Archive for April, 2004

Utila, Honduras, 2004-04-30

I am now a certified open-water scuba diver. Not that that means all that much. Except being $171 poorer, 5 days slower, and able to rent scuba gear the world over. Really feeling weightless, the freedom of being able to breathe underwater, and all the new things I saw certainly made it worth the time, effort, and money. Luckily enough for my finances, I don’t see it being something I’ll be spending heaps of money on. It’s fun, it’s amazing, it’s beautiful. But it’s slow. Calm, slow, weightless. Tranquil. No adrenaline. And I’d rather stick to faster sports than upgrade to swimming with the sharks to find some.

Today I had my last two dives, and I’m feeling very happy to get off this god-forsaken island. It’s gorgeous, the water’s warm and reefs are amazing. But I’m tired of walking up and down the 1 road connecting my dive shop with everything else. I really can’t imagine what it would be like to live here. It does make sense how growing up here can turn you into one of these incredible sun-scorched, bad-teethed, inbred phenomena as are these islanders. Especially classic are the old men who just sit on the porch all day airing out their leathery permanently sun-burnt skin and beer bellies, yelling to the neighbors and passersby in their native English so thick and oddly-accented as to credibly betray their pirate heritage. Most of the islanders are bilingual, and the same ridiculous accent carries into their Spanish too. It’s great.

Not only is it really an island (no, I’m not making that up!), but it really feels way separate from Central America. I’m ready to get back. Too much of the same damned food, too much island.

Utila, Honduras, 2004-04-29

The first two minutes or so were terrible. My brain said it’s ok, it’s ok. And my instincts said no it’s not, no it’s really not. Come on, get up, get out. You’ve been underwater way too long. You are going to die. All the while my brain screams some more it´s ok, it´s ok. But then my scuba instructor gave me the hand signals to start practicing some of the various skills I had to learn, such as how to clear my mask when if floods, and how to control my buoyancy. That was a good distraction from the problem signals my instincts were trying to send me.

That was the confined dive, the first of 5 dives in a 4 day Open-Water P.A.D.I. certification course. This was my 3rd day. It seems to be the only reason that people come to this strange island: really good, really cheap diving. Some say it’s the cheapest courses in the world here, I think I can believe that. Another thing I can believe – but this one I honestly almost can’t – is how much life there is at least in this part of the big flat blue wetness. Being able to breathe underwater is a little hard to believe too. I mean, that IS the point. But there’s a big difference between knowing that and experiencing that. And once I got used to moving completely submerged and controlling my buoyancy the real fun was just starting.

Utila, Honduras, 2004-04-26

Who actually feels the need to bolt their door at night? For one, I do. Now. I never used to. But now, when I imagine it, it really is quite scary. Some of the many people I’ve told about it tell me that most of the petty crime here is caused by local crackheads. I just can’t help but imagine that whoever it was, he could have had a knife in one hand, while he used the other hand to grab my shorts and my friend’s bag off the floor. Just in case one of us woke up and saw him. One of us did wake up, Cassandra, the Canadian girl I split the double with, said she woke up with the light on and the door open, but figured I had left it that way. It was only in the morning that she, waking up first, exclaimed that her bag was gone, along with all her money and everything valuable. That shot me awake. From the bed I could still se my backpack was still there. OK. Oh boy… my shorts. Having put them on the ground at the foot of the bed, I had to get out of bed to see them. Or not to see them. Damn. This sucks. And a few more timely neuronal firings reminded me: my wallet. My camera. In the first one was about US$15.00 of various funny-named currencies and my driver’s license. Wow, that’ll be a pain in the ass. In the other were the last 2 weeks’ photographs. And the rest of my trip’s potential ones too.

“Oh my god! Yes, oh my god. I took my money and my passport out of my bag just before bed last night! I’d almost thought I’d lost them.” Cassandra showed me a small handbag, implying they were in there. “Oh no. But my necklace is gone. That was a present from my mom.”

