honduras and el salvador: part one and only.

as a group far too huge (we varied between 6-9 people), we ventured from livingston of guatemala to the bay islands of honduras. i really loathe being in big groups of turistas- you look stupid being such a dense section of tourists, you´re also unapproachable by locals or anyone else because there are so many of you, you´re unmanageable trying to get so many people to move in the same direction and agree on proper routes to desired destinations, and you never really get to know anyone all that intimately because you´re always in this huge, impersonal group.

that being said, i REALLY especially enjoyed the company of two crazy germans- mike and marquetta. marquetta is absolutely nuts and mike is the solid, quiet, stable type who nonetheless openly accepts marquetta´s insanity. i really liked them both. in utila, one of the islands known for diving, we found our dive center and thank GOD for mike giving me my ¨scuba refresher¨ because i would have been lost without him! though i must admit, it´s ALMOST like riding a bike... there are just so many rules that it´s the technicalities that´ll get you, not the instinctual stuff. the diving was pretty amazing- not as clear as thailand, and not as many schools of fish, but more types of fish to see, and i saw different types of environments too. i did a half-cave dive, which made me want to do a cave specialty it was SO amazing. like floating through a tunnel, or like you´re at an all-natural waterpark (which i guess you technically are). and you have no depth perception underwater so once and awhile you blatantly whack the walls, despite your best efforts. i saw hawksbill turtles, which was amazing- their shell obviously is stagnant while their fins make these asian-dance-like-movements, gliding in and out, almost swaying... they had me in a trance. we also saw sting-rays, which was magical, catfish-like creatures, which were really cool-looking (their whiskers stir up the sand! it all makes sense now), crazy flat sideways-moving fish that look EXACTLY like sand, so they just slither along the bottom, what i call the ¨black evening gown¨ fish, which were flowing and elegant and absolutely beautiful, and cleaner shrimp, which, if you put your hand in front of their shell, will pick off all the dead skin on your hand! i also did a wreck dive, which is always a treat- i love how it´s like man meets nature.... and nature wins. a once-powerful gigantic boat now crushed by the sea, covered in coral with fish large and small floating in and out of its windows and crevices. just lovely! adam, one of the divemasters, is a crazy old fish man who gives fish talks. on evening i attended one, tipsy, and since he was tipsy too we all had a gay old time talking about fish and watching his slideshow on the dock while he yelled at little carribbean kids who were insulting his mother... anyway, it really helped the way i looked at things underwater- i became much more observant of types of fish and the way they acted and all the variations, etc.
i was a little disappointed that the weather did not allow for trips to the north side, which meant no chances to see dolphins or whale-sharks... but i guess you have to leave something for later.

when i was little i used to have dreams that i could fly. i have had them since then, but they have been different types of flying. when i was younger, the dreams involved flying the way you would never imagine flight; it was more like floating... in gelatin... gelatin with a current. slow, lazy, sluggish, splendidly sedate flying that i realized just this time felt EXACTLY like scuba diving. i was very happy to discover this connection and similarity, delighted in the revelation- i can now consciously experience the exciting dreams of my childhood. three cheers for that.
i also realized this time diving that looking out into the blue, being immersed in the blue, and seeing ONLY the blue, is the most lonely, lonely feeling. all-encompassing, bringing the world down so small and close... it is frightening.
when i went to sign up for my dives the dive center asked me what level i was at. i felt like a fraud for answering ¨advanced¨ (as this is my technical level)... i had only had 9 dives at that point!

around utila were a few bars we hit up if for no other reason than there is NOTHING to do on utila but dive, snorkel, eat, drink, and sleep. the beaches aren´t even nice, just full of seaweed. one of the bars called treetanic took the owner FIFTEEN years to create, and it was a splendid blend of cement, glass and porcelain pieces- it was GORGEOUS! i wandered around and met people randomly while in awe of the wonderland, and later found out that they thought i was REALLY high while describing how lovely treetanic was. just high on life, my friends.
even though i partied quite late almost every night, i was always awake at 6:30 for diving. one night i got four hours of sleep, so i had a hungover dive and passed out on the boat floor in the sun in my wetsuit at diving ¨intermission¨.
on one of our dives we ended at our 5 metres for 3 minutes safety stop and since the stop was actually on sand, we took off our flippers and had slo-mo underwater ninja fights. it was so funny that i couldn´t help but laughing, really hard, underwater, and thus CONSTANTLY filling my mask with water, which made me unable to participate in 80% of the fights. it was super funny to watch though. good times.

there was a tip of the island that we could see from our dive center, and it was ALWAYS sunny- everytime i looked at it, even if it was grey and storming elsewhere, THAT little peninsula would be bright and shiny and inviting. one evening coran and i snorkelled out to it and i saw the most beautiful sunset of my life. through my snorkel i exclaimed, in nasal lisp and sounding like a 7-year old, ¨it lookth like heeeaaaveenn¨. it was absolutely lovely, and with the sandy beach (that, might i add, quickly turns to the aforementioned seaweed) and crazy teal sea and the bamboo huts and palm trees and the backing of the craziest and most beautiful and soft, warm cloud formations you´ve ever seen... it quite felt like it. to avoid the bug bites that would ensue, we did baywatch runs back to the dive center and coran, the skinny, gay indian kid, then became known to me as ¨hasselhoff¨.

