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