July 12 – Granada, Nicaragua

We’re several days and several countries from where I last wrote. So let’s catch up a bit.

We left Antigua Saturday morning after breakfast to drive to Volcán Pacaya. I looked at our Guatemala map and found a road that appeared to be a somewhat straight shot to the volcano, so I navigated us onto that road. A couple of kilometers out, we passed through a little town and then the road turned into a dirt road. We asked a couple of kids and they said we were on the right road, so we continued. It wasn’t the first time that a road on a map turn out to be, or turned into, a dirt road. Now something you should Central America, and it’s a shame really, is that they are several years behind on their concepts of trash collection and disposal. As often as not, it gets dumped somewhere near town and set a blaze. Cliffs and canyons are great things to throw garbage from, I guess because you don’t have to see it. But really, you can pretty much dump your trash wherever you want. So a few kilometers past town, as we snake through the mountains and basically hug the side of a volcano, the road passes several little garbage dumps, and for a little while, is pretty much composed of garbage. So after driving across the trash highway, we pass under the actual highway (which we want to be on) and end up in a crappy little town and several wrong turns later, we’re on the highway. We turn off a couple of kilometers later and head up to Pacaya.

After paying our park fees we parked at the base of the hiking trail. Passing on the disgusting looking options for lunch there, we ended up making chicken salad in a can and eating it on some of our last wheat thins that we’d brought from the States. Six stray dogs, including a cute but aggressive little pup wanted a piece of out lunch. A couple of them got some chicken juice poured on their heads when we were draining the cans. While we were eating, about 20 yards away from the car, some little punk kid managed to break the little quarter window on our car. Jackass! The window was still being held together, mostly by the tint, but it was destroyed. But nothing we could do about it. We got the “ranger” to find us a guide for the hike, and asked the “ranger” quite nicely to keep an eye on our now-vulnerable car. The hike up started out as a forested trail for the first kilometer or so. It was steep but pretty easy climbing, although the altitude made it more difficult. After a little while, we got to the edge of the wooded area and looked up at the great black cone ahead of us. The top of the volcano was nice and cone-shaped and was billowing smoke, just as you might hope a volcano would look. We took a bunch of pictures, and then our guide asked if we wanted to continue up and see lava. Of course we did. Pacaya actually had three different cones: the top one was smoking and was not climbable, the second lower down was a difficult 45 climb up and had lava, the third was an easy hike up and apparently was somewhat warm or something. We hiked up the second. The footing was loose volcanic rocks, some of which were just hours old. Every two steps forward was followed by the proverbial one step back. We made it to the top of the second cone and marveled as we saw lava oozing slowly from the earth’s surface just meters away. Our guide scrambled over some rocks and found us a sight that no one else on the volcano was finding that day. He scurried back and led us along to an area where there were two large streams of lava slowing from the earth. The heat given off felt as if we were standing too close to a campfire and our feet got too hot if we stood for two long on some of the warmer rocks. We watched the top of the lava cool first and then fold over as the bottom continued to flow. We were basically watching new rocks being formed before our very eyes. I’ve done a decent bit of traveling, but this was one of the coolest things I have ever seen.

The descent was even more difficult than the ascent. We had to climb down backwards at times as if working our way down a ladder: a hot, sharp, crumbly ladder. We both slipped several times, but I managed a pretty decent fall that ripped my sock and my ankle underneath. We passed several pour souls who had booked the organized afternoon trip out of Antigua who would only scale the third cone. I can’t imagine getting 90% of the way up an active volcano and not seeing lava! They were settling for a marshmallow toasted over a warm rock. When we got to the bottom, we thanked our guide and gave him a great tip. He had been so patient and informative and had clearly given us the best tour of the volcano that anyone was getting that day.

We drove the rest of the way down the mountain and onto the highway into Guatemala City. By this time it was fairly dark. We’d pretty well avoided driving at night through Mexico and Central America because it’s about 10x as dangerous as driving at night. In Central America the roads are not just for cars. People walk, ride horses, herd cattle, bicycle, conduct business, lie down, etc., etc. in the roadways. Furthermore wild animals and stray dogs wandered out into the streets and often had no motivation to get out of the way. Literal highway robberies are more prevalent at night as well. The road into Guatemala however was a four lane divided highway, and we were only about 40 minutes outside of the city. We didn’t figure it would be too bad, and frankly, we didn’t have too much of a choice. Another obstacle we learned about is that many cars have no lights: no headlights, no taillights, no brake lights, and sometimes no reflectors even. Apparently some cars drive without their lights on because the drivers believe it allows them to see other cars better. We managed not to hit any of them, navigated the city without too much of a problem (considering we still didn’t have a map) and ended up at a clean, quiet, and cheap (although utterly un-charming) hotel in the one safe area of town. After settling in, we went out to find dinner. We had to walk by several clubs and bars toward our chosen restaurants and we both got some interested stares. We were the only gringos we saw in the area. After failing to find the tapas restaurant (Guatemala City Fail #6), we ended up at a popular Mexican place and had some decent tacos.

