On the gringo trail

Man, super tired and irritable right now. Just got into Angituga after almost 11 hours of travel from Flores. First my hostel had booked my ticket for the wrong day, so I had to get in an argument about whether or not I should have to buy another ticket. Apparently they were 'looking all over for me' the night before, when I was in my bed, sleeping, since I had to get up at 4:00am to see the Tikal ruins; I would have thought my room would have been a good first place to look for me if there was some sort of question. By the way it would have been cheaper to go out to the public terminal and book a seat and figure out the shuttle to Antigua once in Guatemala City, but the kicker is Guatemala City - no central station, so you arrive at the terminal for the specific station, probably have to transfer, probably have to deal with getting robbed either by the taxi driver or on the bus (apparently the Red Buses in Guat are a no-go zone for gringos; there are 3 types of city buses in Guat). So I paid the extra money for the 'convenience.' So we get on the bus, and the A/C is on, which kind of makes sense since it's muggy out, but it stays on and soon I'm shivering and can't sleep. So I ask if it can be turned down (meanwhile everyone is wrapped in thick wool blankets, except me, in shorts and a hoodie); they turn it off and I fall asleep but I wake up again at some point, shivering again with the A/C at full blast. We're in the mountains by now, it's maybe 3am, and there should be heat on, not A/C. So I ask again if the A/C can be turned down and the driver tries to tell me how hot it is inside the bus, and we go through all this rigmarole, and I mumble 'casaca' (bullshit, that's right, I can curse in Guatemala, it comes in handy sometimes, like when my hostel wants me to buy a second bus ticket), and I really want to sleep, but the driver blows me off. A bit later the other guy (who works the bags and stuff) says he'll turn it down, which he does and I fall asleep, but wake up just before arrival in Guat with the fucking A/C on again, shivering in my boots. So we arrive in the city and our shuttle is supposed to be waiting for us, but instead we wait for it for an hour, and instead of getting 'door-to-door service' to a hotel of our choice, we wind up at the ticket office/hotel of the company operating the shuttle. Just all super annoying, and adding no sleep to it makes everything and everyone harder to deal with, especially me. This A/C crap has happened in a lot of countries, I don't know if locals figure, "I'm paying for it, so it better be on full blast!" or what, but obviously everyone else knows it's chilly if they bring a sack full of blankets on the bus with them. In Thailand, never take the A/C train. It costs more anyways.

OK, so where have I been? I spent the weekend in San Pedro after leaving Xela, went with Ed and Scott (the rugby boys), this girl Michelle from Alleen's Spanish school, and her friends Jackie and Aaron. We took the top floor of a hotel off the main drag, had all three rooms and the balcony. I wound up sleeping with Michelle, in the bed and carnal sense. It was a long time coming, she'd been dogging me for a week or so in Xela, and then suggested that we share a room/bed (three rooms and three beds, everyone shared), which was nice I guess since I didn't know Aaron at all, he wasn't even in San Pedro when we booked the rooms, and what if he snores? Michelle is nice, she's kind of homely but pretty too, and I can't really say no to such an open invitation, it was a sealed deal before we even began. She said she hadn't slept with anyone in almost a year, which would make anyone randy I guess.

