San Hose and Pooonta Mona

I flew in to San Jose, the capital of Costa Rica and hopped on a bus to the center of town. Getting a taxi proved difficult and confusing. There were a bunch of them lined up at the curb, but none would take me the 2+ km to my hostel. Why, I don't know. Eventually I found a goodly taxista who took me to a hostal across the street from the Supreme Court. I stayed there that night and then hopped a taxi (waiting right outside) the next morning for Escazu where my great Uncle Jack lives. Escazu is an American suburb dropped from the sky into CR complete with Quizno's and Pottery Barn-esque places. Aparrently it wasn't always so. I got dropped off at my uncle's gate and we hung out and had lunch and he told me (when asked) about his time as an anthropologist in Africa with a small village of Africans and his time in the OSS in Africa during WWII trying to extract intelligence pertaining to Axis troop movement and whatnot. It wasn't nearly as interesting as I'd hoped it would be, but nice nontheless. I took a bus back to San Hose and went back to the hostal then took a bus the next day to Sixaola which is near the Panamanian border on the Caribbean. Then I took a 1/2 hour cab ride to Gandoca. Along the way a cop stopped us and asked for my passport which I presented. I asked the taxista if there were lots of problems with turistas here and he said that Columbians bring lots of cocaina through. I assured him I had none. After grinding down a pothole pocked road in the early 80's Toyota truck (with well-warn shocks) I got dropped off at the beach in Gandoca. I walked for an hour along the beach and on a jungle trail to Punta Mona, a so-called permaculture farm/community. Punta Mona sat in the jungle, literally with the beach in front.

Jumping off a bridge.

After returning to Guatemala city to buy a new pair of shoes -Adidas running shoes for the KoRn fan in me and also because I wasn't about to buy a pair of Ocean Pacifics- I took a 5 hour Monja Blanca (White Nun) luxury bus to Coban, not to be confused with Copan. Coban is a tourist hub of a city of about 55,000 that's all about growing coffee. As soon as I got in I made my way across town to a microbus to Lanquin which is a small town 45km away, but the drive took 2 hours because the roads are slow.
We passed through green rolling mountains and lots of little farms suffering from a lot less poverty than on the way to Xela from Guate. When I got into town I headed to a backpacker's paradise called El Retiro which features thatch huts with bunks, a lovely river, and a real tasty restaurant that served lots of veggie friendly options. What a place for me! I settled in, but felt a little feverish for some reason as my dirty-mountain-kid cough/undefined illness seemed to be digging in. I laid down for a little and felt a lot better in time for dinner.
My 3 hutmates were Spanish gals in their 30s who I had trouble understanding, but they were real nice. The next morning I hopped on the back of a pickup with a group of 10 other gringos and went to Panajachel which is probably the coolest place I{ve ever been. Our guide was a young Guatemalteco who took people out everyday to the same place, so he knew what he was doing, so I figured. We got dropped off at a cave called Santa Maria which was only recently explored in totality (as it turns out, by our guide who was a regular caver).
We dropped our backpacks off at the office of the cave which was right next to a beautiful green river and put on water-logged donated shoes that hung on nails behind the office for use in the cave. I sported a rad pair of white Kswisses and looked like a real tool.
Then we went as a group down the riverbank a little bit to a treestump that had a ropeswing tied off to a pole. Our guide, who's name I still don't know, but will call Jorge for the sake of this entry, was all, "So who's gonna go first? It's a good warmup for the cave," as he looked at me. I told him I'd gladly do it after he did and cleared the rocks that were looming under the water near the bank. He assured us all that we'd be well out into the middle of the river, away from the rocks by the time we would let go and drop/fly into the water. A brave Irishman named Rory went first and went sailing over the river and let go awkwardly and dropped the 10+ feet down sort of sideways. He lost his Crocs and had to go swimming after them and started swimming to the opposite bank of the river, why I{m not sure. Then someone else went and screamed and landed awkwardly too. I was only casually considering taking the plunge until everyone else except a Swiss couple and an Israeli went. THe Swiss guy, Manuel was all "look, even the American isn't doing it!" so as not to feel too pressured himself so I thought, "oh, what the hell. This looks like a good experience waiting to happen." So I hopped on the swing and without waiting too long to freak myself out I went flying out over the river and dropped from what seemed like an enormous height without injury and I felt great (eventhough I got some water in my nose)! I swam back to shore and we headed off to the cave.
Everyone got a candle but being NOLS trained to the maXXX I had my headlamp ready to go. It turned out that Jorge had taken 7 days to explore the cave and map it in its entirety. I eagerly followed him in. It turns out that Guatemalan caving differs greatly from supercautious conscientious NOLS caving. We were not in any way prepared for injuries, backup light sources, or extra food or water (we had none at all). But what the hell. I can handle myself in any cave that maintains its integrity. We entered the cave which was already a pool of water then Jorge went ahead of me and dove in and started swimming balls to the walls ahead. So I followed him as I had both hands free to practice my Waterworld Mariner's-butterfly stroke (not really). The other folks had a candle in one hand and had trouble swimming. We kept going forward, swimming and wading until we got to a ladder that was lashed to a beam installed up above. Jorge climbed up and I followed. We were all barefoot and in swimsuits, definitely not leaving no trace. There were parts to the swims where I couldn't touch the bottom at all and was glad I'm not retarded in the water. We kept going and going until we reached a really deep pool that Jorge encouraged us to jump into from about 7 feet up above. I took a pass on that one as getting injured/stuck in a cave is not my idea of a good time. We headed back to the entrance and when we got to the ladders we took another route down a rushing vortex-like hole. I'd noticed it on the way in, but thought better of poking it as it looked like the kind of place where you could be sucked in and never come out. Well, that's how we got out. I had to lower myself down and duck under a waterfall and big rock to a room where everyone else was waiting then Jorge came down and we exited. It was a lot of people's first cave experience and they were pretty wowed. It was definitely the most dangerous cave experience I've ever had, but a good one, nonetheless. I'd never been in a cave with that much (swimmable) water. Rad.
Then we went back to the office, grabbed inner tubes and headed upstream and hopped in the river and floated down until we got to a bridge that the road took to Panajachel. We paddled to the opposite bank and walked back across the bridge where we were informed we could jump. This bridge was a steel structure with giant steel cables supporting it on either side. It hung 10m over the river. Was I going to jump? Of course not. That would be dangerous and not something my mom would approve of. Other people gave it a go, overcoming their fear and reporting that it was the jam and definitely worth doing. I was not convinced. I began thinking about why I didn't want to do it and the only reason I could think of was just plain fear (of jumping off a fucking 34' bridge into a river). "You only live once," I heard from Andy, the other Irishman trying to convince Rory to jump. Yes that is true, but I don't want to die in Guatemala. But seriously, Dan, you're not going to die. Just go down straight and you'll be fine. I climbed over the side and stood on a girder looking down as Ron, one of the two Israelis held my glasses. Before I climbed over I had said that "without being able to see, things were less scary" which proved to be incorrect. I took a breath and, without thinking, stepped off. I inhaled deeply and couldn't believe how fast I was accelerating and remember thinking "Oh, shit. This is going to hurt." But I went in pretty smoothly and came back up and reported that I recommended the experience to those who had yet to try it. Doing things that yer afraid to do is the jam. You just have to be able to overcome reason, your gut, and see what happens. Yay!
Then we all returned our inner tubes and hoofed it to Panajachel (national park). Along the way Jorge knew some little girls at a farm and they were selling chocolate wrapped in white printer paper for Q10. They had a cacao fruit which Jorge busted open and gave us the beans to sample. They had a sweet, tangy gelatinous coating on them which we sucked off then spit the seed out. I went in halfsies on a square of what turned out to be grainy chocolate goo that had a real nice cigarette flavor to it. Stimulating the rural economy, we were. T'was my good deed for the day. Everyone sampled it and agreed that it was not worth eating so I left it at the entrance booth to the park for someone who smoked.
We hiked up to a lookout high above the 350m of limestone bridge covered in clear turqouise pools under which a raging torrent of water flowed and continued downstream. We hiked down to the pools and checked out the upstream entrance where the river flowed under the pools/bridge and witnessed the awesome force with which the water flowed. pretty rad. Then we went downstream a little to a nice clear pool and I dove in and the water was wonderful and unlike anything I've ever experienced before. What a place! Where the rock came up from the bottom it was covered in a slimy algae that made walking on it really diff'. We swam around for a while then met Jorge down at the last pool downstream where he brought a rope 'n' wood ladder.
He took 4 of us to the other side of the pool and slung the ladder around a good sized rock and threw the ladder over the side down a waterfall. He climbed down first, barefoot. We followed clinging to the ladder for dear life. This shit was Dangerous! If we fell, we'd be Fucked! Jorge was holding the end of the ladder down below. It turned out that my bare feet had incredibly good traction on the wet, seemingly smooth limestone. All that caving in boots kept that fact from me. We were now under the bridge on a ledge looking down into the exit torrent that furiously roared out into the river. Water was dripping down on us from the ceiling as it filtered through the limestone from the pools. We climbed down further, to my hesitance, to get a better look at the rushing water which was exploding from a hole in the giant tunnel a couple hundred feet away. Then we climbed back up and called it a day and watched the other four's stuff as they went down. Then on the way back Andy told me about his pal who was arrested bringing 2 suitcases of weed into Japan from Thailand and was getting out of jail after 8 years. He was just a regular dude who didn't hurt no one and got caught up in some shit while on holiday during college. It was a good day in Guatemala.