Luckily for me my licenses to live in a legal and capitalist society (i.e. passports and money cards) were safely in my money-free-at-the-moment money belt, still in my possession. We went out into the hallway. A few other guests were already up at the time. After telling them what happened, we heard back a few second-degree stories about other thefts at the hotel all in the last 5 days or so. One girl, present, noticed that her bathing suit was no longer hanging on the line to dry as she had left it the night before. We all walked down to the porch to see the clothesline, and sure enough, the clothes that had been there were gone. From the porch one could see into the closet-sized kitchen (the use of which was one of the reasons to want to stay at that hotel). Cassandra exclaimed “my books!” and ran into the kitchen. On the small counter spread out and most likely rifed-through were her books and a few other things out of her bag. Under some other stuff she found “my necklace!”

We can assume our friend emptied her bag to stuff the other things in it. We can also assume that he was a he, and on crack, and ready to kill me at the slightest flinch. But, more practically, we can assume this guy is very familiar with the hotel. He knew how to open the door quietly, knew the layout of the room, the lightswitch, where someone might leave something easy to grab. He knew that there was a convenient flat spot in the kitchen. And he’s obviously at it a lot. We’re talking an employee or someone close to the owners.

So was the police chief, talking about it I mean. He agreed with me, when I went to talk to him at the municipal building, which is really the second story on a dock, and only has about 5 offices. This was certainly not the first time he’d heard about it, and he took my report and my address and was really nice and concerned. He even told me to come back before I left to see if anything shows up. Even though he was a million times more helpful than the average Central American policeman should be, I still wonder how hard it would be just to set up a little trap and get this guy red-handed. If he’s done it so much before, it’s 1000 to 1 he’ll do it again. But I really have no hoped up of getting anything back. At least it sure would be nice for this not to keep happening to people.

I think I’m noticing things that would make really cool pictures even more now that my camera grew legs. I’m getting over the shock, little by little. My initial feeling right that instant when I was sitting on my bed staring at the shorts-shaped empty piece of floor was to get the hell off this damned island, get the hell out of this fuct-up part of the universe. Go home and not have things like this happen to me. But after a little while I calmed down a bit. I remembered how terribly lucky I am. Not only can I come to places like this, but I can also leave them. I have a wonderful home I can go to. I can buy a new camera. A better newer one, even. Life goes on. No big deal. Best of all, I get another apparently very valuable lesson. Bolt the door at night. I won’t let this make me paranoid, but at least more sensible and cautious.

Antigua, Guatemala, 2004-04-21

From Cobán I meant to make it to Lago de Atitlán, a collapsed caldera ringed by active volcanoes and reportedly very beautiful, very touristy, and very cheap. All of which turned out to be true, believe it or not. But to get there I only got as far as Guatemala City when they told me there were no more busses until morning. The way it works is that the busses in Guatemala, called chicken busses and mostly composed of reincarnated American school busses, are a lot cheaper than busses in Mexico, and they’re also a lot suckier. To make things hard for me, they seem to start running at 5am or earlier, and stop at 5pm or earlier. At least now my Guatemalan uncle Bob makes a lot more sense.

I found a bed in a very dingy and very cheap pension with the amenities of: very international scribbles all over the walls of either crudities or youthful possibly marijuana influenced philosophy, drunk and loud employess, and a 10” long worm coming out of a crack in the shower floor. In an attempt to while away the hours until I could sleep, for didn’t much want to be there while I was awake, I went searching for internet. Every place I found was either closed, or closing, until the fifth one I tried. Notable not only for its later hours, this internet café lacked the very common “No Pornografía” signs, and was aside from me populated by three very focused teenage boys with headphones on and Windows Media Player on fullscreen. After my somewhat distracted attempts at emails, it was time for food. It is really strange how so much of the food here has the same names as Mexican food, but is completely different. E.G. a Guatemalan enchilada is more like a Mexican tostada, and on this night a I ordered a flauta and what I got was more reminiscent of a folded burrito. That was ok with me for sure.