after utila, i spent about thirteen hours (always depressing to waste a day in its entirety just in getting somewhere, especially if nothing crazy or interesting happens) getting to gracias. gracias was once called ¨gracias a dios¨ (thanks to god), which i think in itself gave me high hopes for the town. my stay in gracias began in the pouring rain looking for a hotel, and eventually i paid a whopping $7.50 (i´m not kidding... that´s really expensive) for the most comfortable mattress i´ve had so far. the lady that ran the hotel was IMPOSSIBLE to understand, even moreso than other hondurans, which was unfortunate because she was a really cute old woman.
the next day i walked to the thermal springs, since i had not yet visited any in my trip thus far. i was quite impressed by the amount of pools, all streaming down into one another, and well built, settled into the forest, each of different temperatures and not as smelly (of sulphur) as i was expecting. so that was quite lovely. in addition, a huge family started talking to me and especially the hip grandmother. i liked her skirt. i asked her about poverty in honduras and she ended up giving me a lecture about the poor-poor and the poor-rich, regarding those who are monetarily poor in both cases, but rich with the love of god in the second instance. it was quite interesting, from what i could understand (she spoke lightning fast and there´s only so many times you can ask them to speak slower until before it becomes a lost cause).
i was all perfectly organized, arriving back in gracias on time, getting food and water for my trek, using the internet, and then... my laundry was late. and then it started raining. and then i met a guy who was hitting on me REALLY hard and telling me the park visitor´s center was closed. no one else knew anything about the park, so i could not confirm this, but with my late laundry, the long, long walk in the rain, the steep prices of gracias lodging, the inability to do the celaque trek in one day, and the man eventually calling me evil because i didn´t reciprocate his feelings.... i drove myself out of the mountain town, and fled to the border of el salvador. just... bad energies. it´s a shame because i later heard that the hike in that park was amazing.

the border town, nueva ocotepeque, was absolutely full of drunks, but was quite pleasant nonetheless. my hotel scared me (filled with drunk men and no showers or functioning toilets, and until i lifted my door up with tremendous force, i didn´t even have a slide-lock that fit), and the streets were a little sketchy, but i managed to find a sweet, pregnant street-chef named connie who cooked me a wonderful baleada and told me not to worry about the safety in n.o.- it´s very safe. she talked to me quite a while and, with the help of the nice guys at the internet cafe, solidified my honduras experience and opposed the negativity recently experienced in gracias. connie was shocked i didn´t have kids- she had three by my age. good lord.

the lonely planet told me that the officials at the el salvador border are extremely meticulous in going through all your belongings and doing many things to your passport. i was expecting this, and instead got a quick peek at my passport and signalled to continue. i asked about three times if i needed stamps, to go to another office, to show my bags to anyone.... ¨no no no¨. i asked another two times, and then eventually at the exit to el salvador. the man there called me beautiful just said ¨welcome to el salvador!¨. i still felt uneasy about it, especially because i have missed stamps before and it has been very detrimental, but there was nothing more i could do.
everything about the path to my first el salvador stop was smooth as silk. left my hotel, got straight on the bus, which left straight away, walked the border, caught the next bus right as it was leaving, got off and onto my connecting bus, right as it was leaving, entered suchitoto and decided to walk down the street a little, walked directly into the tourist office by chance, asked where the cheapest hotel was, the peace corps volunteers told me it was the unlabelled house that they were staying at, and they were going there right then, so i left with them and got a room much cheaper than anything else in town. beyond that, i finished almost every suchitoto sight in one hour. smooth smooth smooth. there was an AMAZING lookout at this one hotel. i walked in, feeling very awkward about not buying anything at the retaurant, took many photos then left, not looking anyone in the eye. i also stumbled upon a really awesome gallery with really interesting works.
the central plaza at night was really quaint and charming, though intimidating. i sat on the outskirts and ate yucca with hot sauce and people-watched because i felt like you needed a VIP pass to be in the inner square. everything was in tones of night black and warm streetlamp yellow. when i finally ventured through the inner square, a lady asked me if i liked the music. i did.
i was asking for something and NO ONE understood what i was saying. honduran and el salvadoran spanish i found to be MUCH different from the surrounding countries- rarely could i even remotely understand them, and they couldn´t understand me, and it didn´t help that i spoke to tourists more than locals in guatemala, so i lost my ¨learning spanish¨ flow, and definitely regressed. it was a real shame.
amber and john, the peace corps volunteers, were very helpful in informing me about the state of the country. as in mexico, i was shocked to find that the biggest income earner in el salvador is the money sent from the states- THIRTY percent of the population is in the states! then we discussed how this affects the people (they don´t want to work for their money in el salvador, the kids are with grandparents who can´t support them emotionally so they turn to the street, and thus to gangs, etc).
it was all very interesting.

it was funny because in el salvador they don´t really use ¨frio¨ for cold, but ¨helado¨, which to me formerly always meant ¨ice cream¨. so everyone´s first reaction when they hear i´m from canada is ¨oh, cold there, right?¨, but i thought now they were talking about ice cream in canada... which was confusing... but i caught on after the second person said it... and then i saw a sign for ¨helados canada¨, but this time referring to ice cream... and there was a mounty on the sign. the cold, mounty canadian stereotype extends even into a small mountain village in el salvador. oh man.

so i had a grand plan to wake up super early and run to the waterfalls the next morn, then shower and catch the first bus to santa ana, then take a bus through the ruta de las flores, and back to santa ana... all in a day. i woke up, took an amazing run to these crazy geometric waterfalls caused by volcanic activity, then ran a little longer and got some amazing views of the lake, showered, and hit the road on schedule. i didn´t want to eat because that meant leaving the bus stop, which meant i might miss the bus. a million buses to the capital went by, and an hour later my bus came. i was starving. i went to my next stop and discovered that my route is not one well travelled. i had to take two more buses. it took double the amount of time than if i had went directly to the capital then santa ana. i arrived at my destination too late to go to the ruta de las flores, i got EXTRAORDINARILY lost because there are no street signs and no one knows where anything is or what any of the streets are called or which way is even north, then i accidentally asked for a room at what i´m pretty sure was a brothel (due to the bewildered look i received when asking for ¨a whoolle night?¨ and the heavily makeupped, scantily clad women hanging around the front entrance), then got an actual room, then looked for a vegetarian rstaurant to find it no longer existent. it was just one of those days. i got fed up with everything and needed comfort, so i went to the take-out pizza hut and basked in the air conditioning and talked to the waitress the whole time and got free pop and water and two mini pizzas for the price of one. i was comforted.
the next day was the cherry on the sundae- i awoke at 6 for no particular reason, eventually found a breakfast served before 9am, then took my time getting ready for what lonely planet told me was an 8:30 bus, the ONLY bus to lago de coatepeque that day. i thought i would arrive early just incase it was packed. i arrived at 8:06, only to find that the times had changed, and the ONLY bus to lago de coatepeque for the required tour through cerro verde park now left at 8. i had missed it by 6 minutes. upset, i comforted myself by telling myself it was all meant to be, somehow.... and asked him how to get to the ruta de las flores. on my way to the next bus station i put my camera on a bar in order to take a photo of a building. the bar fell. i was cursed! but i had fun with the guys standing around, giggling and putting my finger to my mouth giving the ¨shh, don´t tell¨ sign, and tip-toeing away.