San Pedro was fine for the weekend if you have some cool peeps to go with, but that was all I needed. The bus drops you up the hill, in the Guatemalan part, and then you walk down to the gringo part, which is so fucking universal that at this moment thinking about it makes me want to vomit in my mouth cause I'm all grumpy and sleep deprived: bars/restaurants/discos, all nicer and I dunno, trendier than anything in the real town above, lots of random folk on the street selling junky crystal necklaces, or in Xela overpriced bread was popular. Gringos going out and getting wasted to the point where they won't notice the bedbugs in their $2 dorm room. It was a party town, pretty pure and simple. Met people who said, "watch out, you'll come for the weekend and end up staying." One guy told me that, he's from the UK and been there five years. Whatev, not my thing. I didn't bother with other places on the lake, I'd seen it, and my travel philosophy is stay a weekend or a month, but try not to fall inbetween, or it's just days wasted. See the shit, snap the picture, and move on, or actually stay long enough to make some friends and learn about a place, and I felt I'd learned most of what there was to learn about San Pedro after a weekend. I can party and get laid anyplace, what's special about San Pedro? The other towns on the lake are pretty touristy too, either in the traditional sense or, in the case of San Marcos, the metaphysical one. In SM you can stay in a pyramid hut and learn about lucid dreaming and crystal healing and do yoga and meditate, and it's all super fucking expensive, which chafes me in the worst way. I actually saw an ad for vipassana meditation in Mexico City, run by a global organization, free, financed by practitioners around the world who want others to be able to enjoy the benefits. Right below that was an ad for a meditation center in SM, $150 a week or $450 a month. Fucking pirates. Besides, even if they're legit, I find it somewhat offensive that a bunch of asshole SoCal hippies decide to move into this place that's sacred to the Mayans and in the metaphysical vortex or whatever, and set up shop to practice their own brand of shotgun spirituality. That smacks of cultural appropriation to me; if I was an actual practicing Mayan in San Marcos and these assholes started building pyramids around my town, I would be angry (Lago Atitlan really is an important place to the Mayans, like most bodies of volcanic water).

What else, mostly we just hung out and ate and drank and fucked, although we went kayaking one afternoon which was nice, just to a beach to swim for a bit. I dragged the group up the road to a Guatemalan pension for traditional breakfast (Jackie especially seemed a little unsure about the plan), which is less than half the price of the touristy stuff and super good and filling, black beans, eggs scrambled with tomatoes and green onions, half an avocado, and a big stack of tortillas. Everyone wanted to go back the next day.

I had to leave early on Sunday to make my connections to Nebaj, so I said my goodbyes (I'll especially miss the rugby boys, they were rad, although they live together and are really close and I felt like I only got to tag along. We were friends for sure, but I was second fiddle). I had to take a launcha (boat) to Panajachel, across the lake, which was nice enough, but interesting only in the price scheme: local price (Q5), expat price (Q15) and tourist price (Q25). This is an unspoken 'agreement' (i.e. the driver knows what you are and charges accordingly. In comparison, this 45 minute bus ride cost the same as the 3 hour bus from Xela; Chicken Bus operators, strangely, never seem to charge gringos more). The bus north was a typical Chicken bus, managed chaos at the station on departure, gunning for the seats in the middle since the shocks went out long ago; I will say thought that if there is a Hell, I'm sure they play that shitty Mexican tuba music all day long, just like in a Chicken Bus. It drives me fucking nuts. Supposedly marimba is the music of Guatemala, and I much prefer that, but somehow the tuba reigns supreme in the world of transport. I did sit next to a Guatemalan who works in the US Embassy, so we chatted a bit about that before he had to get off at Los Encuentros (a large transfer point), mostly about how it was to work at the embassy, his time at community college in Minnesota, and how armed pandelleros have stepped up their attacks on cross-boarder buses recently (I read too that violence increases on and around Easter celebrations here).

On the ride into Nebaj I met a guy in the Peace Corps and a girl volunteering long-term in Nebaj, along with her two friends who were visiting for a couple weeks. That pretty much meant I knew all the gringos in town, or that's what it felt like. Latter I would meet another Peace Corps volunteer; all of them were from the mid-west, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri. Don't meet many of them. I stayed at a hostel run by the organization the girl (Mary Claire) was volunteering for, in a dorm with a quiet French couple who recognized me from the Buena Vista concert in Xela. The couple seemed like one of those that does everything together, and isn't particularly interested in having that arrangement altered. But since I was getting onto the Gringo Trail, these two would end up popping up a lot over the next few days.

