My Favorite Occupation

Lord of the Hand Dance

2010-09-15T17:00:00.000-04:00

Best. "Commercial". Ever.

2010-07-09T11:14:00.001-04:00

Pic of the day

2010-07-06T01:02:00.001-04:00

Face to face with my dinner, a deep fried guinea pig. They are called cuy in Peru and are widely eaten everywhere. We once walked through a street fair with about 50 booths, all with several cooked cuy front and center on display to lure in passerby's. We went to a nice restaurant for ours (David ate alpaca but it wasn't much of a photo op), although I bet the street fair ones would have tasted better. Being deep fried, I can't comment much on taste, it was very greasy and had the consistency of chicken. Not good, but not bad either. It's the teeth that get me though.

Everything good must come to an end...

2010-06-27T18:46:00.000-04:00

Our last early morning bus ride. Though perhaps nostalgic, we went with the cheap option ($9 for a five hour ride) that left 90 minutes earlier, so it was also the least comfortable of our Peru busses, although still arguably better than most of the busses we took in Central America. We are now back in Lima, just waiting for our 12:30am flight tonight to LAX, with a layover in Mexico City.

We had planned to see some museums (there is an old convent literally decorated with artistically arranged human bones from the catacombs), but David woke up feeling a bit ill, so we´ve just kept close to the hostel today. We did go out for lunch, where I finally was able to order anticuchos, which is beef hearts cooked on a skewer. They were delicious! I expected such a strong muscle to be tough, but it was actually very tender.

Lima is grey and foggy, which is typical for this time of year. We were just lucky that we had so much sunshine when we first came through. But we are enjoying the coolness, as Las Vegas is forcasted to be 110 degrees tomorrow. Welcome home!

This afternoon on TV we watched the second Harry Potter in spanish. We had seen the first one months ago as well. Kids movies in spanish, especially one you`ve seen before, isn`t a bad way to practice the language. Unfortunately, Harry Potter has all that dang magic language, making it a poor choice I suppose. Still it was that or Law and Order, and I can´t watch that show no matter how desperate I am for something to do. And it was even in english!

We are both a little shell shocked that we are actually coming home. With unlimited money and a ticket to another country, we could easily stay out longer. But truth be told, we are also ready to come home. I keep talking other people out here into becoming a nurse (best career ever), and I don´t mind saying I miss it. Also I´m ready to play with all those neices and nephews at home, including a brand new baby girl I´ll get to meet tomorrow! I don´t know where we are going to end up, we´ve got six cities on our possibilities list, but I do plan on sending out applications right away and we´ll see who wants to hire me. Let me know if you know someone who is a nurse recruiter, or a nurse who works in the OR or oncology, which are the two specialties I am most interested in pursuing at the moment. You never know where a job might come from!

Once I get home and start getting organized again, I´ll start posting pictures from Peru, and maybe get some Top Ten type lists or something like that up. I´m sure going through all those pictures is going to bring back a lot of memories. Cancun was only six months ago, but it seems so much longer, we have really managed to do a lot in these six months!

An oasis in the desert

2010-06-26T20:24:00.000-04:00

For only the fourth time on our trip, we decided to take a night bus onward from Arequipa. We were loathe to miss the amazing coastal desert scenery that we had enjoyed so much on the way in, but we were anticipating close to a 15 hour bus ride, and we hate arriving in new cities late at night, when things are more dangerous, more expensive, and hostels have a way of being already full. So at 6:45pm we were all ready to go, even though the bus didn´t even arrive until a half hour after we were supposed to leave.

One thing I don´t think I´ve mentioned about the busses in Peru. Just before they leave the station, a guy goes around with a video camera and makes a record of everyone on board. This is sold as a safety measure, but when you start thinking about the implications it gets a little macabre. We had, on the way to Colca Canyon, passed the beat up remains of a bus that had gone over the edge of the road, coming to rest on a switchback far below, conveniently in total view of traffic. As we all craned our necks to see the twisted wreckage, our tour guide had been dismissive. "Don´t worry, they were very lucky. Only four people died."

So, all safe now that our faces were identifiable on video, our bus finally set off. The busses in Peru are also kind enough to show movies, usually in Spanish but if they notice a gringo they will turn on the English subtitles. The first movie they showed starred John Travolta and Robin Williams taking care of a couple of kids for a week. Or something like that, it was hard to tell because though she did turn on the subtitles, and they were even in English, they were actually for the directors commentary. So while we are listening to the spanish trying to figure out what is going on, the subtitles, which were impossible to ignore, are saying things like "Oh, I remember the day we shot this scene, Rita Wilson came up to me and asked if her character could have a lazy eye!". It was generic enough we could sort of follow it, but eventually we just gave up and I started reading "Captains Courageous", which I picked up in Costa Rica for a moment just as this. When the next movie started, I guess she felt we weren´t paying attention anyway, so she didn´t even bother to turn on the subtitles. By now I was tired of reading, so tried in vain to watch a super weird movie where Steve Zahn and his girlfriend go camping on some Hawaiian island with several groups of people who may or may not be nefarious killers. It was all very ominous, but in spanish kind of ridiculous, and the "twist ending" that I was able to grasp in two seconds not understanding a word played out for another fifteen minutes. But I will be thankful that we weren´t treated with a repeat viewing of "Mandy and the Secret Tunnel" or "Cheetah Girls II", both of which we´ve seen on other busses.

Amazingly, we both slept, something we´ve been unable to do on other night busses. Figures that just as we figure out the trick we are ready to head home. In any case, we were shaken awake at about 6:00 am, a good three or four hours earlier than we had been expecting. We sleepily grabbed our stuff and stumbled off the bus into the waiting arms of a trio of taximen, all desperate for our fare. We just followed the first guy we saw, even as the others tried to undercut his price to steal us away, something I haven´t seen anywhere else. We took us right to the hotel we wanted to stay in, and luckily they had a room open for us, and we fell back into bed for a few more hours.

We had arrived in Huacachina, an oasis surrounded by gigantic sand dunes. The small lake (large pond?) used to be a resort town for the well to do Peruvians, but these days it serves local Peruvians and backpackers alike. (It is even featured on the back of the S/50 bill.) We first, of course, had to hike the big hill beside us, which was already spilling into the back of the property. I really don´t understand how the town hasn´t just been covered by the sand several times over. The wind blows, and the nature of sand dunes is to move with the wind. The town is completely surrounded by the dunes, which on two sides come literally to and even over the edge of fences and roads, then climb steeply to the peak. There is no way even a team of bulldozers could do anything about moving that much sand even if they wanted to. But such is the nature of existence in countries like this. You do what you can until you finally just can´t anymore. No sense worrying about the inevitable, it will come when it comes.

We climbed up to the first peak, which even back at sea level was exhausting in the slippery sand, one step back for every two steps forward. But what a view we were rewarded with, an endless sea of sand in one direction, the large city of Ica peeking out over the dunes in the other. There were dune buggies full of tourists in the distance skidding madly over the sand, and what seemed mostly like local kids trekking up to the top to ride down again on modified snow boards. We just sat and watched for a while, because children tumbling down steep sandy inclines is surprisingly entertaining.

We had two full days in Huacachina, and mostly we just chilled out. While we have loved every second of the adventure we´ve been having, there also comes a time when it is nice to just rest! We did take a tour of a couple of wineries, as this is a large wine center for Peru. The grapes were not in season, but still it was interesting to see the old time wine presses, and hear about the technology used to make the wine. I´m just a not-so-closeted nerd, and I´m always fascinated by how things get made. Our cab driver who took us out kept up a steady stream of random conversation, and though it took great effort I was glad I was able to keep up with him. We also both got massages. I´ve been trying to do this since Guatemala, but there was always a reason not to, either it was too expensive or there was something else I wanted to do more. Or, in the case of Cusco, it seemed like accepting an invitation for a massage might lead you to a whorehouse. See, my very first massage was by an old, fat woman who might as well been named Olga. She was no-nonsense and strong and gave me an incredible massage. So when companies hire anemic looking skinny model waifs to advertise for them, well, lets just say that does not send the kind of message I want to hear. But I took the plunge here, and my masseur turned out to be a big burly man, a pile of greasy curls tied into a ponytail. He spoke English though, and though he looked like Rambo it turned out he had been trained at an Elizabeth Arden spa in Virginia. It was terrific, and even though I tipped him 40%, the hour massage only cost me about $12. Perfect.

Something to mention, in Central America I think most people assumed we were Americans. Here though, everyone thinks we are Dutch. The blonde hair I guess? When we correct them they are always very surprised, which is confusing because we´ve met far more tourists here from the US than we ever did in Central America. I assume it has something to do with our backpacks, that we are clearly not just here for a week as are most Americans. Still it cracks me up.

The other thing is the fútbol, or soccer. It is all anyone talks about here, and as soon as I do tell people I´m from the US they go into some big monologue about our soccer team. The only reason I have any awareness of it at all is due to people´s status updates I keep seeing on Facebook talking about the games (and bad referees), but I don´t have any real understanding of how well we are actually doing. So I just smile and let them go on, not really understanding but they seem to enjoy having a little bonding moment with a real live American. Amazing how cross-culturally universal sport is.

Flight of the Condors

2010-06-25T17:36:00.000-04:00

We arrived in Arequipa late, after a handful of typical delays (leaving late, stopping at random stops to pick up extra passengers, getting stopped by the police, detours and outright stops for road work) to find that the person from the hostel was still waiting for us. Even better, she was patient and helped us figure out our plans in Arequipa so we could buy our bus ticket onward before we even left the bus station.

We stayed at Marlon´s House, a sister hostel to the one we had stayed at in Puno, and if the building wasn´t quite as new, the staff was just as friendly and showers just as hot. Which, when it comes down to it, is all I really need. I´ve had it with cold or, sometimes even worse, lukewarm showers.

The next morning we were up for a 2:30am pickup for a tour out to Colca Canyon, a six hour ride away. There is some dispute between what the tour guide told us and what our guidebooks say, but I´m going to go out on a limb and say that Colca Canyon is the deepest canyon in the world, at something like 13,400 feet deep, more than twice as deep as the Grand Canyon in the US. I guess there is something deeper in Nepal, but it is considered a gorge, not a canyon, or something like that.

After a few innocuous stops for stretches and snacks and plenty of chances to buy souveniers, we finally came to the point. We got out of the van, hearing we had just missed them, but as soon as David and I situated ourselves on the lookout we saw them - the amazingly huge Andean Condors. With a wingspan of between 9 and 11 feet (!), they were easily spotted as they rose out of the depths of the canyon and began making lazy circles first below then over us. They gave us a show for almost 45 minutes, and we saw at least seven of them, males and females. Truly spectacular.

The canyon, though far deeper, isn´t as picturesque as the Grand Canyon. It just doesn´t have all the nooks and crannies, or that beautiful desert asthetic. But the old Incan terracing, still used by locals for agriculture, was still impressive and we took quite a few photos.

We made several more stops along the way home, giving no attention at all to the locals who had captured birds of prey (owls and eagles but no condors at least) hoping tourists would pay for a photo. We did try some local cactus fruit, which though very seedy sort of tastes like kiwi, one of the more tasty fruits we´ve tried down here. For lunch our tour bus took us to a typical tourist buffet, but David and I knew we could do better than $7.50 each so took off wandering the town. We finally found a place and had a 3-course meal for less than a dollar each. Granted, they were out of the two things we could read from the menu, so we had no idea what we eventually ordered, both of which turned out to be filling if unexciting. (I THINK mine was pork.) But still we felt proud of ourselves. I´m very interested to weigh myself when I get home, my pants are all hanging off of me so I´m pretty sure I´ve lost a fair amount of weight, but without effort as I´ve never gone to bed hungry. I think I´m just not stuffing myself like I would at home, and we have far less desserts. I guess that is all it takes!

Along the way home we saw plenty of wild llamas and alpacas and vicunas, and stopped at another high pass, at 16,100 feet, where we built a little stone tower and made a wish. (No, I´m not telling or it won´t come true!) By this point we are pretty well used to the altitude. Still, we knew it was downhill from here on out and were happy about that.

Fact: No matter how many times you say it, Titicaca never stops being funny!!

2010-06-23T17:37:00.000-04:00

The problem is, apparently, that I am a five year old at heart, because I cannot, CANNOT, say Lake Titicaca without taking a moment to giggle to myself. But, in my defense, the lake is called Titicaca for crying out loud!

We arrived in Puno after a surprisingly comfortable bus ride, where we met Linda, a retired nurse from Seattle. She was travelling with a tour group also on our bus, but apparently we were far more interesting (or, given what she told us about herself, more likely she was) and we chatted for quite a while about her work and world travels. To get to Lake Titicaca (HAHA) from Cusco, we crossed a pass that put us at 4335 meters, which according to the online converter is 14,222 feet and 5.29 inches. Whew!

Before we left a tout had approached us in the bus station to sell us a hotel in Puno, and it was a relief to get off the bus and find a woman with our names on a sign. She took us to the hotel, which was new and therefore desperate for business, so gave us a lovely room with a view of Lake Titicaca (snort) and a private bathroom for only S/40, or about $14. Puno is the largest town on Lake Titicaca (giggle), and is the jumping off point for the areas attractions, so has a fairly decent tourist scene. We had been warned that Puno wasn´t much of an attraction in itself, but David and I found it charming and quaint. Our first order of business was getting some food, where I got a huge bowl of wanton soup, and as if that hadn´t completely filled me up, they then gave me a huge plate of chicken fried rice. The local food here might not be the best I´ve had, but it is solid and filling, and that huge meal cost me all of $2. We then walked through town, where we found a huge wall full of murals, which I always love. These were funny though, in that the top panels were all scenes of war and fighting, while the bottom panels were of Donald Duck and the Little Mermaid. What a contrast!

The next day we took a full day tour out to the islands. We would have preferred to go out on our own, but with our limited time the tour let us see more than we could have managed otherwise. And it actually turned out to be quite pleasant. First up, we took a 45 minute or so boat ride to the famous floating islands. Hundreds of years ago, a tribe of people wanted to get away from the warring tribes along the banks of Lake Titicaca (tee hee), so utilized a reed that grows in abundance on the lake, and which, conveniently, floats. Bundled into platforms two meters thick, the "island" lasts for years, with new reeds laid down on top every two weeks to replace the ones rotting away at the bottom. Each island was big enough for a couple of small houses, a kitchen, and a large flat area in the middle (for the tourists to sit). In fact the islanders have since traded fishing for tourism as their main source of income, but if the visit was 100% staged and circusy, it was still fascinating to see such a different way of life. (When we left, they all waved and cried "Hasta la vista, baby!" Sigh.) Besides building with the reeds, the islands also use them for weaving, and even for eating! They call them the "bananas of the islands", although I can assure you they taste NOTHING like bananas. Maybe celery.

Our boat had dropped us off at one of the islands, and then we were able to board a traditional boat made of the same reeds for a short row over to another island. Though these boats are no longer made with only traditional materials (the bottom was, we were told, filled with empty water bottles for buoyancy), it was this style of boat that Thor Heyerdahl once sailed from the coast of Chile out to Easter Island, to give credence to his theory that Easter Island had been populated from the East and not from the West as had most of the other South Pacific isles. In fact people from Titicaca (hehe) helped him build his boat. Kon Tiki is the name of the book he wrote, which I would highly recommend.

We then had a three hour ride to the island of Taquile. The island is covered in pre-Incan terracing, and has fantastic views across to the mountains in Bolivia. It was hard to tell which was bluer, the water or the sky. Titicaca (HA!) is divided between Peru and Bolivia, and the Peruvian guides like to say that Peru owns the Titi half, and Bolivia the caca. I wish I could have gotten a Bolivians opinion on that, but again, the $140 visa was a deterrant for a day trip over.

We ate lunch at a local restaurant (fried lake trout and the delicious coca and mora tea) where they did some traditional dancing for us, and even pulled up yours truly to help with a sort of conga line/square dance section. After we ate, we walked through the town and eventually back to the boat for the ride back to Puno, where we bid a very fond and touching farewell to the big, blue, and awesomely named Lake Titicaca.

Cusco and our energy

2010-06-22T19:29:00.000-04:00

Our three days "stranded" in Cusco went pretty smoothly. There was a big protest march the first day of the strike, with various groups of people seemingly protesting different things. There were thousands of protesters marching up and down the streets, but it was all rather orderly, with huge sections of people holding signs and yelling slogans and all marching in neat single file up the street. There were random piles of rocks to prevent people from driving, and once we saw a lone tire rolling down the street with no indication of where it had come from.

Most shops and tourist-oriented stores were closed, or at least it seemed that way at first. The more we walked around, we would see the souvenier shops cautiously open their metal rolling doors part way, only to shut them again as soon as any of the protesters got near. With some good timing, we were able to get into some and do a little shopping, although we got trapped in a few, having to wait until the protesters were safely past before we were allowed out again.

But that was just during the day. In the evenings, all those same people were still out in the streets, but in colorful costumed parades instead. Where the last time we were in Cusco we saw what seemed to be the dance recital for every young girl in Peru, this time we saw the exact same thing but for all the boys. They were all dressed in various colorful traditional costumes, which we started to recognize after a while. The youngest boys went first, and as the evening progressed the boys got older and more talented. The favorite dance for them seemed to be the one where two boys would face off with long whips, and they would take turns taking swipes at their partners legs. It clearly hurt, but not enough to stop being fun apparently as they all went at it with gleeful abandon.

We were able to walk just out of town to visit two nearby ruins, including the zigzag terraces of Sacsayhuaman (which everyone refers to as "sexy woman"), and another with a small cave just a few minutes farther out. At that one, we were approached by a young man who told us he was just four weeks away from becoming a full-fledged shaman in his village, where his family had been shamans for generations. He seemed quite proud of this, and asked us if we believed in "the energy". He spoke in fairly decent english, although his choice of words sometimes made it hard to understand exactly what he meant. I was intrigued by his teeth, several of which were, well I don´t know exactly how describe it, even though we´ve seen it on a few people. It is like the teeth are outlined in silver, like with a perfect silver frame around the otherwise still white tooth. It is really a frame, or is it a crown? I don´t know, but it is a very unusual, interesting look. Anyway, despite his interesting teeth, we were naturally reluctant to engage him at first, assuming he had an alterior motive. But he assured us he just wanted to talk and did not want any money. He had David put his hand on his heart and take a few deep slow breaths. Just as David exhaled the last time, a beautiful falcon flew out of nowhere to land in a tree nearby. The shaman smiled and told David this was a good sign and that he had very strong energy. He had me put my hand on my navel and breathe, and although I didn´t conjure up an animal spirit guide, he still told me I also had good energy and added that I was in excellent health. Afterwards he wished us well and just walked away, I´m still not quite sure why he had decided to approach us. I guess he was just drawn to our strong energy!

Back to Cusco with a sweet old grandmother

2010-06-21T20:50:00.000-04:00

Our next plan was to retrace our steps along the rail tracks, back to the town of Santa Teresa. Though backtracking often seems to take longer than it did the first time around, we were still so high after our visit to Machu Picchu that our step must have been a little livlier, because we made it back to the train station, about 12 kilometers away in just two hours. There we found a mini-van that wanted to take us back to Cusco for about $12, which would have been a good deal, but with our achy bones and muscles we wanted to stop in Santa Teresa, which the guidebook promised had a spectacular set of hot springs. Not finding any other transportation, we just kept walking, another eight kilometers along a hot, dusty road. Along the way we passed several groups of people walking the opposite direction towards Aguas Calientes, and we stopped and swapped info. Thus we got a recommendation for a guesthouse and a restaurant in Santa Teresa, which we went straight to as soon as we arrived in town. My lunch was particularly delicious. For an appetizer I had a half an avacado, stuffed with pieces of carrot, green beans, cauliflower and tomato in some kind of mayonaise sauce. It was soooo good.

After we ate, we went back to the hotel to pack up our swim suits, and on the way out asked the proprietor where the best place to find a cab would be to take us the couple of kilometers out of town to the hot springs. He just looked at us sadly and said, "Oh, those washed away during the floods in January." What?!?! This was terrible news indeed, since we had just walked 20 kilometers specifically to come here FOR the hot springs. But what can you do? We adjusted our plans, and spent a pleasant evening walking around the small town.

The next day we got in a shared taxi to take us back to the town of Santa Maria, where we were going to catch a bus to Ollanta, a town in the Sacred Valley with some Incan ruins of its own. A young man that shared our taxi struck up a conversation, one of the most satisfying conversations I´ve been able to carry out completely in Spanish. He said his main job was as a nurse, but that he also worked as some kind of engineer. After a while we mentioned we were heading to the Sacred Valley, and he said "Well don´t forget about the strike." What?!?! He elaborated that for the next two days there was going to be a transportation strike that would completely shut down all roads in the region. We really wanted to see the ruins at Ollanta, but we knew it was a small town and did not want to be stranded there for three nights. So once again we adjusted our plans, and in Santa Maria booked a ticket all the way back to Cusco.

The bus was full and we were very lucky that we were able to get two seats together, albeit in the very back row of the bus. In front of us was sitting a kindly looking grandmother type, with grey hair and several missing teeth, who kept looking back and smiling at me. She finally picked up a small package, a plastic shopping bag that was all taped up shut, and made to hand it to me. She was saying something, but in a near whisper, making it impossible for me to understand what she wanted me to do. Finally I heard the word "mochilla", which means backpack, so I confusedly started looking around for something that might be her luggage, when she gave up and turned back around. David and I just shrugged. A few minutes later we stop, and several policemen board and start searching the bus! They smiled at us, barely checking under our seats for whatever it was they might be looking for. But they were a little more thorough with others, and were looking around all the luggage in the overhead compartments, although oddly they didn´t actually open up any bags. After they had worked their way up to the front of the bus, suddenly people all around us started pulling out taped up bags they had been sitting on and handed them back to the sweet old grandmother! I have no idea what was in the bags, but for once I was glad for my lack of Spanish, which saved me from being the smuggling grandmothers mule.

Machu Picchu, a dream come true

2010-06-20T20:30:00.000-04:00

You could blame it on the altitude, or the loud noises coming through the window from the train yard, or just the fact that we were about to do something we´ve been dreaming and talking about for years and years, but we were both wide awake long before the alarm went off at 4am. We were dressed and standing in line by 4:30am, behind about 75 people even more hard core than we were. At 5:30 we boarded a bus which whisked us the eight or so kilometers up the mountainside to the front gate of Machu Picchu.

I can´t even describe how excited we were. We stumbled up a stone staircase and onto the first sets of terraces. We cleared a corner around a stone hut and suddenly there she was, looking just like in the classic photograph. Ruins on a hill surrounding a wide green plaza (with llamas!), with the peak of Wayna Picchu looming in the background. We were out of breath from the hike and the altitude, but just being here was enough to take your breath away.

Being so early was deliberate, though surprisingly isn´t for the sunrise. With the high mountains all around, though it was light by 6am when the front gates opened, the sun doesn´t actually clear the mountain tops until well after 7, so most people make it for that. But to hike the peak of Wayna Picchu, you have to be one of the first 400 people to request a ticket, and we didn´t want to miss it. We got a ticket in the 10am slot (the first group goes at 7) which was perfect, giving us plenty of time to enjoy the sunrise and just look around for a while.  We hiked along a few of the Incan trails (there are eight leading to the site from various directions, cutting across the mountainsides around us) and saw a version of an Incan drawbridge on one.

The peak of Wayna Picchu, which is about 1200 feet higher than the ruins, looks deceptively steep, and although it is a steep climb up innumberable stairs, it wasn´t technically hard, just tiring. Every so often you would turn around to get an amazing view of the ruins and would have to snap a few photos, but then you would get a little higher and have to take a few more.  At the peak is a bunch of huge boulders that everyone crowded onto to catch their breath and enjoy the spectacular scenery of the quick moving river flowing through the deep valley all around us. It was hard to believe we had been hiking down there just the day before, it seemed so far away!

The hike took about an hour to the top, where most people turn back.  But gluttons for punishment, David and I continued down the backside to the Temple of the Moon, a small but very well made temple in a natural cave. We scaled some steep and narrow passages along the cliff wall and down long wooden ladders to get there, all of which took a breathless 90 minutes. By the time we finally made it back to the ruins proper, we were exhausted, and we still had over half of the ruins to explore!

From the photos you usually see of the ruins, it is hard to get a perspective of where you actually get to walk and what you get to see. But really the only thing off limits is the grassy plazas. We saw temples and baths and even a prison. Several times when we sat still for a few moments, we would see the chinchillas hiding in the rocks, which look like a cross between a rabbit and a squirrel. They were quite brave and let us get rather close to take photos, but once we crossed that invisible line they would dart away in a flash. There were llamas roaming the grounds as well, including several little ones. At one point a dog started barking, and every llama in the place pricked up their ears, and then rushed to the scene to see what was happening. We happened to have a good view of the whole ruin at the time, and it was weird watching them converge from all corners on this poor dog. Once they arrived the dog calmed down, and they just slowly wandered off again. The llamas were tame of course, but it was still startling when you would be standing there minding your own business and suddenly there would be one right next to you pushing past along the trail.

Besides all the hiking and exploring, there was plenty of just sitting and taking it all in. I ended up taking almost a full 2Gb of photos and video, many of the photos almost identical to others, but I just couldn´t stop myself. When we were finally bone weary from all the steps and sunshine, we made the typically questionable decision to skip the $7 bus ride back to town and instead walked back. We didn´t reach the hotel until 5pm, it was a very full day, but one that we will never, ever forget.

The "backdoor route" to Aguas Calientes

2010-06-19T19:58:00.000-04:00

We caught an early morning bus (how many times have I said that on this blog?) to head an hour and a half back up the dirt road leading to the small town of Santa Maria, where we needed to transfer to another dirt road to get another hour and a half to the small town of Santa Teresa. We were hoping to catch a mini-van, but arriving so early in the morning, before the other backpackers coming from Cusco started arriving, there were none to be found. We found a cab driver willing to take us, and waited about a half hour hoping someone else would arrive to split the fare with, but in the end we gave in and paid him about $12 to just get us going. The road followed a river up the valley, and we passed several tiny villages along the way, admiring the striking mountain/valley scenery the whole way. At least, when we weren´t trying not to notice how close we were driving to the steep drop off and how fast our driver took the blind corners.

But he delivered us to Santa Teresa, where we immediately hopped onto a mini-van which took us another hour or so to a hydroelectric station farther up the river. Here there is a small train station which runs the 12 kilometers to Aguas Calientes, the jumping off point for visits to Machu Picchu. The train leaves only once a day late in the afternoon, and is intended as local commuter train. Everyone warned us that sometimes the staff would sell tickets to foreigners, sometimes they would flat refuse and there was nothing you could do about it. Not wanting to deal with that kind of hassle, we made the trip one better - we simply walked the 12 kilometers, following the rail tracks the whole way.

The walk was beautiful, and even better almost totally flat. We had condensed our belongings and had left one backpack back in Cusco, so we each had only one pack to deal with. We walked over the river on an old rail bridge and passed small farms of bananas and coffee. We even found a few bugs! As we passed one of the farms, and old man coincidentally came out to also walk to town, and we chatted for a few minutes. The conversation was simple, but it felt great to be able to communicate relatively easy in spanish! He pointed up to the largest of the peaks on our left, and told us it was Waynu Picchu, which is the mountain peak that towers over Machu Picchu in the classic photos that you see. We squinted up and could even see people walking around the top. A few more curves around the mountain, and up in the distance there it was. Incan terracing, with ruins on top. We couldn´t make out much from so far below, but it was undeniably Machu Picchu. It was so exciting I took a dozen photos that have no chance of turning out, but I couldn´t help myself. We were almost there!

We thought we were walking pretty well, but with our necks craned up the old man soon left us in the dust. Eventually we made it to another train station, where the path that had been leading along the tracks seemed to veer off down to a road. Our only instructions had been to follow the tracks, but we were leery of walking on the tracks directly. But after only a moments hesitation we saw a group of guys walking down the tracks toward us. We chatted briefly, they were headed back to a small waterfall we had passed, and told us the town was not much farther and that it was fine to just walk along the tracks. We wished them well, and took off down the tracks, with the mountain on one side and a drop off on the other. Just around the corner we came to a tunnel. This seemed foolhardy at best, but we had come far enough that we didn´t want to just turn around, and we could easily see the other side of the tunnel maybe 25 yards or so away. We listened for the sound of a train, and then as best we could sort of stumbled and ran through the dark tunnel to the other side. Just past that we found a rock pile where we would be able to make it down to the road below, and decided to take it. We didn´t want to tempt fate so close to something so awesome! A hundred meters down the road we saw that the tracks went into another tunnel, this one much longer that the previous one. Just as we were commenting on how we would not have enjoyed running through that one, the train came through! I don´t want to imagine what might have happened if we hadn´t left the tracks when we did. We later saw the guys who tried to kill us with their bad advice, but they were so friendly it was hard to hold a grudge.