the ruta de las flores were not filled with flores (flowers), and were kindof disappointing, but at least i tried. i then took a crazy route to the lake and chilled with kids and watched rain bounce off a beautiful pumpkin-black building with a fan palm in front of it, then watched constantine, which is really, surprisingly fantastic! i decided that for a country with more guns than people, i saw surprisingly few guns. also, the bus system in el salvador is remarkably worse than any other country i have travelled in so far- i think that in my time spent in el salvador i spent more time in buses than not.

speaking of which, the next day i took thirteen and a half hours of buses to arrive in nicaragua. i had just finished the book ¨travels¨ by michael crichton and he talked a lot about crazy aura and energy stuff, among many other things, so on the buses i got bored so i would stare at people really hard, and then try focused inattention, trying to see auras. unsuccessful, and i must have looked REALLY funny if anyone was watching me. el salvadorans, because there are so little tourists in their country, are supposed to be extremely friendly. i actually found them less friendly than other countries in central america, but i got a lot of talk on my bus rides out of the country- again, as in honduras, trying to balance out my views of the country before i left. in nicaragua, strangely, i noticed an immediate positive difference in friendliness and approachability, (which always fascinates me- an invisible border on land can change cultures and views so drastically and immediately).

and nicaragua will be continued later!! even though i´m nearly though with it. as a teaser, i´ll let you know that it´s really, really lovely! for now, i must return to the sea : )

with much love, signed,
xela
(xena´s she-warrior cousin).

belize (sorta) and guatemala: part one and only.

despues de mexico i headed to belize, completely unaware of... anything. i tried looking up hostels before i left and found nothing, so i figured i´d just jump right in. in belize city i found out rooms are approximately $30 per night, plus the water was cloudy from the hurricane, and so when the bus man asked me where i was headed, i responded ¨umm.. guatemala?¨ and hijacked it outta the country. unfortunately i lost twenty (out of just one hundred!) dollars in switching from pesos to quetzals, and lost another $20 or something in leaving belize. wasn´t tooo happy about that. there was a small, timid medical student sitting beside me on one of my many buses and he filled me in on belize. the wages, the people, the history, the languages, the immigrants. very interesting stuff! what i found super interesting is that english is generally a belizean´s first language, but i think their accent evolved from being spanish people speaking english. so in other words, they sound like english is their second language, but it´s just their accent! neato. i found them to be really really friendly and easy-going people. at least those on the bus. very chatty group. nice to have a day of english. the belize landscape is very boring from belize city to san ignacio, and then it started getting kinda nice.

which leads us to guatemala, which was absolutely gorgeous! still without guide book or any sort of information, my arrival at the border was rather stressful, and interesting. i essentially just asked the mass of taxi drivers that formed around me where i should go. it took me awhile to decide on a random, slightly familiar-sounding guatemalan city by the name of flores.

after the last bus ride to flores, an elderly lady asked me for her bags under the seat. when i passed them to her she thanked me, patted my hand, smiled and ¨que le vaya bien¨ed me. it was very sweet. then i realized it was my stop too and when i got off, her english-speaking son asked me where i was going. i told him i had no idea and he offered to take me on his motorcycle to a cheap hostel he knew in town. how nice! universe takin care of me. that night i stayed in a single room because the hostels were full. since i had no guide book AND no fellow travellers to ask questions to, i wandered the streets over and over in search of persons. everything was deserted. i had a nice salad though! i then booked a 3am tour to tikal, since i remember someone mentioning that in mexico, and ended up meeting a nice group of people at the internet spot.

went to bed at 12 and woke up at 2- obviously making great use of my hotel room... not. the bus picked me up at 3 and we headed to tikal, a gigantic abandoned mayan city in the jungle. luis was our hilarious guide and we walked in the pitch black forest full of crazy jungle sounds to the tallest temple of them all. something i didn´t know before the tour was that the temples are not built on hills, but the ¨hills¨ beneath them are just unexposed temple! the jungle covers the temples in moss, dirt and foliage in record time because it is so humid and jungly. anyway, we climbed what i would consider almost a ladder (ridiculously steep steps) to arrive at the top. from here we saw the ¨sun come up¨... but we really just saw it get slightly lighter out because it was so cloudy. but it was still really cool! seeing layer after layer of temples in the distance, rising up from the canopy, not to mention the layers of mountains. we sat silently and listened and watched the clouds move, and rise, and fall, and eventually dissipate. it was quite gorgeous. the pictures do it absolutely no justice. saw tarantulas, toucans and this anteater-like guy. the guide put a tarantula on this girl´s hand at the beginning, then two hours into the tour he told us that the hairs on the back of the tarantula make your skin fall off after about three hours time.... the girl freaked out a little before he broke into a huge ¨just kidding¨grin. it was pretty funny. wudda joker. i kept wondering what it would feel like standing on the temples the gazillion years ago when it was first built.

i had a very smooth exit from flores- in perfect succession, with zero lost time, i showered, checked out, ate a lovely meal while writing in my journal, then caught a tuk tuk to the bus right as it departed. smooth as silk. felt good. and the bus ride was AMAZING. gorgeous gorgeous gorgeous- i was taking pictures like a mad photo fiend. (note that because i was in a moving vehicle, the majority of these photos did not turn out, but at least i felt at ease knowing that at least i was trying to capture the beauty). lumps of lush lime-green mountain (that i have convinced myself are hidden ruins because the lumps are set in super-flat land...) with sparse dark-green palms and other trees and bushes and succulents and the random donkey or pig and whatnot, perfect late-afternoon lighting, no one but locals, in all colourful indigenous dress. i was soaking it up, all alone, at the back of the bus.

arrival in coban was uneventful, except for endless harrassing of the hostel workers for what the hell i should do the next day.