The next day I went back to Coban instead of going to Chisec to check out some supposedly rad caves because I wasn't feeling up to it and went to the local coffee finca. The tour was boring, but I learned about coffee. There were 3 square-as-can-be American retirees on the tour along with a Quebecoise couple. One of the Americans kept asking really stupid questions. Then we sampled some weakly brewed coffee and I left. Put that in your naturally formed wonder of a skull bong and smoke it.

La Ciudad

At noon I boarded a micro from Copan to Guatemala City so I could replace the shoes I left at the mountain school because hiking boots and flip flops leave no happy medium. And I look like either a murderer or a bro so something had to be done. Crossing the boarder was no biggie because I got the 1 day pass or something and didn't have to pay the bribe again. Upon arriving in the City 5 hours later I was struck by how much it sucks. It's dirty, polluted, jammed with insane traffic. I got dropped off at a gas station where I caught a cab to Zone 10 where my hostel was. The driver dropped me off (took my backpack out of the trunk) on the wrong street because he read the address wrong and sped away. No time for a gringo who insisted this was the wrong place! But It was only a block or so away and the neighborhood was posh so I didn't have to stab anyone or fend off and would be attaqueros. I dropped off my bag and headed to the giant american-style mall with a GAP and a Cinnabon, but on the way there I saw this european style market with granola, FRENCH BREAD, apples, and more granola and french bread. I bought a lot and felt lucky. At the mall I went to the sporty shoes floor and found an Adidas store. The only pair of Adidas shoes I'd ever had were Sambas in 7th grade which I had my mom buy me because they were in style and I wanted to be cool, despite the fact that I was no futballer. There were two guys working in the store and I tried to explain what I needed and settled for a shoe that would have sold for $40 at DSW, but I paid around $80 mainly because I was so damn sick of wearing hiking boots and flip flops and I didn't know that San Jose, CR would be a shoe shopper's paradiso. $40 of that was dumbass tax. One day we shall eliminate this tax as soon as we get those damn Liberals out of there!

