¡viva el salvador!

tortillas y pupusas

2009-03-25T14:11:00.000-06:00

antonio´s mom and sister and i decided to have a pupusa-making day at their house the other weekend. it was super fun and even though our pupusas weren´t the most beautiful, they were still really good. hopefully i will be able to make them in the states, only i´ll have to use harina instead of corn masa. but, still they´ll be pupusas. anyway, here´s some photos.

firing up the stove

gloria shredding cabbage for the curtido

meanwhile, me and antonio´s mom made tortillas. it doesn´t matter that we´re making pupusas, every salvadoran household has to have tortillas in it at all times.

mixing up moras (kind of like spinach) with quesillo for the pupusas

gloria stirring the salsa de tomate

flattening out the masa to add the ingredients - i´m making pupusas with mora y queso and gloría´s making the frijol con queso pupusas

antonio´s mom waiting for the pupusas to cook

i don´t know how salvadorans do it....my face got all red and my eyes were watering from being in that small space with the smoking stove. meanwhile, antonio´s mom and gloria didn´t shed one tear the whole time.....

the final product, pupusas, curtido and salsa de tomate

antonio, our first client!

molineros revisited

2009-03-23T16:51:00.005-06:00

remember these kids?

i paid one last visit to my family in molineros a couple weeks ago. it was like i never left! except for the fact that dayana and sindy were both a lot taller! sindy´s now 4 1/2 years old and in pre-kindergarten and dayana´s 9 and in 4th grade! what? ana´s now playing softball with some other women from molineros. i went and played with her the day i visited and man, i haven´t run full speed around the bases in a long time!

dayana and sindy with mama rosa

sindy ready for school

sindy and her cousin hazel ready to go to school

dayana

nothing has changed in molineros. it was exactly like it was when i first showed up that rainy september in 2005. ana still has her tienda, mama rosa and papa ovidio still live across the street. mama viviana is still going strong. jaqueline still comes over with hazel all the time. the same chamacos still hang out above the tienda and yell ¨hey baby, hello¨ when i am walking to ana´s house. it´s still hot as hell during the day there. ana still makes the best food. everything´s the same!

anyway, it was really fun hanging with my first salvadoran family again and i was sooooo sad when i had to say goodbye. ana is really like a mom to me and sindy and dayana are truly like my little sisters! perhaps the feeling hit me that i was really leaving el salvador when dayana said ¨laura, no quiero que se vaya¨ and i realized i wouldn´t be able to come back whenever i wanted. ít´s only going to get worse over the last final week!!!

adios for now.

what´s LEFT to say?

2009-03-18T13:52:00.007-06:00

el pueblo salvadoreño has spoken and funes is its man. yay!!! let me tell you, it was a very exciting election to be a part of. i´ll take you through the process!

sunday morning i went with antonio to his voting place here in apaneca. voting stations in the municipalities aren´t set up by location (like in the states), but by last name. upon first entering the voting area there are lists of names and you find your name on the list to make sure you´re in the right place. then, next to your name is a number and when you enter the actual building or area where the voting takes place, you find your number and that´s where you vote. there is a big board with photos and names of each person who is allowed to vote at that actual voting stand and you have to make sure that all lines up. when you get to the front of the line, the voting workers match up your name to your DUI (which is an identification card which is a mix between a driver´s license and a social security card) photo and number. then you get your ballot: a single sheet of paper with an ARENA flag and a FMLN flag on it. the back the ballot must have a ¨sello¨ (seal/stamp) and a signature. if those aren´t there, the ballot is considered null and void. so once you get your ballot, you go to a cardboard voting stand that has a piece of fabric in front of it with two holes for your arms. it´s not like in the states where you vote behind a curtain or anything. you stick your arms in and that way nobody can see how you´re voting.....it´s kind of weird. anyway, in choosing your party, you put a black ¨x¨ on whichever party you are voting for with a crayon they give you. you can´t mark outside the flag...if so, your ballot is no good. if you show anyone how you voted, your ballot is no good either. you then fold your ballot up, stick it in the box and then you have to return to the voting table to get your right thumb covered with this permanent black ink that doesn´t come off for a couple days so that you can´t try and vote again somewhere else. it was quite funny seeing all these salvadorans with black thumbs on television and walking around town the next day!

there were vigilantes from both political parties there making sure that there was no funny business going on and apparently there were UN vigilantes as well, although at antonio´s voting place i didn´t really see anyone ¨foreign.¨ all in all things were pretty tranquilo around town, although i did hear chambre that don rodolfo, who is an arenero, got in a fight with some young guys that are efemelenistas about who was going to win.

anyway, the rest of the day it was just a waiting game...waiting for the polls to close at 5:00 p.m. i didn´t want to watch the news because here´s what happens next: once the polls close, the voting places start counting the votes. channels 2, 4 and 6 send cameras and journalists around the country, mostly in san salvador, into various voting places to watch votes being counted. for example, the camera will sneak in and watch one table count its votes. it goes like this: the table is surrounded by various vigilantes from both ARENA and FMLN. then there is a person who is physically taking the ballots out of the box and reading them. then the person hands the ballot to a representative vigilante from whichever party the vote is for. then, once all the votes have been taken out and read from the ballot box, each person with the stack of ballots counts how many they have. whoever has the most is the winner of that table and all those in support of that party, at that table, erupt in a bunch of hoots and hollers. so, all night, up until about 7:00 p.m. the news was recording these vote counts and it was nervewracking. especially when they´d come to a table that had a lot of ARENA votes....the guy reading the votes would say ¨arena........arena......arena......fmln.......arena..
....arena.......fmln......arena....arena.....¨ and so on. it was difficult to watch and definitely kept me on the edge of my seat!

the vote quantities started coming in around 7:00 and funes was winning san salvador and we started hearing cheers and stuff coming from down the street. so we went over to our neighbors, the owners of one of the ciber cafés in apaneca, and big efemelenistas, and watched some of the news with them. but it was soooo close all night long. i think the biggest margin was funes - 53% and avila - 48%. the rest of the night, the margin kept becoming smaller and it was like ¨oh for the love of god!!!!!!!!¨

then, the election officials read their official statements....reporting on the results from the various 14 departments. during the first official statement most of the departments only had about 30% of the results so far. about 45 minutes later, there was another official statement and about 80% of the results were in and the margin was even smaller.....51% funes, 49% avila. but that´s where it stayed for the rest of the night. there was a huge celebration in the streets and all the FMLN supporters paraded around apaneca. in san salvador it was a huge party......funes gave his speech in a crowded, camera-filled room with people all wearing red t-shirts. avila finally gave his speech and talked about how arena was still strong despite losing the election.

the funniest thing was the fact that after the election, all these areneros kept saying how ¨funes needs to work with ARENA now that the FMLN has won the presidency.¨ i kept thinking - well, yes, that would be my suggestion as well. but ARENA was NEVER willing to ¨ work¨ with the FMLN when they were in power. NEVER. and now they want funes to do that. and i think funes will. in every speech he´s made so far since winning he´s talked about how he´s more interested in a unified country than one with such harsh political divisions. but it´s going to be an uphill battle....just yesterday, three ARENA diputados (kind of like our senators and representatives) quit. i asked the teachers in my school why they quit....they´re elected officials and just because the other party won the presidency, in my opinion, wouldn´t make it necessary to quit their service in the legislative assemply (kind of like our congress). and they said that they ¨had to, before the other guy takes over.¨ it doesn´t make any sense to me, but i´m guessing that nobody really knows what to do because this has never happened before. this is the first time the FMLN has won and what´s the protocol they have to go by? i guess we can only wait and see what happens.

what´s going to be interesting is to see how the ARENA party handles this defeat. i think they are scared. for twenty years, their campaign has been run on fear....telling the salvadoran population that if they vote for the FMLN there is going to be another war, that el salvador is going to be like venezuela and cuba, that all their family members are going to be deported from the united states and remesas will stop. and they have won all past elections with those campaign threats. but now that the FMLN has won and it´s more than likely that none of those threats will come to pass, my guess is that people are going to see that those were JUST THREATS. how is ARENA going to run their next presidential campaign in 5 years? i think it is a good thing for both parties. ARENA is going to have to have a more educated plan de trabajo....what´s THEIR plan to improve the country? so far they´ve never really come up with a work plan......their campaign has always been ¨you don´t want what the FMLN has to offer, so vote for ARENA¨ instead of saying what makes ARENA better in terms of improving the country. meanwhile, mauricio funes´s and the FMLN´s plan this time around was ¨here´s what i plan to do if i´m president....build a women´s center in san salvador, work on programs for farmers, unify the country, etc., etc.¨ there was NOTHING like that from ARENA......just the same old ¨don´t vote for the FMLN because they´re guerrilleros.¨

so now funes has given the FMLN a chance to prove themselves. let´s just hope they hit a homerun!

here are a couple articles about the funes win...

miami herald article

la times article

the BBC

and CNN

the change they need

2009-03-10T15:56:00.010-06:00

sunday is the big day. it´s time to vote for a new president in el salvador and i am very excited and nervous at the same time. i´ve only written a couple of times about politics here because it´s difficult to write about without getting preachy and revealing my particular bias. but since it´s election time, i´m going to write a bit about what´s been going on for the past year, and specifically, the last few months.

the current president, tony saca, is from the conservative ARENA (Alianza Republicana Nacionalista). ARENA has been in power since 1992 when the peace accords were finally signed, putting an end to the bloody civil war that plagued el salvador for decades. ARENA, in el salvador, equals money. practically every big business, mall, car dealership, bank, television station and newspaper is owned by ARENA...not the party itself, but by people who are ¨areneros.¨ this does not bode well for the FMLN and its candidate, who is vying for the spot as the next salvadoran president.

the FMLN (frente farabundo martí para la liberación nacional), on the other hand, started off as party of guerillas. farabundo martí was a salvadoran revolutionary in the 20´s and is THE face of revolution here in el salvador. in many salvadoran pueblos you will see murals painted with the likenesses of both farabundo martí and che guevara. in a nutshell, the civil war was started when people fighting for rights for the poor in el salvador (campesinos, etc.) decided to take action, rather than sit back and let the military-run government neglect their social situation. they fought and the national military (la guardia) fought back....fought back by mass killing innocent groups of women, children and old people (known as ¨matanzas¨) and punishing those that were trying to make the government listen to the plight of the country´s poor. many of the FMLN candidates in the past have been products of this war...former guerrilleros. however, the FMLN party, over the years, has tried to move away from its ¨guerrilla¨ reputation, and simply focused on creating a more benefits and help for the poor.

farabundo martí

there are many official political parties, not just the FMLN and ARENA. others are: PDC, PCN, FDR and CD.

the ARENA candidate is rodrigo ávila, a former police chief and college graduate. (tony saca, the current president, has only a high school diploma). ARENA´s campaign slogan is ¨vote with wisdom¨ (vota con sabiduría)...meaning, think before you vote because you might regret voting for the left (FMLN).....like el salvador might become a guerrillero state if FMLN is in power.

the FMLN candidate is mauricio funes, a former journalist and college graduate. FMLN´s main slogan is ¨hope is born, change is coming¨ (nace la esperanza, viene el cambio.) they´ve, however, somewhat changed to a new slogan that says ¨this time it´s different¨ (esta vez es diferente)

let me just tell you a little bit about how each slogan refers to the state of el salvador at the moment. ARENA is going with the fear factor, while FMLN is going for the hope factor. just about every commercial run by ARENA has hugo chavez in it....saying that voting for mauricio funes is voting for hugo chavez.?????? it reminds me somewhat of what obama went through when conservatives were saying that voting for obama was like voting for terrorists because of his ¨connection¨ with william ayers. these commercials have forced funes to run commercials saying ¨don´t believe the lies.¨

it´s particularly frustrating because every outlet of information (television channels - channels 2, 4, 6, 21 - and newspapers - el diario de hoy and la prensa gráfica) are owned by ARENA supporters. so, for example, you open the newspaper to read ¨ávila attends opening of community center for children¨ and there is a photo of him hugging children and giving them toys. then, on the next page, it reads ¨funes is accused of blocking streets in the zona rosa for his campaign tour.¨ it´s outrageous, not because this happens a few times....but because it happens every single day. i can´t even read the newspapers anymore because it´s pura propaganda. i understand that in the states it´s the same way....but at least there are other ways to get your news that are way less biased than your local newspaper. here, everywhere you turn, it´s the same thing. ávila good, funes bad.

