San Pedro La Laguna

We arrived here yesterday morning and checked into our ultra-cheap hotel...there are stunning views of Lake Atitlan, with mountains and volcanoes all around. At dawn the mountains are lined with orange and yellow light.

The hotel, again, goes for about $2.50 per night, and its not even a hostel...no mixed dorms, no shared showers, just private rooms with lakeviews. The terrace outside our room, however, is not private; we share it with the people in the next room up.


Picture: Hills around Lake Atitlan. Our view from the hotel terrace is like this, except panoramic and a bajallion times more impressive. So take this picture and multiply it by a bajallion, and you have an approximation of our hotel view.



I went out onto one of the terrace hammocks to do some reading and enjoy the view, and our hotel neighbors were out doing the same. Our neighbors, as it turns out, are Mondo Euro-Hippies. One of them, a dreadlocked German with colored ties around most of her skinny dreads, was dancing around in a flower skirt twirling these rainbow-colored hippie balls tethered to her hands on long cords. She twirled around, her flower skirt blowing lightly, her eyes closed, humming softly as she did figure-eights with the hippie balls with the lake and mountains in the background. If she had a lit joint between her lips it would have been the perfect scene.

Now, I think the essential difference between Euro hippies and US hippies is the fact that they spend those precious, valuable Euros instead of weak, pathetic US dollars. At $2.50 a night, that comes to something like 1.7 Euros, according to a conversion website I found. At that rate, the hippies could literally live at this hotel, sustaining solely on the sale of handmade hippie-crafts, light drug dealing, and panhandled money from tourists impressed and/or entertained by hippie street drumming. Pretty good deal.

Hot Springs/San Pedro.

Tomorrow we bus it to San Pedro. We booked a hostel which apparently has stunning views of Lake Atitlan from some of the rooms; hopefully we get a room with a view.

We went to the volcanic hot springs today outside Xela, they were awesome...and hot. As we approached in the van, you could smell the sulfur from the volcanoes and couldn´t tell the clouds from the volcanic steam. When you got real close to the volcanic rocks where the heat comes from, the temperature becomes unbearable. If you were patient I bet you could cook an egg by those rocks.

The hostel we found is about three bucks a night for a private room. SICK! From there wé´ll do a lake Atitlan tour, and then go to Antigua, Guatemala.

Xela

Picture: Xela´s central plaza. Xela is short for ¨Quetzaltenango,¨ which is the city´s full name, but is actually a shortened version of the original Mayan word for the area.





When we first arrived here in Xela (Shee-la), Guatemala, it looked like there was very little to do in the city itself, a first impression that was confirmed by Hannah´s ¨Central America on a Shoestring¨ Lonely Planet book. The town itself is very pretty, though, with narrow cobble streets and low tin-roof buildings with a pretty central plaza, all completely surrounded by a beautiful panorama of green hills and volcanoes. The city is a popular launching point for many excursions to hot volcanic springs and volcano-hiking. We´re going to the hot springs tomorrow, as well as a market that has some of the most freakishly massive vegetables in Central America. The minerals in the water from the surrounding volcanoes account for the massive produce, bringing forth a bounty of nutrient-rich, radioactive freak plants that turn you into a superhero with just a few small bites--carrots as big as the length of my forearm, for example.










Picture 2: A market stand in Xela, though not the one with the volcanic freak-veggies. Couldn´t find a picture of them on the ´net, but I´ll return with my own photos of them.




Yesterday we stayed in a hostel that offered a massive free breakfast, and tonight/tomorrow night we´re staying in Oscar´s house, someone else we met through Couchsurfing.com. Last night we went out to a vegetarian feast with him, his friend Eddy, and some of Eddy´s students from the Spanish school that he teaches at here. Apparently this town is very popular for Spanish students; there are schools everywhere. We were all talking about where we´re from, and Oscar was astonished and appalled when I told him that New York City is not the capital of New York, but Albany, a place he´s unsurprisingly never heard of.

Tonight, like we did for Ronny, we´re cooking Oscar and Eddy dinner as a token of our gratitude for Oscar´s offering a free bed and bathroom (with hot water this time, unlike at Ronny´s place).

Couchsurfing has given me plenty of good Spanish practice, not to mention free lodging and local perspectives on these cities. Next Hannah and I are heading to San Pedro, a town by lake Atitlan where things should be cheaper--we were very dismayed to find that Guatemala seems to be more expensive than Mexico, not less. Other than that it´s great here...so far so good, Guatemala.