they didn´t know anything. i took the advice from the mass of people i interviewed and determined that i should go to the lake near san cristobal, and then the forest near the town center.
the lake was... just a lake. it was right on the edge of this dirty little town, so it was even less appealing. at least if it´s in the forest you can have a nice hike and convince yourself that, even if it´s a shitty lake, at least there are trees on all sides. anyway, i ate an apple and asked a guard if there was a trash can nearby. he waved around, insinuating their entire environment is a trash can. this depressed me and i hesitantly placed my apple core on the ground as there was really no other option.
back in coban i had an amazing coconut ice cream thing... their ice cream here is very different from ours- more like, literally, iced cream. it´s really delicious and the chunks of coconut within made my day. the lady who sold it to me told me not to go to the church on the hill because i´d get robbed, and not to go into the forest because it was dangerous. jesus christ. i walked halfway to the church and there´s no way someone could get robbed because it´s a flight of stairs on a hill- opens on all sides. i went to the forest and the guy i paid didn´t mention anything. i told him the lady told me it was dangerous and he´s like ¨oh yes yes, don´t go too far in!¨. thanks for warning me when i bought the ticket, buddy. i stmubled upon a random birthday party in the forest. it made me laugh- hilarious circus music going and i asked where the bathroom was and everyone stared at me with huge, beautiful smiles before this girl took me to the banos. wandered in a little more and it started pouring, so i stood under a thatched roof with a runner and we talked about the surrounding area. i then ran away in the rain and found sanction in a travel agency. talked to the guy for a really long time because i had no one else to talk to (no one in my dorm and the hostel people were probably really annoyed with me by this point). he tried to convince me to take his tour, but in the end i chose to do kam ba caves instead of lanquin, and i´m soooo glad i did so, because kam ba was amazing.
that night an american named matt entered the dorm while i was napping and i joined him for supper. he had just re-entered civilization after being lost in the tikal jungle for 24 hours with no food or water or preparation of any sort. i was laughing pretty hard cuz the story was absolutely ridiculous. i had to pull ticks out of him the next morning. not to mention the fact that he offered me mouthwash after brushing my teeth and remarked ¨you never know what´s in this water¨, when just one night prior the boy was drinking disease water out of old rusted cans he found in the jungle.

matt joined myself, peter and jill for the tour the next morn, thanks to my sweet spanish skills (strangely, i feel they´re actually getting worse) convincing the guide to let him come. the guide brought his wife along and, even after ten years of marriage, they were still the most unbearably cute couple ever. i looked to the back of the truck when he stopped for gas and he was tilting her off the back in a loving kiss with her arms wrapped around his neck like it was their friggin wedding day. so cute.
the ride to semuc champey was AMAZING. the driver even stopped to let us take photos. he also stopped and showed us a cocoa bean pod (it looks like a giant alien egg or something... not what i expected at all) and then jumped out of the truck, looked both ways like it was a cartoon, and then scampered over, found a good one, and then hit it over a rock a few times and let us eat the white stuff in between the beans. quite tasty, and comical. the beans you have to dry out and then grind to make cocoa powder.
semuc champey is a series of about seven layers of moss-green-to-ocean-teal waterfalls that you can swim in. i don´t know why, but when i slipped into the water it felt like the most amazing water ever. i was forced to exclaim ¨god this is phenooommeenal¨ and swim around aimlessly for the next hour and a half as we all chatted hilarities. matt was covered in scratches and bites from his jungle adventure but the ¨cleaner fish¨ weren´t picking at him. we decided it must be because they could sense the AIDS he caught the night before. we imitated the teensy fish, ¨oh, AIDS, avoid that guy.¨ the hike to and from the waterfall felt fantastic. somedays i have zero stamina and strength and some days i´m on fire. that day, i was on fire.
next stop was the kam ba caves and they were indescribably cool... but i will try for a description anyway. kam ba is a series of underwater river caves... so you enter and swim with one hand while holding a small candle with the other. if that wasn´t cool enough, there are waterfalls you climb and little mini cliff jumps inside the cave. it was soo cool that you´re forced to curse in its descripion: kam ba is fucking amazing. i would get so excited about how cool it was that i would do full-body shakes, slapping the water with a huge giddy grin, internally yelling ¨OMIGOD THIS IS CRAZY FUCKIN WICKED EEE!!!¨ i LOVED it. there were a few hidden rocks underwater and i managed to hit a couple- one scraped my knee real bad and the other i hit SO hard that i couldn´t move my entire leg for about 45 seconds. there was one part that streamed the gushing water down into such a narrow space (about one foot) and you could not see to the other side. that was the craziest part by far, because you had to just let yourself fall down into the wedge with no idea what awaited you on the other side, WHILE under very forceful water. it was frightening, but quite the rush once you got through it. it was like a lesson in conquering the fear of the unknown. before the caves we did swing jumps into the strong river, and after the caves we took tubes lazily down the river. amazing day!!
by the next morn my mp3 player had been stolen and i missed my rides because the tour agency lied to me, all of which made me really sad, and i effectively lost an entire day to waiting (without music!), but... tis life. still really REALLY disappointed that i don´t have music for the next 8 months at least.
it was the next morn that i realized that once i´m showered and packed, there´s no turning back. i´m too stubborn to stay at the hostel another night- i HAVE to leave on principle alone, even if it makes no sense to leave. i´m silly like that. and by silly i mean idiotic.
on the bus to guatemala city i sat beside a boy and his grandma. we were at the front and the boy kept standing and holding his arm forward with his hand in a first like superman and making whooshing noises, then spiderwebbing me like spiderman. i giggled at him and then asked his grandma some questions about guatemala city. she told me it was dangerous (which didn´t matter much because i was catching the next bus OUT anyway) and when she found out i was travelling solo she took over. i exited the bus and she found out which bus i had to catch at which terminal, then bartered for a taxi for me, then asked the guy if he was safe, then got his card and taxi number, then allowed me to board the taxi! gramma´s the world over, taking care of the young. it was really, really touching. i boarded the next bus and spent the next hour and a half in the most uncomfortable and painful bus positions EVER. elbows in waists, spines dislocated, hips crushed; just a more intense version of the usual.