The next morning we found the Wimbeldon final on ESPN. Several hours later, when Federer had finally bested Roddick, we left the hotel to go to laundry. We walked the two blocks to the laundry listed in the guidebook. It wasn’t there (Fail #7). We got the car and drove to another lavandaría. Closed (Fail #8). Apparently nearly everything closes in Guatemala City on Sundays. We drove toward a restaurant that we couldn’t find (Fail #9) and ened up dead-ending in a crappy neighborhood that was bordered by a giant canyon… in the middle of the city (Fail #10). We got ourselves out of there, found what we thought was an open lavandaría, but apparently it was only literally open (the door) they were not open for business (Fail #11). Back in the car we were trying to get to our hotel when we found out where everyone was: the mall. So we parked (took 20 minutes, the lot was packed) and headed to the (joy of joys) food court for lunch. After a half-decent bagel sandwich, we headed across the mall to the multiplex to try to see Up. Unfortunately, Up was only dubbed, not subtitled. We could see Ice Age 3, Transformers, or Hannah Montana the Movie with subtitles, but Up was only dubbed (Fail #12). So we got some gelato (this was a really nice mall) and saw a man reading the Sunday NY Times… although it was in Spanish. We thought the Sunday Times, or any English newspaper would cheer us up. So we headed to the bookstore. No newspapers. (Fail # 13). Finally we left the mall. After we regrouped at the hotel for a while, Janet went and found another bookstore (still no newspapers). Fortunately, they had the English Lonely Planet guidebook for El Salvador & Nicaragua, two countries for which we didn’t have a guidebook. I’m not exactly sure what we planned on doing, but that was a good find (Success #2). We called Amazing Andy and left him a message about the broken window. We then got back in the car to go grocery shopping at the Walmart, for which we had the address. It wasn’t there (Fail #14). We drove across town to the Hiper País (sorta like a Super Walmart… and possibly owned by Walmart) and stocked up on groceries. We got back to the hotel in time to cook dinner and catch the last half of Sunday Night baseball on ESPN… which meant seeing my Rays (Unfortunately, it was the third game of a 3 game sweep by the Rangers).

Monday morning we headed back to Amazing Andy’s shop and found it with minimal wrong turns. Andy drove us the Embassy and took the car to get the rotors re-ground and to replace the brake pads. After waiting around the typical amount of time one might expect to wait at an embassy (even when arriving within 15 minutes of them opening at 8 AM), I had 20-some new pages ghetto-taped into my passport. We took a cab back to Andy’s, and the brakes were all fixed. We paid him the less than $100 (most of it parts, only about $13 labor, and he gave us the address and directions to the place to replace the window. We thanked him for all he had helped us with and we gave him a bottle of wine we had gotten for him. Andy invited us back to his farm when on our return trip… hopefully we’ll be able to take him up on that offer.

At the glass place, after a brief lost-in-translation moment when I could not understand that the girl just wanted my name for the receipt (she was very confusing and had a thick accent), they got to work replacing the window while we picnicked in the office. Half an hour and $15 bucks later, we were on the road, headed to El Salvador. Again, after only a handful of wrong turns, we saw the sign that pointed to El Salvador and took that route. A couple hours later at the border, we started jumping through the border-crossing hoops. El Salvador really wanted a description of our car, including: VIN, make, model, year, # of seats, # of doors, # of cylinders, type of fuel, and my favorite: engine displacement. I have no idea the engine displacement, couldn’t find it in the manual, so I made it up. The CRV is now a 3.6 litre! Crazy enough, it cost us absolutely nothing to cross into El Salvador and we were remiss to learn that they would not be stamping our passports. There is an agreement among Guate, Salvador, Honduras, and Nica that allows free flow of people between the countries, so that apparently means fewer passport stamps (though not less paperwork). With no map of our new country, we stopped in a small town and started asking at gas stations. The Shell was sold out; the Texaco (pronounced tex- ACK- o) didn’t have any… but they pointed us to an auto-repair shop across the street. The jovial owner of that shop welcomed me warmly and said he should be able to find a map. He made a call and then said we needed to go into town. I told him our car was too cluttered to fit him in, so he drove me in his Jeep. As it turns out, his wife worked at a travel agency in town and that’s where he took me. They were such a cute and sweet couple and surprisingly, she spoke perfect English. We had a wonderful Spanglish conversation about El Salvador and New York (the man had been to Albany to buy school buses to import to Salvador) and she gave me a touristy map that I thought would be no help for driving. As It turns out, Salvador is such a small country, the crappy little map worked just fine. We drove a little ways more down the Route of the Flowers to a gorgeous little place with perfectly outfitted cabins. There were interesting insects and birds galore and we made dinner on our little porch as it began to pour. We ate dinner, drank wine, and watched the lightning before turning in for the night.

The next morning, after lazing about a bit, we headed down toward the coast. We debated where to stay but really wanted to end up camping that night, since we hadn’t camped in almost two weeks. We ended up driving toward a little town on a thin peninsula of land between the Pacific Ocean and a small bay. Most of the road was dirt, and much of that in a sad state of repair. We somehow missed the town and just kept driving down the dirt road until we ran out of road. We knew we weren’t too far from the ocean, so we took a right down a path and headed toward it. The path thinned and thinned until it was completely blocked by brush. We turned off the path until we couldn’t go any further, and then I got out and stood on the roof of the car looking to see if I could see the beach. See, no; hear, yes. We decided to clear some brush and head for the water. After scratching past a few more trees, we hit a clearing and drove out onto the sand. We were miles from the nearest town and figured it would be a good place to camp; it was pretty much night by this time anyway.

There was about half a hut constructed on the beach out of sticks and palm fronds that we decided to refit with our tarp to create a covered area. We pitched Janet’s little hiking tent (almost all mesh) under the tarp and then started prepping dinner. As we prepped, an odd man walked up and we had a disjointed conversation about the area. He smoked a cigarette and generally hung around awkwardly long before wandering down the beach without saying anything else. Odd fellow. We continued prepping dinner (stir-fry… there were a lot of veggies to cut) when two young guys rode up on their little horses. We were starting to get hungry now and hoped this would be a quick interference. We were wrong. One of the boys was drunk and wanted to chat… which was quite difficult because he spoke the kind of Spanish even a native would have trouble understanding. It was the equivalent of a really, really heavy hick accent in English… except in Spanish… and slurred through the drink. He chatted for a long time. He asked if we had batteries for his walkman. We gave him batteries. He chatted some more. He offered me a ride on his horse. Several times. I politely refused. He told me how pour they were. He asked for money. I gave him $20 (they use the dollar in El Salvador). He thanked me and eventually he left. The boys rode down the beach a bit and then came back. He wouldn’t leave. He asked for more money. I explained we needed the last of our money for gas. He asked for food. I explained that we only had enough for the two of us. Eventually I gave them a bottle of water and told him my wife and I wanted to be alone. They finally left. This was almost an hour-long meeting and by now we were starving.