C-c-c-Copan

What a morning it was°! I got up at 330 and waited outside my hostel, JUNGLE PARTY (!) in Antigua and got on a micro to Copan, just across the Honduran border. The seats were too close together for me to get even remotely comfortable and drift off to sleep in any meaningful way, but somehow I managed and slept awkwardly. At around 7 we pulled up to a roadside hotel for breakfast and bathroom breaks. I got me a typical breakfast of eggs, beans, and plantains then went to the bathroom and when I came out...Guess what? The micro was gone! Boy was I pissed. How the fuck did that jerk of a bus driver leave with one less person? Didn't any of the passengers notice there was one less person? Jesus! My big backpack with some important stuff was strapped to the roof of that thing. Though I suppose I could have told the driver that I was going to the can and chill out until I was done, but no, I just assumed. So I talked to the receptionist-who was not terribly sympathetic-about what I should do and she told me that another micro had pulled up while I was in the can and on their way to Copan too. So I talked to the driver and his pal who were eating their breakfast and they said that they could give me a ride. I tried calling the travel agency that I booked the ticket through to see if they could call the driver and tell him not to pawn my backpack and get it to me somehow. But, as it was a little after 7 in the morning they weren't open so I got on the other bus and we were off to Honduras after agreeing to pay them Q35 more even though it turned out to be the same company!!! The country side was beautiful with rolling hills and mountains all around. I started thinking about what it would be like if I didn't get my backpack back and all the equipment therein and eventhough it would have set me back a bunch of dollars it would have been really liberating only having a bookbag with all I needed to get by down here. And I'd have smelled really bad. We got to the border and all had to get out to pay bribes to both the Guatemalans and the Hondurans, but it only set me back a total of $5. There were dudes with stacks of money on the border trying to change our money, but I figured I'd be better off going to the bank and taking out money and letting Chase penalize me $3 like the assholes they are. I should have supported the local moneychanging racket like a good Jew, but instead supported the megalomaniacal American banking industry, like a powerless, thoughtless American. We got back in the bus and crossed the border and were in the town of Copan shortly thereafter where we pulled up to the curb and infront of us I saw the asshole bus driver of the other bus and my bag in the doorway of a restaurant or something and I said "Alla es mi hombre!" and opened the door and yelled to/at him way too loud and he was seemed embarrassed. I got out and was all WTF, but instead of trying ot articulate myself in Spanish I just said "Tienes mi mochila! Porque sali sin migo?" (You have my backpack, why'd you leave without me???)The dude knew he was an asshole and said nothing. I went to find a hostel and right by the central park there was a horribly manged dog spasming violently, frothing at the mouth in the street. It was wet all over and had what I thought was a dead puppy between its hind legs. I asked some dude if it was giving birth and he said yes, but I didn't think normal births were so violent. I continued on but decided to stop and get a photo and then realized that it wasn't a female giving birth because it had a dick. Rather the lump of flesh or whatever it was was not a puppy. I got out my camera and took a photo as a couple of taxi trike drivers looked on and joked while the dog writhed in what looked like a hell of a lot of pain. I stopped by a bank to withdraw some Lempiras and asked a revolver toting bankguard if he knew what the deal was. He said that it was probably poisoned in the local fashion. I said someone should just shoot it and throw in a dumpster for everyone's sake. He agreed. I got my money and dropped my bag off at the hostel and then went to the Mayan ruins. They were alright. Not that I have anything to compare them to, but they were merely alright. Climbing the tallest temple was not allowed, but the grounds were really nice, like a massive fairway of beautiful green grass. There were two tunnels that cost an extra $15 which I didn't pay. I started to go in anyhow since there wasn't a sign saying I needed a pricy ticket and a worker came in after me and asked if I had the ticket. So I said yes and showed him my ticket to the ruins and he told me what I already knew so I followed him out. He then proceeded to tell me that for $5 under the table he'd let me into them tunnels and so I paid him a mix of Quetzals and Lempiras and checked out the tunnels which were alright, but barely worth the $5. I find that everytime a local offers me something like tour or entrance to some tunnels it's not worth it. Maybe one day I'll learn. On the way out there was a path into the forest that I took for a while until it got boring, but it was really nice to walk through a new type of ecosystem. I saw what looked like a capibara, but smaller, scurry by. Then I walked back to the town and went to a restaurant/hostel called Via Via where I ended up taking all my meals because they were relatively cheap/delicious/veggie. On the way to Via Via the poisoned manged dog was still shaking violently, but now on the sidewalk. How it got there I don't know. You couldn't have paid me $200 to touch that thing. Maybe they called in a forklift. The entire day I couldn't stop thinking about that fucking dog and it's disgusting body, disgusting lump-thing, and the crazed look of pain in its eyes. If it were a human I would have puked. Additionally there were lots of other stray dogs all lookin' pretty rough. There wer tons of stray dogs in Xela, even in roving packs and they never made me feel queasy. That dog has ruined me forever. I went back to the hostel and took a shower then went out wandering around the little place where there's literally nothing to do except buy souveniers so I went back to the hostel again and read for a while then joined a card game with a gal and a guy who were sort of traveling together with another girl. We hung out all night, played an Israeli card game that was sort of fun, and drank some beer. They were alright, but nothing to write home about. Put that in your skull-bong bought a souvenier market in Honduras.