my first night in antigua i had power ranger sheets. amazing. antigua as a colonial strongly paled in comparison to mexican colonial cities, but the power ranger sheets have most definitely increased its ¨awesomeness¨ status.
i attempted to go up the hill to the cross because i heard it was a decent view of the city. on the way i came across some cops, who offered to ride me on their motorcycles. i dclined and continued up the hill to an old lady, whom i greeted and asked her if i was on the right track in order to arrive at the cross. she told me yes, but i wasn´t going alone, was i? i confirmed her suspicions and she said something about danger and drugs and did this pinching motion with her hands..... i remarked ¨so i should not go?¨ she told me no, not by foot, and made the pinching motion again. i deduced that perhaps my left breast would be squeezed by drugged-up, dangerous strangers if i were continue. so i went back to the hostel.
on the way, i passed by a store with bags i was very interested in purchasing, though in a market. it´s always smart to check out the prices at stores first to get an idea about prices. so i asked about the price. two hundred quetzals. i told him thank you and turned to walk away. he told me to name my price. i told him i really wasn´t interested in buying, i just wanted to know the price. he said to tell him what i would pay. as a joke, i said fifty quetzals. he said one hundred and fifty. i told him i really wasn´t interested, and turned away. he yelled ¨one hundred quetzals!¨ really, i´m not interested. ¨seventy five.¨ seriously, i´m waiting for market day. ¨alright fine, fifty quetzals.¨ i was shocked. without doing ANYTHING i got the guy down from 200 to 50 quetzals. 25% the asking price. so now i HAD to buy it. it really is beautiful. and his mom made it and everything in his shop. i talked to them for awhile, took photos, and left.
that afternoon i took a ¨trek¨ up the pacaya volcano. this ¨trek¨ could have been done in about one quarter of the time but because we had a very large man from brooklyn new york with too much weight and even more pride, we were stuck waiting for him every ten minutes. i got really frustrated- it´s just plain rude making a huge group wait for you when there are porters waiting right beside you to take your fat ass up the friggin mountain. i felt bad for him at the same time, but since i felt he was being inconsiderate, that feeling faded fast. anyway, this is one of the only active volcanos i will ever see, and i´m not going to lie, i was a little disappointed in the amount of lava flow... but seeing lava was still really amazing! it was just really hilarious how long we stood staring at like 3m of lava. it was amazingly hot- our wet clothes were dry in minutes and it burned my eyes to look at it up close. and it was moving, though very slowly, which was crazy to see. i kept feeling like at any moment the 3m would explode into 100s and we´d all be envelopped in slow thick waves of magma. but it didn´t happen. had obnoxious, annoying mr.brooklyn not been there, we probably would have been up and down the mountain before it even rained and certainly before it got dark, but as it was we had to get soaked, straddle the trail which had become a small river, and slip down a wet mountain in the pitch black of a nighttime forest. lovely. on the ride back, i was having beautifully fluent spanish conversation with the van driver and he offered to stop and get me a beer as we listened to team brooklyn (him and his family) whine and bicker and complain the hour and a half back. it all made me laugh. there were more wicked glowworms in the footpath of pacaya. i thought i was imagining them for awhile, before the guide picked one up.
mike the banker (and he dressed in khakis, a polo shirt, and a sweater around his shoulders, which did NOT help the banker stereotype) and i went out for a night on the town when we arrived in antigua. we were walking to the hip and happening bar when we saw a really lovely wine and cigar bar. i saw sangria on the menu and, in my half-tipsy state, i loudly inquired about the alcohol level of the sangria; was it hard, or full of orange juice like they do sometimes? the bartender replied in perfect english that there is a lot of wine in it- it´s quite strong. embarrassed to be understood by the english bartender, i ordered one and sat down with the two other barflies with my fourty of beer. mike ended up smoking two cigars with the male barfly while i bonded with the female. it was really lots of fun- the place had a lovely atmosphere and karmen and i had the exact same sense of humour so we had each other in hysterics all night.
we later moved to a bar, where i met a local and i ended up confiding all these things and crying and we had a really deep conversation and it was all very liberating.
puffy-eyed and looking like death, i awoke the next day extremely hungover and therefore terrified of the bus ride ahead of me. luckily that was alright and i arrived at lake atitlan feeling just moderately shaken.

