Anybody need some rope?

Ok, so in my last post I told you about THEY. Now we have had another run in with this problem, but with a twist.

Because my wife is pregnant with twins, and this will be her first time giving birth, our doctors in Petén, Guate, and the States have asked us to be in the States for the last trimester. Because of this, and regular Guatemalan stuff that happens, I have just now given her the nursery room, ready to be decorated. This gives her a whole 2 WEEKS to get everything decorated just the way she wants, not to see it again for 5 MONTHS. Needless to say, this has created some stressful situations.

If everything was as easy as running down to Home Depot, Hobby Lobby, or even WalMart, maybe it wouldn't be so bad. But we are in Petén, which makes everything harder to find and twice as long to get it done.

One such project is a wall map. Deciding it would be difficult to paint an even line that she would like (she has some OCD tendencies) she came up with the idea of putting it on the wall with rope. Guatemalans love rope, even make a lot of it here, so we thought it would be an easy find.

After not finding rope in 5 different places in our town (besides the plastic kind) we were left with the option of going to town. Luckily, there is a hardware store that has just about anything you'd need, albeit one of each thing and no options from which to choose(the Super Hardware Store).

So I went to the city with the instructions to "Buy a lot of rope." At the Super, I found some rope that was nice and bought all that they had, thinking that 24 meters would be more than enough and I would get all sorts of praise for my great find.

Now for the project details. The wall is 4 meters long by 3 meters high. My wife wanted the world to take up the whole wall. I bought enough to go wall to ceiling 8 times. Surely that is enough right?

Well all we got was the outline of N and S America, and from Russia to South Africa heading west and then South. My 24 meters wasn't enough. No problem, right? Just drive back to the city (45 minutes one way) and buy more rope. I even took a sample to make sure I got the right kind.

After 7 hardware stores, I figured out that everybody has rope, just that everybody has a different size. My size was 3/8. I found 1/8, 3/16, 1/4, 5/16, 7/16...etc. However, nobody had 3/8. So I went back to the Super, already knowing that I had bought all that they had. After talking for a while, they remembered that "the lady" had some at her house but wouldn't be back until that night. If I would come back tomorrow at 9am they would have it for me. Still skeptical, I figured it was my best shot, and thinking it was a good idea, left my sample with them just to make certain that they brought the right one from "the lady's house."

I made one more stop before heading home and to my surprise they had rope labeled 3/8! I no longer had my sample, and it looked a little smaller, but sometimes your mind plays tricks on you. The price was better, so I bought 45 yards of this rope, and headed home to what I was sure would be a hero's welcome!

Of course, the rope wasn't the same. Not even close. It was even a different color. But at least I still had my Super friends and my backup plan to return the next day to buy the exact same rope as what was already on the wall.

Upon returning the next day, I didn't think to cut off another sample piece of rope. My Gringo brain was thinking that of course they would still have my sample from the day before. I got there and they pulled out a big dirty wad of rope that supposedly measured 275 meters. After talking them into only pulling out rope from the center of the wad (that wasn't dirty) I asked for my sample. They replied that they didn't have it, but they checked and this was the same rope.

I bought 30 yards and headed home, admittedly with a little less confidence. My fears were made into reality when upon comparison the rope was different. My wife's regret was that I didn't have a sample with me when I got there, not so that I wouldn't have bought a third type of rope, but so that I could've told them what she thought of them wasting several more hours of her decorating time.

She decided to finish the map with the second type of rope, it being the closest. Here are the final results after a total of 60 yards of rope. If you are wondering, we sketched it with a projector and we attached it with hot glue.