In a further lurch to the left for the region we call 'Latin America,' El Salvador elected a leftist president, Mauricio Funes, for the first time in its history. The election was close, with Fuenes' Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) party capturing just over 51% of the vote, with 90% of ballots counted. The election results also make sense, seeing as how El Salvedor has one of the most unequal societies on the planet when it comes to wealth distribution - in the top 10 when comparing richest 10%/poorest 10%, and in the top 15 when using the Gini measurement of inequality. For those of you who don't know, El Salvador, like many Central American countries, has had guerilla uprisings throughout its modern history to protest unjust distribution of wealth. And like many Central American countries, El Salvador has suffered at the hands of US-backed military governments and death squads, most recently in a 12-year civil war (1980-1992. A coincidence this coincides with the Regan/Bush presidencies?). Go USA. Likewise, the take-away lesson from today is that we should stop hating Muslims, because we're probably going to be fucking ashamed of it 20 years from now, just like I'm ashamed now of my country's involvement in this region.
Words from the new president:
"Now we need a government like the one envisioned by [Archbishop of El Salvador] Óscar Arnulfo Romero, who, in his prophetic message, said that the church should have a preferential option for the poor. Paraphrasing Monseñor Romero, I would say that this government should have a preferential option for the poor, for those who need a robust government to get ahead and to be able to compete in this world of disequilibrium under fair conditions."
"Our history--what happened in 1932, the poverty of the '70s that caused the armed conflict in the '80s and the state in which many in the countryside like Izalco still find themselves today--these can be explained fundamentally by the unjust distribution of wealth, the use of the government to support the process of concentrating wealth."
I saw a starving teenager walking by my hostel today, with sharp ribs, bony arms, and a stomach that was becoming distended. He didn't LOOK unhappy, just hot, but then, it's hot here... it's rare to see this sort of thing in more urban areas. It might be the first time I've seen that, actually.
Haven't been back in the water since my sickness/rash. Kind of bummed out and lonely at my hostel, where I'm still the only guest. I stay because I like everything except the fact that I'm the only one there, but something might have to give soon. The frat house next door hasn't been an option; I was hanging out with some Canadians down the street that left today; met some folks with a house on the beach that I might be able to get into Sunday or Monday. Made a fool out of myself while drunk last night, because for some reason my brain has a hard time recognizing faces. It's a recurring issue, and seems to happen with women more than men (no, I'm not getting into details). In my cognitive science class we learned about how facial recognition is one of the most complex operations our brains perform, and that it can't be replicated by a computer (I think that's starting to change now, but it's tough), and we only can 'store' a few thousand facial patterns, which is why we think we recognize strangers sometimes, because our brains are full and trying to mash the new pattern into an existing one. This all makes me feel... not at all better about my weird handycap. Can I, like, get money from this somehow?
USA vs. El Salvador, football, tonight in San Salvador. A guy who runs a hostel near mine runs a free shuttle to watch the game, just because he wants people too. Going to try and get a seat, most everyone seems to be going.
Spell check continues to not work, I think it's this PC, the same one as before. So you can all continue to slag off about my spelling :-D
Saturday, March 28, 2009
Thursday, March 26, 2009
A Day Off
I took a day off from surf today, I swallowed a bunch of seawater my second time out yesterday and got really sick. I think there's sewage in the water, the same stuff that probably gave me this might-be-staph infection on my side (trapped between my body and my rashguard, I'd be right pissed too if I was staph floating in the ocean). Also got tagged by a jelly on my left ankle while paddling. On a brighter note, I saw a huge sea turtle surface to eat a jelly day before yesterday. Also, I almost got run over by 6 cows hurrying down the path to the beach, when they got there they peed a bunch and then drank the seawater. That was bright because it was funny and weird.
It's mid-day, I'm in town using the internet and going to go grocery shopping. I cruised out to El Zonte earlier, there's a mean right-hand point with a rock bottom (like 99% of the breaks in this country), but the waves looked pretty strong and if you straighten out you'll hit rocks real quick... I'll probably stick to Sunzal since I can't surf worth a crap. It's fun paddling around and getting tossed about though, and occasionally riding a face for a few seconds. Zonte was cool, way more going on there than I expected, I checked out a few hostels/hotels (often the difference is the name, although hotels around here tend to be clench-but assholes about stuff, like 'no outside food or drink'). I met a girl from Montreal whose boyfriend owned one place, really nice, right on the beach. Maybe I can do that. How sick would that be?
I'm thinking about leaving my place because there's no one there, it's lonely. I went next door yesterday to the hostel that has some people, to trade books, and it was super bru-d out, a bunch of Socal guys that seemed misogynistic and had a troubling number of pop Christian books on the shelf. So I probably won't be heading back anytime soon. There was a German girl staying at my place for a couple nights, she left though, so it's just me again. A bummer since there were 6 others when I moved in. I found this super sick house to rent in La Libertad (have I mentioned that?); I met a Canadian couple in Antigua who had rented it. But I need at least one other to rent it, four would be ideal. $5 each a night, a few minutes to catch the bus to the other beaches, a few minutes down to the pier for fresh seafood, a pool, a garden, a grill, awesome views of the ocean and plenty of cool sea breeze... it would be so rad, there's even a couple of surf boards to use. It's *almost* worth renting on my own if I could talk them down, I mean I spend $12 a day on room/(surf) board right now, but really I need some peeps to rent it with me to be fun. Ran into that Aussie Andrew from Flores on the water the other day, he said he might be interested next week but is staying in San Salvador for now. Put a post on Travbuddy and couchsurfer, got some response, maybe something will shake out next week.
Why do the truck drivers put several large fake Mercedes symbols on their truck grills? Don't they realize that having 6 of them actually makes me LESS likely to think they're actually driving a Mercedes?
p.s. Blogger spell check isn't working right now. So slag off.
It's mid-day, I'm in town using the internet and going to go grocery shopping. I cruised out to El Zonte earlier, there's a mean right-hand point with a rock bottom (like 99% of the breaks in this country), but the waves looked pretty strong and if you straighten out you'll hit rocks real quick... I'll probably stick to Sunzal since I can't surf worth a crap. It's fun paddling around and getting tossed about though, and occasionally riding a face for a few seconds. Zonte was cool, way more going on there than I expected, I checked out a few hostels/hotels (often the difference is the name, although hotels around here tend to be clench-but assholes about stuff, like 'no outside food or drink'). I met a girl from Montreal whose boyfriend owned one place, really nice, right on the beach. Maybe I can do that. How sick would that be?
I'm thinking about leaving my place because there's no one there, it's lonely. I went next door yesterday to the hostel that has some people, to trade books, and it was super bru-d out, a bunch of Socal guys that seemed misogynistic and had a troubling number of pop Christian books on the shelf. So I probably won't be heading back anytime soon. There was a German girl staying at my place for a couple nights, she left though, so it's just me again. A bummer since there were 6 others when I moved in. I found this super sick house to rent in La Libertad (have I mentioned that?); I met a Canadian couple in Antigua who had rented it. But I need at least one other to rent it, four would be ideal. $5 each a night, a few minutes to catch the bus to the other beaches, a few minutes down to the pier for fresh seafood, a pool, a garden, a grill, awesome views of the ocean and plenty of cool sea breeze... it would be so rad, there's even a couple of surf boards to use. It's *almost* worth renting on my own if I could talk them down, I mean I spend $12 a day on room/(surf) board right now, but really I need some peeps to rent it with me to be fun. Ran into that Aussie Andrew from Flores on the water the other day, he said he might be interested next week but is staying in San Salvador for now. Put a post on Travbuddy and couchsurfer, got some response, maybe something will shake out next week.
Why do the truck drivers put several large fake Mercedes symbols on their truck grills? Don't they realize that having 6 of them actually makes me LESS likely to think they're actually driving a Mercedes?
p.s. Blogger spell check isn't working right now. So slag off.
Monday, March 23, 2009
The Surf Part, scene 2
Just an update. Salvador is nice. Mangos are yummy, and every time I turn around my family is trying to give me more (they're so nice!). Each morning, they get up and rake the mangos into piles and feed them to the cows next door, or they attract birds I guess. It's crazy. The seafood is good here too, I bought boca colorado (literally 'red mouth,' but it's red snapper to us) yesterday and made fish tacos. There's good street food here, and I love street food. I talked about already, corn flour patties with stuff insided and cabbage/hot sauce on top, but there's also pupusastortas, a long bun with avocado, grilled meat, pickled cabbage, mayo, mustard, hot sace, all put together and then grilled again (pretty tasty, and only a buck!). Minutas are good too, shave ice with fruit syrup soaked in, with this super slow, tasty honey globbed on top. Great for the mid-day heat (it's pushing 95 during the day here. Ice is a welcome snack).
I'm getting to use my Spanish here with all the friendly locals, although their accents are harder to understand than in Guatemala. But yes, they are friendly, and a lot of them speak a little English and like to practice: a guy on a bike wearing a shirt decorated in a thousand little American flags rode by me while I was waiting for the bus the other day, waiting until the last second to yell, 'how are you?' in that self-conscious, just-learning-a-language kind of way. The guy at the post office chatted with me, earnestly, while he patiently figured out how to fit five giant stamps on each of my nine postcards. I found a beach house to rent from this couple who had lived in L.A. for 30 years; the woman held my arm constantly and treated me like her grandson. Although I hear stories of some real assholes, maybe Salvadorians operate in a land of extremes.
That's right, I found a beach house to rent, or actually it's on a hill a few minutes from the beach, great views of the ocean, mango trees, a small pool, barbecue... it's pretty complete, and is only $20 a night. I just need some people to fill it. An Australian guy I met in Flores will be here today or tomorrow, but he's got four friends, making six of us altogether, and the woman was balking about five. Maybe we'll still do it, and have some of us stay someplace else. It would be SICK to have a house like this, to barbecue seafood after surfing (did I mention that snapper was $3/pound, and that fresh lobster is only $4/pound?). Speaking of seafood, locals go fishing with a spear gun and an inner tube. They float out on the tube, dive with the gun, and shoot what they can get. Kinda cool.
The buses here are way, way bigger than in Guatemala; Guatemala apparently got all the little old buses and Salvador got all the newer, longer ones. They're slower though, hence 10 hours to go 75 miles.
Surfing is going OK, I cut my foot pretty good on the rocky bottom yesterday, but I put iodine on it and I think it's OK. I went out just after sunrise today, although when the waves started finally getting good more than two hours later, I was exhausted and had to come in. I'm going back out this afternoon, there're fewer people then anyways. There can be 50 people on the Sunzal break in the morning, way too many people for so few waves. And you can tell who's good, because they're the ones surfing while the rest of us watch. Still working on the short board bit, although I was watching people today and I really admire the slow grace of the long board, and might switch back. The big disadvantage to the long board is that it can be hard to paddle out if you have to go through the break, but it's not a big deal on the points they have around here.
I'm getting to use my Spanish here with all the friendly locals, although their accents are harder to understand than in Guatemala. But yes, they are friendly, and a lot of them speak a little English and like to practice: a guy on a bike wearing a shirt decorated in a thousand little American flags rode by me while I was waiting for the bus the other day, waiting until the last second to yell, 'how are you?' in that self-conscious, just-learning-a-language kind of way. The guy at the post office chatted with me, earnestly, while he patiently figured out how to fit five giant stamps on each of my nine postcards. I found a beach house to rent from this couple who had lived in L.A. for 30 years; the woman held my arm constantly and treated me like her grandson. Although I hear stories of some real assholes, maybe Salvadorians operate in a land of extremes.