The town of Aguas Calientes exists for pretty much one reason only - to separate tourists going to Machu Picchu with as much of their money as possible. We did luck out and were able to find a room for a completely reasonable 40 Soles, about $13, although this was the last of the deals we were able to find. Walking through town, which is quite lovely nestled in a steep valley where two rivers converge, we were assaulted by a barrage of touts competing for our patronage to their restaurants. They offered lots of free drinks, and if you hesitated they would offer lower prices than stated on the menu. One place told us that instead of free drinks (inevitably the pisco sour, a local coctail made with lime) we could have free nachos with guacamole, we caved. We went in and made the order with our waitress, and they could not have been more delicious. But when the bill came, we found that not only had we been charged a boggling $6 for them, we had also been charged a "tax" of about $7 on a bill of about $17! (A reminder, in most cities we are able to eat lunch for $2-$3 each.) When we told her we had been told the nachos were supposed to be free, her english suddenly got very poor and she said that we hadn´t specified that when we had ordered, and if we had she would have given us a smaller plate. Obviously she must know her guy out front promises everyone free nachos, but she had us since we had neglected to specifically mention it to her when we ordered. We had made sure to specify that our entrees were at half price, so she gave us that, we had just assumed the free nachos was understood. Big mistake! We eventually got her to knock down the price a little more than half. The "tax", which is not charged anywhere else in Peru, we learned was also negotiable, as long as you negotiated paying it or not before you ordered. She did eventually allow that the tax also included gratuity, so we ended up paying it but not a sole more. We had been foolish, but at least the food had been undeniably good.

To Quillabamba

2010-06-16T21:27:00.000-04:00

There are a couple of ways to see Machu Picchu. Most people either do a four day hike along the Incan trail, which requires making reservations months in advance, or they just take the train to the town of Aguas Calientes, which lies far below in the valley. There is only one train company though, so without any competition the prices are sky-high. Just a few years ago however, a "backdoor" route opened up, which entails a few long bus rides and a fair amount of hiking, but is less than a quarter of the cheapest train ticket. Of course David and I chose this option.

So from Cusco, we boarded a bus to Quillabamba, an out of the way city that hardly any tourists go to. It was actually a little farther than we had to go, the road heading up and over a high peak in the Andes, and then plunging almost 11000 feet into the first signs of the jungle of the Amazon. We hadn´t expected to see the Amazon on this trip, so couldn´t pass up the opportunity. The bus, which was late and slow going, was at least comfortable enough, especially considering this wasn´t a tourist bus and David and I were the only gringos on board. When we hit Ollanta we came to a road block. We waited for 45 minutes without explanation, even driving the normally laid-back locals to shouting and banging the windows and floors to let their exasperation be known. Finally we were led onto a detour, which took us right onto the train tracks. I don´t know why the road was closed, but I guess we had to wait for the train to pass so we could drive a few miles literally down the tracks to get to the other side of town.

The climb up the mountains was breathtaking, with huge peaks filled with glaciers and snow gleaming in the sunshine over us. We passed green Incan terracing, and saw llamas and other livestock in the fields. At the peak a woman got on selling "papas relleñas", which was a hard boiled egg in the center of a glob of mashed potato that had been baked or more probably fried until it was crispy on the outside. It sounds like an odd combination, but it cost about 30 cents and was absolutely delicious. After crossing the pass we started our decent into the jungle, which was a little more nerve wracking as the bus now had gravity on its side and was careening down the narrow mountain road with as much speed as he could get. Suddenly, the bus stopped and without a word everyone got off the bus. We weren´t sure what was happening, but suddenly we noticed that everyone - men, women, old, young - were on the side of the road, peeing. I guess it was time. Since it was a nine hour bus ride, we took advantage of the opportunity as well. When in Rome!

The bus was overfull, so there was a young kid, maybe 13 or so, standing in aisle next to us. (Yes, standing for nine hours. People do that here.) We´ve noticed that the children here are generally very well behaved, even small children, on these long bus rides. They just take it all in stride, always giving up their seats if an adult should board without complaint. Anyway, I was admiring this kids calm disposition, when suddenly he walked over to a row with an open window, squeezed through the people sitting there to lean his head out the window just in time to barf. The lady was kind enough to let him stand there for a while getting the fresh air, even though she had another kid in her lap. I was just glad it wasn´t me.

We were pretty tired when we arrived in Quillabamba, but were able to ask directions to get oriented, and then made our way to a hostel. The town was nice and comfortable, along a huge roaring river, but at 3200 feet it wasn´t quite the Amazon experience we had been led to expect. (The guidebook starts with "Welcome to the jungle!") At least it was warm. We bought some ice cream and walked around, got some fruit in the market and found some dinner, but were ready to go the next morning. While technically I do believe this was the Amazon, next time we come to South America we will do the Amazon right.

Cusco and Pisac

2010-06-16T20:50:00.000-04:00

Cuzco is a place I´ve been dreaming of going for a long time. We arrived at 6am after an uneventful night bus from Arequipa, and quickly jumped in a cab for a hostel. We chose the silly Hostel Frankenstein, which promised "cold, dank rooms" just because it made us laugh. Well, really we chose it because it was relatively cheap, but a laugh never hurts either. We were just glad they had a room free when we arrived, we were so tired. But not so tired to miss noticing the fireplace. Score!

After a nap, we headed for the streets. And the city did not disappoint. Large plazas surrounded by churches, tiny cobblestone streets snaking off in all directions, atmospheric staircases climbing between buildings up the hills, and plenty of people, locals and tourists alike, percolating through it all. The historic capital of the Incan empire, Cusco (or Cuzco, depending on your preference) now has a population of about 400,000. We were glad to find that our few days in Arequipa had helped us adjust to the altitude, and even now at 10,800 feet we were breathing easy as explored the town. We were also glad we had our new coats, cause while it was warm in the sunshine, it got cold when it went down!

Cusco is well positioned as the natural stop before heading up to see the infamous Machu Picchu, which means that just about every tourist who comes to Peru comes to Cusco. And the city is well set up for them, with lots of shops and hotels and restaurants. Cusco is also a city of festivals. In our three days there, we saw at least one parade a day. One seemed to be a sort of dance recital given by every dance studio in the city, with thousands of young girls doing extensive routines in elaborate traditional costumes. Some of the girls were barefoot as they danced down the stone streets, and I felt for them, happy as I was in my newly purchased alpaca wool socks. Another was a parade of religious floats that came out of the church and slowly - SLOWLY - circled the square. The costumes and colors are amazing, but all the parades were sorely lacking in tempo. lol The floats were all carried around on the shoulders of about 20 men, which is I guess why they went so slow, because judging by the expressions of the men below, they were all extremely heavy. Many of them had "alternates" who would follow them and tag people out to take a rest. I enjoyed the bands that played, many of them oddly dressed in matching Hawaiian shirts. They would march in to the square from all directions, stopping traffic wherever they went, which no one seemed to mind.

After an assortment of museums, our first Incan site was that of Pisac in the Sacred Valley. We took a city bus out to the town, and then hired a cab to drive us up to the entrance at the top of a very steep hillside. We arrived early in the morning, so there weren´t yet many people around which was nice. We always face the dilemma of whether to hire a guide or not, but we decided to do it on our own. The ruins are well preserved, featuring lots of the famous Inca stonework. The Incas used no mortar when they built their stone walls, they just carved the rocks to fit together to well that even today you can´t fit a piece of paper between the stones, which have withstood centuries of weather and earthquake. There were large terraces built into the hillsides below the buildings, which were used for agriculture. It was all gorgeous, and we quickly wandered off up into the ruins, exploring every room and vantage point. The tour groups with guides soon began arriving, and we noted with satisfaction that almost none of them entered the ruins like we had, sticking to the main and easy paths. Guides can give great information and anecdotes, but it comes at the price of being free to explore at your leisure and fancy. The guidebook told us we could hire the cab to wait for us for two hours, but instead we decided to walk back down the other side of the ruins back to town. This turned out to be a good idea, because we were having so much fun climbing through Incan tunnels and admiring the massive valley below we spent almost four hours in total walking about. The walk down was a bear with thousands of Incan steps, but we still enjoyed it.

Back in town we found a little restaurant to have lunch. We ordered shrimp chowder to start, but weren´t prepared for the red, whole shrimps floating in the soup, complete with antennae and claws. How are you supposed to eat that?

Heading into the Andes

2010-06-11T21:17:00.000-04:00

[Note: Forgive me if there are spelling mistakes in this post, this computer has its spell check set on spanish, so every single word is coming out underlined in red, so I´ve got no help!]

Arequipa surprised us with its size, spreading out in all directions through a huge valley surrounded by snow peaked mountains. I´m not sure if the city is technically in the zone of the Andean mountains, but if not it is right on the doorstep. We had come here for two reasons, the first being to give our bodies a chance to acclimate to the altitude. We have been at high altitudes several times throughout the trip, and although we´ve never had a problem with altitude sickness, we have definitely noticed decreased endurance at times. With all the hiking through high Incan ruins coming up, giving our bodies a few days to pump out extra red blood cells seemed prudent.

The second reason was Colca Canyon, which we intended on doing as an overnight trip. But the Sarah´s let us know that June is a month of festivals in Cusco, and in a time when things are already busy, it gets even more crazy as the locals come in to celebrate. Never afraid to change our plans, we decided just to stay two days in Arequipa and head straight to Cusco, hitting the canyon on the way back to Lima.

First we did a little shopping, buying some much needed Levi´s and coats to prepare us for that cold Andean air. We hadn´t needed or wanted denim in the heat of Central America, but we were already feeling the chill through our lightweight pants and fleeces. Then we did a little eating. Along with the Sarah´s we went to a great restaurant up a massive amount of steps up to the roof of the building, overlooking the Plaza de Armas. (It seems instead of calling the main square the Main Square, in Peru they are always called the Plaza de Armas. There has been a lot of fighting in their history, obviously.) The plaza was beautiful enough during the daytime, with a huge cathedral and arch on one side, the other three sides lined with columned buildings. But overlooking the whole plaza at night all lit up was a spectacular view. Being outside it was quite cold, even in our new blue jeans. But the waiter was prepared, and brought us each a thick poncho to wear while we ate, and it made all the difference.

The menu was extensive, but David and I had our eyes (and stomachs) ready for something a little more unusual, cause it is always fun to eat the local fauna. David ordered an alpaca steak, which pretty much tasted like beef. I ordered cuy, which is guinea pig. My food spanish is mediocre, so I wasn´t sure how it was going to be prepared, but much to our delight it came whole, head and all, just fried. The Sarah´s had no intention of eating it, but they seemed to enjoy living vicariously through us. Or at least they enjoyed laughing at us as we tried to pick the meat off the creature. We took some photos of the poor thing, teeth and all, which I´ll post as soon as I can find a reliable internet connection. All I can say was it tasted like chicken, although being fried it was so greasy that I can´t really give a good description.

We also joined the Sarah´s on a tour of a local convent. The history of the convent was interesting. When it opened up, it was custom for every family to send their second child, male or female, into the service of the church. The families would send with their daughter a large dowry to cover her expenses. This particular convent only selected novices from the most prostegious (and wealthy) families. The nuns would then invite musicians and artists to give performances for them, and generally lived it up much as they had before they were nuns. They even had slaves! After 300 years the Pope finally sent someone to look things over. All the money was sent back to Europe, and the slaves were freed - many of whom stayed on to become nuns themselves! Anyway, today a few dozen nuns still live there, and instead of living off their wealthy families, they have opened up the majority of the convent to the public. It cost a whopping $10 entrance fee, but we got to look around the old living quarters, kitchens and assorted other rooms. Of course it was all ornate and beautiful. One room was my favorite, the room where they used to lay out the nuns that had died. Surrounding the room were paintings of the dead nuns, as it would have been unacceptable for the artist to paint a nun while she was still living. The artist had like 24 hours or so with the body to make his painting, so they were all pretty basic. But, kinda cool. There was also the infirmary, complete with a wooden operating table. And forgive me for being unsensitive to Catholicism, but apparently there are those who hurt themselves in order to remind themselves of their sins or something. On display was underwear made of barbed wire that the nuns would wear. I can´t imagine what that is about, but it seems completely horrible.

The other museum we went to was to see Juanita the Incan Ice Princess. She was sacrificed to the mountain gods, where she laid frozen and preserved until a nearby volcanic eruption sent ash that melted the snow around her, revealing her to some archeologists. She is a fantastically preserved mummy, complete with hair and clothes and most of her skin. They keep her in a glass case that keeps her frozen solid, which isn´t always on display but we were lucky. The rest of the museum was good too, just the right size to keep interesting without becoming repetitive.

Our last day we decided to get pizza for lunch. It was a vegetarian restaurant, so we figured it would be good, and when it came it looked great, all melty with cheese and big slices of tomato. When we started eating it something seemed weird though, until we realized that for the sauce, they had just used ketchup!

The bus to Arequipa

2010-06-10T22:38:00.000-04:00

The next morning we were on another fancy bus to Arequipa. Most tourists stick to night busses through this region, as distances are long and by travelling at night you save having to get a hotel for the night. My problem with that, besides the fact that I just don´t sleep very well sitting up, is that I love watching the scenery. Luckily we were able to find a day bus. Better yet it was almost completely empty, so we got to sit in the very front seats on the top level, which gave us a great view besides some extra leg room. It was great.

There were only about six people on the bus in total. Two of them, an American and a Canadian both named Sarah, sat next to us in the front. They were both working as teachers in Honduras, which was interesting enough in itself, and we had an entertaining ride talking with them as we all admired the striking desert and ocean scenery. The desert was dry and mostly unvegetated, and then we would drive through cliffs that fell down to the huge waves battering the coast. With little in the way of people or cities to fill the space, it just seemed so massive. At one point David even pointed out a small pod of dolphins playing in the waves. A few of the tiny, tiny "towns" we did pass were very humbling as we sped through in our luxury bus. Many of the homes were nothing more than a 8`x8`shack made of woven mats.

We were coming down a long stretch when we saw traffic stopped up ahead, with lots of cars and trucks lining both sides of the road, which was odd considering the light traffic we´d seen so far. As we got closer we saw that a semi-truck had lost its load of oranges, which were strewn in a massive heap along the side of the road. Everyone passing by had stopped, not to help, but to grab all the free oranges they could carry! Women were stuffing them in their purses, men were holding their shirts up in front to make a little basket with them. I don´t know where the driver was, but I´m assuming he was having one of the worst days of his life as he watched his cargo being stolen.

Night fell before we reached Arequipa, and as we cleared a large hill, the lights of the city sprawled out before us. It was a similar view coming into Albuquerque along I-40 from the west, except much bigger. I had heard Arequipa was the second largest city in Peru, but somehow we were still surprised by the massive display of lights spread out amongst the hills. The city makes a good stopover on the way to Cusco due to its altitude of 7800 feet, giving your body a chance to start to aclimate. Many people suffer from altitude sickness coming to the Andes, and we don´t intend to be one of them. There are meds you can take, specifically Diamox which can help by making you breathe a little deeper to get more oxygen. But I know Diamox as a diuretic, and I don´t need to be peeing all the time, so we are hoping the stopover will be enough.

The Nazca Lines

2010-06-08T16:05:00.000-04:00

Our bus this morning was a new experience for us. It was a fancy, double decker luxury tourist bus, and the difference from Central American chicken busses could not have been more stark. Our seats were comfy with fancy foot rests and tray tables. We had a cabin steward who brought us pillows and blankets, and even a sandwich! They played music in between movies, which were covers of 80´s pop songs like Material Girl and Blondie´s Touch Me and Sunday Bloody Sunday, but they were all orchestrated like they were from the 60's , in the style of The Girl From Impanema. My favorite was the Carpenters Top Of The World.

Then there was the video, telling us about the location of the exits and how we should not steal the blankets and how the onboard toilets were ONLY FOR URINATION. The woman who did the videos was notable for her ability to make handing someone a glass of water a sexual experience. Every smile was full of very subtle yet startlingly effective innuendo. Then she told us that seat belt use was mandatory (also a first down here), and that if we were caught without our seatbelts on, we would be "reported to the authorities". Dang, these folks don´t mess around!

We headed out of Lima, and were quickly into the desert. I guess I´ve seen enough James Bond movies that I know there are huge deserts down here, but I didn´t really appreciate the scope. Hours and hours of nothing but sand, washing down from huge sand dunes (the largest sand dune in the world is somewhere around here) across the road and down into the sea, making for one heck of a huge beach. I was loving the scenery so much, that I was almost disappointed when we arrived in the town of Nazca.

But not for long. We got off the bus ready to brave the army of touts trying to take us to their hotel, when we saw one holding a sign for the hostel we wanted. I love it when that happens! We pointed to her so the others left us alone, and she led us to a (free) taxi that took us the three blocks to the hostel. Perfect.

We were here, of course, to see the famous Nazca Lines, which were made between 200-700 AD. Some of the lines are in the shapes of plants, or animals, and some are actual lines, perfectly straight stretching for kilometers across the desert floor. None of the lines, however, are visible except from above, presenting interesting questions for the scientists who try and figure out how and why the people made them. There all sorts of theories, involving the use of really long ropes, or hot air balloons, or aliens. But no one really knows. Interestingly, there were scientists at the site in the early 1900`s, finding pottery and stuff that was left behind. But it wasn´t until the 1930`s that a plane flew overhead and the existance of the lines was discovered. Can you imagine being the guy who was studying pottery shards for 30 years, and then suddenly you realize what you´ve been walking right on top of for years?

We assumed we would have to wait until the next morning to take a flight up and over, but the weather was so good that we were encouraged to go right away, which suited us fine. Within an hour we were at the airport boarding a tiny 4-person plane. It was just us and two pilots. Not long ago, a pilot suffered a heart attack mid-flight causing a crash that killed all aboard. So new safety procedures have been adopted, including the use of two pilots for every flight. We took off into the sunny sky, and within a few minutes started making flybys of the various shapes. It was fun to see the familiar, famous ones - the spider, the monkey, the astronaut. The astronaut, by the way, was given that famous name by those who want to believe it was aliens that created the lines. But researchers actually believe it is a priest with an owl head. Still, the nickname persists.

The flight was turbulent in that tiny little plane, with our pilot doing circles around the lines so that the window pointed straight to the ground, for our optimal viewing pleasure no doubt. Luckily in the rush we hadn´t had time to eat lunch. Still, I was feeling a little queasy by the end of the half-hour flight. Regardless, it was totally worth it.

The preservation of the lines is due to the almost total lack of wind or rain in the area. One good rainstorm could literally wash them away, a humbling thought for us tourists who amble through, lucky to see something so unusual created so long ago.

Please google some pics, they are awesome. But I´m down to my last memory card and just don´t trust these public computers anymore to upload any pics of my own. Just a couple of more weeks and I´ll post the good ones.

Lima, South America

2010-06-04T21:56:00.000-04:00

So why the sudden change in itinerary? Well, David and I have been dreaming of going to Machu Picchu for years, we even came really close when we first came back from the Disney tour in Asia, but hesitated and let "common sense" tell us to wait. We had been talking about it on and off all through this trip, and the only reason we kept saying no was the cost of the plane ticket, which to anywhere in South America is always expensive, even from nearby in Central America.

Our excuse in the end was the deteriorating weather in Central America, which is coming into the rainy season. But really we were just hungry for another taste of excitement and adventure. Nicaragua was lovely, but after everything else we had seen in Guatemala it had a sense of the familiar about it, despite the significant differences. We had intended on going into the jungle, which would have been a new experience, but once we found a reasonable ticket from San José to Lima and then home (for $800), we found we couldn´t resist the temptation of four weeks in South America. Apologies to Panama, which I do feel bad about missing, not to mention the Corn Islands in Nicaragua and the Nicoya Penninsula in Costa Rica. But flights to Costa Rica are always cheap, so I´m sure we will return to the region again one of these days. Well, we will have to, because I already spent $3 on a Panama flag patch for my backpack, and I´m far too cheap to let that go to waste. ;)

From our hostel in Alejuela, it was a five minute taxi to the San José International Airport. (Travellers tip: most people assume that they need to stay in San José to wait for flights, but the airport is actually in the city of Alejuela, where the hostels are literally minutes away.) After changing our colones back into dollars - one dollar equalled 535 colones, which made calculating prices a challenge even for a math nerd like me - we were in the air and heading for Mexico City.

Now, for those of you who might have a vague sense of Central American geography, it might seem like Mexico City is in the exact opposite direction of Lima from San José. And you would be right. But those were the cheap tickets. The cheapest direct ticket we could find was almost $600 more expensive! In Mexico City we had a lovely seven hour layover. They didn´t even have a Cinnabon to help the time pass (we had skipped the one in Costa Rica, because Cinnabon is not made for breakfast.) They did have an interesting museum displaying some of the ruins and artifacts from different Mayan and Aztec and Olmec sights in Mexico. But the best part was the flights in and out. The city is just massive. They estimate over 21 million people live there, and GDP of the city is higher than many other countries in the world, including Taiwan. Someday I want to go back and see more than just the airport.

But with a flight to Peru, it was hard to feel melancholy at missing Mexico City. Our flight to Lima was a bit odd. The announcements were always made in Spanish, with a much abridged English version following. Just after takeoff we heard them say something about Acapulco, which didn´t make much sense. But 40 minutes later, we did, in fact, land in Acapulco. It took a bit to figure out that we had stopped to refuel. We were stopped about 45 minutes on the tarmac before we took off again. Weird. The view of the bay was sure impressive though.

Our flight was to arrive in Lima at 11:15pm, but with the refueling delay we didn´t arrive until 12:15am. By the time we got through customs and immigration, it was well after 1am. Luck was with us though, and just out of the gates we were approached by a taxi driver who actually gave us a decent price to get out to Miraflores, one of the nicer areas in Lima. On the way we stopped at a red light, and a kid about 12 years old rushed into the intersection ahead of us, and began to juggle with sticks that were on fire. While I was surprised to see someone so young at that time of night being so...resourseful, the fact was if I had had any small change in the local currency I would have given it to him, it was quite a show. And I guess it wouldn´t have been so impressive in the daylight. Anyway, we had emailed a hostel to tell them we were coming, but when we arrived they told us they were full. (When I checked my email the next day there was an email from them saying they would have a room waiting for us. Maybe the night watchman was too tired to pay attention?) Our taxi driver was more than happy to take us to a place he knew, where he no doubt made a small commision for bringing us. But while the place was $40 a night, more than the $25 we had been hoping to spend, it was now 2am and we were ready to take whatever there was. The room was actually one of the nicer places we´ve stayed on the entire trip, with actual furniture in the room, big comfy beds and a scalding hot shower. We didn´t notice much of it though, we fell straight into bed and were instantly asleep.

The next day we walked up the road and found a proper hostel to move to, which was still $30 a night, but big cities just tend to run more expensive. Better yet, when we finally got into the room later that afternoon, we found we had been given a room with a private bathroom, when we had only paid for a shared bath! Little things like that are the delight of the backpacker world. We were also located right on the main square, closer to the shops and restaurants and with a great view from the common room of the hostel.

We were only planning on staying one day in Lima, having a few errands we wanted to get done. But as we started walking around, we realized how much we were enjoying the city. Lima is large and modern, with a population of over 8 million people. Some big cities, such as Guatemala City and San Salvador, had seemed unfamiliar and therefore somewhat dangerous. But Lima seems familiar somehow, sort of like if New York were on the Pacific coast. And oh what a coast! We walked down to the beach, where high cliffs look down onto rocky but vast beaches populated mostly (at this time of year, June is winter south of the equator!) by surfers. We quickly realized we wanted to stay a day longer, just to have time to soak it all in and not just do a mad dash around doing errands. So we relaxed our pace and just enjoyed exploring. People were everywhere, we felt safe on every street (Miraflores is a fairly well to do neighborhood), and we just felt excited to be exploring a city in South America! I´m not sure what it is, but every time one of us mentions the fact that we are in South America I get a charge of adrenaline. It seems so exotic and exciting!

For lunch we have been going to these hole in the wall places, which all serve basically the same things. You get a juice of the day, an appetizer, and a main course. Ordering is a bit of a challenge, since we recognize only a small percentage of the menu. Today David ordered what he hoped would be (and in fact was) calimari, as well as a pounded chicken with fries and a salad. I had an amazing ceviche, which is fish that has been soaked in lime juice, which "cooks" the fish through a process of oxidation. It is very tangy and acidic, and very delicious, served on a bed of red onions. I didn´t know exactly what I was ordering, but I also ended up with a thin piece of steak with a fried egg on top. Our juice, as best as we could tell, was blackberry juice infused with cloves. It sounds weird, and actually was weird, but was also quite delicious. For all that food, you pay 7 soles, which is just over $2. Awesome! There is nothing better than food that is both delicious and cheap, and we haven´t had the combination since we were in Mexico. We´ve had a good look through the food section of our guidebook, and there are definitely some more things we want to try. Did you know potatoes come from Peru? They have over 5,000 varieties of potato, which is hard for me to comprehend, but I´m definitely hoping to try a few. Actually, I did have a hunk of a sweet potato with my ceviche, which was bright orange with purple skin.

This morning we went over to the archeological sight of Huaca Pucllana, which is in the city limits and was an easy walk for us. We expected a little dumpy place, but it was actually quite impressive. A huge temple structure, all made of adobe bricks. The site isn´t Incan though, it was built by a matriarchal society called the Lima about 400AD. The large temple and surrounding plaza is under heavy restoration, but even as the men with shovels and wheelbarows roll by you are allowed to walk around. At one point we walked past a pair of plastic bags on the side of the trail, which our guide pointed out to us. They were filled with pieces of pottery and dried up corn and other vegetables, all of which had been left as offerings and were now being uncovered by the workers. It was all quite unexpected and fascinating. The walls, which again are completely made of adobe (sand, water and crushed sea shells) have been so well constructed that they have withstood 1500 years of earthquakes.

A few other observations.
- Where every other place we have been to has their share of stray dogs, in Lima it is cats. They run around the parks by the dozen. But they don´t seem feral, they seem friendly and we´ve seen several people feeding and petting them.
- This evening we had a churro in the park, which had a caramel filling down the center. Yum.
- Down by the beach is a park called The Park of Love or something along those lines. There is a gigantic statue of a couple laying down making out. I´m always surprised by images like that in Latin America, which has such a reputation for being conservative, but we also saw a billboard ad with a woman with a breast hanging out.
- We keep running into the waiter who served us lunch our first day. Not only around his restaurant, but also walking down streets across town. He must think we are stalking him.

Tomorrow we bus to our next stop. And it is a good one!

Goodbye, rich coast...

2010-06-04T16:56:00.000-04:00

From Monteverde, we caught the early morning bus to the city of Alejuela, just outside of San Josè. We had been expecting the bus ride to last over 5 hours, but we made it in less than four, which is always a treat. We walked around for the afternoon, and found it to be pleasant and comfortable, if not particularly exciting. There was more William Walker story to fuel my obsession however. The town has a museum and a nice statue of Juan Santamarìa, the young man who is credited with the defeat of William Walker and his filibusters in Costa Rica by setting fire to the building where they were hiding, forcing them out into the open where they were killed or captured (or fled). The statue depicts the young man with a long rifle in one arm and a flaming torch in the other. Though he was killed in his efforts, he is still remembered and venerated today. (In fact, the international airport is also named after him.)

And suddenly, our time in Costa Rica, and Central America, had come to an end. The plan had originally been to go to Panama, but somehow we ended up on a flight to Lima, Peru.

More Costa Rica fun

2010-06-04T16:40:00.000-04:00

[Dangit. This post was supposed to have pics, but we´ve gotten another virus on our memory card. How does anyone survive using a stupid PC?]

After our success at Monteverde, we were content to try something similar the next day. Although rather than paying for an expensive park, we found a free trail to hike up to the top of a mountain where the radio antennas live. We talked to an American couple in our hostel - indeed, it seems like everyone travels to Costa Rica in couples, whether romantic or not, everyone was in pairs - who had taken the hike the day before. They warned us it was very steep and pretty muddy, but we still decided it sounded like a good idea.

It took us maybe a half hour to walk to the start of the trailhead, and right away we started finding good bugs. The terrain was a bit different than the cloud forest, more open and drier, so although there was plenty of overlap, we also found things we hadn´t seen before. And since we were still turning over leaves and peering into holes with our flashlight, our pace was slow enough that the trail, which was in fact quite steep, was hardly a consideration.

In addition to the beetles and caterpillars and such, David´s eagle eyes picked out one of the coolest bugs I have ever seen. It was a variety of stickbug, which is cool enough. You may remember the giant one of those we found back in Guatemala. But all the stick bugs I´ve ever seen look like their name, little brown and grey twigs. This little guy was green! He looked like strands of moss bunched together. He did his best to quiver and shake, imitating a piece of moss just blowing in the wind. I know we are total nerds, but we were thrilled, what can I say? A very exciting day of entomology.

Not long after that, we spotted a couple of white-faced Capuchin monkeys swinging in the trees. They were pretty far off, but coming across wild monkeys never gets old.

As we neared the top, we heard a loud, deep rumbling sound. It is a sound we have learned to recognize, that of an erupting volcano! When we reached the top of the mountain, not too far off we could see the bottom half of what was clearly Volcan Arenal. Unfortunately the top half was covered in clouds, obscuring what must have been a nice big puff of smoke and ash. Central America has not been stingy with its volcanic activity, this was the fourth volcano we´ve seen (or in this case, heard) give a nice little eruption.

That night, nursing mild sunburns (and we were wearing sunblock!) we decided to skip cooking our own dinner in the hostel again, and instead splurged on a restaurant built up in a tree. Actually, instead of paying the high prices of the actual treehouse, we went right next door, where the owner had wisely build his building right next to the big tree so that the branches still overswept the balcony where we sat. There was only a small wrought iron fence sitting between us and another couple that were sitting in the actual treehouse, our food was great and we paid about half of what it would have been. Now that is what I call backpacking with style!

