Barcelona III- bike rental

I decided to rent a bike for a few days to see more of the city and give my feet a rest.  There were a ton of bike rentals in the city, all more or less the same.  I found one place that wasn´t especially close to Cris´s place, but they had a couple of cool vintage bikes and some track bikes in the window so I figured they were a better bet than the cookie cutter bici joints.   Keep in mind that the following and all things I write about bike rentals are from the perspective of someone who takes pride in being the No. 1 bike rental guy on Going St.  Anyhow, I went by and dude wasn´t terribly interested in renting me a bike, but did so nonetheless and hooked me up with a total piece of shit cruiser with one of those garbage Shimano derailleurs that you see on only the shittiest bikes that make me cringe whenever I see them.  One of the pedal spindles was bent as well which gets kind of annoying after a minute or two.  I rode around for a bit and then decided I didn´t want to have to keep riding this piece of junk for 5 whole days and returned it later that day before heading to my next couch surf.

When I dropped off the bike and left I saw an old man carrying a bike frame and wheelset  towards me.  It looked like...an ALAN!  Holy shit.  I asked him what he was planning on doing with it and he said he was gonna sell it to the shop where I´d rented a bike.  I looked at it and it had a full Campy Victory group and the whole thing was fuckin´minty.  I asked how much and he said he was asking 400€ for it from the shop, but said he´d take 300€ if he had to.  Obviously out of my price range on this trip and still a good deal for anyone who wanted a piece of aluminum bike history.  Expressing my excitement, I asked him about it and why he was selling it.  He said that he bought it in the 80s and paid a bunch for it and won the European  firefighter´s bike racing championship in the 50-70 year old age bracket.  And now he needed money more than a bike he didn´t ever ride.  As we were standing in the street at a corner a van turned the corner grazing the back of the frame and I clenched my teeth and gasped, ¨dios mio!¨ but all was well and the old man didn´t even blink an eye.  What are the chances of an encounter like that happening???  Put that in your first-generation aluminum skull-bong and smoke it.

Barcelona II- Urtica and Malva

Cris´s 31st Birthday was 2 days after I arrived and she was kind enough to invite me along on a big ol excursion.   I took the Metro to meet her 2 friends, Alvaro and Pep near their house.  They picked me up in their silver Peugeot and we headed out to a town on the other side of the mountain to the west where we picked up Jose.  Alvaro and Pep were both real nice and interested in getting to know me.  They both spoke good english and after trying to communicate in Castellano for a while, English was clearly more efficient.  We picked up Jose who had two baguettes sticking out of his backpack and stopped for a coffee in a typical little bar (which I would describe as borderline tacky and serving low quality food and bev) to wait for the rest of the crew.  These bars are ubiquitous in Barcelona and it´s rare that I ever see anyone actually eating anything in them, despite the advertised menus.  Usually there are an old guy or two sitting at the bar nursing a beer and talking to his bartender pal.  As far as I could tell, they only served various arrangements of cured pork on white bread.

Speaking of cured pork (my 3rd favorite topic), there are these fucking pig legs EVERYWHERE in this city: at the crappy supermercado, at the nice supermercado, in bars, at meat shops, and they´re generally around 70€.  I would totally buy one and play tennis with it, but there are no tennis courts nearby, except the ones on top of Montjuic in the old olympic village and I don´t know anyone who could afford to buy themselves a pig leg to play against me.  Anyway, I appreciate the hoof being attached ´n all.  In AMERICA that shit´d be as least leg-like as possible and wrapped in some impenetrable barrier to keep the sneezes and subway hands of people like me from coming too near.  Instead the legs and layer of fat and mold (I guess) are right there for the poking.  And poke I did!!!  Once.  THere´s really no reason to do it thrice.  

Alvaro asked me if I was dreaming a lot, as he found he did when he was in an English speaking country and I realized that I´d been sleeping really soundly and having pretty vivid dreams, I guess from all my Spanglishing.  When the others arrived at the bar we all introduced ourselves with kisses from all the ladies, and handshakes for the fellas.  It´s a lot easier to remember someone´s name when you kiss them.  Twice.  We got back in the cars and drove up to the vast state park which was situated among sheep farms and a type of oak trees I´d never seen before.  We arrived at the ancient house of one of the group´s uncle and aunt where we dropped off the lunch foods. 