The next morning I woke up early and hiked all the way across the city center to find a bus to Panajachel, the main bussible destination on Lago de Atitán. Guatemala City has no central bus terminal, which is really perfect considering it’s the transportation hub of the country. To find your next bus requires a careful statistical geometric analysis of about 10 different people’s 10 different directions, and then walking all across the city with your fingers crossed. When you’re feeling real good that you managed to find a bus, the bus drives in circles for 30 minutes trying to fill itself up as much as possible before leaving, of course passing by many of the blocks you just hiked to find it.

At the very least they gave me plenty of warning before I had to change busses, because when you tell someone unmistakenably that this bus is going ALL THE WAY to Panajachel, you have to give him at least a 20 second warning before he has to get off in some random crossroads town and change busses in order to get to Panajachel. It’s simply good manners. This nice man gave me 30! That extra smile really put the service over the top.

After riding crowded chicken busses all day, and doing the same the day before, sleeping in that disgusting place in Guatemala City, having spent 8 nights in a row in different places, being hungry and thirsty, and just generally stressed out, I was de un pretty mal humor by the I got in to Pana. It was one of those times when I sort of wondered where the hell am I and what the hell and I doing here? The lake and the volcanoes and everything were all beautiful and I didn’t care. Maybe I should just go home and get a job and then I won’t be so tired and hungry and there won’t be so many guys trying to hassle me for my money. But… after some food, rest, internet, and a really good run and swim, the idea of going home and getting a job returned back to its proper position of abstract ridiculousness.

San Pedro de la Laguna, on the far side of Lago de Atitlán is a beautiful little town absolutely FULL of tourists… really, and a lot of them stay and open businesses too. So it’s hardly like being in Guatemala at all in some ways, but still at Guatemalan prices. That’s why so many gringos like it so much. I was ready to end my terrible cycle of spending every night somewhere else and rest at least a couple of days there. I didn’t think it would be good to stress myself out too much more. I’m fragile!

My hotel, being one of an extreme over-abundance was quite cheap, and quite empty. For B-fast the next day I checked out a café called Munchies because I heard the attached hostel could have a bit more interesting mix of people than just me and some ants. And out of no where comes running my Canada-connection, Marie-Éve, screaming “P.B! P.B!” (Don’t ask, K?) It turned out I had actually managed to run into my friends from Chiapas (or what was left of them anyway), something I was hoping but not expecting to do. And off to Antigua we went. Another nig

Cobán, Guatemala, 2004-04-18

As of my previous entry, Graham and I had ridden in the back of two trucks. By the time yesterday was to a close, we’d brought that number up to seven. Maybe seven itself is in most contexts not that impressive of a number, but on these kinds of roads, in these kinds of trucks, and for these distances… well, I’m proud of myself, OK? Two separate times running out of gas is pretty good too. And we were able to achieve more than our goal for the day, thanks to the charity of a tall skinny man in an orange shirt with 2 toddlers, a wife, and a fast red truck. The primary goal was to make it to a small town at the bottom of a huge valley named Lanquín, which we achieve with efficacy. Plus a chance to discover that a little old lady with a lazy eye in a little old shack on the side of this long long dirt road we have come to know so well makes very hot disk-shaped things that taste almost exactly like those microwave burritos only very deliciously so, and only cost 1 Quetzal.

Once in the town of Lanquín we discovered – and I hereby disclaim that this may not be representative of the entire population of Lanquín – the people trying for the tourist moneys have not caught on to the idea that if you’re nice you get more of it in the end. Instead, they think they can get away with being assholes and trying at every instant to rip us off. Sadly, to a certain extent they can: people do and will keep coming to the amazing site of Semuc Champey, which is only accessible via Lanquín. The name Semuc Champay in Q`uechqa means (sp.?) “water hidden under rocks,” and is an apt name for what is essentially a long natural bridge, so long, in fact, that one doesn’t realize there is a raging river underneath it when one first comes upon it from the trail. What one does see is a series of beautiful stepped pools with crystal water splashing in a hundred little water falls down the steps, and then one jumps in for a swim because it’s simply irresistible. Only after is one ready to walk/swim/climb/slip to each end of the bridge and look down below at the huge river being squeezed at one end into the tunnel underneath and gushing out at the other to meet all the water from the pools as it makes the final 10 meter plunge.