That's right, I found a beach house to rent, or actually it's on a hill a few minutes from the beach, great views of the ocean, mango trees, a small pool, barbecue... it's pretty complete, and is only $20 a night. I just need some people to fill it. An Australian guy I met in Flores will be here today or tomorrow, but he's got four friends, making six of us altogether, and the woman was balking about five. Maybe we'll still do it, and have some of us stay someplace else. It would be SICK to have a house like this, to barbecue seafood after surfing (did I mention that snapper was $3/pound, and that fresh lobster is only $4/pound?). Speaking of seafood, locals go fishing with a spear gun and an inner tube. They float out on the tube, dive with the gun, and shoot what they can get. Kinda cool.
The buses here are way, way bigger than in Guatemala; Guatemala apparently got all the little old buses and Salvador got all the newer, longer ones. They're slower though, hence 10 hours to go 75 miles.
Surfing is going OK, I cut my foot pretty good on the rocky bottom yesterday, but I put iodine on it and I think it's OK. I went out just after sunrise today, although when the waves started finally getting good more than two hours later, I was exhausted and had to come in. I'm going back out this afternoon, there're fewer people then anyways. There can be 50 people on the Sunzal break in the morning, way too many people for so few waves. And you can tell who's good, because they're the ones surfing while the rest of us watch. Still working on the short board bit, although I was watching people today and I really admire the slow grace of the long board, and might switch back. The big disadvantage to the long board is that it can be hard to paddle out if you have to go through the break, but it's not a big deal on the points they have around here.
Thursday, March 19, 2009
The Surf Part, scene 1
So I finally made it to Sipacate, Guatemala, for the surf part of this adventure. On the way in, I was gawked at on the bus. I don't think they get too many gringos down this way. And then a guy sat next to me who wanted to tell me about how he snuck into the United States to work, but got caught by INS and sent back to Guatemala City, where he held people up at gunpoint to buy food for a while. But then he found God, and his eyes opened, and he insisted on giving me his number and really wanted me to call him on Wednesday to come over for dinner, at his house in the middle of the country a couple hours from Sipacate. He stank of booze.
From Sipacate, it's a short tuk-tuk ride to the public 'pier' (a spot on the river where small boats leave), and then a short ride through the mangroves to El Paredon, where the actual surf camp is. Walking through town, everyone knew exactly where I was going. Paredon probably only has a couple hundred people in it, sandy roads, no hotels or markets or central parks, just folks mending their fishing nets, a football pitch, and a surprising number of tiendas (7 or so, the town was surprisingly well supplied and inexpensive for being so remote). There wasn't much in the way of telephone service, and certainly no internet. Everyone knew exactly where I was going and were happy to point me on my way before I could even open my mouth. There's only one reason for a gringo to come to Paredon, and only one place to stay, and that was the surf camp.
When I found the camp, there was a kid maybe 18 or 19 (Carlos) sleeping in a hammock, some bamboo huts, and an unspoiled black-sand beach, overlooked by a set of four hammocks roofed with thatch. Carlos found me a room, explained how to mark down what I purchased so I could pay at checkout, and then kind of disappeared. I was all alone at the camp, the only current visitor. A fear of loneliness set in. It actually wasn't a fear of the actual loneliness, as much as a fear that I would be lonely, which would make the whole thing way less fun, and I had been so excited for it. Which kind of turned out to be what happened.
Seeing as how Carlos didn't even turn on the fridge for me, so I couldn't even wait for the beer to cool down, I went into town to see what was what, and see what I could get for food. I was hoping to prepare most of my own meals to keep costs down, and was looking for cans of fish (good protein, surfers need protein) and bread (I bought a Costco-sized peanut butter jar in Antigua, as well as some really tasty, not-too-sweet blackberry jelly, but I needed bread, which is usually around. Pan frances they call it, it's pretty mas o menos. There's also pan dulce, which just means any bread with sugar in it, always different, sometimes it's more like a cookie). What appeared to be the local camp dog followed me, which seemed to bad for him since the other dogs in town turned out to be super territorial, and the camp dog got beat up several times, although a vicious bout of sneezing on all sides usually broke it up. In town there were the tiendas and a couple comedors (little eateries). There were also a lot of prepubescent girls cat-calling me, saying stuff like 'hey handsome' or 'do you have a girlfriend?' and then laughing really hard. It was... weird. Generally all the kids were super nice, they all wanted to run out and say hello, and then run away. Everyone seemed very friendly, in that pre-contact way, before they realize that white people are really just all a bunch of cheap rich assholes that want to buy the place out and build a Coors beer-themed hotel over the homes of the locals.
Let's see, what else was around town... a kid in a truck holding a large iguana by the neck. A tortugario, or turtle sanctuary, that looked like it had been built and then abandoned. Several really nice looking houses on the beach, I'm guessing vacation homes since they didn't look to be currently occupied. Once night fell, I was in my bunk, trying to read by the pitiful single bulb dangling from the roof. Then, around 7, the evangelical service next door started. This turned out to be a nightly event, not just next door but at several evangelical churches in town, usually large in area but usually with only 5 or 6 people inside. I don't know what the deal is with evangelicals in Guatemala, but it seems to be a growing, fanatical faction. This particular service featured a woman wailing for an hour and a half, sounding on the verge of tears, and clapping and general shouting from the 'crowd.' Have you ever seen the movie 'I Heart Huckabees?' Remember when Mark Wahlburg's character talks to the old Sicilian woman, who wails about the famine in her village? That's more or less what the woman in this church sounded like, only with more tears in her eyes. It was awful.
The camp is alive at night, although not with people. A huge sow and her piglets mill about, looking for food, and the dog chases them, when he gets bored. Huge toads, bigger than my fist, come out. Geckos take in the cool moisture of the toilet bowl. Around 3am, the pigs decided to look for food in my cabin, and I woke up and turned on my headlamp to catch a pale white piglet ass making out the door with a bag of grub. It was the snack bag from the bus, all my cookies and crackers. Fortunately, my Reese's cups package remained unbroken (I was SAVING those, stupid pigs!).
Fortunately, a group of four Americans arrived the next day. I saw them in the morning on the beach, where I was running while waiting for Carlos to show up (he said he would open up the kitchen at 5am so I could get in and make breakfast. He woke up around 8:30, so I ate sandwiches for breakfast instead of cereal, and then went for a run). Lucky for them, since they had overshot the camp and were hand-carrying their rolling suitcases down the beach. They were Steve, his sister Kristen, Courtney, and Coral. Steve had been in the country for a while, in fact we were both in Xela at the same time without ever meeting; the other three were down just for a week or so, with a couple days in Sipacate to surf and chill on the beach. So that was rad, I had some surfing buddies, we shared boards and hung out, and Steve got attacked by a crab in the outdoor shower. Like a crab so big we should have thrown it in a pot of boiling water and eaten it. I guess his pinch wasn't so strong though, the whole thing was funny and amazing more than anything else. Steve was also good at finding large spiders under the beds.
It was also good to have those guys around since they were taking lessons, which meant we had access to the fun boards (I was told the fun boards - these are boards over 8 feet with round noses - were only for use during lessons). But I'd never ridden a short board before, so was trying to learn to balance and duck-dive through oncoming waves and stuff. The surf was good, but tough, the rip usually wasn't bad but sometimes it was vicious strong, the waves were too big for me in the morning at high tide, so I stuck to the late morning and afternoon. I'd never ridden a beach break either, which was hard because the waves don't break as consistently as a point break, so you have to paddle out through them, which can be difficult. I never did catch a wave on my short board, although I was getting close by the end of the second day. When I got frustrated I would take the fun boards out, which are a lot more forgiving and can catch smaller waves. The downside is they can't duck-dive through the breakers so good, so paddling out can be tough. It was super fun though, surfing is great because no mater where you do it, you can guarantee you're in a beautiful spot. One of my favorite parts of surfing is sitting past the breakers, watching waves roll in, and just sort of connecting with the place, whether it's a black sand beach in Guatemala or a cove on the Oregon coast. It's the opposite of snowboarding, where people have taken a mountain, cut paths through the trees, and built a ski lift, and basically bent nature to the task. In surfing, you just have your board and your own strength, and you have to figure out how nature works to do what you want to do. There's no manipulating the waves, your only bet is to understand them. But since things are being done on something else's terms, there's not as much rush, not the push to get as many runs as possible, or anything like that, not for me at least. It's peaceful.
I decided to leave Sipacate after just two days. It was kind of expensive, and while it was nice, I just wasn't digging it enough to risk staying, and thus losing time in another place I might really love. A German guy came along (I've met a lot of Germans on this trip, unlike my other trips abroad, strange), and three girls had shown up the second day, so I wouldn't have been alone, but I wasn't digging the German guy, and the girls seemed incredibly boring, even though one of them was breathtakingly beautiful (she was from Utah, there seems to be a lot of breathtaking girls in Utah, what gives? We seemed really different, not surprisingly, since my being left-of-center would make me the most liberal person in Utah. She talked a lot about hating the government, I didn't mention my work on the Obama campaign, seeing as how I have an interview to be a diplomat when I get home).
I took the launcha back with the American folks, and then we caught the slowest chicken bus ever, which eventually broke down after more than three hours. We weren't even in Escuintla, which should have taken two hours (we needed to change buses in Escuintla, me for the border and them for Antigua). The girls in the group, having only a few days of vacation, were fed up and hired a taxi to Antigua. They were nice enough to wedge me in the back and drop me in Escuintla. But by now, I wasn't sure when I would get to the border. I was guessing 4:30, but I wasn't even sure if immigration would be open, sometimes it closes early. Also, I had over $100 in Quetzales to change, since I had taken a weeks worth of cash to Sipacate, and borders usually offer poor rates. Looking in my circa 2006 Lonely Planet, I found that the hostels in the Guatemalan border town are 'not recommended' but instead I should try the 'friendly cowboy town' of Chiquimulilla, about 45 minutes away from the border. There was even a friendly, family-run hotel I could stay at. Unfortunately, that hotel no longer exists; in fact, there are no hotels in Chiquimulilla. There are two pensiones, local guest houses geared towards short-term stays and not at all towards tourists. The first was full, so I didn't have much of an option but to stay in the second, where I slept in what was easily one of the worst rooms I've ever been in. Now I've stayed in some real shit-holes, both in Bolivia and SE Asia, but this one was pretty damn shitty: a long row of concrete-block coffins, with ratty, filthy-looking mattresses barely covered by a single, threadbare sheet, a bare lightbulb dangling from the ceiling. No ventilation, no windows, but the room was only covered by a sheet of corrugated metal, leaving several inches at the top for mosquitoes and whatever else to come in, which explained the numerous spiderwebs, some filled with small leaves (I think even calling the room 'indoors' would be a stretch, ironic giving the stifling feeling inside). The large metal portal into the room didn't have a key, but instead had a lever inside to allow access, to get to the lever you had to reach your hand through the small window on the door. The bathrooms had some frightening-looking wiring going on with the electric shower heads, which didn't function, although that was probably better - it was sticky and hot out anyways, and if I die from poor wiring in a shitty motel, I'll be right pissed off. The toilets had no seats, the whole bath area had no lights and was pitch dark, and I would pee outside at night. A small consolation is that the owners live in one of the rooms, and so put up with the same stuff. The old man would cough and groan every 20 minutes or so, eventually cough up a lump of flem which he would hock from the back of his throat, then go outside for a cigarette. I could hear all this because the rooms were more or less connected, for purposes of sound travel. In fact, the owners liked to watch TV loudly and until late at night, and then switch the radio on early in the morning.
