Another Long Day

I didn´t like waking up today. Last night I ate at the only restaurant close enough to my hotel that I though I wouldn´t get stabbed at: Wendys. That was kinda gross and when I got up to grab a shower I saw my first cockroach of the trip... in fact it was my first one ever outside of a zoo. I must live a privilaged life. When I got out to the bus stop at 6AM I got to test the limits of mf my Spanish skills when I found out that a bus going south to Nicaragua does not stop at my town despite what I had heard the night before. Maybe it´s because it´s a Sunday. I made clear my needs to anyone who´d listen to me nearby the bus stop and they indicated that I should take a `chicken bus´ north and get off in some town that sounded like Jicama at the Oasis Hotel. I was falling asleep on the ride out there, but the bus driver kindly informed me when to get off and I found a very nice bus to Managua waiting for me. Quite literaly because I was the last person there and it took off the moment I stepped on board. Oh, about chicked busses... I don´t think that I´ve explained them before, but they´re old american school busses refitted with more seats, bigger engines, extremely tackey paint jobs and lots of chrome. They´re the cheapest busses and they´re so fast that they pass everyone on the road. I like em but they´re a bit crowded.

After changing busses a few more times I eventually got to Granada, a fairly famous city in Nicaragua. It´s supposedly the oldest European city in the new world, whatever that means. It´s very pretty, built on a lake, it´s been sacked by pirates no less than 3 times, and it once faught a civil war against the city of Leon a hundred miles away in an attempt to become the capital of Central America. They´re full of pride around here. That and Regetone music, the most vile kind of music there is.

After I found a cool hostel to stay at, the `Bearded Monkey´, I wandered around for a little while and watched a small concery being held in the town square. It was a bit of live ranchero music and I thought it was pretty good. Also I got Erika a preasent here but don´t tell her that ;) Shortly thereafter I ran into someone that I saw at the hostel eating alone so I had some beers with them and wandered around the city some more. It´s fiercely hot today and I don´t think that it´s gonna get any better when the two of us climb up some volcano tomorrow. I don´t recal what it´s called but I´m pretty sure that there´s no lava. It´s late now so I´m gonna go catch a shower... there´s a draught here so the city shuts off the water during daylight hours and you have to catch up on your bathing late at night. ttyl

Travel Day

Today I covered a lot of ground. I bid a silent goodbye to my roommates at the hostel in Copan as I left to catch my bus at 5AM. I loved this bus from the moment I saw it. It was decked out with huge seats with enough room for even my knees, movie screens (would you believe they played Apocolypto?), and drink service. I mostlt slept thru the 7 hour ride, and when I woke up I was in Tegucigalpa, the capital of Honduras. In my few waking moments, I noticed that the countryside was try and mostly forected with pine trees... one would be forgiven if they mistook it for the hills of california between Sacramento and Tahoe.

When I got off the bus finally I found myself at the bus station in the capital of the most dangerous country in Central America without a guide book and no other gringos in sight. I´ll admit that I felt a little vunerable. I knew that I could catch the direct bus to the capital of Nicaragua to the south but i´d have to spend the night in Tegucigalpa and wait for the morning. Without a guide book I´d be at the mercy of the taxi drivers who are known for scams. I decided to catch a shorter ride south on a different bus immediatly rather than wait out the rest of the day in the city. So, I rode that one another 4 hours south and ended up in Choluteca, 45 minutes north of the Nicaragua border.

I´m writing from the net cafe across the street from my hotel. I pushed the limits of my poor spanish skills and found the time and location of the bus to Nicaragua the next morning and got this hotel recomendation close to the bus station. Its a little smelly but I did get AC with it for a total of $10. Actually thats a really high price for around these parts but I didnt see any alternatives and it´s hot as holy hell here. I´ll write again when I´m actually inside Nicaragua. No idea where I´ll end up, but at least I´ll have a guide book.

Busses and Ruins

Hi guys! I'm writing today from sunny Honduras, rated as the most dangerous country in Central America. Actually it seems really nice to me from where I'm looking at it and I heard all the same stuff about Guatemala and and it was really nice too. So, after I traveled to Antigua yesterday afternoon, I got up at 4 this morning to catch the van to Copan Ruinas in Honduras. Copan Runias is a tiny town built next to Copan, which is a very nice set of mayan ruins out in the jungle. The town is about half a mile across and has a lot of great flowers, cobbled streets, and very short residents. The town square is a veritable garden of eden and a lot of really cool shops and restaurants are built around it.