ARENA even put out a commercial saying that if you sing the el salvador national anthem and you say the pledge of allegiance, then you shouldn´t vote for the FMLN and funes because that would make you unpatriotic and you don´t believe in el salvador. meanwhile funes is trying to defend all this, WHILE proposing his plan for a CHANGE.

i can´t believe ARENA has been in power for over almost 20 years....but then again, i can. why? because ARENA runs its campaigns based on fear and presents. i´m not kidding! the poverty rate here is unbelievable. but here´s what normally happens...right before an election, ARENA candidates go to poor villages and hand out things like key chains, t-shirts, hats, sometimes even food - like lunch, and essentially ¨buy¨ their votes. it doesn´t make any sense to me why people buy into this? they´re dirt poor and instead of voting for someone they might think could make it easier to get food EVERY DAY, they vote for the candidate that gave them a free lunch. before our mayoral elections in january (el tigre won again...), el tigre came to san jorge and handed out material for school uniforms. does he does this every year? no. just the years he needs the poor people´s votes. in apaneca (i don´t know how it is around the rest of the country) most of the FMLN supporters are professionals, people with educations beyond high school, those working as lawyers and teachers and doctors. el tigre wins every year by going to the poor villages and giving them key chains. ?????

these are just some of the problems facing el salvador right now. here is another from the ny times regarding the election and its candidates.

there was a recent ARENA-run ad on television where this nurse narrated a 5-minute long commercial on how ARENA has been nothing but butterflies and sunshine for el salvador since the peace accords were signed in 1992. she went down the list of presidents since the accords and how they built roads and buildings and how generally they made everyone´s life a living garden of eden throughout the years. it ended with tony saca´s presidency and how san salvador is this beautiful, modern city with upscale malls and high-rise condo buildings. this is true about the malls and such....there are malls here with polo, anne taylor, apple, l´occitane and nautica stores. they´ve been building like crazy in the zona rosa...upscale condos and apartment buildings. but my question is this....how do any of these places deserve to exist when there are still people in this country WITHOUT WATER, or electricity or anything but plastic as walls to their homes? really! how is it possible that ARENA can call itself a party of voting with wisdom when it´s allowed people to go without water in favor of building ¨la gran vía¨ an upscale mall? the government of el salvador recently started building high walls in front of the shanty towns and ¨undesirable¨ parts of san salvador in order to hide the poverty. i have passed the squatter village mentioned in the above-linked NPR article. when passing it the first time, back in september of last year, i couldn´t believe what i was seeing. i see extreme poverty here every day, but i had never seen it like this, in such quantity. picture about three football fields of dirt, not a tree in sight. then fill it with shanty after plastic-wall shanty. it was only about a quarter full in september of last year. i just last week passed it again on my way to molineros and it is full to capacity. it´s extremely depressing. i didn´t see anything about this during that 5-minute infomercial narrated by that nurse.

on the other hand, the civil war was very recent (in historical terms), and some people are put off by the fact that the guerrilleros started it. they don´t look beyond WHY they started it. and funes, in a poor decision, selected a former guerrillero to run with as his vice president. i think this was a mistake....kind of like the palin factor in mccain´s bid for president. funes is very well-respected, and most of the negative ads run on television focus on his vice presidential running mate, salvador sanchez cerén. my family in molineros said as much to me when i visited them last week. they said ¨it´s not funes that we don´t want, it´s his running mate.¨

i was really mad one day because shortly after obama took the oath of office, ARENA ran an ad in the newspaper congratulating obama (even though, in my opinion, obama´s political ideologies couldn´t be further than those of ARENA´s). they did this in order to show salvadorans that they approve of obama, even though during the presidential campaign in the states they criticized obama for his campaign promises and ideals. the salvadoran government and tony saca were very close to bush. so after the results came in showing that many latinos in the states supported obama, ARENA did an about face and printed this huge ¨congratulations obama!¨ ad....a huge one-page portrait of obama with the ARENA logo at the bottom. if you are a poor person who can´t read or write, what do you think you see there? that obama is supporting the ARENA party.

shortly after this ad ran, the front page of el diario de hoy stated that ¨the u.s. embassy criticized the FMLN for using obama in it´s campaign ads!¨ i was like ¨WHAT???¨ antonio was fuming. apparantly, the guy who is in charge until a new ambassador is appointed here, made a statement saying that the u.s. is unbiased in opinion of either candidate and it doesn´t want either candidate using obama´s image to support its political campaign. funes did (and still does) use obama´s photo on television in an ad in which he shows both obama and lula (president of brazil) and says how he looks to them as examples of presidents of countries who are fair and just and that provide true democracies. i understand if el diario wants to accuse funes of using obama in his ads, but why omit the fact that ARENA is doing the same thing?

there is no ¨freedom of the press here,¨ unless you from the ARENA party. it´s one-sided and sadly, it´s the ONLY form of information most people have. all i want is for the press to be fair and give educational insight on both parties and candidates. yes, i want funes to win....but my complaints lie in the fact that if el salvador wants to claim that it´s a true democracy, it needs to change a few things. you can´t have a democracy when all of the people making the decisions have been from ONE PARTY for almost 20 years. salvadoran citizens don´t vote on anything except for diputados, mayors and the president. there is no vote for city council, or ordinances or anything. so, for example, el tigre wins in apaneca and he´s for ARENA. he appoints the city council, who, guess what? are all from ARENA. how are there ANY checks and balances in that?

antonio couldn´t believe the absentee ballot i received prior to the presidential election in the states....full of choices of judges, councilmen, ordinances as well as for president. the ballot in el salvador is this: a single page with the flags of each political party. that´s it. then the voters put a big black x on whichever party they want to vote for. so, it´s not a vote for the candidate themself, its a vote for the party. and in this election more than ever, mauricio funes has been trying to distance himself from the idea that he is the FMLN, because of the connotations it has to the civil war. there is a group here called ¨amigos de mauricio¨ - a group of people not so much supporting the FMLN as they are mauricio. but when it comes down to it, a voter is putting an x not on the name of mauricio funes, but on the FMLN flag.

i realize it could be worse. el salvador´s not zimbabwe or some other country....like venezuela. people DO at least get to vote, however corrupt it might be. but i look at the state of this country and it´s obvious that what ARENA has done so far is not working to relieve the economic stress that this country has....no jobs (i´m not talking no jobs like the no jobs in the states....there are REALLY no jobs here), education rates, hardly ANY family planning education, the fact that the income for most people comes in the form of remesas from the states. it´s crazy!

anyway, i know i´m bad about expressing my political opinion and if you want to read a more educated and researched blog go to tim´s el salvador blog. he´s been great about posting some of my blog entries on his site, so i´ll do the same. his blog is a lot more informative and you might get a better picture of things through his posts than mine.

so the election is sunday. i´ll probably stay inside all day because i don´t want deal with any of the negative campaigning anymore. hopefully by monday el salvador will have a clear winner......mauricio funes!!! ojala!

esta vez es diferente......

el ultimo viaje

2009-03-01T16:03:00.001-06:00

by far, this trip was probably the best i´ve taken since being here in central america. maybe because it was my last trip down here for a while. anyway, i´ll just get right to it since it´s gonna end up being a long blog entry. we were gone for something like 20 days, but it was well worth it!

so we started out from my place here in apaneca. our first destination was ANTIGUA, GUATEMALA, which as the name indicates, was the old capital of guatemala. i have to say that i really had avoided going to antigua because it is a tourist magnet. everyone and anyone who comes to central america goes to antigua. there is a small english magazine called ¨revue¨ that circulates around central america that is basically all about guatemala, but has a section about el salvador and honduras as well. anyway, i always seem to be able to have the latest copy of revue from wherever...a hotel, the old hostal, some office in san salvador. anyway, what scared me was the fact that this magazine is chock full of ads for businesses, hotels, restaurants...mostly in antigua. if you haven´t noticed by now, after all my blog entries about travel, i´m not a big fan of the whole ¨gringo central¨ thing. but it really would have been a shame to not at least visit antigua once.

so, since apaneca is fairly close to the guatemalan border, we were able to get to antigua in about 6 hours or so. first of all, when our bus pulled into the antigua city limits, i was completely amazed. antigua´s huge! i didn´t expect it to be that big. antigua´s a colonial town (like suchitoto in el salvador, only a gazillion times bigger!). our bus pulled into this weird terminal out in the middle of nowhere and that was it....we were there. we walked around trying to figure out how to get to the main plaza and finally ended up taking a mototaxi because we had no idea where we were and our packs were dragging us down. finally we were in the park, sitting there trying to figure out where to stay. we asked a couple locals where the cheap places were and this woman told us the name of a couple hotels. on the way, we stopped at a few places that were mentioned in our travel books and found them to be completely crazy in prices ($45!!!!! that´s nuts!!!). we finally found a hotel that had super cheap prices.....$6 a night for the both of us. perfecto.

after finding the hotel, i wanted nothing more than to take a siesta. i had a splitting headache and was super tired from getting on and off buses all day. later that night when i finally woke up, i was starving so i decided to go see if i could find some food. i walked down to the main street and was surprised to see a mcdonald´s directly across the street from the entrance to our hotel. i haven´t eaten at a mcdonald´s in years, but the ease of being able to go in, see the prices and order quickly was too tempting, so that´s what i did. when i came back to the hotel, courtney saw the mcdonald´s bag and just laughed.

antigua reminds me a bit of santa fe, new mexico. it´s a town that has things like mcdonald´s and burger king and kodak shops, but the stores blend in with the town. they don´t announce their existence with big billboards and neon signs. and alongside the mcdonald´s and bagel barn there are plenty of artesenias - you name it - jade, woodworking, cigar and clothes shops along with fine art galleries and restaurants. it was odd seeing all the stores and restaurants that i had seen advertised in revue - most of them looked nothing like i´d imagined they would.

consumerism aside, antigua´s best feature is its ruins. i don´t know what the final count is, but on a map courtney and i counted at least 23 catholic churches, most of them classified as ruins. i guess in any latin american city you´re going to finad a number of catholic churches, but for some reason in antigua it seemed to me that every street we turned down there was a catholic church or ruins of one.

like i said before, antigua was the old capital of guatemala, so this is probably the major reason for all the catholic churches and old colonial style. the great thing about antigua is the fact that it has retained its colonial look and feel. one of the things el salvador has failed to do is preserve any of its indigenous or colonial heritage, which is unfortunate both culturally and economically. many tourists come to guatemala because they want a glimpse into the past...they want to see a people who have kept their original dress, language and communities. (this always confuses me because then these same tourists after experiencing this want to know where the nearest dunkin´ donuts is!) guatemala is a place that takes pride in its indigenous traditions, whereas in el salvador, it is not celebrated at all. nobody wears traditional clothing in el salvador, there are maybe a handful of old women who can still speak nahuat and colonial structures are often torn down instead of restored. i think this is part of the reason el salvador has a hard time attracting tourists (well, that and the fact that people are still scared of the violence of the civil war and the notorious gangs). el salvador has other attributes - the surfing, volcano hiking, and above all, the people - but cultural tradition is one thing that´s missing here. back to antigua.....it wasn´t just the old capital of guatemala until 1773, it was also the old capital of basically all of central america at one point. the spanish set up shop in antigua much like they did in mexico city and lima, peru. however, the majority of the structures in antigua met their end in a couple of terrible earthquakes in 1773. this prompted establishment of guatemala city as the new capital.

the next morning we had a plan to go check out the old cemetery as well as the park and the main church in the park. i was not feeling too hot and i kept thinking it was because i ate gross mcdonald´s. it wasn´t until later in the day that i realized i was having that oh-so-familiar parasite feeling. gross! but we went ahead with our plan and first went to the old cemetery on the outside of the main town area. i am a big fan of cemeteries. they are such quiet, well-kept and, despite being filled with dead people´s remains, peaceful places. this old cemetery is huge and literally every tomb is a bright white that almost hurt my eyes to look at. there is a small church in the cemetery - st. lazarus - that was simple and at the time, people-free. outside the church, to the right, was what would have been an amazing view of volcán agua which looms over antigua. but at the time, the top half of the volcano was hidden by clouds.

iglesia de san lázaro

inside iglesia san lázaro

view of volcán agua, half-covered by clouds

after visiting the cemetery we made our way through town back to the main plaza. in the park there is a 250 year-old fountain called ¨la llamada de las sirenas¨ (mermaid´s call). the fountain is beautiful even though it´s kind of weird seeing water pouring out of the mermaids´ boobs. you know, it doesn´t matter where you are in the world...you are always reminded of men´s fascination with women´s boobs. there are at least two volcanoes in el salvador whose nahuat names mean ¨breasts.¨ then you have the grand tetons in the rockies out west in the states. i could go on for days.....

immediately to the east of the park is antigua´s first catheral, catedrál san josé. it was first built way back in 1545, but that damned earthquake did it in in 1773 after being destroyed and rebuilt in-between 1545 and 1773. at one point it was huge - it had something like 18 chapels and a gigantic dome. only two of the chapels have been restored. buried under the alter of the old cathedral are a few people from Conquest times. the ruins are amazing. i can´t imagine what it was like back in the 1600´s when the church was at its biggest. i mean talk about making a statement. all those maya who were partially converted to catholocism probably thought there was no alternative with those huge catholic churches hovering over them. not to mention the fact that it was their labor that built them.

catedrál san josé

promenade of old government building that used to be the center of all of central america

view of old government building from the church plaza

inside catedrál san josé

view above in the ruins of the old catedrál san josé

tombs underneath the ruins

front doors of catedrál san josé, looking out on antigua´s main park and plaza

view of volcán agua from church plaza

anyway, we called it a day after all that religious archaeology. my parasites were attacking me and it ws time to find a cure.

the next day we started by walking down to the famous yellow arco de santa catalina, the site of a convent back in 1609. the iglesia de la merced is down the street and is also yellow - a really bright yellow. it was originally built in 1548, destroyed in 1717, reconstructed and destroyed again in - you guessed it - 1773. we didn´t go inside the church but we did visit the ruins on the other side. apparantly the fountain inside the courtyard is/was the biggest fountain in all of central america. i have no idea if that´s true but it IS really big, and, there wasn´t a breast to be seen anywhere on it. probably because there was a convent there back in the day. on the top of the cloister is a beautiful view of antigua and the volcanoes surrounding it: agua, fuego and acatenango.

arco de santa catalina

iglesia la merced

statue on fountain in la merced

wine casks

volcanes fuego and acatenango

after leaving la merced, we headed down across town in the hopes of going to casa popenhoe, which is a mansion restored to give an idea of what domestic life was back during antigua´s reign over central america. well, casa popenhoe was popen-closed so we headed further down the street and ran into the huge iglesia san francisco.