The woman first showed me a room identical to the one I wound up staying in, which she said was Q50 (about $6.25) for the night. This is a real shit deal by local standards; in Antigua, a very touristy and relatively expensive town, I paid Q50 for one of the nicest dorm beds I've seen, a comfortingly clean and accessible bathroom, and a breakfast buffet in the morning. I made to leave, hoping to find another place, and she showed me the second room, only Q25 (about $3), the only difference to my eye being that this room lacked the moldy armchair of the first. I think it was still a rip-off, but I wasn't even sure if there was another place to see, so I said OK and rolled out my silk sleeping sheet that is supposed to keep out bedbugs.
At least it really was a 'friendly cowboy town.' Actually, maybe not 'cowboy,' but people were really nice, wanting to stop and talk to me in the street and be helpful. I wouldn't say you should break your back to get to Chiquimulilla, but if you find yourself there, it isn't so bad, outside of the accommodation. I didn't really get that good of a rate on my quetzales, although I figured I would be able to get an early start and arrive early in La Libertad, which I was worried about because I was arriving on a Friday, and my (shitty, shitty) Fodors Central America said La Libertad accommodation often fills up on the weekends.
So I got up at six, and started making my way to La Libertad. There was some confusion on my part at the border, since the Salvadorian officer just looked at my passport without stamping it. I thought at first it would get stamped farther in, but then it became apparent that I was already inside the country. So I went back, and it was explained to me that I have 90 days for the region of Guatemala, Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua, with no separate stamping. I'm still not sure why I have a Guatemalan exit stamp, but I guess I'll just run with it.
The Salvadorian side has a small town too, which was... identical to Guatemala. At first blush, at least. After a short time I began teasing out differences: no tortillas evident, more papusas (corn patties filled with stuff and heated on a grill, topped with a cabbage salad and hot sauce, delicious); the people are more mestizo looking, the buses appear to be run by actual companies with set tariffs, versus the lasaiz-faire free-for-all of Guatemalan chicken buses; instead of Mexican tuba music the Salvadorian buses play almost equally bad American e-z listening love ballads; the girls are way cuter. I noticed I was the only person on each bus with (a) white skin, (b) glasses, or (c) a beard. We passed through several tunnels, all sponsored by Claro, a cell phone company, which I found ironic since the inside of a tunnel is the last place you're going to get cell service. Salvador smells good, once I got on the bus and we started moving through the country. Most developing countries smell like shit; cow shit, chicken shit, pig shit, burning piles of trash in the street, animals decomposing in the gutters. Salvador smelled like jasmine and wild rose and fresh-cut wood.
The people are friendly, but not necessarily helpful. I kept getting shuffled onto buses, being assured they went where I wanted to go; 3 buses, lots of doubling back, and 10 hours later (this was for a 75 mile journey, and included 2.5 hours waiting on the side of the road in God knows where; at least they sold tasty tortas where I was waiting, sweating in the heat: a long bun with avocado, grilled meat and onions, mayo, ketchup, cabbage and hot sauce, all grilled again once on the bun, only $1 and pretty damn tasty) I finally arrived in El Sanzul, 15 minutes outside La Libertad. I decided to skip the city, figuring stuff might be getting full, and not wanting to negotiate a strange city known for being grubby and gross, late in the day with all my stuff, all sweaty and sticky and tired (at least the buses had enough air moving through them to be pleasant, and the views of the ocean and the private seaside mansions were nice. The whole place feels very Socal). Small towns are easy to negotiate. I looked at a couple places clustered on the road, and wound up at 'Surfer's Camp,' run by the most friendly family ever. The dad is Antonio, his family has a tienda at the front of the property that sells beer and papusas; the property is a former mango plantation and the mangoes are just beginning to fall, four kinds in all, coco (big, like a coconut), manzana (small and round, like an apple, which is what manzana means), platano (long, like a plantain), and indio (I don't know what to say about these ones, except that they taste good). So if I want a mango, I can walk outside and pick one up. There's a kitchen to use, and worn but serviceable surf boards to rent for just $6 a day. My room is nothing special, but is clean enough, although the bright pink walls and matching sheets are a strange aesthetic choice in my mind. It's a 3 minute walk to the Sunzal beach, with one of the most famous right-point breaks in the country. I haven't ridden it yet, but I will. A little nervous about the rocky bottom, I'm used to sand, but at least the point will be easier to navigate than the beach breaks at Sipacate.
I'm in La Libertad now, and am getting ready to go buy some of today's catch off the pier. Lobster, $4/pound; tuna steaks as big as me for $5 each; a variety of fresh shrimp and fish whose names I don't recognize (one of them is red snapper, which in Spanish is a certain... I don't know what). I think I'll be happy here.
From Sipacate, it's a short tuk-tuk ride to the public 'pier' (a spot on the river where small boats leave), and then a short ride through the mangroves to El Paredon, where the actual surf camp is. Walking through town, everyone knew exactly where I was going. Paredon probably only has a couple hundred people in it, sandy roads, no hotels or markets or central parks, just folks mending their fishing nets, a football pitch, and a surprising number of tiendas (7 or so, the town was surprisingly well supplied and inexpensive for being so remote). There wasn't much in the way of telephone service, and certainly no internet. Everyone knew exactly where I was going and were happy to point me on my way before I could even open my mouth. There's only one reason for a gringo to come to Paredon, and only one place to stay, and that was the surf camp.
When I found the camp, there was a kid maybe 18 or 19 (Carlos) sleeping in a hammock, some bamboo huts, and an unspoiled black-sand beach, overlooked by a set of four hammocks roofed with thatch. Carlos found me a room, explained how to mark down what I purchased so I could pay at checkout, and then kind of disappeared. I was all alone at the camp, the only current visitor. A fear of loneliness set in. It actually wasn't a fear of the actual loneliness, as much as a fear that I would be lonely, which would make the whole thing way less fun, and I had been so excited for it. Which kind of turned out to be what happened.
Seeing as how Carlos didn't even turn on the fridge for me, so I couldn't even wait for the beer to cool down, I went into town to see what was what, and see what I could get for food. I was hoping to prepare most of my own meals to keep costs down, and was looking for cans of fish (good protein, surfers need protein) and bread (I bought a Costco-sized peanut butter jar in Antigua, as well as some really tasty, not-too-sweet blackberry jelly, but I needed bread, which is usually around. Pan frances they call it, it's pretty mas o menos. There's also pan dulce, which just means any bread with sugar in it, always different, sometimes it's more like a cookie). What appeared to be the local camp dog followed me, which seemed to bad for him since the other dogs in town turned out to be super territorial, and the camp dog got beat up several times, although a vicious bout of sneezing on all sides usually broke it up. In town there were the tiendas and a couple comedors (little eateries). There were also a lot of prepubescent girls cat-calling me, saying stuff like 'hey handsome' or 'do you have a girlfriend?' and then laughing really hard. It was... weird. Generally all the kids were super nice, they all wanted to run out and say hello, and then run away. Everyone seemed very friendly, in that pre-contact way, before they realize that white people are really just all a bunch of cheap rich assholes that want to buy the place out and build a Coors beer-themed hotel over the homes of the locals.
Let's see, what else was around town... a kid in a truck holding a large iguana by the neck. A tortugario, or turtle sanctuary, that looked like it had been built and then abandoned. Several really nice looking houses on the beach, I'm guessing vacation homes since they didn't look to be currently occupied. Once night fell, I was in my bunk, trying to read by the pitiful single bulb dangling from the roof. Then, around 7, the evangelical service next door started. This turned out to be a nightly event, not just next door but at several evangelical churches in town, usually large in area but usually with only 5 or 6 people inside. I don't know what the deal is with evangelicals in Guatemala, but it seems to be a growing, fanatical faction. This particular service featured a woman wailing for an hour and a half, sounding on the verge of tears, and clapping and general shouting from the 'crowd.' Have you ever seen the movie 'I Heart Huckabees?' Remember when Mark Wahlburg's character talks to the old Sicilian woman, who wails about the famine in her village? That's more or less what the woman in this church sounded like, only with more tears in her eyes. It was awful.
The camp is alive at night, although not with people. A huge sow and her piglets mill about, looking for food, and the dog chases them, when he gets bored. Huge toads, bigger than my fist, come out. Geckos take in the cool moisture of the toilet bowl. Around 3am, the pigs decided to look for food in my cabin, and I woke up and turned on my headlamp to catch a pale white piglet ass making out the door with a bag of grub. It was the snack bag from the bus, all my cookies and crackers. Fortunately, my Reese's cups package remained unbroken (I was SAVING those, stupid pigs!).
Fortunately, a group of four Americans arrived the next day. I saw them in the morning on the beach, where I was running while waiting for Carlos to show up (he said he would open up the kitchen at 5am so I could get in and make breakfast. He woke up around 8:30, so I ate sandwiches for breakfast instead of cereal, and then went for a run). Lucky for them, since they had overshot the camp and were hand-carrying their rolling suitcases down the beach. They were Steve, his sister Kristen, Courtney, and Coral. Steve had been in the country for a while, in fact we were both in Xela at the same time without ever meeting; the other three were down just for a week or so, with a couple days in Sipacate to surf and chill on the beach. So that was rad, I had some surfing buddies, we shared boards and hung out, and Steve got attacked by a crab in the outdoor shower. Like a crab so big we should have thrown it in a pot of boiling water and eaten it. I guess his pinch wasn't so strong though, the whole thing was funny and amazing more than anything else. Steve was also good at finding large spiders under the beds.
It was also good to have those guys around since they were taking lessons, which meant we had access to the fun boards (I was told the fun boards - these are boards over 8 feet with round noses - were only for use during lessons). But I'd never ridden a short board before, so was trying to learn to balance and duck-dive through oncoming waves and stuff. The surf was good, but tough, the rip usually wasn't bad but sometimes it was vicious strong, the waves were too big for me in the morning at high tide, so I stuck to the late morning and afternoon. I'd never ridden a beach break either, which was hard because the waves don't break as consistently as a point break, so you have to paddle out through them, which can be difficult. I never did catch a wave on my short board, although I was getting close by the end of the second day. When I got frustrated I would take the fun boards out, which are a lot more forgiving and can catch smaller waves. The downside is they can't duck-dive through the breakers so good, so paddling out can be tough. It was super fun though, surfing is great because no mater where you do it, you can guarantee you're in a beautiful spot. One of my favorite parts of surfing is sitting past the breakers, watching waves roll in, and just sort of connecting with the place, whether it's a black sand beach in Guatemala or a cove on the Oregon coast. It's the opposite of snowboarding, where people have taken a mountain, cut paths through the trees, and built a ski lift, and basically bent nature to the task. In surfing, you just have your board and your own strength, and you have to figure out how nature works to do what you want to do. There's no manipulating the waves, your only bet is to understand them. But since things are being done on something else's terms, there's not as much rush, not the push to get as many runs as possible, or anything like that, not for me at least. It's peaceful.
