I got, got, got no time...

But a quick note.

In case yáll heard that I got robbed, it´s true. In case you didn´t hear, I did, and Patrick sent me enough monies to make it to Cancun.

So, mostly this post is written to say yes, i am broke, but no, I am not destitute, and Christina, Mom, Matt, and Chelsea are meeting me in Cancun tomorrow afternoon!

See you soon!

The Amazon Trail

This is the game that took up most of my indoor time as a child. My sisters and I frequently fought over who was going to play, and infrequently watched and helped each other as we canoed down the river trying to spot animals. This is a game about animals: you take pictures of them, and then you win when you get a lot of pictures. You spearfish and you trade with the locals. You learn all about the animals of the rainforest, and you have FUN! If you haven't already gone to amazon.com to buy this for your child, do so now. I'll wait.
As you hopefully have figured out, I am not in the amazon. However, I did visit the rainforests of southern Belize this week. I stayed in the jungle for two nights. I have warrior wounds from fighting off the deadly mosquitoes and no see ums. they are itchy wounds.

The cockscomb wildlife basin, so named for it's resemblance to the comb of a male chicken, on his head, wait...I'll get a picture.



This is the cockscomb basin. Correction: this is the cockscomb basin in the 80s. The camera was out of batteries, despite the two packs of batteries that I have bought in the past week. Apparently they had been sitting on the shelf for far too long waiting for me to buy them. So I noted all of the animals that I saw and will procure internet images of them for you in the later parts of this blog. I hope you're excited.

I arrived wet with the heat of the noonday sun. I bought jungle provisions before I went in: cookies, banana bread, ramen noodles, and powdered coconut milk. I also bought water. After I bought the water, I decided not to hike the 10 miles into the preserve. It surely would have been the death of me. Instead, I hired a taxi and popped right into the thick of the jungle in about a half hour. The road, while gravel, is covered with potholes and huge rocks, and also we were looking for animals on the side of the road. He told me that most people who see animals see them on the main road - especially jaguars. There were two jaguar crossing signs that seemed not to be jokes on the way into the preserve. Once in, I quickly signed up for the rustic cabin. this is the cabin with no electricity and no bathroom, but it does boast a beautiful screened in porch to hide you from the bugs in the evening when you want to sit out and listen to night come in. I went for an unproductive walk. This was only days after Patrick had left the country, and I was missing him, and a little miffed that I wouldn't be able to talk to him for the next couple of days. That was the reason that I moved back to Minnesota - so I would be able to talk to people whenever I wanted to! Now I was out in the bush again, and really wanting someone to talk to.

I found someone! It was a canadian couple, just in Belize for 11 days. They walked the 10 miles to get in, and were covered in bug bites. They were incredibly lovey dovey, and ended every sentence with 'sweety' or 'honey.' I was fine with it, because they took me on a night hike. Mind you, if it wasn't for them, I would not have walked in the jungle at night alone, because that is scary. Instead, I would have holed up in the cabin and waited for daybreak, and probably also sanity.

The thing about the central american jungle is, that all of the animals that you come to see - the jaguars, the fer de lance, the tapir - all of these are nocturnal. It is far too hot during the day to walk around, people included, and so we wait for dusk to explore. The obvious problems of exploring in the dark - it's dark, it's scary, there are huge spiders - are impossible to overcome by yourself on your first night in the jungle. So you wait for someone, anyone to come along and ask you to accompany them.

We leave at 8:30 for a 3.5k hike. This is a little hike. In miles, this is 2. This is nothing, an hour walk through the forest. We walk along the big path toward the Wari trailhead. There is a bird that sits on the trail, looking like the trail. When we get close, it moves uptrail about 15 meters. When we get close again, it does the same thing. This bird should probably just wait for us to go around it. It is a chuck will's widow, I think, after not-so-careful internet searching. Here it is:All around us fly Click beetles, which light up in the eyes like fireflies and click like the toy out of a rice crispies box when you push on their abdomens. this makes the firefly light glow brighter, and it makes a cute little noise. this is a click beetle:

There are leaf-cutter ants blazing trails all over the jungle. There are millions of leaf cutter ants, climbing trees to fetch leaves, clearing paths...wherever there are leafcutters, there are paths cleaned of leaves. they use them for food. They can't eat the leaves, but bring them to their nests and cultivate a fungus using the leaves, which they then eat. Here is one:


