Rio Dulce

I left San Pedro back to Antigua, which i wished i'd stayed longer at when i was there the first time. So this was my redemption. The first thing i did when i got there was go to maybe the one restaurant that I'd rather go to than any other here. i was kicking myself over missing it my first way through. what do they serve you ask? bagels, bagels, and more bagels. haaalleluja. and i didnt even mention the locks! my taste buds were in the clouds let me tell ya. the next day i visited the very busy market in town gift shopping, and aside from making some solid purchases i also got some valuable bargaining experience in. They all expect you to haggle when you're looking at anything, which was new to me. some of them even took it a step further, which i had to help myself from laughing at. when id ask about the price, before i could even have the chance to argue the starting amount, they would say 'its a good price just for you 80 quetzales okay 75.' it was like they were bartering with themselves!

Contrary to the rest of central america that i have thus far experienced, all throughout Guatemala there are little shuttle vans that take you directly to practically anywhere in the country you want. On the surface this is very appealing-fast, convenient, fairly cheap, and you dont worry about anything getting stolen, its just you and a bunch of other tourists. HOWEVER under the surface they are terrible little things. they can be unbelievably crowded, make me carsick like the dickens, and the drivers are obnoxious. So when i left antigua, i decided it was back to the chickenbusses for me. The first one i caught from antigua to guatemala city went flawlessly. the next bus going to rio dulce when i arrived was 20 bucks and fancy. or there was a 6 dollar old one going a half hour later. you all know which one i took. and man did it start well. not only was it full of locals and with a little too little leg room, but we even got a guy on board trying to sell shampoo to us. he had a whole shpeal and everything about how he wasn't here to annoy us or be a bother, he just wanted to share his wonderful shampoo with the masses. from there on things got interesting, good or bad depending on how you look at it. Either way, about an hour and a half into the trip, water and steam started rocketing out of the dashboard. Everyone reacted surprisingly nonchalantly. The bus driver kept driving, someone got up and went to work trying to fix it, and no one dove out the windows, which was maybe the logical course of action. In any case they couldn't fix it and we had to pull over to wait for the next bus to pick us up. And it was there, in the blazing heat leaning against the side of the bus on the shoulder of the highway, that i realized the main reason why i dislike the shuttles so much. they're just too damn easy! theres no adventure in getting door to door service in smooth-running vans with no crazy locals, no doubt that everything will go according to plan. thats not what i want, i'm traveling dammit! Anyways so eventually the next bus came, full, and we all stood for the next few hours until seats opened up for us. a solid day of travel that i will remember forever all thanks to the chicken busses.

here in rio dulce im at a hostel where a friend i made earlier this trip is working now. it was nice seeing a familiar face. The town here is right at the end of the river where it empties into a lake. Yesterday i took a kayak out exploring and before i left my bud was like make sure you get around the corner to take a look at the lake, its huge! i was thinking yeah whatever, ive seen plenty of big lakes its probably nothing special. but wow. when i turned that corner, it was like looking at the ocean. i literally couldnt see the other shore of the lake. granted lake nicaragua is over ten times bigger, but it has mountains around it and you can always see the other side. this was a very strange feeling to me. There is also a castle here where the spanish would fight pirates who used to sail up the river. it was a little hard to imagine.

And one more to add to the highlight reel: today i went to a hot spring waterfall. over 20 ft tall and like an extraordinarily hot shower in the coolest places. It emptied into a cold river that flowed underneath, and you could actually swim under/ behind the falls into little caves that were like natural saunas. saweet.

in two days its april and i have exactly one month left.
yoikes.

gus

pics

leeeets see these would be a creepy bug on the bed next to mine, rachel the new zealander out the window of our bus to antigua, the hostel at semuc champey, pictures from pacaya - lava, marchmallows, etc - 3 locals boating home on lake atitlan, indians nose (look at it sideways), view from behind a cross of san juan at lake atitlan, view over the lake, some fabulous chicken busses, and two nice, high class restaurants in antigua

San Pedro, Guate

helloooo everybody

after leaving lanquin me and some new buds went onwards to antigua. the new crew is (well was now) made up of 2 new zealanders, and dutch, an austrian, and a minnesotan. Antigua was actually very nice and a bit of a relief. if you dropped me into any of the vast majority of central american cities, i couldn´t for the life of me tell you which it was. they all look exactly the same-low buildings, sprawling, dirty, dusty, smoky, lots of stray dogs, garbage everywhere. Antigua on the other hand is colonial, kept very clean, and felt more...i dunno. modern? safe? homely? the ultimate highlight of my stay there, and maybe of the trip though i cant say for sure yet, was getting to hike Volcan Pacaya and see lavaaaaa. for ten dollaaaaars. and those ten included the transportation 2 hours each way and a guide up. awwwright. But really it was incredible. i was 3 feet away from a literal flowing river of lava. you would put a stick in and it would instantly erupt into flame. Not kidding! i have videos! we also roasted marshmallows on some of the lesser lava that you could get closer to without feeling like you were frying your skin. the heat was was absolutely unreal. you could only stand next to the lave for a few seconds before it felt like your shoes were melting and your skin was being singed. how cool is that?! very very very. on another note i met a couple very londony girls who, instead of saying they were drunk, said they were proper trolleyed. also cool.