Last Day in Mexico

Today is our last day in Mexico. Last night we met Ronny Roma and his friend Eric and cooked them a pasta dinner in exchange for them giving us a free place to stay. They´re both real cool dudes and are graduate students at Universities here in Mexico. Tonight we´ll do the same, cook them dinner and get a free bed, and early tomorrow morning we are taking a van to Xela, Guatemala and should be arriving in the afternoon. Ronny is Guatemalan, so he had lots of advice to give us and could answer lots of questions, particularly regarding safety. The usual precautions seem to apply, and traveling at night is a no-no unless you want to get shanked prison-style or be murdered for your precious, plump, nutrient-rich North American organs.







Yesterday we took an excursion to a canyon outside the city. There were some delightful spider monkeys playing in the trees and I got some video of them swinging around. Funny how the most mundane aspects of monkey life provide such endless thrills for us higher primates. Everyone in our river boat flipped out when we saw the monkeys, particularly these Venezuelan girls who brought two bottles of wine on the boat and were passing them around and taking pictures of each other swigging from them. ¨MONOS! HAY MONOS ALLI! MONOS EN LOS ARBOLES!¨ They´d stand up and scream. The alligators were another fiasco with those girls, but they didn´t provide quite the thrill that the monkeys did.


Photo: Canyon Sumidero. Monkeys not visible.







We also went to a Mayan Medicine museum and learned about traditional medicine. Apparently, the techniques have evolved a bit since 1000 AD, and modern-day ¨traditional Mayan medicine¨ often involves spitting Coke and/or Pepsi on the afflicted patient. It´s supposed to be purifying, or food for the spirits or some similar shit. If you ask me, they lost all their credibility (and I lost most of my respect) as soon as they started using cola for indigenous healing. They do, however, use spider fangs to treat inflamed testicles; a practice I respect deeply.

We also got to view a film on the upright birthing process and the ceremonal placenta-burying that is typical to the indiginous culture here. It´s all quite bloody and unsanitary, and involves extremely young indigenous pregnant girls, machetes, and strong incense.










Above: Traditional Mayan birth, as performed by mannequins.











In Oaxaca I lost my tourist visa, so today we went to the Migrations building to take care of some beaurocracy. It took forever, I had to explain every detail of where, when, how, and why I lost my visa, and give many-a-detail about what might have happened to it. The guy who was dealing with me had to leave to do something else, though, so he passed me on to some other guy who then forged the first guy´s signature on all the official documents.







Oh, Mexico. Te amo.

Guatemala, here we come.

Chiapas

We arrived in the state of Chiapas early this morning, in the town of San Cristobal de las Casas. Its a very charming town here, with lots of pretty churches and street markets.

Lots of ladies at market carrying chickens under each arm, the birds hanging upside-down in bunches with their legs tied together and others stuffed in canvas bags. They were very tolerant of being carried around like this, but thats because they dont know that they will all be put to a brutal death via decapitation for the heinous and unforgivable crime of being fowl.

Tomorrow night we are couch surfing with some dude named Ronny, and depending on how conveniently located he is, might book a hostel closer to town for another couple of nights before going to Guatemala.

Ive taken the liberty of stealing other peoples pictures of San Cristobal from the Internet since I am unable to post my own...just try to picture me in there somewhere.

Movin´ On Through

Tonight we board a bus southbound, for a 12-hour ride to Chiapas, Mexico. There is supposed to be some cool shit there. We´ve booked a hostel and hooked up with a guy who´s letting us crash on his couch for a couple days, but have little to nothing specific planned. After that we´re crossing into Guatemala, where we will probably stay for at least a week, week and a half. We´ve heard fantastic things about the country from some other travelers at the hostel in Puerto Escondido, and we´re psyched to discover it for ourselves.

Today we took a Taxi to a nearby town where there´s a great market every Sunday. Tons of tiny, huched-over Mexican ladies draped in colorful shawls selling seasoned crickets. They´re not as crunchy as I thought they´d be, particularly when drowned in delicious, spicy sauce. Sort of mushy, actually. There were also lots of tents with people selling homemade rugs, leather bags, belts, and hats, and massive machetes. I´ve seen a lot of phenomenal masks to add to my collection, but I´ve saving my pesos for Guatemala to buy a mask where they´ll be cheaper and I won´t have to haul it around as long.

Yesterday, when we taxied to some ancient ruins in a little town just outside Oaxaca, I tried some Mezcal. The stuff is fairly ubiquitous down here. It´s liquor made from I believe the Agave cactus, and it comes in varieties like cream, apple, and coffee. It´s delicious and I´d buy some to bring back home if it wouldn´t be such a pain in the ass to carry it with me in my backpack everywhere.

For breakfast in Oaxaca we´ve been eating Tortas y Memelas. Tortas are sort of Mexico´s answer to the Panini. Memelas are corn tortillas covered in beans and your choice of cheese, veggies, or seasoned chicken or beef.