lake atitlan was magical. it has been called the most beautiful lake in the world, and i think it might come close. it´s the crater of a gigantic volcano that supposedly blew up a billionish years ago and it´s surrounded by two other volcanoes. the surrounding mountains are dramatic and beautifully lush and green and the the water changes colours hourly- from bright sea green to teal to sky blue to calm grey. it is absolutely gorgeous. and the atmosphere of the teensy town in which i stayed, santa cruz, was exactly like that of a cottage. so my ¨go go gooo!¨ mentality immediately, uncontrollably and unconsciously become ¨it´s time to slow the hell down¨. and i spent four days here doing nearly absolutely nothing.
unfortunately what i thought was the remains of a hangover was actually some sort of crazy stomach disease because it lasted about 4 or 5 days, which strongly hindered any sort of feel-goodness regarding the wonderful dinners served. but all else was wonderful. there were so few people there that we all just became really close. dave and laura and i became the ¨tri-vector¨ (no, i don´t know what that means). we took a hike to the boring and elitist collection of private gringo hangouts that is san marcos. the hike was fantastic though- full of lush, tropical plants and near-vertical corn fields, and walking through the villages on the way we experienced a little indigenous acceptance, which is hard to come by, and thus feels really great. we also compared slang for diarrhea, further proving to me the openness of travellers to discussing their fecal matter. the next day dave and i rested in hammocks in the morn while he played his euchalele (spelling?) and sang like a jamaican, which was just lovely to relax to. then we all headed to hot springs, which was not at all what we expected. i was thinking pools of water, perhaps overlooking the lake... but oh no, these aguas calientes are PART of the lake- the volcanic activity of the nearby land heats up the side of the lake, so we were dropped off by boat beside a giant cement wall and had to balance on jagged, algae-covered rocks in BOILING, quite heavily wavy water. as uncomfortable as this sounds, it felt really fantastic when you found a spot you could sink into. after this we watched a princeton graduate jump off a super high cliff... this guy made me so happy to watch because he broke his stereotype so well. the next day laura and i ate breakfast together and she convinced me in about three minutes to join her in cuba. love spontaneity. unfortunately, when looking for flights later, we found nothing, at least in our price range, so that plan was quickly erased. then we trekked to a village and then took random collectivo taxis to get to panajachel. this was the hike that never ended. it wasn´t that long, but when you think you´re lost and your hiking partner is feeling really ill, everything feels like it´s taking so much longer. this trail dwiddled to absolutely nothing at times, and at one point, if you stepped one inch off the narrow path into the shrubs at your side, you´re no longer supported by land, but trip and fall off the cliff. ha. eventually we found really nice people with a pack of angry dogs who told us we were on the right track. one guy made me so happy because he was so friendly, happy, and helpful. hostility REALLY bums me out, and openness does the contrary. the views were spectacular- we got quite high. the lake looked absolutely enormous from that height. when we were walking into the last village a mother and child began running away from us, looking back every few steps to see if we were still there. apparently sometimes indigenous people think white people are ghosts, so this may have been the case. they hid in the corn fields and as we passed we greeted them, and they softly returned the greeting and they were GORGEOUS! the mother crouched down beside her daughter, who was twisting around to peer at us while elegantly plopping her long tumbling hair on top of her head, both dressed in bright indigenous clothing, both bearing large, inquistive eyes, the repetition of corn stalks surrounding them. absolutely beautiful.
in the second town we reached by collectivo, there was an election campaign going on. there were streamers and banners everywhere, locals holding sign supported by bamboo... but the best part is that there was this cheesy dance squad singing and dancing crazy pop music. the party leader was nowhere to be found... but at least there was dancing. very relevant.
that night in santa cruz was a cross-dressing party. i wore a black curly wig, a baseball shirt with a beer belly, drew on a goatee and freckles, stuffed some socks in my croch, and grabbed a beer. i dropped my voice as i walked up to the bar and a chick at the bar ACTUALLY thought i was a man. awesome. it was so much fun. unfortunately there weren´t many people staying in santa cruz anyway, but on top of that- only about six of us dressed up. so we just sat. a little tipsy. eating dinner. dressed as the opposite sex. little odd. especially since there were all these normal people sitting around us, so it really just made us the freak table. or the FUN table. (that´s how i´d like to see it). the guys looked phenomenal in their sparkly evening gowns. laura couldn´t find any more men´s clothes so she found a dreadful leopard print one-piece women´s outfit and she was a male lion. at the end of the night these old hippies were playing drum music at the bar and liam, ¨no one takes life slower than liam¨, was super high, softly and slowly and sensually swaying in his long purple glittering gown to the music. it was hysterical, and he didn´t find it funny in the slightest. just kept dancing.
other nights we took temescal steam baths (which ed prepared wrong and he smoked us out of), we jumped into lakes and thoughts unexpected waves were sea monsters, we watched movies and ¨6 feet under¨, and we followed a heavily used double happy hour with curry. far, far too much curry. really, so much fun.
my shoes were taken from me AGAIN in santa cruz. this time we think it was the dogs that stole them. why are my shoes in such high demand?!
everytime a song came on in santa cruz that was on my mp3 player i´d let out an exaggerated fake sob and remark ¨and tthhiiss was on my mp3 player¨. oh music, i miss you so.

after santa cruz i went to chichicastenango- a giant sunday market, known all over guatemala. i wasn´t overly impressed, but i bought some skirts and a scarf and too many belts. and guatemalan market running shoes- can´t wait to test these out. maybe do a comparison with me mexican market running shoes. i bought this cute little necklace with little painted dolls on it (it´s not as creepy as it sounds), and when i bought it from the little girl, the other little girl asked me to buy hers. i told her i already had one. i told her i didn´t need two. i told her i didn´t want it. i told her to go sell it to someone else. i told her i´m travelling for a year or two and can´t carry things with me that i don´t want or need. this girl followed me around for at least 45 minutes, and i wouldn´t give in because it was wasteful. i still do not understand why she would follow me around for so long.

on my way to xela we had really nice, helpful people on the very packed chicken bus. i´m convinced that there is absolutely no upward limit for the amount of people one can shove onto a chicken bus. it is infinite. you think ¨there is no way they´re stopping for that family of twelve on the side of the road when i cannot even move one limb of my body.¨ and of course, they do.
in the mayan language, x is pronounced ¨sh¨, and as in spanish, ¨e¨ is pronounced like an a. thus, xela is actually my name in mayan! so this was all very exciting- never have i heard my name more often than in xela. never have i heard more jokes about me than when people were trying to make comments regarding the town (i.e. xela´s so dirty. being inside xela isn´t so nice, but everything around shayla is beautiful. i had so much fun in xela. you get the idea). when men poaked their heads outside the buses and yelled ¨xela xela xela¨, summoning people onto the bus, i yelled back ¨what what what?!¨ i was soaking up all the attention, whether it was intentional or not.
my first night in xela (teehee) i randomly met the girls from semuc champey and antigua, once again. even more coincidental is that they told me to come out to the bar that night, and i kinda waved it off, then my roommates at the hostel told me to come eat pupusas with them at the market, and i did, and they were atually meeting those girls at the market, and then proceeding to the bar- they had all just climbed a volcano together the night before! smaalllll world. pupusas (dough and cheese and spicy toppings) are delicious. atol (gound-up warm corn drink) is also delicious. i didn´t drink but watched the differences in dance styles between all those who drank the night away and grooved to crazy techno music. they all had such different style that it was really fascinating to watch! on my way to bed i met a seven foot two belgian with whom i decided i would walk to a lake with the next morn.