We cooked the stir fry, which turned out to be delicious and watched the full moon over the water. More people came by on their horses. This was the least-deserted deserted beach ever. Neither of us slept well because it was stifling hot in the tent and because we were sleeping on lumpy sand. Since Salvador doesn’t abide by the whole daylight savings time thing, the sun came up at 5 AM… and so did we. After oatmeal and coffee, we packed up our sandy, messy stuff and headed back to the main road. Our plan was to find a nice little beach town near the Honduras border, stay the night, and head through Honduras in the morning. After scouring the guidebook, we found nothing that suited our collective fancy, so we decided to hell with it, let’s drive to Nica! We stopped in a small city called San Miguel to find an internet café to make sure it was still reasonable to drive across Honduras. After several failed attempts to find open internet cafes, we went with the old standby of driving slowly and refreshing the wireless networks page until we found and open network… and it worked: Pollo Campestre (Central American KFC). We sat in the parking lot reading the news on Honduras (Good! The two sides were in talks in Costa Rica and there were no protests!) and then grabbed some fried chicken (but from Pollo Campestre’s competitor: Pollo Campero. FYI, in English these places are the Amenable Chicken and the Country Chicken) and headed for the border. A couple miles from the border, we straightened ourselves out at a rest stop. We were filthy and stinky and tired. We brushed teeth, changed into dirty but nicer clothes, applied makeup (one of us) and chewed some dentyne/sucked on some altoids. Then we drove to the border.

And then the fun began...

(...to be continued)

July 3 - Antigua

We’re in Antigua, and it apparently has a hold on us. I absolutely love this city: it has great food (and excellent service) a few good bars (one with cocktails that rival any I’ve ever had), beautiful architecture, a wonderful setting in between several volcanos, great weather (warm during the day, cool at night), and pretty cool people (ex-pats, tourists, and locals alike). We originally planned to stay two nights. Then added a third. It’s now the morning after the 4^th night. We actually left but were forced to come back. Darn. So anyway, how we got here:

Tuesday we got up in San Antonio and I went downstairs to use the internet. Basically the family unplugged their Ethernet cord from the family computer and plugged it into mine, which didn’t work so well, so I ended up on the family computer. The older of the two sons helped me with the internet while the younger one kept shooting at me from his imaginary gun (too cute). After we packed up the car and a short walk around town, we headed out toward Antigua. We got a little lost (navigating isn’t the same as in Mexico when we had GPS) but managed to get on the road to Antigua via a small town called Ciudad Vieja.

The landscape in Antigua is dominated by a large volcano, Volcan de Agua, which rises up just south of town. The city itself is all colonial architecture. It was once the capital of Guatemala, but after the devastation of several earthquakes, including a large one in 1773, the capital was moved to Guatemala City in 1774 and the people were told to abandon Antigua. Many didn’t so the city survived and now it’s a gorgeous little town full of church ruins and restored colonial buildings. As we drove in I was surprised by just how small the city is. We drove literally all over town looking for a hotel or hostel with parking (and failing) but town was only about ten minutes across (and this is on cobblestone roads with lots of stop signs).

We finally settled on a private room in El Hostal, and parked our car on the street for a few hours while we settled in and vegged out. We didn’t know at the time that we were required to buy a parking permit to park on the street and were pretty lucky we didn’t get a ticket. When we decided to go to dinner, we went to move the car into a guarded lot. The girl at reception had recommended parking at the service station up the road, so we tried that. The cars were all double-parked which would require us to hand over our keys, something we weren’t going to do, so we moved on. We tried at the fanciest hotel in town, but we couldn’t seem to find anyone to ask whether we could park in their garage. We tried asking a cop where we could park, and he got us a guy selling on-street parking permits. We asked him about purchasing one for the next day, and he told us we couldn’t and that we’d have to get up at 6 AM to buy a new parking pass. So we headed back to the hostel to regroup. After some internet searching and flipping through guidebooks and advertisements, we had a list of a few hotels with parking that we were going to try. We got to the first, and he said parking was for guests only. But he drew us a map of how to get to another hotel where we could park. After driving around a bit, we came to the conclusion that the place he pointed us to simply didn’t exist (a common theme in Guatemala). So we drove to another hotel with parking. I stopped the car and got out to ask about parking (for hotel guests only) and apparently left the car in drive. The cobblestone roads keep the car stationary pretty well, even when we’re in drive, so I guess I assumed it was in park. It stayed put for a while but then started rolling for a parked car. With a cop behind her, Janet managed to jump into the driver’s seat and stop it before any damage was done. From there we headed toward the market and finally found a public parking garage. We paid far too much to park the car on the opposite side of town from our hostel, but it was finally parked and we could head to dinner.

Dinner was at a great little French restaurant called L’Casserolle. The menu and conversation in the place was in three languages: French, English, and Spanish. It’s kinda fun ordering French food in Spanish. We split the rabbit in mustard sauce (conejo con salsa mustard) and salmon ala orange (which were great), a bottle of Chilean white wine, and a very rich chocolate mousse. (Apparently spelled muss in Español). After dinner we just took it easy and hung out at the hotel for a bit.

Wednesday morning I got up and went for a run. I literally ran all over the city, which is challenging because of the chicken buses (which I learned are called chicken buses because they allow animals on board as well as people) the cobblestone streets, the really uneven sidewalks (when the sidewalks even exist), and the altitude (we’re nearly a mile up). I ran 5.5 miles but it felt more like ten because of the lack of oxygen. After breakfast, we headed out to walk around the city. We went down and took pictures of the ruins of a church that have an amphitheatre built around them and now, I assume, hosts concerts. After that we went to a church that had been rebuilt time and time again and was host to Central America’s first saint, who was beatified by Pope John Paul II in 2003. Behind the church were the ruins of the convent, printing press, school, etc. that used to be associated with the church. After walking around the ruins for a bit, we went for lunch (highly recommended in the guidebook, but nothing to write home about) and then we just chilled out for most of the afternoon. Janet learned about a program to teach the children of the Guatemala City garbage pickers and I walked around town taking pictures.