After meeting up with a Canadian named Steve on the van ride out, we checked into a hostel together and hiked out of town towards the ruins. We got a little lost on the way out there but eventually found some of the most impressive mayan ruins around. Its not as large as the ones at Tikal but its got the best set of carvings and statues in the new world. Some of them are still out in the open like the macaw heads in the ball court seen in the picture here. Behind that is the 'stairway of hyrogliphs' covered up with a roof. Its got a huge set of starts that are covered with writing and record the history of the place. Unfortunately some of it got jumbled when part of it collapsed but the generally we've got the story straight. The rest of the statues can be found in the museum nearby.

Inside the museum is a recreation of the some part of the temple with fresh pait on it, and some petty damn detailed stone reliefs and stelae which are like carved pillars with huge depictions of the king, mostly a guy named '18 Rabbit' at this site. After tiring of that stuff we headed back to the hostel so I could clean up after sweating a couple pints in the jungle and now I'm off to have some shishkebabs with some more people I met at the hostel. Tomorrow I'm catching a bus at 5AM to get to the capital of Honduras, which I can neither remember or pronounce, and then I'm catching the Tika bus to the capital ofNicaragua... wherever that is. Hopefully I can get all that done in one day and start to spend some slow and fun time in Nicaragua. ttyl

Lots More Lake

Sorry I didn't update yesterday... but it wasn't a veryproductive day so there wasn't a whole lot to say. Actually, thats the best kind of day there is. I went back to the town of Panajachel to start my trip South to Honduras. When I got there I found out that my bus out was held up due to some protests being held somewhere so I'd have to come back the next day. It turns out that when the teachers or anyone else go on strike in this country, they block the main highway through the country to get some attention. Makes sense to me. The mountain shown in the picture here is called Indian Nose since its supposed to look like a Mayan face. I think I can see it. I took the pic from my hotel room.

After that I tried to hit up some ATMs to get a little cash. Neither of my ATM cards were working in any of the 6 machines around town and I was getting a little worried. So, I called up the banks, got some stuff straightened out and now the theory is that it will start working in a couple days. I'm keeping my fingers crossed. I've since learned from other travelers that going into the banks can land you cash when the ATMs wont work and that I could also just charge cash against my credit card inside any bank. They make it so easy for me.

After that I went back to San Pedro to spend the night and meet up with the guys again. I found them pretty easily and we proceded to bar hop until later in the evening when we held a lunar eclipse party with some other backpackers that I met. It was drizzling so no moon was visible unfortunately. Anyways, it was a good time. Basicaly a day party. I'm a little sad to have to leave town today but I've got a better time awaiting me in Costa Rica so I'd better just pack it on down there asap. ttyl

Relaxing at the Lake

After I last posted yesterday, I ran into an old guy, Ernie, that I had met that morning on the van ride to the lake. We talked for a while and I decided to go on a 2 hour horse riding trip with him the next morning. He had met some greek guy a couple weeks ago and managed to find the house of the horse owner by memory from the recalled directions. I couldn´t have found the place even if I had a map... it was down a lot of twisting garden paths with at least a dozen turns. I agreed to meet him early in the morning so I headed back to my hotel to get dressed for the town´s nightlife. I met a couple of Canadians (Greg and Brendan) who are next door to me. Btw, that´s a picture from my hotel room´s balcony. The cost of the room is $4 per night but I got talked into paying $6 so I´m a sucker ;P

I hung out with them for the rest of the day/night... they work on repairing ships at drydock up in Victoria and they decided to take off 4 months to travel. One of them has spent a bit of time in Central America already and lived in my current town, San Pedro, for a month so he knows all the places to hang out here. We went off to some restaurant that he liked and indeed I thought it was pretty swell too. It has a largist courtyard with table scattered about under thatched umbrellas with candles and ther was an open campfire in the middle of it all. They played the sountrack to Trainspotting before going on a Beetles binge as we knocked back many many beers. The guy who was here before has also spent a month on this tiny (2 acres) island in Belize called Tobbacco Caye that Erika and I also spent a few days on. He spent his time spearfishing, conche diving, drinking of course, and paying 8 doallars a day total. I´m wicked jealous.

