Ill in Paradise and other Adventures…
Hello all. As always, i hope and trust this finds things going well in your part of the world.
Im adjusting to El Verano (summer) here in Central America.. and it is HOT. The kind of hot where you take 2 to 3 showers a day but still feel a constant layer of sweat on your body.. hmmm…Im currently in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, staying with a wonderfully hospitable new friend, Belen… (thanks, Bret and Mario!)
This new installment starts in Coban, where i spent a few days relaxing. In Coban i stayed in a beautiful hotel, where i promptly made friends with all the waiters and reception staff.. (which isn´t too hard when youre a woman traveling alone and they are all men.. ha ha). Settled in to write, read and relax for a few days. Coban is a pretty, small town (20K), which was once a center for the Rabinal Maya. In the 19th c. germans moved there, founding coffee and cardamom fincas (farms). It was a very tranquil place in which to recover from the craziness of Antigua. I spent one day doing nothing and the next just cruising around, visiting a pretty church on a hill near town and touring a coffee plantation.. this was quite interesting. It felt good to be alone again, exploring at my own pace..
4-17: Lanquin– on my way to visit Lanquin and Semuc Champey i met some volunteers from Casa Guatemala, an orphanage near Rio Dulce where my friend Gabriella has been volunteering! (small travelers world). We got to know eachother on the bus ride to Lanquin. We stayed at a beautiful place, a paradise really, called El Retiro, a ¨hostel¨comprised of palapa structures including dorms, private rooms, bar/restaurant, etc. It was situated right next to a river with plenty of space for relaxing in hammocks and enjoying wonderful food and drinks. Unfortunately i assumed (never do this) that the town of Lanquin would have an ATM (which it didnt) so the 2 days there i spent adding up the tab in my head to make sure i wouldn´t have to have an awkward conversation at the end of the few days! The highlights here were visiting the caves at Lanquin, where we walked/swam about 2km into a cave using only candles or headlamps to light the way, and the beautiful cascading pools of Semuc Champey where we swam in the amazing water of the Rio Cahabon.
I was fortunately able to enjoy the tour that day (mind over matter) despite the fact that i felt pretty sick to my stomach the entire time at El Retiro. The heat in a four person dorm (top bunk 2 feet from ceiling thanks very much!) and lack of fan didn´t help much. One day while i was lamenting to one of my dorm mates how sick i was feeling, she starting asking me a bunch of questions about my meds.. (she was an MD turns out).. well, smart me– not only was i taking an anti biotic given to me by the MD in Antigua, but my anti malarial is.. guess what??– an antibiotic.. so, i basically was taking 2 daily dosages of a.biotics for 5 days.. OOPS… once i stopped, i (believe it or not) felt almost immediately better… Just in time for the big all-you-can-eat BBQ dinner.. mmmm
Trying to leave Lanquin the 3rd morning, i hung out with a Chilean couple, Claudio and Javiera, who i had seen in Antigua also. So nice talking to them and reminicing about my time in Chile and also hearing their accents and chilean slang! Anyway, pretty psyched to get back to Coban where it wasn´t 100 degrees and fan-less, when the driver told us that this day just happened to be a national day of protests and that he would only be able to bring us within 10km of Coban, where we would have to cross through the protestors and find a way to Coban. While this sounded like a great adventure, we decided we would wait for news of the protest and opted not to potentially walk 10km in the heat with our huge backpacks! After waiting 3 hours finally we met a couple who had come from Coban who told us it was no problem and that we should go and not worry: they had just walked through the peaceful protest and taken a cab from the other side. Sounded simple enough. So, with all that confusion we had an un-eventful trip to Coban, didn´t see a protestor and only had to pay a few Quetzals for our cab ride.. too bad, i was hoping to be able to write to you all about how i marched in support of the Campesinos! Oh well, theres 3 months left in my trip, so maybe next time!
One characteristic of Guatemaltecos which has been a running theme in this trip is that they are very helpful with directions and giving you answers to your questions, even if the answers are wrong. They would rather say something then say ¨I dont know¨.. i got pretty lost in Coban when a woman told me the mercado was ¨really far away, like 7 blocks in such and such direction¨, when i learned later it is right next to the central plaza (in the complete opposite direction). Same with the shuttle driver who told us about the protest, we got different information from each person we asked, eventhough they were supposedly all in communication with eachother..