 On the way to the trailhead I saw some nettles and got all excited and went to eat one when a few of the group were all, ¨No!!! That shit stings!¨ I was all, ¨this shit´s fine if you roll it up, see?¨ even though I took a couple stings when picking it.  Alvaro and Pep (both biologists) and a couple others called it Urtica, which when pronounced with in Spanish doesn´t sound anything like when I heard it spoken in American.  Oh!!!  I realized.  The name is Urtica, like Urtica Dioica, Latin for Stinging Nettles!  THen I saw a bunch of mallow and went to grab some and said, ¨Malva¨and they were all, ¨ÿup!¨  and I realized that all the Latin names I learned are the names that the Spanish use!  Finally, some applicable education!   I also told Pep that my naturalist teacher was all ¨ Ït´s an extinct language so you can pronounce it however you want¨ and Pep was all, ¨That´s some bullshit¨ and all was well.  Now when we go on plant walks I´m gonna tell you plant names in Spanish and you´ll think I´m pretentious, yet correct.  

As we hiked along the trail, I got to talking with Pep about plants n stuff and he pointed out strawberry tree, an Arbutus which is related to dogwood or somethin´that I´d read about on Becky Lerner´s blog, but had never seen in real life.  IT had some ripe fruit on it and it was pretty tasty!  Now I´ve eaten wild foods in 2 countries!  Our hike led down to an neolithic multi burial site that had been reconstructed into a little stone slab building with a bunch of rocks strewn around it.  We climbed around on it and took some birthday photos then moved on to a spot in the trail where a string was tied leading off up the wooded hill.  We followed the string for a ways, ducking and ´schwaking til we got to a huge boulder pile upon which we climed to see the valley below and the mountains in the distance.  It was pretty neat.  On the hike back to the house I had a nice convo with one of the dude´s who´s name I can´t remember about his travels in India and what it all was like, and I came away from it feeling excited to be going.  It was all in Spanish and I understood him perfectly, which was the first time so far on this trip that that had happened.

When we got back to the house we set up the upstairs of the house which functioned as a sort of visitor´s/educational center and overnight house for kids coming on field trips to the park.  We ate tons of toasted white bread, delicious squash soup Cris had made, cured meat, and tomatoes.  The conversation was mostly in Catalan and I sort of just laughed when they laughed and smiled when they smiled and occasionally someone would explain to me what was going on, but I couldn´t for the life of me understand the conversation.  I could pick out words here and there, but normal speech amongst Spaniards, or Catalunyans in this case was not intelligible.  It´s also super tiring trying to process all that information so I mostly tuned out to save my mental juice.

After lunch, tea was made and a box of different tea cookies was set out right in front of me.  I don´t think anyone noticed, but I´m pretty sure I ate half the box.  I have no self control when it comes to sweets I have not tried before.  Because, seriously:  when am I going to have the opportunity to try them again?  WHEN???  Exactly.  Reason and sugar are good friends.

Then we played a variation on what Drew D. Hill call Salad Bowl where everyone writes a famous person, an object, and a movie on pieces of paper and throws them in a bowl, or in this case, a bag.  There are two teams and one round is description, the next is charades, and the next is a one word description.  Being preoccupied with pig legs, I wrote pierna de cochon, thinking that cochon is spanish for pig, but it turns out, much to the amusement of everyone there, that it´s French, and possibly Galician, but not Spanish or Catalan.  Cerdo is Castellano, whereas in my previous experience in Guatemala, it´s Coche (much to my disappointment as it ¨coche¨ is much easier to say than ¨carro¨ for CAR).  We had a great time playing and the girl team won.  Then Pep and Alvaro drove me to a suburb where I could take the train back to Barcelona, but not before talking a lot about the USA, telling me about a guitar bar I should check out that night, and inviting me to hang out with them and eat Tapas a couple of days later. ¨Holy shit,  I´m making friends in another country!¨