Lyrics to my anthem

Here are the lyrics to the aforementioned Bell Chao song sung on fridays at the school:

One morning of radiant sun
Oh, Goodbye beautiful
I went looking for the the invader

I´m a communist for life
Oh, Goodbye beautiful
And a communist until I die

It´s my desire to continue fighting
Oh, Goodbye beautiful
with the sickle and the hammer

And if I die in combat
Oh, Goodbye beautiful
Take my rifle in your hands

Sounds like solid gold to me!

Put that in your People's Republic government-issued Skull-Bong and smoke it.

The Mountain School

Last Monday I caught a microbus to the Minerva mega-bus-terminal where I caught a bus to the mountain school. After I found a seat and sat down and a helpful bus dude threw my backpack on the roof a guy boarded, but not just any guy. Another Guatemalan Equivalent was he. He wore a straight-from-the-thriftstore jacket, shirt, and tie with the collar all wacky and ruffled. It was clear that he wasn´t used to wearing such attire, but he seemed sensible enough. He was about 38, had the obligatory moustache and whipped out an avocado and began to lecture us on the benefits of the vegetable (is it?) and it turned out that he was selling a pamphlet for 25, no 20, no 10(!!!) Quetzales. In this pamphlet were natural cures for arthritis, hepatitis, indigestion, cataracts (I assumed "THAT THEY DON´T WANT YOU TO KNOW ABOUT")! The Guatemalan Kevin Trudeau was out to make a quick Q and he´d even thrown in a Christmas coloring book for the kiddies. This dude struck me as a lot more genuine than his American counterpart and I was almost sure he´d never been convicted of credit card fraud. I almost bought one of his pamphlets, but I´m so fuckin´healthy that I don´t need any cures. We had pulled into a Shell station to fill up and for the second time in Guatemala I saw a beautifully kept lawn of bright green pesticide treated grass next to a cement wall. Only Shell and the faux-suburb houses can afford lush strips of grass. Are you surprised?
At the Xela school that morning I was told to get off the bus at Santo Domingo, but since I had no idea what Santo Domingo looked like I stayed on the Chicken bus too long and went into Colomba, the nearest town. It was all my fault as I didn´t specify to the money collector guy (el ayudante) that I was a gringo who didn´t know where I was going and that he should tell me where to get off. So we came to a mega traffic jam and he got off and I got off too to ask where I should go to get back to Santo Domingo and he told me to stay on the bus and catch a pickup back to the village when we got to Colomba. So I did just that. When we got into town I jumped off the bus and the ayudante jumped on the roof and slid my backpack down to me and I grabbed it and headed over to the pickups and got in the one that was going in my direction. That little wiener voice in my head was saying "This is DANGEROUS!!!" but it was the only way to get back to the school, unless I waited for another bus going back and, what the fuck, I´m in Guatemala and the locals do it like it´s their horribly low-paying job. So off we went and, good God, it was awesome. All those years of wearing a bike helmet while cycling were erased and now I´m not the safe-nick that you once knew. I subsequently rode a pickup 2 more times like a regular Jose-seis-paquete. Unfortunately my corduroy hat fell victim to the pickup gods and flew off my head at 45 MPH. Alas. So I arrived at the school at 1 PM just as my lesson was to start and I was hungry and tired and didn´t know WTF was going on, but I got a short tour and got on with my lesson. My teacher was this cat named Misael who wasn´t worth shit as a teacher, but he was a nice enough guy and told me that he was told by (a very reliable source) a pickup driver that George Bush is of Jewish descent. I assured him that that was not the case and to tell his piloto buddy that an in-the-know American assured him that GWB is no Jew. I chalked it up to anti semitism/anti evangelicalism because they´re super Zionistic. He also was unaware that WWF wrestling is fake and asked if I believed in UFOs and I said I believe that there are flying objects that are unidentified. I guess things aren´t so transparent in Colomba. After my class I was introduced to the neighborhood and my meal family with whom I would be eating. My mom was 23 year old Elisa who had one eye that was white and somehow useless. She had 4 kids ranging in age from 1y 7m to 9 (she had that one at 14). She lived in a one room tin shack with a bed which was more of a full sized ottoman with a hunter´s jacket print with deer where I assume all 5 of them slept. The floor was the dirt. There was one lightbulb that hung from a cord which was connected to another cord that hung from the ceiling with a piece of wood attached to the plug with a bunch of rusty nails sticking out at eye level on her 9 year old daughter, Maria. There was also a rack of dished and an armoire. To contrast the furnishings there was a massive stereo system and tv. The stereo was one of those monsters you can buy at Best Buy for $300 with everything in one with massive detachable speakers. I couldn´t figure out what the hell it was doing there until one morning I went for breakfast and was greeted by booming reggaeton. She told me that her husband was working in Houston at some factory where they package stuff including stereos (maybe that´s where she got it?) and that he has been there for 3 years. I don´t think he´s come back at all because it´s real tough to get back in. As soon as I was introduced Maria grabbed my hand and dragged me off to play. The kids were pretty damn filthy and they were all over me and grabbing my hands and