The next day we went to another reserve for yet another hike. This one was much denser forest, so we spotted only a few bugs here and there. But don´t feel too sorry for us. We walked out onto an overlook over a supremely green valley, and I jokingly said "And cue, toucans!" Before I could even laugh at my own silly joke, David looks down and says "Toucan!". Actually it wasn´t one toucan, it was a whole flock of at least seven or eight. This was the Keel-Billed Toucan, a large black bird with a bright yellow face, chest and beak. These were much closer than the ones we had seen in Guatemala, so seemed much bigger to me. A little while later we stumbled onto a troop of coatimundis. While we had seen others in Tikal, this group had three tiny little babies running around in their midst, which were adorable beyond words. It did make us nervous though, because to continue on the trail we had to push through the group. The babies were totally unconcerned with our presence, and kept running up to us to check us out. But each time they did, we noticed the adults giving us the evil eye, and we really didn´t want an angry mother giving us rabies or something. We moved slowly and loudly, and remained unmolested.

Later we came across a large group of those Capuchin monkeys. It was impossible to count them the group was so large, and they were dancing in the trees all around us. A few of them got rather close to check us out, before skittering away, flinging themselves out into the air off the edges of branches only to catch themselves on another tree. The acrobatics were impressive. Eventually though they decided we had worn out our welcome. At first we noticed a few sticks and branches "falling" in our general vicinity. Finally one of the older monkeys swung down, baring his teeth at us silently and creepily. We took the hint and continued down the trail.

We also hiked down the valley to see three waterfalls, and saw a handful of other birds, including the beautiful turquoise browed motmot. On the way home we stopped at a café run by the local cheese factory, and had some of their fresh ice cream. Delicious.

Monteverde, Costa Rica

2010-05-30T18:49:00.000-04:00

Santa Elena is a quiet little town, a triangle of three streets full of shops and restaurants that cater to the gringo tourists. It reminds me of several other little towns like this we've been to, although this one has the distinct advantage of being surrounded by lush mountains and views over the Nicoya Peninsula down below. As soon as we checked into our hostel, we were given the (wide) array of tour options we had. Several different reserves for hiking and animal-searching, an aviary, an insect zoo, a "serpentarium", a bat zoo, and an assortment of coffee tours and cheese factory tours and, of course, the canopy zip line tours.

We, being us, remained non-committal and decided to skip the tours and just do our own thing. The next morning, we took the public bus to the Monteverde reserve, which is the main reserve in the region. We had heard lots of conflicting opinions about whether it was really the best, or whether the smaller ones were less crowded so offered a better experience overall, but we decided to just go for it. Places get famous for a reason, and we were arriving early enough (7am as they opened) we hoped we could beat the crowds and have a good time.

The road from town to the reserve is only paved about half of the way. Apparently as the reserve began gaining popularity, the locals were concerned that if access was too easy, so many people would come that the park would be overrun and the very thing people wanted to see would be destroyed. So the roads remain unpaved. We were dropped off about 15 minutes before the park opened, so we walked around and right away began finding totally awesome bugs. Metallic silver beetles, huge hairy caterpillars; we were thrilled before we'd even walked in the gate. Once they did open up, we were the first ones in the door.

The park is actually very well set up for visitors. Right in the gate there are about four different trails leading off in different directions. You tell the attendant how long you want to hike, and they draw you a route through the park, which helps break up any congestion. Not that we had to worry about it, there are definite perks to coming in off-season, and we only saw maybe a dozen other people the entire time we were in the park.

The forest was beautiful. A cloud forest is different from a rain forest, in that while it doesn't get near as much rain, the clouds roll through bringing lots of moisture. The canopy overhead was dense, blocking out a good deal of the sunlight. The relative darkness, combined with the fluctuating mist as clouds rolled through, actually make it difficult to spot much wildlife. We could hear birds now and then, but rarely were able to see them unless they were actually flying around. We soon realized that we were highly unlikely to see any sort of mammal (the park does have a few, such as sloths, but they are mostly nocturnal), and were probably not going to really see any birds either. This was a little disappointing, as this was our last chance to see the infamous Resplendant Quetzal. The Quetzal is the national bird of Guatemala, and was highly prized by the ancient Maya for its unusually long and colorful tail feathers, which they used to dress the king. The birds are today endangered, as they only live in narrow bands of altitude in cloud forests, and quickly die in captivity, so you won't see one in a zoo. For months we had been hoping to see one, but this was our first, and last, real opportunity, and it was pretty clear it wasn't going to happen.

With that realization, we turned our attention from the skies down to the dirt, and started hunting bugs. We were quickly rewarded, and the fun kept coming. We saw bugs and beetles of every color, delicate spiders, colonies of ants, huge millipedes, and all sorts of caterpillars. Under every leaf a new little wonder would surprise us with an unusual shape or color combination. This, of course, meant we were walking very slow. Usually when we are told a hike will take us four hours, with our long strides it means we can cover the distance in two. But turning over leaves and logs meant our four hour hike took us seven. We'd planned ahead though and brought some sandwiches from a little bakery, so we were good.

Since I was trying to take pictures of the bugs, which was difficult to the low light, David often wandered up the trail ahead of me. Just as I was finishing up with a particularly nice tortoise beetle, David comes running and yells a single word. "Quetzals! Quetzals!" I caught up and we ran back up the trail, running into another couple who were, fortuitously, with a guide. The guide was ridiculous, pointing into the dark tangle of trees after just a moments glance. "There is a female!" He had a great little telescope on a tripod and had it set up in two seconds, and with much grace they let David and I take a look as well. The females aren't as colorful as the males, but we could see her bright red chest and green face and strange little tuft on her head. More strikingly was the gigantic green and wiggling grub she had hanging from her mouth. "She is waiting to take that back to the nest, but is checking things out to make sure the coast is clear," the guide told us.

There were at least four of them flying around, and although the guide pointed out the males for us, they were too quick to get the telescope focused on. Still, we were pretty thrilled and thanked the couple and the guide profusely for helping us out. It was so satisfying, when something you've been wanting and thinking about for months just suddenly happens. We continued on down the trail a bit, chatting happily, when suddenly David looks up and sees another female. This time it was close enough we could use our binoculars. As we admired her, a male comes along and finds the perfect perch to let us admire him. His tail feathers weren't particularly long, but he was still gorgeous. We watched them for about ten minutes before they finally flew away. We continue down the trail, marvelling at our luck, when another male comes along. He was singing away, and this one did indeed have the long emerald green tail feathers. He gave us quite the show, again from a perfect little perch where we could watch him.

We felt like all our Christmases had come at once. The birds were too far away to photograph unfortunately (google one, they are worth it!), but with the binoculars we had quite the performance. For a shy bird that most people don't get to see at all, for us to see that many that well was really unusual, and we feel extremely fortunate.

But don't kid yourself. We still kept looking for bugs.

Leon, Granada, San Juan del Sur, and at long last, Costa Rica!

2010-05-29T18:16:00.001-04:00

We spent three days in Leon (I'm using a hybrid American/Spanish keyboard and can't figure out how to make the accent mark dangit), mostly near the pool in our hostel as the heat was intense. We saw a lot of churches, and had some truly excellent pizza, the best we've had since we were in Xela. We did go to a terrific museum, that had some Picasso and Chagal and Matisse, and a lot of great pieces by Central American artists. I generally have a pretty low threshold for enjoying museums, but I really enjoyed this one.

We stayed at the Lazybones hostel, which overall was great (did I mention the pool?) however we did get some visitors in our room at night. It was hot, so we weren't using the mosquito nets because they blocked the fan. The first night David felt something crawling on him, which in his half asleep daze he thought seemed like a cat, although it was too small and there was certainly not a cat in our room. I'm thinking it was a mouse, as there were some nibbles to some food we had. The next night something hit my face. Something fast and leathery. A bat! I actually think bats are pretty cool, but getting slapped in the face by one while you are trying to sleep is decidedly uncool. Anyway, we used our nets after that, guess they were there for a reason, cause we didn't see any mosquitoes.

From Leon, we jumped in bus to the capital, Managua, where we stayed just long enough to get off the bus and get on another to Granada. We sat next to a local guy named Alan, who is a medical student and spoke pretty good English. He was getting ready to go to Germany to get his PhD, and was nervous because his german wasn't very good. Can you imagine going to college in a third language? But he got a scholarship, so that was his best option. We asked about the weather, wondering if it would be as hot as it had been in Leon. He said not as hot, but he promised it would be very dry. "We only get rain maybe twice a year." Cue rain for the next three days straight.

Granada is a lovely colonial town, making comparisons with Antigua, Guatemala hard to avoid. But it hasn't yet had quite as many coats of polish, and still retains a slightly grittier feel, in the good sense of the word. It has had more coats of paint however, making it quite pleasing to look at. We holed up at the Oasis, a sister-hostel to the Lazybones, also with a pool which we enjoyed. I even met a friendly Peace Corps Volunteer who was taking a little vacation from her rural outpost, and I think I may have talked her into going to nursing school in Albuquerque when she finishes. It is hard to resist such a great path!

Granada is on the shores of Lake Nicaragua, a huge freshwater lake. The lake used to have maneating bull sharks in it, the only freshwater shark in the world. But a lucrative trade in shark fin saw the quick decimation of the species, which supposedly still exist in small pockets down the river that leads to the Caribbean coast. We rented bicycles and rode several miles down a peninsula. It was raining a bit, and we got splattered with mud from the tires. But at the end of the road we saw a family of howler monkeys, much bigger in size than the ones we saw in Guatemala, and a beautiful species of jaybirds that we've been coveting since we saw their picture in a bird book in Honduras. It was a great ride.

From Granada we decided to head to the beaches of San Juan del Sur. Though still overcast, our luck held and it didn't rain, giving us one last chance to get some sun. You know how sometimes walking the beach you will see some dumb little fish washed up on shore? Here we saw three pufferfish (still puffed up!) and a large parrot fish with a huge set of teeth on him.

We were up early the next day to head to the Costa Rican border. We had been warned this would likely be our most difficult crossing, and indeed it was. By far. Approaching the border we passed miles and miles of semi-trucks, which were stopped along the side of the road, single file, inching so slowly toward the border that the drivers were wandering around the street in little groups. I can't even imagine how long it takes them to get through, but I can't see how they would all get through in a day.

Once we got to the border, the usual group of "helpers" attached themselves to us hoping we would change money with them. But they proved quite useful in navigating the maze to the immigration office. After paying three different sets of "fees" (all of which were supposedly legit, according to our guidebook), we got flustered and jumped on an international bus. These busses are far more comfortable than the chicken busses, and also far more expensive. But we were confused and decided just to splurge for the convenience. After waiting a bit for the people who came through on the bus to finish at Nicaraguan immigration, the bus drove us over to the Costa Rican side and we got in line. Luckily the rain had stopped, because we were standing outside in line for over two hours. At one point, there was a mass movement as 50 - 75 people in line ahead of us suddenly left the line and walked away. I have no idea what they were doing or where they were going, or why they all decided to leave at once. But it probably saved us another hour of waiting, so we were grateful for the mystery. Once we finally made it into the building, we saw that there were exactly two officials moving people through. They were friendly and efficient, but hopelessly backlogged. There must be some rhyme or reason to why the Costa Rican government doesn't just hire a few more people, as this crossing is notorious for being long and awful, but I can't imagine what the reason is. We made it through, the officials making a show of everyone on the bus getting their bags out to be inspected, but then just waved all the backpackers through without checking anything on us, though they did a cursory check of the locals.

Next came the intrigue of us finding our stop. The bus was express to San Jose, but we wanted to get off before that at the turnoff to the cloud forest reserve of Monteverde. The guy who sold us our ticket said it would be no problem, but of course he was now nowhere to be found. We talked to who I thought was the driver and one of the assistants, but we didn't know the name of the place we wanted to be dropped off, and that seemed to be confusing them. We weren't even really sure what would happen when we got dropped off on the side of the road, we just assumed that we would be able to find another form of transport to the reserve. The drivers sort of smiled and nodded and blew us off, so as we took off we were stressed that they might not stop where we needed to go, but were also stressed that they would, because we weren't sure what we would do then. Then the rain started, which is never a friend to a backpack.

But, as usual, it all worked out. They dropped us off at the right place, just after the rain stopped. A cabbie tried to get us to pay $50 to take us direct, but he also admitted the public bus would be by just over an hour later. We waited (and looked at bugs, natch) until the bus came, and we paid about $3 for the ride to Santa Elena, the town outside of the reserve.

Sorry there are no pictures on this post (and I got a great one of the parrotfish!), but this afternoon I was checking out the camera and the bus hit a bump and I managed to format my camera card. groan. I'm pretty sure I will be able to recover the pics once I get home (at least I hope!), but there is no doing it from here. Technology is the best thing ever, until it isn't.

Butterflies and murals in Nicaragua

2010-05-21T23:00:00.000-04:00

There are two ways to tell the story. I can say we spent 12 hours on a microbus, two taxis and four busses to cross two borders through sweltering heat and torrential rain. Or I can say, breakfast in El Salvador, lunch in Honduras, and dinner in Nicaragua! I tend to like the second version better, and hope to forget as much of the first version as possible. Except we found a friend on our last bus, a Nica cowboy complete with hat and gigantic belt buckle. Despite our inability to understand much of what he was saying (at least we got the gist), he talked with us for a while in a dusty bus stop waiting for the bus to arrive. (We were afraid we were going to have to wait for an hour in the heat, but the bus arrived and soon took off early, much to our relief. It stopped at a store and the driver bought a drink, then we returned to the bus station. We sat for about 20 minutes and we took off again, where he picked up a few people along the way, and then returned to the station again! D´oh!) Our bus eventually arrived at another tiny town, and we all crammed and I mean crammed into a little microbus, where despite having my pack in my lap I still was getting very friendly with two other passengers sitting opposite me. All the travel had taken longer than we had expected, and we were arriving at the Nicaraguan border right at 5pm, in the rain, and we weren´t sure if we were going to be able to find a bus on the other side or if we were going to have to get desperate and hitch. But after making our way through, with no bus in sight, we found our cowboy waiting for us on the other side with a taxi. He even negotiated a decent price for us. Our stop was only about 20km down the road, and he was off farther into the highlands. I can´t say it enough, we just keep meeting these super friendly people who go out of their way to help us, despite the language barrier. People are awesome.

We were in the town of Somoto, a small town that had made a claim to fame based on the recently discovered river canyon that is the start of the Coco River, which is one of the longest in Central America. Of course by recently discovered, they mean discovered by us white people. Anyways, we hired a guide who hiked us in through gorgeous farmland to the canyon. When the water was deep, we swam down along, letting the current help push us through a beautiful and, at times, deep canyon with steep rock walls. We got out and clambered along the sides and over huge rocks when the river turned into shallow rapids. It was great. At several points along the bank we came across huge numbers of yellow butterflies drinking along the banks. When we would walk by, they would all start flying around all at once, leaving us to walk through what we termed "Butterfly Cloud". Our guide was great at talking slow and simply, so we were able to feel all fancy talking in Spanish all day. The only issue we had was the water itself. We had imagined some sparkling mountain spring, when in fact it was very brown, full of all that farm runoff and who knows what else. We kept our shirts on to protect from the sun, and lets just say they were nowhere near as white when we were done. Anyway, it might not have been as magical as we´d hoped (except for those butterflies!), but it was still beautiful, and a very fun day.

We spent another night in Somoto, and then moved down the road to the college town of Estelì, which is notable for being full of murals. I am a huge fan of graffiti art, and have been taking photos at every opportunity all along the way, so I was pretty excited for a city full of murals. Some were political, some were for kids, and some I have no idea what they were. We just walked through the city like we were on a treasure hunt. We found a terrific little restaurant, but unfortunately Estelí is also a cigar factory town, and it is impossible to enjoy eating anything when someone behind you is smoking a stogie. I´ve been spoiled by living in so many cities where public smoking is illegal, and while the smoking down here isn´t as bad as it was in Asia (in fact most of the smoking I´ve been around has been by the Europeans, not the locals), I sure will be glad when I get home and can eat in a restaurant without fear of nasty smoke defiling my meal.

We are now in León, another college town, historically the arch-rival to Granada, where I think we are heading tomorrow. Back around the time of the US Civil War, the city of Leòn thought they could finally defeat their poltical enemies in Granada by inviting William Walker into town. He was an American who came down with a bunch of mercenaries he called "fillibusters", which apparently is another way to say pirate. He did indeed defeat Granada, but instead of handing the city over to León, he decided to stick around as the new "President of Nicaragua". You see he thought he could make some improvements, little things like reinstituting slavery, and hopefully give some backing to the Confederacy. What he did do was to unite the bitter political enemies who, with some help from the Costa Rican army (back when they still had one), were able to drive him out. Being a good sport about it, he had the good grace to burn the city of Granada to the ground on his way out, and posted a sign "Granada was here." His awesome sense of humor somehow wasn´t enough convince the locals to let bygones be bygones, and he was captured by the Honduran army and executed. The truth is I find this embarassing tale terribly interesting, and having found out that William Walker himself wrote a book about his exploits (I assume while he was still happily president) which I am desperate to find. If not here, I´m hoping ebay will be good to me when I get home!

If we were in the mood to hang out, I think we would enjoy León a lot, but for whatever reason we are both feeling pressed to move on. I don´t suppose that has anything to do with the horrible realization that we only have about 5 weeks to go! Ack! We still have so much ground to cover if we want to make it to Panama City. And we are still thinking we want to go to the Corn Islands, and down into some other out of the way places in Nicaragua. Will we make it? Stick around to find out!

El Salvador

2010-05-20T12:47:00.001-04:00

After another two night stay in Antigua at our favorite hostel (The Yellow House) with our favorite hostel staff (Julia!), we decided to chicken bus it to El Salvador. The tourist shuttles are always easier (and more than twice as expensive), but generally go from one capitol to the next, and we wanted to stop before San Salvador. We found a rough guide online for which busses we wanted to catch, and we crossed our fingers it would work out. At our first stop, we knew what we were looking for, but then a friendly guide looked at us as he was getting off and said "Are you going to the border?" We said yes, so he motioned for us to follow him. We have had really good luck with friendly strangers helping us figure out where to go, so we followed him off the bus, and, as is the custom in bus stations, were immediately beset upon by 15 guys hustling us over to a bus. We loaded our packs, and barely had time to sit down before the bus took off. It only took us about five minutes to realize something was wrong from the direction we were heading, and the bus assistant soon confirmed our worst fear. Yes, we were heading to the border, but instead of El Salvador, we were going to Mexico. D`oh!

We got off at the next little town and grabbed another chicken bus in the opposite direction. (I´m afraid our helper was a little embarassed to have "helped" us, but it wasn´t his fault!) Back in town we were more careful about stating WHICH border we wanted to go to, and quickly found the right bus. From there we made it to the border, did the customary long walk from one side´s bus stop to the other side´s bus stop, and after just two more busses made it to the pretty mountain town of Juayùa. Finding street addresses is always difficult. Even if the streets are marked, which they often aren´t, most people use the age-old method of "It is two blocks down and three blocks over from the yellow and white gas station". We asked a local guy if he knew the way to the hotel we wanted to go to, and he pointed us down a street. We cautiously headed in that direction, but I guess he could see our hesitancy because he ran up behind us and proceeded to walk us the rest of the way. Many travelers opt to skip El Salvador altogether. While the country has its share of volcanoes and waterfalls and jungle, you can find all of that bigger and better in surrounding countries. Added to that is that the country is still trying to get tourists to trust it as a safe and interesting destination. While options for tourists are expanding, the infastructure is still pretty basic. But what the country does have is an extremely friendly and outgoing population. Everywhere we went people smiled at us and said hello. From little kids to old grandmothers, everyone who passed us had a friendly greeting.

We came to Juayùa specifically for the feria gastronomico, a food fair they have every weekend. Booths were set up all around the main square, and we walked around looking for something weird to try. We finally settled on frog. It was marianated in a green sauce, almost like a pesto, and was served with rice, a tortilla with a weird white paste stuff inside, a small salad, and some delicious fried plantain. I´ve never had frog before, and it tickles me to say it, but it tastes like chicken, only chewier. For dessert we had a chocolate covered frozen banana. There was a piragua guy, which is sort of like a snow cone, but then they put all sort of weird thick goop and powder and stuff on it, so the banana just looked more appealing. Maybe we´ll try a piragua another time.

We also found a little place to get haircuts. The lady was great, and it only cost $1.25 each! We found that the hotels were expensive, but just about everything else is really cheap. Our original plan had been to scoot through the country after this, but since we were enjoying it we decided we could spare another night. In an unusual decision for us, we decided not on the cute little colonial town, but instead decided to spend a night in San Salvador, the capitol. Our first hour-long bus went smoothly, and at the bus station we quickly found our next bus and got on. It was still fairly empty so we figured we´d have a few minutes to wait, but it started to fill up fairly quickly. Then a man got on and started making some kind of announcement. This happens often on the busses, and is usually someone trying to sell something or give a sermon or whatever, so I´ve stopped even trying to figure out what they are saying. But then he got off, and a few people followed him. At first we wondered if there was going to be another bus that left sooner, but most people stayed on the bus so we weren´t sure. We waited a few more minutes, and then someone else got on and said something, too quietly for us to make out, but again a few but not all the other people got off. We decided something was up, so David got off the bus to take a look around, and sure enough across the street he found another bus station. We unloaded and went across, and were even lucky enough to find a deluxe bus with more comfortable seats and curtains over the windows which was leaving promptly. After we got on, a very nice lady came over to us to ask what we had paid for our seats, just checking to make sure we hadn´t been overcharged. (We hadn´t, the two hour bus ride was just $1.25 each.) These El Salvadoreans are just nice! I still can´t figure out why so many people stayed on the original bus though.

We arrived at a rather chaotic bus terminal in San Salvador, and were able to quickly jump in a cab. The neighborhoods in San Salvador are pretty clearly demarcated between the good side of town, the bad side of town, and the stuff in between. We chose the good part of course, up near the university where the college students and most of the backpackers go. Unfortunately we hadn´t really thought about it being a Sunday, and to our chagrin most things were closed. We tried walking around, but with so few people around we just couldn´t be sure of how safe we were, not to mention there just wasn´t much to look at anyways. We did end up in a mall at one point, which was a little weird. They even have Cinnabon here! Sadly it was at American prices, and I wasn´t willing to pay $4 for it. ;)

Still we found a little local joint to have lunch. For dinner we caved to convenience and went to Pizza Hut. (The street was loaded with American fast food joints, there were even two Burger King´s less than a block away from each other.) The Pizza Hut was fancified though, with waiters and a full menu of pastas and sandwiches and other stuff. We went for a special take out deal, two pizzas for $9. When we got back to our place we found one pizza was thin crust and one was thick crust. Who knows why. While we were waiting though, there were two young local guys sitting near us, talking in a mixture of spanish and unaccented english. They had some tattoos and piercings, but were wearing jeans and polo shirts. We started talking, and they told us they had each grown up in Los Angeles since they were little kids.

"But I got into a little trouble, and so I got sent back here a year ago. It was really weird having to come back to a country I didn´t even remember. I wish I could go back to the US, but I guess it will be alright here. Gotta make the best of it anyways!"

They didn´t elaborate on what kind of trouble they had been in, but coming from LA and knowing the history El Salvador has with gang troubles, I could imagine. But I was really impressed with their attitudes about it. Neither tried to complain about how the mean old USA had treated them unfairly. Whatever they had done, they were taking responsibility for it, and for the consequences they were now facing. They weren´t thrilled with their new life, but they were making the best of it. They got their food and as they said goodbye they directed us down the street to where we could find some "ladies".

It´s good enough for me, yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah...

2010-05-12T16:40:00.000-04:00

Our stop in Lanquin was the sublimely located "El Retiro", which is right on a river deep in a lush valley of green rolling hills. This was our third experience with a jungle lodge, and it didn´t disappoint. Well, truth be told we didn´t have many bug sightings, but we did get to chase out an adorable black and red snake from our room one night. Obeying the rule that if anything is especially flashy it is probably poisonous, we treated it with caution, but it was only maybe 18 inches long and couldn´t get any traction on the concrete floor, so it was throwing itself around in a most amusing way trying to get away from us. As soon as it hit the grass and had something to hold on to though it literally disappeared.

The big draw here is the nearby Semuc Champey, which is billed as the most beautiful spot in Guatemala, or, depending on who you talk to, in all of Central America. A river comes crashing down a canyon and then plunges underground before coming back to the surface farther downstream. But a small amount of water from the river and from the surrounding canyon flows along the surface in a stepped series of natural pools. The river water here was colder than anywhere else we´ve gone yet, but the water in the pools is heated by the sun. After swimming around at the bottom where the pools form a waterfall to rejoin the river coming out of the ground, we sat around in the pools, where little fish swam all over nibbling at our skin. That last part was a little creepy. One little fish might have been kind of cute, but there were dozens around each of us. We then hiked up a very steep but scenic trail up to the top of the canyon for a view of the pools from above. On the way down we ran into a family of howler monkeys, including an adorable little baby. We were glad they weren´t feeling territorial and didn´t throw their poop at us (as howler monkeys are known to do).

We then went to the cave. Unlike the ATM cave in Belize where we wore fancy helmets with headlamps, here we went in holding candles, which gave the whole experience a very different feel. One little candle doesn´t illuminate much, but when you get ten, it was surprising how great it looked. We swam through parts, climbed up a rope through a waterfall, and jumped into some deep pools. (We had to trust the guide that the pool was deep enough, cause we couldn´t see, and David was the first one to try it.) We´ve had several experiences where we feel like Indiana Jones coming across some ancient artifact, but this adventure was decidedly straight out of The Goonies. We didn´t find any pirate treasure, but we still had a great time. Afterwards we jumped in the river with innertubes and floated down some rapids for a bit. We even got to stand in the back of a pickup truck for a crowded ride back to the hostel. Another very fun day.

We are now back in Antigua (again), and for our last hurrah took a trip out to Volcan Pacaya. It turns out caves and waterfalls and ruins aren´t all Guatemala has to offer. You can also get up close and personal with hot lava. Magma. It is just fun to say, magma. Say it. Magma. Told you so. The crater was spewing smoke when we arrived, but besides the lava it has a tendancy to spew poisonous gas, so is strictly off limits. We were underneath the peak, watching a river of lava flowing rapidly down the side before slowing and spreading out across the lava field. It was unbelievable how close we got. We knew there had been an accident and some people had been killed a few weeks ago, so we were determined not to get ourselves in trouble. But the lava was flowing so strongly that we didn´t have to go very deep into the field at all, and were able to do so above the flow where we didn´t have to worry about it falling down on us.

We got within a few feet of one of the flows, which was moving much faster than I´d imagined, a couple of feet a minute. The heat coming off it was incredible. The rock in front would crumble away, exposing the red lava which had a consistency of sandy molasses, or molten glass maybe. Then the outer layer would cool and turn black again, until it pushed foward another few feet and another chunk would crumble down. We watched a small ledge we stood on initially get completely engulfed by the flow, it was mezmerizing. Up above we could see where the lava was much hotter, running like water, and every few minutes there would come a loud rumbly belch from the crater overhead. Just incredible.

On the way down we found a gigantic grub on the trail, bigger than my thumb. David, surprisingly, wouldn´t touch it though. "Grubs gross me out." he said.

We are still trying to figure out our route, but I think we will be heading to Juayua in El Salvador for the food festival this weekend. You never know what to expect with internet access in a new country, but hopefully I´ll have another update soon.

Belize it or not, we swam with a manatee!

2010-05-08T22:03:00.001-04:00

Sleep deprived from several nights spent sweating instead of snoozing, we boarded a chicken bus to Belize City. The bus was packed with folks headed to an "Agricultural Fair", which from the street seemed to be the equivalent of a state fair, so we had to sit with our bags in our laps. It was hot, but the bus was using the latest in AC technology, Model 4-50, which is four windows down driving at 50mph. (People love telling that joke down here.)

From the Belize City bus station we got in a cab for a quick ride to the water taxi terminal, and soon were on our way to Caye Caulker. There are lots of cayes in Belize (pronouced "key"), but Caye Caulker is the favorite of the backpacker set. The town was surprisingly empty, it turns out May is a quiet season caught between the dryer weather of April and the beginning of summer vacations in June. We happily splurged on a room with air conditioning, and since it was off-season were able to negotiate the rate from $60 a night down to $35. This was still a big splurge on our $50 a day budget, but we didn´t regret it for a minute.

When we arrived the island was in the middle of a huge windstorm, which kepts things comfortably cool but stirred up sediment in the water so made for less desirable snorkelling or diving. So we spent several days napping and walking along the beach and watching the sunrises and sunsets, and didn´t begrudge the wind for a second. When it finally died down we scheduled a snorkelling tour of the barrier reef (second in size only to the one in Australia I believe). We got in the boat with a pair of Aussie girls, and took a 25 minute boat ride down the reef. As soon as we pulled up, a six foot long nurse shark passed under our boat in water that was only four or five feet deep. As soon as we got in the water, a school of jackfish and a gigantic grouper swam through us. We went to four different sites, and we saw just about everything we could have hoped for, including a frenzy of feeding nurse sharks, green turtles, a moray eel, sting rays almost as big as me, a school of barracuda, porcupine fish, puffer fish, a parrotfish as big as my torso, and even a manatee (otherwise known as the sea cow). Our driver saw a boat cleaning their fish over the side, so stopped to let us watch the feeding going on underneath the boat. A huge swarm of sting ray and even a huge spotted eagle ray were swarming around, and right in the middle was a gigantic Loggerhead Turtle. I was amazed by the size of the turtle, and just as I was thinking "I could easily fit my entire fist in its mouth" it turned and swam right towards me. I backpedaled furiously (we were only about ten feet away) and crashed into one of the Aussies behind me, but just as it reached me it decided it wasn´t done with the fish guts and turned around and went back into the frenzy. I´m willing to bet turtle attacks are relatively rare, but still.