When I got back to Barcelona, I stopped into a Locutori, or internet cafe that smelled quite a bit like urine, though it was packed and no one seemed to be bothered by it.  Then I wandered around as per usual looking for the place Alvaro had told me about with the guitars and I found it, but it was packed and I had my backpack.  It was also in a small square populated by north African fellows, moms with kids in strollers and a bunch of what looked to be, no, actually were a bunch of hookers.  I made eye contact with one of em which I knew would result as it did in her following me around for a bit til I made it out onto the Ramblas (the main touristy drag) and found a nice falafel joint.  I figured this would be a good way to lose her since hookers typically don´t like falafel.  Falafel is usually the one hooker/meat-free thing I can eat while traveling and this would be the first of many.  I walked back to Cris´s house with the intention of dropping my backpack and going back to the bar with the guitars, but instead ended up talking to her and her housemate Xell, who has a V'drum kit in their living room.  Xell was real intense in a good way and real kind, though hard to understand through the Catalan.

Put that in your favorite hooker´s skull bong and smoke it.

Barcelona I

I arrived in Barcelona via the Wonderful RyanAir then took a bus to the neighborhood where I was to meet up with my CS host, Cris.   I tried calling her from the Airport using my skype on my phone though the airport´s intermittent wifi.  Since I didn´t buy a pricey simcard in London (literally pennywise and pound foolish) and was only able to communicate to her that I´d meet her in front of Solmania in 50 minutes.  When I viewd her area on streetview, Solmania was a brightly signed shop so I figured it´d be an easy place to find.  Turns out Solmania is a suntan and skin cream shop or something, definitely a weird choice for a commie such as meself.  After realizing that the directions I wrote myself weren´t accurate enough, I asked around for Solmania, but no one knew what the hell I was talking about (I should have asked some guidos, but I guess they were all out clubbin´it up), but finally I went into a restaurant and they directed me to the joint, a couple blocks away.   I got there before Cris did and was all sweaty from lugging my backpack dressed in lots of layers so RyanAir woulnd´t stick me with a 50 pound fee for having a bag larger than its lilleputian limitations.  I took off some layers and took a second to relax when Cris came up to me and gave me the kiss on the cheek, pausing before the second one explaining that,  ¨here we kiss on both cheeks.¨  ¨Oh, ok!¨ I said.  We walked back to her place so  I could drop off my bag and we spoke in Spanish about general stuff.  It turns out my spanish is actually pretty bad.  Fortunately Cris spoke more English than I did Spanish so we were  able to communicate just fine.  I spoke in spanish when I could and she spoke in Englilsh when she wanted to, or when I didn´t understand what she´s saying.   

We walked with her bike-boom era step-through bike (yet with a really nice Miche rear wheel!) 30 minutes through town to a cultural center housed in a typical old town building. There were 2 big main rooms, one with a bar, and the other with a stage and space to salsa.  They had a giant plate of paella with whole shrimp and mussels of which we bought the last plate of for 4€ and shared.  She informed me halfway through the plate that she had had a fever that morning and still had a cold.  I guess the Catalunians aren´t as paranoid about germs as I am.  Beer was cheap from the tap at €1 per small glass. 

As the folks danced (all between mid 20s and mid 30s it seemed) I was blown away by their willingness to engage each other and smile and laugh.  Partner dancing is so foreign to me, as my experience at parties is that everyone dances by themselves without relaly engaging anyone else´s body movements.  Although I guess specifically going somewhere to salsa is different than going to someone´s rager to get wasted and moonwalk.   

After I hung out watching for a while Cris found me and said that she was ready to go.  Before we left her friend Jose insisted that she and I dance.  So she showed me the basics of Salsa (she was taking lessons and considers herself to be intermediate) and we shared a bit of a dance before the song ended.  By then I had caught on and was getting into it, but´twas time to go.  She borrowed a Bicing (the local bikeshare) card from Jose and we left, grabbed a bike for me (sorta clunky 3 speed with 26¨rear and 20¨front that rode well enough) and meandered home, talking about this´n´that.  

Just like the VHS lounge/cafe that sold fresh peanut butter that I frequented and loved in Xela (and had decided to open in the US before realizing that the profit would be nonexistent) I thought that it would be great for there to be an inexpensive paella bar that had salsa nights in, oh, I don´t know, Portland!  Maybe the inexpensiveness of the places was a distortion of my relative wealth, (Cris said wages are really low and  her place cost 180€ a month for each of the 3 rooms, which was not exactly cheap by her standards). Maybe such places already exist, but they sure as hell aren´t all Anarchisty like this place with a bike-tire-reuse-as-belts workshop. The only salsa club I know of in Portland isn´t as reasonably priced for obvious reasons, nor is it lefty.  