I made my first day hike to Acul, which was recommended by one of the Peace Corps guys I met. The French couple was going the same way, so I tried to give them a 20 minute head-start - but they ended up dicking around somehow, so I caught up to them before we even left town, and we spent a fairly awkward hour or so asking questions to be pleasant and not really talking much. Eventually I wanted to go faster so took off as they had a break. The hike was nice, up a mountain, over a plateau, and down a valley, into the town of Acul, where there are two cheese fincas (plantations). Nebaj was one of the most violent areas in the civil war, and Acul was founded in the 60's as the first polo de desarollo, or development pole. These remind me of the fortified agricultural collectives the US set up in Vietnam during the war, where ostensibly development would be fostered but really it was an easy way to keep an eye on the populace. Anyways, the hike was nice, not gorgeous like I had been expecting, with dry rolling hills of long-needled pines dotting the landscape. Acul was small and friendly enough, I got gawked at a bit, men in the fields waving hello and kids frightened away by my greetings, lowering their gazes and shuffling away - a couple got so flustered they forgot what time it was, although it was afternoon one responded with a "good morning," another answered "good night." A couple of times teenagers appeared to mock me in Ixil, the local Maya dialect (hey you know what guys? I speak a language you don't know too!). It was hot, so I bought an "ice cream" of frozen water and mixed fruit in a cup, with a bamboo stalk coming out, from a tienda (essentially a small convenience store). On the other end of town I found one of the cheese fincas, and as I walked up the drive, a guy came speeding by on an ATV, not caring how much dust he kicked into my face. He was white, white like me, could have been from Iowa himself. He sneered at me, and I thought he looked like an asshole. At the house I met the mother of the Ladino family mother, I figured this family was probably in charge of the local populace during the war at the polo. I asked if they could serve me some food, she explained the set lunch she could make, and also offered just some tortillas and cheese. I was there for cheese, so asked for the latter, and a papaya-pinapple juice. It was alright and all, not amazing, the setting was nice, although there was some truly terrifying taxidermy on the walls. A mestizo man-servant waited on me, I even got a bell on my table to ring if I needed anything, which I felt too uncomfortable to use (in America, we pretend we're egalitarian, OK?). At the end of my meal I was asked to pay Q40, which is a huge fucking rip-off for Q1 of tortillas, some cheese they make at the place, and a couple Q worth of fruit (you can get quite a nice meal for this price even in a touristy restaurant). So that annoyed me, although there didn't seem much for it except to pay it. Lesson learned: always ask how much stuff costs, ideally before you eat it. On the plus side, this motivated me to start buying food in the market and cooking a bit; you can have meals this way for 3 or 4 Q apiece (40 or 50 cents). Not many of the hostels here have kitchens to use (even though in my mind that's one of the things that makes a hostel), but there are things you can do without a kitchen even. Examples without: tortillas (bought fresh on the street), diced onion and tomatoes, avocados. Mangoes and pastries. Example with kitchen: eggs, black beans, toast, tortillas. Simple stuff. I bought a bag of salt (complete with bits of twigs, which I just think of as "prizes"), which if you're going to have one flavor agent I think that should be it, although next on my list is a bottle of Picomas hot sauce.

I hung out with my mid-west friends that night, met some Dutch girls (of course, the Dutch are everywhere), and left the next morning. Nebaj didn't seem worth any more time, the hikes seemed somewhat generic, and another day there is a day I don't get to surf or snorkel or whitewater raft or something. It took four different micros to get accross to Lanquin, my next destination and the town next to the emerald pools of Samuc Champey, I had meant to get up early but slept through my alarm, ate a quick brekky, bid farewell to the French couple. The French couple caught me as I waited in Aguacatan for my micro to fill up (micros don't leave until they're full, chock fucking full). Just to fill you in now, they had to stop in Coban to get money out, and wound up catching up with me again in Flores, and trying to coax me into taking the 5-day trek to El Mirador, the largest by far of all the Maya pyramids, tucked into the jungle on the Mexican border. It's cheaper for them, you see, if they can enlarge the group, but I had little desire to spend 5 days in the jungle with a totally boring couple. I passed.