this church was built in 1579, but can you guess what happened? if you can´t, you haven´t been paying attention. yes, that blasted earthquake of 1773 destroyed it. this church is important because inside is the tomb of hermano pedro de betancourt, who was actually made central america´s first saint (and i think the ONLY saint) by pope john paul II. while the church itself is beautiful, the most fascinating parts of the place are the ruins and museum. even if you are not a religious person, the story of san hermano pedro is really interesting. hermano pedro was a franciscan who came originally from the canary islands and trujillo, honduras (a place i visited on my trip to honduras in july). anyway, he came to antigua and founded a hospital and did all these good deeds, including miracles of healing. the museum has tons of items dating from his time at the church, including his clothes, shoes, walking stick and furniture. probably the oddest things in the museum are hermano pedro´s deathbed sheets, clothes and get this - his underwear! these weren´t fruit-of-the-looms though. they were made of this strange mesh-like stitching and reminded me of chainmail. the tomb where hermano pedro´s remains are placed were originally in another tomb in the church. the church moved them to their present location and in the museum there are a series of photos showing the transfer of the bones as well as what the bones look like in skeleton form. pope john paul II came to give hermano pedro sainthood in 2002. i can only imagine the hoopla in antigua during the pope´s visit.

side entrance to iglesia san francisco

iglesia san francisco

inside iglesia san francisco

tomb of san hermano pedro bettancourt

paintings left on the ruins of iglesia san francisco

that night i had to decide if we were going to go on with our plan to leave for cobán the next day. i was not feeling well at all. the meds i had bought in the pharmacy were working somewhat, but i didn´t feel like getting in a bus and traveling for 6 hours. but i also didn´t want to screw up our plan so i just decided to wait until the morning to see how i felt.

iglesia san pedro, another catholic church in antigua

inside of iglesia san pedro

statues of maximón (san simón), the ¨evil saint,¨ for sale in a nearby artesania. we learned a lot about the maximón tradition when we visited santiago atitlán a couple years ago.

arco de santa catalina at night

more ruins

well, the next day, i didn´t feel any better, but i was on the last round of medicine so i just decided to chance it. we got on the bus and had to sit in back in the last available seat. i don´t know if any of you are familiar with sitting in the back of a bus but it´s the worst place to sit because you´re behind the rear wheels. so every time you go over a bump or are on less than smoothe streets you get shaken up like a martini. and since we were in the middle of colonial antigua with its cobblestone streets, by the time we got to the city limits and on the highway, i was was ready to lose it. my stomach felt like i had just swallowed a bunch of double-edged swords and they were slicing my insides open. it was horrible! when we finally arrived in guatemala city, i was on the verge of calling the trip quits. i saw no end in sight to the parasites and i imagined myself miserable and in pain and farther away from home. in guatemala city i could have easily made it back to apaneca by nightfall and that sounded more appealing to me than dealing with feeling gross for the next 2 1/2 weeks in hotel beds and on buses. but an amazing thing happened. when we got off the bus and got into a taxi, i started feeling a bit better. i think it was just that sitting in the back of the bus made things worse. or maybe the medicine finally was killing the parasites and they were all giving their final death cries. i don´t know. but by the time we got on the bus for cobán, i was feeling 100% better and ready to go. now i just had a 5-hour bus ride to make it through without the pain coming back!

so we were headed for COBÁN (not to be confused with copán ruinas in honduras which i visited back in 2006). cobán is located in the alta verapaz area of guatemala, high up in the pine forests. apparently, back during WWII times there were some germans who set up shop in the cobán region. bus since some of them were nazi sympathizers, the u.s. government urged the guatemalan government to oust them, so they were pressured to leave. however, they left a lot of their architecture and so cobán has quite a few buildings with chalet-type looks to them...which is odd amongst the lamina-roofed houses and central american style that makes up the rest of cobán.

when we finally got to cobán it was already around 5:00 so we had to find a place to stay. i hate this part of traveling - trying to find a place that´s cheap and wandering around like an idiot in search of that place. normally when we get into town we basically have to ask how to get to certain hotels that are listed in the travel book. often times we get to a particular hotel and find out that their prices are triple what the books says, so we end up wandering around until we find something reasonable. but we often run into people who tell us a hotel is one way when it´s in the opposite direction. or people lie and won´t tell you where someplace is because they want you to stay in their cousin´s hotel. however, in cobán, we ran into this nice guy who wanted us to stay in a hotel that he worked for. we told him we didn´t have that much money so he pointed us in the direction of hotel la paz which, he said, was 73 quetzales, less than his hotel. so we headed in that direction and, before we actually found it, we passed another hotel and this guy was going in and he said ¨you should stay here, the rooms are cheap.¨ so we checked out the room but realized it was a shared bathroom and it was 100 quetzales a night. then we found out that the guy we were talking to was only paying 50 quetzales a night because he was guatemalan and we didn´t think that was fair. so left and found hotel la paz and it was only 73 quetzales just like that first guy said, and we had our own bathroom. after all that was done it was like 2 hours later....that´s why i hate the whole ¨looking for a hotel¨ thing...it´s so time-consuming! anyway, we settled in and were happy.

the next day we just decided to hang around cobán. i was outside our room, in the courtyard and there was an old woman sitting out in her pajamas on a bench. i started talking to her and found out she was the owner of the hotel, but i think she had short-term memory because she kept telling me how she´d traveled to egypt, spain, italy, mexico and the united states. i´d go ¨how did you like egypt?¨ and she´d say, ¨i´ve traveled to egypt, spain, italy, mexico and the united states.¨ it went this way for like 20 minutes. she was comical. then coronado, the hotel manager kept walking by and saying hi to us. he was so funny, but kind of a pervert, so we made sure we didn´t act toooo friendly towards him because we didn´t want him to get the wrong idea.

we walked around cobán and tried to find a woman courtney had met a tourism fair in san salvador. she was selling jewelry with orchids in them and had given courtney the information on the association in cobán. so we set out looking for her. first we went to the mayor´s office and got some information. they gave us two choices, neither of which led to the woman. we decided to go a clinic where supposedly a doctor there knew something about the association, but when we finally found it, the doctor wasn´t there. so we walked around some more and found an artesenia that coincidentally had the jewelry courtney was looking for.

chilis for sale in the cobán market

colorful tela in the cobán market

later we decided to walk up to a church called el calvario. el calvario sits way up above the city so to get there we had to climb up a series of steep stairs, passing by various shrines (and a passed out drunk) along the way. at the top, the smell of copal filled the air. copal is used in mayan religious ceremonies and i wasn´t sure why this man was burning it. while he was burning the copal, he was chatting with this woman while a little kid was hanging around gathering wood on the ground. there was a beautiful view of all of cobán from the church plaza on top. we walked into the church and found it empty. the thing that is interesting about latin american churches is that they all have something that sets them apart from the churches we saw the day before. in guatemala almost all the catholic churches have signs of both christian and pagan religions, whether it´s in the paintings (like the churches in antigua) or in the statues (like the church we saw in santiago atitlán on one of our previous trips to guatemala). i walked outside and started talking to the man and woman...i wanted to know what bird was making this crazy noise up in one of the tall trees. they told me its name was ¨ardilla¨ which is what squirrels are called as well. we talked some more and then courtney and i decided to make our way back down.

the first set of steps up to el calvario

iglesia el calvario

view of cobán

inside iglesia el calvario

at the bottom, we walked over to parque las victorias, the entrance of which was just about a kilometer away. when we got there we asked the guy at the entrance what time the park closed. he said 5:00 - it was about 3:00 so we asked if two hours was enough to hike the trails inside. he said ¨yeah¨ so we paid the entrance fee and went in. he gave us ¨walking sticks¨ which were just broom sticks. we headed down a trail and past a small laguna. the trail snaked through the forest where there were tons of tropical plants, trees and flowers. we climbed up for about 45 minutes until we ended up high above cobán and had a view of the other side of the city. we came to a sign that said ¨la montañosa trail, 4 km¨ to the right, and ¨el caracol trail, 8 km¨ to the left. we had taken the la montañosa trail to get up to the top and we had done that in 45 minutes. we thought well for sure we could go downhill on the caracol trail in 1 1/2 hours. so we decided on the caracol trail since we hadn´t seen that part of the forest. things were fine until we were about 45 minutes in to the hike and we were hiking uphill, then downhill, back uphill, and downhill again. we were also getting closer to the highway on the other side of the forest and further away from the entrance which was completely on the other side. it was getting really annoying. the trail kept going back and forth, up and down, and hugging the highway. we didn´t like being next to the highway because who knows what kind of people could just enter the forest from the highway. it´s not like in the u.s. where running into a highway is no big deal. here in central america, highways usually have a lot of foot traffic and delincuencia. anyway, so we just kept following the trail and the minutes kept ticking away. finally we ended up at the top of the mountain and a bit farther away from the highway and back into the middle of the forest. but we still didn´t know where we were in relation to the entrance of the park. it was now 5:00 and it was starting to get dark. finally we saw the roof of a building we thought was the visitor´s center which we had passed on the way into the park. but the trail we were on didn´t go past the building - just farther away . i was like ¨screw this.¨ i saw some lights, like along a road by the building through the trees and i told courtney we should just leave the trail, climb through the forest and get to the road by the building, especially because it was getting dark. so i led the way, trampling over the brush and thorny trees and we finally ended up on a trail by the building and the road that was in front of it. only the building wasn´t the visitor´s center, just a regular house and we were like ¨how the hell did we end up here?¨ we followed the road out of the park and ended up by cobán´s fútbol stadium. we followed the road back into town and realized we were really far away from the park entrance, on the other side of town! so we walked back to the entrance because we had to give back our broom stick walking sticks and when we came up to the entrance from the outside, the guard had this look on his face like ¨you guys are idiots.¨ we made our way back to the hotel feeling stupid, but relieved we had made it out of there before dark.

la montañosa trail

the next morning i woke up and courtney was gone. she had gone back to the park because she realized she had lost her camera case somewhere near the beginning of the la montañosa trail. she came back and said she didn´t have any luck finding it, but had run into a group of guatemalans who were hiking through the park for exercise. they told courtney she shouldn´t be walking through the park by herself because it is dangerous. they asked her, ¨haven´t you read the newspaper?¨ apparently gangs hang out there and rob people of everything - including their shoes! so i guess we were lucky that the only horrible thing that happened to us is that we got super lost!

anyway, that day our plan was to go to BIOTOPO DE QUETZAL. the biotopo is also known as biotopo mario dary rivera after a guy from san carlos university who was murdered in 1981 for battling timber companies in trying to establish protected areas for the quetzal. the quetzal is guatemala´s national bird and the name of its money, and its also a sacred symbol in the mayan world. problem is, it´s in serious danger of becoming extinct, mostly because its habitat is being destroyed. seeing one in the wild is rare, but it is possible, especially in the biotopo.

we took a 1 1/2 bus ride south to the biotopo and when we got there it felt like it was abandoned. nobody was at the front gate, so we walked up the trail and found the visitor´s center. we looked around a bit and then a man came down another trail and introduced himself as one of the park guards. he told us all about the park and about the trails and said the last time he saw a quetzal was a year ago. he explained that there were two trails and suggested we take the shorter one because the longer one was three hours long and it was threatening to rain. we agreed and set off by ourselves. the trail we were on was called el sendero de los helechos, which means the trail of ferns. and ferns there were on this trail. much like in parque las victorias, the trail led through the huge park amongst plants and flowers and even passing by a small waterfall. the biotopo de quetzal was a little wetter than parque las victorias because it´s at a higher altitude and most of the reserve is classified as cloudforest. we saw a bunch of pajuiles - a huge bird - and when we came back from the hike we were able to see some toucans in the trees at the entrance of the park. i really liked the biotopo and would have liked to have been there super early in the morning to catch a glimpse of more birds, but because it´s far away from cobán, it´s hard to get there really early unless you have a car. but i left happy at just being able to hike through the protected reserve.

quetzal in the visitor´s center at the biotopo....sadly, probably the closest i´ll ever get to a quetzal is this dead stuffed one....

on the los helechos trail

a pajuil through the trees

when we got back to cobán we decided to go check out the cost of a trip to SEMUC CHAMPAY - a series of limestone pools located in the lanquin area of guatemala. getting there by bus would have been difficult as there´s not much public transportation in or out of the area. we went next door to our hotel to another hospedaje that had a sign advertising trips to semuc. the price ended up being pretty reasonable, so we booked two seats for the microbus the next day.

the next morning the two drivers of the microbus got us at our hotel. when we climbed in the van, it was about full already. there were these three french-speaking girls, a german couple, and another couple in the back who didn´t talk so i didn´t know where they were from. nobody really talked that much the whole trip, except for one of the french girls who wouldn´t shut up. anyway, the van stopped about halfway to semuc and we got out and took in the beautiful view overlooking the mountains. it was really interesting because the mountains looked like thousands of small hills as far as you could see. we took some photos, then continued on our way.

when we got to the pueblo of lanquin, we turned off and continued down a dirt road until we came to a stop in a small parking lot. the driver said something about that these were the lanquin caves (grutas de lanquin) and we were going to stop here first and then continue on to semuc. well, we didn´t know we were coming here but figured since we were there, we´d pay and go check it out. i mean, we weren´t about to sit and wait in the van while the rest of the people went into the caves. so we paid and followed the three french girls and the driver into the caves. the driver was explaining about the caves and it was odd because he would only pay attention to the french girls. the old german couple was behind us and we were all trying to keep up with the driver and the french girls. then courtney said she though that the girls had paid for a guide to the caves and since we hadn´t that was probably why the guide/driver was ignoring us. that totally made sense, but then we were pissed because we didn´t even want to come there. we bought tickets for a ride to semuc, not the caves. and for us to have to sit in the van and wait for the french girls to have their guided tour was ridiculous. so we continued on with the german couple behind us. at one point the german woman turned around because i think it was difficult for her to climb up and down the slippery rocks. but her husband continued on with us. i didn´t really learn that much about the caves because the guide wouldn´t explain anything to us. but what i did catch is that is that the maya use the caves for religious ceremonies.