Tonight is intense for Hannah, as shes been living here in Oaxaca working for over three months, but it´s exciting to move on and adventure through new places.

Real mexican food is delightful, although the Tex-Mex of the north country will always have a place in my heart.

I feel very tall here.

Tonight before we board our bus we´re getting sushi for dinner. I´m told that the Mexican interpretation is a perfectly delicious one, but we´ll see.

So far I haven´t had any gastrointestinal issues, which is always great when you´re traveling in the third world. I´m excited for Belize, where we´ll go after Guatemala, but we won´t be there long because we won´t have much cash left and its much more expensive there in comparison. Hannah sold me a bunch of Malaria pills, and we´ll start taking those today or tomorrow to prepare for the onslaught of disease-ridden tropical parasites that will come as we begin to move southeast. I´m psyched to see some Central American Jungleland. Beware of jungle cats and rowdy, curious primates!

I feel bad not jazzing this thang up with some photos, but its just not technologically feasible living out of a backpack. You´ll have to be satisfied with text-based reports of our adventures.

Getting There!

First off, I´m not sure how many pictures I´ll be able to post here on account of the technological limitations I´ll be facing here in the Southland. But I´ll do what I can.

My adventure began at the airport, as so many modern-day adventures do. I found my gate at JFK and was blessed by the presence of several fratboys and their vapid girlfriends. My first layover was in Cancun, but for the Frat Bros sitting nearby, I knew immediately Cancun would be their final destination. Several more of them appeared; they´d been taking tequila shots at the bar to ¨pregame for the flight.¨It was 10:15 in the morning.
¨Bro! What happens in Mexico, stays in Mexico!¨ one of them said. Another, one of the girls, was reading off some information from her passport.
¨Under ´nationality,´ it says ´American´¨ she observed. ¨But I´m Italian!¨
She wasn´t kidding.

Later, on the flight, the Bros were taking full advantage of the in-flight beverage service to ¨Pregame for Cancun.¨ The boys were ¨totally not gonna sleep all week,¨ the party would be going nonstop and they´d only sleep on the flight home, if all went according to plan. You could tell they thought it was going to be a defining trip in their young lives, all pre-frayed Billabong caps, tequila shots and guided tours. I knew they´d have a great time and wished them well.

My gate number in Cancun for Mexico City didn´t show up until 20 minutes or so before my flight, but I made it to the gate in plenty of time. The Mexico City International aiport looked like a jerry-rigged shithole. My gate had no screen, just these placards with worn white lettering, and when the boarding call came there was no loudspeaker, just a lady screaming at the top of her lungs over the hum of waiting travelers. I had very little time to get to my gate, so it was a pleasant surprise that it was so easy to find--much easier than in Cancun. I finally arrived in my final destination, Oaxaca, around 11:00 PM. My bag was the first on the baggage claim conveyor belt--a stroke of good fortune that can only be explained as a modern-day Mayan miracle! I got my pack, went through customs, and got a cab to Hannah´s apartment in the city center.

24 hours later, we boarded a bus for Puerto Escondido, a town on the Pacific coast of southern Mexico. Our Hostel here is owned by a scatter-brained British fellow. One of his employees is a young fellow with a vaguely sketchy past. About a week ago he was stabbed by a broken Corona bottle in a bar in town by some coked-up thugs who, as he put it, ¨wanted to rape the girls¨ he was with, and he ¨wasn´t about to let that happen.¨ I suspect it was mildly less heroic than he described it, but in any case, he had the bloody bandage to prove that he was indeed stabbed by something.

It´s hot as balls and the bugs are ferocious, but Mexico is an awesome place. Just don´t drink or brush with the tap water here, or amoebas might re-eat your enchiladas and send them out through your colon in a high-powered gastrointensinal rocketship.

More on all of this later.

The First 24.

I depart for Oaxaca Monday, August 17th. After my plane lands I'll have to find my way to the city center and then to Hannah's apartment, Guerrero 311. After that there will be a day or so for exploring and getting to know Carmen, a third travel buddy who will be with us for the beginning stage of the journey. Then, 24 hours after hitting the tarmac, the trio will take a bus to the Pacific coast, where blue waters await by sandy beaches; a seemingly endless crystal paradise.

Whatever happens in the month that follows will be the journey of a lifetime. Hannah seems to have made an acquaintance with a local cab driver in Oaxaca, so we anticipate hiring him as our chauffeur for a day or so. Having a local guide to take us to the places we want to see is going to kick ass as long as he's trustworthy.
And if Hannah trusts him, I trust him.




Thick Mexican cheeses pump slowly through my veins. My brain is an elaborate bean burrito. My arms are nothing but floppy enchiladas. My toes are hot little tamales. Slowly, over the course of the next five days, I will become Mexico.