We headed home at 2 when the bars closed, a couple hours after is legally permitted, and I definitely missed my 8:45 rendevouz with Ernie and the horses. I left a note on his hotel door appologising and maybe I´ll run into him later. He likes it so much here that he´s staying for a week. That´s pretty much the opinion of everyone that i´ve met but I´m going to start heading towards Honduras tomorrow. I´ve been mapping out how many days I´ll take in each place in my head, and I´ve got around 7 days that I haven´t got much of a plan for yet. Maybe I´ll stay in some beach town and try to get my open-water scuba license that´s required to take any kind of scuba tour that´s available. It takes several days and I´ve never had the time on any other trip to do it. Here´s a pic of some cafe I havent tried yet next to the water. Despite the ratty pictures that I´ve put up of this town, its not so shabby and I rather like it.

Lakes and Volcanoes

As promised, I did visit the volcano yesterday. The van took off at 2 but we got held up in terrible traffic when the afformentioned religious procession blocked off our path for half an hour. Unfortunately I did not get a chance to take a picture, but for the brief seconds that I saw it there were several large wooden platforms with life-sized statues of Mary, Jesus, and various saints being carried down the street by a hoard of purple clad people. Actually, they were wearing really large hooded felt robes and all the little kids had them on too. Apparently this procession is held every Sunday in the weeks leading up to easter which is Central America's biggest holiday.

When we got to the volcano, the sun was already set and clouds were closing in. Some people in the group opted to rent horses to carry them up to the top but I'm too proud and cheap for that so I hiked the rest of the way after the van dropped us off. I got to talk with an Aussie on the way up who is in the country taking language classes. He told me all sorts of colorful stories about recent crimes against tourists by gangsters and the police(who are equally as bad as the gangsters in this country) that were so shocking that I won't rcount them here lest my mother read this. By the time we got to the top of the mountain and started to decent into the field of lava flows it was getting pretty dark and cold. Thankfuly we had glowing hot lava at hand to solve all our problems.

Right before we started walking onto the lava field the guide offered this advice. He said that if you smelled buring rubber then you´re close enough but if you smell buring bacon you may want to backoff. I came to learn that he meant that my shoes would melt and indeed they did a little.

Most of the lava field that could be seen was all cool and jagged beyond compare butwe found the hot stuff easily enough. It wasn't shooting up but rather oozing extremely slowly. At 20 feet I was comfortably warm and felt safe but when I got to 6 feet of it so as to poke it with a stick it was almost unbearable. I had to jump over several lava filled fissures about 1 foot wide and several feet deep to get that close and I thank my video gaming skills for helping me navigate the field of fire. The Aussie that I was hiking with broke out some marshmellows and we roasted them on a coat hanger he also brought. Soon after we headed home and hiked for an hour in the rain. On the way back we passed through a mountain town on the side of the volcano and a lone gringo getting a off a chicken bus (that´s the cheapest kind of bus... refurbished american school busses with bigger engines and lots of chrome) and the guide said that the town was famous in Guatemala for banditry and that he was a gonner ;P

The next morning I caught an early van out of town to head for Panajachel. We had some minor mechanical problems on the van which included loud thumping noises and after than some old lady gat a nasty gash on her leg getting back into the van. There was really a lot of blood =/ We eventually got to town (and to a hostpital) and got to enjoy it for a few hours. It's a largish town build on the Eastern side of the most beautiful lake that I've ever seen; Lago Atitlan. The lake is dominated by two HUGE volcanoes on the north and south side of it and about 6x10 miles in size. That sounds kinda big but having the volcanoes next to it makes it look rather small. I had a nice lunch of pizza and a beer that I think was bigger than a 40oz and took a boat to San Perdo on the other side of the lake where I heard a nice atmosphere could be found. It was... the town is very small, built on a steep hillside along the water, and has a lot of people my age wandering around. I've already met a few but I guess I'd better go meet the rest. It reminds me a lot of McCloed Gange in India if you´ve been there... I think it would be easy to lose many days around here if you´re not careful. ttyl

First Day Out

I'm writing now from a net cafe in Antigua, Guatemala, and I've got a lot to report, but let me first explain howI got here.