well, we continued on and i wanted to pass the french girls, so courtney and i did that, but then we came to what looked like a dead end. so we stood around and then the french group came up to where we were and the guide said to them in spanish ¨so here´s the end.¨ so courtney and the german guy started back and i followed and when i passed the guide, i heard him say to them ¨and now i have a little adventure for us, we´ll go down a little further on a different trail through the other part of the caves and come out on the other side.¨ like he was tricking us or something and we were missng out on something by not being able to go with them. we didn´t even want to go to the caves in the first place! we were really annoyed. we returned back where we came in and when we got back to the van, the german guy kept making comments to the other driver who had stayed with the van. i told courtney that i bet the german guy would go off on both of them at some point, because of the nature of germans. the german couldn´t speak spanish and his english was so-so, but he started getting really pìssed because it was getting later and we were still waiting for the french girls and their guide to get back. i kept telling courtney to get ready for a show from the german. sure enough when the french girls and the guide finally approached the van, the german blew up. the talkative french girl said ¨are we ready to go?¨ all smug and irritating and that was the last straw. the german guy yelled ¨hurry up! we´ve been waiting for you for over an hour!¨ then he started yelling at the guide/driver - in english - and he was saying he didn´t even want to go to the caves, that he and his wife are older and can´t climb around caves. why would they want to come there? then the french girl started arguing with him - in english - saying how they paid for a guide and the german said ¨we didn´t pay to come here!¨ it was hilarious! most of all because they were all arguing in english and it was all that stupid driver´s fault because he was trying to show us all up by taking those girls on that secret adventure. it was quite entertaining. we got on our way and the driver was trying to make up time so he was going way too fast on the road to semuc. it was crazy!

so we made it up to semuc in one piece and since we didn´t want to deal with any of the drama surrounding the french girls and their coveted guide, courtney and i tried to get a head start. we decided to climb the trail up overlooking the limestone pools first and then actually swim in them later. the trail up to the lookout was very steep and rocky, but our goal was to get up to the top before the french group caught up to us. i´d never climbed a trail like this before. there were parts where we actually had to climb up these ladders because it was so steep. finally, after about an hour we made it to the top and were rewarded with the amazing sight of the limestone pools below.

semuc champay from above

the cahabón river flows over (and under) the natural limestone bridge, which is why the water is a such a clear turquoise. we had a few minutes to enjoy the view when we heard the group coming. we took the last of our photos and went on our way. we followed the trail with miguel, who was supposed to be helping the other guide with the french girls. he said he didn´t feel like hiking with them because they weren´t very friendly, so asked if he could hike with us. we got down to the pools and miguel guided us around the bridge in order to view the river as it plowed underground. miguel told us that on time a tourist fell off the natural bridge and into the water and died, and when his body emerged downriver where the water hits daylight again, the only thing they found was a finger! he said the fish all at the rest! gross! later, we swam a bit and then it was time to go back to cobán.

the rio cahobón

when we finally got back the germans had had enough of the driver and at one point told us, in english, that he ws basically just stupid. i couldn´t have agreed more.

the next morning it was time to move on from cobán. we had another long trip ahead of us. we were heading north to flores in the petén district of guatemala. to get there we had to ride a microbus to sayaché, get on a boat across the river ¨la pasión¨ and then take another bus to santa elena/flores. so we begrudgingly walked over to the terminal and immediately hopped on a microbus packed with others on their way up north. it rained most of the way and we had to stop several times so the cobredor could cover everyone´s stuff that was on the top of the van. on the way, courtney made friends with this young guy who, when we got to sayaché, helped us with our stuff on the boat across the river. then, when we got to the other side, he ate with us at a comedor on the bank of the river. he told us he was in the military and works at the belize/guatemalan border putting data into a computer about other countries like the congo and haiti. we didn´t really understand, and he didn´t get into it any more than that, but it sounded like it was some kind of top secret government-type information. he was super nice and rode with us all the way to santa elena. he told us that when we passed through the belize/guatemalan border we should stop and say hi if he was there.

anyway, we took a mototaxi from santa elena to flores, an island full of hotels and restaurants which serves as a base for most people who are going to visit tikal which is about an hour and a half away. we were planning to go to tikal, but not until after we visited belize. so we found a cheap hotel and basically just crashed.

the next morning we were off to BELIZE. we took a bus to the border town of melchor de mencos. the road to melchor was not a paved one and the trip took a lot longer because of it. when we finally got there, we avoided the money changers, crossed the border and entered belize. our entry into belize was quite shocking. central american borders are very sketchy, dirty, filled with do-no-gooders and the migration offices are always kind of ramshackle. well, not so in belize. we entered the office and filled out a form (something we´ve never had to do crossing other borders in central america) and then when passing through inspection (again, never had to do that before), they confiscated my pears! all these sighs had warned about bringing in fruits and i guess i should have pitched them, but i only had four of them! anyway, we had known that belize was going to a bit more expensive than guatemala, honduras or el salvador, but we were in for a huge surprise.

when we got out of migration, taxi drivers bombarded us and we did need a taxi so we asked how much it was to go to benque, where we had to catch a bus to belize city. the price? $5!! ok, so that might not sound like a lot to people living in the u.s., but in el salvador, for example, you can get a taxi from one side of the city to the other for about $4 or $5. and the taxi to go to benque only had to go 3 km. we were starting to get nervous...we were thinking maybe we didn´t have enough money to actually do anything in belize.

we chatted with the cab driver, which was weird because it was in english. we were not used to speaking english, but since english is the official language in belize, we had to get accustomed to speaking it again. we started noticing all these chinese restaurants and tiendas and we asked the driver why and he said, ¨it´s the government. they let the chinese come here for free.¨ well, whatever the reason, there were a lot of chinese-owned establishments in belize. interestingly, belize seemed to be a mini-america melting pot of cultures and religions. we saw afro-carribbeans, latin americans, americans, chinese, and even saw a few mennonites, complete with horses and buggies.

we hopped on the bus to belize city and we even found the bus situation different from el salvador or guatemala. there were some kids standing up in the seats and the cobredor reprimanded them and made them sit down. in fact, he made everyone sit down and didn´t allow anyone to be standing in the aisle or anything. you would never see a cobredor doing that in el salvador....it´s mayhem on the buses there! courtney and i were saying ¨we´re not in central america anymore!¨

the biggest thing i noticed about being in belize (aside from the high prices for everything) was the lack of people. it was nice to be somewhere where the buses weren´t overloaded with passengers, houses weren´t everywhere and people weren´t crowding the highways. just to be able to look out and see an uninhabited landscape was nice. the books say that there are about 300,000 people in belize. ok, so belize is about the same size as el salvador and el salvador has 7,000,000 people. big difference!

so on the bus ride we were just hanging out when this guy comes back and asked us where we´re from. we got to talking to him and he told us he´s a record producer from dallas, texas and he was down there in belize looking for the ¨next big rap/hip-hop artist.¨ his name was aaron and he was born in belize. he said that he´d been shooting a video in belmopan with the rapper sitting a few seats up, named mr. program. ??? he showed us this CD and it´s by mr. program. then aaron started telling us how in belize they charge tourists exhorbitant prices and if we needed a belizean to go around with us, we could call him and he´d prevent us from being overcharged on park entrance fees and things like that. courtney and i were both thinking, ¨is this conversation really happening?¨ when the bus got into belize city, aaron, courtney, me and mr. program got off the bus and we said thanks for the offer, but we were on our way to one of the islands. so they pointed us in the direction of the water taxi terminal and we were on our way. throughout the rest of our trip in belize we kept asking people if they knew mr. program and surprisingly, some people actually did! go figure.

we got to the terminal with a decision to make: which island to go to? caye caulker or ambergris caye (san pedro). our books said san pedro was more expensive, but it is supposed to have better beaches and be a prettier island overall. caye caulker would be more budget-friendly, but not as scenic. then we saw a billboard up in the terminal that advertised a place called ¨pedro´s inn¨ that stated that it was the cheapest hotel on san pedro and had rooms for 20 belizean dollars ($10 american). the ticket booth lady said san pedro was prettier, so we decided to go to SAN PEDRO (AMBERGRIS CAYE).

we hopped on the boat and since it was getting dark, we didn´t see anything on the 1 1/2 hour boat ride. there weren´t too many people on the boat and we were the only tourists. the boat stopped at caye caulker to pick up some boxes and then we were off again for san pedro. when we finally docked it was about 7:00 and we had no idea where to go. the boat guys told us we´d need a taxi to pedro´s inn so we walked down the main street and checked out the hotels there first. we kept hearing hollers and shouts every couple of minutes coming from the various establishments on the main street. we were like ¨what the hell is going on?¨ the places were filled with americans and then we put two and two together and realized it was super bowl sunday. i had no idea! when you´re traveling you kind of lose track of the dates and sometimes the actual days. courtney and i rolled our eyes and continued on our search for a hotel. we found a taxi and told him to take us to pedro´s inn which was on the opposite end of the island.

when we got out there, courtney went in and i waited in the taxi. she came out and said they had one room left and it was $30 (american). the taxi driver said, ¨that is the cheapest you´ll find on the island, believe me.¨ $30 was waaaay more than we had budgeted for but it was the cheapest so we had to take it. so we unloaded our stuff and went into the bar which was filled with older americans - mostly men. they were all drunk and there was a huge flatscreen television on the wall with the super bowl on and everybody was hootin´ and hollerin´. we paid for our room and the australian owner, peter, kept yelling wisecracks at us, joking around. everyone was drunk....it was just strange being in there after being in central america so long, without that scene around us all the time like it is in the states. the bartender gave us the key and we walked up to the room which didn´t even have a door handle on it. the room we were faced with was, excuse my language, a piece of shit. the room measured probably about 6 feet x 6 feet, had two beds, a ceiling fan and a window. that´s it. the bathroom was shared with the rest of the rooms - all 40 of them - which were all on top of the bar below. we were pissed. not only did the room suck, but it was $30, not the $10 that they advertised. that was the whole reason we had come to san pedro! anyway, we sucked it up and decided to go down to the bar and eat something because we hadn´t eaten all day. that was another rip-off. we had no choice but to eat there because the hotel was out in the middle of nowhere. we got a pizza that cost $20 and had some beers. luckily, a few of the guys bought us some beers....which in belize are another rip-off. belikan, the belizean national beer, isn´t even a normal sized beer and it´s $2.50 a bottle. pilseners in el salvador are 70 cents and have more beer in them!

we met a bunch of characters in pedro´s. we first met wade, a pilot, who is basically living in san pedro because it is cheaper than living in the united states. and also, i suspect, to pick up women. i don´t think wade was the sharpest tool in the shed, but he was really nice. he just kept saying how he had all these different women coming to visit him in a couple of weeks. i looked around the bar and i came to the conclusion that it was kind of sad. all these retired american men, divorced, getting wasted, drinking jager shots, trying to re-live their college years. there were a few women who came in too - these older 45 plus year old women with leathery skin and dyed blond hair drinking shots and woohooing. it was definitely not my cup of tea, this whole scene. i mean, every once in a while it can be fun to go out and have a good time and act like an idiot at a bar, but after talking to those men, it was obvious that this is something that they do every single night. but you know, they are doing what they want to and i guess that´s what matters. in any event, it was interesting chatting with these people. i even played beer pong, which, jeez, i haven´t played since like 1993 or something. it´s been a while, but they (and courtney) forced me to play...i don´t know why! my partner was some guy who was on a show called ¨three sheets.¨ i won the game for us, surprisingly. maybe because i wasn´t crazy drunk. anyway, after a few hours in that place, we called it a night. it was ok, but all those people were just a reminder of how i don´t want to be when i´m in my 40´s or 50´s.

the next morning we got up and decided to walk down to the main street in town and see if we could find a different hotel. we asked at a few and they were all around $40-$60 and that wasn´t any better. then we came to a place called ¨thomas hotel¨ and there was an old man in the lobby. we asked him what his prices were and he pointed to a sign in the office that stated his rates were $35 a night. he said he could give us a discount on the tax so it´d only be $32.50. he kept telling us that the rooms were really nice, so we went up and checked one out. we were surprised because it had two huge beds, our own bathroom, a fridge and a television with cable. we told him immediately that we were staying there and that we´d be back after lunch. we were planning on staying on san pedro for two more days and if we were going to pay $30 a night we sure weren´t gonna keep staying in that dump pedro´s inn. the cool thing was, thomas (the hotel´s named after him, the owner) was born and raised on the island, so we felt better about staying in a local joint. and it was right on the beach! we were much happier because we were going to be getting what we were paying for. just because pedro´s is the cheapest (by a measly $5 at that) doesn´t mean it´s the better deal. we hiked back pedro´s, after eating some horrible mexican food, grabbed our backpacks and hiked it back out of there. as we were leaving, we ran into the bartender and she was like, ¨oh, where are you girls off to?¨ courtney, who was really mad about the whole thing, answered ¨another hotel.¨ the bartender was taken aback and asked why, didn´t we like our room? we said that first of all, they totally false advertised, and secondly, you don´t even get what you pay for. seriously, it wasn´t the room itself...i´ve stayed in more rustic conditions than that....it was the fact that it was $30! a room like that should be no more than $3-$5. anyway, that bartended seemed miffed, but we didn´t care. we lugged our stuff down through town to thomas´s and we were happy.