Our day of snorkelling was so successful we decided we didn´t need to go out for a dive, which would have been fun, but I´m pretty sure we just would have seen more of the same. (The exception being the famed Blue Hole, but we´ll save that for next time.) Caye Caulker is a great spot that I´d recommend to anyone that is ready to live by the local motto, "Go slow".

This morning though we took the water taxi back to the mainland and took a shuttle back to Flores in Guatemala. Our travel was delayed for a half hour when traffic suddenly halted to allow a funeral procession to march over a mile down the road - the highway! - to the cemetary. It was a full military funeral with lots of people in uniform and even a marching band. Our driver was extremely frustrated, but it was kind of interesting for us. Tomorrow morning we are headed to another jungle lodge in what is billed as the "most beautiful spot in Guatemala". I never trust hype, but I´m sure it will be a nice place to see for a few days. We are still a little irked that we missed a week of Spanish class thanks to my dental adventure, but I´m not sure we want to spend any more time in Guatemala, as much as we love it here we are itching to get down to El Salvador and Nicaragua. Hopefully we will find another spot to take some classes along the way, but I´m guessing we will be out of Guatemala by the end of next week.

You betta Belize it!

2010-05-08T19:02:00.001-04:00

We left Antigua (again) for a 90-minute shuttle into Guatemala City. Heavy rains with some awesome lightning sent people running for cover, giving the streets a very deserted feel as we drove around. We did see what looked like a room in a building one story up where the outside wall to the street had been removed, and in the room was a statue of a man with some office furniture around him (also possibly made of stone, although it was hard to tell in the dark). David swears he saw the beginnings of a gang fight there, but I was too busy staring at the weird statue to notice. lol
We then got on a bus up to Flores. I'm never a fan of night busses, but this one wasn't bad as far as they go. We arrived 12 1/2 hours after we left Antigua, and quickly hopped on a colectivo minibus to the Belizean border, about two hours away. Big sections of this road are still unpaved (although not as much as the guidebooks warned us about), and the rain made the road muddy and slick. But that was probably better than the dust storm it would have been on a dry day, so we didn't complain. The border crossing was rather uneventful, although the Guatemalan agent must have somehow realized that we had been spared the usual 10Q "fee" when we came back from Honduras, because he charged us each 20Q. Very obnoxious. It is so lame when you know you are being, basically, robbed, and the guy knows you know he is robbing you, but for the sake of just getting across the border without hassle you fork it over anyway. 20Q is still only $2.50US, which isn't worth a fuss, but the principle! The principle!

A half hour and a short cab ride later, we were in the city of San Ignacio, our stop for the night. Although it is one of the largest cities in Belize, it feels very small, just a few crisscrossed streets with lots of shops and banks, although there are what seem like homes stretching off in every direction. What we noticed right off was the heat. It is maybe 90F, with a humidity to match. We've felt the heat in other places, but without an ocean breeze we are really feeling it here. I've done my share of complaining about cold water showers, but here even the cold water is only "cold". I can't believe I'm pining for a real cold shower, but it sure would help relieve the heat.

The other weird thing is that people speak English here. I've gotten so used to speaking in Spanish that I am having a hard time not saying "buenos dias" and "gracias" all the time. I'm sure many of the people also speak Spanish anyway. They also speak Creole, which I think comes in both English and Spanish varieties. Whatever it is, through in that Rasta accent and I can't understand a word of it. Another oddity are the large numbers of Chinese living here. The Chinese restaurants far outnumber any other kind of food in town, which was great for me, as the Guatemalan´s best attempt at asian food was my plate of "Chow Mein" which was actually angel hair pasta dressed with butter. So I had some chicken fried rice one night, and some Sesame Chicken the next, it was awesomely unexpected.

Our first adventure was to a place called Cave´s Branch. Basically you get in the river (the water was cool and delicious) on an innertube, and you float down the river, which winds its way through a series of caves. Cave tubing is a popular tourist attraction here, and hoards of cruise ship passengers arrive on busses from the coast. While there were a lot of them, they were in full cattle mode, and were easy to get around. Must be all that buffet or something. Since David and I were coming from San Ignacio, instead of arriving with a busload of 30 people, it was just the two of us with our guide. He snaked us around the masses and farther up the river so we got to go through an extra cave, which we fully appreciated. The last cave was the best though, I´m talking caves that are the length of several football fields, and the river just eases you down and through. The last cave has a little waterfall coming over one side, and a partially collapsed celing in on part with the sunlight and jungle plants reaching down into the cavern. It totally felt like the beginning part of the "Pirates Of The Caribbean" ride at Disneyland, minus the gloom and smell of mildew. After the cave we went through some minor rapids, which was fun too. A totally great day.

The next day was even better. We went to the ATM cave, which doesn´t stand for Automated Teller Machine, but I´ll have to look up the Maya to remember the full name. We went with Nick from England and a married couple from Utah. After driving for an hour or so, we then hiked through the jungle for another hour, crossing three times through a small river. We saw herons and owls and what are called "Jesus Christ" lizards, which are so named because they can stand and run so fast on their hind legs that they can literally run across water. Our guide pointed out different plants all along the way, telling us which ones would cure upset stomach and which ones would give you an itchy rash, helpfully called Poisonwood, and which ones were an antidote for Poisonwood. He showed us one vine covered in sharp needles, which he said can grow up to three miles long!

Unlike any tour I´ve ever been on before, the guide was totally relaxed and kept encouraging us to take our time and not to rush. We took full advantage of this, and what was supposed to be a seven or eight hour tour stretched into almost 12! It was great, and we tipped appropriately.

Eventually we came to the mouth of the cave, from which the river pours out. After putting on helmets with headlamps, we jumped in the river and swam into the cave. From there we followed the river deeper and deeper into the ground. Sometimes the water was ankle deep, sometimes chest deep, sometimes we had to swim, twisting through crevices and over boulders and underneath huge stalagtites and gorgeous curtains of rock. We saw huge crawfish, a few bats and a totally creepy cave spider. As if cave spider wasn´t a creepy enough name, this one is called a Scorpion Spider.

At some point we left the river and climbed up into an overhead passageway that we never would have found on our own. (The cave follows the river for over two more miles from the point we veered away). The passageway was tight at first, but soon opened up into a series of large caverns, and this is where the ancient Maya would come to bring offerings to the Gods. There were pots all over the place, many well preserved thanks to the calcium sediment dripping from the celing which coated and protected everything. We had to take off our shoes and walk around in our socks here to help preserve the site. Farther back we started coming across the bodies, 1000 year old preserved skeletons lying where they fell. The cave is named after the most perfect of these, a skeleton of a young girl laying on her back, limbs askew. Talk about "Pirates of the Caribbean". It was creepy and awesome and humbling all at once.

After a third night that was too hot to sleep through, we were ready to head to the beach. Note to any travelers coming to San Ignacio, do yourself a favor and get a room with AC!

A visitor and the end of a 90-day visa

2010-04-27T20:36:00.000-04:00

Our little adventure down here took a different kind of twist and we had a visit from our friend Erin. She lives in Albuquerque, which according to my nephew Jackson is pronounced "Albert Cookie". We spent a couple of days in Antigua shopping and looking at ruins and shopping and eating and then shopping some more. It was fun for David and I, not just to share a fun place with a friend, but also to have an excuse to live a little and spend a little more money than usual. We went to the fanciest restaurant in town, the kind with a chef instead of a cook, and had the most amazing meal. Mine was so fancy I couldn´t even pronounce it. For a 5-star meal, set inside the most gorgeous ruin of an old monastary, for three people we paid less than $100. We´d practically pay that for TGI Fridays back at home. In fact we enjoyed it so much we did it again at a different fancy restaurant a few days later. I am so spoiled.

We did a day trip up to Tikal to show her some toucans, lizards, crocodiles, howler monkeys and an agouti. Also there are some ruins there, which she also thought were pretty cool. Then we did a few days around Lake Atitlàn. We found a much nicer hotel in San Marcos than we stayed before, the Aaculaax, that along with a great lake view also included spiders, lizards and scorpions for our enjoyment. In Pana we fed bananas to some spider monkeys. It turns out they ignore you if you are skimpy and throw them a bit of banana, but if you throw the whole thing in the peel they love it! Actually saw a squirrel in San Marcos grab a banana out of a tree and kindly stopped in full view of the balcony to let us watch it eat it. There was also a cross-eyed dog that loved to play. Hmmm, was Erin´s trip all about animals, or it is just me?

We were also excited that she got to experience an earthquake, which was just a little rumble but lasted a good 15 seconds. Later that day we saw a volcano erupt in the distance, with a huge plume of smoke rising up into the sky. We didn't really notice the ash fall, but the hotel staff were complaining about all the extra dusting they were having to do that day. I'm not sure she enjoyed the large spider she found in her room, but it is always good to go home from the tropics with a good bug story. We even did some hard bargaining at the local market, and she found one of the items she bought at the airport for almost 200% more than she paid, so I guess we did pretty well.

We didn't get the chance to ride a chicken bus, but we told her all the stories of crazy driving and bad road conditions. So as we were leaving San Pedro in a shuttle bus, we come to a section of road where there has been a landslide and a huge boulder is blocking the road. Several guys were already there, and our driver and a few others got out to help, and they muscled it off the road over the other edge. Nothing like a little necessity to get some road work done!

Now our little vacation within a vacation is over, and it is time to get back to some travelling. Actually, to my astonishment our 90 day visa expires on Tuesday. Where does the time go? So after much consideration, we are heading to Belize tomorrow, taking a night bus back up to Flores (our third visit!) and then will jump on a local bus to and across the border. We haven't exactly decided what to do in Belize, as we are expecting some pretty hefty sticker shock. But I'm sure we will enjoy it.

Guatemalan dentistry

2010-04-27T20:21:00.000-04:00

Thursday night I started to get a little tooth-ache. By the time we arrived in Antigua Saturday night, the tooth had stopped hurting but my face was starting to swell up. I figured that wasn´t a good sign. Of course Sunday nothing was open, so I took advantage of my nursing background and the prescription-free pharmacies here and started myself on some amoxicillin.

Choosing a dentist in a foreign country is a little nerve-wracking, but as it turns out a lot of Americans actually come to Guatemala specifically for dentistry services, a little dental tourism. Many of the dentists here have an American level of education, but the prices are about 1/10th of the cost. But rather than finding the cheapest option, I went with the most-recommended. The dentists even spoke english, which was a definite plus. They kept me on the amoxicillin (he didn´t seem remotely surprised that I had already started an antibiotic) just at a higher dosage. And they had me come back Wednesday to meet with the root canal specialist.

I asked a lot of questions, and the specialist was quite comforting. But as I lay back in the chair, he said "I think it will be better if we do this without anesthesia." Say what?! I was more than a little terrified, but by this point I trusted him. And he was right, I didn´t feel a thing, and it was over in maybe ten minutes. Just before he filled it he said "OK, now I am going to fill the canal with Clorox." ::sigh::

The root canal was finished with another visit (still no anesthesia used), and then I was back to see the regular dentist again. I had the option of getting a crown done, or of just having a permanent filling put in, which would last long enough for me to get back to the States before needing the crown. Since the crown would mean I'd have to stay here in Antigua another week or two, I opted for the filling. As much as I like Antigua, I am definitely ready to get moving again.

Three dentist visits, no novocaine, I was in and out in twenty to thirty minutes each time. Not bad. When I was paying the final bill ($137 all included), we glanced up at the TV, and they were playing a section from the Matt Harding dancing video that we participated in for the DC clip. It is really weird to be at the dentist in Guatemala and see yourself on TV.

The angel from Guatemala City

2010-04-16T17:02:00.000-04:00

We decided to pull ourselves away from the finca and head back to Antigua to do another week of language school. We walked our packs down to the main road and waited for a passing bus to stop. When it did, the handler jumped out and opened the luggage compartment underneath for us to put our bags in, and pointed for us to put them behind a burlap sack. As I heaved mine over it hit the sack, which began to move and chirp - the sack was full of live chickens! I jumped and the luggage guy laughed at me for almost squishing the chickens.

We had to change busses only once, and we arrived into Guatemala City about three, so still had plenty of time to find a cab over to a different bus station where we could get a chicken bus out to Antigua. Guat City has a few ritzy, nice areas, but in general is not thought of as a safe (or interesting) place for travelers. Just before our bus stopped, a girl sitting across from us leaned over and asked if we knew where we were going. We started talking, and she told us she lived close by where the Antigua busses went, and if we wanted she could take us. Since we weren´t sure of where we were or even which bus station to tell a cab driver to take us to, we readily agreed. She walked us over and we got on a local city bus, which travelers are always warned never to take, and that we never would have been able to figure out which bus to take even had we wanted to. Her name was Claudia, and she is getting ready to graduate with a masters in architecture. We rode the bus out quite a ways, with Claudia pointing out various landmarks for us. When we got off the bus we had to walk through a back alley, and I was thinking, OK, here is where the sweet angel girl turns out to be luring us to our doom. But no, on the other side of the alley was a huge shopping mall, and on the other side was a big bus stop. She waited with us and even helped explain to us some of the method to the madness of the chicken busses, how they are named and painted according to their routes. It won´t suprise anyone in my family to learn she is LDS.

So our Guatemala City angel got us through town and onto the right bus, saving us a ten dollar cab ride and giving us a far more interesting experience. It is experiences like this that make me love travelling. People are just awesome the whole world over. It isn´t easy to approach strangers, especially with a language barrier (though her english was better than my spanish), and we sure appreciated her going out of her way for us.

Spiders, bugs, and the smell of freshly baked bread.

2010-04-16T16:42:00.000-04:00

From Flores, we had about five different plans of where we wanted to go next, and kept changing our minds every five minutes. The only thing I like more than making plans is changing plans. The day we were going to leave, we arrived at the bus station an hour before the bus to Cobán was supposed to leave, only to find out that the bus line we were looking for was out of business, and the bus that took over the route had just left 15 minutes earlier. Thank you Lonely Planet. We weren´t prepared to wait another four hours for the next bus, so what else could we do but immediately hop on a bus going the opposite direction?

The bus dropped is off in a little town of Poptún, and we hopped in a tuk-tuk out to the Finca Ixobel. The finca is a working farm, but also a guest house. We had skipped staying here on our way to Flores because we´d heard it was booked solid over Easter week. Arriving just afterwards, things were very quiet. In fact our first night we stayed in an eight bed dorm but had the whole room to ourselves. The next night we moved to our own little bungalow, which was up on stilts and very rustic. Our cabin had no electricity, so we had to use candles at night, but then we´ve long been in the habit of going to bed not long after the sun goes down and getting up with the sunrise, so that wasn´t a big deal.

Finca Ixobel was basically a jungle lodge set on a farm instead of the jungle. But where the jungle so far has surprised us with the lack of creepy-crawlies, the farm gave up the goods from almost the moment we arrived. Our first treat was a nice big tarantula crawling across the lawn. As we looked around, we saw dozens of holes in the grass, with tarantulas just barely peeking out at us. Unlike the wolf spider we saw in Honduras though, these were not aggressive, and we surmised that these were a kind you could probably pick up, although we did not test our theory. Next we found a giant stick bug that was probably a foot and a half long, probably twice as big as what I´ve seen before. We found another bug that I can´t even describe, and I am dying that I can´t post the picture I took cause it is totally awesome and freaky. We also saw three different types of fireflies. One was gigantic, and instead of flashing would light up and then fly around for five or ten seconds. The first time I saw it I thought it was someone with a flashlight it was so bright. We saw ant lions and leaf-cutter ants and a huge praying mantis, not to mention several different kinds of lizards, some of them a couple of feet long (but not iguanas).

We also found some frogs, one big one that was covered in these giant disgusting ticks. Luckily it put us on the alert, because we both found ticks on us as well (albeit a different kind, much smaller). I love bugs, but ticks are just gross. We did manage one hike up a huge hill outside the finca, but after we found the ticks we stuck to more well-worn paths.

We met some great people, including a family from Ireland who had rented an RV and were driving from Florida down to Panama and back. They had two pre-teen girls who weren´t quite sure if they were having fun or not, though they did shyly admit to liking snorkelling in Belize and horseback riding there at the finca. Very cute.

The finca also had a working bakery and restaurant, so besides eating yummy cinnanon rolls for breakfast we also had fresh bread every night for dinner. We ended up staying five days, and the food was a big part of that. A happy belly is not something to mess with.

The perils of public computers

2010-04-13T15:48:00.000-04:00

Ok, a little hold on the narrative for a little housecleaning. After some time where we didn´t have a good internet connection, I am trying to get caught up. However it seems we have picked up a virus on my camera memory cards, so for the time being I can´t upload any photos. Argh! I can still see the pictures via my camera, so I know they are all still there, but I can´t wade through the spanish operating system on the computer to figure out how to get to them. I´m optimistic I will after we get home, but I don´t really know for sure. We will start using a new card today, so hopefully more pics will be coming eventually.

Tikal

2010-04-13T15:38:00.001-04:00

A lot of people had cautioned us that Flores wasn´t a "real" Guatemalan city, but we take everything people tell us with a grain of salt. We didn´t actually DO much on Flores except swim in the lake, but we really enjoyed it. We loved walking along the water in the evenings when everyone came out to enjoy the cool breeze off the lake. We were also there for the Santa Semana procession. The procession here isn´t as big as it is in some of the bigger cities, but the street murals made of colored sawdust and flowers and candles were still big and beautiful.

But we weren´t here to swim or to admire religious parades. We were here to make a big check off our list of Places To See Before We Die. And that place, of course, is Tikal.

You never know how it is going to go, when you visit a place you´ve been dreaming about going for years. Will it be what you expected? Will it live up to the hype? Hype is the biggest enemy of all, leading you to be disappointed with something amazing just because you were expecting more. Luckily for us, Tikal met and exceeded what we were hoping for. (I´m still not sure if we were more excited about seeing the temples or at the wildlife.)

Our hotel, the Jaguar Inn, was located just outside the main gates, and was a good base for an overnight visit. Most people to day trips to Tikal from Flores, but by staying overnight we got to visit the park in the evening when it is much less crowded. The wildlife was surprisingly active, and we saw a pair of spider monkeys and a new kind of toucan before we´d even left the grounds of the hotel, playing in the trees right outside of our bungalow.

The ruins themselves were, as expected, big and spectacular. We climbed sevearal of the temples for great views overlooking the tops of the trees in all directions. One of the temples is accessed by climbing a "staircase" that is really more of a ladder. I´m not terribly afraid of heights, but even so it was a pretty humbling experience for those that braved the ascent. (Heck, the descent was worse.) It was so hot, that even with a bottle of water at my side I must have gotten a little dehydrated and I started to get cramps in my legs from all the climbing. A nice rest in the shade with a tall drink of water fixed that though.

We wandered around the backs of most temples looking for animals, and did cross several agoutis. At one point we cleared a corner and up ahead we saw the unmistakable profile of a coatamundi, which is sort of a cross between a racoon and a ferret, and has a ringed tail it sticks straight up in the air as it walks. We slowly started walking towards it to get a better look, when it turned and ran. We were surprised we could have scared it at that distance, but then we saw what it was really running from as a trio of tourists came around the corner running at it at full speed hooting and hollering. I can´t imagine what they were thinking, I mean is chasing an animal into the bushes really that much of a thrill? But they paid a price, as David and I proceeded to mock them for the rest of the afternoon. I am sure they would be devastated if they only knew.

The next morning we were back at 6am. By that point we had seen all of the main temples, but wandered around sort of looking at the more minor structures but really looking for more jungle creatures. We were rewarded when a group of about two dozen coatamundi´s walked by us. They are the most adorable little creatures, David was desperate to get one as a pet. They were rather tame and got surprisingly close to us, obviously hoping we would feed them. (We resisted the temptation, but it was hard, they were so darn cute! I even got a video of one of them sniffing at the camera, if only I had had a wide angle lens!)

Later on we were treated to the wild screams of the howler monkeys. Signs warn that if you get too close they will throw their poop at you, but we were spared that behavior. Still, pretty awesome to be standing in the jungle, a howler monkey screaming over your head, several spider monkeys jumping about the next tree over, and a group of coatis running around practically under your feet sniffing for dropped bits of cookie. And I haven´t even talked about the birds. (Three kinds of toucan, parrots, the wild oscillated turkey, and even the Woody Woodpecker woodpecker.)

Yes, Tikal was a success.

North to Tikal

2010-04-12T15:21:00.000-04:00

[Note: Sorry I'm so far behind, I will get caught up soon, and will add some photos to this post as soon as I get to a better internet connection.]

We left Utila on the 6am ferry, took a cab to the bus station and hopped on a bus to San Pedro Sula. Three hours later we were on a colectivo to Puerto Cortez, where we transferred to a chicken bus going to Omoa, our destination for the night. We stayed at Roli´s Place, which is a nice little hotel run by a Swiss expat with a habit of posting lists of rules on every conceivable surface. None of the rules were particularly unusual (Don´t light candles, Don´t be loud at night, Don´t pick the fruit on my fruit trees), but the sheer number of them was a little intimidating.

Here is a little experiment. We visited an old fort. Sounds kind of boring, huh? Now try this. We visited an old fort used for fighting pirates. Just add pirates and suddenly everything gets more exciting. My biggest disorientation of the day though came that evening as we walked up to the beach, which faces the Caribbean Sea, and the sun was setting quite nicely out over the watery horizon. Suddenly my entire frame of reference was off, watching the sun set in the East. Or, obviously, what I thought was the East. It is so easy to forget that the Honduran coast is actually to the North, not the east, and I guess the bay we were on was particularly curvy towards the West. But it totally threw me for a moment, high school did not prepare me for the intricacies of Central American geography.

The next day we chicken bussed it to the Guatemalan border, where my mind was blown and neither the Honduran or the Guatemalan officials asked for a "border fee". First and last time, I am sure. Another shuttle and boat taxi later and we were in the little town of Livingston, which was memorable only for its very distinct Caribbean culture. We only stayed for breakfast, and then were on another boat up the river to the Finca Tatin, a secluded jungle lodge.

The lodge is up a small fork off the main river, sitting back in the jungle with a bunch of individual cabins of varying degrees of fanciness, but all with a rustic charm. The main hall was open to the elements on all sides, with a thick thatch roof. The thick wooden beams were strewn with hammocks, which we quickly got acquainted with. Nothing like a relaxing swing in a hammock listening to the sounds of the jungle. There was also a large dining hall, where everyone gathered to eat a communal family-style dinner every night. This was the best part, and we met and talked with many of the other travelers over simple but filling food. Out front there was always a group swimming off the dock. The water was just cool enough to be refreshing from the heat of the day, and the mix of fresh with the salt water provided an extra boost to your buoyancy so you could float around with ease.

The first day we took out a kayak and went paddling up the river, and through some of the mangrove thickets along the rivers edge. We also, for the first time, got sunburned. This could have sucked, except it gave us the excuse to stay at the lodge a few extra days while we "recovered".

We saw plenty of wildlife, a bunch of kinds of crabs, spiders, some cool grasshoppers. David ran across a six foot long snake on a pathway, and we saw what we think is called a paya, a rabbit-sized jungle rodent. (It was cute, more squirrel/rabbit than rat.) Somewhere along the way David had even learned to identify the call of the toucan, which sounds nothing like a bird and totally like a frog. I kept teasing him, but early one morning (we were almost always up with the sunrise) we spotted four toucans in the trees across the river from us, clearly making their weird frog call.

Easter Week is called Santa Semana here, and is when just about every local goes on vacation. This has the effect of pushing a lot of backpackers out of the cities and into the jungle lodges, so everything gets crowded for the week. The lodge was full while we were there, and though they found room for us we had to change rooms three times in the four nights we were there. Our first night was the best, a very fancy room with a private deck and fancy glass shower, all up on stilts. Though, surprisingly, bugs weren´t a problem for most (except a few girls who were bitten by a horsefly which caused a lot of swelling, poor things) all the beds were decked out with mosquito netting which was great for atmosphere. Our last room was in the dorms, and with eight beds with mosquito netting, the place looked like a malaria ward.

We are now in the town of Flores, which is a gorgeous tiny town on a small island in a lake up in northern Guatemala. Everything is brightly painted, and the roofs are all a rusty red. Though it cools down at night, it is pretty hot during the day, which makes swimming in the lake off a pier a highlight of the day for tourists and locals alike. Indeed, you have to watch out that you don´t get creamed by a pre-teen flinging himself off the dock and into the water. For the third time we have run into a guy from Seattle we met in Xela two months ago at our first school. We joke that he is our oldest friend in Central America.

Diving

2010-03-31T19:27:00.000-04:00

We came to Utila for the scuba diving. After a few days of just enjoying island life, David started his PADI Open Water course, and of course turned out to be a natural. I waited for him to get through the book and skill stuff, and then joined him out on the boat for a "scuba tune-up", which was advisable since my last dive was in Puerto Rico in 2002. So while David was getting his first taste of breathing 60 feet underwater, I was off with a divemaster practicing all the same things he was learning - taking your mask off and putting it back on underwater, finding your regulator should a shark startle you and make you accidentally spit it out in surprise, that sort of thing.

All the divemasters at our school were straight out of central casting. Young, tanned and beautiful, and all with fun accents. David was primarily with Ethan from Australia, and mine was Alice from Norway. I was really spoiled my first dive because it was just Alice and me on our own, so we just swum around and she kept finding moray eels and parrotfish and some totally amazing sea cucumbers for me to see.

After David finished his course, he had two more dives scheduled, so I got to join him. We had been hoping to go to the north side of the island, which is where the elusive whale sharks tend to be sighted, but the weather was too rough to make it. In fact, while I would have suffered through any seasickness if it meant I would get to see a whale shark, not a single one was sighted the entire ten days we were on the island, even though this is technically the season. The whale shark may have eluded me for now, but while whale sharks can run, whale sharks can´t hide, at least not forever. Another time we will have to go to Holbox in Mexico or maybe Ningaloo in Australia to hunt one down.

In any case, both our dives were excellent. The water was warm and the visibility was high. We saw several lionfish, which are gorgeous with these feathery spines fanning out, a warning to everyone of how poisonous they are. (As a general rule of thumb, if anything is the ocean is especially ugly or especially gorgeous, it is probably lethal.) While David proved quite adept at handling himself underwater, not everyone else on our dive was quite as graceful underwater. One guy seemed to crash down to the bottom or up into rocks with an almost purposeful drive. My tendancy is always to stick close to the guides, so you can see the cool things before other people scare them away (or in this case, steps on them). However there were a couple of girls who couldn´t quite figure out the concept of "personal space" underwater and kept crashing on top of me. So David and I retreated to the back of the pack, and contented ourselves to finding the things the others swam right by.

The best example of this came right at the end of the second dive. Diving for me is like flying, and I really enjoy swooping down to just about the sand to sail through tight spaces between the rocks. As I came through one particular passageway, the first thing I realized was there was a hidden cave underneath the rocks, and the second thing I realized was there was a six foot long nurse shark sitting in it looking at me. I managed NOT to spit out my regulator in surprise, and just admired it for a second. Then I swam up to David and the rest to make them come back and look. This was Alice´s 80th dive on the island, and it was the first time she had seen a nurse shark, so we were all pretty excited to have found it.

Our last day on the island we hiked up and around to the north side. It was great to see the water, but kind of depressing to see all the trash that had washed up from the sea, plastic bottles and the soles of shoes mostly. But we have enjoyed the wildlife. There are two types of iguana here, one that is endemic and endangered, but that lived right in the backyard of our hotel which we could watch over lunch. Another lizard we enjoyed was maybe eight inches long, bright green and with a vivid blue belly. It would run a few inches, and then stop and wave at you. Yes, you read that right. Every time it would stop it would wave its front paw like it was saying hello (or perhaps a hopeful goodbye to get you to leave?). We looked it up and it is called the Shakey-paw lizard or something like that. The third kind was bigger, and when it would run away from you it would do it on its back legs, its front legs just sort of dangling there, which was always funny to watch. Finally we found another spider, hairy and mean looking. It ignored us when we took its picture, and we weren´t sure if it was alive or not, so David poked it with a stick. It attacked and bit the stick with rapid vengance, and we screamed like little girls and jumped back about ten feet. So yeah, alive.

Besides not finding a whale shark, the other tragedy was the fact that our dive shop was out of t-shirts, so we don´t get to show off our PADI cred. Hate that.

Utila town

2010-03-22T13:59:00.001-04:00

We arrived for the ferry early, so we had plenty of time to experience ferry envy. The Bay Islands of Honduras is made up of three separate islands. Roatan is the more upscale, Utila is more backpackery, and the other one is lightly populated with super fancy resorts, and basically no casual travelers go there. The ferries for Roatan and Utila were sitting side by side. Our little blue boat sitting next to this gigantic ferry that just dwarfed our poor little launch. Ah well.

