winners for the kids. Mexico City was terrible—the kids weren’t allowed to touch a thing without supervision from one of the dozens of volunteers. We had our fingers crossed this wouldn’t be the same, but it was no use.

Not that it wasn’t a nice place—it was. But holy cow can adults stifle a kid’s imagination. We walked into the place and our kids’ eyes were bugging out of their heads with all the cool stuff there appeared to be. But any time they approached anything they were immediately besieged upon by eager employees. All these people wanted to do was explain different things, and probably teach the kids a thing or two along the way, but instead they just scared our kids off. They just wanted to explore and play with all the great stuff in front of them. But that wasn’t going to happen. Any time they found a display without an adult at it we’d hear someone call out to another person and within seconds there would be an adult there ready to explain something to them. They’d nod politely for a few seconds and then abandon that display for the next. And the process would repeat itself. Helicopter parenting (without the parents) at its worst.

They did manage a little fun, though we didn’t even last two hours there, when the two of them would have easily spent all day if left alone to their own devices.

Lowe loves to play cars. So the chance to be his own car with working stoplights was amazing fun. It was funny to watch him spend 30 seconds standing at a stop light without running it.

Across the street from the museum was the zoo. We have a love/hate relationship with zoos. Basically we love to go to the zoo and then we leave hating it. Happens every time. “That’s it, we’re never going to another zoo.” But then we find ourselves in a new city, in a new country, looking for things to do with kids, and we end up at the zoo again.

Fortunately, this time was different. This was easily the best zoo we’ve ever been to. Who would have ever guessed that?

The animal enclosures were huge, and lush, and clean, like nowhere we’ve ever seen. Chicago? Minnesota? Portland? Please, step it up a notch. Guatemala City Zoo is eating your lunch.

Never have I seen zoo animals so active and healthy looking.

The capybara, world’s biggest rodent, and hands down favorite animal of the Schulte family. We have a running “joke” in the family about, “When we have a farm I’m going to have X animal.” Capybaras moved way up the farm animal list.

This is the new monkey exhibit. It’s just wide open to the world.

Anyway, the zoo was pretty dang nice, as far as zoos go. And maybe best of all, they had a great playground in front of an outdoor food court where we had amazingly good Chinese food and cold Mexican beer. This day was chock-full of surprises.