i really don´t have much to say about san pedro. it was really beautiful and the reef is right there. but the influx of retired american folks, buzzing by on their golf carts and being loud kind of took away from san pedro´s beauty. it´s kind of how i imagine the bahamas to be. courtney ran into a local guy who said a developer who wants to build a huge resort is trying to get the local school torn down to make room for the resort. the local said that there´s nothing the local community can do about it because tourism rules in belize and the developer´s interests are more important to the government since tourism is the biggest industry belize has. it´s quite sad.

we did run into a couple salvadorans who were our waiters in the resturants where we ate. it was funny talking to them because they seemed excited to talk about el salvador. one guy was about my age and said his family had fled the war in el salvador in the 80´s and came to belize where the government gave them land because they were refugees.

you can´t go wrong with beaches like this (unless you stay at pedro´s inn....)

the rest of our time on san pedro was completely uneventful. i´m not sorry i went, but i was a little disappointed that i didn´t like it more. you win some, you lose some. we headed out of san pedro, back to belize city and on to a much better part of our trip.

our next destination was the COMMUNITY BABOON SANCTUARY which is located northwest of belize city, in a tiny village called bermudian landing. getting there was a bit challenging. we took a bus from belize city and had to get off at a desvio in burrell boom. we waited forever before some guy gave us a ride to the town of burrell boom. he said he would give us a ride to the baboon sanctuary for $20 and we said, ¨um, no.....¨ i mean, he had just given us a 20-minute ride for free and it was only another 1/2 hour to the sanctuary. we decided to just try our luck getting another ride. we waited where we were for a few minutes, then some guy told us there was a bus stop a kilometer down the road, so we started walking. a group of school kids caught up with us and walked with us, telling us what everything was....the schools, churches, etc. when we got to the bus stop, miraculously a ministry of agriculture pickup offered us a ride, so we hopped in the back and were delivered to the baboon sanctuary in no time.

there was nobody there, the visitor´s center was vacant except for one woman who was working there. she sid we could camp there for $5 a person and we could leave our backpacks in the center if we wanted. we paid the entrance fee and with that got a short guide into the sanctuary. the thing that is cool about the sanctuary is that it´s not a national park - it´s a community-run project. the monkeys, which are not baboons but howler monkeys (the howlers are called baboons in belize) are protected by a voluntary agreement signed by the members of bermudian landing and six other communities in the area. the members of the communities, who all own the land where the howler monkey habitat is, voluntarily signed an agreement vowing to not destroy the habitat of the monkeys. so far, every community has kept true to its word and over 1,600 monkeys are thriving in the forests of the sanctuary.

our guide, kim, took us across the road and pointed out some of the birds, plants and trees of the area before taking us through a clearing where we saw this huge iguana perched in a tree.

a cool iguana taking a nap

this flower is called ¨hot lips¨

then, out of nowhere, came a group of 7 howlers. they climbed down through the trees near to where we were standing. one of the howlers had a little baby howler that clung to her. the guide explained that these were all females. the males (who make all the noise) stayed deep in the forest. i was staring up at one of the monkeys when i felt something drip on me and i realized another monkey higher up was peeing on me! i moved out of the way, grossed out, but laughing because i´d never had that happen to me before and probably wouldn´t ever again. it was amazing watching them, just in the wild, not in a zoo or anything. we watched them a while, then moved on, checking out other stuff in the forest.

two female howlers

the same two howlers, but the baby decided to make an appearance as well

we returned to the visitor´s center and decided we wanted to eat. kim told us there was a little hut down the road that had good food. we headed down there and ordered food and waited at a rickety table outside. some guy came and started talking to us - his name was russell, and he had his son with him. he works as a guide for tourists and was telling us how it was hard for local guys like him to get business because of the monopoly some bigger outfits have giving guides throughout belize. see, cruise ships make a stop in belize city and the passengers have the opportunity to get off the ship and then go somewhere for the day. what happens is big companies get the first opportunity to sign up people on the cruise ship, so end up getting the bulk of the business. meanwhile, guides like russell have to stand out in front of the gate where the passengers get off the ship and try to catch a group of toursts that haven´t already signed up on the ship. so it´s just up to chance. so most guides have to buy their own van so they´re able to take small groups to the belize zoo or any other area of interest to tourists in belize. belize is so small that you can practically go anywhere and back in a car in a short amount of time.

anyway, russell was going on about how things aren´t fair in belize. the poor people never get any opportunities to make money. the more we were in belize, the more we got to see just how belize works. where is all the tourism money going? it isn´t going to the belizeans.

russell chatted with us for a while then said if we needed a ride the next morning to belize city, he could take us because he had to go meet the cruise ship and try to get a group. he said he´d stop by the visitor´s center around 7:00 if we wnated a ride. we thanked him and made our way back to the visitor´s center. on the way, we stopped at this tienda which was literally, out in the middle of nowhere, and it was guess what - chinese owned! we thought we´d be able to get some fruit or something, but the store didn´t have anything like that....just huge cans of stuff like pork-n-beans.

when we were going into the visitor´s center back at the sanctuary, an older man with a huge beard approached us and at first i thought he was a bolo. but then he introduced himself as fallet and we realized he was one of the founders of the sanctuary from what we had read in the center earlier. he asked us if we were interested in doing a night hike. we thought it´d be cool, so we signed up. like i said before, fallet, along with a dr. rob harwitch, founded the sanctuary in 1985. dr. harwitch had been doing biology studies in the are when he ran into fallet. fallet asked him what he was doing on private land and dr. harwitch said he was interested in the area and suggested the idea of the sanctuary. fallet said that dr. harwitch was lucky that it was he who ran into him because normally strangers found on private land usually found themselves on the wrong end of a 12-gauge shotgun. anyway, fallet gave us a discount because we had our own headlamps and told us to meet him at 7:00 and wear bug repellant.

in the meantime, we decided to hike down the road to the belize river. one of fallet´s dogs decided to come with us. when we got to the side road that led down to the river, a guy came down from a house above and cut us off. he introduced himself as shane and said he was trying to start an ecological education center here. another guy came down ahead of us and shane said he and his friends were all working together to try and get the center started. he said he had cut out some trails on his property through the forest and wanted to show us. we followed him and i didn´t think anything of it. shane was telling us the names of the trees and the history of the plants and stuff. the trail wove around the forest and the male howler monkeys began to start their 4:00 rituals. they were so unbelievably loud....like lions roaring or something. anyway, we walked through the forest with shane and his fried and shane asks if we thought we´d be able to find our way out of here if we needed to. i thought that was a weird thing to say and i started thinking - what if this whole things is a set-up, they´re just luring us somewhere where we can´t get out. at least fallet´s dog was with us. but then i started noticing things we had passed before and soon we emerged up by the road and shane´s house, where he lived with his grandmother.

all shane´s friends were out horsing around and listening to reggae. they brought out a couple of chairs for me and courtney and now we were hanging out with this group of guys who seemed like they were ready to party. shane told one of his friends to go get some rum at the ¨china shop¨ and i thought ¨they´re going to get rum at a place that sells dishes?¨ and then i realized they were talking about the tienda we had visited earlier. anyway, the next thing we knew we were drinking these really strong rum drinks. it was quite funny hanging out with them, but fallet´s dog seemed to be telling us it was time to go. he kept getting up and walking towards the road, looking back at us like ¨come on guys.¨ i did want to leave because it was getting late and we had to meet fallet at 7:00. we said goodbye and shane seemed sad to see us go. courtney told me on the way back to the visitor´s center that shane had mentioned to her that he couldn´t believe we let him and his friend take us into the forest like that. he said he thought it was cool that we trusted them, that we weren´t snobby. i said i didn´t even think twice about it until he mentioned our ability to find our way back!

fallet met us later and we set out for our night hike (after trying some cashew wine made by fallet´s son). we entered the forest with our headlamps on and immediately i saw all around us this reflection like the ground was wet with dew. after examining a leaf more closely, i realized it wasn´t moisture, but spiders! thousands and thousands of them....some of them were sooooo huge! it was so cool seeing how they were all around us, everywhere, in the trees and all over the ground. it made me more aware of the fact that even though we can´t always see them (or other insects) when we are walking through the forests, they are still there. so i tried to be extra careful with my steps so as not to step on them and kill them. we kept hearing all these crashes throughout the forest and we´d turn off our lights and just stand there and listen. it was creepy but soooo cool! three hours later when the hike was over, fallet apologized because he said we didn´t really see any animals except bats, but we were like ¨no! it was soooo cool!!¨

fallet gave us the key to the visitor´s center so we could get at our backpacks when we needed to. we said gracias and went about trying to get everything set up. it ws freezing cold and so we layered on the clothes. this was the first time sleeping in the tent since i bought it last year. it was really cheap and not that big, but we needed a small tent to be able to carry it in our backpacks. we couldn´t have a huge tent with a bunch of poles because it would´ve weighed us down too much. we were basically hillbilly campers because we didn´t have a raincover or anything. so courtney had bought a huge piece of plastic at the ferreteria in el salvador. we cut it in half and used half for the bottom of the tent and the other half fo rthe top to keep rain out. it was quite a spectacle. but, if anyone reading this knows me, this is how i operate most of the time.....case in point, my car back home with its ducktape repairs. haha.

it didn´t rain at all that night, but it was a tight fit in the tent. courtney kept waking me up throughout the night to tell me she thought there was somebody prowling around. i looked outside and all i saw was a cow wandering over by fallet´s car. courtney insisted she saw two people and i´m like ¨it´s a cow with horns eating grass!¨ i didn´t really sleep that much more after that.

we woke up super early the next day and took down the tent. around 6:30, russell pulled up into the sanctuary and asked if we wanted a ride. we said yeah and scrambled to get our stuff together. we hopped into his van and greeted russell and his wife, who turned out to be the same woman who cooked us food the day we were chatting with russell. the trip to belize city was fast and russel let us out at the bus terminal. we thanked him and wished him luck. we boarded the bus for belmopan because we were headed for THE BELIZE ZOO. the belize zoo is one of the few zoos where its animals are housed in huge enclosures that are exactly like their habitats. the zoo takes in animals that have been rescued and attempts to rehabilitate them so they can be released back into the wild.

the bus left us off at the zoo entrance. we had to walk down a dirt road for a bit before coming to the visitor´s center. the gift shop let us leave our backpacks in the office. we were pretty stinky since we had slept in our clothes in the tent the night before and had not showered. we changed in the bathroom, brushed our teeth and were then ready to see the zoo. we were greeted with a photo of harrison ford, outside the gift shop, from what looked like the 80´s. he looked super young and was wearing a belize zoo t-shirt and i was wondering what that was all about.

the zoo was great! i was excited to see the tapirs. we saw jaguars, more howler monkeys, the most horrible-smelling peccaries, ocelots, tigrillos, cool harpy eagles and so much more. everything about the zoo was great except the groups of cruise ship tourists that swarmed the place for about two hours. why are americans so loud??? when we were looking at the jaguar, this dumb woman kept going ¨here kitty kitty!¨ really loud. but, what are ya gonna do? they´re enjoying their vacation i suppose. but guess who we saw? russell! we were happy to see that he was successful in getting a group to take to the zoo.

a tapir!

spider monkeys being their awesome selves

a toucan....their colors are so amazing!

a smaller, different species of toucan...these toucans were really friendly too. i couldn´t get enough pictures of them!

i swear, if i am in a bad mood, all i have to do is look at this picture.

a puma hanging out. it´s sad to think that el salvador used to have all these animals and there are basically none left.

now for the male howlers. if i could get the video tool on this blog to work, i´d post a video of them howling....but it´s not working right now so you´ll just have to use your imagination. (well, what d´ya know...i got it to work! the video´s below...)

a tigrillo who had just woken up from a nap

one of the jaguars....he wouldn´t stop pacing in front of us, so most of the photos i took of him are blurry.

one of the two harpy eagles. i had never seen a harpy eagle before.

a little blue bird

when we left the zoo it was raining and we had to wait for a while on the highway until a bus for the border passed. but once we hopped in we had a couple hours to rest. except for having to pay a steep $15 belizean departure tax, the trip back across the border into guatemala was uneventful. we made it to flores later that night and crashed at the same hotel we had stayed at before.

our plan was to camp at TIKAL for two nights, then take the one bus that goes through tikal and up to uaxactún, another mayan site. therefore, we didn´t need a roundtrip ticket on a microbus from flores, which is what most tourists need. there are a few hotels in tikal, but most people stay in flores, take a co-op microbus up to tikal and return the same day. even if you stay in tikal, you can use your roundtrip ticket to return when you want. but we didn´t need to do that because we´d be taking the local bus up to uaxactún as well as the local bus back from uaxactún to santa elena. however, everywhere we went in flores, nobody would sell us a one-way ticket. it was so annoying and when we asked about the local bus schedule (the buses that all the people who aren´t tourists take) from the terminal in santa elena, nobody in flores would tell us the truth. they all said there was no service up there. then someone said that maybe there was one bus, but it left at 6:00 a.m. whatever. we finally just chanced it and got a mototaxi to the terminal and found out there were local buses that went up to tikal all day. ugh! what liars people can be just to earn a buck. anyway, we got on the next bus up to tikal and when we got there i was relieved to set up camp and get tikal under way. despite all the other great places we´d been on the trip, tikal was the point of the whole thing. i´d been waiting to see tikal for forever and i was finally going to get the chance!