climbing on me until I got up and tried to engage them in some game where they wouldn´t be all over me (Hey, look over there!). We played around with neighborhood kids, including this one kid in overalls, about 9 with a slightly retarded look about him who always had one index finger in his nose. I kept my distancia from him. Janelle, the student Elisa´s parent´s house next door had some purell and gave me a squirt before I ate, thank Christ. I brought my own from then on. I went in to eat and sat at a little table with a plastic stool while the kids sat on the bed and watched me eat, curiously. Every meal was served with a stack of fresh tortillas (with some lime on them, the mineral, not the fruit) which tasted a lot better than the ones I was served in Xela, but on a couple of occasions I found a hair or pieces of polyester stuffing in em. That put me off a bit, but hell, this nice lady was the only person who was gonna feed me and she and her kids were alive so I figured her cooking wouldn´t kill me. Generally it was pretty tasty, but the portions were usually small. A lot of dishes had Chicken seasoning in them because that´s not considered to be in violation of vegetarianism. So I ate the shit and grinned instead of asking her to cook without seasoning of any kind. One day she served my a plate of textured vegetable protein to my shock and amazement and I ate it despite the fact that I don´t handle soy well. It was the best meal she made me. Elisa was a very matter of fact when she spoke. She´d say "Cena es bien" to confirm that my dinner was good as if it were a fact rather than a question. Most everything she´d say was a statement. Maria insisted on playing rock, paper, scissors, but seemed to miss the point of the game as she would choose her weapon after the fact everytime. My first dinner Elisa whipped it out and breastfed her littlest child, a girl whose name I can´t rememeber. My favorite kid was 2+ year old Filipe who had a bright personality and like playing with me. He usually had snot running out of his nose and peed on the floor of the house once as I was eating. Not what I wanted to see. Elisa voluntarily told me (matter of factly) that she had 6 sisters living and one dead. I didn´t ask how. There was the body of a rusty hacksaw on the floor and Jose, 4 was playing with it one day as if it were a gun, cocking it and I asked him if it was a gun or a saw and Elisa said it was only a saw, but Jose could have fooled me. Infront of their shack was a cemet wash bin with a reservoire and scrubbing tubs on either side which were used to do the dishes. There were turkeys and ducks hanging out in and around their house. Their neighbor had a bull hanging out under a tin leanto for what purpose I did not figure out. Elisa had a cell phone to call her husband. I had a really tough time making conversation with Elisa and Maria. "So, what do you want to be when you grow up? 80% unemployed without hope?" Somehow I don´t think astronaut or president are usual responses round those there parts. Do desperately poor Guatemaltecos have asperations, hopes, and dreams. We don´t know...frankly we don´t care. Or something like that. I didn´t want to impose my über-privilaged norms on them by asking such a Q so I abstained. With Elisa I had nothing to talk about except to ask her questions about things that were new to me, but once I understood that which I didn´t I wasn´t about to ask her how her sister died or what it was like to get knocked up at 13. It´s hard to talk about anything with someone from such a different background without risking alienating them. Or maybe that´s because I don´t know a damn thing about relating to people who aren´t relatively shitting money.
The school the kids of the barrio went to was sponsored by Tigo, one of 3 cell phone companies available in Guatemala (the others are Claro and Movistar). When I say sponsored by I mean the entire structure was painted Tigo-blue and had giant Tigo ads/logos all over.
Across the street from the shack was the street´s only tienda and I bought some cookies one day and the package said they were "enrobed in chocolate." I thought it very strange to use such a word to describe the way the cookies were coated in chocolate, especially since they weren´t really enrobed, but coated on one side. Even so, that kind of fancy pants word-use could only have been to convince any English-speaking person that they were especially decadent cookies worthy of such queer word usage and worthy of purchase.
I left the mountain school on friday morning skipping my class because it was useless and I wanted to get to Lago Atitlan as early as possible and here I am and I left in such a hurry that I forgot my SHOES!!! I´ll be walking around in my hiking boots for a while. On the bus from the school to Xela this dude sat behind me and asked if I was American in good English and told me that he left Guatemala when he was 5 and moved back 5 years ago when he was 27 to work his mom´s land growing grass for cattle. He was on his way to Xela to take some class that would give him a diploma (he lost his HS one from the US) so that he could be a tour guide in the Capital. He had resident status in the US and I was ethnocentrically confused as to why he had returned, but I guess he had a hell of an up on the rest of his countryfolk able to go back to the US on a whim to see his P&M in Tucson. He was surprised that I was travelling alone becuase he always see gringos travelling in pairs or groups. I have to say the the act of travelling alone is not my cup of tea eventhough I can do whatever I want. When he got off he wished me happy travels and told me to be safe.
I ate the best seitan of my life in Panajachel.