4-21: Coban to Flores (the Peten)– The Chilean couple and I decided since we were all headed in the same direction we should go together, so we set out for Flores on a 6am shuttle, which turned out to be one of the worse transportation experiences so far. Not only did the driver do the usual high speed around a corner-slam on the brakes manuever, BUT he insisted on blaring Rancheras and Reggaeton music for the nearly 6 hour bus ride. Oh, and he put songs on repeat. I thought i would die of happiness when he finally played a horribly cheesy Latin Pop love song..Javiera told me later that he was lamenting loudly about a girlfriend having done him wrong, which would explain the repeat of songs with alternately misogynistic or sappy lyrics.. UGH. He refused to adjust the volume too, so at the first stop Claudio bought us all cotton for our ears..
El Peten is the dense jungle in the northeastern part of Guatemala. The town of Flores was built on an island in Lago de Peten Itza. (peten means island and Itza is for the Itzaes Maya). A very sweet, small town of 2000 people, with a tiny town plaza in the center of the island atop a hill, and a hot steamy climate! Stayed here 1 1/2 days pretty much doing nothing, but enjoying the island, including the requisite drinking beer in the nice breeze at a palapa restaurant overlooking the lake.. AAAH, what a tough life! Felt like a bit of a tag along, as its strange at first when youre traveling with a couple, but Javiera reassured me by saying ¨oh, dont worry, we have PLENTY of time together, just the two of us, after traveling for 8 months!¨.. (or at least thats what i think she said, in spanish! ha ha). Claudio and Javiera are both 29 years old and Web designers from Santiago de Chile, one of my favorite places. They started traveling from Chile and have seen lots of S. Amer and Central America and are on their way to Mexico. They are both very creative and have found jobs along the route, doing design work for people for example, in exchange for room and board in certain places where they wanted to stay.. Claudio is an urban cycling activist and musician and Javiera is really artistic and creative (she even taught me how to make a really cool bracelet) and both enjoy talking about music, politics and have great senses of humor.. so it was great hanging out with them both! (not to mention great for my spanish practice.. only after 3 days did Claudio start speaking a little english with me)
4-23 Tikal– Tikal is known for its impressive pyramids and plazas but is really special because it is in a dense jungle, so as you walk from site to site, you pass under dense jungle canopy. We heard howler monkeys (very scary, they sound like big Cats to me) and lots of birds. We learned from our guide about the medicinal uses of plants as well as rituals of the Maya of this area. We climbed the highest temple (at 64meters) to enjoy a magnificent view over the jungle where you could see the tops of other buildings. Its hard to believe that at El Mirador, another site north of Tikal, there is a temple 2 times the size of this one!! Of the 100 km square area of Tikal, only 2.5 km sq. has actually been escavated, which really makes you wonder about all that is lying underneath still undiscovered. There are way too many things to mention about the Maya… their knowledge of astronomy, astrology, their cosmovision was very interesting. One of the things i learned was that they thought of the cardinal points being 5 vs. 4, and associated them with colors ie: North=white representing Day, South=green representing the earth or jungle, West=black representing night, East=red representing the sunrise, and the 5th in the center=blue representing both heaven and water.
Left Tikal that afternoon for Poptun another small town in the Peten, about 115km south of Flores. There we stayed at an amazing place called Finca Ixobel for 2 days. The finca is run by a woman from California who has lived in Guate 20 years or so, the Finca is a 400 acre spot with series of palapa buildings, wonderful food (they make their own bread, yogurt, grow all their own veggies) and relaxed atmosphere. Claudio and i climbed a small mountain (well, ok, it took 30 minutes, so doesn´t really qualify as mtn.. but…) but most our time at the Finca was spent enjoying the hammocks, reading, playing music (them, not me!) and getting to know eachother. Big milestone for me.. I talked in my sleep in SPANISH!!! Im trying to fight my fear of insects here in the jungle, as they are everywhere.. spiders, grasshoppers, mantis, cockroaches, mosquitos, etc. (i cannot imagine what the Amazon is like!) After we saw a cockroach under my bed, it took me at least two hours to fall asleep, but somehow i managed. And Javiera had to teach me how to put the mosquito net securely over the bed. The two of them thought i was pretty ridiculous, im sure! In addition to the insects, we saw frogs, and lightening bugs.. really cool. We also enjoyed a show of fire dancers our last night.