As we waited David caught a group of young European girls making eyes not at me, but at all the patches on my backpack. I played it cool though and pretended not to notice. Secretly though, showing off your travels brings the sweetest kind of enjoyment any backpacker knows. People often ask how long we are travelling for, and knowing we are American are always surprised by our answer of "Six months, more or less". The ones only out for a few weeks (or months) without fail express envy, which we eat up like the sweet nectar it is. Then there are the ones like a girl I met yesterday from Norway. At my "six months" answer, she nodded approvingly, but didn't say more, knowing that the next step in the protocol is for me to ask her back, which of course I did. "Well," she answered as non-chalantly as she could muster "I've been out for about eight months already, and probably have another eight before my money runs out." Now it was my turn to be envious, her slight smile betraying her inner pleasure at trumping me.

Utila is a small-ish place, with the main town situated around a circular bay. As it was not created for tourists, but instead discovered by tourists, it is not particularly ideal for showing off what it has. The main road is separated from the water by a thick line of buildings. Many are now dive shops (the reason most people come here) or restaurants with decks that extend out over the water. But many are homes, shops, or worse empty half demolished buildings that serve no purpose but to block the view. There are only a handful of trucks on the island, most people get around by scooter, golf cart, bicycle or ATV. The road however is extremely narrow, with just enough room for two golf carts to pass each other. Add in the vehicles parked on the side, not to mention all the people wandering around on foot, and you have a very uncomfortable situation. Especially since both local and tourist alike find no greater thrill than to riding down the crowded street on a motorcycle as fast as they can go. I have yet to see an accident, which is a constant surprise. A scooter will scream by with two adults, each holding a toddler in their laps. In the states the feds would take your children away for doing that, but here they are just going to the store and would surely be offended at the suggestion they were acting as unfit parents.

From the main road a low hill rises up inland, and it is up one of these roads where our hotel is. The walk isn't far, though is somewhat tiring when everything else in town is so close together. However we can't move. Our mattresses are old and both have body sized depressions in them, however we are both sleeping just fine. But, importantly, we each have a powerful fan, and the icing on the cake is the shower that has water in three temperatures to choose from. Cold, warm, and hot, and with water pressure to spare! This is a rarity here, and we are making the most of it. The weather here has been varied, with cold rainy days leading into hot sunny ones, so we have enjoyed all three settings. The water heater, which is an electric device stuck onto the end of the shower head, doesn't even have any exposed wires!

We are also enjoying multiple showers a day, as we have run out of deoderant. The supermarkets here only carry antipersperant, which we reluctantly tried using, but both of us developed ugly itchy rashes. So until we can find a place with plain old deoderant, we are both on the stinky side. Island life is better suited to this than city life, so at least we are in the right locale.

The backpackers here tend to be on the young and foolish side, with a surprising number of spring breakers thrown in the mix. For St. Patricks Day one of the restaurants hosted the "Beer Olympics", which somehow David and I ended up missing. However, as with any place, we are good at finding our niche. While the food in the restaurants has been largely expensive and disappointing, we found a guy who operates out of an empty lot who makes the most amazing tacos. He even has David salivating over the smell of the roasting onions! We did find a place last night that is only open three days a week, but we both had huge plates of carbs (mashed potatos, rice, corn on the cob and garlic bread) and then I had a huge tuna steak and David went for marlin. It was so good we didn't even have room for the chocolate cake, which is saying something.

We have been waking with the sunrise, and generally go for a walk every morning. Though the island is far more rocky than beachy, there are small beaches on either side of town and we usually spend an hour or two just wandering around. The pace here is just right, a perfect spot to slow down and chill out. There is the issue of the spiders. Fortunately they tend to keep to themselves, spreading their webs up between the trees or tall bushes, occasionally in the power lines. There is a fantastic restaruant here called the Jade Seahorse, which has been decked out with fantastical sculptures and twisted pathways and treehouses, every surface a mosaic of glass or beads or bottles. It is fun to walk through and we'd love to go at night for dinner, but with all the trees it is infested with these spiders. The spiders are large anyway, but they also seem to be communal, building their webs in huge sheets connected to each other - a single sheet between two distant trees might be made up of a dozen individual spider lairs, and these webs can easily encroach into the human living space. As much as I love the look of the place, no restaurant is worth getting a spider in the face.

Exploring the backside of water is even more exciting than it sounds

2010-03-20T12:47:00.000-04:00

Our last day in Copán was marred slightly by an unexpected 16-hour power outage. Things were still open (restaurants all cook with gas), and was mostly obnoxious because we couldn´t get some laundry done as we had hoped. We were also cut off from the internet which I had been hoping on using. But oh well, we sat in the town square and enjoyed just hanging out for a while. And fortunately the power came back on about 7pm, so we were able to turn on the fans when we went to bed. (Otherwise we would not have gone to bed, way too hot!)

We caught a 7am bus up to San Pedro Sula. A horrifying new trend for me is that I´m starting to experience carsickness on some of these busses. This has never been a problem for me before, and I´m really quite annoyed with it. I´d bought some corn muffins from a corner store next to the bus station just before we boarded, and they turned out to be quite stale, but at least it got me over the hump. From San Pedro we walked along a surprisingly large bus station and found a connecting chicken bus to our next destination, a small town called Los Naranjos on Lake Yajoa.

I thought I was catching movement out of the corner of my eye as we boarded, but when I sat down my worst suspicions were confirmed when a flurry of cockroaches scattered out from around the seat, up the windows, over the ceiling, across the floor, up over the back of the next seat. There wasn't much we could do but flick them away when they got too close. Fortunately my memory of a similar experience in Indonesia proved reliable, and once the bus started moving, they all retreated to whence they came and we didn't see another for the rest of the ride. At least the bus was cheap, only $1.50 for the two hour journey.

We were dropped off along the road by a sign pointing the way to the guesthouse we were headed for, D&D Brewery. The guy who owns it operates a small brewery, and one of the draws of the place is that thanks to that process, even the water that comes out of the shower and the sinks is purified, so you don't have to worry about keeping your mouth closed while you shower like in most places. Both of our guidebooks raved about the place, so we were pretty excited to go, although the reality was more sobering. A note to whomever it is that writes lodging reviews for Lonely Planet in Honduras (you too Rough Guide!): Stop pretending things are so awesome when, in fact, they are not. Don't get me wrong, overall the place was fine, and I'd even recommend it. We are even savvy enough travelers not to have had super high expectations, reviews nonetheless. But still we couldn't help be disappointed. The food was ok, but expensive. (Why is it that it is always the most expensive restaurants that never INCLUDE the food taxes in their prices, which adds an additional 15%?) The room was barely adequate, the kind of room where the toilet is next to the bed - I've certainly stayed in worse, but when you are expecting something nice, adequate doesn't cover it. Every other traveler we talked to was also very disappointed with what they found, most staying less time than they had intended.

On the plus side, there is a nice (but cold!) swimming pool, that was great for cooling off our feet on the first and very hot day we arrived. The garden setting is lovely, we saw some great birds and a few awesome bugs. But in the end, the hotel is just a means to an end to get to the lake. Even if it was the worst hotel in the world (and it isn't), I'd still recommend you come here. Here's why.

Our first morning we walked through an "Eco-archeological" park nearby, with a boardwalk through some marshland. We saw lots of birds (and ran into an amusing bunch of Mennonites who were brimming with frustrated excitement because they could hear - but not see - a very elusive bird they had been hunting for months) and walked by some unexcavated ruins. The weather had cooled significantly from the day before and we had a great time just walking through the woods.

When we returned we ran into a quartet of teachers, three from England and one American who were traveling around teaching English to schoolkids. We joined up with them and we all headed out to the main draw of the region, Pulhapanzak Falls. (Don't worry, I couldn't pronounce it either.) We walked around and enjoyed the view, and once we'd talked the one girl teacher into it, we hired the guide.

Stripped down to our swim trunks and sandals, the guide led us down to the bottom of the falls. We went through a locked gate, and made our way along a rocky, muddy path along one side of the falls - you can barely see the path in the photo, sorry I don't have more but my camera isn't waterproof! We were soaked with spray long before we even approached the water. We reached the first pool, and headed in. The water was cool but warmer than I'd expected, which was a good thing because after wading through a series of small pools our guide led us right underneath the roaring curtain of water. The sound was deafening, and we just barely made out our instructions to always look down and breathe through our mouths, as the rush of water made it impossible to inhale otherwise. We went under and through several times to a couple of different little caverns, and at one point had to get down and wiggle through a small hole on our bellies into a cave that opened up behind the water. It was exhilarating. The girl was rather scared about it all (and humorously kept almost losing her bikini in the rush of water) but the guide was great and literally held her hand almost the entire way. We were just blindly following him through sheets of water with no idea what was on the other side, so it was a good thing he knew where he was going. With each step you didn't know whether you would sink to your shins in the water or up to your chest, or whether you would step on the bottom or have to balance on the tip of a rock. The strength of the falling water was impressive and humbling. On the way out we jumped off an overhang into a pool below, which is one of those things that you do knowing how stupid it really is. I did hit bottom, but comfortably so.

A tour like that could never happen in the States. There would have to be handrails and insurance and everyone would have to wear life vests and helmets and be hooked to a line. You really do take your safety in your own hands when you come to countries like this, which can be a little intimidating at times, but also quite liberating. No one is going to take care of you, or keep you from doing something "for your own good". There is a certain downside to that too of course, but it also makes you realize what a sterile place the "civilized" world can be. I think I could spend a lot of evenings talking about and trying to decide exactly what I think about the merits of keeping people safe versus giving the freedom to live as they want to. Anyway, this was definitely a highlight of our entire trip so far.

The second reason why a stay at D&D is a must, is to meet Malcolm, the resident bird nerd and tour guide. A self-proclaimed wanderer, he has been traveling away from his native England for most of his life, and does things like travel to the India/Pakistan border by himself just to see a rare kind of bird that lives there. (He said it was kind of a cross between a chicken and an ostrich, so it does sound intriguing.) He has been living in Honduras for about three years now, and leads birdwatching tours on the lake. After making the arrangements over dinner the night before, we met him at 6am along with a local guy who rowed our boat for us. After a quick snack of fresh papaya at his place, we spent four hours paddling through the marsh and along the edge of the lake. We saw all sorts of great birds, including hawks, five kinds of herons, and even the keel-billed toucan. In all he was able to identify 57 species for us, giving us lots of tidbits of trivia along the way. This was my first bird tour, but we really got into it and had a fantastic time.

From there we were back on the chicken bus up to San Pedro Sula (since we caught the bus mid-route the cockroaches were nowhere to be seen), and then on another "nicer" bus to La Ceiba, which is the jumping off point for catching the ferry over to the Bay Islands. We stayed at the Banana Republic Hostel, and since we arrived late in the evening the only thing they had available were the dorms. The beds were surprisingly comfortable, but overall the place was pretty dumpy and the bathrooms were just gross. We arrived at the same time as a few other people, and we tried to find a neighboring place to go to instead, but turns out it has moved across town, and we didn't feel comfortable walking around in the dark. The best thing about the place though is just a block away is a fast-food joint called "Super Baleada". A baleada is a local meal, a tortilla filled with beans and cheese as a base, then you can have them add in egg or different kinds of meats or whatever. There were two girls standing outside the place who were making the tortillas fresh for each customer. They were cheap and delicious, and after a day of travel totally hit the spot.

There is a huge bug museum in La Ceiba that we wanted to go to (they have specimins of both the largest moth and the heaviest beetle in the world), so the next morning we got up early and went looking for another place to stay. The other place we checked - again recommended by both our guide books - was even worse, a huge concrete nightmare over an admittedly nice-smelling bakery, and our walk through town revealed very little of interest. Both we and the people we had met (a nurse and her husband from Canada and a girl from Liechtenstein) all decided La Ceiba was definitely not worth it. The couple left for a bus to Trujillo, the girl went to the mountains, and David and I, though a little sad to miss the museum, grabbed the ferry over to Utila.

Into the mouth of the serpent in Copán

2010-03-19T17:45:00.000-04:00

Rather than suffering several chicken bus transfers, we broke down and splurged on a six-hour, $11 (each) tourist shuttle from Antigua to Copán, Honduras. This made things easier as we went direct, and the shuttle waited for us as we ran through a quick and efficient border crossing. However I never realized a shuttle could be less comfortable than a chicken bus. We were packed in, and as we left Antigua at 5am we were sleepy, but the seat backs were so low and the leg room so limited the only way to sleep was to hang your neck down onto your chest, which is never comfortable enough to actually sleep. The girl next to me was a good deal shorter, and still kept getting embarrassed when she would fall asleep and her head would fall onto my shoulder. The good bit was we had a nice conversation with a father and son traveling together and got some good recommendations of things to do. We also met a guy who owns the only locally owned (rather than foreigner owned) dive shop on Utila, where we are planning on diving. He is a real character, and we are definitely considering going to his shop.

The city of Copán Ruinas is just a small place, with the area around the town square lined with some hotels and restaurants that cater to all the tourists. Compared to other gateway towns to ruins though, it is decidedly quiet, a drab, dusty town livened up only by the tendancy of the local population to hang out in the town square. Guys in cowboy hats selling ice-cream and girls with carts selling fruit or a small homemade meal, and all of their friends who are just hanging out with them. In places without air con, it is almost always cooler outside than in, and of course is much less lonely and boring.

Our hotel, La Posada de Belssy, was a simple but clean and comfortable place, run by a friendly and helpful family. [BACKPACKER NOTE: Be wary of hotel reviews in the Lonely Planet and Rough Guides to Honduras. Each one we have stayed at has certainly been oversold. In this case the place was fine, but forget about "views of the city", and the rooftop terrace wasn´t much to write home about, although I might have felt a little differently had the small pool not been under repair. I think I was only disappointed because it didn´t live up to the review, not because I had any problems with the room itself.] An unusual perk was a TV in the room, so we watched the last half to "I, Robot" one night which was deliciously decadant. ;)

The first afternoon we went out to a bird park, which was set down in a river ravine a ways up into the forest. The first aviary we came to was the scarlet macaws. There were two pathways, one that led around the enclosure, and one that led to a door and path that went right through the center. Having spent a great deal of time at the San Diego aviary, and with no one around to ask (we were the only people there), we just assumed we could walk through. This was a little scary with over a dozen huge birds eying us as we snapped a few pictures. I was determined not to be intimidated, but I will admit our pace picked up considerably after one of the birds flapped its wings. Later in the day we saw another small group walking around with a tour guide, and he took them right down the path that led AROUND the cage. Oops! Glad I have both of my eyes still! Actually I don´t think we were in any extra danger, as there were several more of the birds sitting on the top of the cage on the outside, wild birds who had flown in to be near to their buddies I guess. All of the birds in the park are rescued from homes and smugglers and such and for whatever reason couldn´t take care of themselves in the wild, but these kinds of birds are all out there in the jungles just doing there thing.

The park was fun, with a bunch of different kinds of birds including some very young toucans, several different kinds of parrots (a few of which talked to us), and a couple of awesome bugs we dug up along the way. There was a swimming hole along the river that we soaked our feet in for a while which was nice too. However at $10 USD a head, we were just beginning to figure out that Honduras was going to massacre our carefully minded budget.

The next day we went to the Mayan ruins bright and early at opening time. At the gate we ran into a couple who had searched out a highly recommended local guide, and were looking for a few more people to join the group to defray the cost. We hadn´t ever hired a guide for the other ruins we´ve been to, but decided we could give it a try. Our guide was great, and led us around the ruins for about three hours. There are definitely pros and cons to getting a guide though. Besides the cost (we split his $40 five ways), we were tied to his schedule and direction, and there were several times I would have been interested to spend more time exploring some little nook or wandering off in a different direction altogether. On the other hand, he pointed out several things I probably never would have noticed on my own. Best of all, Copán is famous for its carvings, and he was able to decipher and point out what exactly we were seeing, which wasn´t always obvious to us. A crocodile here, a beheaded enemy there. There was a large round rock, and he said "This is where the winners of the ball game would be laid down and sacrificed, their blood running down this passageway to be caught in a bowl here." Grusome, but not something I would have ever known just looking at the rock myself.

Another fun moment was when we first walked in the gate to the park. About a dozen scarlet macaws were flying around in the trees, and they decided to give us a show, with several swooping down near us right at eye level. They are gorgeous birds, and their red feathers really caught your attention in the morning sun amongst all the green trees. Then we looked down and we saw several agouti running around. If you don´t remember them from your local zoo, they are big rodents, sort of like a hugely overgrown guinea pig or something. Just running around in the bushes. Awesome!

The couple we met were a pair of Brits, whom we met up with later for dinner. If you think David and I are weird for traveling out here for six months, these two are going for two years! They arrived here from Africa, and were talking about Asia coming up. So jealous.

Robb: 0 Clown: 1

2010-03-15T19:19:00.002-04:00

Our week in San Pedro went by quickly of course. Our last day we took a hike up to what is called "Indian Nose", due to the fact that if you kind of squint the top of the mountains kind of sort of look like the profile of a person, and the peak is on the nose part. We took a pickup to through the nearby town of San Juan, and started the hike up through a coffee plantation. From our first overview we could see that, typical of many towns down here, the town is fairly ordinary and relatively poor, except for a state of the art pristine soccer field. The people down here love their soccer, I cannot emphasize that point enough.

Anyway, the hike was typically harder than expected, but luckily our guide was the elderly gardener from our school so he didn´t push us too hard. The view from the top was fantastic, overlooking the entire lake. From there we hiked down the other side to another village that was having market day, which we got to walk around. We had some kids approach us just to talk, and happily they didn´t try and pull out my arm hairs this time which was a special treat for me.

From here we got in the back of another pickup which took us down the hill again back to town. So far I´ve only been in pickups that we hired especially for whatever group I was with, but this time we just piled into the back of a regular service one, which meant that they were going to take every last person that was willing to climb on. So as we are making our way down this super steep and windy mountain road, in addition to several large bags of produce, we had 17 people and at least one chicken standing in the back holding on to the rails and each other for dear life. The grandma standing in front of me was only about four feet tall so at least I had a little arm room above her. (The benefits of being tall here are few, but are nice when they work out.) The people here do not have the same ideas about personal space and are not shy about cramming up to other people when necessary, and in this case it was certainly necessary. Luckily our driver was very considerate and took the road down at a slow enough speed that no one was lost along the way.

That night as we were heading to dinner there was a power outage in town. Fortunately all the restaurants cook with gas, so with few exceptions everyone was operating in candlelight. It was a memorable farewell to town.

From there we took a bus to Antigua, which was notable only for the fact that our driver kept falling asleep as he drove. Luckily when he would doze he would just slow down, so other than a few people on bicycles passing us (on the freeway!), we arrived without injury to Antigua. We jumped around to a couple of hotels, and ran into several groups of people we´d met in other places, but since we are intending to return to Antigua later in the trip we didn´t really do much but eat and sleep and look at ruins of churches. (There is a ruin of an old church like every three blocks, I kid you not.) I did get a $2 haircut from a local barber, which is on one hand pretty terrible, but on the other hand looks just fine. So there ya go. We also ate dinner one night at a place where the owner was in a Peruvian band and gave a live concert. They were pretty good and we had a great time.

Antigua is famous for their Santa Semana (Easter Week) celebrations, where they have huge parades that trample over these gorgeous flower "paintings" they make on the streets beforehand. To go to this you have to make reservations months in advance, and we had no intention of doing so. But by happy coincidence while we were walking around we stumbled on a mini-parade doing the exact same thing. I don´t know if it was a prequel, or even just a practice run, but there were hordes of guys in purple robes and floats and bands and the whole shebang. So we were pretty excited about getting to see that, even if our non-Catholic roots hadn´t prepared us for what any of it meant.

One thing I have to admit to, was that I broke my ten year stretch of abstinence and ate a meal at McDonalds. But before you judge me, I had several very good reasons! The first was that David and I started our malaria meds, which are best taken with a fatty meal, and I could think of no more fatty meal than a quarter pounder with cheese and fries. The second is that this was the most posh McDonalds I have ever seen. After you order the back of the restaurant opens into several different seating areas, one indoors with a play area, two seperate internet cafés, an outdoor patio garden with a big fountain. My favorite were these fancy mahogony tables that overlooked the patio with views right out onto the huge volcano that overlooks the city. Totally ridiculous. Actually most of the fast food joints in town (and practically every American chain was represented) were decked out similarily. They take their fast food seriously down here.

Travel Tips

2010-03-08T20:37:00.000-05:00

I´ve started to notice that I am getting some hits from other backpackers out on the road, so I thought I would put in a little traveler info that someone might find useful.

Xela:

We stayed at a guesthouse called the White Home (according to the sign) and known as Casa Blanca to the locals. The woman who runs it does not live on site, so unless you are lucky to catch her there (which was usually in the afternoons), just call the number on the sign. She only lives a few blocks away. I´m sure cost varies seasonally and maybe depending on which room you get (we had one of two that open up into the main courtyard) but we paid 500Q for two people for a week. The bathrooms are shared, and the back shower get the hottest, but even so with the chill in the air I found it best to shower in the afternoons when it was warmer. The kitchen has a fridge (that you may have to plug in to use) and plenty of pots and pans. We even had a TV in our room and a bigger one in a common room. Nothing fancy, but comfortable and easy, and Dona Blanca was delightfully friendly.

For spanish school we went to INEPAS, which was a good school that went out of their way to accomodate our requests for specific exursions in the afternoons. (which were terrific and cheap.) Maria, who runs the school, is a force. She doesn´t speak any english (only spanish and french), but somehow is able to get across the important stuff. David really liked his teacher Gloria.

San Pedro on Lake Atitlan:

This is a very easy place to stay of course. But our school recommended a great little hotel called Hotel Peneleu, which is up the street from the Santiago dock. Look for the signs to the Hotel San Francisco and it is just up from there on a side street to the left. We were lucky and got one of the two penthouse rooms, so our room opened up onto a rooftop terrace with a terrific view of the lake. Best of all for two of us we paid just 50Q a night. Definitely nothing fancy here, but the shower was super hot and there was a hammock just outside our door (another perk of being on the roof). The owners were very friendly and live on site. There was a gas stove and a few pots and pans, but unless you are really stretching a budget there is no need as food is so cheap (and good) in town.

For Spanish school we went to the Cooperativa, which I think may be a bit more expensive than others, but I liked the social projects they support. For a great teacher ask for Flory. She speaks relatively good english when pressed, and was super friendly and fun to talk to. I paid $90 for four hours a day.

San Marcos on Lake Atitlan:

If you come here, you have to go to the Japanese restaurant for dinner. I don´t remember the name, and it is off the beaten track so you will have to ask someone for directions. We were a little underwhelmed with the food options in town, and this place was just great. (And cheap!)

The Daily Grind

2010-03-06T17:36:00.000-05:00

This week has flown by. Which is surprising since on one hand it seems like we've done so little, but I guess that is part of the appeal of San Pedro. Our daily schedule:

7am Out of bed
While we have a "kitchen" at our hostel, all it really consists of is a gas burner and a couple of well-battered dishes. From what we have been told hardly anyone living here owns a refrigerator. Since restaurants serving the backpacker crowd are abundant and, more importantly, cheap, David made a few attempts at simple pasta and that was it. Neither of us wanted to get up early enough to go to a restaurant for breakfast, so we usually bought some banana bread or a sweet roll from a local woman who roams the streets with a basket of breads every evening to eat the next morning.

8am - 12pm Class
School here has been great. Our school was located on a hillside garden, and we each sat in these individual palapas amongst the fruit and flowers that overlooked the lake. In Xela David had not one but two different teachers that he really liked. My teacher was awesome teaching grammar, but for whatever reason we didn't really click when it came to just talking and practicing the grammar. This time I am the one who got the great teacher, and boy what a difference did it make. We didn't actually go over all that much new material (although we did review command forms so now I can tell David what to do which is of course enjoyable). But we talked and talked about everything and anything. For example, she could not get enough of the fact that I do not like clowns, which came up when I learned the phrase "creeps me out". In fact she thought that was the funniest thing ever. But she was so nice I had to forgive her, even though it was against my better judgement.

We met another couple at school from Hawaii, who are moseying down to Costa Rica and are thinking about moving there for a while (he is a boat captain and thinks he can get work pretty easily there). This is very dangerous thinking for me to be around, but Costa Rica is still such a distant point in my future I only spent a little bit of time thinking about getting a job at a hospital and moving there. Now if I run into them again IN Costa Rica, then I´m in trouble. :)

12pm - 1:30pm Lunch
Like I said, there are no shortages of restaurants here, and we've been sampling many of them. It feels a little guilty, because we are eating a lot of American fare, hamburgers and pasta such, rather than the local food like we were doing in Mexico. But when you can get a plate of beef medalions in red sauce with rice and grilled vegetables for less than $5, it is hard to turn down. So we haven't. Yesterday we went to a middle eastern restaurant where we sat on the floor on grass mats and pillows. There was even a hammock to lounge in while we waited for the food to arrive. Yeah, we are really "roughing it" here in Guatemala.

1:30pm - 2:30pm Nap
I've taken a siesta every day we've been here. Sometimes 20 minutes, sometimes a full hour. A guy could get used to this.

2:30 - 7pm Homework
Unfortunately learning a language requires a lot of homework. The funny thing is, when you want to learn what you are learning, homework isn't a bad thing. David especially is making huge strides, and we are hoping to get to the point where we can have full converstations in spanish very soon.

7pm - 8:30pm Dinner
We'd head back to the strip for dinner. Did we want to go to the place with the upstairs dining room that overlooked the street, or the one with the balcony out over the lake? Or maybe the little hole in the wall place that was showing a movie and had real fudge brownies with ice-cream for dessert? This was easily the toughest decision we had to make all day.

8:30-10pm Lounge
If we watched a movie we might get home later, but we had the penthouse room at our hostel, so right out our front door was a balcony where we could sit and watch the stars and the lights from the other lake towns twinkling away across the lake. We´d sit here in the afternoons too and birdwatch.

If you feel moved enough by our plight, feel free to contact me for information on where you can make monetary donations to help improve our desperate conditions.

From the cheering coming from the sports bar, I'm assuming someone just won a gold medal.

2010-02-28T18:32:00.000-05:00

It is a quiet week on the blog, but that is because it has been a quiet week in Guatemala. We stayed two days in Pana, enjoying our hot shower and an abundance of pretty good, cheap food. We did spend a day at a small reserve where we saw some spider monkeys, although we were eluded by the coatamundi (for now, I will not rest until I lay my eyes on one!!)

We then went to a much smaller town called San Marcos. The town is gorgeous. The area down around the lake where all the travelers are has no roads, just little dirt and stone paths that snake through the banana trees to take you to the different guesthouses and restaurants and yoga schools. This is where all the hippies go to meditate and align their chakrahs, so the food is all organic and highly vegetarian. We considered taking some courses as we arrived just days before the next full moon cycle was to begin, but in the end we just weren't in the mood to be THAT chilled out. (Though we are still interested in taking some yoga.)

So we took a boat across the lake to another town, San Pedro, where the majority of the backpackers hang out. At 10,000 strong, the town is twice the size of San Marcos, yet with so many more foreigners it seems even bigger than that. The food here is decidedly international, though while I had the best burger yet in Central America, David can't seem to get a break with the pasta dishes, which are always a little...odd. But the food is cheap, with many of the restaurants offering unbeatable atmosphere with views right over the lake. It is the kind of place we wish we could bring people to meet up for meals.

We were wandering around today and found another spanish school, and before we knew what we were doing we had signed up for another week, so we will be staying here a while. Our hotel is only $6.25 a night, which gives us plenty of room to eat like kings and still stay on budget. But then we are eating like kings anyway - there is a local woman who walks around selling bread from a basket, and I am unable to resist her $1 loaves of banana bread. (Or chocolate-banana bread, or cinnamon rolls that aren't quite like home but as close as I'm gonna get.) She is aware I'm an easy target and beelines over to me whenever she sees me.

Right now I am having difficulty with the keyboard, which looks like an American keyboard, but it works like a Guatemalan one with all the extra buttons, so I'm having to remember where all the different keys are. I'm actually surprised at how well I'm doing, but still. Tonight we have the difficult task of choosing a new restaurant to try, then review our spanish lessons to be ready for tomorrow. Getting a new teacher is always scary, I feel like a kid on the first day of school. Who knows what to expect? Will we get the teacher jaded by experience, or the over-eager novice? Hopefully we will get the baby bear teacher that is juuuuust riiiight.

Earthquake!

2010-02-23T17:34:00.000-05:00

We were woken up this morning about 4:30am, not from fireworks, but because our room was moving. There were a couple of good shakes, but it was over before I had woken up enough even to stand up (and run for the safety of outdoors, down here I´m not trusting a doorjam, and yes, I´ve thought about this scenario). It was much stronger than any of the quakes we ever felt when we were living in California, but not strong enough to cause any damage, at least none we were aware of. For a moment we thought maybe the volcano had erupted, but no such luck.

We got up and a little after nine we were packed and waiting for a bus out of Xela. As we stood there an aftershock hit, not as strong as the first but still enough for us to stumble a bit and cause all the power lines to sway in the air. All in all, pretty awesome! Just looked it up online, and it was a 5.4 quake with an epicenter not too far north of where we were.