We walk on. There are lots of spiders - did I already mention that? And lots of howler monkeys howling, but it is too dark and they are too far up in the trees for us to see them. They make a howl like a big hungry carnivore. they make a sound like they are going to eat us. I took a picture of a howler monkey at the zoo yesterday. this is the picture that I took:


We don't see anything else for the rest of the trip. when we arrive back at camp, at 11:30 - how did it take 3 hours to walk 2 miles? - we are exhausted, and practically fall into bed. I can't sleep, because I'm still a little scared of the jungle. At about 12:37 (I looked at my watch), Sean, the man in the room next door, screams. Then I hear rustling and a lot of low voices, and it seems that Sean has been stung by a scorpion. He is looking for it for 20 minutes. Now, we saw some King Scorpions earlier in the evening in the kitchen. they are 2 1/2 inches long, these little suckers. they have big stingers on their tails, and they are super creepy. He had one in his bed. Needless to say, I did not sleep for the rest of the night. Did I mention that these things are arachnids? Gross.

So the next day, I left the too happy couple and went river tubing all by myself in the jungle where the 9 poisonous snakes of Belize are probably hanging out. I mean, I went in a river in the depths of the jungle by myself! I was scared shitless. I was so scared that for the first 10 minutes, I didn't let my butt touch the water. Then I did, and it was nice, because it was probably 90 degrees that day. I didn't see any snakes. I didn't see any crocs. I did see a lot of birds! A lot of beautiful birds...like:
The Great Currasow!

This One! It is yellow.

After awhile, I decided to camp out at Tiger Fern waterfall for the night. I think that I decided this after I had had a sleepless night in a cabin and I found out that it would cost $30 Belize less (that's $15 US) to stay in a tent - also I probably would get some sleep because scorpions do not come into tents that have closed zippers. This is a well known fact. Actually, i suppose they could rip through the tent fabric with their scorpionclaws or scorpitail, but the odds were in my favor here.

The picture at the top is my view from campsite. I arrived sweaty, seriously sweaty (it was a 90+ degree hike to the top of a hill) at the campsite at around 5 pm and just waited for nightfall. I couldn't read, write, or think because I was so tired from the not sleep, so I just sat and watched and waited. Night came. I saw some animals, heard the howler monkeys start to screech, and went to bed. Morning came. I had slept. I got up at 5:30 when the sky was just turning light. I looked out the lookout, and the entire Cockscomb basin was covered in fog, covered so thick that it looked like a lake covered in snow. there was not a tree to be seen. It must be what the clouds look like from above. It slowly dissipated throughout the morning, and I slowly went about my business, writing and watching and being in awe. I camped in the jungle. By myself. And I liked it. Alot. I am a badass.

New Itinerary Again!

Dad. I hope you're reading this blog, because these itineraries are for you.

March 24. I'm in Belize!
March 25. San antonio, Belize - I'm going to watch some Mayan ceremonial dances and visit the jungle!
March 26. Same deal.
March 27. Jungling.
March 28. There is a giant Maya hoopla all day on Palm Sunday. there's even a running of the torch all over belize, so while I did miss the olympics, I will still see the fire.

March 29. back to Guatemala
March 30-April 2. Coban / Semuc Champey / Lanquin. this is the national park that is home to the quetzal (guatemala's national bird). I'm gonna bag one (picture of a quetzal). Also, a creepy cave filled with bats and water. You take the tour in your swimsuit holding only a candle, and swim with the candle above your head through the underground river. weeeeird.

Easter weekend. Antigua. This is it. semana Santa, the big celebration with flower carpets all over the city and huge parades. Antigua will be filled to capacity on these days, so probably I will be calling everyone I know to get away from the crazies.

After that, I'm heading up to mexico through Palenque (west and north of Guatemala), my last mayan ruin, and then up over guatemala to the Yucutan where I am meeting up with Tina, Matt, Mom, and possibly Chelsea for a week of sunning myself (safely, with tanning lotion) and salting myself in the ocean.

April 15th. I'm coming home!

april 18th. matt's basketball banquet and, I heard through the vine, aiden's 1st communion.

It's been a long long time...