It took four micros (Japanese mini bus) to get from Nebaj to Coban; a micro can be more comfortable, except not really. Like Chicken Buses, micros get packed to the gills - 5 in the back bench (designed for 4) and 4 on the next three benches (designed for 3). They get 4 on a bench designed for 3 by first folding down the fold-out seat (hope you DON'T get that seat, there's even less ass cushioning and the back rest is even shorter), then they have these custom made bench bits, maybe 6 inches wide and 18 long, which wedge between the space normally made between the fold-out seat and the side of the bus. Thus, space for one more little Guatemalan (or in my case, white) ass. In front of the front row there's a small, 6-inch ledge, underneath is the engine and the other vital parts that turn $40 worth of steel into $22,000 of pure Japanese engineering. This space also functions as seats, dispelling any pretense a passenger in the front row might have about extra space in comparison to the rows behind. In my case, I was on the fold-out seat by the door, where they can't actually put a bench piece because there's the drop in the floor for getting in and out, and besides, this is where the money-taker wedges himself. In front of me, on the ledge, was a motion-sick indigena woman, clutching a black plastic bag to her mouth in an apparent attempt to hyperventilate, or at least catch potential puke. Fortunately, the bag didn't have to get used.

Anyways, I made it to Lanquin, where I spent the afternoon looking for avocados to pack lunch to the lagoons the next day. Oh, there were avocados the day before, and there would be avocados tomorrow, but none today. I asked every store in town, none would own up to having avocados to sell me. I bought some mediocre, spongy white cheese instead (I needed SOMETHING more than tomatoes and onion in my tortillas), which was not unlike the weird salty mountain cheese they make in the Bolivian Andes. I couldn't even find ham. Lanquin isn't very big. Anyways, I took the organized tour through my hostel to the caves and lagoons, and it was super fun. First we jumped off a rope swing into the river, just to set the tone for the day, and then we spent the first few hours on a cave tour unlike anything that could be offered in the United States (for legal reasons). We scaled walls and jumped into pools, and I was only a little sketched out when the guide said, "OK, make sure you jump only here. Only jump here, right in the middle, OK?" We carried candles in, and at points had to swim with them above our heads. Underwater rocks lurked to stub toes and cut knees. One guy smacked a stalactite with his head, which of course bled everywhere, and he had to leave to get patched up (although he made it back later). We rappelled down a small waterfall, and felt bats whiz by our heads. It was rad.

Next, we inner-tubed slowly down the river, back the the park entrance. Before we got into the park with the lagoons, we had to cross a suspension bridge, which our guide said was 9 meters (just shy of 30 feet) above the water. Some of us jumped in, although when I was about to jump from the spot where the first few had jumped, the guide said, "wait, move over here a bit, the water is deeper here." Like I said, not something we would do in the States. It was pretty high, and even though people weren't hitting the bottom, I tried to curl horizontal once I was in the water. I smacked my ass pretty hard, there's a bruise now.

You don't need a guide for the lagoons, but they were beautiful. Supposedly this place ranks #1 as most gorgeous in Guatemala for most people. White limestone with strikingly turquoise water, set in a steep valley. It reminded me a lot of a park I visited in Kanchanaburi, Thailand (which I compared to the Hanging Gardens, it was amazing), although the Thai park had a lot more people getting drunk there; Semuc was pretty deserted. Semuc also had larger (though fewer) pools, so was better for swimming, and even had some gold-with-brown-stripe fish darting around. The vista was better too (although I think I rank the Thai park higher overall, it just had such a cool sense to it, all jun Next we climbed down a (sketchy) rope ladder to a large rock, where the underground rapids come out from under the pools, and then there was yet another high-altitude jump, this time into the foot of the falls.