We got on our bus with relative ease, they slow as they pass groups of people and scream out where they are going. We were about 45 minutes early for the direct bus, so we just got on a bus headed for Guatemala City knowing we´d change busses when we got to Los Encuentros. As we headed out of town, we made fun of the people who are afraid of chicken busses. Here we were, saving almost 2/3rds of the cost over taking a tourist shuttle. We´d even seen a guy with two goats at the bus stop, but unfortunately he didn´t get on our bus.

Just as we hit the edge of town we made a stop, and about 50 people got on board to sell us stuff. First it was the fruit guys, then the candy and gum girls, then guys with breads and then sandwiches and then tortillas and then drinks and then ice cream and then fruit again and finally a nice newspaper to read while you ate everything you just bought. In the middle of it a burn victim stood at the front telling us his story, but the other salesman were all yelling over him and we couldn´t hear anything. It was totally crazy and terrific.

Then we took off, and I mean took off. I am quite certain our bus driver had sold his soul to the devil, because were in clear violation of the laws of physics as we took corners at speeds the bus absolutely should have tipped over. We whipped through this high mountain road, passing other cars (and other chicken busses!) gripping the seat in front of us trying not to fall over. (We were seated, but at these speeds we were still in danger of falling over.) We white knuckled it, and were not at all surprised to find that our driver had cut a half hour off a two hour drive. Think about that for a minute. Totally crazy.

It took us two more quick busses, but we are now in Panajachel, the main city on the shores of Lake Atitlán. The important thing is our hotel has a kick-ass hot shower, so we may stay here a day or two before heading off to one of the smaller towns across the lake.

Volcano, check. Earthquake, check. Gravity-defying chicken bus ride? Check. Guatemala is being generous. Let´s just hope Honduras comes through with the whale sharks.

We climbed a volcano, and watched one of six others erupt. In other words, a good day.

2010-02-22T21:42:00.001-05:00

It is hard to believe we have now been in Xela for almost three weeks. And today is, I believe, only day 41 of our trip. School is really a time-sucker! Friday was our last day of class, at least in Xela, I´m sure we will take more in other cities as we go along. We both learned a ton over these two weeks (50 hours of one-on-one instruction!), and now we need a little time to absorb the information before we try and learn any more. David especially got a crash course in conjugation, but the upshot is he learned past tense as well, so now we can practice with each other, which I think is going to be even more useful than class.

(Those teenage boys are here again tonight, and their wild giggles as they play whatever they are playing tonight makes me pee with internal laughter.)

Saturday we had made tentative plans to go climb a volcano, but Friday morning was terribly overcast, and the weather report predicted more clouds and rain for Saturday, so we cancelled the trip. We haven´t been paying much attention to weather reports, as the weather has been rather cooperative with us, with only the occasional brief rain shower as we´ve gone along. Trusting technology turned out to be a mistake, and Saturday morning was absolutely perfect and would have made great hiking weather. The report for Sunday was identically poor, calling for clouds and rain, so we learned our lesson and booked the tour.

The tour company was supposed to pick us up at 5am, so we set the alarm for 4:30. I woke up at 4 though, not sure why but sure I had heard something. A minute later, I heard a loud explosion that echoed through the courtyard and into our room. It went off again several more times, and then was quiet. David was up by this time too, and we were having a hard time explaining the noise. Was it kids playing a prank with fireworks nearby? Then it started up again, with a bang going off every minute or so. The other woman who is staying at our place came out of her room, and we were hoping that since she has been living here for so many months maybe she would be able to explain it, but she was just as uneasy as we were. After a half hour we were pretty sure it wasn´t kids, because they would be moving around to avoid getting caught. It hadn´t been a wet night, but when we´d been in Campeche, after a heavy rain we had heard a series of loud explosions when an electical box got wet and shorted out, leaving half our neighborhood without electricity for a few hours. So then I started to worry that there was an electrical problem next door, and we would leave for our tour and come back to a burned out room.

About 4:30 I finally had had enough speculation, so we ventured out into the dark street. There was a heavy fog (which did not bode well for our hike), but I walked out cautiously hoping to see or hear where the noises were coming from, ready to bolt back to the door if I saw any suspicious characters about. Of course as soon as I went out it was silent, and I slowly walked up the block waiting to hear it again. A flash lit up the sky and the noise started up again, but this time I could at least tell it was coming from at least a few blocks away, which made me feel better about my doomsday fire scenario at least. (There had been a fire a few days earlier in a hotel just off the main square, but the fire department had been able to contain it from spreading to any of the adjoining connected buildings, so I felt good about that anyways.) I couldn´t make out anything through the fog, it was just a white flash, but from outside we could hear the explosion echoing across the city. We speculated that if it wasn´t an electrical problem somewhere, maybe it was some kind of weird military thing, which didn´t really make sense nor did it make us feel any better. The explosions continued, five or six at a time, then silence of a few minutes, then another rally. Everytime it would get quiet we would hope it had stopped, but inevitably it would start up again. We continued to get ready, and by five were out on the porch waiting for our ride. The fog had cleared a bit by now, and as I craned my neck to see down the street without unlocking the gate, suddenly over the buildings I saw what was clearly a firework. Just a simple little white flash, but definitely a firework. Our original guess had been right, someone was shooting off bottle rockets!

Turns out Catholics are totally weird in this part of the world. We knew last Wednesday was Ash Wednesday, and Friday was a huge celebration with a big firework show over the main square. But apparently Sunday morning at 4am was time to celebrate or at least be a reminder for the residents of town to get ready for church or something. I´m probably making light of something terribly important, but after an hour of being totally freaked out I think I´m entitled. :)

Our tour bus picked up another four people, and we headed out to the foot of Santa Maria, a huge volcano just outside of town. [Warning, the following information was not googled and is my interpretation of what the tour guide told me in Spanish, so take it with a grain of salt.] The volcano last erupted in about 1902, destroying the city and actually opening a new vent and starting a new volcano on the (I think) westward slopes, which is called Santiaguito. While Santa Maria has been dormant since, Santiaguito erupts every hour or so with steam and ash, and is rated one of the world´s ten most dangerous volcanos. We were climbling Santa Maria, but it was Santiaguito we wanted to see.

The van drove us about twenty minutes outside the city, and dropped us off literally at the end of the road. It was still dark, with just the barest glow of the coming morning starting to push through the fog, so for the first half hour we walked with flashlights up a steep path, following behind a guy with a donkey. As soon as we got off the bus our local tour guide showed up to join us, a remarkably attractive and healthy looking dog. As has happened to David and I several other times along our trip, the dog attached itself to us and started following us the mountainside in the dark.

Hold on a minute, this is important so I´m gonna google. The city of Xela sits at 7656 feet above sea level, and it has taken me the last two weeks to be able to climb around the hilly city without losing my breath. The summit of Santa Maria sits at 12375 feet, which means we had another mile up to climb. The tour was rated as "moderately difficult". In the states, moderately difficult generally means not that big of a deal, at least for avid hikers like we are. So we were mentally unprepared for just how hard this hike was going to be.

From the first steps we were climbling probably a foot with each step, so I guess you could think about it like we were climbing uneven stairs for three hours straight. Look at that photo again, and you can see that Santa Maria is not some mountain with nice Sound-Of-Music gentle slopes. Fortunately for the five boys that were making the hike, there was one girl along too. Since she had no male ego to worry about, she had no problem being the slow one of the group, which I have no doubt each and every one of us boys was grateful for. "Oh, let´s be gentleman and wait for the poor girl." (GASP, GASP, GASP.)

The fog soon cleared and the sun shone down, and it turned into a beautiful morning marred only by the increasing difficulty of breathing. We made more and more frequent stops, the dog panting along with us, not being pushy but clearly in favor of any handouts of food when someone opened up something from their bag. Having learned our lesson in the past on a 20 mile hike to the Cirque of Towers in Colorado, we at least had plenty of water with us, which I´m sure helped a great deal. The cold of the morning soon wore away and our extra shirts and sweatshirts were soon tied around our waists. Thank goodness we had to keep waiting for the girl to catch up again.

It took three hours, but suddenly the pine forest thinned and disappeared, and another 15 minutes of hard climbing got us to the peak. There were only a couple of other local guys at the top, and we just stared all around ourselves in awe. We could see (again, assuming I was correctly understanding my guide) seven other volcanoes, as well as other plain old mountains. The air was thin and it took a long time for my heart to return to a normal beat, but boy was it worth it. The clouds were all below us, but we were lucky and they didn´t really obscure the things we wanted to look at. We made our way over to the (I think) westward side where we could see huge amounts of steam seeping out of the Santiaguito crater and rising lazily into the air. We sat to eat, quickly putting back on all of our extra layers as the brisk wind on this side made it suddenly very cold again despite the seeming nearness of the sun.

We heard it before we saw anything. In fact at first I ignored it as background noise, thinking I was hearing an airplane flying overhead. But then it got louder, and our attention was quickly drawn to the crater below us as the white steam started growing and getting much darker in color. A huge cloud of steam and ash suddenly burst through a layer of clouds that had started to obscure Santiaguito, spewing rapidly high up into the air. It was totally awesome. The cloud rose up and up until finally the wind caught it and blew it towards us. Fortunately it curved around the mountain to our left, but even that was gorgeous. At night apparently you can see the glow of the lava, but I can´t imagine making that hike in the dark the whole way.

After the eruption (I love that I just said that) we made our way around to the lee-side of the mountain. Though we weren´t more than 20 feet away from where we had started, the lack of wind warmed us right up. The poor dog was panting away, so David cupped his hands together and we gave it some water to drink. I´m sure this is exactly what it counts on, but any dog that will climb a mile certainly deserves a little food and water for the effort. We stayed up top about two hours in all, and soon droves of other people began arriving, almost all locals. When we were ready to go, two hours after arriving, I was still short of breath in the thin atmosphere, and suddenly there are all these old grandmothers around me, having just climbed up in flip-flops. Many gathered into groups and started having what seemed like church services, singing and praying. One of the other guys commented to me "I know plenty of people who have a hard time getting up to go to church. Imagine if you had to climb a volcano every Sunday morning."

After a long rest, we eventually started back down, which, as I had suspected, was practically worse than going up. Though my heart wasn´t pounding as before, my legs were soon trembling with the effort it took to descend down such a steep and slippery trail. You Albuquerque peeps know how the La Luz trail has those massive switchbacks that are so annoying because you walk so far to climb so little? I was desperate for a switchback that was more than five feet in either direction. Going up or coming down, there were exactly three places where I had the luxury of walking five or six steps of flat. Everything else was slippery, uneven and, of course, steep.

At least the breathing got easier as we descended. All in all, I think it was the hardest, most difficult hike I´ve ever made. While I can´t say it was enjoyable exactly, I can certainly say it was totally, without a doubt, worth it.

One way to look at it is that I sort of almost got burned by a volcano.

2010-02-18T21:54:00.000-05:00

I´m sitting in an internet café, which has a dozen terminals and all are being used. I´m not far off the main road, yet I´m the only gringo here. Ten of the other computers are being used by very excitable teenage boys who are all playing internet soccer with each other, screaming and yelling at each other every time (I assume) one of them makes a good play. There are also a couple of girls (girlfriends?) who are standing just outside the door, laughing at their own jokes (or perhaps at the boys?). I feel very out of place, but still it totally cracks me up. When I traveled to Asia, all the teenage boys would be sitting in lounges singing karaoke. Now they play internet soccer. Ah, progress. :)

We are just about to finish our second week of Spanish class. There have been both good and bad days. It is hard feeling like a child with a limited ability to communicate. No wonder kids cry so much, they just don´t know how to tell you what they want! However we do think we chose a great school, as they continue to take us on outings that, were we to have to pay a tour operator to take us, would cost about ten times as much. Plus, getting there by local transport is a hundred times more interesting and fun than going in a tour shuttle!

Tuesday afternoon we took a chicken bus out to a village on a hill called San Andreas Xecul. The town is mostly notable for a crazy church that people (including me) love to take pictures of. We also walked up a steep street leading up the hill to similarly adorned but smaller church, and turned around to an amazing view of the valley behind us. Next to the church was a lot where a man was doing a ritual with a fire in front of a cross. Part of the reason the Catholic church did so well among the Mayans was that the Christian cross closely resembled the cross the Mayans worshipped which pointed the way to the four corners of the world. Even today the Catholocism practiced here is melded with the old Mayan traditions, in ways that I´m guessing would be considered outright paganism in other parts of the world. But that is just how it is here.

There were two other tour groups following us. But with a quick question to a local we ditched them up another alley, and found the home that houses another incarnation of the venerated San Símon. Unlike in Zunil, this was definitely not a tourist affair, and was therefore much more casual. The woman of the house warmly invited us in, and didn´t even charge us admission! Inside there were two effigies side by side, as well as a smattering of random small statues and Mayan carvings (which our teacher-guide assured us were real) crammed onto a long table. We took photos and our teacher lit a candle to show our respects. Outside facing down the valley (with that breathtaking view) and towards the sunrise, was a Mayan alter adorned with more old carvings, mostly of faces. The altar was black with soot from the offerings that are made to the sunrise. Totally awesome.

Wednesday was the birthday of the Italian girl that is also living in the house we are staying at. She invited a few of her friends over for some (very interesting) chocolate cake. We had to sing Happy Birthday to her three times to represent the languages present - Italian, English and Spanish. We all spoke mostly in Spanish as it was the common language for everyone, which of course made me feel very cosmopolitan and fancy. In reality I was just barely hanging on to the thread of the converstation, but still it was the best I´ve done so far. And I got cake for my efforts, which was great even if it did seem to have some kind of orange marmalade mixed in.

The house has actually been rather interesting of late, as a few new people have moved in (including an actor from Chicago) which has prompted the landlady to make drastic efforts to redecorate. We´ve had guys hammering and sawing at all hours of the day, and I swear every time I go into the kitchen the dishes and silverware are in a different location, which has the upside of turning every meal into a treasure hunt. Will the bowls be up in the cupboard, in a drawer, or under the counter? You just never know! Also we still haven´t tired of the other residents of the courtyard, a couple of small birds that live in the tree. To warm up we sit out in the sun for lunch every day, and these two birds fly over to a mirror on a windowsill and fight with their reflections. It is the cutest thing.

Today was another great outing. A bunch of us took a chicken bus out to Xunil, where we boarded a pickup truck. For transport the pickup trucks put a basic steel rack in the back, so people can sit or stand in the back to make trips where the chicken buses are less convenient (or in this case, don´t go at all). There were ten of us that boarded in the back, and we took off up through the village and then up into the hills beyond. The road, of course, winded its way perilously close to the steep dropoff beyond, which proved to be a bit much for a young French Canadian girl who became very pale and quiet as she clutched the support frame. For me, however, it was a highlight. The coutryside was filled with small farms, men in cowboy hats and women in colorful local garb tending the fields. We got an amazing view of Santa Maria, a huge volcano nearby (that we are hopefully going to climb on Saturday).

Finally, up in the far reaches of the mountain, we arrived at Fuentes Gorginas, a natural hot spring. The locale was gorgeous, the main pool right up against the side of the mountain, with water trickling down the rock into the pool. The water was hot tub hot, generally cooler the farther away from the mountain you got, but with patches of water so hot it was almost scalding. In fact when I swam over to touch the water trickling into the pool (I knew better but couldn´t resist) I almost burned my hand. Guatemala (and all of Central America) is rife with dormant and active volcanos, and thermal heat is nothing to play with kids!

I´m not sure what was in the water (David got a mouthful and said it had a sour taste), but it was incredibly relaxing. We sat and talked under a canopy of lush foliage, steam rising from the water over our heads which certainly added to the out-of-this world atmosphere. Several of the girls used the mud from the mountainside to give themselves facials while they steamed. It was just terrific. I hadn´t been super interested in coming, certain that the pools couldn´t possibly live up to the hype, but boy was I wrong. The next time you find yourself in Guatemala, make sure you book a trip here. (There are even cabins where you can stay the night, too bad I have class again in the morning or I might have just stayed over!)

When we got back to town one of the guys took us to this very out of the way café where I had an amazing mug of hot chocolate. David got a hot chocolate that came with two scoops of ice cream floating in it. A great end to a great day.

The take away is that I did NOT start an international incident.

2010-02-14T14:20:00.001-05:00

Classes are going well. I have no expectations of being fluent by the time we come home, but I´m sure going to know a lot more than I did coming in. My instructor continues to crack me up, with long side conversations detailing the difficulty he has deciding whether Salma Hayek or Sharon Stone is the sexier star.

Thursday after class Maria, the woman who runs the school took David and I and another student (from Montreal) to another village close to town called Xunil. We saw another beautiful church, and went to a weaving cooperative where the local woman sold their clothes. Interestingly the patterns, colors and style of their clothes was quite distinct from the village we had visited on Tuesday, even though they are but a few kilometers apart.

We also visited San Simón, an effigy of what I think is an evil spirit of vice, but one that the locals take very seriously. Maria only speaks Spanish, so a lot of what she told us about him went over our heads, but the short version is that he is worshiped in several villages across Guatemala, and each village depicts him in a different way. Here he was a plastic mannequin with shades and a cane or, as David put it, sort of like Michael Jackson. He was located in the garage of somebodies house, and is moved to a different home every year so no one family has a monopoly. People would come in and light candles for him, and there were far more people here than we saw at the church up the road. Even Maria lit a candle for him as we left. I wasn´t able to find anything googling him, but definitely need to get some more information on what I was seeing there. (Also, I wasn´t going to post the photo, which I had to pay about sixty cents to take, but I´ve seen other photos up and around so I don´t think I´m violating any beliefs by doing so.)

Part of the reason I missed a lot of what Maria was trying to tell us about him, was that a very, very drunk man came in while she was talking, and began shouting and weeping at the effigy, yelling in his ear and then cuddling up with his head on its chest while he cried. This, as you might imagine, was difficult not to enjoy. He finally went over to light a candle, barely able to stand, and I was anticipating having to save him when he fell into the sea of flame. Luckily another group of people came in, and he shuffled over to the side where he could crouch with his back to the wall. (That is him in the photo, holding the can of beer.)

Saturday though, was on of my favorite excursions we´ve yet taken on the trip. Seven of us met Maria at the school at 6am, and we walked through town to catch a minibus to an outlying village about an hour away. Oh, and did I mention the village is on a volcano? Because it is! On a volcano! From where we were let off we had to walk up a very steep road through the hillside village. On the way up the village was just walking up, so we didn´t see many people, but the homes were all on plots of farmland, with cows and chickens running about. We walked I think like three kilometers, which for David and I isn´t that far, but it was steep going the entire way. I was worried about the thin air, but I guess my blood has thickened up finally and we both managed better than most of the others. We reached a small office to pay our entrance fee, and then had to hike another 2 kilometers just as steep up to the ridge of the dormant volcano. From the ridge we could see across to two other volcanoes in the area, one of which is still active and belches steam and smoke about every 45 minutes. (Awesome. We want to go there next weekend.)

But the reason we came was on the interior of the crater, where a lagoon surrounded by lush foliage sits. The lagoon is considered a very sacred place by the Maya, so visitors are asked to be respectful and, for example, swimming is strictly prohibited. We hiked down and had some snacks while we recovered. Then we walked around the entire lake. It was ridiculously beautiful, with beautiful flowers and orchids and berries all over. As we walked the clouds started rolling in through the crater, and these huge clouds of mist would envelop us before being blown away again. Maria told us that people believe the water in the lagoon has beneficial health properties, so people will run their hands in the water and then pat the water into their hair, which is supposed to give you energy. There were a few groups of locals sitting in groups, talking and singing and chanting. At one point I was looking over at a group of people singing, and I glanced down at my feet just in time to avoid walking through a pile of black ash, were clearly a fire had been burned recently. I looked up to see Maria, who was walking a ways in front of us, motioning madly at me to avoid the fire pit. Thank goodness I missed it, who knows what sort of riot I would have started had if I´d disturbed an offering the people were singing about. (David, walking right next to me, didn´t notice it at all, so it wasn´t like I was being unusually aloof, it was just a flat circle of black ash sitting on top of the sand beside the lagoon.) The offerings of flowers were easier to avoid at least.

To top it all off, we finally found some awesome bugs. One was this fly/bee like thing, with a yellow striped abdomen. We found it crawling on the beach, and when we disturbed it it fell back on its haunches to show us its red legs and underbelly. It was a big sluggish, so it was hard to tell if it was just awkward, or whether it was a defensive posture trying to scare us away. In any case, it was by far the best bug sighting we´ve had since we arrived. (Sorry I can´t figure out how to rotate the pic. But stop being lazy and just turn your head to the right!) Later as we were climbling back up the crater, we found another huge beetle that freaked out the girls (especially when David picked it up) but made us giddy with delight. We didn´t see any parrots, although we found a pile of fresh green feathers, but David saw a small red finch-like bird, and I saw a pair of large bright blue birds with big crests on their heads. Gorgeous when the sun hit them as they flew away.

On the way back down the village was up and going, and just about every person we walked by had a smile and a "Buenas tardes" for us. Even better were the kids. In most places we´ve gone, the kids are either a little shy, or aware of us but generally nonchalant and uninterested. Here the kids would wave and giggle and say hello as we passed. So adorable.

We are doing great with our budget here, and continue to try and figure out where we want to go next. I think we are pretty much settled on going to Lake Atitlán next week, and Antigua for more class after that. Our South American plans have been changing rapidly as well. For one heady day we decided to cut our trip short by a month (and cut the scuba) in order to fly down and out to Easter Island, but I think we´ve decided that for now it is just too big of a sacrifice. So we are back to figuring out which route will take us to the Bay Islands in Honduras for dive lessons before we go to Belize and with the least amount of backtracking.

I will never again complain about having to get my car smogged.

2010-02-10T19:30:00.000-05:00

I´m three days in, and already we have covered more grammar than I learned in two years of high school spanish. I guess it helps that back in high school I was only peripherally interested in actually learning to communicate in Spanish, and now I´m motivated by the immediacy of needing to buy bus tickets and order dinner and all sorts of practical things. Monday we spent reviewing present tense and a lot of vocab, and yesterday we went over el pretèrito, or past tense, which I´d never really figured out before. It is going to take a while before it is comfortable, but I´ve got the general idea down. And it is so helpful to know how to say things like "I`ve been travelling for three weeks in Mexico, and I went to several ruins and ate lots of tacos." Some things just can´t be expressed in present tense.

Today my teacher was mean, and just made me talk all day long. Grammar wise we only did the por vs. para lecture (if you don´t know, you don´t want to know), but we talked a lot about all my travels and where I´ve lived and just about anything he could think of to ask in the past tense. It was long. But it was good. My maestro is named Jorge, laughs a lot, and since I´m a nurse has enjoyed teaching me all sorts of medical terms, including parts of the anatomy that an American teacher might have been embarassed to mention on the first day of class.

David is also enjoying his teacher, and is also learning much more than he expected to by this point. We aren´t making decisions too far into the future, but we have decided to stay here in Xela for at least another week beyond this one.

Monday after class they showed us a movie (in Spanish but thankfully with English subtitles) about the history of Guatemala. While I feel very strongly about the political issue of torture in America, it isn´t until you visit a place like this (Cambodia was similar) that you remember how sheltered we are in the US. The massacres that took place here in the 70s and 80s were horrific, you just can´t understand how the human condition could allow people to be so callous and evil towards another human being. It makes me realize how grateful I am that, at least in this area, we are more "civilized" in the US, while at the same time redoubles my determination to make sure that we stay that way.

Tuesday after class one of the instructors took David and I out to a village called Salcaja. We went on another chicken bus (much less colorful this time, although we did get another of the health tonic hawkers), and while they called the place a village to us it seemed more of a suburb, not very far outside of Xela at all. They had a big colorful market that we walked through, admiring all the gorgeous fabrics. There are still tons of fruits and vegetables that I can´t identify.

We then walked over to a smallish but sturdy church, which is the oldest (Christian) church in all of Central America, built sometime in the 1800s. It is intersting because of all the pagan decoration they included to entice the local Mayan population, with fruits and animals symbolic of the Mayan beliefs much more prominent than the cross. Inside I was fascinated to see statues of a black-skinned Jesus on the cross, with a very white Virgin Mary opposite. (Sorry, but I can never bring myself to photograph things inside a church. Even if it is "allowed", it just seems wrong. By the same token, I hate taking pictures of locals on the street, even though those are the pictures I want most of all. It just seems so rude.)

Finally we went into someone´s house where they showed us the loom they use to make the incredible fabrics the indiginous women wear. Then they tried to sell us some homemade liquor they make out of fruit and who knows what else. Besides a drink to sample, they also had apples and cherries that had soaked in the stuff. The drink was very sweet, and VERY strong. Neither of us cared for the fruit much though, and we declined to buy any. (Speaking of alcohol, we´ve been amused to see Manichevitz listed on the menu of several of the restaurants we´ve eaten at in town. There must be a large Jewish population hiding here somewhere.)

The children here are, of course, beautiful. The indigenous women carry their children, seemingly up to age two or three, wrapped in a shawl on their backs or sometimes down on their side. On the way home on the bus though, we saw a kid maybe just over a year, riding in a typically colorful shawl on his mother, who was dressed in typically colorful local dress. The boy though was wearing a black leather baseball cap, with bright blue plastic sunglasses. It cracked me up. Even better as we got closer we noticed the kid was also holding a Spiderman action figure.

I´ve been tired a lot here. Partly it is due to the high mountain elevation, Xela is 7500 feet above sea level. For comparison, I also got very tired visiting Albuquerque, which is only about 5300 feet. But the other issue is that I´m fairly certain I am suffering from carbon monoxide poisoning. The streets here are very narrow, and everytime a car goes by, whether it is in a big puff of black smoke or not, you can taste and smell the exhaust coming out at you. I want to go hike up the volcano but I´m not sure I´m up for it quite yet, I get tired just walking up the hills in town still. At least I know my red blood cells will start to compensate, as long as the fumes don´t kill them off first!

I´m tempted to read Harry Potter again, but in Spanish

2010-02-07T15:17:00.000-05:00

One more funny update to the Chicken Bus experience. All through the trip people would get on board to sell us things, usually fruit or ice cream bars. So you have a nine year old boy with bags of watermelon and coconut and papaya hooked onto the spikes of a grappling hook pushing his way through the crowd to make sure everyone had an opportunity to buy his stuff. After he´d make a round, he´d get off the bus a few miles down the road, presumably to get on another bus going the opposite direction. One kid selling honey-roasted peanuts had the brilliant idea to give everyone on the bus one sample peanut. Unfortunately I only had large bills at that point (which he couldn´t make change for) so I´ll have to wait for my next opportunity to get some more of those.

As we got closer to Xela, a different kind of hawker emerged. This one was older, in his late 30´s to 50´s, and they were selling what reminded me of those cure-all tonics that the travelling salesmen used to sell. He would stand in the front of the bus and give a little speech about how his cream/pill/juice would make you healthier and happier. I couldn´t actually understand most of it, but enough to get the gist. Then he would walk around and give a bottle/bag/container to anyone who seemed interested to look at as he made his way to the back, and on his way back up people would either give it back or give him some money. I was of course very curious about what kinds of things they were selling, some Guatemalan brand of Airborne I guess.

Friday morning we walked around the city looking for schools and a place to stay. We talked to five different schools (they are everywhere down here), and really liked three of them. It was hard to narrow it down, but we finally just went with the school that not only gave us a great vibe but also had a handful of other students that we would be able to get to know and practice with. The woman who runs the school is awesome. She doesn´t speak any English (Spanish and French), but with an immersion program that is sort of what you want anyway. We will both have one-to-one instruction for five hours a day, five days a week. I guess they also organize activities like hiking outings, or watching a spanish documentary, or volunteering in a village with various projects. The language is primarily why I´m here, so I didn´t pay much attention to the rest, although if we stay here a few weeks I´m sure I will be more interested.

Several of the schools recommended a guest house for us to stay at, which was only two blocks away from the school that we chose. When we arrived though, the front door had a huge padlock on it. We stood there a minute, looking at our map to figure out another place to try, and a guy walking down the street stopped and asked if we were looking for a place to stay, pointing at the hostel. I said yes, and he started talking a lot, most of which I couldn´t follow, but he motioned us to follow him. Without a better idea, we did. He walked us a few blocks away, and we figured he was going to take us to another hostel. Instead he knocked on a garage door of a home, and a woman came out. They talked, and then she ran back inside and came out with a set of keys. She spoke at least a little English, and I could understand her spanish better than his. Turns out she runs the hostel, and the guy is a friend of hers that didn´t want her to lose us as customers! Such luck.

She took us back to the house, which she opened up for us. She usually rents the house out to groups, but didn´t have one scheduled until March. There are four bedrooms to the place, and an Italian girl has been staying there all by herself for the past month. The woman joked with us that the Italian girl would be very sad to now have to share her private house with us. (Her name is Erika and she has been lovely.) Besides our room and a hot shower, we also have a kitchen so we can cook our own food which is nice. For a week we are paying 500Q, which is about $62. Not bad!

We are up in the mountains here, so it gets pretty chilly at night compared to what we´ve been used to in Mexico, down in the 50s. Still we are wearing tshirts and sandals, while the locals are all bundled up in heavy woolen sweaters and look at us like we are crazy. Almost no one speaks English here though, so practicing our Spanish will be very easy! Friday night we went to a graduation party at our new school, where three girls who had been there a month were all leaving. They cooked us an amazing dinner out on an open-flame grill, flat steak and grilled green onions and guacamole and potatoes, it was delicious. ¡Estaba buenísimo!