Before dinner we went for drinks on the roof of Sky Café, a bar just across the street from our hostel. Janet had one of the best mojitos ever, and Sky Café became a new favorite. Dinner was at a Sushi restaurant that was also on our block. Failing to read the chalkboard out front, we sat down and ordered avocado tempura (excellent) and three rolls. The waiter brought the first two rolls, which were huge, and said he’d bring the third roll in a minute. The first two rolls were a rainbow roll (okay) and one called Mango No Come Mango, which was excellent: fresh mango and salmon. When the waiter brought the third roll (basically an eel roll covered in fresh plantains, also great), there were actually two of them. I asked but the waiter just said, yep, two. I figured it was fine and that we could finish four rolls, so we did. And after that the waiter brought out another plantain roll and another mango roll. Now we were really incredulous and asked why, and he answered simply: “Dos por uno” (2 for 1). Apparently it said that on the blackboard out front. We managed to pick at the last two rolls a bit (especially the mango roll) but we were stuffed. So yes, if you’re keeping track, that’s two dinners in Antigua and we’d had French and Sushi, both great.

After dinner we walked around and took more pictures of the ruined churches that were lit up at night. We came across Reilly’s, the Irish pub, and decided to stop in for a beer. Soon we made friends with the table next to us and a beer turned into a night at Reilly’s. Our new friends were three Brits and one Norwegian girl who had been traveling with them. They were all a lot of fun and the bar was absolutely packed (on a Wednesday night, no less) and was playing good music. We stayed out till the late (by Guatemalan standards) hour of 1 AM.

Thursday morning, again after breakfast, we went and paid for another day of parking (since we had decided to stay another day) and then walked around town (sensing a theme?). We had lunch at a typical Guatemalan restaurant (so-so) and then went for massages at a spa across from our hostel (our street was the best). It was raining pretty hard and we were in little huts, so the loud noise of the rain was pretty relaxing. Two hour long massages for a grand total of $50. Not too bad. After our massages we headed back to Sky Café and watched the rain while we had some delicious drinks. First was a round of mojitos (not quite as good as the previous day’s because they had a bit too much lime, but still better than 90% of the mojitos we’d ever had. The next round we ordered a Fidel Castro (white rum, anejo rum, fresh squeezed lemon, grenadine, and sprite), which tasted mostly like fresh lemonade and was excellent, and a sangria (made with anejo rum, honey, and very fresh strawberries). I’m pretty hard to please when it comes to sangria, and this stuff was great. So good we ordered another round of sangria.

Dinner on Thursday night was at a little Italian place called El Mediterráneo that the guidebook said was a favorite of resident foodies. Again we had fun ordering Italian in Spanish, and had mozzarella and tomato brushette, penne with fresh mushrooms in a white wine sauce (delicious) and rigatoni with calamari in a picante tomato sauce. The dishes were simple in their ingredients, but were all fresh and excellent, and we agreed that it ranked up there with some of the best Italian food we’d had in New York. We finished up with gelato with espresso, which was just that: vanilla gelato drowned in a shot of strong espresso and topped with a bit of chocolate sauce. So yes, three nights in Antigua and we’d had French, Japanese, and Italian. After dinner we went back to Reillys and had a couple of beers while we talked to the bartender and then turned in early-ish.

Friday morning we packed up the car and headed out to Guatemala City. We grabbed some sandwiches from a great little deli on our way out. We had three goals in Guatemala City: the embassy (to get more pages in my passport), a camera shop (to fix my stupid lens which is broken for the third time), and an auto shop (because the brakes are acting up). We did a lot of research before we left and had names and addresses for all of the above, including two camera shops and two auto shops. We tried several places to find a map of the city and failing at that (Fail #1), we navigated using the crappy little maps in the guidebook.

First stop: the embassy. Closed for the 4^th of July (even though this was the 3^rd of July). Fail #2.

Second stop: Frank’s Auto Repairs. After driving in several circles, we got to the address. It was a public parking lot. Apparently Frank’s used to be there, but that was several years ago. Fail #3.

Third stop: camera shops. We parked nearby the two shops and I walked to find them. After asking several times for directions , neither shop materialized. Fails #4 & #5.

Fourth Stop: Andy’s Auto repair. Again, after several circles and some fun driving (it was now rush hour) we found Andy’s. And it was open (just barely, they were closing). Success.

Andy, as it turns out, is an American from California, son of an Englishman who had lived in Belize when it was a British colony, and Andy had lived in Guatemala for 20 years. His accent was an interesting mix of American, British, and Guatemalan. He took a quick look at the brakes and said the pads needed replacing but also that the rotors were warped and that they needed to be machined. Which would have to be Monday. So Monday it would be. Andy also does all the work for the US Embassy cars, so he said he could help us out getting the right people at the Embassy. Offhand, Janet asked is he happened to know of a camera shop in the city, and he got on the phone and called a photographer friend, who came over immediately on his motorbike to look at my lens. The photographer recommended waiting until we got to Panama to have it fixed because Panama is the Canon headquarters for Central America and they were more likely to be able to fix it there. Andy gave us directions back out of town (and even offered to let us camp on his farm) and we headed back to Antigua.

We found a room at a cute little hotel with a room on the third floor with a view of Volcan de Agua and La Merced (a gorgeous restored church). We headed out to dinner again at El Mediterráneo, and had another excellent meal (mushroom bruchette, pasta with arugula and fresh parmesan, shrimp with radishes and carrots, and dessert of pana cotta and another round of the gelato with espresso). We went back to Sky Café for drinks on the roof: a piña colada made with fresh blended coconut, and a strawberry margarita, made with freshly blended strawberries. Both drinks were great, but the margarita was most definitely the best strawberry margarita I have ever had. After drinks we headed back to the hotel and watched History of the World Part I, which is even more enjoyable with Spanish subtitles. In the middle of the night we were both awakened by a crazy rooster who thought it was morning (it was not) and who crowed every ten seconds or so for a few minutes, then stopped just long enough for us to fall back asleep, and then started up again. He did this until it was actually morning.