Nine days ago on friday I had my last day at Kush Games. There has been a lot of drama there lately and I've accepted a new job at Zindagi Games. I know everyone there and it's 50 yards from my apt so it was an easy choice. Anyways, the president Umrao offered me a little time off before I started so I decided to take advantage of that to the tune of one month of travel. In the week before I flew out of LAX I spent a lot of happy days with Samantha. Here's a nice pic of us on the Channel Islands for a bit of hiking and picnicing. On the day before I flew out we also hit up Disney Land and had a typicaly great time. Now that I think of it, we also went to Vegas on the weekend before that. Busy times =)



At 1 AM on Saturday morning I flew out of LA. That was the plan at least but due to a 1.5 hour check in line and my showing up a mere 1.5 hours before the flight, I missed the plane. I got put onto the next flight an hour later and due to my multiple other connections having some layovers I ended up getting to Guatemala on schedule so it all worked out swimingly.



When I got to Guatemala City the next morning I blew through customs and hopped on the first minibus to Antigua. In tradition with all other Central American cities, the capital was crowded, smoggy, and filled with American franchises. I saw 2 Burger Kings and 2 Chuck-e-Cheese's within 4 blocks. The best plan is to get out ASAP unless you want to stick around for some museums or to get some sleep before a 5 AM flight out of the country.





The drive to Antigua consisted of a 1.5 hour trip throught some mountains that were less like a jungle and more like a forest. There were pine trees, lots of flowers, and I even got a little chilly. I guess I just pictured the whole country as a steaming jungle. When we got to Antigue I was pleased to see clean streets, not so much wood/car smoke, and more dilapitated churches than I can take pictures of. I think that the actual count is 38 churches within a couple square miles. The city was designated the seat of spanish rule over all of Central America in 1543 and was built up with a lot of flair. Unfortunately the city was built between two volcanos that didn't cover the town in lava but instead plagued it with earthquakes. After a particularly bad one in 1773 the seat of power was moved once again and the city has been at a stand-still ever since.



When I got here I walked around to at least 8 hotels before I found a room. It's a small but clean and has a bathroom accesable from the courtyard. After walking around for a while I got some dinner at the Rainbow Cafe... they make some of the best quesadillas I've ever had and I wish that I had taken a picture. I hate to eat alone so I sat with an older man (named Ian) who turned out to be the author of 'Roughing It: Guatemala'. He advised me on how I should spend my 17 days till I meet up with Samantha in Costa Rica, hundreds of miles away to the south. He suggested that I should spend the majority of my time in Guatemala, skip El Salvadore entirely, breeze through Hondures by bus, and spend a week in Nicaragua, just to the north of Costa Rica. We swapped some stories and he went on his way. He's headed to Panajachel where I'm going tomorrow so maybe I'll run into him again. I decided to spend a second day in Antigua so that I could get up early today and photograph some churches before the cars showed up. It's Sunday so there's supposed to be some religious procession with music, flowers, and floats but I'm in here writing so who knows if I'll see it =/ The other reason that I'm spending another day in Antigua is so that I can visit Volcan Pixcaya. It's an active volcano an hours drive away and I'm joining a tour of the lava field there. Apparently you get to walk on fresh lava just yards away from the glowing stuff. Can't do that in Hawaii ;) I'm going to head off for that in a few hours after I get some rations for the hike.


I think that my favorite part of travel would be the people that I meet. I like to go to the smaller places where there aren't too many wattering holes to get a beer at so you run into the same gringos constantly from town to town. Yesterday I chatted with a Parisian named Vincent, Ian whom I've already mentioned, an Austrain named Franz, and some others whos names I cant recall. Hopefuly I'll meet some more people at the Volcano that can steer me towards the best adventure yet. Either that or we'll parish in a hail of sulfer and fire. That's what makes it so stimulating ;)



I'll finish up the post with a picture of my lunch today beacuse I really enjoyed it even though it looked... questionable. It's churrizo soup with a side of tortillas and a glass of juice. Not too bad for 6 dollars, but I think that I need to find some cheaper eats. This town is one of the more expensive places that I'm going so it's not gonna be too hard.




Ttyl... next time I'll have pictures of lava, or is it magma?