We are just hanging out this weekend, getting ready for lots of homework. We found a grocery store (David made us french toast this morning, we are really roughing it here), did some shopping, looked around the big market. We will stay here at least a week, but probably more as long as we like our teachers. From here there is an option to take a two or three day hike through the mountains to Lake Atitlán, the next place we want to go to. There is also a volcano overlooking the city, and if you climb up it you can see down to the next volcano over, which is active and still spews hot lava, which of course we really want to see. We started looking at flights, and getting down to South America is going to be pricey, but we really want to make it happen if we can. So much ahead.

The man with the machete shook my hand and said "Welcome to Guatemala!"

2010-02-05T18:23:00.000-05:00

Someone asked me last night what I did for my birthday last year, and I couldn´t remember. This year, while unusual, is certainly going to be memorable.

We were up early, partly because our hostel was unsually noisy, and partly because we wanted to get up early in order to catch our bus to the border. We arrived at the bus station about 45 minutes early, not only because we are now a bit anxious about bus travel after missing a bus we were practically sitting directly in front of, but also because we were hoping there would be some other travelers coming along for the same ride - there is safety and comfort in numbers when you don´t really know what you are doing.

Sure enough there was a large group of Europeans, but they all boarded another bus, leaving the bus station practically empty. Darn. But then walked in a vision of salvation in the form of two American farmer girls. We chatted with them, and not only were they headed to Guatemala but also to the same city as us, Xela. Whew!

The first part of the bus ride was easy, about 3 1/2 hours on a first class bus driving through gorgeous mountainy countryside. The first class busses in Mexico always show movies (dubbed in Spanish), but it always a mystery as to whether you will get a comedy, a drama, or even an infomercial. Yesterday we were treated with "Cheetah Girls 2", which from our perspective at least had some music, making it preferable to Hillary Swank lawyering it up in the courtroom. (And it was much easier to follow as well.) We found out that whichever of us gets the window seat looks at the scenery, and whomever gets the aisle seat gets sucked into the movie, so please go to David for a complete analysis of the subtleties of Raven´s performance.

When we reached the border, we were dropped off opposite a generic but governmental-looking building, so we headed over there. Inside it took us all of three seconds each to get our passports stamped, the official asking only "Va a Guatemala"? (Are you going to Guatemala?) Besides the two American girls, we also found there was another girl going with us. She was asian, and didn´t speak much Spanish or English, but we assume our numbers gave her some comfort. (Talk about brave!) We got in a taxi that took us up a hill about 5 kilometers, and were very glad we didn´t try and walk. (Even I admit that taxis sometimes are useful. Sometimes.) For the last 2 kilometers the street was lined with vendors selling everything from clothes to cell phones to stereo equipment. Surprisingly our taxi drove us right past it all right up to the border, which was also a relief. Although I´m guessing they weren´t there for the tourists, but perhaps for daytrippers from Guatemala? Maybe I missed a great deal on a boombox!

Crossing into Guatemala was similarly simple, with the exception of being extorted for money. We were charged a 10Q "fee", which is about a buck twenty. We had been warned this might happen (this also happened to me in Vietnam, although there they only charged me the equivalent of a quarter). There is always the option of asking for an official receipt (which of course they can´t give you), or even the time honored tradition of playing stupid. But with five of us going through without the protection of any locals also going through, we just marked it up to a loss and paid it. I´ve decided to believe they are going to use the money for baby formula anyway.

We then proceeded up another very long, very crowded, steep hilly road in search of some kind of bus "station". We went so far we started to doubt that we were going the right way, and asked a local guy, who very kindly pointed back the direction we had been coming for and said it was about five minutes back. We sighed, hot and sweaty in the sun with heavy packs on our backs. Then another man walking by spoke up and said, no, it was another two blocks further from where we were. Both men were friendly and didn´t seem to have any interest in leading us astray, but the second guy had an air of authority about him we decided to respect, despite the fact he seemed a little drunk. Drunk or not, the second guy was right, and less than a minute later we saw where we were headed.

A word about the chicken bus. Remember when you were a school kid, and you´d wait on the side of the road for the big yellow bus to come pick you up? Well, one day that bus decided to retire, and got sent down to Guatemala to be, essentially, a greyhound bus. The drivers here own their own bus though, so it becomes a matter of pride to properly pimp out your ride. The busses are repainted with flashy script and firewheels and dedications to Jesus. People along the road just wave the bus down, which sometimes stops, sometimes just slows down enough for someone to jump on or off. Inside the bus people squeeze on, cramming themselves into any available inch of seat - one family of five was sharing a seat originally meant for two schoolkids. There is no awareness of personal space, but surprisingly it isn´t as aggressive or rude as it sounds either. Everyone just accepts that they are going to have six people touching them at all times, especially at the front of the bus with people squeezing on and off as best they can.

In addition to the passengers were two assistants. One of them helped people with luggage, which got put up on the roof. I´m not sure how it was secured, although nothing ever fell off even on some screamingly fast curves, so it must have been adequate. He usually rode half hanging out the door, and would yell our destination out to people along the roadside in case someone wanted on, although sometimes he would disappear to the roof and stay up there a while, only to reappear in the back door having climbed down the ladder, while the bus was moving of course. The other assistant collected the fares, and every so often he would squeeze down the aisle getting money from anyone who had boarded since the last time he had collected. This guy was tall and broad, with his shirt open in the front but tied into a little knot at his belt. He also must have been an idiot savant, because I have no other explanation of how he could remember who had already paid and who hadn´t. The driver was going as fast as the curves would let him drive, plus a little more, and people were jumping on and off the bus all along the way. The luggage guy was paying attention too though, because every so often he would start yelling at a passenger, who would get up and slowly start making their way to the front. Just as the person would get there, the bus would arrive at the next stop, and the person would get off. I found this to be rather well organized, so that the bus didn´t ever have to wait for someone to push through. The guy would get off, three girls would get on, and we were off again.

The mountain road we were taking was true to cliché and meandered along the edge of a steep cliff. At one point we slowed as we approached a police car sticking halfway into the road, next to a crane and a bunch of onlookers. That half of the bus all stood up craning their necks to see out the windows. We were on the opposite side, but of course I could only imagine it was another chicken bus at the bottom of the ravine that was being hoisted up. As soon as we passed the cop car though, the bus driver sped up and whisked us away.

The people on the bus were extremely friendly towards us. An old cowboy with a machete at his side and a big white hat stopped as he passed us to wish us well, shaking our hands and saying "Bienvenidos a Guatemala!" The asian girl was sitting in the seat in front of us, and when the guy came around asking for money, an old woman sitting next to her did her best to explain what the fare was, and when the girl pulled out American dollars instead of quetzals, the woman spoke at length with the assistant helping him figure out the exchange rate. Later when she got off the bus she gave David and I this huge toothy grin.

Two hours along, the asian girl got off at Huehuetenango, and a few minutes later the bus stopped and the assistant indicated we needed to change busses to keep going to Xela. I think the driver had just flagged down another bus heading the other direction. So we got out, ran across the busy street and got onto another chicken bus. Oh, and I guess I should say that while the busses were very crowded at times, there were never any actual chickens on board. Maybe next time.

Our arrival in Xela was straightforward, and although the hostel we wanted to go to was full, we found a hotel right across the street that had the best hot shower I´ve had since we´ve been traveling. (Or perhaps I´m just getting less discriminatory, but boy did it feel good!) The girls, Dee Dee and Debbie, agreed to come out to dinner with us to help celebrate my birthday. We decided to forgo the stalls and splurge on a restaurant. Unfortunately the Thai place listed in our guidebook was gone, so instead we settled for a fancy pizza place. Holy crap was it good. We had a great evening with the girls, they are organic farmers so like us have done quite a bit of traveling. People who travel are just interesting!

All in all, definitely a birthday to remember.

Today we walked around trying to find a long-term place to stay as well as a school to start our spanish lessons. We found both, although my hands are cramping from all this typing so I´m gonna call it a day. While so far Xela doesn´t have the charm of some of the other cities we´ve been to, we are very excited about the school we chose and can´t wait to start increasing our language skills. Another perk is the giant volcano towering over us. I´m sure we´ve got some hiking in our near future!

Apparently if you are caucasian and stay long enough here you are required to have dreadlocks. So on to Guatemala we go!

2010-02-03T17:52:00.000-05:00

We made another grand departure from our itinerary, and stuck between threats of rain and an ever-growing desire to get to Guatemala so we can start our spanish classes already, we decided to bypass Palenque (for now) and headed straight to San Cristòbal de las Casas, a lovely mountain town where pine trees intermingle with the palm trees. It is decidedly chilly, and for the first time we found blankets on our beds instead of having a ceiling fan. Our bus ride was eleven hours long, which was actually nice because we were told it would be twelve. I can´t complain much, we both slept most of the way (the bus left at 10pm), and this being Mexico we had more leg room than you do on an airplane. (That will change once we leave Mexico though and we start riding the chicken buses.)

We arrived not knowing exactly where to go, but we got a great sell from a tout for a hostel that offered a free taxi ride from the bus station - what more could a weary traveler ask for? (There is nothing we hate more than paying for a taxi. Remnants of being a starving actor in NYC I guess.)

We´ve been here, what, two or three days now, I´m having a hard time keeping track of the date. It seems at times that we are in Tibet, with all these colorful flags hanging over the narrow, hilly streets like Tibetan prayer flags. We both have a thing for stairs, and find it hard to resist a good set anywhere, and we´ve had several nice adventures climbing up the hills to find nice little churches at the top. The town itself is gorgeous, with every building painted these crazy awesome colors, everything is bright blue and orange and yellow and red. Several of the main streets are blocked off for pedestrians only, which makes walking around a lot nicer too. Everywhere people are selling things, usually something to wear or something to eat. Women walk around with babies slung on their backs and an armful of brightly colored blankets or scarfs or whatever. My eyes love all the color, I would love to buy a stack of blankets to take home, but of course my backpack wasn´t made to accomodate much in the way of souveniers. I wish I had a bag like Mary Poppins!

Our food adventures continue as well. We have a tendancy to frequent these tiny little places called comedors, where someone will set up a few tables, and then make one or two dishes to sell that day. Sometimes it is something familiar like pozole, sometimes it comes with a name we´ve never heard of and we just have to wait to find out what we will be eating. Sometimes they don´t even ask us what we want, they just sit us down and bring whatever they feel like. Without exception the food has been good, although sometimes it comes with bits and pieces that we politely shove to the side. David ended up with a stew that had bits of things that may have been vegetable, may have been fruit, it was hard to tell, and though there were clearly three different kinds of meat, it was impossible to know exactly what kind of meat they were. (Our vote was for pork, chicken and beef, but I hope he didn´t commit some unforgivable sin.) The last pozole I got made me sweat it was so spicy, that darn habeñero. They have dishes of it on the tables, and just the smell makes my eyes water. Yesterday we sat down and the man yelled "torta, torta grande!!" at us a few times. We've had tortas before, it is sort of a mix between a hamburger and a sandwich, with lettuce and tomato and maybe some avocado over some kind of meat. He finally brought us these enormous sandwiches, with some fried ham that smelled delicious, but nestled on top of the ham were two raw hot dogs. The last hot dog I ate was about ten years ago, and that was only because we went to Cony Island and that is just what you eat when you go to Cony Island. Mixed in with everything else I managed to eat it though, I'm certainly getting more used to eating unusual things. But you feel like you are sitting in someone`s kitchen, so picking it off would have seemed rude. Manners over taste buds!

Not all of our meals are weird though. Last night we found another great taco place. And, believe it or not, but David is eating beans! It is still somewhat reluctant, but he isn´t holding back either. He has even had a few bites of my peanut butter, something I never expected. See what adventuring does for you?

Our plan at this point is to head down to Guatemala tomorrow, to a city called Quetzaltenango, or, for short, Xela (pronounced SHEY-la.) It is, I believe, the second biggest city in Guatemala, and has a repuatation for being the place to go if you are serious about learning Spanish. It sounds a bit snobby to me, but they say the cities of Antigua or around Lake Atitlàn bring so many more tourists that you end up speaking English so often that your progress on Spanish is hindered. I´m sure we will go to all three places so we can decide for ourselves, but we hit Xela first. There are a couple of volcanoes around for us to explore on the weekends, and I´m sure we will have a great time if we can find a good teacher.

After we´ve studied for a month or more, we will again start the exploration. We are hoping that when we get to Tikal, we can return to Mexico on the river crossing and get back to Palenque. It was a tough decision to skip it when we were so close, but we want to be ready to start classes on Monday and didn´t want to be delayed another week.

We had the option of paying about $30 each to pay for a shuttle bus to take us to Xela from here, but we decided to rough it and save some money. We got a bus down to the border town (about $7 each) tomorrow morning. From there we hop in a taxi to take us the 5km to the Guatemalan border town of La Mesilla. From there we will have to find and jump on a chicken bus either direct to Xela, or we may have to connect in Huehuetenango. That part of the bus should cost us less than $5 each (according to our guidebook, which is now three years old.) So it will take a little longer, and we will no doubt find the chicken bus an adventure in itself, but isn´t that the point?

Oh, I should mention that we got a new Lonely Planet guidebook for Central America. We found it in a used book store here, and it is well worn and dog-eared. As we paged through it we found some things circled and others crossed out, little notes written in the margins and the names of unlisted hostels marked on the maps. I half expected to find "Property of the Half-Blood Prince" written on the inside cover. Let`s just hope that we have the same set of tastes and expectations as did the previous owners!

We went swimming under the ground

2010-01-29T19:53:00.000-05:00

This morning, joined by a brother and sister from Florida we met at the hostel, we decided to see some cenotes. All over the Yúcatan, the water seeps down and creates these large, deep waterholes. Eventually the ground above them caves in, or at least enough for people to figure out a way to wander inside. What you get are these marvellous caves filled with crystal clear water, perfect for swimming.

We took a bus out to the town of Cuzamá, then got in a pedicab to take us another 5 kilometers to an old Hacienda where the tour starts. Using the train rails left over from the heyday of the Hacienda henequin plant, we got on a horse-pulled cart that took us to three different cenotes in the area. Standing just feet away from the entrance, you would have overlooked them, the ground is as flat and dusty as everything around it. But when you look down into the small hole in the ground, you see a unexpected blue world just beneath you. Two of the cenotes we went to had small staircases to take us down, the other was just a ladder down through a small (and long) hole. Down inside, the caves were enormous, with huge stalagtites and the roots from trees cascading down a good hundred feet from the ground above down into the water. The water was clear as glass, with a few fish the only thing obscuring the view down to the bottom of the well, often a good 50 - 75 feet below. But more amazing was the color, this crazy turquoise blue that would light up whenever the sun could find a small opening to shine through. I was afraid the water would be cold, but while cool it was definitely refreshing from the hot day outside.

I tried to take some photos, but the light was pretty poor for photo-taking. We came home exhausted from all the swimming, so we stopped at a food stall and got ten turkey tacos (with avocado and onion and tomato) plus two liter-sized juices for about $5. Too much food, but it was so delicious I couldn´t stop eating.

We haven´t made our final plans yet, but I think we will be heading to Campeche tomorrow morning, just to check it out for one night before making our first big travel, a seven hour bus ride down to Palenque. We have loved it here in Mérida though, if ever we decided to move to Mexico, this would probably be our first choice.

The dog followed us for hours, even to the top of the pyramid!

2010-01-27T16:54:00.000-05:00

A few more photos just to catch up

2010-01-27T16:41:00.000-05:00

Sitting in the Plaza Grande eating homemade coconut ice cream...

2010-01-27T16:27:00.000-05:00

We are now in the lovely city of Merida, which is on the Northwest side of the Yucatan. We spent one night at Chichen Itza, which turned out to be far more impressive than I had been led to believe. Some people are turned off by anything that becomes "too touristy", and with busloads of people heading to Chichen Itza from Cancun, it definitely qualifies as too touristy. But just because something is popular doesn´t make it any less interesting. We arrived at 8am, so even though we stayed almost three hours none of the busses had yet arrived. That meant that the hundreds (and I mean HUNDREDS) of tables of locals selling crappy souveniers weren´t yet up and running either, so we definitely had a better experience than probably many do. The night before we went to a "sound and light show", which basically was sitting in the dark listening to a Spanish presentation while the temples lit up blue! then green! then red! Boring, except for just as it started a huge shooting star shot right over the pyramid, which was amazing. Living in the city for so long I´d forgotten what the stars look like. David leaned over and said "I´d forgotten stars came in different colors".

We´ve been in Merida for three days now, and we love it. A very beautiful city, with narrow streets and even narrower sidewalks, but somehow the claustrophobia is charming and even comforting somehow. There seems to be quite a community of American expats living here, and I can see why.

Yesterday we hopped on a two hour bus to Celestún. (Holy crap, I FINALLY figured out how to make the accent mark work! I´m telling you, these keyboards are confusing!) We were lucky and were able to very quickly get together with other people to make a group big enough to hire a boat for. The first one they put us in had a little engine trouble, but we made the best of drifting around the harbor by watching the flocks of pelicans and other birds. It took about a half hour but we finally got to shore and got in another boat. We then zoomed out into the ocean, which was this bizarre color, sort of a milky green. We sped along within feet from the shore, until we hit the mouth of a river. As we crossed through, there was a clear line separating the fresh and the salt water (even though the fresh water still tasted very salty). From here was a massive mangrove forest, we were able to walk around a bit and saw an area where the salt water seeped into the trees and literally petrified them. The mangroves somehow stain the water, so unlike the milky green of the sea, here it was a deep brownish red. You don´t get to see red water very often, very interesting.

The biggest reason people come here though is to see the flamingoes. They were bright pink clustered in groups all through the area. We couldn´t get close enough to get very good photos, but it was amazing to see so many. And this wasn´t even high season, which begins in March. We also saw lots of egrets and herons and hawks.

Our boat driver was zooming us all over the place, and suddenly he banked hard and headed straight for the shore. Just when we thought he had gone crazy and was going to kill us all, the trees parted to reveal a small passageway of water. I´m sure that is the drivers favorite part of the entire tour. We stopped at a small dock, and they showed us a place where the water is bubbling up from the ground. David and I were the only gringoes in the group, but there was a girl from Barcelona who spoke decent English, and the other passengers kept ganging up on her to make her translate everything for us. I felt a little bad for her, but we were grateful for what she told us, and anyway she had a huge personality and I think she enjoyed the attention. But we think the spring was one of many that feed the river. (There aren´t any rivers in the entire Yúcatan, at least not above ground. The water all seeps to low underground rivers.) Here David and I jumped in the water and were able to swim a little. The spring water wasn´t warm exactly, but it wasn´t as cold as the ocean water anyways, so it was bearable for a few minutes. Fish were swimming all around us, I guess eating whatever was coming out of the spring. It was really pretty awesome.

We are taking it easy in Merida today, and tomorrow plan to visit some cenotes, which are areas where the ground has caved in over huge wells of water. You can climb around in the caves and go swimming and stuff. The next day we will go to another Mayan ruin at Uxmal.

We´ve changed our route from that point about a dozen times in the last few days, but at this point I think we´ve decided to go down to Palenque, and then head west into Chiapas (to San Cristobal de las Casas), and go down into Guatemala from there. There are ruins we want to see in every direction, and we just can´t see them all, and we are itching to start our language lessons. We are getting by, but once we can speak a little more of the language it will greatly enrich the experience we are having. We will save Tikal for later on in the trip, which will also be good to give it some space, I don´t want to be suffering from temple fatigue when we get there (although at this point there is no signs of that happening, I am loving all of these places.)

Oh, and Chrisy, our room has a balcony that looks right over the main square. We love it!

It only took me a week to lose my first pair of sunglasses

2010-01-23T12:05:00.000-05:00

Reluctantly we left Cozumel (but not before we were taken to this awesome taco stand that made the best tacos I´ve ever had), and headed down to Tulum. Tulum is a gorgeous beach, with the added bonus of having a Mayan ruin perched up above the sand. If we had more time I would have loved to stayed longer and just become a beach bum, which, considering the ridiculously dark tans we saw, many people actually do.

Instead we hopped the bus to Coba, our first large ruin that is located right next to a crocodile-infested lake. We spent the afternoon counting crocs swimming in the shallows. We walked around the lake a bit through the small town while the kids made fun of us and the stray dogs treated us like their long lost owners.

We slept in a very basic hotel last night, with no hot water (something to get used to, because that is often the case, although in the heat sometimes a cold shower can be more refreshing than it sounds) and only a very slow ceiling fan to relieve the heat. We´d been warned about loud barking dogs, but all we heard was the rooster when the sun came up. We wanted to be up early anyways, so we could get over to the ruins right at opening time. A lot of the ruins are very popular and busloads of tourists arrive to get in the way of your photos, but if you go early in the morning you can beat the rush and have a nice visit to yourself. Indeed, we waited at the gate with only three other backpackers, and were able to climb the main temple all by ourselves which was nice.

The pyramid was pretty impressive, I´m not sure but I think of the others we will see only the one at Tikal is bigger. We also saw some very colorful birds, some vultures, and of course we picked up another dog. These dogs just seem to love being around people, they run up to you and then follow you around for miles. This one even climbed to the top of the pyramid with us! I couldn´t vouch for his health status, but they are a far cry from the packs of mean stray dogs we encountered in Taiwan.

We had intended to take a nice leisurly pace through the Yucatan, and had even come up with a new route that would have allowed us to see much more of some more ruins as well as Chiapas. But last night I started looking in the guide books reading about Honduras and El Salvador and realized how much more we have to see. We are loving Mexico, but I guess we don´t have to spend two nights in every cute little town we pass. So we are skipping over Valladolid and are heading straight for Piste, where we will be able to see the World Wonder Chitzen Itza tomorrow morning (first thing!), and then on to Merida tomorrow night.

Our Spanish is improving as we learn phrases and vocabulary, but I am certainly looking forward to starting a class somewhere. People are very gracious with our limited language ability, and I know as we improve people will be even more friendly and interactive.

And our farmer tans are coming along very nicely.

If the sun kised me in Cancun, it made out with me in Cozumel

2010-01-19T14:11:00.001-05:00

Considering the reputation Cancun has, we had a much better time there than we expected. Eating at stalls the food was cheap and, more imporantly, DELICIOUS. Half of the things we eat we don't really know what it is beyond what kind of meat it is and what color the sauce is, but while some things have had rather strong flavors that can be overwhelming after a while (I'm talking to you, mole enchiladas!) everything has been good, we haven't had anything we just outright didn't like.

Our couchsurfing hosts were great up til the end, and even let us stay a day longer than expected. Another surfer from Germany arrived as well, and it was fun meeting him. Our last morning they cut down a coconut from their front yard (next to their turtle pond) and let us eat the meat. I've never had fresh coconut meat before, and it was not at all what I expected, with a nutty flavor. Very good.

We then took a colectivo, like a mini-van, down to Playa del Carmen, and jumped on the ferry over to the island of Cozumel. Our new couchsurfing host is also amazing. She is originally from Boston but has been living here a dozen years or so working as a wedding planner. (lots of people like getting married in paradise!) She and a friend of hers who is also visiting here took us on a car tour of the whole island, which is 9 miles wide and, I'm totally guessing here, but I'd say about 25 miles long. The beaches are awesome, and since she is a local she stopped and was able to show us some fancy hotel rooms, and even showed us the place she hosts her weddings. (Gorgeous.) I know I sound like a commercial for couchsurfing sometimes, but it is such an amazing thing to be able to have an instant friend in a place like this. After the car tour she took us to the local square where she knew a latin band was going to be performing. We sat out in the square and listened to the music while people danced, it was so much fun, what a great day.

Yesterday she had to work so we walked out to the beach. It was a beautiful day, and we got a little more sun than we should have. I'm more pink than burned, but still a lot more sun than I'm used to getting! We found another stall to eat at, I had the most delicious pozole, a little different than the kind I had in New Mexico, but just as good, with lettuce and radishes served on top. It was a little more expensive than the places we ate at in Cancun, but at $3, still nothing to complain about.

We struggled with our decision to hold off on diving for now, it seems such a perfect place for it here. But we know we will have more opportunities in Belize and Honduras, which are along the same barrier reef. We'd been thinking about going snorkeling today, but we got so much sun yesterday we might take a day to do some laundry and re-pack (and blog) and just get some stuff done. Definitely want to catch the sunset tonight, we missed it last night because my pozole was so good I just couldn't rush it.

We leave here tomorrow, we'd been planning on going to Tulum, but might head for Coba first to get a little jungle action before we run out of beaches.

Also, my sister wrote me and said she had been talking to her kids about the devastation following the earthquake in Haiti, and then yesterday they saw there had been an earthquake in Guatemala and the kids got very scared about David and I. So, for the record, we are fine! (And nowhere near there yet.) But I read a "fun fact" before i left that said more people die every year eating shark than are eaten by a shark. We are being careful, but we aren't anticipating any trouble.

Lastly, I'm still trying to figure out how to post pics. The files are large so it takes a long time to upload, which I don't always have. Rather than post pics here I may just start an online album somewhere to direct you to rather than having to upload everything twice. But experimentation continues.

El Rey

2010-01-16T17:41:00.000-05:00

Don´t have a lot of time to write, but here are a few photos to keep you satiated. These are from El Rey, a small ruin located in Cancun that we went to yesterday. There were hundreds of iguanas running around, which of course thrilled us!

Oops, had another one up but somehow deleted it, and my time is almost up so gotta run, but there is David anyway!

The beach (with turtles)

2010-01-14T18:54:00.000-05:00

This entry will be short, but I just wanted to gloat about the fact that I´m in Mexico. HAhahahahahahaha!!!

OK, got that out of my system. We arrived in Cancun yesterday afternoon, and the first thing I noticed was the smell. Asia had a smell too, here is more subtle but just as wonderful. Our couchsurfing hosts are terrific. David and I tended to host people once, maybe twice a month, but these guys have an almost steady stream of visitors. Someone left the day we arrived, and someone from Germany is coming in the day we leave. They are right in the heart of the city center, so we are in walking distance from lots of restaurants and stuff. Last night after we talked a while, they sent us to this little park that is surrounded by food stalls. We had no idea how to order or even what to order, but after watching a while we ended up with some tortas, which are sort of similar to a hamburger. We also had two big glasses of fruit juice, one was mango and the other was...red. Everything was delicious, and was only $4. So our budgeting prowess continues!! ;)

Today we took a ferry over to Isla Mujeres, and spent the day walking around and enjoying the beach. We went to a turtle sanctuary, we´ll have to see if the pictures turn out (sorry, but no pictures now, this visit was spontaneous and we don´t have the card reader with us) but we got some pics of a seahorse with all these little bits of weed floating around that on second look turned out to be TINY little babies.

Anyway, so we are safe and well, and having fun. It will take a while to get a little tan and break in our tender feet to all the walking we are going to be doing, but we are happy and excited to be here.

Question: Is it in or out for a boy to wear capri pants? We say out, but we saw someone wearing them today.

Also, typing on a spanish keyboard is really weird, they have all these extra letters (ñç¡¿) and all the symbols are rearranged. That is gonna take a while to get used to.

Tomorrow we will head to the hotel zone of Cancun and see what all the fuss is about. Then Cozumel on Sunday. We´re already considering rearranging our itinerary a bit, but that was expected. I´ll keep ya updated as we go! Pics next time.

The Final Countdown

2010-01-12T11:46:00.000-05:00

Well, this is it folks. If you think this process has been dragging on for WAY TOO LONG now, just think how I feel!

The plan thus far: We arrive in Cancun at 3:30pm tomorrow. We’ll take a bus from the airport into town, where our first couchsurfing host has offered to pick us up. Thanks to google maps we were actually able to get a street view of their house, which looks like it has a jungle out front, which is kind of cool. We will be staying with them for three nights, then have a free night that we aren’t sure what to do with yet, maybe stay another day in Cancun, or we could head down to this little town Puerto Morales, or maybe spend a night in Playa Del Carmen. Then on Sunday we’ll take the ferry over to the island of Cozumel where we have another couchsurfing host lined up for another three days. (She just wrote to tell us she is taking us to dinner at her parent's house the first night. Love it!)

I’m glad to have the first week sort of planned out, as it gives us some breathing time to adjust and get on the right schedule. These will also be some of the most expensive areas we’ll be, so having a free place to stay (and hosts who can tell us where to go and what to avoid) is extremely helpful.

Yesterday we put everything we were taking out on the bed. In general I think we are doing pretty well with the “stuff” quota, but I think we may be bringing too many clothes. I mean, we are only bringing two pairs of shorts, two pants, two t-shirts and two button up shirts each (with an extra t-shirt and button up to share between us). But I expect we will end up buying stuff along the way that is more appropriate and comfortable, so we’ll see how long this stuff lasts. As usual all the guidebooks stress how only kids wear shorts and that you can’t really wear shorts away from the beach towns and expect any kind of respect from the locals, but we’ll see how that works out. They said the same thing in Asia and I never noticed any problems with my incessant short-wearing there. But I’ve got pants if’n I need ‘em. In the end, we each have plenty of spare room in each of our bags, so we should be fine.