And I have to play catch-up. you see, Patrick came to Honduras with me and told me that I wasn't allowed to use a computer. If he saw me touching one, I'm sure he would have cut my hand off. and so I did not compute (much). I can place the blame squarely on his shoulders and it won't even matter because he is not in this country. Ha.
So without further ado, I will now relate the entire time that I have been travelling since the last time that I wrote a travelling blog entry. It will be a long time, so I hope you're not too hot to trot - this might be good.

Oh, by the way, if you want to see all of the pictures, you have to look on facebook. If you want to see all of the pictures, but are not friends with me on facebook, either you have to join facebook and be my friend, or just imagine what guatemala looks like, and put a little mental image of me in there, and you're close enough. I'm convinced that all of the pictures i took can be found somewhere else on the internet. I did use a popular guidebook, after all...

Okay, after I left Panajachel, or the land of the lotus eaters, I made my way north and east to the Carribean coast. The first place that I stopped was called Rio Dulce, "sweet river". It was sweet. The place I stayed refused to be captured digitally, but it was a 15 minute boat ride from civilization into the mangrove swamps surrounding Lago de Isabel. Once there, I stepped onto a dock that was covered with a palapa roof (a giant tiki hut) and got my room settled. It was a hut that was connected to the rest of the hostel with a series of wooden walkways - usually there is enough water to completely cover the ground, so the walkways are necessary. This was far and away the coolest place I have ever stayed. There were little nocturnal mangrove rodents that hung out by my hut and crickets louder than most of the dickens that lulled me to sleep at night, along with the gentle rocking of the rocking waves...it was very peaceful, and I noticed that all of the people were also peaceful, probably because everyone slept like wombers on the sweet river.
During the day, I went to the hot waterfall and boqueron caves - the waterfall was HOT, smelling all sulphury and coming out of the mountains.

I met a man there who wanted to make sure that I knew about his work saving mayans from sickness. It was a very hard job, he assured me, living on 60 acres of Guatemalan rainforest near the hot waterfall and swimming in it twice a week, but someone had to do it, and that someone had to be him. I am meeting alot of people here who I think have reached a state of lonliness so profound that they think the only way to meet women is to toot toot toot their little tooters. Maybe he really did have some sort of a God complex, but I think rather that he just really wanted someone to talk to. I always meet those people who just need someone to talk to, it seems.

On a slightly happier note, though, I met one of those 'listener' types today, and she listened to all of my pent up 'I haven't talked to anyone in three days' words.

Okay, moving on...I met mom and kate. But they were from Scotland, and they were the way Mom and Kate would have been had they met 20 years ago. It was really fun hanging out with them, and they shed some light on the major topic that I have come out here to think about, but which up until now haven't even mentioned on the blog: love. theirs is a love that is unacceptable in guatemala, so they had some interesting things to say. I can't go into it now, because it's all connected to more connections that are connected to thoughts that can't yet be spoken, but someday when I make a manifesto, I will let you read it. how's that? For now all that needs to be said is that I have a lot of thoughts about love and our culture's conceptions of love that need to be spoken aloud at some point, maybe with a bottle of red wine.

Okay, so then I took a trip up the Rio dulce. This is a tourist hot spot, and it was hot. I mean cool. First we saw the only fort in Guatemala. I have since learned that there is a fort in Honduras as well, that is a little bigger, dubbed "the biggest fort in all of Central America ca ca ca!" It isn't that cool or big. The fort in Guatemala, as evidenced by my facebook pictures, is right on the waters of Lago de Isobel. It was used to keep stanky British pirates away from the good Spanish holdings in the area. What these were, I'm still not sure, but probably the Spanish were in control of the port that led from inland Guatemala to the Carribbean, so they naturally sent ships that way.

We took a lancha - basically a motorboat with a fringe on top to hide our white heads from the Carribbean sun - so we slowed down at certain points, like for instance this place and the next place: an empty island full of birds. I named this today in honor of Patrick - he knows why I hope. (if not, email me).

Whoa. this is getting intense. I watched a giant pelican eat a giant fish. I didn't buy conch shells from little kids in homemade child-sized dugout canoes, but I did think about you, emily, and your class making a dugout canoe. When I asked how long it took to make, they said 2 days. I think they have better tools than you did, somehow.