Why are there no bands like this in Chicago?
Mago de Oz

Put that in your (oh, this is a bit of a stretch) corrugated tin-roof skull-bong and smoke it.

Tajumulco

On Saturday I woke up at 3.50AM after having slept awfully because I was worried I wouldn't hear my alarm. I put on my hiking boots and backpack and left. I picked up Jaimie, a pal from school and we met Josh, another pal from school by his house then walked the 25 minutes to the Quetzaltrekkers office on the other side of the park. Quetzaltrekkers is a non-profit tour/guide company who we went with as well as 18 other folks to Tajumulco, the highest peak in all of central America at 13,800 ft. We got in a pickup truck (2 trips) and got dropped off at the Minerva bus terminal where it became clear that all the vicious stray dogs hang out for the night. We hopped on a Chicken bus to San Pedro for an hour and a half, got off and ate breakfast of rice and beans at a restaurant, and hopped on another chicken bus for another hour+ that dropped us off near the trailhead. We began walking with up the trail towards the mountain which I´d seen before in the distance from the old Guerilla camp last weekend. My pack weighed around 40 lbs with my gear and the group gear too (nuts, spice kit, and pasta sauce as well as 6 liters of water). We stared the hike at around 10,000 feet and I had to be conscious of my breathing immediately. Deep breaths help. We took frequent breaks and I was doing fine. Other people were having a hard time with the weight and the altitude. The mountain off in the distance looked massive and like a hell of a climb once we got to the base. That day was spent getting to our base camp at 13,200 ft. On the way up there were young guatemaltecos with small backpacks with a blanket rolled up and tied on, wearing jeans and sweatshirts. We gringos all had synthetic clothes to wick away the sweat and keep up warm even if wet as well as adequate provisions if disater struck. Did they have first aid training or foam sleeping pads in case of injury? Did they have enough water to wash out a wound? What would they do if they got wet? The temperature drops below freezing at night and their illpreparedness could be their undoing! Or maybe they´re just tough Guatemaltecos who deal with much more difficult things on a regular basis and can handle things that I´ve been trained to prepare and double prepare for. I guess preparation is a luxury, another thing to which I´m privelaged. Towards the base camp I was having to rest with great frequency, but I recovered quickly, which, I guess is an indication of being acclimated. Good for me. We got to base camp and there was a group of campesinos, of all ages near a makeshift tent for 20 near our camp. They were conducting a ceremony of some sort led by a guy with a bible including a lot of chanting and one guy kneeling, the bible held over his head. A donkey, led by a few guys, that we saw on the way up had brought them provisions. The preacher and some of his pals came over to use and we talked for a little while and he spoke a little English and seemed surprised that we spoke Spanish. His followers all seemed really stoked to meet a bunch of gringos from all over the place. He didn´t seem to be familiar with Austria. We were unable to finish our pasta that dinner or our oatmeal the next morning so one of the guides brought it over to their tent and I assume they ate it. We played a round of energy ball (!!!) and Josh taught us a game that he had played with some campers at a camp he worked at. Big Booty is my new favorite game and I will bring it back with me for sure. We played until we were too tired to do the chant and as dinner was being prepared it started to hail. Clouds had been coming in on us (literally) for the entire time we´d been camped and now they were starting to open up. I was really tired so I lay down and then it started to rain and lightning came within a kilometer, but let up in time for dinner. I was thinking about assuming lightning position, if it got closer and was surprised the guides didn´t encourage us to be prepared. I guess NOLS trained me good. I was surprised how much of a disparity there was between my NOLS experience and the leadership there and the leadership on this trip. I was really shocked to hear one of the leaders say something was for pussies and two of them calling each other "big dick." It´s not that I have such a problem with such language, but rather in the context of group leadership I´ve been taught that that´s totally unacceptable. Whatevs. Anyhow, after dinner I went to sleep and slept pretty well considering. We all got up at 4 and hiked the 600 remaining feet up to the top to view the sunrise. My how there were stars and we could see the lights of Mexico on the other side. We all had headlamps and the group of Guatemaltecos ahead of us only had 2 flashlights among 10 people which made the class III (using your hands) climb really slow until we finally passed them and made it to the top. There was a blanket of clouds over most of the terrain below and the 5 or 6 other volcanoes were visible off in the distance, poking through the cloud cover. One of the volcanoes near Lago Atitlan was erupting far off in the distance with the approaching sun yellowing the sky behind it. Pretty rad it was. We watched the sun rise and make a shadow of our volcano in the sky opposite the sunrise. Then we headed back down around the crater along the ridgeline into a valley which led right into camp. We ate our breakfast of oatmeal with jam, sugar, peanut butter, granola, and cinnamon (XXXtra delicious), packed up camp and headed down. The breathing became easier and easier. When we got to the road that led to where we were to catch the bus there were a few houses and a couple of dirty little kids ran out saying, "Quetzal, quetzal," but alas they got no quetzal. Bummer. Their old man was standing in the doorway of their cement block house in a cowboy hat and jeans with a big belt buckle. We got to the main road and saw a group of soldiers walk by with their big ol guns which made me a little nervous, but I guess massacres are for campesinos, not gringos. We cram-jammed onto an already-filled- to-capacity chicken bus with one of our guides hanging onto the bar by the door for dear life. I had my crotch against some poor lady´s shoulder. She´s suffered worse things than gringo-crotch, I´m sure. We stood for the entire ride, as is the style and finally got dropped off at the bus station in San Pedro where we hoofed it to a restaurant a good walk from the station. They fed us rice, tortilla, salad, and lemonade. I was very apprehensive about the lemonade and the salad, but one of the guides said he drinks the lemonade every week and doesn´t get sick and I figured the restaurant has a lot to lose by poisoning 20+ gringos every week. So I dug in, but still avoided the salad, for the most part. I asked the manager if the food was safe for gringos and she assured me it was, but my new pals reminded me that I would only hear what I wanted to hear from a restauranteur in Guate. A day later and I think I´m fine, but these things can take a little time to develop. We got on another Chicken driven by an insane man who took that thing to its limits, especially around blind turns and straight aways. Fortunately that 1962 Blue Bird handled like a goddamn Ferrari and functioned as an extension of the drivers body, like fighter pilots´ planes do. I gripped the seat in front of me as hard as I could, sitting next to Jaimie who was also convinced that doom was a´comin´. After a while I decided to surrender to the Chicken Bus Gods and a bucket of peace washed over me. Acceptance is key. I noticed the Guatemaltecos don´t worry about dying on a chicken bus, at least outwardly. My strategy worked for a while, but then I´d grip again and have to chill myself out with some more Zen. Towards the end of the ride the seat in front of me started to give. One of its two supports had totally broken off and the 500lbs of european heft were making it bounce a lot with every bump in the road. I didn´t think my legs could handle being broken in guatemala so I kindly asked my fellow trekkers to get up and let the seat do what it wanted without their assistance. Finally we got to Minerva and walked the entire way back to Quetzaltrekkers HQ to return borrowed and group gear. On the way I saw a Nissan Sentra with an all-rear-windshield-covering NIGHTWISH decal!!! That band has some serious global reach. I walked all the way home, showered, ate dinner, and went to sleep for a long long time.