we set up our hillbilly tent which took forever because the ground, while a grassy field, was almost pure rock underneath. we had to use gallon jugs of water to hold the plastic down on top of the tent because it was a little bit windy. the campground caretaker, gonzalo, was super friendly, so we felt totally at ease leaving our stuff in the tent while we went to the visitor´s center and checked things out. if we entered the park after 3:00 p.m. we could use our ticket for the next day. we decided to get our tickets and then set up a guide for the next day at 6:00 a.m. so we could check out the place before all the tourist groups got there.

at 6:00 the next morning, we met juan, our guide, at the entrance and set off to finally see tikal, the best-known symbol of the mayan world. tikal´s original name was ¨musul¨ meaning ¨meeting place of pueblos,¨ and the more modern name of tikal means ¨place of voices.¨ tikal was powerful, but fell second behind that of el mirador to the north (on the border of guatemala and mexico, and site of the largest temples in the mayan world. i really want to go there, but it is an undertaking. two days of hiking, there and back...you need about a week or so just to make the trip. maybe one day i´ll go!). this was around the time of christ, although construction at tikal began as early as 500 BC. because a huge volcano erupted in el salvador in 250-300 AD, which covered many parts of guatemala with ash, el mirador lost power which resulted in tikal and uaxactún (25 km to the north) battling for power. tikal eventually won out with help from other mayan cities like kaminalijuyú (modern day guatemala city). so tikal then controlled petén for about 300 centuries. at that time the population was between 50,000 and 100,000 people. but in the middle of the 6th century, tikal lost its dominance because of growing powers in other mayan cities like caracol, in belize, and catakmul in the north. tikal once again regained power in the 7th century and tikal continued to build temples up to 869 AD when it seems as if everything stopped. tikal was abandoned in the 10th century after the collapse of the mayan civilization in 900 AD.

the old sign of tikal when it was called ¨musul¨

juan led us first to the palacio de acanaladuras where the maya had found a way to capture the rain as a source of water for the civilization. because the whole area is limestone, there is no water source nearby, so finding a way to bring water to the people was a necessity. next we went to temple V, which is huge. it was just recently excavated and restored in 2003. juan told us we could climb up to the top if we wanted, he said he´d wait for us. so we did and it was nauseating! it had been raining a bit and so the wooden steps (which were vertical ladder-type steps) were kind of slippery. when i stepped on the top, i had serious vertigo. the landing was really narrow and there was no guardrail or anything. i had to sit down in front and just take in the view like that. but it was cool because in the distance were the tops of temples III and IV. it was a great view but i had to get down from there.

temple V

view from the top of temple V

another view from the top of temple V

after we both made it down, juan led us to the plaza de los siete templos and el mundo perdido. we then went to temple IV which has a claim to fame as being used for the star wars movie, return of the jedi...the scenes with the ewoks. anyway, we decided not to climb it just yet because we were planning on staying another day and figured we could do it later.

temple IV

another huge central american tree...an amate

juan led us to the great plaza where the most photographed temple of the mayan world, temple I or temple of the jaguar is located. also in the great plaza is temple II or temple of the masks. both are completely uncovered and juan told us that the excavation of these temples has caused the most environmental destruction in the park. the rest of the temples and structures in the park that have been excavated are only partially excavated - most only half uncovered - in order to leave the trees and plants that have grown in, around and over the temples, growing.

the plaza is beautiful and is flanked on both sides by the northern acropolis and the central acropolis. we didn´t climb temple II (climbing temple I isn´t allowed) just then, saving that for later.

temple I, temple of the jaguar

temple II, temple of the masks

by the time our tour ended, the throngs of tourists were beginning to arrive so we were glad to take a break back at the campground. while courtney was showering, i was talking to gonzalo and he asked me what i studied in school and i said history and anthropology. he immediately thought i was an archaeologist and i assured him that i wasn´t, that i had studied cultural anthropology and took only a few archaeology classes. he seemed to ignore this little fact and wanted to know what i thought of the reconstruction of temple IV. i told him i didn´t know, that we hadn´t seen to much of it yet. he said that it was a bad reconstruction because the guatemalan archaeologists doing the work were inexperienced. i told him i didn´t know one way or the other - i´ve never studied how to reconstruct a temple before!

anyway, we ate and then headed for the museo litico in the visitor´s center. the museum was really informative about the discovery and excavation of tikal. tikal was discovered in 1848 by an expedition of the guatemalan government led by modesto mendez. a swiss scientist came shortly after and removed parts of temples I and IV and took them back to switzerland where they are in a museum. in 1881, english archaeologist alfred maudslay came and photographed the place. this started a huge project to begin excavation and in 1956 that was started by the guatemalan institute of anthropology and the university of pennsylvania. most everything was finished by 1984, but there is ongoing work being done constantly.

juan made a good point though when he was walking with us earlier. we told him we lived in el salvador and he asked us if we´d ever been to joya de cerén, an archaeological site outside of san salvador. we said we had and he told us we were lucky to have ssen that because it´s the only preserved site in the central american mayan world that shows us what life was like for the normal, everyday maya. tikal, uaxactún, copán, etc. are all sites that while grand, only give us an idea of the lives of the elite. joya de cerén is a site that was preserved by ash from a volcanic eruption in san salvador and is sometimes referred to as ¨the pompeii of the americas.¨ most people think joya de cerén isn´t interesting, but what people don´t realize is that it´s not always the big temples that are the most important!

after we visited the museum, we went back to the grand plaza and climbed up temple II and just hung out there taking pictures until the sun went down and we got kicked out with the rest of the tourists because it was 6:00.

that night it rained a lot and the next day when we hiked up to temple IV it was still raining, so we didn´t get to see the great view...just fog. we waited it out, but it didn´t stop, so we climbed down and decided to hike down to temple VI or the temple of the inscriptions. it was a long hike out there, but we finally made it.

view from the top of temple IV, at least on the morning we were decided to climb it

back of temple VI, temple of the inscriptions

more spider monkeys!

complejo Q (that might not be right...usually the complejos are the unexcavated sites, but i looked on the map and that´s what it said...?)

top of complejo Q

my new favorite tree, the ¨palo jiote,¨ or ¨indio desnudo,¨ or in mayan, ¨chakaj¨

one of the colorful pavos that roam tikal

after temple VI we decided to go hike the trail on the other side of the park. there was supposed to be a tree lookout on the trail. we started out and found the mirador, but it was kind of rickety and it was super slippery because it was made of wood. courtney climbed up first and i followed, but when i got to the first landing, i said forget it. it was foggy and i knew i wouldn´t be able to see anything at the top and i seriously didn´t want to fall to my death climbing a stupid tree lookout. so i backed up and went down while courtney went up top.

courtney climbing down from the tree lookout

we continued down the trail and then it started raining horribly and we sludged through for what seemed like forever. finally after more than two hours, we came out of the forest and back to the campground. we had been on our feet for more than six hours that day!

our abode for two days in tikal (and at the baboon sanctuary)

comparing me with the tent, it´s hard to imagine both courtney and i fit in there. but we did!

we were waiting for the bus to pass through tikal for UAXACTÚN around 3:00 when courtney decided to ask the guys at the info booth about cerro cahui, which we were thinking about visiting on our way back from uaxactún in a couple of days. all of a sudden i heard courtney yelling my name and i look up to see the bus passing by. so we ran to catch the bus and just made it. on the ride up through the jungle, i really felt like i as in the middle of nowhere - probably because we WERE in the middle of nowhere. there was nothing but trees on either side of the one-lane dirt road for 25 km.

when we finally entered uaxactún, i felt like i was back in time. uaxactún is so far removed from any big town that the people have been able to retain most of the mayan traditions. there were no cars, except the pickups used to make trips into the mountains. anyway, so we got into uaxactún and the bus left some poeple off at the entrance. then the bus swung and came out in front of the disused airstrip. there the bus stopped and a kid came running up to greet the bus and told the cobredor to tell the gringas to get off the bus. there was all this commotion about whether we should get off or not and i looked out the window to see a familiar face.

see, back on our first day in tikal, we came across this woman selling these really cool dolls made out of corn husks and flowers and other things found in the forest. we thought they were really unique and wanted to buy some, so we asked the woman if she was going to be selling them on sunday because we didn´t want to have to store thme while we camped. she said she wasn´t going to be there the next day or the day after, unfortunately. we mentioned that we were going up to uaxactún on sunday and she said ¨i´m from uaxactún.¨ we asked her if it would possible to find her in uaxactún and buy some fo the dolls from her when we were there and she said, ¨sure, just ask for susie consuelo.¨ so we said we would and went on our way. on sunday, when we were walking through the park, we saw another girl selling those dolls in the same spot. we asked if she knew susie consuelo and she said ¨yeah¨ and so we told her how we were going up to uaxactún that afternoon. so when we got on the bus, that same girl was the bus too and she got off at the first entrance to uaxactún, ran down to susie´s house and told her that two gringas were looking for her. we didn´t know that, but when we saw susie standing outside our bus with her son, we put two and two together.

anyway, susie said we should stay at the place where the bus had stopped, so we got off the bus and followed susie. turns out, the tienda where we were going to stay is also the house where the owner of the bus lives. (that worked out for us when we had to leave a couple days later!) so we got settled in and susie led the way to a comedor where we scarfed down eggs and beans. later we went back to the tienda/hotel and susie said she could go with us to the ruins and show us around the next day. so we made a plan for the next morning.

there´s not much electricity in uaxactún - only about 3 hours a day. so it was lights out rather early. the next morning we got up and went down to the tienda and then decided to go find some pan dulce and café. we walked across the airstrip and to a panaderia and bought some pan and asked where we could get café. there was nobody in the place where we were directed to, so we just wandered around the dirt roads up the way. at one house an old woman was looking out the window and i asked if she knew where we could get some café and she said she could make us some. so she invited us in her house and chatted with us for a while. after sharing our pan dulce with her and drinking our cups of coffee, we said goodbye and went to find susie back at the tienda.

the old airstrip in uaxactún

uaxactún´s catholic church

little girl hanging out in the tienda in front of where we stayed in uaxactún

i think this old man thought i was a goofball, but he enjoyed seeing the picture i took of him

susie took us up a back trail to the first set of ruins, which were awesome. the thing that is really cool about uaxactún (and parts of tikal as well) is that there are huge hills amongst the forest that are all unexcavated temples and structures. i can´t imagine how much more there is to discover and how big these cities really were.

susie in front of the uaxactún ruinas sign

susie was great because she was all for climbing up to the tops of the ruins. she kept talking about how the kids in uaxactún are bad and do all this stuff to the ruins. it was kind of comical how she´d keep mentioning how back in the day such and such ruin was in better shape before those darned ¨niños traviesos¨ ruined everything.

the ruins in uaxactún seemed a lot more grand to me and i think it was just because we were the only ones there and everything was silent and eerie. susie explained how tikal workers came up and put in all these signs about uaxactún but that uaxactún doesn´t get any help financially from tikal. yet tikal charges people to get to uaxactún. and on all the signs, they have the tikal logo and don´t put anything about uaxactún....like tikal encompasses uaxactún. when in reality, they were two separate cities who fought for power in the past and are still two separate villages today.

the inside of a fruit called ¨huevos de caballo¨ is sticky, just like glue. susie said that when kids can´t afford glue for school they sometimes collect this gooey substance to do their schoolwork. also, parrots eat the fruit.

susie in front of some tombs

anyway, we went deep into the forest where susie showed us these holes in the ground that the maya used for cooling off in the heat of the summer (dry season). those were creepy! no way was i climbing down there!

a natural air conditioner....a hole in the ground in the forest

after seeing the ruins in group A we crossed through town to the ruins in group E, which are super impressive because these are the temples constructed to act as an observatory. there are four temples in all - one temple faces three smaller ones directly in front of it. on the shortest day of the year, december 21st (winter solstice), the sun rises behind the southernmost temple; on march 21st (the vernal equinox) and september 23 (the autumnal equinox) the sun rises behind the middle temple; and on the longest day of the year, june 21st (summer solstice), the sun rises behind the northernmost temple. below these temples is one of the oldest temples in petén. susie kept saying how the buildings in tikal are all so young compared to those in uaxactún and that some of the uaxactún structures date back thousands of years before christ.

the three temples behind which the sun rises

one of the temples used for the sun observations

view of the three temples used for the sun observations from the top of another temple

so we came upon this sign and asked susie ¨who is ´they´¨ and she answered ¨the monkeys!¨ apparently when monkeys see trash laying around this area, they put it in the trash cans!?!?!?!?! so the sign says ¨if they can, we can too.¨ i would´ve died to see a monkey putting a churro bag in a trash can.....

susie climbing down from the top of a temple

by the time we left the ruins in group E i was completely happy that we had come to uaxactún and i decided that it was my favorite part of the trip.