Okay, so then I was in Livingstone. I quickly made my way to a loud and rather male-dominated guest house by the name of 'something about Iguanas'. Actually, I can't remember the name, but it was something about iguanas. I think my name would have been better. When I say male-dominated, I mean testosteriffic. this is the kind of place where people made fun of me for not drinking enough, and really pushed the drinking games. These were 30 year old men. naturally, I wondered why they were so obsessed with adolescence when they were, like I said, 30 or in some cases, way older. I haven't been able to figure it out. Maybe someone has an idea out there in blogland? anyway, I left for the first evening to make garifuna food!

I learned how to cut coconuts and grate them and soak them in water to make coconut milk. I helped make banana dumplings (using green bananas, because they hold up better and are super starchy) and turned them into soup, stew chicken, and coconut rice. I danced with cute little girls, to drums played by puff chested masculine little boys. I laughed, I cried. It was a very good night.

I woke up the next morning and read an entire book. Anansi Boys, by Neil gaiman. Not as good as American Gods, but still a good read. Jacquelyn, you will probably like it since you're in a big old modern myth phase.

This blog seems somehow way less profound and more making fun of my journey that I had originally hoped. maybe this is because it has been a long time since it all happened and all I can recall in this slightly dehydrated state is the funny parts. Probably i should blog more. But for right now, I am totally sick of blogging. After I read the whole book, I booked it to San Pedro Sula, the fourth circle of hell is how i described it, I think. It was Honduras. Honduras will have to be the next blog...

Panajachel - Lago de Atitlan - I climbed a volcano! - oops, my spanish teacher is in love with me.

Whoops! Well, I just remembered that Im supposed to be putting pictures on facebook and words on blog. So i will put the rest of the pictures on facebook and the rest of the words here. This is Lago de Atitlan. I stayed here for two weeks in an apartment by myself - i helped the owner fix the place up and also helped her build some fences and a roof garden (pictures on facebook). I carried some serious loads up to the roof for padma. serious. She reminded me of a cross between Katie Becker, Mom and Aunt Cindy. Also she was like me, but also she was almost 60. This woman sang with Grace Slick. I think. Im sure. She told me, and i believed her.

Anyway, Panajachel on Lago de Atitlan is a place where people go to forget the rest of the world. It is about half gringo (white people), and the rest mayans, with a little ladino thrown in for effect. I have been studying under some sort of feminist yoda there, whose name, appropriately, is padma. She went to the lago to teach indigenous women to use the internet, and decided to stay for 15 years. she doesnt have a job, and she likes it that way. It is so refreshing to meet people who dont give a damn if they have a job or not - actually, who don´t even want one! They just want to learn, and working so hard as we work in the US everyday I am beginning to think is detrimental to my mental capacity. I do not learn nearly as much when Im stuck in some sort of routine...I want to be a traveller for my job, and Im looking at ways to facilitate it.

So I got to the town and almost immediately ran into this woman, who I heard speaking english on the street. I asked her if she knew of any apartament that I could rent, and she took me up to hers and set me up inside. I am positive that somehow this was meant to be. I can´t explain it, but this woman was like a mother and a teacher to me, and she needed my help! So I helped her set up her upstairs garden, build some fences around the roof, and clean out her apartments. I also provided her with a daughter figure, and she provided me with a mother. Her daughter moved to the states to go to school for music, and she needed some emotional support. We were meant to be, right?

It is difficult to describe the feeling that I have known someone for longer than life, and irrational. I think the best that I can do without incriminating my craziness too much is to say that I had a very strong feeling when I met her that I wanted to know her better, that we were alike, and that i would learn a lot from her.

She set about teaching me all about guatemalan culture. I read some of her books, I, Rigoberta Menchu, and The Managua Lectures, by Noam Chomsky. From these I learned the story of the Guatemalan war, the genocide, the hatred of the indigenous people. I learned the same stories that I have been learning about other places with different names, different labels. People all over the world with a little bit of power have these same habits of believing, I think without guilt (except that I did see the robert macnamara interviews, fog of war...please watch this if you havent- it is a really good documentary about the vietnam war), that they are entitled to anything that they want. Indigenous people all over central america, and actually, all over the world, have been exploited since way before our time, and they are still being exploited today.