Guatemalan Equivalents

The other day when I was walking to school I saw a man who looked exactly as Dee Snyder would if he were guatemalan and not wearing those sunglasses he always wears. Perhaps this guy was Lionel Ritchie and Dee Snyder{s love child. He was wearing pinkish jeans and had really awful bangs. Close your eyes and try to Imagine it. Last night when I was walking home I heard singing on my street so I went over to where it was coming from and was treated to the Guatemalan equivalent of Boys II Men. Though the American version is far superior these guys were really giving it the ol' colegio try despite the fact that there was one or two guys who couldn't sing on pitch which made their singing a little cacophanous, but still enjoyable from a curious gringo{s perspective. They even had the Guatemalan equivalent of the guy in B2M with the cane and the really deep voice. Every friday there{s a graduation dinner for the students who are leaving the school and last night it was a potluck type dinner. I made chow Mein with eggs, onion, and carrot and it was the jam, especially with ketchup. The ketchup here is far superiour to the american version. Anyhow, at every friday night graduation dinner there{s this dude, Cazarelli who is Xela's answer to Elvis. He{s got the look down and his name sounds like Fonzarelli which is 5 or 6 bonus points for him. He plays his guitar though an amp that also has his mic, and some beats he has playing on his boombox (also sent through the amp). His songs are all played to unchanging drum machine beats that you{d find on the demo setting on any of the basic drum machines. he favors what I assume is the samba beat. I think he plays around town or something and is known outside of the school. The first time I met him, during a lesson he shook my hand 3 times really casually as if it were a meet and greet or something. 3X I cannot explain. During the dinner I experienced my first Earthquake. It was minor, and I didn't even notice it until someone said something and then I was all 'oh, everything is moving is a slow rolling motion!' It was as if the Earth was gettin' some. GO Earth!

My Padre bought a rooster the other day and put it up on the roof with a string tied from its leg to something else and the first night I woke up to that fucker cock-a-doodle-doing at 3.30 am. I don't think |I need to tell you that the sun doesn't rise until a lot later here. It wasn't that it began its stupid antics at 330, rather it's that between 330 and 715 when I get up that fucker CADD'd 25 times and it's not pretty. It's finishes its call with a horrible sound that sounds like a sick dinosaur. I think that's the only sound it can make. It continued to CADD all day, without a rest and to make matters worse there are other roosters in the neighborhood and I think they egg each other on in their tied-to-the-roof-gonna-be-slaughtered-next-week misery. I asked my Madre if and when they're gonna kill it and eat it and she only said "later." That gives me little hope. I do have ear plugs, but I can't hear my alarm if they're in and I don't want to be late for class or anything. I'm thinking about being the executioner just so that we can all get on with our lives/deaths. I have a sharp knife! I have to believe that it's keeping everyone else up at night because I don't think they have earplugz.

There's this strange phenomenon around here where guys will put strips of super dark tinting across the top and bottom of their windshield and the edges are usually silver or something and opaque. Why anyone would limit their field of view like that is beyond me especially since the lighting at night is garbage and the driving matches it.

There's this Tienda right by my casa where the proprietor has a hole in his throat and I never noticed it until the other day. I knew his voice was real fucked up, but I never looked at his neck closely enough. Throat holes don't sit well with me.

The other day I was walking to buy some tasty bread and there was this really nice motorcycle parked on the street and it had a swastika decal, black on gray, 3" on either side of the gas tank. Later I saw the dude who owned it and he was some weiner who looked like he was going to a club, not a Nazzy. Go figure,. Maybe he was real PoMo and a diamond of sass in the ruff of pragmatism that is Guatemala.

This morning we went on a trip to an old Guerilla camp out in the Campo and Amaro, our resident X Guerilla told us a bunch of stuff about his days. It was great fun!

Put those in your American equivalent of a guatemalan skull bong and smoke 'em.


I forgot to include a few things in the last MM.
1. Before each graduation dinner, which usually includes all the students and a bunch of teachers we sing songs led by a few musically inclined instructors while Cazarelli plays the bass lines on his guitar which are usually a lot louder than the classical guitar and shakers played by the staff. One of the songs is about how ¨I am a communist for life, I will die a communist, my hands are my rifle.¨ I´m not sure if it´s sung tongue in cheek or if they´re seriously communists for life until death. There are lots of Che Guevara pictures and posters in the school so it´s possible, but I don´t feel like I´m learning Spanish from a bunch of commies. Note that in Guatemala Che Guevara is not the Cli che that he or his image is in the US. The song´s a good one, regardless of it´s message- It could be about WWE and the new line of Dodge trucks and I´d still sing its catchy melody.
2. There´s a really big problem with alcoholism in Guatemala and especially in mi Barrio. There aren´t any bars, rather there are Cantinas which sell booze at a low low price that the borrachos can afford. The one cantina I pass regulary is like all the other tiendas with old timey bank bars seperating the customers from the clerk. One night I passed the cantina and there were 5 or so dudes hanging out in there and the booze vendor was chilling with his customers on the opposite side of the bars. It´s weird that the relationship between dealer and user is defined/mediated by steel bars, rather than a bar ...Everyday, without fail there are several borrachos passed out on the sidewalk from the early hours of the morning until afternoon. They usually lie on their backs with their heads against a building and their knees bent over the high curb. There´s a bum couple who I´ve seen embracing while sleeping and I have seen two dudes doing the same. It´s also not uncommon to see people stumbling around and today one dude approached me and I said¨como estas?¨ and he said ¨muy mal, tengo goma.¨ which means, very bad, I have a hangover and I assumed that he was going to ask me for money so I told him good luck with his hangover and walked away. Giving money to people here is a lot different than in the US because here I am a citizen of a country that has so badly fucked over the poor of Guatemala. That´s not to say that the US hasn´t fucked over its own poor, but there ain´t been no civil wars in the US in recent years due to American-style meddling. Therefore I feel hungry Guatemalteco X is more deserving of my relatively powerful currency than hungry American X. Also there really aren´t any heroin addicts here so the money´s more likely to go to food than drugs, unless it´s a borracho and I don´t give em monedas anyway.
3. In my barrio which is pretty working class with cinderblock buildings (I guess almost every building here is cinderblock) , stray dogs with sagging teats and crippled back legs, and the aforementioned borrachos there is a strip of houses that were recently built behind 10ft walls with razorwire on top and big metal gates with a door in the middle. Every once in a while one of the gates is open and there they are, 4 or 5 brightly painted townhomes with shiny cars in the driveways and little strips of thick green grass. It´s like these people saw a commercial for suburban living in the US and said, ¨I want that!¨ and made themselves a little slice of heaven walled in, in a working class Quetzalteco neighborhood. Also, when I was on the bus to Xela from Guatemala city we passed tons of unbelievably poor campesinos by the roadside which was littered with a landfill´s worth of trash. On the roadside there also were billboards featuring European models with cell phones, washer and dryers, televisions and other such stuff that a Campesino has no use for (clean water?¿?). Guatemalans, who are mostly indigenous have images of sexy Europeans thrust upon them unmercifally (sort of like in the US!!!). Their politicians are of European descent too. bummer. A size 11 or 12 shoe in Xela is a rarity.
4. The Guerilla stories included how they would eat twice a day, oatmeal for breakfast and rice and beans without seasoning for dinner, if they were lucky. They´d carry 100 lb packs and live a really crappy life for years at a time and fight the army a few times a week on average. Put that in your Skullbong with a Che sticker on it and smoke it.