we ate a really late lunch - it was already about 3:00 - at the same comedor and when we asked what she had, we were told that ddeer was the choice that day. so we ordered that and invited susie to eat with us. we got to talking to the woman who owned the comedor, maria, and her husband. they thought it was cool that we lived in el salvador and that it was even cooler that i was married to a salvadoran. that deer meat was good, really good. at one point courtney said to me ¨looks like they have an AA (alcoholics anonymous) group here too.¨ and i said, ¨how do you know that?¨ she pointed to a sign above the door at maria´s house next door. i looked at the sign and said ¨that doesn´t say anything about AA!¨ the sign said ¨recuerdo de coban, c.a.¨ courtney thought it said ¨bienvenidos a grupo AA¨ hahaha. we laughed so hard at that and courtney said ¨i need to get my eyes checked.¨

susie´s son, guidman, hanging out at the comedor

maria with her two main dishes....deer and pavo meat

we left the comedor to go back and rest. susie was going to bring back her dolls. her son, guidman, who was so adorable, wanted to hang out with us while his mom went to get her stuff, so she let him stay. we hung out with guisman for a couple hours, then susie came back with her dolls for us to pick from. we bought a lot - as well as some chicle natural (natural gum). uaxactún is a chicle harvesting area, the chicle is harvested from the chico zapote tree and the farmers who do the harvesting are called chicleros. they also harvest xate, a decorative plant that is exported to other countries. i tried the chicle and it tastes just like a tree, but it´s surprisingly good.

susie with her dolls all set up to sell to us

guidman hanging in the hammock singing to us

after we bought our muñecas, we went back to the comedor again. we had to eat then because the electricity wouldn´t be on later. we were actually happy to go back and eat more deer meat. we chatted a really long time with everyone and when it was time to leave, i was sad. i was sad that we had to leave uaxactún the next day and i think susie was sad to see us go. she had been super nice to us and took us to those ruins and never asked us for one cent the whole time. when she came back to our hotel with us, we gave her some money and she seemed really shocked, but grateful. i knew she was super poor because when we bought those dolls, guisman said to her ¨now we can eat.¨ she couldn´t even sell her dolls on saturday or sunday in tikal because she had to go out and look for beans in the milpa. anyway, i felt bad for her, but you know, she´s trying by making those dolls. so i hope she has luck with that.

we gave susie and guisman a hug and i though susie was going to cry and i was sad. tehy went on their way and soon after, it was lights out.

a guy driving his horses up the road

a uaxactún road

at first when we passed this pig i thought it was a dog!

we had to be up super early to catch the only bus out at 6:00. we got on the bus and went around town picking everyone up, and then stopped again in front of the tienda and the bus owner got on and told everyone that if they had any pacaya (an edible plant) or turkeys or anything that they wouldn´t be able to take them through tikal because tikal bans taking those things out of the protected forest. which is understandable....they don´t want another el salvador on their hands up there.

so we got all the way down to the front entrance gates to tikal and the inspectors got on the bus and immediately seized a bag from this old woman, which seems to have had a dead turkey in it. they they seized this huge bag of pacaya from this other guy. the old woman was pissed. but so were the driver and the owner because then they had to straighten things out with the inspectors. our bus was detained for a least 45 minutes while they straightened it out! ugh.

finally we made it to el remate and courtney and i got off the bus and found somewhere to eat. we were going to take an 8:00 p.m. bus back to guatemala city, so we had all day to kill. we decided to hike out to CERRO CAHUI, a reserve in el remate. the lady at the restaurant where we ate said if we wanted we could leave our backpacks there and pick them up when we got back. we said thanks and were on our way.

we had to hike a ways down a road before we finally go to the entrance to the park. the guards told us it would take about three hours if we did the whole trail, so we set out, not knowing what to expect. the first part was pretty easygoing, but then we hit the uphill part and it seemed like all we did was climb up steep rocks for two hours. but once we got to the first lookout it was worth it for we had a beautiful view of lago petén itza. we hiked up even further and there was another lookout with the further lagunas in view as well. the rest of the trail was basically easy downhill after that amongst the amazing forest.

view of lago petén itza

the trail through cerro cahui

view of the lake from ground level

we made it back in roughly the three hours we were told it would take and made our way to the restaurant to get our stuff. from there, we hopped on a bus back to santa elena, stopping along the way at a new mall that was in the middle of construction, but whose pizza hut was open. we figured after all the hiking we had done over the past three weeks, we deserved some pizza.

back at the santa elena terminal, we were about three hours early. it was only 5:00 and our bus didn´t leave until 8:00 so we bought our tickets and then went in search of an internet place. we found one and wasted about an hour checking our email, then walked back to the terminal. we sat around waiting for 8:00 to roll around and at around 7:30 i watched all the people on the 7:30 bus get on and depart. at around 7:45 i went to buy some o.j. and cookies and i gave the kid a 100 quetzal bill and he had to go get change. i said ok and he left and then all of a sudden i hear courtney ask the guy announcing the buses if the bus that just left was the 8:00 one. he said yeah and told courtney to run out there and stop it. what happened in the next five minutes was complete insanity.

i forgot about my change and grabbed my big backpack and my recuerdos i had in another bag and ran out after courtney. courtney came running back and said she´d caught the bus and they were waiting. i gave the cobredor my backpack to put underneath the bus, then realized i´d forgotten my change and had to run back in. plus i had to go to the bathroom....we were on the verge of taking an 8-hour bus ride. i got my change from that kid, then went to go to the bathroom and that stupid guy hollered at me and told me i couldn´t go because the bus was waiting. i said ¨it´s your fault - the bus isn´t supposed to leave until 8:00.¨ he just shrugged his shoulders. so i went back to get on the bus and then i remembered my other backpack. i had asked courtney to hold it while i bought my o.j. and so when i got on the bus i asked her if she had it and she said no, so i had to run back in the terminal like and idiot. thank god there it was sitting on the bench. jeez! finally i got back on the bus and we took off and me and courtney were like ¨did that just happen?¨ it was so crazy!

the bus stopped a couple times so i was able to go to the bathroom thank god. i slept fitfully on the bus and finally we approached guatemala city. when we got to the drop-off point, we told a taxi driver we wanted to go to the terminal where the buses leave to go to the border las chinamas. he said ok and when we got to the terminal there were hardly any buses there. it was only 4:30 a.m. and another bus driver said that there weren´t any buses to the border until 6:30 a.m. but he said that his bus went to jutiapa and from there we could switch buses and go to the border. he said it was 30 quetzales and we said ¨we paid 30 quetzales to go from the border to guatemala city¨ and he said we´d only have to pay the 30 quetzales on his bus and on the next one in jutiapa we wouldn´t have to pay. we had no choice because we didn´t want to sit around the terminal for two hours. so we got on and about halfway into the three hour trip we picked up this guy who stood up front and chit-chatted with the driver all the way to jutiapa. right before we got off the bus, the driver said ¨don´t pay on the next bus because everything has been taken car of.¨ so we got on the next bus and i saw that the guy who had been on our bus chit-chatting with the driver was the cobredor on this bus. we got about 5 minutes into the trip when the cobredor came back and wanted five quetzales from each of us and we said ¨no, we paid on the previous bus. we paid to go to the border.¨ and he said ¨no, that driver lied to you, you have to pay us.¨ we argued with him and he was basically saying it was not his problem and that we had better pay up. so we gave him his 10 quetzales and i said ¨you know, i think it´s better to ask the police what they think.¨ he didn´t say anything and i told courtney that driver of the other bus probably gave him the money. or maybe he did stiff him. but the point was they think we´re idiots just because we´re tourists and they were robbing us. it pissed me off....it wasn´t the money, it was the principle. and i looked up and the driver and cobredor are just laughing and that pissed me off more.

so when the bus stopped at the border, i got off and wrote down the license plate number so that the cobredor could see me. he had a nervous look on his face, but didn´t say anything. so we went through migration and i wasn´t sure if i wanted to say anything or not, but then i saw a police officer. courtney kept egging me on saying i was good at doing this kind of thing. so i was finally like, you know what...those jackasses shouldn´t be able to get away with that. so i went up to the police officer and i told him what happened. he was super helpful and told us to come with him while he asked them about it. so we appraoched them and i explained again what happened and that stupid cobredor was like ¨wait, wait...they are right, they got tricked by the other bus company, but that´s not our fault.¨ and i said ¨well then you need to talk it out with your friend, the driver of the other bus who you were so friendly with.¨ and he didn´t have any response to that. i said that they think they can just take advantage of us because we´re gringas and that it was bullshit. well, as it turned out, there was a bus from the same company as the bus that ripped us off at the border and so the police made the driver of that bus give 10 quetzales to the jutiapa bus. then he made the jutiapa bus give us our 10 quetzales back. then the police gave us a ride across the border and said that it´s a trap they probably do all the time. he said if we ever had problems again at the border to not be afraid to ask. what an ordeal! but i felt better having said something because that was wrong what they did.

anyway, back in el salvador, our trip was officially over and unlike some of my previous trips, i was sad it was over. i had a great time and i´m actually glad this was the trip we took at the end of my time here in central america. it was so rewarding and i truly will never forget all the places we saw and people we met along the way.

i´m glad i´m not a cruise-taking traveler. i feel like i would miss out on too much of the little stuff - meeting locals and seeing out of the way places that are just as great as the more well-known and photographically-ready places. i´m so glad that i took the opportunity to travel while i was in peace corps. who knows when i´ll have this many opportunities again. i know i didn´t get to see nicaragua, costa rica or panama, but i did get to know guatemala and honduras really well, and belize a little bit. not to mention awesome el salvador. backpacking is not for the lighthearted, i will admit that. and it´s not without its frustrations. but it´s manageable and definitely takes some creativity and a lot of humor. i know i´m getting older, but i somehow feel that my backpack and headlamp will still get used in the future. i just hope it´s sooner rather than later!

one final graduación

2009-01-21T12:41:00.005-06:00

well, back in november i attended my final salvadoran graduation. it was a really busy day. in the morning we had the graduation for my school and later antonio and i were invited to attend papa chepe´s daughter´s graduation in ataco. it was a bittersweet experience! although i was glad to see all the kids graduating, it was sad to think i wouldn´t be there with them again next year...especially those 6th graders. this year´s group of sixth graders were really great and i had been with them since they were in 4th grade. they are all supposedly going on to 7th grade which is a big change from the previous sixth grade classes i had worked with. so i was really proud of them, especially the girls. anyway, here´s some photos from our school´s graduation.

me and the 6th grade girls.....they are on their way to seventh grade! as for me, i´m on my way back home.....

luz de maria

the graduating kindergartners

don jorge´s son abel (don jorge was one of the witnesses for my wedding)

me with two really great 5th graders, ruth and selena

all in the family.....deysi, the oldest, with her two sisters reina and heydi

6th grader rafael antonio

me and jenifer (and her little sister in front)

the 6th graders with the teachers

me with chus, ever and luisito - maria laura´s son

next it was on to papa chepe´s daughter´s graduation. she goes to a catholic school in ataco that has a really large number of students. i thought that was really nice that they invited us to the graduation because it wasn´t just the church ceremony and then the ceremony at the colegio. it was dinner and dessert as well! that´s what i love about salvadorans....even if you are not a physical member of their family they will treat you like you are. they invite you to eat with them, invite you to all kinds of family-oriented celebrations and are really happy to have you. that´s what makes peace corps so rewarding....you get to make all these new ¨families¨ even when you´re missing your family back home. anyway, here are some photos from that event.

me with papa chepe´s family

papa chepe´s whole family (and antonio) and the graduating girls

me and papa chepe after dinner at the colegio

papa chepe´s daughter (right) and her cousin with their medals for excellent marks

so that´s the last graduation i´ll be attending here in el sal and i hope everyone who i taught and saw leave my school in san jorge continues to study until they graduate from university!! buena suerte!

all in a day´s work

2009-01-16T10:34:00.012-06:00

i finally learned what it was like to go out and pick coffee all day. well, i say ¨all day¨ like i was out there at the crack of dawn and worked ´til sundown or something. not exactly. mirna invited me to go with her and her sisters and their kids to her family´s finca after christmas. back in the day, mirna´s grandparents built a hacienda-style house in the forests around ahuachapán and the surrounding land is filled with coffee trees. for a starter coffee lesson, i wrote about the coffee process in this previous blog entry. today´s entry covers more about how the coffee gets cut, who does it and how the coffee is prepared before it´s processed.

my preparation for cutting coffee started with finding a canasta, or basket. on christmas day antonio and i went over to visit papa chepe at his house in san jorge. i told him i was going out to ¨work¨ the next day and so he lent me his basket.

before i go on, i had to post this picture.

when antonio and i went over to papa chepe´s house, it was pandemonium. all these kids were there, papa chepe was drinking guaro (it was 9:00 a.m.!) and this duck was wandering around their house. then it hopped on the couch and papa chepe came over to drunkenly talk to us about politics and sat down on the couch on top of the duck! but the duck didn´t even care, it just moved over.

anyway, enough of the quacks. so the day after christmas antonio and i met mirna at her house and her three sisters came over with all their kids. i think there were 10 of us in all. we packed up and got a pickup ride out to the campo. when we were on the dirt road up to the hacienda, this woman comes running out on the road and says we need to help her. apparently her 2-year old daughter was in the car waiting for her mom to come out and while she was waiting, she locked the doors with the keys still inside. this happened like 45 minutes before we showed up. so we all got out and went over to where her car was and this little girl was screaming inside. the mom didn´t want to break the window, but we were all like ¨you have to break it.¨ i tried jimmying the lock with a wire hanger because god knows how many times i´ve had to do that in the past with my car. but then the girl started vomiting and this guy immediately broke the back window and got her out. it was really a weird event.

so after we all got over that, we hopped back into the truck and continued on deeper into the forest. finally we arrived at the hacienda and hung out for a bit and ate some food. then mirna and her sister took me down to the part of the forest where all the workers were. it was time to start picking coffee.

first we talked to the mandador and he showed mirna where they had been cutting coffee that day. antonio had to show me how to pick the coffee off the branch. my instinct was to just pick each semilla off like you would a cherry or something. but he showed me how you hold the top of the branch, bring your hand down the whole branch and let the semillas just fall into the basket.