We’ve got one more stop to make today, plus a trip to the post office, but otherwise we are packed and ready to go. Oh, I had another great talk last night with my family about getting finances worked out. (After Melissa made the most delicious homemade lasagna.) It is really exciting watching everybody setting goals and getting prepared for the future. It is such a relief when you can set aside the social stigma we are all taught that talking about your money is somehow impolite or whatever. When you all get together and brainstorm and are able to rely on each other for encouragement and support, amazing things can happen. I’ve even gotten to do my favorite thing and play the big brother card. We all made six month goals, and I told them in six months I will be back to check up on their progress! lol

I spent the weekend in the shadow of Marie Osmond

2010-01-11T10:53:00.000-05:00

The plan had been to write every day until I left, just to get myself primed for frequent writing during the trip. But the internet connection here at my sisters is erratic (the guest room is just too far away from the wireless router upstairs I guess), and then we had a mini-family reunion this weekend so I've been busy catching up with cousins. My uncle plus four of his kids (and their wives and kids) all came down from Salt Lake, and another aunt and uncle came from California. I haven't seen them in four or five years, so it was a lot of fun catching up. A couple of them went on a trip through Guatemala and the Yucatan a few years ago, so they had some really great tips for David and I as well. After talking with them I think David and I are pretty set on heading to Palenque, which messes up the route to Belize, but I'm sure there will be a way to figure that out depending on what we want to do at that point.

I always love talking to people about travel, because no matter who it is, this fire lights up in their eyes as they tell you what they did and saw. Our route is going to be much less straightforward than theirs was (and backwards), so every time they mentioned something that we said would probably be too far out of the way for us to get to, they'd practically yell at us, "But you can't miss THAT!!!" It was really funny, but I'm sure I am the same way every time I talk about Cambodia or Indonesia. Travel is exciting because it is an intimately personal experience that can be shared with everyone. And when you find someone who is truly interested (often because they've been or are going to the same place you did), it brings those memories and feelings back in a vivid and vital way.

I had another cousin show up who was attending the CES tradeshow, whom after we talked we realized we haven't seen each other in 19 years, which was scary. In my mind he was still this little kid, and now he is all grown up and running for Congress. We had a few interesting discussions, and he quickly pulled out the policy nerd in me talking about the Fair Tax, which I'd never heard of before. (Basically the income tax would be replaced with a national sales tax.) I wanted to talk more politics but wasn't sure it was polite dinner conversation, especially when Sarah Palin came up. ;) But here I am getting ready to go travel through the Yucatan and I want to go to a bookstore to buy the Fair Tax book to take with me so I can evaluate the idea. Nerd! Nerd!

My cousin Troy made a very insightful comment, about how when you are apart from family for a while, and all you get are occasional comments on Facebook, after a few years it is easy to start to feel like people are changing and how you might be growing apart or something. But then you get together again, and everyone is just the same as you remember, except fatter and more gray. I'm glad we all get along so well, and that David can enjoy himself with them as well, because I feel blessed to have the family I do. (Even when they are crazy, and believe me, they are crazy. lol)

I missed the best part of the weekend though, when the family went to church and accosted poor Marie Osmond in the corridor. Come to think of it, I'm glad I wasn't there, cause I'm always super uncomfortable meeting celebrities, but still thinking about it makes me giggle. Poor Marie, it must suck to be the most famous Mormon.

Today is Thursday, right?

2010-01-07T09:14:00.000-05:00

Yesterday we had lunch with another old friend from Sacramento, Jay Joseph. He has been living in Vegas for about ten years now, and it was great to catch up with him. In another blow to Albuquerque he had some first hand knowledge about salaries for RNs here which was much higher than I'd anticipated. I'm glad I have this big trip to think about instead of having to decide where I want to live when we get back, because I have too many options that are all so appealing!

I was afraid that with four weeks in Las Vegas, we'd be totally bored by now, but in reality we have so much to do that we haven't had a chance to get bored at all. Every day we accomplish a little bit more. At this point the only "big" things we still have to do is figure out how we're gonna file our taxes, decide if I'm gonna feel safe paying a few bills online from internet cafes or if I need to set someone up to pay them for me from here, and then cross my fingers that my final paycheck from work is going to show up in the next few days. I also still haven't had any mail forwarded from our old address yet, which is very unnerving. They said it can sometimes take two weeks for it to catch up with you, so there isn't necessarily anything wrong yet, but I wish it would just start arriving so I could relax about it.

We'd wanted to buy a sink plug to take with us (to wash clothes in the sink) but are having the hardest time finding one. Also it took us about fifteen different stores to find a 1oz tube of Neosporin cream. Everyone only had the ointment, or had the cream in the 0.5oz size. Am I weird, cause I hate ointment, it is just so messy, but apparently it sells a lot better than cream does. Anyhoo, we finally found it at Kmart (of all places).

Like I've said we have a couchsurfer host lined up for Cancun, and possibly one for Merida. We're now trying to get one for Cozumel, but haven't heard back yet. Maybe today will be the day!

Better this than "Jersey Shore"

2010-01-06T12:13:00.000-05:00

We went to the Venetian last night and saw "Jersey Boys". (Thanks to Brenda and Scott for the awesome Christmas present!) We took a look at the cast list just in case we knew anyone from NY, and it turns out we knew someone...from Sacramento! I swear, Sac-Town has sent quite a group of kids onto the Broadway/performing circuit. The show was a lot of fun, and while I enjoyed it I think my parents thought it was one of the best things they'd ever seen. I had fun too, because the last thing I did before leaving NY was spend five minutes considering becoming a stage manager, and I worked on a show called "Sinatra" with the Rockettes directed by the same guy who did this that was a clear parent to "Jersey Boys". No Rockettes here, but a smoother timeline, and still a lot of good fun.

Before the show we walked around the strip a little (I'd never been down as far as the Venetian), and after the show we got to catch up with our friend, Jeff Liebow. I haven't seen him in about 15 years so it was great to catch up. We did a production of "Chess" together back in 1994 at Davis Musical Theatre Company. He was terrific in the show (as was Deven May, whom I couldn't even imagine as "Bat Boy"), and proudly showed off pics of his 5-month old baby who was ADORABLE. Thank goodness all actors nowadays have their own website, cause that is how I contacted him to let him know we would be there. I swear, how did people survive before the internet? ;)

I'd collected 4 quarters and had intended on winning a million dollars in a slot machine, but then I forgot to play. Darn it!

Tuesdays are for Supercuts

2010-01-05T19:45:00.000-05:00

Today was another lazy day. We were waiting for a package from UPS so had to sit around until they finally came. At one point I told David, "Go check the door and see if they've come yet." He opened the door just as the UPS truck turned the corner and stopped in front of the house. Hmmm, maybe I need to head on down to the strip tonight.

Hey, I AM going to the strip tonight! For Christmas my sister got us all tickets to see "Jersey Boys". Most of the family doesn't want to go on a school night, so I think just me and the parents are going tonight. I've got two quarters in my pocket, and I'm feeling mighty lucky tonight! :)

I got a haircut today at Supercuts. My Dad says I look like a Marine, but I wanted it short. Who wants to deal with bedhead when you are traveling? Pics will be forthcoming.

Monday morning

2010-01-04T12:23:00.000-05:00

I keep seeing ads for LOST, which are no doubt placed there with the sole intention of driving me crazy. Giving up TV to go travel is a no-brainer, but that dang stupid LOST is something I've been following for years now, and I don't see how I'm going to make it back without someone ruining the ending for me. Twist ending movies are ALWAYS ruined for me before I see it, whether it is "Sixth Sense" or "The Crying Game" or whatever, somehow I always stumble into a conversation at just the wrong time. ::sigh::

Today we are going to get the typhoid immunization, and do some more shopping. We're also dropping Kyle off at the airport, so he can fly back to Albuquerque before flying to England tomorrow for his semester abroad. I'm so excited for him, he is going to have such a great time. Plus, he doesn't have to worry about dengue fever or malaria. (Although I'm gonna get a much better tan.)

We've found another potential couchsurfer host in Merida which is good news. It just gets tricky since our schedule is so open-ended, we aren't exactly sure when we will get there. If Coba is a great place, we might stay a few days. If it isn't, we might stay only one, and we have a few stops like that before we hit Merida. So we'll see if it works out, but it is nice to have it as a possibility.

Yesterday was a lazy day while I fought off this cold. Still feeling it a bit today, but it is still mild and is going to pass soon, I can tell. Just a bit more tired than usual.

Hiking at Red Rock

2010-01-03T11:38:00.000-05:00

Yesterday we went hiking just outside of Vegas at a place called Red Rock. I went last week as well, but we went later in the afternoon so didn't stay long as it was getting dark and cold. Yesterday was much warmer and we had a great time. The kids are like fearless mountain goats. I kept up with them most of the time, but every so often a little voice would say "You are leaving the country in a week, so this would not be the most opportune time to sprain an ankle". That voice was usually coming from David. Unless it was me saying it to him, cause he of course is a lot more wiley than I am. Places like this give me the opportunity to consider living in Vegas, cause there are enough hiking and exploring trails to keep me occupied for a long time.

And look at that pic, aren't "my" kids totally adorable?

Everyone here has been getting sick with some kind of cold. David caught it two days ago, and I've been hoping I would get it sooner rather than later. I was rewarded this morning with a sore throat. That gives me over a week to get better, which is plenty of time, so WHEW!

Movies

2010-01-02T00:47:00.000-05:00

Been seeing a lot of movies while we've been here in Vegas. First was "Avatar", which I thought was pretty amazing, if not terribly engaging. (Plus, Sigourney Weaver's avatar kind of freaked me out.) Then we saw "The Princess and the Frog" with the kids, which I thought was fun, even if all the Bayou stuff kept reminding me of "The Rescuers". (But I loved the firefly!) We rented "Up", which continues the Pixar domination of unexpectedly interesting and touching animated movies.

Today my brother Kyle took us to see "2012", which has been out a while, but as a reminder we generally see maybe three movies at a theatre a year, much less in a single month. It was just as bad as I expected, but it was also just as awesome as I expected. The movie could have ended after the destruction of LA and I would have been satisfied. The moralizing nonsense at the end was annoying (I agreed with the politician), but I was happy to go along for the ride. Woody Harrelson was great. The biggest distraction was trying to figure out where I'd seen the little boy before, and that Amanda Peet looks like the 10 year younger twin sister of Catherine Mary Stewart. Then I found out Kyle has never seen "Night of the Comet", which is one of my favorite 80s movies ever, right up there with "The Last Starfighter", which ALSO stars Catherine Mary Stewart.

I can't wait for the night when a hostel in Guatemala gets the pirated DVD of "Prince of Persia", because that looks like fun. I saw the first "Charlie's Angels" in a hostel restaurant in Thailand, so I know it can happen. :) Ditto the remake of "Clash of the Titans", which Kyle has also been ordered to rent. I watched that again a few years ago, and it was amazing how bad it was, when it had seemed so amazing when it first came out. Cutting edge in 1981 sure doesn't hold up much anymore!

Happy New Year!

2009-12-31T12:00:00.000-05:00

Ten years ago I was living in New York, wondering if Y2K was going to destroy the world. I spent the evening with some awesome friends, Heather and Anna and Emily, and I remember going to the roof and listening to everyone cheer when the end of the world didn't happen. lol

I can't believe that was ten years ago. The "oughts" were a pretty great decade for me. I lived in NYC, San Diego, Albuquerque, DC, and spent three months in San Francisco. I traveled to eleven countries, did a Broadway show, earned another bachelors and became an RN, went to both Disneyland AND Disneyworld, dived with an octopus in Indonesia and whale watched over lunch in Newfoundland. I had the pleasure of getting one-quarter of "Il Divo" and one-third of The Jonas Brothers to sing "Happy Birthday" for my sister over the phone. I saw the Grand Canyon and Niagara Falls and Uluru and Angkor Wat. But most of all, I've made a heck of a lot of good friends whom I treasure.

I have two more weeks to prepare for our Central American Adventure (what a way to start the decade!), and though we are getting a little antsy it helps that we have some really cute kids here in Vegas to play with in the meantime. Got our travel insurance yesterday, and we're getting the Typhoid (it comes in pill form now, no shots!) on Monday. We've even found a couchsurfing host for the first three nights in Cancun, which we are really excited about. I wasn't sure I wanted to stay in Cancun at all as it would be so expensive, but now we have a place to stay and a local guide to give us info on where to go. CA isn't the best region to take advantage of couchsurfing, so we are grateful for the opportunity.

Oh, and we've already seen three sets of friends who have come through Vegas traveling, so if you are coming in the next two weeks, be sure and let us know!

Merry Christmas everyone!

2009-12-24T22:53:00.000-05:00

I've spent the evening eating fondue with my entire family (except one who knows who she is!) including nine nieces and nephews who were all super-cute. I feel very blessed to have the family that I do, and glad that those holiday movies about families who love each other but are always miserable when they get together has nothing to do with us.

Now to go watch "A Christmas Story" with the kids...

Winter is bearable at 60 degrees

2009-12-23T11:13:00.000-05:00

So how’s this for synchronicity. On Monday I had to pick up my brother at the airport, who was flying home from Albuquerque. Then I get a Facebook message that my best friend Tiffany has a three hour layover in the same airport that ends just after my brother arrives. Tiffany and David and I all met at the same time, doing a college production of “The Boyfriend” back in 1992. But Tiffany wasn’t flying alone. A few weeks ago her brother broke both his legs, so is now recuperating down in Cabo San Lucas with their parents (I know), but since he was gone our friend Nick, who was also in “The Boyfriend”, had left his home in Chicago to spend a few months in New York living in Tiffany’s brother’s room, and for reasons I don’t quite understand was flying to Sacramento via San Francisco with Tiffany and so was on the same flight. This part I knew. But then when we arrive at the airport, it turns out that ANOTHER friend of ours, Rod, whom I met just prior to “The Boyfriend” in a college production of “Chicago”, and who now lives in San Francisco but had been in New York doing a show for the holidays, had his show close the night before so just happened to be on the same flight home. Awesome, right?

It was great to catch up with these peeps. Also great was when we noticed how young and attractive we all still were. Until my stinking brother, who had been four years old when we all met, showed up and sat there as a 21 year old living reminder of how old we all actually were.

Vegas has been great. Been getting a lot done, plus are getting to spend some quality time with the kids here. We played darts and Sorry! and judged a gingerbread house building competition. David and I have even gone to see two movies, something we almost never do on our own. (Netflix, baby.) We saw Avatar with my mother (which was enjoyable) and The Princess and The Frog with the kids. Well, sort of. It was six adults and four kids, and we were the only people in the whole theater, so the six adults sat and watched the cartoon while the four kids literally ran around the theatre changing seats about every two minutes. Afterwards they said they liked the movie though. lol

It still doesn't seem real, but goodbye DC

2009-12-19T11:14:00.000-05:00

Leaving a city you love, even for a grand adventure, is always bittersweet. Our 2 1/2 years in DC have been an adventure in themselves as we explored the many things DC has to offer. We attended a Presidential Inauguration, studied history at museums and civil war battlefields, and gaped at the grand architecture that decorates and uplifts a city like this. We found hidden gardens, underground art museums, and even learned to make homemade crabcakes with delicious fresh Maryland Blue Crab that replaced the turkey at Thanksgiving. And we both were blessed with fantastic people to work with, whom we will miss even more than the monuments and festivals. Our Central American expedition has our attention, but going to DC was not just a great decision, it was the right decision.

We were so wired the night before we left we couldn’t sleep, so we were on the road at 4am. (Thanks Chrisy for the pancake and bacon dinner the night before, next time I want some more of that black raspberry jam!) With such an early start we avoided any semblance of traffic and were able to push through to Jackson, TN for the first night. We lucked out and seemingly found the one non-fast food restaurant in town, hidden away on a side street, where the waitress was handing out homemade chocolate chip cookies she had just baked. Our motel was notable for having some of the best donuts I have ever had as part of the continental breakfast. Kudos to the Days Inn!!

After another motel in Elk City, OK, we hit Albuquerque, where we stayed several days with our dear friend Erin and her family. We saw lots of great peeps and were severely tempted to move back, even though a move back would violate my own commandment that our next home would be winter-free. The green chile breakfast burrito I inhaled didn’t hurt the cause either. Of course we won’t be making that decision until we come back next summer, but Albuquerque is back on the table.

Close calls

2009-12-06T19:28:00.000-05:00

A few of these don't seem real, but who cares, still awesome.

Heading to work, but...

2009-12-06T06:28:00.000-05:00

Suddenly everything seems to be moving so fast. Amazingly, we are keeping up. Craigslist has been awesome and we've been getting rid of lots of stuff, just down to a few items left that hopefully will go today. David has been painting like a fiend and that is well over half done. I work the next three days (trying to cram in as many paid hours before we go as possible), and then we just have Wed left to wrap things up, clean out the house and get over to our friend Chrisy's that night. There is still lots to do but it is all coming together.

The only problem has been the weather, with lots of rain and, yesterday, snow, which is preventing us from taking one last walk up to the Capitol Building like we wanted. We were just there not long ago, so it isn't a huge tragedy or anything, but I'd been hoping to make a farewell walk our last week to commemorate our time here, which has been so awesome. Unlike some other places we've lived, where by the time we left we were ready to go, it does feel like we are leaving here a bit early, and I suspect we are thus going to miss it here more than others. Ah, nostalgia.

The Destruction of New York (to Rhapsody In Blue)

2009-12-03T07:22:00.000-05:00

Love it!

Another look at Close Encounters

2009-11-25T20:41:00.000-05:00

I love this.

Close Encounters of the Redneck Kind from Marc Bullard on Vimeo.

Comments

2009-11-24T20:38:00.000-05:00

Suddenly I'm getting a bunch of spam comments, so forgive me, but I'm gonna have to go to comment moderation. All that means is when you comment (and of course I hope that you do) it won't show up until I ok it as someone I actually know and not someone trying to link to some pharmacy site. (Some of them are so polite. "I love your site, it is so informative, I read it all the time! Also, follow this link to get viagra!")

My sweet Craigslist Adventure

2009-11-24T20:21:00.000-05:00

Holy crap, Craigslist is awesome! I've bought a few things from there in the past, but this was the first time I've sold stuff. Made $100 in less than 24 hours, and someone who wants to buy the washer/dryer for $550 but probably won't come and get it until Monday. Sweet! I probably should have tried for more money, because clearly there are plenty of people desperate to buy my crap, but I'm not gonna worry about it. Each piece that leaves this townhouse decreases my stress level, so I'm happy.

The POD with all our stuff was picked up yesterday, which was the biggest relief of all, as I was convinced it was going to be too heavy for the forklift. But it wasn't, and that is on the way to Vegas. So our apartment is quite bare. Still have a dining table, which I intend to put on craigslist, but not until closer to departure, because clearly once it goes up it will sell quickly, and I need somewhere for this computer!

While the focus is on getting things out, we unexpectedly just had to bring a bunch of stuff in. My brother surprised us (and himself probably) with a last minute visit. He and Tara arrive tomorrow and are staying through Thanksgiving. Of course I work four of the five days they are here, we have no couch or TV or dishes or just about anything. Luckily a friend loaned us some bedding, towels and even a shower curtain, so we've at least got the basics covered for them. (Good thing I didn't put the futon on craigslist yet!) But I'm sure we will have a great time, I've been trying to get him to visit since we moved here, and late is certainly better than never.

Had dinner with Chrisy last night, who just got back from a conference in the Yucatan where she got to pal around with Jane Goodall. Yes, THAT Jane Goodall. She had lots of great tips for us. I can't wait to go swimming in a ceynote!

If the Earth had rings like Saturn

2009-11-22T21:55:00.000-05:00

I'd never thought about it, but this is awesome.

Plane tickets to Mexico? Check.

2009-11-22T08:29:00.000-05:00

Super boring? Remembering to call and cancel Netflix and Tivo. Super fun? Buying our plane tickets to Cancun. January 13th, with a layover in Dallas, window seats the whole way. Sweet!

I was surprised to find that most flights were either a red eye with layovers of 10+ hours (who wants to do that?), or else they landed in Cancun at like 9pm. I suppose most people who fly to Cancun have their resort pre-booked so just have to get there, but as a backpacker you want to arrive early in the day so you have time to look around and find a place. We haven't ruled out pre-booking a hotel that first night, although we don't really intend on staying in Cancun. Just a few hours south is Tulum, an old Mayan ruin right on the beach, which sounds far more interesting to us.

We arrive at 3:30 in the afternoon, so we'll have a little leeway to decide what to do.

More packing

2009-11-20T13:58:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I had what, for me, comes as close to a "bad day" as it gets. Just feeling a little overwhelmed with so much to do, with a million little decisions that aren't really so important, but added together made me feel like I was on the verge of accidentally parking in front of a fire hydrant or something. Deep breath, keep packing, move on.

And packing indeed. I'm now worried that we are packing so well that the pod is going to be too heavy. So the duality of my nature is having an epic battle, with one half of me wanting to save as much as possible just in case (or just because we can), and the other side wanting to toss everything that is not required to sustain life. If someone could film the fight going on in my brain it would make one heck of a pirates vs ninjas movie. Again, I am fully aware of the futility of trying to know which dresser would be most useful or if the decorative pillow will be useful in a different apartment. Knowing me I'm gonna want to decorate everything Mayan when we get back anyhow, so maybe that answers that question. :)

We've decided to go ahead and pack the TV, three weeks before we actually move. In theory, I'm a snob that hates TV and would feel great about being one of those show-offs who brag about not owning a television. In practice, I am a reality TV junkie, and love Survivor and Amazing Race and So You Think You Can Dance and Food Challenge, not to mention Glee. It is going to be hard to give them up, especially in the middle of a season, though I suppose we can watch them all online. I had given up TV for several years in the early 90s when I was doing so much theatre, which worked out great. Maybe it is time to try it again. Except for Glee, no lofty philosophy is making me miss that piece of heaven.

David can pack like Einstein can do math

2009-11-15T14:45:00.000-05:00

We've got the pod coming on Wednesday, which we will fill and then send on to Vegas, where we will move it into storage until we get back. After a lot of debate, we decided to only get one pod instead of two (which was recommended for our 1200 square foot townhouse), sell the extra furniture and just buy new stuff once we get moved into another place. Yesterday we decided to get a head start on the packing, taped out the area of the pod on the floor and did a practice run. And thanks to David's savant-level packing ability, we realized are going to be able to bring a lot more of the furniture than we thought. The great thing about adding a dresser (or four) is that all that drawer space is great for packing dishes and things too, so two birds with one stone.

We put our first plant out on the sidewalk today, which someone snagged less than ten minutes later. We are going to lose a lot of great plants, and it is good to know they will be going to a good home. (Forget pets, my plants are my babies!) Gonna be tougher when we get to the expensive plants, our gigantor bird of paradise and the ficus tree.

Rain, rain, go away

2009-11-12T10:42:00.000-05:00

Preparations continue. Tuesday I walked 2 1/2 miles to some office to get a permit for the moving company to park a storage cube on the street for us to move the essentials to Vegas. We are going to get rid of most of our furniture, but there are always boxes of yearbooks to save. Unfortunately they have to do some visual inspection of the street to make sure there isn't a bus stop or something in front of our house (there isn't), so I have to go back again to get the actual permit. Due to the holiday yesterday, it may or may not be ready this afternoon. However, it is raining cats and dogs out there, and another 5 mile round trip walk in the rain does not sound very appealing. (I don't drive in the city, parking is awful.) I guess I'll have to take the metro part way. I'm weird like that, the metro doesn't make a straight line to where I'm going, I have to go all the way into the city, transfer to a new train and then head back out again, which isn't hard but just annoys me to have to, map wise, go so far out of the way just to circle back. In the end I'd rather just walk, which I guess is partly what makes me constitutionally inclined to be a backpacker. Thank you New York for bringing that out in me!

Tuesday night our friend Morgan who was in "La Boheme" with us called, he has been living in Switzerland but was in DC for an audition. He had just a little time to spare before his train back to NY, so we walked another 4 1/2 miles to see him and give him a brief run around the Capitol Building. (I never get tired of seeing people see it for the first time, it is always such a thrill.) We had a great time catching up, we are so lucky to know such awesome people that are scattered across the world, and maybe we don't get to see them very often, but when we do we have such a great time. Ditto to the time we got to spend with Jun, my best friend from high school who stayed with us for a few days this weekend. We have great friends!

I can tangent like no one, eh? My point being that I ended up walking almost ten miles that day, and while my legs and body had no problem, my feet were a little sore at the end of the day. Gotta start building up my callouses again to prepare for hiking up all those Mayan temples. So rain, please stop so I can start walking again every day.

Travel health

2009-11-07T01:34:00.000-05:00

Our preparations continue. Next up we need to find a place to get a Thyphoid immunization. I had one for my Asia trip, and I was hoping it would still be good but after looking it up it turns out it is only good for about two years. Luckily we've both had our hepatitis shots for work, because those ones are expensive. The last decision concerns the malaria prophylaxis medications. When I went to Asia I decided not to take anything, partly because I'd heard about all the side effects, and partly because I was there for so long the risk/benefit/expense didn't seem worth it. I'm lucky that mosquitos don't particularly like me for some reason, which also helps. We haven't decided for sure yet, but I think we are going to forego any meds this time as well. Which just means we have to be extra careful to not get bit, so we'll be bringing along the DEET and wearing long pants and shirts at night.

Otherwise there isn't too much else to worry about health-wise. We'll probably go to the dentist for a last check-up just to be safe, and I'm going to order some extra contacts to take with me. There are several companies that do travel health insurance, that will fly you back to the US if anything particularly bad happens to you, and we will definitely take out a policy, they actually aren't that expensive. (Which tells you that most people never make any claims, because traveling is as safe as anything else!)

Packing

2009-11-05T10:11:00.000-05:00

One thing I learned trying to sell yourself as an actor, is that it is all about spin. So while I could just say I leave things until the last minute because I'm a lazy procrastinator, instead I'm gonna go with something about the glory of spontaneity, or of the importance of living life in the moment. I suppose the reality is somewhere in between. But our plans continue to shift ever so slightly, a few days here, a few days there. As actors we could never plan ahead for anything, and even though it should be easier now, we've just never developed those skills.

By lucky accident, our procrastination saved us almost $150 though. For the move we decide to go with one of those pods you pack up, and then the moving company moves it for you, and somehow our last-minute reservation ended up being cheaper than the quote we got a few weeks ago. Thank you angels! We've been going back and forth trying to decide how much stuff we want to save. I've been at war with STUFF ever since my first back-packing trip, which has been a very rewarding change for this former pack-rat. Once you live out of a pack for a year, you realize how little you really need to get by, and how all the excess crap we collect just drains your energy. However, we did buy a bunch of furniture here, and weren't sure whether it was better to move it, store it and use it again, or just sell it all on craigslist and buy new (or used) again when we finally get to California.

Math to the rescue again! We think we will be able to keep our leather couch (by turning it on end in the pod, I hope it survives shipping like that), and possibly a dresser. Not even counting any money we might make selling the rest, we'll save about $1400 by dumping it now, which to me seems enough to buy new stuff once we settle again. Plus just that much less hassle and worry, and I'm always a big fan of reducing hassle and worry.

We are also getting rid of all our CDs and LPs and lots of books. I'm fine keeping photos (we have a lot of those) and stuff like yearbooks, but lots of stuff is just taking up space. We've been reducing our CD collection for a few years now, and finally have it down to about 600 (from a high of 1400). We are going to donate most of it to a theatre company here in DC, which we feel pretty good about. I suppose we could sell it somewhere, which if we were uber-thrifty would be nice. But time is limited, and I just don't have the energy to go down that road. I'm all about saving money and being cheap, but sometimes it just feels good to make a donation that you know will be appreciated.

Question: should I save things just because they are autographed? I have a CD for "Three Wished For Jamie" (if you've heard of it, then you are a nerd!) that is autographed by Charlotte Rae. I love me some Mrs. Garrett, but I can't decide how long I need to carry this around with me. Ditto "Rags" and Marcia Lewis. Even worse is an LP of "Little Mary Sunshine" autographed by Elmarie Wendell, whom I worked with years ago in a production of "Gigi". She is a neat lady, but packing a single LP isn't easy! What would you do?

Best Halloween Costume

2009-10-31T08:47:00.000-04:00

Yes, he goes there, keep watching.

I mean, who can compete with that?

Guide books

2009-10-27T18:53:00.000-04:00

This kind of a trip is exactly the kind of thing that is going to keep my typing like mad on this blog, so come back every so often if you're interested in how things progress. We have a lot of planning to do of course, from packing lists to itineraries to figuring out what stuff to keep and where to keep it while we are gone and how we are going to do our taxes from Honduras and so on. (Since I am a money nerd, I just spent an hour calculating the difference between storing our stuff in DC compared to storing it in Vegas or just selling all the furniture on Craigslist, and still haven't made a decision.) And heck, this is me and David we are talking about here, so it is always possible that one of the jobs I applied for already is going to call and make an offer I can't refuse which could completely change our plans around again. But hey, it is all part of the ride with us. We might change our minds a lot, but we tend to go full steam ahead with whichever plan we're working on at the time. Sucking the marrow and all that.

Anyway, on Sunday when we made the decision, we got on Amazon and ordered the Lonely Planet Guide to the Yucatan, and The Rough Guide's Central America On A Budget. (We had a huge sack of coins, and at the Coinstar machine if you get your money back as a gift certificate, you don't have to pay the 9% fee. So hello $160 Amazon gift card, which since change is virtually useless by itself was practically free!) To my surprise they just arrived, so Amazon is on my happy list for promptness. Fun reading in store!