NYE in Xela

Here´s how it went down. Last night a bunch of us PLQ students met at Parque Central to go out and party. I got there with my pal Elena a little early to find Jarret and Karl already there. There were lots of firecrackers going off all around so I got decided to sprint over to the little market on the South side of the park and bought 2 packs of Saturn Missile-type fireworks. I think I may have gotten a little gypped, but I don´t have a problem paying a little extra for the timing and convenience. I ran back to my group'o'pals which by then had swelled a bit and lit off the first pack in an open space and up they went, one ricocheting off a concrete structure and coming a little close to us. It´s not like we were being any less careful than the little kids and their parents lighting off every kind of firecracker available. The parque was filled with smoke like it was its job. After a while we went off to the one and only gay bar under the impression that if anyone knows how to ring in the new year its Guatemalteco'boyz. There was music pumpin´but when we actually walked in there were a total of two Polish-lookin barmaids with an attitude and not a single gay dude in sight. So before we could all decide to leave and go to a slightly more thrashin´bar Jarret and Elena got drinks so we stayed for a drink or two while the surly broads blasted Spice girls and some other top tier jams, as is the style. In the parque we had met a peace corps gal who said there was a bar that had live Cuban music nearby so I went out with a couple of cats trying to find the place, but we only found bars without live Cuban music! Alas. So we went back and left en masse to a bar nearby that sold buckets of Guatemalan Ice beer by the bucket for the low low price of Q50 for 6 bottles. Guatemala has 3 major beers which are Carbro, Gallo, and Dorada Ice. Carbro and Gallo are both pretty tasteless and watery and make budweiser look like a world class beer. Dorada ice is a slightly beer flavored seltzer water with some alcohol in it served ice cold with attitude. It went down real smooth. We hung out at that place, which was actually pretty cool and had a fancy ceiling and a waitress who was working her very first night and we gave her a run for her money constantly changing our order. Indecision 2k8. We left shortly before the new year and went back to the park to watch the fireworks display which rivals that of Logan Square on 4th of July. I ran back to the market and bought 2 more packs of rockets and some sparklers and we lit em off and got hugged by sketchy Guatemaltecos who were also hanging out in the less than highly populated park. We stuck around watching the fireworks for a little while and then noticed that there were almost no people in the park and fewer by the minute. Elena, Jarret and I went back to the gay bar to see if the party had officially begun and upon arrival we found the two surly bar maids with their boyfriends eating from plates of hors dóuvres and literally NO ONE ELSE in the damn bar. Where do the gay boys in Xela celebrate the new year?¿?¿? Geez! So we used the bathroom one by one and while I was waiting to use it one of the boyfriends of the bar maids came up to Jarret and me and asked for the Q40 cover which included one drink and I laughed and told him that we were only here to use the bathroom and that we weren´t gonna bay $6 to party by ourselves and drink A drink. So I said ¨kiss MY asphat!¨ Not actually, but we told him we were only using the bathroom and then we left to go back to the park and there was almost no one there so Elena and I walked home together cuz she lives on the way back to my casa.
This morning I met Josh, Shannon, and Ben, 3 new pals from the school and last night at the school to go for a hike. There at the school was a gal who told us she had a case of strep gone crazy and it had become a full body problem and that she got these black spots on her legs. She was trying to get a room at the hostel across the street, but it wasn´t open since it was ny´s day. She seemed nice enough. We left her and her lame pal at the school and started off towards the hill with a church that says Christo Viene atop it on the hill. We climbed up her good and found a bunch of drunk young Guatelmalteco guys atop it. We continued on the path as there are supposed to be steam baths at some point as well as some caves. We walked a couple miles and it was beautiful and Santa Maria loomed in the distance, huge as it is. We came upon a stone quarry that had wooden structures that seemed like they hadn´t been used in a very long time, kinda like in Dances with Wolves when KK comes to his outpost to find it abandoned. Speaking of KK I watch part of Waterworld last night with Spanish Subtitles and it was the jam, as it always is. THe hike was lots of fun. The end. Feel free to write me about yall´s NYEs. Anyone get laid??? Resolve to put that in your skullbong and smoke it!