Afterwards Graham and I, along with a Swedish girl and a Dutch couple we made friends with, were all milling about at the exit wondering if we’d ever find a ride back to Lanquín (a very hilly 10km away). The only vehicle in the parking lot was a little red truck. We eyed it with fingers crossed. The finger crossing gods were apt that afternoon – not only would our new skinny friend in an orange shirt with 2 toddlers, a wife, and a fast red truck take us back to Lanquín, but he was going all the way to Cobán! the town we had planned on waking up early and bussing to the next day. Not only did we get a free ride, but we didn’t have to see the a-holes in Lanquín ever again. And as if that was not way more than I deserved already, our skinny friend in the orange shirt was also a very insane friend in a fast red truck and he drove very redly and very very fastly.

El Centro de Nowhere, Guatemala, 2004-04-17

All the busses from Flores (near Tikal) to Guatemala City take the only good highway – often the only paved road at all – which goes all the way east to the Caribbean before coming back all the way west to Guatemala City. Aside from that, there’s only two or three other roads that will take you between there and El Petén. It’s 8 a.m. and I am currently sitting on the side of one of them, along with Graham, the Canuck, hoping to flag down the first motorized vehicle that passes (it’s been one long wait and may well keep being one). We’re two rides out of Fray Bartolomé de las Casas. Our last ride left us here, wherever here might be. It’s a small collection of simply built houses, a church, some pigs/dogs, and it’s in a beautiful green valley. This area’s full of beautiful green valleys, and I saw a good many of them from my 15’ up vantage point atop a fully laden cargo truck. For four hours. Four very bumpy hours down the only road for miles with its quality varying from bad to less-than-unpaved. That road got us as far as Fray by night fall. Fray is a happening place on Friday night. There’s a pool hall with nice tables. There’s a hotel with a pool with water in it that you can’t see through. It’s supposed to be the best in town. But no hot water in the showers, and for a few minutes, no water at all. Unfortunately for Graham, he was covered in soap during those fateful minutes, and the empleada girl he was beseeching over the top of the shower door to bring him a bucket of water stood there dumbfounded while I couldn’t help but just listen and laugh… she didn’t speak Spanish and was in the most precious state of innocent confusion I think I have just about ever seen.

Saturday morning (today) we got up at 5:45, as early a start on getting the hell out of there as possible. And here I am, a wait waiting. Thinking of all the LOSERS who just take the bus.

Tikal, El Petén, Guatemala, 2004-04-15 to 2004-04-16

Sleeping in a hammock in the jungle is simply a recipe for adventure. While last night it was not as much a of a hammock adventure as I had in Palenque, it was still interesting. (If you are picking up here without having read my currently unavailable previous trablog entries, I was stung by a scorpion.) I got to experiment with new ways to get something resembling comfort in my too-small hammock (I got a pretty good one involving extending it with my sleeping bag). I got to have crazy malaria pill dreams for the first time in a few months, and I got to be woken up by howler monkeys a few times throughout the night. I haven’t seen one yet, but I do hear they’re small from people who have. Nonetheless, what I heard from the monkeys themselves certainly seems to say to me that they’re big, mean, scary, pissed off, and coming my way. And that there’s lots of them. Especially at about 5:00 a.m. Of course, maybe they’re just pissed off that they’ve come all this way to the tropical jungle and it’s still really cold at night. I was ok in my sleeping bag, but the 4 other hammockers next to me were howling in their own somewhat-less-scary way this morning.

It’s only about a 10 minutes walk from the Jaguar Inn, where my hammock hangs, to the closest ruins. Excellent for getting out early and seeing the sunrise over the temples, just as everyone says you should come to Tikal and do. But, when the sun rises at 5:30 and the ruins open at 6:00, it’s a bit difficult. Still, they were amazing at 6:00, almost empty with a beautiful light trickling in at a lazy angle through the canopy, birds chirping from every green tree branch, vine, leaf, and flower.