I am now in San Pedro on Lago de Atitlan, which is a nice little town with lots of delicious NON guatemalan food restaurants. but mostly people come here for the lake, which is big, very calm and surrounded by volcanoes (dormant) and other large hill-mountains. one is called indians nose because it looks exactly like the nose of a face looking upwards. i climbed it the other day and met a couple guys from brown. aside from being nice talking to guys my ageish from home, the half sister of one of them went to garfield! so weird. other than that, i have a cold which sucks, my own room which rocks, and got my first professional massage today which super rocks.

okay well its time for dinner and i gotta pee, so i guess that means its time to wrap things up. best wishes to you all.

gus

picture update (tela, honduras, to samuc champey, guatemala)

Lanquin

this has been quite the week, taking me from tired to astonished to car sick to adrenalin-filled to ecstatic to sad to, for a day, wanting to be doing nothing else in the world than what i was doing.

Starting at the beginning, tikal would cover tired and astonished. we were successfully in the shuttle at 4 :30 am and at the gates when the park opened at 6. we walked into the grand plaza alone with mist surrounding everything and the 2 enormous temples rising up out of it to tower over everything. i never imagined them to be that big it was incredible. high point: sitting on top of temple V looking out over the ruins and neverending jungle and listening to rosalita by bruce springsteen on my ipod. talk about a coming together of the old and the new. The next morning me an alex split ways-he flies out of costa rica, while im changing my flight home to be out of mexico, and his was about a week earlier than mine. so he wanted to do mexico first and then head south, while im doing guatemala first and heading north, therefore not being logical to go together any more. the goodbye ended up being pretty much just like saying bye to anyone else ive met on the road, and it actually felt pretty good being off alone again. you do whatever you want, you dont have to ask what anyone else wants to do. i dunno its easier in a lot of ways.

anyways, that morning i left for Lanquin, which covers car sick on the list. its the closest town to Samuc Champey, which is argued to be the most beautiful spot in the country and as i found out very reasonably so. The place im staying at is best described as a mix between a resort and a hostel, and is unbelievable. a bed for 4 dollars, outta this world all you can eat buffet dinners for 4.50. So far ive eaten, among other things, an amazing amount of vegetables, enchiladas, smoothies, tuna salad sandwiches, french toast, shepherds pie,mashed potatoes, fajitas-the list goes on and on! and its mostly not central american! how great is that? the place is set in a huge green mountain valley with a river running right through it that on several occasions we have innertubed down. as for samuc champey, i took a tour, and this would be what covers adrenalin-filled, ecstatic, and wanting to be doing nothing else in the world. there were about 20 of us on it, and the adventure started on the way there when everyone was loaded into the back of two cowtrucks. nice. when we got there the first leg of the journey was through a nearby cave which had a river running through it. we took in nothing but our swimsuits and candles they gave us. and next thing we knew we were doggy paddling through this underground cave, doing all we can to keep our one hand holding our candles above water. it looked rediculous, like out of harry potter or something, just this long line of heads bobbing in the water illuminated by the little individual pools of light the candles gave off. during our tour through they had us climb a mini waterfall with a rope, jump off a piece of wall sticking out into a pool below, and drop down a tiny hole a side stream had made down into the dark of the main river below, with barely enough room to fit your shoulders through. when we got out we warmed up again and went innertubing down the sunlit river outside for a bit. and then finally after that we got to samuc champey, which is a limestone bridge that formed into 6 different pools with see-through super light-green water, all set in another valley with the mountainsides going up on each side. and below the pools is a different cave that has a different river absolutely roaring through it.but while we were swimming in the pools you couldnt feel or hear the river below you and it was crazy to imagine that it was below us somewhere. anyways, the finale to the tour came when they took us to the bottom pool and set up a rope ladder down a little waterfall. we went down and found ourselves in the exit point of the river out from the cave, and it was really indescribable,but ill give it a shot. the river was a mess about 50 ft below us, just going around every which way in a huge patch of white water that looked convincingly enough like instant death if you were fall in. and looking back into the cave, it looked like the batcave or something, with the rock carved into unbelievable formations by the water. and all over the place, water was dripping down from the ceiling from the pools above us. when everyone had gotten down, the guides come in and say, okay, who wants to go rockclimbing! we all kinda start laughing nervously, but they took us through this little hole in the wall that led even farther into the cave, giving us a better view of everything. and then of all things they say, okay who wants to jump in! fortunately they didn´t mean there, and they led us back up through the hole and down out to a bit of a point farther on from the whitewater. this was the point where we were all giddy with adrenalin, and one by one as we approach the jumping point, the guide asks if we´re good swimmers, and explains that once you jump in you have to swim like a madman to the side to get out of the current and avoid getting washed through the rapids downstream. and so in we went, and man what a rush. i dunno how bad i just made that all sound, no one came close to not making it. but yeah it was wild. and speaking of wild, with an irish owner here, a few irish travellers, and about 50 others, st patricks day lastnight was one to remember.