This morning I got up and found a parking employee to buy today’s parking pass. He seemed shocked when I asked to buy one on foot. Surely someone else had parked their car overnight and needed a new parking pass, right? We had breakfast at a place next to our hotel that had excellent coffee, and now we’re getting ready to hike Volcán Pacaya, an active volcano a couple of hours south of here.

So that’s the news here.

(The map below sucks, but the yellow line is roughly where we've driven so far (since we crossed into Mexico)

June 29 – Lago Atitlán

Editor's note: I have pictures to go with this post, but the internet is no cooperating, so here's the post without most of them.

Lake Como, it seems to me, touches the limits of the permissibly picturesque; but Atitlán is Como with the additional embellishments of several immense volcanoes. It is really too much of a good thing. After a few days of this impossible landscape, one finds oneself thinking nostalgically for the English Home Countries.

–Aldous Huxley

As I write this, I’m sitting on the porch of our hotel looking out at the impossible landscape with the embellishing volcanoes. I don’t know if it’s too much of a good thing, but it certainly is a good thing. And it might be the most beautiful lake I’ve ever seen. But before Atitlán, how we got here:

We spent Friday and Saturday nights in San Cristobal de las Casas in southern Chiapas, Mexico. Saturday we got up late-ish and headed to Chamula, a little Mayan town just outside of San Cristobal. We drove into town on a narrow road with tiny farms and ranches along the sides. When we got to town, there were cars parked all along the street and our path was blocked by some trucks so we just parked. As soon as I got out of the car, an adorable girl game up to me selling hand0made bracelets and belts. I’ve gotten pretty good at turning down beggars and salespeople from living in NY and DC, and even on this trip I’ve learned to gently reject little kids trying to sell me crap. But this little girl was so sweet and adorable and caught me a little off-guard, so I ended up buying two bracelets from her.

We walked into the main square where we had clearly stumbled upon something special. The full name of the town is San Juan Chamula, and seeing as this was the first weekend after the Día de San Juan (the festival we had tried to find earlier in the week), the town was celebrating its patron saint, San Juan Bautista (John the Baptist). A large stage was set up with a band preparing to play and there were many men gathered in front of the stage. Most of the women were back toward the rear of the crowd, many of them selling various produce and the likes on blankets and small stands set up throughout around the outside of the square. There were only a handful of other gringos in town and we definitely felt like were intruding on someone else’s party.

We went into the church and stood at the back watching the townspeople pray. The Mayan in this and many towns practice Catholicism with a bit of their traditional beliefs thrown in there, sort of like Santería. The floor of the church was covered in green pine needles and there were candles throughout. There were no pews and no pulpit. The parishioners would clear away an area of pine needles, sit on the floor, and light candles on the floor or on a table. Many people were making offerings of Pepsi (yes the cola) and some sort of home-made liquor. In the middle of the church were several tables completely covered in candles; there were so many that when we talked halfway through the church, it felt like standing next to an open fireplace. One wall of the church was lined with 4 ft. tall dolls of various saints in glass cases, many wearing traditional Mayan dress. Janet and I stood and watched the people in the church for about half an hour or so, staying toward the back most of the time. A few tourists were inter-mingling throughout the church but we felt less intrusive just keeping near the back. After the church, we ate some grilled maíz from a street vendor and walked through town and shopped at the artisan market stalls. We then stopped at a tiny taquería stand for lunch. We had some great tacos al pastor and split a giant bottle of Fresca. The whole meal cost us 19 pesos, which is a little less than $1.50. Not bad for lunch for two.

After lunch the man on stage directed everyone over to the side of the square and some people cleared a long area in the crowd for someone important to walk through. It was difficult for me to understand many of the Mayan in this area because they had very heavy accents, but I could tell this was some sort of political figure. Mexico is gearing up for national elections on July 5, and we had seen political advertisements all over the country. The man on stage throughout the morning had been making political statements, throwing his support to several candidates. We stuck around for a while, but after no one showed up, we decided to head out to the next Mayan town over.

As we pulled into that town, we were inundated by a group of young girls. As we were getting ready to get out of the car, they were tapping on the windows and trying to get our attention, a scene that has played out several times on this trip. One was even so bold as to open my door, but she seemed shocked at her own impropriety and backed off a little. When we got out they all spoke over each other asking if we wanted to buy their shawls, if they wanted a picture with them, if we wanted them to take a picture of us, if they wanted us to watch the car. We gently refused all the offers and went in to the church. This was similar to the church in Samula, except minus the pine needles, most of the candles, and all the faithful. There was one man praying in a side chapel, but otherwise the church was empty for us to walk around and look more closely at the saint dolls.

We left the church just five or so minutes later and the girls asked to be paid for watching the car. I asked them from whom? This town was practically empty, we assumed most people were in Chamula. We grabbed our umbrellas, because it looked like rain (“Can I have your umbrella?”) and walked through the town for a few minutes. When it started pouring, we dashed for the car and headed back over the mountain to San Cristobal. After unwinding for a bit, we walked into the center of town looking for an English book store (closed by the time we found it) and then went to dinner at El Café París Mexico, a FrancoMex Restaurant. Ignoring that there was no one inside and that FrancoMex is probably not a great idea, we decided to eat there anyway. French onion soup, Filete a la Veracruzana, a Margarita, a glass of Vino Tino, crepes for dessert. Nothing was particularly good, except the pan (bread), but at least now we can say we have eaten FrancoMex cuisine. And also the whole meal cost us less than 8 bucks.