Tikal has the most beautiful ruins I’ve ever seen. Not just because the ruins themselves are the biggest and most diverse, but because they are spread out over a wide area of amazing pristine jungle, in the middle of a large national park, and protected from the sun by the high canopy. It’s a fusion of history and nature, with miles of trails to explore. I wonder if they cleared all the trees out when this was a bustling metropolis of 100,000+ inhabitants (back when it was the commercial and administrative capital of the region and before they were all killed – a time span from about 700 BC to 700 AD). It seems they didn’t use the pyramids for anything other than ceremony; did the citizens just walk past them everyday, just another part of the old landscape that was there when they were born and would be there after?

One of the signs at the (creatively named) Temple V says there had been some eleven generations of forest cover growing up its slopes. Some of the temples that have not been excavated and restored certainly show signs of being readily reclaimed by the jungle and staying that way for a really long time. They resemble very unnaturally small, steep, tall hills, capped with a small stone structure – the only part too steep for the roots to cling to, even after all these years. The rest of the temples really are truly magnificent, but the few left as the jungle would have them really intrigue me. There’s just a magic in the mystery of imagining that the temple could be there, instead of actually seeing a temple.

I wish I was Indiana Jones, then at a place like this I would surely be doing something *really cool* right now because I’d fall through a trap door and have to figure out all the puzzles, and fight all the snakes, and the scorpions, and the Nazis. I´d get the treasure, and the pretty lady(ies?). Instead of just looking at the big tarantula on a tree, I’d hella EAT it. And I’d have a cool hat. And fly jet planes.

Or I could just be a howler money and throw fruit and be scary and poop from trees.



Belize City, Belize, 2004-04-14

It’s not actually the fourteenth of April, and I’m not actually in Belize at all. But I WAS there on the 14th, I promise.

I thought I might check it out. Go out to the cays for a dive, or something. Besides, Sabine (my German freund) needed to leave Mexico to renew her tourist card before she went up to the Yucatán*, and I need a way around the roadless jungle between me and Tikal. We made it to the border town of Chetumal on a night bus. I should have known this Belize place was going to be trouble when the busses crossing the border left from the parking lot of a produce market. After waiting an hour, we found out we were waiting at the wrong end of the parking lot and had just missed the bus, meaning another hour and a half wait for the next one. The beginning of the bus ride was nice; we got to see the Caribbean coast and stuff. There was a really beautiful place the bus stopped for a minute where it smelled like your head was inside a flower. But soon thereafter a friendly man got on the bus and started talking to us. He suggested we not visit practically anywhere in Belize, particularly Belize City, because the second we alight from the bus we will likely be raped and killed and certainly at least violently robbed. A few bocks walking after we got off the bus in Belize City, just before it started pouring rain, I decided it wasn’t so bad as he said. Still, for somewhere that is most expensive place in Central America, it just doesn’t make sense that it should be so ghetto. For example, most of the shops are closed up with big metal bars, and if you want anything you have to tell the little Chinese ladies to get it for you.

Everything seemed a lot nicer after some rest and some food, but it was still kinda lame. And when I was told I couldn’t do a one-day introductory scuba dive, that I would have to do a full certification course for lots of money, it became increasingly clear that one night in Belize was enough for me.

I don’t regret going, it was interesting to see this strange place, nestled on the mainland but more similar to the English speaking islands and full of black people. A country who has its origins because it is the terrestrial shadow of a barrier reef impassable to Spanish galleons, and thus the perfect base for English pirates. They (most of them) to this day speak English (or almost close enough) and have a picture of a pretty young lady named Elizabeth on their money. And it was money that gave me a great farewell to Belize. I, and the Canadian guy named Graham (with whom little did I know I would be traveling for a few days), got nice and ripped off by the money changer right before entering Guatemala. The Belizean border guards let us go back and try to find the guy once we got wise to it. According to some of the other money changers, he had conveniently “gone to lunch.”

Well, I gave Belize a chance, which is way little and still more than it really asked for.


*I heard a story, true or not, that when the Spanish first came to the Yucatán, they asked the locals what the place was called. Not speaking nor understanding Spanish, they responded with “We don’t understand.”, which, in their language, sounded like “Yoo-Kah-Tan.”