I decided to leave Sipacate after just two days. It was kind of expensive, and while it was nice, I just wasn't digging it enough to risk staying, and thus losing time in another place I might really love. A German guy came along (I've met a lot of Germans on this trip, unlike my other trips abroad, strange), and three girls had shown up the second day, so I wouldn't have been alone, but I wasn't digging the German guy, and the girls seemed incredibly boring, even though one of them was breathtakingly beautiful (she was from Utah, there seems to be a lot of breathtaking girls in Utah, what gives? We seemed really different, not surprisingly, since my being left-of-center would make me the most liberal person in Utah. She talked a lot about hating the government, I didn't mention my work on the Obama campaign, seeing as how I have an interview to be a diplomat when I get home).
I took the launcha back with the American folks, and then we caught the slowest chicken bus ever, which eventually broke down after more than three hours. We weren't even in Escuintla, which should have taken two hours (we needed to change buses in Escuintla, me for the border and them for Antigua). The girls in the group, having only a few days of vacation, were fed up and hired a taxi to Antigua. They were nice enough to wedge me in the back and drop me in Escuintla. But by now, I wasn't sure when I would get to the border. I was guessing 4:30, but I wasn't even sure if immigration would be open, sometimes it closes early. Also, I had over $100 in Quetzales to change, since I had taken a weeks worth of cash to Sipacate, and borders usually offer poor rates. Looking in my circa 2006 Lonely Planet, I found that the hostels in the Guatemalan border town are 'not recommended' but instead I should try the 'friendly cowboy town' of Chiquimulilla, about 45 minutes away from the border. There was even a friendly, family-run hotel I could stay at. Unfortunately, that hotel no longer exists; in fact, there are no hotels in Chiquimulilla. There are two pensiones, local guest houses geared towards short-term stays and not at all towards tourists. The first was full, so I didn't have much of an option but to stay in the second, where I slept in what was easily one of the worst rooms I've ever been in. Now I've stayed in some real shit-holes, both in Bolivia and SE Asia, but this one was pretty damn shitty: a long row of concrete-block coffins, with ratty, filthy-looking mattresses barely covered by a single, threadbare sheet, a bare lightbulb dangling from the ceiling. No ventilation, no windows, but the room was only covered by a sheet of corrugated metal, leaving several inches at the top for mosquitoes and whatever else to come in, which explained the numerous spiderwebs, some filled with small leaves (I think even calling the room 'indoors' would be a stretch, ironic giving the stifling feeling inside). The large metal portal into the room didn't have a key, but instead had a lever inside to allow access, to get to the lever you had to reach your hand through the small window on the door. The bathrooms had some frightening-looking wiring going on with the electric shower heads, which didn't function, although that was probably better - it was sticky and hot out anyways, and if I die from poor wiring in a shitty motel, I'll be right pissed off. The toilets had no seats, the whole bath area had no lights and was pitch dark, and I would pee outside at night. A small consolation is that the owners live in one of the rooms, and so put up with the same stuff. The old man would cough and groan every 20 minutes or so, eventually cough up a lump of flem which he would hock from the back of his throat, then go outside for a cigarette. I could hear all this because the rooms were more or less connected, for purposes of sound travel. In fact, the owners liked to watch TV loudly and until late at night, and then switch the radio on early in the morning.
The woman first showed me a room identical to the one I wound up staying in, which she said was Q50 (about $6.25) for the night. This is a real shit deal by local standards; in Antigua, a very touristy and relatively expensive town, I paid Q50 for one of the nicest dorm beds I've seen, a comfortingly clean and accessible bathroom, and a breakfast buffet in the morning. I made to leave, hoping to find another place, and she showed me the second room, only Q25 (about $3), the only difference to my eye being that this room lacked the moldy armchair of the first. I think it was still a rip-off, but I wasn't even sure if there was another place to see, so I said OK and rolled out my silk sleeping sheet that is supposed to keep out bedbugs.
At least it really was a 'friendly cowboy town.' Actually, maybe not 'cowboy,' but people were really nice, wanting to stop and talk to me in the street and be helpful. I wouldn't say you should break your back to get to Chiquimulilla, but if you find yourself there, it isn't so bad, outside of the accommodation. I didn't really get that good of a rate on my quetzales, although I figured I would be able to get an early start and arrive early in La Libertad, which I was worried about because I was arriving on a Friday, and my (shitty, shitty) Fodors Central America said La Libertad accommodation often fills up on the weekends.
So I got up at six, and started making my way to La Libertad. There was some confusion on my part at the border, since the Salvadorian officer just looked at my passport without stamping it. I thought at first it would get stamped farther in, but then it became apparent that I was already inside the country. So I went back, and it was explained to me that I have 90 days for the region of Guatemala, Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua, with no separate stamping. I'm still not sure why I have a Guatemalan exit stamp, but I guess I'll just run with it.
The Salvadorian side has a small town too, which was... identical to Guatemala. At first blush, at least. After a short time I began teasing out differences: no tortillas evident, more papusas (corn patties filled with stuff and heated on a grill, topped with a cabbage salad and hot sauce, delicious); the people are more mestizo looking, the buses appear to be run by actual companies with set tariffs, versus the lasaiz-faire free-for-all of Guatemalan chicken buses; instead of Mexican tuba music the Salvadorian buses play almost equally bad American e-z listening love ballads; the girls are way cuter. I noticed I was the only person on each bus with (a) white skin, (b) glasses, or (c) a beard. We passed through several tunnels, all sponsored by Claro, a cell phone company, which I found ironic since the inside of a tunnel is the last place you're going to get cell service. Salvador smells good, once I got on the bus and we started moving through the country. Most developing countries smell like shit; cow shit, chicken shit, pig shit, burning piles of trash in the street, animals decomposing in the gutters. Salvador smelled like jasmine and wild rose and fresh-cut wood.
The people are friendly, but not necessarily helpful. I kept getting shuffled onto buses, being assured they went where I wanted to go; 3 buses, lots of doubling back, and 10 hours later (this was for a 75 mile journey, and included 2.5 hours waiting on the side of the road in God knows where; at least they sold tasty tortas where I was waiting, sweating in the heat: a long bun with avocado, grilled meat and onions, mayo, ketchup, cabbage and hot sauce, all grilled again once on the bun, only $1 and pretty damn tasty) I finally arrived in El Sanzul, 15 minutes outside La Libertad. I decided to skip the city, figuring stuff might be getting full, and not wanting to negotiate a strange city known for being grubby and gross, late in the day with all my stuff, all sweaty and sticky and tired (at least the buses had enough air moving through them to be pleasant, and the views of the ocean and the private seaside mansions were nice. The whole place feels very Socal). Small towns are easy to negotiate. I looked at a couple places clustered on the road, and wound up at 'Surfer's Camp,' run by the most friendly family ever. The dad is Antonio, his family has a tienda at the front of the property that sells beer and papusas; the property is a former mango plantation and the mangoes are just beginning to fall, four kinds in all, coco (big, like a coconut), manzana (small and round, like an apple, which is what manzana means), platano (long, like a plantain), and indio (I don't know what to say about these ones, except that they taste good). So if I want a mango, I can walk outside and pick one up. There's a kitchen to use, and worn but serviceable surf boards to rent for just $6 a day. My room is nothing special, but is clean enough, although the bright pink walls and matching sheets are a strange aesthetic choice in my mind. It's a 3 minute walk to the Sunzal beach, with one of the most famous right-point breaks in the country. I haven't ridden it yet, but I will. A little nervous about the rocky bottom, I'm used to sand, but at least the point will be easier to navigate than the beach breaks at Sipacate.
I'm in La Libertad now, and am getting ready to go buy some of today's catch off the pier. Lobster, $4/pound; tuna steaks as big as me for $5 each; a variety of fresh shrimp and fish whose names I don't recognize (one of them is red snapper, which in Spanish is a certain... I don't know what). I think I'll be happy here.
Saturday, March 14, 2009
On the Gringo Trail
Man, super tired and irritable right now. Just got into Angituga after almost 11 hours of travel from Flores. First my hostel had booked my ticket for the wrong day, so I had to get in an argument about whether or not I should have to buy another ticket. Apparently they were 'looking all over for me' the night before, when I was in my bed, sleeping, since I had to get up at 4:00am to see the Tikal ruins; I would have thought my room would have been a good first place to look for me if there was some sort of question. By the way it would have been cheaper to go out to the public terminal and book a seat and figure out the shuttle to Antigua once in Guatemala City, but the kicker is Guatemala City - no central station, so you arrive at the terminal for the specific bus company, probably have to transfer, probably have to deal with getting robbed either by the taxi driver or on the bus (apparently the Red Buses in Guat are a no-go zone for gringos; there are 3 types of city buses in Guat, some safer than others). So I paid the extra money for the 'convenience.' So we get on the bus, and the A/C is on, which kind of makes sense since it's muggy out, but it stays on and soon I'm shivering and can't sleep. So I ask if it can be turned down (meanwhile all the Guatemalans are wrapped in thick wool blankets, andthen there's me, in shorts and a hoodie); they turn it off and I fall asleep but I wake up again at some point, shivering again with the A/C at full blast again. We're in the mountains by now, it's maybe 3am, and there should be heat on, not A/C. So I ask again if the A/C can be turned down and the driver tries to tell me how hot it is inside the bus, and we go through all this rigmarole, and I mumble 'casaca' ('bullshit', that's right, I can curse in Guatemala, it comes in handy sometimes, like when my hostel wants me to buy a second bus ticket), and I really want to sleep, but the driver blows me off. A bit later the other guy (who works the bags and stuff) says he'll turn it down, which he does and I fall asleep, but wake up just before arrival in Guat with the fucking A/C on again, shivering in my boots. So we arrive in the city and our shuttle is supposed to be waiting for us, but instead we wait for it for an hour, and instead of getting 'door-to-door service' to a hotel of our choice, we wind up at the ticket office/hotel of the company operating the shuttle. Just all super annoying, and adding no sleep to it makes everything and everyone harder to deal with, especially me. This A/C crap has happened in a lot of countries, I don't know if locals figure, "I'm paying for it, so it better be on full blast!" or what, but obviously everyone else knows it's chilly if they bring a sack full of blankets on the bus with them.
OK, so where have I been? I spent the weekend in San Pedro after leaving Xela, went with Ed and Scott (the rugby boys), this girl Michelle from Alleen's Spanish school, and her friends Jackie and Aaron. We took the top floor of a hotel off the main drag, had all three rooms and the balcony. Killer views.
San Pedro is fine for the weekend if you have some cool peeps to go with, but a weekend was all I needed. The bus drops you up the hill, in the Guatemalan part, and then you walk down to the gringo part, which is so fucking universal that at this moment thinking about it makes me want to vomit in my mouth cause I'm all grumpy and sleep deprived: bars/restaurants/discos, all nicer and I dunno, trendier and themed more than anything in the real town above, lots of random folk on the street selling junky crystal necklaces, or in Xela overpriced banana bread was popular. Gringos going out and getting wasted to the point where they won't notice the bedbugs in their $2 dorm room. It was a party town, pretty pure and simple. Met people who said, "watch out, you'll come for the weekend and end up staying." One guy told me that, he's from the UK and been there five years. But he only has one leg, so where's he gonna go? Whatev, not my thing. I didn't bother with other places on the lake, I'd seen it, and my travel philosophy is stay a weekend or a month, but try not to fall inbetween, or it's just days wasted. See the shit, snap the picture, and move on, or actually stay long enough to make some friends and learn about a place, and I felt I'd learned most of what there was to learn about San Pedro after a weekend. I can party and get laid anyplace, what's special about San Pedro? Besides, my friends had to go back to Xela on Sunday, and I would have been all alone... The other towns on the lake are pretty touristy too, either in the traditional sense or, in the case of San Marcos, the metaphysical one. In SM you can stay in a pyramid hut and learn about lucid dreaming and crystal healing and do yoga and meditate, and it's all super fucking expensive, which chafes me in the worst way. I actually saw an ad for vipassana meditation in Mexico City, run by a global organization, free, financed by practitioners around the world who want others to be able to enjoy the benefits. Right below that was an ad for a meditation center in SM, $150 a week or $450 a month. Fucking pirates. Besides, even if they're legit, I find it somewhat offensive that a bunch of asshole SoCal hippies decide to move into this place that's sacred to the Mayans and in the metaphysical vortex or whatever, and set up shop to practice their own brand of shotgun spirituality. That smacks of cultural appropriation to me; if I was an actual practicing Mayan in San Marcos and these assholes started building pyramids around my town, I would be pretty upset (Lago Atitlan really is an important place to the Mayans, like most bodies of volcanic water).