we had a hilariously horrendous time getting to the lake, involving late buses, buses moving at 5 km/hr, overcharging, torrential downpours, the usual. also, because jonas is so crazy tall, as i followed him through the market on the way to the bus i had to watch the guatemalans half his height point, shout and laugh in nervous fright and awe. i felt absolutely awful for the guy. and then his wallet got stolen. shit life.
once in the village, we had an ¨hola¨ fight with some young children (they yell loud, blunt ¨HOLA¨s, we yell back... it is an adorable, endless battle).
it poured as we reached the ranger station, so we did the only natural thing to do- infringe on the ranger´s space and try every snack available to see if they´re chips. and they never are, despite the ranger constantly agreeing with your statement ¨are these chips?¨ then you jokingly chastise him for lying to you, and he grins and nods, likely not understanding a word of your spanish.
once in the park it started raining again halfway through, and jonas didn´t have a jacket, so we stood under a tree and sang various madonna songs with surprising vigor, and then we switched voice depths- he spoke lightly and i spoke deep like a man, and then i tried to teach him to have a british accent, which turned out as a very short, old british guy and/or a gay german. this was all incredibly entertaining- he had me in hysterics, even though it sounds like we have some sort of mental problem. he was much funnier and weirder than he came off when i first met him.
back in the market, we had ¨a most gastronomic experience¨ (his words), trying absolutely everything we came upon. i love rocking the GI.

next day we attempted to go to hot springs. which were actually steam baths. which at the moment had no steam. so they were just cold showers. we gave up and got hot chocolate and tried to superglue my sandals. later became a wine night followed with hysterical readings of the phrases in august´s spanish dictionary.

i booked a ¨six-day trek¨ (they lie- the first and last days are getting to the trailhead and back by bus, it is only a four day trek), and expecting hurricane feliz (the hurricanes are FOLLOWING me, apparently) ruined our plans (alhtough he died to a tropical depression by the time he hit xela), so we wasted a day, but we left the following morning.
the trek was really, really amazing. the first day was kindof funny because all we did was visit two REALLY colourful cemetaries (this is when my spanish cemetary photography obsession began) and sit on flea couches with dirty animals and eat an amazing dinner with the best apple pie of my life and play jenga. good enegies abound.

so random comments about the trek (because it all kindof blends into one): BEAUTIFUL scenery, to start with. some of the most beautiul places i have seen in guatemala, which says a lot because guatemala is gorgeous. day one, we stopped at an italian cheese farm in the middle of nowhere. i didn´t want a beer, but someone ordered me one, so i drank it. already dehydrated from hiking, beer was maybe a bad idea, and gareth and i giggled at the back of the group and walked slowly and wobbly as we both slightly felt the effects of just one cerveza. two nights we had temescal steam baths, which felt amaaaazing, though i really choked on the first one. i was determined to get through them because lupo and marco came out in utter orgasms, so i felt it would be worth it in the end. these baths would be SO easy to make- i´m definitely making one in my house when i finally get a real life. the walk to the first bath was hilarious- a ridiculously steep hill of super slippery mustard-coloured clay, then we walked into someone´s backyard by accident. on the way back down from dinner it was DARK in the super slippery clay and it was hysterical. i kept grabbing the pole then slipping in a half-moon down to the other side of it. i was VERY close to putting my chest through barbed wire, and if my stigmata the next morning is any indication- i MAY have put my palm through it without realizing it. the kids at this stop were very friendly and inquisitive (including giving me an audience for undressing... eek), reminding me more of the children in the himalayan villages than those i have met in central america. i guess how they react towards us really depends on their amount of exposure to tourists. slept in a hammock, all curled up in a sleeping bag. sooo comfortable. amazing amazing sunrise- saw colours i didn´t know existed in the sky. one village was so incredibly photogenic, with its three identical gobbling turkeys and its indigenous children and mothers and darkly contrasting stones and trees and blue sky. beautiful. parts of the trek were so slippery i just slid down on my ass. others were so wet we just intentionally stepped sloppily in all the puddles because it took less effort. nice to not worry about getting dirty, nice to get wet and love it (i was using ALL the equipment from the company- only my bathing suit, shirt, bra, and underwear). we enjoyed singing songs. lupo and i especially loved bryan adams. duct tape really helps prevent blisters. this didn´t help the fact that by the last day mark told me it was painful to watch me walk. noam was a commander in the israeli army, so he kept calling me soldier and making me continue. i kept jokingly dreamingly sighing and calling him my rock- helping me through when times were tough. after the second steam bath, geronimo, the owner of the house, was in the room when i walked in in a bikini. i was behind him and held up my shirt in front of me and gave the ¨trying to be invisible¨ look, while gareth died laughing to himself. i eventually had to bare the bikini to stunned mountain-village-man geronimo. i had to sleep in a small bed that night with yelel and august and it was hilarious. they were both high and i´m a natural, so we were giggling the night away, especially when i accidentally made remarks like ¨what IS that?! stop poking me¨, referring to the sleeping mat crushing my head. the two boys slept on my shoulders, which numbed my arms, so i eventually turned my head to the foot of the bed. next day we climbed to the highest non-volcanic peak in central america. it´s really nothing special- we had better views previous days, such as one peak that we could see four volcanoes off in the distance, peaking dramatically from their surroundings. yelel and marco collected mushrooms from the forest on the last day, and we had a wonderful italin chef identify and cook them for us when we got back to xela. (i´m pretty sure there was something wrong with them because we all felt a little funny, and i felt like my stomach was self-destructing for days and days afterwards). the second last leg of the stretch involved trudging full out through a river for about 20 minutes. it felt fantastic. unfortunately, walking through water up to your calves makes the following hike feelt absolutely awful. wet feet are not happy feet, and noam had to yell a lot of soldier talk to me as we approached the village of todos santos.

the inhabitants of todos santos were SUPER friendly, which was really refreshing, and most of them men were insanely drunk. for what reason, i do not know, but todos santos is KNOWN for its drunks- the people here just get 100% shit-faced, all the time. but not in a scary way, just kindof.. a hilarious to watch, but sad to think about kindof way. every male in todos santos dresses exactly the same, which is also really funny- red and white striped pants with the same thick-collared, hand-woven sweater. i´ve never seen a culture with a more distinct look. i didn´t think the drinking in the town was too bad until i looked into one shallow bar that, in its two feet of space, the bar was absolutely packed with men with red and white striped pants drowning their sorrows before the 6pm cantina close, and one man ¨looked¨ at me with blank eyes and yelled an incoherent jumble while raising one fist and falling out of the trench of drunks. it was pretty bad.
to yelel, i was comparing a cuba vacation with what we were doing, and that made us laugh so hard. ¨so they´re in their comfortable hotel, all-inclusive, eating and drinking whatever they want, wherever they want, in front of pristine beaches, in nice hotels with clean and perfect beds and bathrooms and showers and pools, tanned and beautiful people... and we´re out here, trekking for four days straight, my feet are torn apart, i´m miserable and disgusting and i haven´t showered for six days, in the middle of nowhere.¨ despite that, i still really love it.