We went to bed fairly early Saturday night so we could get up at a decent hour on Sunday. Sunday morning we pulled everything out of the back of the car and managed to pack it up better than it had been packed the entire trip. Then after our wonderful hot showers (and a hot shave in the nice shaving mirror), we headed out. We made a quick stop to pick up some groceries and found a place to get lattes to go. Once we were on the road we felt pretty rejuvenated: clean car, nice and showered, hot lattes. After driving a couple of hours through some rolling hills, we were pretty close to the border. We made a last fill-up stop at the PeMex, the state-owned gas station that keeps prices around $2 a gallon and headed for the border.

We had read that you crossed out of Mexico into a no-man’s land for a couple of kilometers and then crossed into Guatemala. When we got to the Bienvenidos a Guatamala sign, we realized we had missed leaving Mexico. So we turned around and somehow managed to explain to the Mexican border official who wanted to spray our tires with pesticide that we weren’t actually crossing into Mexico. After making the 4 km trek back and getting our passports stamped out, we got back in the car and apparently let in a gigantic wasp. So we got out. And I swatted it, and it decided to come straight for me and actually bounced off of my neck. So I danced around swatting at it to make sure it didn’t get me, much to the amusement of everyone sitting around the border. After that adventure, went back to Guatemala and this time missed the Guatemalan pesticide-sprayer. So we backed up and got our car sprayed down then moved up to stamp our passports. My passport only had two spots open (one now) and the border guy was not too pleased. Apparently Guatemala’s entry stamp is pretty big. After that we got the permit for the car and we were on our merry way. All told it took less than an hour (including our mistakes) and cost less than $15. Unfortunately, we know that the border crossings get much worse from here.

We could immediately tell why the border was where it was; we were driving through some of the tallest, lushest, and steepest mountains I had ever seen. We had to crane our necks to even see a hint of the sky above. After a few hours of this driving, it began to rain. I guess this was our welcome to the rainy season in Central America. The rain wasn’t too bad, and the road conditions were pretty decent on the whole. Once I had to swerve to avoid a bolder than had fallen into my lane, but the Honda performed superbly (good thing we just got new tires). It was starting to get pretty dark and foggy when we were pulling into the Atitlán area and we were pretty anxious to find a place to stay, none the less, we decided against staying in the crappier towns and overly-touristy towns and headed to a little village called San Antonio.

Atitlán is surrounded by mountains and volcanoes, so to get to the shore you have to descend down a mountain. Halfway down we stopped at a vista to take a few pictures. Janet got out and I stayed in the car. A little boy came up to me and said, ”Pusa una piedra,” which means, put a rock. Thinking I had misheard him, I said, “No entiendo” (I don’t understand).

“Pusa una piedra.”

“¿Qué de una piedra?” (What about a rock?)

“Pusa una piedra.”

Janet had just walked back to the car and so I asked her if the kid had put a rock under our tires. Thoroughly confused, Janet asked, “What? A rock?” So I got out and sure enough there was a big rock pressed up against the rear tire. So I picked it up and threw it away and the kid said, “Dáme una Quetzal” (Give me a Quetzal (Quetzal’s being their money)). I guess he wanted some money for being so kind as to tell me he put a rock under our tire.

Heading back down the mounting, we passed through a few other small towns and by some disgustingly-hideous razor wire-fenced in private property, and finally entered San Antonio and immediately saw signs for our hotel: Las Terrezas del Lago (The Lake Terraces). The signs pointed us down a dirt path that had seen its better days. Once again the little CRV performed admirably, even managing a difficult 7 point turn on a hill, through a little ravine, in the now-almost-total dark (we had missed the hotel). We got to the hotel and found it to be wonderful: the cutest little family runs the place and after we had settled in, the Señora made us some empanadas for dinner and we ate those as we watched the lightning flashes over and behind the volcanoes.

A little side story: Guatemala is known for its chicken buses. I don’t know why they’re called that, unless it’s the way they like to play chicken with you on mountain roads. The chicken buses are all old American school buses that have been repainted in vibrant colors and repurposed as public transportation. As we started seeing them on the roads in Guatemala, we joked about them being the buses we had ridden to school in our youth. As we passed through a small town we saw a few that had not yet gotten their vibrant paint jobs. All but one had the name of their school districts blacked out, but that one:

(FYI, I am a product of Pinellas County Schools)

Back to the narrative. This morning after getting up, I decided to go for a run. The altitude and running up the slopes of the mountains made my run pretty difficult, but the stares I got were pretty memorable. As far as we can tell, we are the only gringos currently staying in our little village, and I daresay they haven’t seen too many (if any at all) jogging through town. Young and old stared, some of the young openly laughed, and one teenager made some sort of joke at my expense. It was a cultural exchange of sorts, they wondering about my shorts and tank top, me about their traditional dress. The men in town, at least the older men, mostly wear red striped tops and brown dotted kilts. The women, young and old, wear turquoise and purple tops and black skirts with colorful trim. I saw one woman wearing a red striped top, I assumed it was her husband’s.

After breakfast, we drove two towns back to get a boat to another town on the lake. We made a friend who tried to rip us off for parking and for a boat ride (100 US dollars for a ride to two little towns). He told us the collectives (public transport boats) would stop running very early and take hours to get to San Pedro. He did however tell us it was Día de San Pedro and that there was a festival in San Pedro. So we left his parkling lot and went to a tourist office, where we learned the collectives ran every half hour until 5 PM and that they took about 35 minutes to get to San Pedro (and cost about $2.50 per person). The tourist office also pointed us in the direction of a parking lot where they charged us less than half what our first friend wanted to charge. So we parked, took the little boat, and walked into San Pedro and found the festival. Every street had been converted into a market and the vendors were selling everything under the sun, including one guy selling light bulbs. After walking around a bit, we found a pork and tortillas cart ($1.00 a piece) for lunch, and followed that up with som tasty ice cream cones (80 cents for the pair). Then we walked down into the fair part of the festival where the games and rides were. As it turns out, carnies are creepy in any culture. And the rides were that much more unsteady-looking. The ferris wheels (there were three) were all powered by converted tractors, with the wheels still on them. One was going about twice as fast as I’ve ever seen a ferris wheel go. We decided to forgo the rides, but I did try to throw some Quertzals onto a floating plate to win a 3 liter bottle of soda. I didn’t win, which isn’t too sad because I didn’t want a 3 liter bottle of soda.