What else, mostly we just hung out and ate and drank, although we went kayaking one afternoon which was nice, just to a beach to swim for a bit. I dragged the group up the road to a Guatemalan pension for traditional breakfast, which is less than half the price of the touristy stuff and super good and filling, black beans, eggs scrambled with tomatoes and green onions, half an avocado, and a big stack of tortillas. Everyone wanted to go back the next day.
I had to leave early on Sunday to make my connections to Nebaj, so I said my goodbyes (I'll especially miss the rugby boys, they were rad, although they live together and are really close and I felt like I only got to tag along. We were friends for sure, but I was second fiddle). I had to take a launcha (boat) to Panajachel, across the lake, which was nice enough, but interesting only in the price scheme: local price (Q5), expat price (Q15) and tourist price (Q25). This is an unspoken 'agreement' (i.e. the driver knows what you are and charges accordingly. In comparison, this 45 minute bus ride cost the same as the 3 hour bus from Xela; Chicken Bus operators, strangely, never seem to charge gringos more). The bus north was a typical Chicken bus, managed chaos at the station on departure, gunning for the seats in the middle since the shocks went out long ago and it sucks getting levered into the air in the back; I will say though that if there is a Hell, I'm sure they play that shitty Mexican tuba music all day long, just like in a Chicken Bus. It drives me fucking nuts. Supposedly marimba is the music of Guatemala, and I much prefer that, but somehow the tuba reigns supreme in the world of transport here. I did sit next to a Guatemalan who works in the US Embassy, so we chatted a bit about that before he had to get off at Los Encuentros (a large transfer point), mostly about how it was to work at the embassy (he really likes it), his time at community college in Minnesota (how does a Guatemalan decide to go to school in Minnesota? That baffles me), and how armed pandelleros have stepped up their attacks on cross-boarder buses recently (I read too that violence increases on and around Easter celebrations here).
On the ride into Nebaj I met a guy in the Peace Corps and a girl volunteering long-term in Nebaj, along with her two friends who were visiting for a couple weeks. That pretty much meant I knew all the gringos in town, or that's what it felt like. Later I would meet another Peace Corps volunteer; all of them were from the mid-west, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri. Don't meet many of them. I stayed at a hostel run by the organization the girl (Mary Claire) was volunteering for, in a dorm with a quiet French couple who recognized me from the Buena Vista concert in Xela. The couple seemed like one of those that does everything together, and isn't particularly interested in having that arrangement altered. But since I was getting onto the Gringo Trail, these two would end up popping up a lot over the next few days.
I made my first day hike from Nebaj to a little town called Acul, which was recommended by one of the Peace Corps guys I met. The French couple was going the same way, so I tried to give them a 20 minute head-start - but they ended up dicking around somehow, so I caught up to them before we even left town, and we spent a fairly awkward hour or so asking questions to be pleasant and not really talking much. Eventually I wanted to go faster so I took off as they had a break. The hike was nice, up a mountain, over a plateau, and down a valley, into the town of Acul, where there are two cheese fincas (plantations). Nebaj was one of the most violent areas in the civil war, and Acul was founded in the 60's as the first polo de desarollo, or development pole. The concept reminds me of the fortified agricultural collectives the US set up in Vietnam during the war, where ostensibly development would be fostered but really it was an easy way to keep an eye on the populace. Anyways, the hike was nice, not as gorgeous as I had been expecting, with dry rolling hills of long-needled pines dotting the landscape. Acul was small and friendly enough, I got gawked at a bit, men in the fields waving hello and kids frightened away by my greetings, lowering their gazes and shuffling away - a couple got so flustered they forgot what time it was, although it was afternoon one responded with a "good morning," another answered "good night." A couple of times teenagers appeared to mock me in Ixil, the local Maya dialect (hey you know what guys? I speak a language you don't know too!). It was hot, so I bought an "ice cream" of frozen water and mixed fruit in a cup, with a bamboo stalk coming out, from a tienda (essentially a small convenience store), and hoped I didn't get parasites or something (I tried to think that if she sold parasites to local village kids she would probably get in trouble). On the other end of town I found one of the cheese fincas, and as I walked up the drive, a guy came speeding by on an ATV, not caring how much dust he kicked into my face. He was white, white like me, could have been from Iowa himself. He sneered at me, and I thought he looked like an asshole. At the house I met the mother of the Ladino family mother, I figured this family was probably in charge of the local populace during the war at the polo. I asked if they could serve me some food, she explained the set lunch she could make, and also offered just some tortillas and cheese. I was there for cheese, so asked for the latter, and a papaya-pineapple juice. It was alright and all, not amazing, the setting was nice, although there was some truly terrifying taxidermy on the walls. A mestizo man-servant waited on me, I even got a bell on my table to ring if I needed anything, which I felt too uncomfortable to use (in America, we pretend we're egalitarian, OK?). At the end of my meal I was asked to pay Q40, which is a huge fucking rip-off for Q1 of tortillas, some cheese they make at the place, and a couple Q worth of fruit (you can get quite a nice meal for this price even in a touristy restaurant). So that annoyed me, although there didn't seem much for it except to pay it. Lesson learned: always ask how much stuff costs, ideally before you eat it (shouldn't I know this by now?). On the plus side, this motivated me to start buying food in the market and cooking a bit; you can have meals this way for 3 or 4 Q apiece that way (40 or 50 cents). Not many of the hostels here have kitchens to use (even though in my mind that's one of the things that makes a hostel), but there are things you can do without a kitchen even. Examples without: tortillas (bought fresh on the street), diced onion and tomatoes, avocados. Mangoes and pastries. Example with kitchen: eggs, black beans, toast, tortillas. Simple stuff. I bought a bag of salt (complete with bits of twigs, which I just think of as "prizes"), which if you're going to have one flavor agent I think that should be it, although next on my list is a bottle of Picomas hot sauce.
I hung out with my mid-west friends that night, met some Dutch girls (of course; the Dutch are everywhere), and left the next morning. Nebaj didn't seem worth any more time, the hikes seemed somewhat generic, and another day there is a day I don't get to surf or snorkel or whitewater raft or something. I had meant to get up early but slept through my alarm, ate a quick brekky, bid farewell to the French couple. The French couple caught me as I waited in Aguacatan for my micro to fill up (micros don't leave until they're full, chock fucking full). Just to fill you in now, they had to stop in Coban to get money out, and wound up catching up with me again in Flores, and trying to coax me into taking the 5-day trek to El Mirador, the largest by far of all the Maya pyramids, tucked into the jungle on the Mexican border. It's cheaper for them, you see, if they can enlarge the group, but I had little desire to spend 5 days in the jungle with a totally boring couple. I passed. I'll probably see them again in a week, that's just my guess.
It took four micros (Japanese mini bus) to get from Nebaj to Coban; a micro can be more comfortable, except not really. Like Chicken Buses, micros get packed to the gills - 5 in the back bench (designed for 4) and 4 on the next three benches (designed for 3). They get 4 on a bench designed for 3 by first folding down the fold-out seat (hope you DON'T get that seat, there's even less ass cushioning and the back rest is even shorter, they suck), then they have these custom made bench bits, maybe 6 inches wide and 18 long, which wedge between the space normally made between the fold-out seat and the side of the bus. Thus, space for one more little Guatemalan (or in my case, gringo) ass. In front of the front row there's a small, 6-inch ledge, underneath is the engine and the other vital parts that turn $40 worth of steel into $22,000 of pure Japanese engineering. This space also functions as seats, dispelling any pretense a passenger in the front row might have about extra space in comparison to the rows behind. In my case, I was on the fold-out seat by the door, where they can't actually put a bench piece because there's the drop in the floor for getting in and out, and besides, this is where the money-taker wedges himself, hunched over. In front of me, on the ledge, was a motion-sick indigena woman, clutching a black plastic bag to her mouth in an apparent attempt to hyperventilate, or at least catch potential puke. Fortunately, the bag didn't have to get used.
Anyways, I made it to Lanquin, where I spent the afternoon looking for avocados to pack lunch to the lagoons the next day. Oh, there were avocados the day before, and there would be avocados tomorrow, but none today. I asked every store in town, none would own up to having avocados to sell me. I bought some mediocre, spongy white cheese instead (I needed SOMETHING more than tomatoes and onion in my tortillas), which was not unlike the weird salty mountain cheese they make in the Bolivian Andes (that I wasn't too keen on). I couldn't even find ham, or any sort of meat that didn't need to be cooked. Lanquin isn't very big. Anyways, I took the organized tour through my hostel to the caves and lagoons, and it was super fun. First we jumped off a rope swing into the river, just to set the tone for the day, and then we spent the first few hours on a cave tour unlike anything that could be offered in the United States (for legal reasons). We scaled walls and jumped into pools, and I was only a little sketched out when the guide said, "OK, make sure you jump only here. Only jump here, right in the middle, OK?" We carried candles in for light, and at points had to swim with them above our heads. Underwater rocks lurked to stub toes and cut knees. One guy smacked a stalactite with his head, which of course bled everywhere, and he had to leave to get patched up (although he made it back later). We rappelled down a small waterfall, and felt bats whiz by our heads. It was rad.
Next, we inner-tubed slowly down the river, back the the park entrance. Before we got into the park with the lagoons, we had to cross a suspension bridge, which our guide said was 9 meters (just shy of 30 feet) above the water. Some of us jumped in, although when I was about to jump from the spot where the first few had jumped, the guide said, "wait, move over here a bit, the water is deeper here." Like I said, not something we would do in the States. It was pretty high, and even though people weren't hitting the bottom, I tried to curl horizontal once I was in the water. I smacked my ass pretty hard on entry, there's a bruise there now.
You don't need a guide for the lagoons, but they were beautiful. Supposedly this place ranks #1 as most gorgeous in Guatemala for most people. White limestone with strikingly turquoise water, set in a steep valley. It reminded me a lot of a park I visited in Kanchanaburi, Thailand (which I compare to the Hanging Gardens, it was amazing), although the Thai park had a lot more people getting drunk there; Semuc was pretty deserted. Semuc also had larger (though fewer) pools, so was better for swimming (but no natural water slides), and even had some gold-with-brown-stripe fish darting around. The vista was better too (although I think I rank the Thai park higher overall, it just had such a cool sense to it, all jungle-y like). Next we climbed down a (sketchy) rope ladder to a large rock, where the underground rapids come out from under the pools, and then there was yet another high-altitude jump, this time into the foot of the falls.