on a much more depressing note, sad was on that first list because i found out that the other day one of my classmates from garfield comitted suicide. He wasn´t a friend of mine, i didn´t really know him well at all. but it shook me up, especially hearing about it here, alone, with no friends to really talk about it with. and just thinking about what if it had been someone i´d really been friends with, how unbearable that would have been. one of my friends pointed out that hes the first person in our class to die, which was an awfully sobering view of the whole thing. anyways, david, rest in peace. to all my friends, i really cant wait to see you all when we´re all home again.

much love,
gus

Flores, Guatemala

hello all. Flores, where i am now, is a nice little island in a lake connected via bridge to the mainland. most important is that our hotel has a laundry washing station because all my socks and boxers are dirty.

3 nights ago we were in livingston, where i experienced three very cool new things, one of which i slightly regret. and that would be the skittle shot i took, which was vodka mixed with i think liquified skittles. i chose grape, it not being my favorite flavor and therefore not such a loss if it ruined grape skittles for me forever. fortunately it wasn´t that bad, but yeah. the other two cool things i did was to meet a guy from guyana (which id ashamedly never heard of, tho im pretty certain he was used to that) named sven who was also jewish (and claimed to possibly be the only jewish guyanan) and spoke patua aka caribbean english. and he looked exactly like a pirate, with a big gold hoop earring and long curly black hair and everything. and wore huge white rimmed stunna shades that looked absolutely rediculous on him. he made a very funny remark though, noting the interesting circumstances in that we were a german and a jew travelling together. he said hed write a song about it. the third cool thing i did was finally listen to live garifuna music, which involves two hand drums, maracas, a turtle shell played with sticks, and a conch shell. and then chanting and dancing. it was freakin awesome. for some reason all the guys wanted to play drums and not the conch, so i picked it up and gave it a try. the idea is the same as trombone, so it didn´t give me too much trouble, and soon enough i was playing along with them. crazy crazy. that was a fun night!

the next day we left up the river to a wonderful little hotel type place in the jungle right on the riverside. fantastic characteristics: perfect water for swimming, rope swing, bangin food, apparently indiginously-made sauna, a possibly 5-person hammock that was the most comfortable ever. the rope swing was a bit of a sore spot for us, since we were trying to figure out how to do dives from it but ended up with a score sheet of about 7 belly flops and 0 dives. i am proud to say i landed mostly head first a couple times though. as for the food, it is amazing to me what a difference it makes in a place when theres really good food. among other things, i had fruit crepes, pancakes, a whole pizza, and -i absolutely couldn´t believe this when i saw it - schnitzle. Nee, dont worry, it was no where near to yours. The sauna looked like a little igloo with a hobbit door. there was a wood stove on the inside that opened up to the outside which is where you fed it from. and then there was a hose inside for steam, and a spray bottle with some minty stuff in it to make it nice to breathe. and then if it got too hot the river was about 5 steps away to jump into. and trust me it got too hot haha. hands down the most intense heat and humidity ive ever experienced, it actually hurt to breathe in the air. but man was it cool, and we slept like babies that night.

okay, well that was longer than i meant it to be, seeing as im getting up tomorrow to catch the bus to tikal at 4 30 in the morning. some crazy scheme to beat the crowds and it had better work. Hope all is good with everyone. only a month and a half more of blogging, what will you do when it ends?!

much love
gus

Livingston, Guatemala!