The thing is, though, that they stick with life even though it is hard. The story of Rigoberta Menchu, a mayan woman who helped start the guatemalan revolution, is about a woman and a community and a people that knows how hard life is and yet chooses life every time, over and over again. This is, I think, part of the answer to a lot of my questions about guatemalan culture. When I asked how people could live this kind of life - they just do. They choose life, and life means this life. We dont have the luxury in my circle of knowing what a hard life feels like - the kind of life that abject poverty necessitates, and we also don´t know the satisfaction of providing for ourselves, the gratitude, and the communal experience of a village living through another year. We have lost that with all of the power that we have gained.

So anyway, I am getting hungry. I climbed a volcano in Panajachel - it is called San Pedro Volcano. The Guatemalan people do not understand switchbacks, or easy trails. They get up and get down and probably dont get as sore as I did, but my partners in crime and I were sore for 3 days after we got down from there. It was about 2 miles straight up this thing, with hundreds of stairs to climb as well. It was sort of worth it when I got to the top within seconds of the entire valley being covered by clouds - i mean, i saw a glimpse and then everything was gone. but now i can say that ive climbed a volcano, and even if the experience was only one of pain, hunger, and frustration, I climbed a volcano and you probably didnt.

New itinerary!

Its for those of you that care, so that you will not think im dead all the time...

Today - Im in livingstone, a little carribean town on the coast of Guatemala. Im smelling the ocean!
Friday - Im going to Honduras to pick up my mister, so that we can learn to scuba dive together
The weekend - We´re going to South western honduras to see Copan
Next week - the little island of Utila in Honduras to scuba...
Next weekend - Something else.
After that - Ill just have to keep you updated.

Antigua.

The giant church in the town center at the beginning of semana santa...

and a little confessional booth...


This is one of those must-sees in antigua, the arch, like the eiffel tower or the statue of liberty.


That same giant church...

my school! que bonita!
All of the trees are topiaried here. they all look like weird popsicles.

The fountain of the sirens - los sirenes


La merced - the coolest building in antigua. look at the maize curling up the pillars - guatemala is a mixure of catholic and mayan religion






This is a church outside of town, in a village whose name i cant remember



The band i heard in the park on the first day i was in town! and a fruit seller - guatemalan women can hold anything they want on their heads, im convinced.


Antigua. It is one of the most beautiful old cities that I have ever seen, with old world european feel and baroque architecture and art all over the place. How do you spell architecture, and why do we insist on including hard to spell words in our language?

Anyway, antigua is a protected place, i think at least. It is. A UNESCO world heritage sight. So a lot of the buildings have been kept nice and pretty so that the world will visit the city. Antigua is the most touristy city in Guatemala. There are white people everywhere, and you dont actually have to speak spanish at all. There are european coffee shops everywhere, and restaurants that cater to the gringos.

this is the wikipedia article on Antigua. I would type more about the history, but somebody else already did and my hands are getting sore..

I studied here for a week, living with a cute little old lady named Hilda. She cooked the oddest things - grean beans fried in a mushroom soup batter and covered in eggs, like a croquette. uh, what else? I cant remember.

What I do remember is a feeling of absolute safety - there were so many tourists here and they all spoke english...i was not out of my comfort zone at all here. So that was a bit of a let down for me, because I really want to travel to places where I dont feel comfortable, where it doesnt feel like I am just wandering through to take pictures. I dont know if that is possible here.

It was, however, really nice to be able to hang out with people who understand the world in a similar way to my understanding...very different from San Andres in that way...it was much less serious and a more enjoyable week altogether. In san andres, I felt a little like I was banging my head against a wall trying to understand - in Antigua, I learned to breathe again...
I went salsa dancing with my Korean roommate, drank beer with Canadians and argentinians and americans, climbed a minor hill with a Japanese woman, and went to the market and garden shop and town centre with my spanish teacher to learn vocab! She seriously rocked my business all over antigua. And then it was over -

Oh, here is something I wrote about Antigua that I think can sum it up...spoiler alert- dont read this if you dont want to hear something naughty...

antigua is a city of sex. Everything here has rounded curves like the body of some nubian princess and always the volcano spurting smoke looms in the south...this city is full of the smell of acid and the smell of decay - shit and vinegar. it doesnt fool me and i wont drink the water no matter how thirsty i feel. lotus blossoms bloom in the water here, in eernal sun and facades of romance and the temptation of the salsa.