I slept in a hammock that night at the hostel; I thought it would make me romantic for my hammock trip up the Rio Negro in the Brazilian Amazon, but mostly it just made me cold. I guess I saved $2 over the dorm room though, and I heard the dorms had bedbugs (I've heard scores of bedbug stories here, although no problems yet, knock on wood. I still can't believe I've never gotten lice or bedbugs or crabs or anything from traveling; in Bolivia I stayed in some SHIT-AY places).
The next day, wooo! on the Gringo Trail, tourist shuttle straight to Flores and the ruined Maya city of Tikal, I was tired of transfers and the price was really good actually. In another hostel, this one was pretty nice I guess, although hostels must make just a shit-ton of money, they provide a bunk bed and charge just a bit less than a private room, but cram a dozen or more people together so they can all smell each other. This place also didn't have a kitchen, and didn't supply towels, or hot water, so it seemed over-priced to me. Most dorms don't supply towels, but some sort of nicety (like free drinking water or internet, which I have now and am abusing the shit out of to catch up on my blog. Don't worry, no one is waiting, there's a system) goes a long way with street cred for me. The hostel did have a lot of books though; I swapped my copy of Cormac McCarthy's "The Road" (which gets my endorsement, read it in three days, couldn't put it down) for a copy of Hunter Thompson's "Hell's Angels" (which also gets my endorsement. Thompson is rad, and a damn fine journalist).
Flores is a small island connected by a causeway to the non-touristy town of Santa Elena; both are small and uninteresting, although Flores has pretty views. On a kick with my shuttle of taking the path of least resistance, I booked my tour of Tikal and return bus to Antigua for the following day with the first opportunity. I wasn't dicking around in Flores, one night, one day of ruins, one long bus ride south.
Ah, the lost ancient city of Tikal. Wasn't going to do it, still not sure if I should have, but I figure it's better to regret things you have done, than to regret things you haven't done (by the way, when you see your mother this weekend, be sure to tell her SATAN!!! You get a gold star if you get this reference). Anyways, it was kind of one of those go-and-take-pictures things, but it was cool. It was overcast, so it wasn't TOO hot and muggy, but the pics weren't as great as they COULD have been. And I learned a couple things, like all about the stuff the Maya used from the forest (e.g. the cotton fruit for clothes, the vines for carrying straps, the sap for gum, the other sap for glue, the dried plant bits for earings), and how the Maya probably either abandoned the city because they ran out of water or because they left in a space ship (no, really, those are the two theories being debated. Whatever, are you a UFOlogist? Then you really have no professional basis for you opinion, do you?). Really I feel like I learned that a lot isn't known about the Mayans. For example, our guide explained to us the ball game, where up until a few years ago it was figured the losing team was sacraficed for being losers, but now they think maybe the winners were sacraficed, because why would the gods want a sacrafice of losers? There was a lot of "we used to think... but now we think..." Anyways, the Maya found flat foreheads and crossed eyes beautiful, so they had practices to make sure their royalty had those attributes. I guess kind of like being white in Victorian England, having crossed eyes in the world of the Maya is a demonstration of how little you have to go work the fields (in this case, you literally can't), but it's funny how today we would look at someone like that and just think "inbred." The Mayan royalty also laid jade in their teeth, which my guide described as "bling bling." No one knows how they cut the jade, because jade is really hard to cut, but then no one really knows how the Maya built their city, either. Like I said, we don't know much about them, which is why we have spaceship theories.
Anyways, I'm in Antigua now, after the hellish bus ride described at the beginning of the post. At least there was no tuba music. I was over this city before I got off the micro though. It's like Arequipa, Peru, all colonial like, but more touristy. Yippee, a crappier version of a place I've already been. You know what? I can get good Pat Thai at home, thanks. Gonna climb Pacaya, the active volcano tomorrow, and roast weiners and marshmallows on the lava, then on Monday I'm heading south to surf. Although maybe, just maybe, I'll head to El Salvador, where I got a lead on a beach house that's $20 a night, with a pool and a huge garden, and is owned by an adorable old couple, and has a surf board just waiting for me... I dunno, I had some folks interested in surfing from the hostel in Flores, so I emailed to see if anyone wants to go, I don't want a whole house to myself. Heard about it from a Canadian couple in my Antigua hostel who stayed there.
'Tikal' means 'City of Voices.' If you stand in front of this temple and clap, it makes a sound like a Quetzal (it's a bird). No, really. It's eerie, and cool.
It's Acul
It's the view from my room in San Pedro
OK, so where have I been? I spent the weekend in San Pedro after leaving Xela, went with Ed and Scott (the rugby boys), this girl Michelle from Alleen's Spanish school, and her friends Jackie and Aaron. We took the top floor of a hotel off the main drag, had all three rooms and the balcony. Killer views.
San Pedro is fine for the weekend if you have some cool peeps to go with, but a weekend was all I needed. The bus drops you up the hill, in the Guatemalan part, and then you walk down to the gringo part, which is so fucking universal that at this moment thinking about it makes me want to vomit in my mouth cause I'm all grumpy and sleep deprived: bars/restaurants/discos, all nicer and I dunno, trendier and themed more than anything in the real town above, lots of random folk on the street selling junky crystal necklaces, or in Xela overpriced banana bread was popular. Gringos going out and getting wasted to the point where they won't notice the bedbugs in their $2 dorm room. It was a party town, pretty pure and simple. Met people who said, "watch out, you'll come for the weekend and end up staying." One guy told me that, he's from the UK and been there five years. But he only has one leg, so where's he gonna go? Whatev, not my thing. I didn't bother with other places on the lake, I'd seen it, and my travel philosophy is stay a weekend or a month, but try not to fall inbetween, or it's just days wasted. See the shit, snap the picture, and move on, or actually stay long enough to make some friends and learn about a place, and I felt I'd learned most of what there was to learn about San Pedro after a weekend. I can party and get laid anyplace, what's special about San Pedro? Besides, my friends had to go back to Xela on Sunday, and I would have been all alone... The other towns on the lake are pretty touristy too, either in the traditional sense or, in the case of San Marcos, the metaphysical one. In SM you can stay in a pyramid hut and learn about lucid dreaming and crystal healing and do yoga and meditate, and it's all super fucking expensive, which chafes me in the worst way. I actually saw an ad for vipassana meditation in Mexico City, run by a global organization, free, financed by practitioners around the world who want others to be able to enjoy the benefits. Right below that was an ad for a meditation center in SM, $150 a week or $450 a month. Fucking pirates. Besides, even if they're legit, I find it somewhat offensive that a bunch of asshole SoCal hippies decide to move into this place that's sacred to the Mayans and in the metaphysical vortex or whatever, and set up shop to practice their own brand of shotgun spirituality. That smacks of cultural appropriation to me; if I was an actual practicing Mayan in San Marcos and these assholes started building pyramids around my town, I would be pretty upset (Lago Atitlan really is an important place to the Mayans, like most bodies of volcanic water).
What else, mostly we just hung out and ate and drank, although we went kayaking one afternoon which was nice, just to a beach to swim for a bit. I dragged the group up the road to a Guatemalan pension for traditional breakfast, which is less than half the price of the touristy stuff and super good and filling, black beans, eggs scrambled with tomatoes and green onions, half an avocado, and a big stack of tortillas. Everyone wanted to go back the next day.
I had to leave early on Sunday to make my connections to Nebaj, so I said my goodbyes (I'll especially miss the rugby boys, they were rad, although they live together and are really close and I felt like I only got to tag along. We were friends for sure, but I was second fiddle). I had to take a launcha (boat) to Panajachel, across the lake, which was nice enough, but interesting only in the price scheme: local price (Q5), expat price (Q15) and tourist price (Q25). This is an unspoken 'agreement' (i.e. the driver knows what you are and charges accordingly. In comparison, this 45 minute bus ride cost the same as the 3 hour bus from Xela; Chicken Bus operators, strangely, never seem to charge gringos more). The bus north was a typical Chicken bus, managed chaos at the station on departure, gunning for the seats in the middle since the shocks went out long ago and it sucks getting levered into the air in the back; I will say though that if there is a Hell, I'm sure they play that shitty Mexican tuba music all day long, just like in a Chicken Bus. It drives me fucking nuts. Supposedly marimba is the music of Guatemala, and I much prefer that, but somehow the tuba reigns supreme in the world of transport here. I did sit next to a Guatemalan who works in the US Embassy, so we chatted a bit about that before he had to get off at Los Encuentros (a large transfer point), mostly about how it was to work at the embassy (he really likes it), his time at community college in Minnesota (how does a Guatemalan decide to go to school in Minnesota? That baffles me), and how armed pandelleros have stepped up their attacks on cross-boarder buses recently (I read too that violence increases on and around Easter celebrations here).
On the ride into Nebaj I met a guy in the Peace Corps and a girl volunteering long-term in Nebaj, along with her two friends who were visiting for a couple weeks. That pretty much meant I knew all the gringos in town, or that's what it felt like. Later I would meet another Peace Corps volunteer; all of them were from the mid-west, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri. Don't meet many of them. I stayed at a hostel run by the organization the girl (Mary Claire) was volunteering for, in a dorm with a quiet French couple who recognized me from the Buena Vista concert in Xela. The couple seemed like one of those that does everything together, and isn't particularly interested in having that arrangement altered. But since I was getting onto the Gringo Trail, these two would end up popping up a lot over the next few days.
I made my first day hike from Nebaj to a little town called Acul, which was recommended by one of the Peace Corps guys I met. The French couple was going the same way, so I tried to give them a 20 minute head-start - but they ended up dicking around somehow, so I caught up to them before we even left town, and we spent a fairly awkward hour or so asking questions to be pleasant and not really talking much. Eventually I wanted to go faster so I took off as they had a break. The hike was nice, up a mountain, over a plateau, and down a valley, into the town of Acul, where there are two cheese fincas (plantations). Nebaj was one of the most violent areas in the civil war, and Acul was founded in the 60's as the first polo de desarollo, or development pole. The concept reminds me of the fortified agricultural collectives the US set up in Vietnam during the war, where ostensibly development would be fostered but really it was an easy way to keep an eye on the populace. Anyways, the hike was nice, not as gorgeous as I had been expecting, with dry rolling hills of long-needled pines dotting the landscape. Acul was small and friendly enough, I got gawked at a bit, men in the fields waving hello and kids frightened away by my greetings, lowering their gazes and shuffling away - a couple got so flustered they forgot what time it was, although it was afternoon one responded with a "good morning," another answered "good night." A couple of times teenagers appeared to mock me in Ixil, the local Maya dialect (hey you know what guys? I speak a language you don't know too!). It was hot, so I bought an "ice cream" of frozen water and mixed fruit in a cup, with a bamboo stalk coming out, from a tienda (essentially a small convenience store), and hoped I didn't get parasites or something (I tried to think that if she sold parasites to local village kids she would probably get in trouble). On the other end of town I found one of the cheese fincas, and as I walked up the drive, a guy came speeding by on an ATV, not caring how much dust he kicked into my face. He was white, white like me, could have been from Iowa himself. He sneered at me, and I thought he looked like an asshole. At the house I met the mother of the Ladino family mother, I figured this family was probably in charge of the local populace during the war at the polo. I asked if they could serve me some food, she explained the set lunch she could make, and also offered just some tortillas and cheese. I was there for cheese, so asked for the latter, and a papaya-pineapple juice. It was alright and all, not amazing, the setting was nice, although there was some truly terrifying taxidermy on the walls. A mestizo man-servant waited on me, I even got a bell on my table to ring if I needed anything, which I felt too uncomfortable to use (in America, we pretend we're egalitarian, OK?). At the end of my meal I was asked to pay Q40, which is a huge fucking rip-off for Q1 of tortillas, some cheese they make at the place, and a couple Q worth of fruit (you can get quite a nice meal for this price even in a touristy restaurant). So that annoyed me, although there didn't seem much for it except to pay it. Lesson learned: always ask how much stuff costs, ideally before you eat it (shouldn't I know this by now?). On the plus side, this motivated me to start buying food in the market and cooking a bit; you can have meals this way for 3 or 4 Q apiece that way (40 or 50 cents). Not many of the hostels here have kitchens to use (even though in my mind that's one of the things that makes a hostel), but there are things you can do without a kitchen even. Examples without: tortillas (bought fresh on the street), diced onion and tomatoes, avocados. Mangoes and pastries. Example with kitchen: eggs, black beans, toast, tortillas. Simple stuff. I bought a bag of salt (complete with bits of twigs, which I just think of as "prizes"), which if you're going to have one flavor agent I think that should be it, although next on my list is a bottle of Picomas hot sauce.
