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).