I slept in a hammock that night at the hostel, I thought it would make me romantic for my hammock trip up the Rio Negro in the Brazilian Amazon, but mostly it just made me cold. I guess I saved $2 over the dorm room though, and I heard the dorms had bedbugs (I've heard scores of bedbug stories here, although no problems yet, knock on wood. I still can't believe I've never gotten lice or bedbugs or crabs or anything from traveling; in Bolivia I stayed in some SHIT-AY places).

The next day, wooo! on the Gringo Trail, tourist shuttle straight to Flores and the ruined Maya city of Tikal, I was tired of transfers and the price was really good actually. In another hostel, this one was pretty nice I guess, although hostels must make just a shit-ton of money, they provide a bunk bed and charge just a bit less than a private room, but cram a dozen or more people together so they can all smell each other. This place also didn't have a kitchen, and didn't supply towels, or hot water, so it seemed over-priced to me. Most dorms don't supply towels, but some sort of nicety (like free internet, which I have now and am abusing the shit out of to catch up on my blog. Don't worry, no one is waiting, there's a system) goes a long way with street cred for me. The hostel did have a lot of books though; I swapped my copy of Cormac McCarthy's "The Road" (which gets my endorsement, read it in three days, couldn't put it down. But sometimes books are just like that traveling) for a copy of Hunter Thompson's "Hell's Angels," which also gets my endorsement. Thompson is rad, a damn fine journalist.

Flores is a small island connected by a causeway to the non-touristy town of Santa Elena; both are small and uninteresting, although Flores has pretty views. On a kick with my shuttle of taking the path of least resistance, I booked my tour of Tikal and return bus to Antigua for the following day with the first opportunity. I wasn't dicking around in Flores, one night, one day of ruins, one long busride south.

Ah, the lost ancient city of Tikal. Wasn't going to do it, still not sure if I should have, but I figure it's better to regret things you have done, than to regret things you haven't done (by the way, when you see your mother this weekend, be sure to tell her SATAN!!! You get a gold star if you get this reference). Anyways, it was kind of one of those go-and-take-pictures things, but it was cool. It was overcast, so it wasn't TOO hot and muggy, but the pics weren't as great as they COULD have been. And I learned a couple things, like all about the stuff the Maya used from the forest (e.g. the cotton fruit for clothes, the vines for carrying straps, the sap for gum, the other sap for glue, the dried plant bits for earings), and how the Maya probably either abandoned the city because they ran out of water or because they left in a space ship (no, really, those are the two theories being debated. Whatever, are you a UFOlogist? Then you really have no professional basis for you opinion, do you?). Really I feel like I learned that a lot isn't known about the Mayans. For example, our guide explained to us the ball game, where up until a few years ago it was figured the losing team was sacraficed for being losers, but now they think maybe the winners were sacraficed, because why would the gods want a sacarfice of losers? There was a lot of "we used to think... but now we think..." Anyways, the Maya found flat foreheads and crossed eyes beautiful, so they had practices to make sure their royalty had those attributes. I guess kind of like being white, having crossed eyes is a demonstration of how little you have to go work the fields (in this case, you literally can't), but MAN it's funny how today we would look at someone like that and think "inbred." The Mayan royalty also laid jade in their teeth, which my guide described as "bling bling." No one knows how they cut the jade, because jade is really hard to cut, but then no one really knows how the Maya built their city, either. Like I said, we don't know much about them, which is why we have spaceship theories.

Anyways, I'm in Antigua now, after the hellish bus ride described at the beginning of the post. At least there was no tuba music. I was over this city before I got off the micro though. It's like Arequipa, Peru, all colonial like, but more touristy. Yippee. Gonna climb Pacaya, the active volcano tomorrow, and roast weiners and marshmallows on the lava, then on Monday I'm heading south to surf. Although maybe, just maybe, I'll head to El Salvador, where I got a lead on a beach house that's $20 a night, with a pool and a huge garden, and is owned by an adorable old couple, and has a surf board just waiting for me... I dunno, I had some folks interested in surfing from the hostel in Flores, so I emailed to see if anyone wants to go. Heard about it from a Canadian couple in my Antigua hostel who stayed there.