I hung out with my mid-west friends that night, met some Dutch girls (of course; the Dutch are everywhere), and left the next morning. Nebaj didn't seem worth any more time, the hikes seemed somewhat generic, and another day there is a day I don't get to surf or snorkel or whitewater raft or something. I had meant to get up early but slept through my alarm, ate a quick brekky, bid farewell to the French couple. The French couple caught me as I waited in Aguacatan for my micro to fill up (micros don't leave until they're full, chock fucking full). Just to fill you in now, they had to stop in Coban to get money out, and wound up catching up with me again in Flores, and trying to coax me into taking the 5-day trek to El Mirador, the largest by far of all the Maya pyramids, tucked into the jungle on the Mexican border. It's cheaper for them, you see, if they can enlarge the group, but I had little desire to spend 5 days in the jungle with a totally boring couple. I passed. I'll probably see them again in a week, that's just my guess.
It took four micros (Japanese mini bus) to get from Nebaj to Coban; a micro can be more comfortable, except not really. Like Chicken Buses, micros get packed to the gills - 5 in the back bench (designed for 4) and 4 on the next three benches (designed for 3). They get 4 on a bench designed for 3 by first folding down the fold-out seat (hope you DON'T get that seat, there's even less ass cushioning and the back rest is even shorter, they suck), then they have these custom made bench bits, maybe 6 inches wide and 18 long, which wedge between the space normally made between the fold-out seat and the side of the bus. Thus, space for one more little Guatemalan (or in my case, gringo) ass. In front of the front row there's a small, 6-inch ledge, underneath is the engine and the other vital parts that turn $40 worth of steel into $22,000 of pure Japanese engineering. This space also functions as seats, dispelling any pretense a passenger in the front row might have about extra space in comparison to the rows behind. In my case, I was on the fold-out seat by the door, where they can't actually put a bench piece because there's the drop in the floor for getting in and out, and besides, this is where the money-taker wedges himself, hunched over. In front of me, on the ledge, was a motion-sick indigena woman, clutching a black plastic bag to her mouth in an apparent attempt to hyperventilate, or at least catch potential puke. Fortunately, the bag didn't have to get used.
Anyways, I made it to Lanquin, where I spent the afternoon looking for avocados to pack lunch to the lagoons the next day. Oh, there were avocados the day before, and there would be avocados tomorrow, but none today. I asked every store in town, none would own up to having avocados to sell me. I bought some mediocre, spongy white cheese instead (I needed SOMETHING more than tomatoes and onion in my tortillas), which was not unlike the weird salty mountain cheese they make in the Bolivian Andes (that I wasn't too keen on). I couldn't even find ham, or any sort of meat that didn't need to be cooked. Lanquin isn't very big. Anyways, I took the organized tour through my hostel to the caves and lagoons, and it was super fun. First we jumped off a rope swing into the river, just to set the tone for the day, and then we spent the first few hours on a cave tour unlike anything that could be offered in the United States (for legal reasons). We scaled walls and jumped into pools, and I was only a little sketched out when the guide said, "OK, make sure you jump only here. Only jump here, right in the middle, OK?" We carried candles in for light, and at points had to swim with them above our heads. Underwater rocks lurked to stub toes and cut knees. One guy smacked a stalactite with his head, which of course bled everywhere, and he had to leave to get patched up (although he made it back later). We rappelled down a small waterfall, and felt bats whiz by our heads. It was rad.
Next, we inner-tubed slowly down the river, back the the park entrance. Before we got into the park with the lagoons, we had to cross a suspension bridge, which our guide said was 9 meters (just shy of 30 feet) above the water. Some of us jumped in, although when I was about to jump from the spot where the first few had jumped, the guide said, "wait, move over here a bit, the water is deeper here." Like I said, not something we would do in the States. It was pretty high, and even though people weren't hitting the bottom, I tried to curl horizontal once I was in the water. I smacked my ass pretty hard on entry, there's a bruise there now.
You don't need a guide for the lagoons, but they were beautiful. Supposedly this place ranks #1 as most gorgeous in Guatemala for most people. White limestone with strikingly turquoise water, set in a steep valley. It reminded me a lot of a park I visited in Kanchanaburi, Thailand (which I compare to the Hanging Gardens, it was amazing), although the Thai park had a lot more people getting drunk there; Semuc was pretty deserted. Semuc also had larger (though fewer) pools, so was better for swimming (but no natural water slides), and even had some gold-with-brown-stripe fish darting around. The vista was better too (although I think I rank the Thai park higher overall, it just had such a cool sense to it, all jungle-y like). Next we climbed down a (sketchy) rope ladder to a large rock, where the underground rapids come out from under the pools, and then there was yet another high-altitude jump, this time into the foot of the falls.
I slept in a hammock that night at the hostel; I thought it would make me romantic for my hammock trip up the Rio Negro in the Brazilian Amazon, but mostly it just made me cold. I guess I saved $2 over the dorm room though, and I heard the dorms had bedbugs (I've heard scores of bedbug stories here, although no problems yet, knock on wood. I still can't believe I've never gotten lice or bedbugs or crabs or anything from traveling; in Bolivia I stayed in some SHIT-AY places).
The next day, wooo! on the Gringo Trail, tourist shuttle straight to Flores and the ruined Maya city of Tikal, I was tired of transfers and the price was really good actually. In another hostel, this one was pretty nice I guess, although hostels must make just a shit-ton of money, they provide a bunk bed and charge just a bit less than a private room, but cram a dozen or more people together so they can all smell each other. This place also didn't have a kitchen, and didn't supply towels, or hot water, so it seemed over-priced to me. Most dorms don't supply towels, but some sort of nicety (like free drinking water or internet, which I have now and am abusing the shit out of to catch up on my blog. Don't worry, no one is waiting, there's a system) goes a long way with street cred for me. The hostel did have a lot of books though; I swapped my copy of Cormac McCarthy's "The Road" (which gets my endorsement, read it in three days, couldn't put it down) for a copy of Hunter Thompson's "Hell's Angels" (which also gets my endorsement. Thompson is rad, and a damn fine journalist).
Flores is a small island connected by a causeway to the non-touristy town of Santa Elena; both are small and uninteresting, although Flores has pretty views. On a kick with my shuttle of taking the path of least resistance, I booked my tour of Tikal and return bus to Antigua for the following day with the first opportunity. I wasn't dicking around in Flores, one night, one day of ruins, one long bus ride south.
Ah, the lost ancient city of Tikal. Wasn't going to do it, still not sure if I should have, but I figure it's better to regret things you have done, than to regret things you haven't done (by the way, when you see your mother this weekend, be sure to tell her SATAN!!! You get a gold star if you get this reference). Anyways, it was kind of one of those go-and-take-pictures things, but it was cool. It was overcast, so it wasn't TOO hot and muggy, but the pics weren't as great as they COULD have been. And I learned a couple things, like all about the stuff the Maya used from the forest (e.g. the cotton fruit for clothes, the vines for carrying straps, the sap for gum, the other sap for glue, the dried plant bits for earings), and how the Maya probably either abandoned the city because they ran out of water or because they left in a space ship (no, really, those are the two theories being debated. Whatever, are you a UFOlogist? Then you really have no professional basis for you opinion, do you?). Really I feel like I learned that a lot isn't known about the Mayans. For example, our guide explained to us the ball game, where up until a few years ago it was figured the losing team was sacraficed for being losers, but now they think maybe the winners were sacraficed, because why would the gods want a sacrafice of losers? There was a lot of "we used to think... but now we think..." Anyways, the Maya found flat foreheads and crossed eyes beautiful, so they had practices to make sure their royalty had those attributes. I guess kind of like being white in Victorian England, having crossed eyes in the world of the Maya is a demonstration of how little you have to go work the fields (in this case, you literally can't), but it's funny how today we would look at someone like that and just think "inbred." The Mayan royalty also laid jade in their teeth, which my guide described as "bling bling." No one knows how they cut the jade, because jade is really hard to cut, but then no one really knows how the Maya built their city, either. Like I said, we don't know much about them, which is why we have spaceship theories.
Anyways, I'm in Antigua now, after the hellish bus ride described at the beginning of the post. At least there was no tuba music. I was over this city before I got off the micro though. It's like Arequipa, Peru, all colonial like, but more touristy. Yippee, a crappier version of a place I've already been. You know what? I can get good Pat Thai at home, thanks. Gonna climb Pacaya, the active volcano tomorrow, and roast weiners and marshmallows on the lava, then on Monday I'm heading south to surf. Although maybe, just maybe, I'll head to El Salvador, where I got a lead on a beach house that's $20 a night, with a pool and a huge garden, and is owned by an adorable old couple, and has a surf board just waiting for me... I dunno, I had some folks interested in surfing from the hostel in Flores, so I emailed to see if anyone wants to go, I don't want a whole house to myself. Heard about it from a Canadian couple in my Antigua hostel who stayed there.
'Tikal' means 'City of Voices.' If you stand in front of this temple and clap, it makes a sound like a Quetzal (it's a bird). No, really. It's eerie, and cool.
It's Acul
It's the view from my room in San Pedro
Thursday, March 5, 2009
Parque Acuatica!
Pretty friggin' sweet. I love being able to run around like a kid n' play (in an adult way, where you add marijuana), even if the Guatemalans make rude comments about my rash guard (hey man, I BURN) and steal my flip flops (it wouldn't be such a tragedy if I hadn't plucked them off a cliff in Brazil, and they turned out to be so light and comfy. Or if Guatemalan showers weren't so gross). Totally, totally worth the trip.
Facebook readers, you may want to click through to my blog to see the pics and videos.
I'm convinced Rube Goldberg had a hand in the design of this contraption. Watch the bucket up top steadily fill up, and then spill everywhere!
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
Mangos!
Honey mangos are now in season. You can buy 20 of them for $.65 in the market. We had mango juice for lunch today, just one of the many tasty fresh juices Esperanza blends up for us.
I went for what is probably my last run in Xela today, on my normal route up a torturous hill and through farmer's fields. The field at the end has a couple cows tethered up in it. I passed the cows, paused for a short break, took some water, and began my descent. Usually the cows are tethered across the field, but today one was next to my path. As I passed, the air I must have taken with my water came up in a loud belch. The cow spooked, tried to run away, and hit its tether and almost fell. I felt bad, and laughed, and then felt bad for laughing, and then kept laughing.