the descent to huehuetenango by bus was absolutely GORGEOUS- everyone immedtiately became a photo fiend. strips of cloud covered the lowlands, foreground of bright green hills, blue silhouettes of volcanoes and other mountains in the distance. stunning. there was a todos santos boy sitting beside us and i was enraptured by him! he looked only about 4-5 years old, but already SO mature. ... intense, serious, staring eyes, distinguished jaw and mouth, fully developed nose, all while wearing a miniature version of the traditional dress ... i felt this swelling- i could almost cry- i could just FEEL the tradition, its strength, the subtle pride. we tried to make him laugh, but he was just so serious. he really affected me, though.

had the best ice cream of my life back in xela' a SOFT ice cream bar dipped in chocolate before my eyes, then rolled in chocolate bits and cookie crumbs. could´ve died right there.
laura met me at a benefit dinner at the hostel, and she dragged me to the salsa club... but i tried for about five minutes to salsa (failing miserably) before falling TERRIBLY ill from the aforementioned mushrooms.

amanda, august, yelel and i headed off to what we thought would be el salvador the next day. everyone was feeling really gross for one reason or other, which made it such a FANTASTIC time to spend twelve hours on buses. not. laura taught me the bus game (essentially, just ask people really intimate questions, but since you´re on a bus you´ll never see them again, so they´ll tell you anything... in theory... except that we were all travellign together, so..... anyway...) in lake atitlan, and it has been VERY successful- i played with jonas, i played with the boys on the bus this day, and i played with some guys in livingston in two days. yelel and august i discovered are absolutely CRAZY, and i, in comparison, was the most innocent, naive little angel in the whole wide world.
anyway, since we were all feeling sick, no one ACTUALLY felt like climbing mountains in el salvador, so like an hour before we got off the bus to guate, we switched our plans entirely and headed to eastern guatemala- to the beach. love the random, if i haven´t mentioned that enough already.

we stayed in a bungalow with a CERAMIC shower (although no one used it) in a marsh, connected to other bungalows and the main house, all lit with crazy cool lanterns. it was SO cool. something about the chill atmosphere and the lack of people and the boys (both huge potheads and i felt close with them since i had known them for a week and a half, which is a long time when you´re travelling) made me want to try their weed. and i got high for the first time. and i didn´t really like it. and that´s my story.
the next morn we took a hilariously small, extremely tippy boat up the river and to a dock. we swam around, then went back, then up the rio dulce by speedboat, which is not nearly as nice as the lonely planet told us it would be.

that boat ride took us to livingston, on the caribbean coast. i don´t mean to sound racist, but livingston was like a whole other world- not a part of guatemala- because all of a sudden.... everyone´s black. it was really cool! we were hilariously greeted off the boat by a really nice, big-pimpin´ guy ¨welcome to paradise yo!¨ livingston wasn´t at ALL what i expected- the garifuna (essentially, blacks) didn´t have the culture i expected, the beaches were soiled and disgusting, the community was divided, etc. but the siete altares cascades nearby were gorgeous and we had fun jumping off the waterfalls with guatemalans. at one garifuna bar, we watched them play (though didn´t enjoy it much because, although it was amazing music, they were literally only playing for tourists) and there was this amazing mural of a garifuna ceremony with the most powerful young black woman looking like she was belting it out- legs spread wide apart, leaning backwards, pelvic pushed, arms bracing body, hands blindly palpating air... givin it her all. it was one of the most powerful murals i have ever seen. i was obsessed with it.
we were in livingston for the guatemalan independence day, which was a shame because it is a town full of slave descendents, so it was probably the worst place to be for independence day. there was a cute schoolkids march in the morning, at least. xela was having a six-day fair in which people that are sober year-round get trashed out of their minds for their country.... and livingston had a marching parade at 8am.
at the port leaving livingston i met a girl named shayla. we bonded.

so that was guatemala! now for random additions:

- the people of guatemala have almost the same photogenic quality as those of india. i am constantly wishing my eyes were cameras or that i had the balls to just sneak a photo of them. i know it´s not that i feel they´re particularly better looking than any other race, but i think it´s because they´re so classic... so natural, pure, innocent, unspoiled, authentic, without our influences. i thought a lot about it, and that´s the only kind of reason i can think of to explain why i would find them so much more photogenic than others. ALTHOUGH really... it could all essentially still melt down to ¨i´m not used to seeing people like this¨, which would also explain why the men love foreign women- i´m not particuarly attractive, but they appear to LOVE me, and i´m convinced it´s just because i´m a little different from what they´re used to.
- guatemala is GORGEOUS- i would always say laos was the most pure, gorgeous and untouched place i have travelled to, but now guatemala can battle it for first place.
- i missed talking to locals. i noticed an almost immediate difference between mexicans and guatemalans- they´re more shy in guatemala, a little less approachable.
- in cultures so different from our own, i often wonder what beauty is to them. sometimes it´s obvious to a degree- like white skin in asia, es evident from the plethora of products to whiten the epidermis... but other times it is a mystery, and i wonder if they even have a concept of beauty, as we have. does beauty exist to them? does sexy exist? do they value a look of unity more than looking ¨good¨, whatever that may be? hm.
- i feel different. i suspected that there was a difference between my feelings when i was travelling and those when i am at home- when i would look at photos i would see a difference- twinkle in my eye, extremely happy, excitement, awareness, loving life like never before, smiles that come easier and wide and more genuine. phil confirmed my suspicions by photo, without me even mentioning it... i am different whilst journeying.

so anyway, i´m still far behind- i have since traversed two countries (though very quickly), but i´m sure this is enough for now!
much much love to all- i hope that all is well in your respective lands : )
love, shay.

p.s. some more photos uploaded: themillman.com/shayla-g