We had heard/read that San Pedro was a hippie town, but so far we had seen little evidence of it (and really few gringos at all). We decided to take a short cut back to the docks and ended up in the thick of hippy town. They had carved themselves out a fairly large barrio of San Pedro and pretty much walled themselves off from the community. It seems that if they were gonna do that they might as well have stayed in the States. There was a playground with hands painted on the wall with the names of the students under it and we knew it was the gringo school because there were two Emilys and a Hannah. Once we got to the docks we headed on a boat back to our car and drove back to the hotel for dinner (steak with onions, peppers, and tomatoes that I cooked… it was only so-so).

And now you’re up to date. Sorry for the length of this post. I haven’t had a lot of time to write.

-Matt

Pictures

Here are a few pictures from our trip so far. I'm uploading all of them to another site, and I'll give you the address once they're there, but you probably don't want to see hundreds of pictures, so I'll try to pick a few of the better ones and post them here.


Natalie & Janet eating Crawfish in Baton Rouge.


Janet & me at El Tajin.


Helado de Tres Marias


At this school you can learn: computation, English,
French, Tae Kwon Do, auto maintenence, and
graphic design. Kinda covers a broad spectrum.


A small Mexican flag outside of
Veracruz.


The Carona bottles we bought had different
football club's logos on them.

June 26 – San Cristobal de las Casas

It’s been a few days since I wrote a blogpost, much less posted one. I tried to write one last night, but we were camping and the bichas (bugs) were a little too attracted to my computer screen. Tonight we’re in an amazing little hotel in San Crstobal in Chiapas, which set us back the horrible sum of ~$32.

So, since I last wrote, we spent two nights (Tuesday & Wednesday) in an RV park in Catemaco, a little town on the shore of one of the prettiest lakes I’ve ever seen. We, of course, rolled into camp at dusk and set up the tent and got to cooking in the dark. Would we have it any other way? Chicken in lime juice with zucchini and avocado. Another pretty darn good camp meal, if I do say so myself.

We got up the next morning and headed into Catemaco proper to find a canoe to rent. No luck there, we headed around the north part of the lake for a hotel that our guidebook said rented canoes. Never found it. When we were about halfway around the lake, we came across a cowboy doing a pretty miserable job of wrangling two bulls. We carefully passed him and ended up on a horrible dirt road. Turning around we carefully passed the incompetent bull-wrangler and stopped at a hotel to ask if they rented canoes. While we were getting out of the car, the bulls came charging through the gate of the hotel (fortunately, we had just pulled over across the street). One of the bulls bumped hard into a car parked inside the gate and then the cowboy managed to get them out of the hotel. ¡Qué toro loco!

We rented a couple of kayaks and paddled out into the lake. There were all sorts of wildlife in the lake, including a ton of different species of birds. We watched a small bird of prey catching fish in its talons and a couple of other bids diving from the sky under the surface to come up with some fish. It was a really cool experience.

After the lake, we headed into the small town of Santiago de Tuxtla for their Día de San Juan celebrations that we had read about in the guidebook. Turns out there weren’t any celebrations, so after cafés lecheros, we headed to the next town, San Andrés de Tuxtla and went to the Santa Clara cigar factory. They let us walk around and watch the employees hand rolling various cigars. The whole factory smelled of fresh tobacco, like a giant humidor, and watching the workers craft the puros (cigars) so quickly was very interesting indeed.
We returned to our camp site and made friends with an Ontario couple who had recently retired to Mexico and a crazy Floridian who had just left her fifth husband for the RV park. They invited us to go to dinner with them at a private home that runs a restaurant out of the front whenever someone shows up wanting food. That too was a unique experience: the food was excellent and we were able to watch her cook just inside the little house while the entire family sat around watching TV and just generally hanging out. All told, the meal ended up costing us about $2 a piece for empanadas, gnauchas, flautas, tostadas, and platanos. That night we shared a few beers with our Canadian friend Dave, including our last two beers that we had brought from the States.

The next day we headed out toward Palenque, a Mayan ruin site in Northern Chiapas. We set up camp in a funky camp site full of hippies (one of whom juggled). It was only around 4:30 when we pulled in for the night so we were able to set up camp, go for a swim, and still have time to cook in the dark. We had bought a hot plate at the Super Walmart (Los precios más bajos… Siempre) earlier that day, which made cooking the chile that much easier. We poured over some guidebooks and got ready for bed a little early, which turned out to be a fortunate move since it started pouring soon after. We took refuge in the tent listened to the storm while watching the lightning. Early in the morning I awoke to the haunting cry of howler mokeys and something even less pleasant: la tourista (a.k.a. Montezuma’s revenge). To make things even more enjoyable, the camp toilets lacked seats. Apparently we were supposed to bring our own.

After a breakfast of regular oatmeal and honey, we headed out to the Palenque ruins. The ruins were really impressive and we were able to climb all over them, something you definitely wouldn’t have been able to do in the US. Climbing to the top of a temple up on a hill, we had a great view of the ruins and the surrounding lush mountains. Some of the ruins were still only partially excavated from the jungle, so we walked around those and imagined what it would have been like to stumble upon them back when they were first discovered a hundred years ago.

From Palenque we drove 5 hours on the most narrow and winding road we had ever drive on for about 5 hours to go only 200 km to San Cristobal and now we’re in our great hotel, a nice break from the camping and it has a toilet with a seat! Hopefully my stomach will right itself by tomorrow. We’re going to a Mayan town tomorrow to see a church that everyone raves about and then Sunday we’re headed over the border to Guatamala.

¡Hasta Pronto!