Tomorrow I'm going to the Xocomil waterpark, which everyone says is awesome. I like waterparks, I think. I bought more sunscreen.
There's a big party in San Pedro (on Lake Atitlan) this weekend, and a few friends are going, so I'll probably roll over there Friday, and head north from there.
That's all.
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
A day outside Xela
Not literally, I'm still here. But figuratively. Or maybe it's "A day inside my own head." I was really relieved to finish Spanish classes, and then the weekend came and it was all social time (in English. It's not the way to learn Spanish. But it's easy. Debo de tener mas disciplina). Now that the weekdays are here, and I don't have class, I actually have a lot of time on my hands. So I started running again (actually I started Saturday), up this super steep hill (past Christo Viene, if you remember it from "Things I notice on the way to school") and then through farmer's fields of dirt (I don't know anything about farming, but it looks like they're prepping/planting fields for the rainy season, which starts in April). It's a really nice run, although the hill is brutal, like a 35 degree grade for half a mile or so, and I'm already at 7000 ft. so I need a break or two for that. Yesterday I went running for an hour, then went to the gym and did squats, core exercises, shoulders and deltoids. And then tried to go to the yoga class, which is two hours, but I had to leave halfway. My body was totally spent, I couldn't hold the forms, I was sweating like a pig and shaking like a mad-man. I heard someones watch beep, signaling 6 o'clock, halfway through. My heart sank. I toughed it out for 10 more minutes, but my legs and delts were so spent I couldn't hold the planks she puts us in every couple minutes. I learned a lesson about pushing too hard I guess. Today I'm going back to yoga, but that's all I'm doing. It's Zaynab's last day, so we went to the mall so she could buy a gift for Esperanza, and then we went to the Mennonite bakery. I don't think I've mentioned that, but there's a group of Mennonites (American ones I think, in Bolivia they were all German) who run this awesome bakery that's only open Tuesday/Friday. It's super cheap, all home-made, and has all sorts of goodies like donuts, moon pies, cupcakes, bagels, whole wheat bread, and yogurt. I got some energy bars of granola, honey, chocolate and dried fruit, yoghourt mora (blackberry yogurt), a chocolate donut with bavarian cream, and a pumpkin moon pie (basically two pumpkin cupcake tops with frosting inbetween).
Anyways, in a way it's good I've got all this time for a few days, because I've really got some shit to figure out. I've been accepted to take the oral exams for the State Department's Foreign Services program, so I need to arrange a place to stay, a flight, schedule a test date, etc. And study. The more I learn, the more I feel I need to learn. The exam lasts all day, and is broken into three sections. Like everything bureaucratic, each section and everything that could possibly be associated with the section has an acronym.
First is the Group Exercise (GE), where the entire class (4-6 people) is given a briefing on a hypothetical situation in a non-existent country, and given 30 minutes to prepare a project based on the hypothetical situation Then each person presents their ideas on the project, and then you all discuss the best course of action.
Second is the structured interview (SI), where two assessors ask about your (i) experience and motivation, (ii) give you a hypothetical situation at an embassy and ask you to think on your feet, and (iii) ask about your past experience and how it fits with the Foreign Services.
Third is a case management (CM) exercise, where you are given yet another hypothetical situation in an embassy, and asked to write a memo proposing a response to the situation.
Throughout all three sections you are scored on 13 "dimensions": Composure, Cultural Adaptability, Experience and Motivation, Information Integration and Analysis, Initiative and Leadership, Judgement, Objectivity and Integrity, Oral Communication, Planning and Organization, Quantitative Analysis, Resourcefulness, Working with Others, and Written Communication. The examples listed in the OA guide are difficult: in the GE the example has to do with the construction of a recreation center in the host country, which would facilitate the purchase of US-built equipment, foster goodwill, and provide facilities for the nearby rehabilitation hospital. But wait, it would be in the department where the main political rival is based, so the project may insult the government, and the project wouldn't really benefit that many people, and besides would be based in a private university.
Here's the example from the SI:
Earthquake Scenario
You are working in a small embassy in a developing tropical island country. Relations with the
United States have been strained for some time, although the island is visited by increasing
numbers of American tourists lured by its beautiful beaches, national parks and wildlife, and
interesting archaeological sites. The island has experienced numerous tremors recently and ten
years ago suffered a major earthquake, which destroyed the port and much of the capital city.
You have been at this embassy for almost two years and are looking forward to moving on to
your next post.
When you first arrived at post, you worked in the consular section, which is responsible for
assisting American citizens in distress and for issuing visas to host country nationals wishing to
visit the United States. You then rotated for a stint in the management section, responsible for
maintenance and upkeep of staff housing. You supervised the local Foreign Service National
(FSN) staff charged with maintaining the embassy buildings and grounds. This past six months
you have been working as the ambassador's aide, which required you to move to an apartment
three blocks from the embassy.
On a Saturday afternoon the communications officer has called you in to the embassy for an
urgent incoming telegram that needs immediate action. As you enter the embassy gate, you
see two FSNs enter the building. Walking toward the building, you feel a sudden jolt and
immediately realize you are in the middle of an earthquake. You have difficulty standing, and
see windows in the embassy shatter. Then the earthquake ends. What do you do?
(possible responses: If appears safe, check on the FSN staff and help as needed;
determine cable contents; inform ambassador and Washington; inform and
motivate staff to take appropriate actions including finding out how much
damage employee residences sustained; make sure someone checks on resident
American citizens and American tourists.)
The earthquake has knocked out electricity all over the city. Because of your in-country
experience, the ambassador has asked you to lead the embassy's crisis response center. The
city's only hospital requests fuel oil for its emergency generators, which will run out in a day.
The embassy stocks emergency fuel oil to keep all embassy functions, including
communications with the State Department, going continually for three days. What do you do?
(possible responses: Determine exact embassy needs; seek alternate fuel
sources; consult colleagues/staff on reducing fuel use; consult host government
regarding hospital needs; consider establishing limited hours for communication
operations; determine when embassy fuel can be replenished.)
The earthquake hit residential areas hard, and many embassy officers and FSNs lack shelter.
Building materials are scarce and the airport is temporarily closed. A local nightclub owner,
known for his flashy life-style, offers building materials and labor to the embassy. The security
office's head FSN reports that the businessman is rumored to be engaged in drug smuggling and
strongly urges you to decline this offer. What do you do?
(possible responses: Discuss offer with colleagues; determine facts in case,
excluding hearsay; weigh only proven cons against pros of needed help; seek
other sources of supply, including from U.S. embassies in neighboring countries;
seek other housing options; contact the U.S. military to determine if they can
transport portable housing units or building materials by ship or helicopter.)
Not so easy seeming, is it?
In the CM exercise, you're given a hypothetical situation at an embassy involving work orders and a petty quarrel between two embassy employees, and asked to evaluate and respond to the situation. I'm not going to list it, because between Blogger's shitty formatting and mac's shitty ability to let me cut and paste, I'm just not interested.
Anyways, I've got a lot to think about for the test. Also, I got a response from the University of Leiden, in The Netherlands. I've been accepted into their Masters in Industrial Ecology program. I'm supposed to reply within two weeks, but they haven't said anything about financial aid. I had asked to be considered for the school's financial aid program, but there was no mention at all in the email or letter I received. The school costs about $21,500 a year, plus living expenses. Financial aid may cover anywhere from 2500 euro to a full ride plus 10,000 euro a year for living expenses. I'm not sure I can properly assess the offer without knowing my financial aid status. Also, I'm still waiting to hear back from NTNU (Norwegian University of Science and Technology). I was expecting to hear back from each by the end of April, but maybe since I got my app in so early to Leiden they processed it quickly (the NTNU deadline was Feb. 1st; Leiden's was April 1st). NTNU is the better of the two schools, and is also free if I get in (I just have to cover uber-high living expenses). Given the choice, I would go to NTNU, get the stronger degree, and be free of debt and worry.
In short, I really don't know what's going on when I get home, and am a little pissed off at myself for eating up vacation time worrying about it.
Family update: Abuelita isn't as cheery as I had first thought; she seems mighty grumpy a lot of the time. Not sure if this is because of the slew of strangers in her home, or if she's in the "just let me die" phase of being old. There is a hilarious picture of her on a camel in the television/Virgin Mary Shrine room though, a younger version with a giant grin on her face. I keep forgetting to ask about it. Esperanza continues to be super friendly, oftentimes downright girlish. I get the impression that before she played host to so many gringos, she watched a lot of tele novelas, because she seems to always be trying to get us to live out the lifestyle - going out late, bringing girls or boys home, dancing salsa with the locals. She loves to make jokes about the various room mates hooking up. I didn't come home the other night, and when I got back for breakfast, she said "oh wait, Devin, I think you have a hair stuck to the side of you there, a blond one I think..." I didn't know what was going on, and just said, "oh, really? Where?" She looked so dead-pan serious, and was leaning over as if to pluck a hair from my shoulder, and then she started grinning and we all started laughing. Geraldo doesn't work at Electronica Israel quite as much as I thought at first, it's more like 8 hour days 5 days a week plus the half-day on Saturday. But he also cobbles shoes at night, as well as doing most of the construction and maintenance on the house. The family home, like many houses that rent rooms in Xela, is constantly being built upwards to accommodate additional renters. I feel like I don't see Jason and Roni nearly as much as I did my first week, so that's all I have to say about them.
Zaynab is gone, but I may see her in San Pedro or Nebaj. Alleen is still here, slowly beginning to speak some Spanish, although her southern accent plays hell with her ability to pronunciate. Not sure if I mentioned the new couple, Barbara from Maryland and Ahmady from Timbuktu, Mali, but they're around. I'm not sure if they're the shut-in type couple that does a lot of stuff alone, or if Barbara just keeps Ahmady on a really tight leash. There's been a couple times when it looked like they were going to come out for beers or whatever, and especially that Ahmady wanted to go, but then after a few minutes to themselves in their room Ahmady might come out and say "I think I'm tired, I think I'll stay in tonight." And then this morning Ahmady asked if I was going to go for a run, we had been talking about going together since we had both been running, but Barbara said "we should get to the library by 9." It was 8:30. So much for that. Ahamdy was in the States to study, and that's how he met Barbara (they're married now); he has a masters degree in finance and she studied international relations I think. We also got a new kid yesterday, Kuni from Japan (I spelled that phonetically, apologies in advance to any Japanese readers or anyone who actually has any idea about how to write Japanese names in Roman script). He doesn't speak any Spanish, and very little English, so I don't know too much about him yet, but he's got one more year of architecture school, and he's traveling in Guatemala and Mexico for 3 weeks. Ahmady knows a little Japanese from his study of karate, which really pleased Kuni. Asians seem really impressed and happy when westerners take an interest in their language and culture. Maybe that's because so few do, while they're always trying and expected to learn about western language and culture. But it's something I saw in Asia a lot, how pleased they would be if you could speak a few words and knew how and when to bow.
Plan update: there's supposed to be a big party in San Pedro this weekend, and the rugby boys (Ed and Scott) may be going, and Zaynab is there, so I might go to the Lake (Atitlan) next, then Nebaj. And I'm thinking of hopping up to Tikal to see the ruins. Alleen went and the pictures are amazing. There's a couple of spots on the way that I'd like to see, but then I might fly back to Guatemala City before heading south to Sipacate.
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