well i just traveled my way into guatemala this afternoon, but i believe we have some catching up to do. La moskitia was very cool, but apparently it takes a buttload of money to travel in completely undeveloped areas with indiginous people to whom money isn´t such an important part of life, which all seems very backwards to me. so we didn´t end up having enough money with us to be able to go very deep into the area, but that didn´t stop us from having a hell of a time. and besides, getting there was half the fun of it. from the nearest big city, it was a 5 hour ride in the back of a pickup loaded up with god knows what, which included gardening tools, luggage, watermelons, alcohol, and two huge matresses. oh, and then the people. there were 10 to begin with, but 14 in the end, with 8 in the back. and the road gradually got worse and worse until we were just driving on the beach and crossing lagoons on rafts that were waiting for us. yeah that was a trip to remember. the first and only town we got to, Rais Ta, was very quiet. there were about 150 people living there, from 15 different families. it took about 8 minutes to walk from one end to the other. the night we got there we heard a bunch of wailing/crying, and when we asked the reason we were told the founder of the town had just died. he was 109! how crazy is that? our main highlights were getting to play with the garifuna kids, who spoke very little spanish (their language, moskita, was really cool-very african sounding), climbing to the top of the water tower and getting a view of the whole area, eating super bomb home made meals, going out in a dug-out tree canoe at sunset with one paddle and one long pole to propell ourselves. we decided beforehand that we were going to find a lost city and name it Gulex, but that didn´t really work itself out. main things i noticed about the people there: kids e-v-e-r-y-w-h-e-r-e. these people need some birth control. also they just sat around a lot.

the ride home and the rest of that day were considerably more hectic. the only boat out of the town was at 3 in the morning, so we got up and caught that and had a moonlit ride back to where the pick ups dropped us off. it was another of the dug out boats, but this one, called a pipante, had seats in it and a motor. so then about 30 seconds after coming to shore we were ushered into a truck. i got into the cab this time. at the first water crossing we came to there was a truck stuck in the middle that had tried to drive across and was completely flooded with lots of locals in their undies trying to push it out. it all made for a very funny sight and we stayed and watched until they finally pulled it out with another truck. when, 4.5 hours later, we got back to tocoa, a bus was waiting for us going all the way to san pedro sula, another 5 hour ride. that featured a guy coming on and giving a 15 minute shpeal trying to sell some medical balm and kids books. when we got off that bus, another one was just leaving for the next town we were going to, and once we got there we hopped off of that bus and onto our next bus which was just pulling out. and so we got to our final town at 5 30 at night, making 14 hours of literally straight travel.

and that brings us to today, when we crossed the border into guatemala and took a minivan with at least 20 people in it, some hanging onto the side, to a port town from where we caught a bone-jarringly bumby boat to livingston, which is where i am now. and im late for an irish stew that they are serving at my hostel, so i gotsta ta go. ill write again soon! maybe from tikal...

love
gus

In transit

well i can now say completely truthfully that i have been stranded on a tropical island. we´d been trying to leave for the past two days, but the weather got a little weird and they shut down the ferries so everyone was stuck. so we had to go lie in the sun a few more hours and read some more and eat a little bit and have a bonfire. BUMMER! It wasn´t so bad really, but we were definitely ready to leave. kinda felt like cabin fever. and now it feels good to be speaking spanish again! and i didn´t think id say it but having a tipical breakfast after a week without was actually pretty alright. everyone on the island spoke english, but kinda in a rasta type of way that was hilarious to listen to and at times a bit hard to understand. the first local i really had a conversation with was this huge black guy who said he was called the prime minister or little brother. he made a mean barbeque. i dunno how clear i made this earlier, but i dont think it was very-two of the germans i was with split, so now its just been me and this guy alex, whos 21 and of course a very cool dude.

my birthday went over very well-thanks everyone for the good wishes! it started out with my first oatmeal breakfast this whole trip. we put pineapple in which was bomb. then i met an austrian and a south african, bringing my total count of countries ive met people from this trip up to a whopping 28. then i went diving! where we went there were tiny jellyfish everywhere, which aside from the stinging was awesome cuz theyre all so crazy looking. we also found some little shrimp that were purple and white (bulldogs!) and super cool. the second dive was to a big circle of sand surrounded by a ring of coral. before we started looking at stuff tho we had a sea-floor kung-fu-off! we all took turns doing backflips and headspins and floating around karate chopping like in croutching tiger hidden dragon. and then took off our flippers and had foot races. we also found a huge sea cucumber and some brittle stars. for the big birthday meal we went out with 3 other friends we made there to a mexican place and had cocktails and delicious food. i got a bloody mary, which they brought me with salt and pepper on the rim, which reminded me of when my grampa asked for one like that and proceeded to drink it all out of a straw. before going to bed we went out to the dock to lie in the hammocks for a bit. so all in all, not too shabby of a birthday id say!

the next stop is into la moskitia, which is the huge eastern part of honduras that has no roads and is reportedly like the amazon. there are 4 indigenous peoples with their own languages and you get around by boat or donkey. i now walk into the wild.

gus