At 4 in morning, sleeping on the couch in the living room, I was instinctually pulled out of a dream by the sounds of someone puking to beat the band.  Oh, fuck, I thought.  I really hoped it was Cris´s housemate doing the puking and not Cris since we shared the same plate.  Then I heard Cris get up and go the bathroom, but there was no puking while she was in there.  When she returned to her room, I heard more puking and tried to go back to sleep, but the wretching continued until morning as did my prayer of ¨guts of steel.¨  Cris left early to go to work and I didn´t see here again until that afternoon. When I asked her if that was she who I had heard she said no but that the walls are SO thin that everything the neighbors do is audible, and it was her 50 year old shut in neighbor, who lives with his mom, who was emptying it out.  whew!

That day, on the way to the Frederic Mares museum I ate my first of many chocolate croissants.  It turns out it´s really difficult to pronounce croissant in Spanish and I would default to French pronunciation which  probably made me sound like an idiot. Some places call them napolitano, which I can say convincingly.  But I don´t think I was fooling anyone when I asked ¨¿como?¨ after pretty much anything they´d say.  Anyhow, the Mares museum  was supposed to have some ancient bikes and collections of random and weird things which sounded right up my alley.  It was in the old town next to the big Cathedral where all the tourists go.  The museum did in fact have numerous collections of numerous odd things, like keys, scissors, lighters, sewing machines, fans, yads,  5 strange ancient bikes made of solid iron and wood, etc.  The collections were overwhelming to look at, especially since each piece was so interesting to look at.  I sort of scanned the 500 keys, 400 scissors, 200 lighters, 50 life sized crucifixes, etc.  Each floor had a docent or two who guided you in the direction the exhibit should be viewed, some more forcefully that others by which I was mildly confused.  On the Jesus floor, a docent around my age followed and directed me around as though she though I was gonna tear down a Jesus for myself.  As this was the first museum I´d been to I wasn´t sure if this was normal Spanish museum staff behaviour, so I didn´t say anything sassy.  Besides my sass is best tasted in English.    

I had a nice conversation in Spanish with a mom-aged docent on the ¨old bikes floor¨ about the bikes and Catalunya before heading out to wander the old town.  I found a guitar store that had a bunch of new Tokai guitars and some Steve Vai Ibanez guitars with the handle cut out, so people know you´re a prick, complete with ¨do not play¨ signs on them.   Put that in your Mom-like-docent´s skull-bong and smoke it.

Terminal Attraction

Like Arnold Schwarzenegger to Jim Henson + Dottie Hinson. May Maywood. Betty Spaghetti. Dorothy Sue. Jimmy Dugan. 437 dingers in the first half of the century. Whoa are weeeeeee. Carolon Square. Glenview Boredom. Glenview Grayness. Oratoricals at the pancake house.

Diarheeeeah on top of ole smokey. All covered with.....Slash. I lost my poor ecosystem to the big timberman. I looked for a good tree, I looked for a stream, but the were all cut down and clogged with debris. Do you want to eat salmon or badger or Shrew? Well, you no longer need to cuz we've got a Fred Meyer not too far from here.

Nicotine Norman Rockwell on the moon shares a drink with a robot named Judy who wears a blue skirt hiked up to her mechanical knees, ball and socket joints, rack and pinion orgasms.

Tire Yeardly Smith. Hey you's cried the mathemagician, this is a square! This is a double dog dare! Golden globed. Cloudy with a chance of choices. You wouldn't believe how good is my impression of a certain neo-futurist architect. I've got them glasses and the grease pencil. I know the trenches and I"ll sketch with my gasmask through the mustard gas attack. I am the future of Industry and Hospital Complexes.

Augustus Gloop

August of 2009 has included:

gorging myself on blackberries in alleys

taking photos for the Mercury of cops on bikes with guns

playing baseball like a pro

camping at Green Lakes at the foot of the South Sister

selling lots of bikes

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.