Central American Insurance

We have it. Yay!

June 23 - The road south of Veracruz

Yesterday felt like the first day of vacation. We’ve basically been driving south all day, every day for a week. We got up yesterday, packed up, and called Grandma Sanborn about our Central American insurance policy. We were able to get a Mexican insurance policy written immediately on Saturday before we crossed the border, but the Central American policy takes some time for processing, something we didn’t read about in any guidebooks or blogs, even though they all told us to get the policies from Sanborn’s when we got to the border. So Janet called Sanborn’s on Skype (the called dropped 4 times) and actually got a helpful young girl (not Grandma). She said she had gotten the paperwork we had dropped off on Saturday and that we would be able to have the policy within the week, which is good news. We didn’t want to be stuck in Mexico and we definitely didn’t want to be driving through Central America uninsured.

With that good news, we headed an hour down the road to El Tajín, an ancient city built around 1000 BC by someone… they don’t know who. It was pretty cool to see our first ruins and it was actually kinda cloudy, so not unbearably hot. Also there were hardly any other people there yesterday morning so we almost had the place to ourselves. After Tajín we headed into Papantla, a nearby town, and had some great tacos at a restaurant on the zócalo (the main square). We also had helado de tres Marías, which was one giant scoop each of vanilla, chocolate, and fresa.

Heading out in early afternoon, we only drove a couple hundred kilometers to a campground on the beach just south of Veracruz. Here, we literally had the run of the place. We set up our tent near a nice palm-thatched pavilion, cooked our salmon, beans, and sprouts and made a creative sauce of spicy Chinese mustard and honey for the fish. It turned out to be quite a good meal. After dinner we took some beers down to the beach and sat watching the waves, bats, moths, lightning bugs, lighthouses, and ships. After a bit it began to rain, so we of course continued to sit there and enjoy our beers and enjoyed the lluvia too. It was a great ending to a great day. Back at the camp, the air was pretty warm and stagnant, so we decided to move our cot (mine) and air mattress (Janet’s) out of the tent and under the pavilion, draping our mosquito nets from the rafters. We watched the pilot episode of My So Called Life that I’d downloaded to my laptop and drifted off to sleep to the sound of the olas (waves).

This morning I went for a couple-mile run on the beach (awesome) while Janet lifted her two-pound weight (for her rehabbing wrist) and made pancakes and coffee for breakfast. We took a few hours to repack the car, finally getting it packed in an organized and efficient fashion, and drove into Veracruz. Veracruz is the first rich city that we’ve been to: there are Audis and Mercedes on the roads and a lot of American chain restaurants and big resort hotels. While driving toward the center of town, I took a left and somehow ended up in the wrong lane. After driving into another wrong lane to avoid oncoming traffic, a man on a bike was facing me down just shaking his head in shame at the horrible gringo driver. Then a bus turned almost into me, and I darted off down another side street. Now normally in this story, I would feel like an idiot for making that mistake and driving like a stupid tourist. But as I headed out of there, I realized that for some reason, this road had the lanes reversed from every other road in Mexico and for that matter, 90% of the rest of the world, and had you drive on the left. There was of course no sign to indicate this as I made the turn.

A short aside: Mexico apparently has a gigantic signage budget (much larger than their road construction/repair budget) because there are signs on the highways every couple hundred meters telling you all sorts of useful information in general: wear your seatbelt, drive slowly, don’t drink and drive, obey the signs, respect the signs, don’t mistreat the signs and of course, don’t destroy the signs. The poderes que sean however don’t really see the need to properly mark things that specifically pertain to the situation at hand, like the speed limit, or when streets are one way. The latter is particularly obnoxious as often the only way to figure it out is to look down the street to see if all the parked cars are headed the same direction. And when I wrote about the topes the other day, I forgot to mention Janet’s favorite tope-related situation, the sign warning of topes that aren’t actually there. Yep, they have signs that cry speedbump.

Back to the story. Soon after that driving incident, we found a parking spot and headed to lunch. Janet and I shared the pulpo cebollado (octopus & onions) and the filete a la Veracruzana (fillet of fish in a sauce of tomatoes, onions, olives, and chili. The octopus was a bit chewy but the pescado was excellent. Janet jotted down all the ingredients to try to replicate it back home. After lunch we decided to take care of paying for our tourist cards. When we crossed into Mexico, we filled out forms much like the typical landing card one fills out when flying internationally. According to the guidebooks and the lady at the border, we just needed to take them into a bank at some point and pay a $20 fee. We had tried to do that yesterday in Tampico, but the bank teller had told us something incomprehensible about going to city hall and in Spanish at 120 kph, I didn’t understand. Apparently though in Veracruz, every speaks Spanish exactly as I learned it, because I understand pretty much everything anyone told me today. So after stopping in at BanMex, we learned we needed to go to Migración, which was fortunately just a few blocks away. At Migración they printed off forms to give to the bank when we paid. Also we needed to get copies of our payment receipts in triplicate, plus one copy each of our passports and the original forms we had gotten at the border. Back to the BanMex, we paid the fees and got all of our copies (after asking very nicely and looking like pathetic foreigners) and walked back to Migración, convinced the guard to let us in even though the office had closed 30 minutes earlier (at 2 PM), and got all of the paperwork straightened out. Our first taste of papeleo (red tape). Fortunately, Mexico is supposed to be the easiest country for border crossings and such, so we’ve got a lot more papeleo to look forward to.

After that run-around, we went to a café to get café lechero. Veracruz is a big coffee growing area and so the coffee here is nice and fresh. The waiter brought us large glasses with a shot of espresso on the bottom. Then a minute later, another waiter came and poured hot milk from a long-spouted tea-kettle, pulling the kettle up 18 inches or so above the glasses as he poured. ¡Qué delicioso!

Now on the road headed 150 km south of Veracruz for a couple of small towns where there is apparently a festival tomorrow. Pretty excited about that.
Para los que hablan español: ¿cómo se dice “u-turn”?