4-26 Poptun to Rio Dulce and Livingston– Rio Dulce is at the eastern end of Lago de Izabel, where the lake and river meet, and down the river, on the small section of Caribbean coast of guatemala, is the town of Livingston. The Lancheros (guys running the Lancha boats down the river) have a serious monopoly here! 12$ US for a 30 minute ride. We waited two hours for a ride, meanwhile 10 men just sat around on the dock waiting for passengers to fill the boat. Its partly understandable with the cost of gasoline, but still this type of thing can be a frustrating experience. The boat ride was beautiful, very green water, blue sky, palm trees, thatched-roof bungalows along the river.. There were also some huge houses and yachts, which i assumed to be foreign owed, but was told they are owned by rich Guatemalans from the city. We saw Garzas, blancas y negras (white and black birds called Garzas) all throughout the ride. ¨They¨ say in the guidebooks that when you arrive in Livingston, its like a different world, and they are definetly right. Livingston; you hear black Guatemalans speaking Spanish and Garifuna as well as English, and there is an interesting laid-back feel to the town. The Garifuna people (who now live along the Caribbean in guate, belize, honduras, and nicaragua) are descendents of African slaves brought to the Honduran island of Roatan by the British, via the Caribbean island of St. Vincent. Their was a revolt on St. Vincent and from there the people were forcibly settled at Roatan. From there they spread to the entire Caribbean coast of Central Amer. They have a distinct culture, mixing African, indigena, and European elements.
We stayed in a placed run by Blanca, a beautiful and ¨muy simpatica¨- very nice- Garifuna woman. Everything in Livingston is super laid back.. We enjoyed walking though town just observing people, listening to the sounds of music and voices speaking Creole, Spanish and English, and had some great food–seafood of course. Our second and last day in Livingston, we hung out at the small strip of beach in town, watching kids play and enjoying the sun.. we were approaced by a guy advertising his friends restaurant, so we decided to check it out, and we got to meet a sort of local celebrity; a very eccentric Mexican woman transplanted to Guatemala, who has a very interesting history (she showed us a story written about her in a national magazine). Among other things, Maria has lived in Indian where she became a chef of Indian cuisine, and helped to apprehend a criminal from the states who had escaped to Livingston (with the help of America´s Most Wanted).. Classic. She talked our ears off, and her food was excellent! I dont think there are many things in life, better than enjoying the company of friends while sharing great food and drinks at the ocean! WOW, what a life! We visited the Garifuna museum and learned much more about the history of the area and the people. One detail i was interested to learn was that there was a Hindu immigration here- they came via Jamaica basically as indentured servants from what i understand. After talking to Javiera i started thinking that with a bit of initiative and creativity i could stay here and find some work– after attempting to read the English translations at the museum i realized they had been plugged into a computer and basically made very little sense!! Javiera commented that i could at least offer my services of translation and stay on rent free for a few weeks, if i wanted… i didnot want to stay in Livingston but it got me thinking about this method of travel! The last night we had a little Despedida, or going away party with some (too) warm Chilean wine, nachos, french fries (mmm.. nice combo eh?) and then listened to a traditional Garifuna band play at a local bar. The instruments are: conch shell, turtle shell, large drums, and maracas which produce a throbbing sometimes haunting rythym. The singing is like chanting in a sort of call/answer form. The traditional dance is called the Punta, LOTS of hip movement! It looks difficult!
Livingston was really interesting. The sights and sounds were awesome! The people are very nice and helpful, and proud. Like the rest of Guatemala, there is a high rate of unemployment, and at times it seemed people were content to be very relaxed doing nothing and at other times i thought ¨Wow, they look really bored¨!!!
Another thing i keep thinking about is the trash problem. Im sure ive mentioned it before, but it is totally normal to throw trash on the ground, out the window of a bus, into the beautiful river or Caribbean sea.. the concept of not littering is simply not part of the culture here, and it is frustrating for us because it is SO beautiful here!!
Well, not to end things on a negative note!!, From here I left Guatemala for Honduras, said goodbye to my wonderful new Chilean friends (who insisted on seeing me off at the dock and waiting til my boat pulled out of site to leave the dock, and saying ¨Te Esperamos en Chile¨ basically, we are waiting for you in Chile!), had a beautiful boat ride to Puerto Barrios, reflecting on all that i have seen here, all the things ive learned and the friends ive met.. I felt very satisfied, content and ready for the next adventure!!
Next time from Honduras!
Take care ALL.
Jennie
4 comments Posted by jennie on May 1st, 2006