so then it was my turn. let´s just say i´m not that advanced of a coffee picker. i did my best. you know, though, i think i had mentioned before in a previous blog entry how coffee cutting is boring, dirty work. well, it is dirty, but boring it´s not. i really liked it, fijate. granted, i didn´t pick that much - compared to what a normal day´s collection is. you´ll see the fruits of my pathetic pickings a little further down when the guys weighed it.

after i kind of filled my basket, it was off to watch the pros do it. here are some photos of some of the people who were out that day.

mirna and her sister waiting around for me to pick my coffee

this guy was too funny. when i was going through the forest taking pictures of everyone, he was eating his tortilla for lunch. i didn´t want to take a picture of him eating, because, well, he was eating! so i said hi to him and then continued on through the forest. then when we were leaving, he came and chased me down and i came back and he asked me really politely if i would take his picture. so i did and he was super happy.

so back at the hacienda, everyone kind of made it back in their own time with their daily product. as i talked about before in the previous blog entry about coffee, everyone then sits out on the grass and separates the green semillas from the red and yellow ones.

everything is then re-bagged and then weighed with a roman scale, like the one in the photo below. each person gets their coffee weighed individually because they will be paid for what they picked.

ok, this is the funny part. this is MY bag of coffee. 12 pounds! that´s it! so pathetic. most people had one sack - which is equal to 150 pounds, or 6 arrobas. mine? 12 friggin´pounds!

once the sacks are all weighed and re-bagged together, the entire lot is weighed again and compared with numbers from the individual weigh-in. these are the final numbers that are given to the beneficio when the finca owners take the coffee there.

it was quite a day! in-between picking the coffee and weighing it, mirna took us down to this waterfall that didn´t have any water because it´s the dry season. but it was a fun hike.

women carrying water from the chorro down by the waterfall back up to their homes.

a view from the top

anyway, so if any of you are wondering what it is like to cut coffee, that´s how it is! hope you enjoyed seeing it!

back in the saddle again

2009-01-13T15:44:00.005-06:00

shame on me! it´s been roughly two months since i wrote last and i´ve got nothing but excuses as to why not. i hope i haven´t lost all of you. i know i said i´d wrap the blog up after peace corps was done, but i´m not going to wrap up quite yet. mostly because i´m still here in el salvador (and will probably be here until march) and i haven´t even posted any entries about anything i´ve done these past two months. i at least want to get some photos up before i sign off. i´m also going on one more trip with courtney (probably our last!) to guatemala in a couple weeks and we´re going to tikal, so i definitely have to post pictures of that.

anyway, so over the next week i´m going to be posting a lot....just updating you all on what i´ve been up to. once my trip´s over and i´ve posted about that, i´ll probably be be ready to sign off.

so first off, i´m gonna post some pictures of christmas and new year´s! i even had a christmas tree this year....a $6 bargain at the grocery store. we had decorations and everything.... christmas eve we went over to antonio´s family´s house and ate dinner once around 7:00 and then ate again at like 1:00 in the morning. the next day we ate christmas dinner again. i was soooo full!

me and antonio in front of our tree

me and gloria knitting on christmas eve

so on new year´s, courtney came to hang out with us. i made chili and we bought some guatemalan 4% alcohol champagne.....didn´t you know guatemala was famous for it´s grapes? i´m kidding. anyway, we ate chili and drank some champagne and then headed outside to let off fireworks. my neighbor, el licenciado had his family over and invited us to his house. licenciado was drunk! he kept offering us tequila and i didn´t want to drink anything really. the guatemalan champagne was fine with me. but we drank a few tequilas with him. but he kept pouring us more and more and i was like ¨please, no more!¨ but he kept on pouring. licenciado´s son is married to a japanese woman and they live in mexico city. so they were there, along with their other japanese friends who also live in mexico city. well, let me tell you....the fact that there were three languages being spoken and there was all that tequila....new year´s was quite hilarious. licenciado kept trying to talk to us in english and then moto, the japanese guy who is friends with licenciado´s son and wife didn´t understand spanish or english very well. so we were all trying to communicate and at one point i would have killed for a video recorder. anyway, so new year´s was really unexpectedly hilarious.

our guatemalan champagne

me and courtney toasting in 2009

shortly before midnight we all went outside to let off fireworks. here´s antonio in the street in front of the house.

courtney trying to light our sparklers

me and antonio...i have about three layers on, it was freezing!

licenciado´s son in the esquina setting up some fireworks

licenciado in-between hugging everyone for ¨feliz año nuevo!¨

licenciado´s mom (right) and his cousin, enjoying the fireworks from inside

anyway, hope everyone is having a great 2009! more soon.......

it´s almost ¨el fin¨

2008-11-17T09:39:00.003-06:00

it´s been a weird couple of weeks and i guess i have been neglecting the blog because i don´t know how to sort it all out in blog form. you know i only have about a month and a half left of service...my COS date is the 30th of december. that date is good and it´s bad. it´s bad because i have a bunch of interviews and medical things to do right around the time of the COS, but because it´s christmas it´s gonna be like trying to spot a quetzal in the wild trying to get everyone in the office at the same time. but the 30th is a good date because it really is at the ¨end of the year.¨ come january 1st i´ll officially be done with peace corps and i´ll be entering a new phase of my life when january 1st comes along.

and you know, it can´t come soon enough. i´m ready to be done with peace corps. i´m not necessarily ready be done with el salvador, but i have to admit i´m ready to end the peace corps chapter of my life. i have been thinking this the past few months, but then a couple weeks ago, during the last week of school, the kids gave me a despidida (going away party) and it was sad. some of the kids were bawling their eyes out! the older kids wrote me letters and they were filled with so much love and friendship and gratitude....it was hard to read them all. i tried to tell them that while i was leaving the school, i wasn´t necessarily leaving their lives, because i married antonio and since he´s from here, i´d definitely be back to visit. and so i think that made the goodbye better for everyone. but still, it was odd to think that i wouldn´t be back next year. it´s definitely a bittersweet experience. i´ve seen this coming for some time, so it´s no surprise that i feel this way. but i think for the past few months i´ve been trying to prepare myself for what´s coming after peace corps that the whole saying goodbye to my community and the kids and all that kind of snuck up on me.

but i still have a month and a half before things really start to change. i had to have skin cancer surgery a few weeks ago and it wasn´t that serious or anything....well, i guess any surgery is serious, but it wasn´t like i was having brain cancer surgery or anything. but every day starting a couple days before i had to go into san salvador to have the surgery until maybe four days after, mirna called me every day to make sure i was doing ok and i wasn´t in too much pain. niña domy called me to see how i was and offered to come over to my house and clean and wash clothes. antonio´s family acted in much the same way. elba, maria laura and mirna all came over with cake and café and food to surprise me a couple days after the surgery. people in apaneca who i normally see every day when i walk to the bus stop were concerned when they hadn´t seen me in a week. ¨qué pasó?¨ everyone wanted to know.

anyway, what i´m getting at is that in a month and a half i´m supposedly leaving this environment. and it´s tough to think about. as much as i´d like to get a job and start earning money again and using a washing machine and all that, i´m just so conflicted about how happy i´m actually going to be re-entering the united states and not living here where everybody really does give a damn about me. there are people back in the states who are family and supposed friends who i haven´t heard from in a year. it´s so funny because the idea of not talking to someone who is your family or your really good friend is just crazy talk as far as salvadorans are concerned. the idea of everyone living their separate lives is strange to them and i guess it´s become strange to me as well. which is why it affects me when i don´t hear word one from anyone back home.

but cultures are different and for the moment, the culture i´m living in is a salvadoran one, and i have to admit i´m quite nervous about leaving it. i was sitting at niña domy´s house the other day and elba and mirna were saying their goodbyes to her until they return in january and i thought how strange it was to be seeing them say that, knowing i won´t be with them when they come back in january. and how strange it is that hanging with niña domy drinking cafecitos and placticaring is going to end at some point.

last but not least, it´s almost time for the blog to come to an end! qué lástima! but the blog has been about my time in peace corps and when that ends, so does the blog. so hopefully i´ll be able to fill it with some worthwhile things before i close its doors forever. so remember to keep checking in!

that´s it for now. my dad´s coming to visit in a couple days and i´m pretty excited about that. don´t know if he´ll like the wind...yes, it´s that time of year again...but i´m sure it´ll be warmer here than it is in ohio right now. at least there´s no snow here.

adios.

give this a try

2008-10-24T14:45:00.000-06:00

if the financial times have you down in the dumps, maybe the following photos will cheer you up a bit. they are just a random selection of photos i took at my school during both the kids´ día del niño celebration and during a science lesson i did with the younger kids about butterflies.

independencia

2008-10-14T15:23:00.010-06:00

well, even though it´s a month after the fact, i have photos from last month´s independence festivities. they are much like the previous photos i´ve posted of the parades and fiestas, but they are unique all the same. i have to tell you, i´m so glad independence day is over! for about 6 weeks prior to independence day (the 15th of september), the only sound you hear all day and every day is the sounds of drums. playing the same four songs over and over and over again. practicing for the big parade. there are three schools here that have bands and so it seems as if every minute of the day is filled with one band or the other practicing their tunes. apaneca is not big, so the sound of the drums all together resonates throughout the whole pueblo making it impossible to escape. you get so used to the sound that when you realize they´ve stopped, you feel like you´re living in paradise. bless ´em though, those hard-working, drum-playing kids!

the last night in september, they close out the ¨mes de la independencia¨ with another parade (same as the one on actual independence day) and they carry these fuel-lit torches. i can´t think of anything more dangerous (except for the catholic church´s pyrotechnics display during the fiesta de patronales) than a bunch of kids with lit torches marching through town. but there were no disasters, so i suppose it was all a success!

these are pictures from the independence day celebration at my school

long time gone

2008-10-08T16:28:00.002-06:00

i know, it´s been awhile. but you know, i am sure the last thing on anyone´s list to do right now is read my blog with what has been going down in the u.s. lately. geez! anyway, sooner rather than later, i´ll have a real update. things are busy here as well, leaving not that much time to write and/or upload photos. but i´ll find time, i promise!

until then, keep your money safe!

farolitos

2008-09-10T15:31:00.012-06:00

what the heck are farolitos? well, glad you asked. the english word for ¨farolitos¨ is ¨lanterns.¨ but farolitos is also used as the name of a celebration we have here, and only here, in the department of ahuachapán. in all of el salvador, only two towns have a farolitos celebration: ataco and ahuachapán. on september 7th of every year, in these two towns, people come from all over to hang their own farolitos in celebration of the virgen mary. la virgen de maria is the patron saint of both ataco and ahuachapán, and on september 7th, both towns are absolutely glowing.

¡viva la virgen maria!

after getting back from suchitoto, antonio and i were both super tired, but i didn´t want to miss out on farolitos in ataco, so we hopped on the bus again. after the short 5-minute bus ride, we arrived in ataco just in time to see almost every owner of every store and house adorning their stores and houses with farolitos. the traditional farolitos are hand-made with wood frames. see-through colored paper is then glued to all sides of the wooden frame. tie a few pieces of string and put in a regular old candle and you´ve got yourself a farolito. if you don´t feel like making your own, you can buy them (still hand-made, just not by you) at most tiendas in ataco (or ahuachapán, depending where you live).

these are what the traditional farolitos look like

it really is a beautiful sight. it totally reminds me of christmas. the church has it´s farolito display outside the church and various streets have their own as well. and you can hang yours wherever you feel like hanging it. there was a small procession of women from the church carrying a statue of the virgen mary through the streets, followed by fireworks and this year, a lively music show consisting of rock and ranchera.

hanging lights on the church´s display

the church´s official display directly in front of the church´s main door....there was kind of a running mass going on at the time as well

it seriously is almost like how you go see the christmas lights in whatever city you live in back in the states.....only the lights are all candle-powered instead of using huge mega watts of electricity. while the candles are burning bright, people are out and about, socializing, eating tons of food and drinking café or chocolate. the public school in ataco had an especially pretty display....a long line of farolitos set on the ground, leading to the huge plaza in the center of the school. the plaza was lit up like a christmas tree.

the long line of lights to the school plaza

inside the plaza, a wooden cart with a paper-made boy and girl inside, surrounded by farolitos

some kids in the school who were REALLY excited about the fact that i had a camera and REALLY wanted their picture taken

soon, unlike those christmas lights powered by electricity, the candles burn out and everyone winds down and brings their farolitos inside where they will wait until next year´s celebration. but for those couple of hours when the farolitos are all lit up on every street and corner, it´s a truly magical place.

the alcaldia (mayor´s building)

one of the community street displays

i thought this mural, painted on a wall on one of the streets, was clever. they painted farolitos on the mural, but also hung real ones in front of the painting.

a salvador del mundo display (salvador del mundo is the patron saint of san salvador, and generally speaking, all of el salvador)

the libras de amor display (libras de amor is a foundation that helps the poor by giving them food and helping women start up small businesses)

the farolitos outside my very favorite yuquetería

outside ataco´s fmln headquarters....not surprisingly, ALL of their farolitos were red

more of the fmln´s display

an arch of farolitos over a street

some non-traditional farolitos

a hand-painted farolito

flower farolitos

man and woman farolitos

this one is a giant farolito which is a replica of the catholic church in ataco

getting older in suchitoto

2008-09-08T16:00:00.031-06:00

for the past three years it´s rained cats and dogs on my birthday. particularly awful was my birthday in 2006. it wasn´t that i was feeling down because it was my birthday and nobody cares about your birthday here, or that i was away from friends and family or anything like that. it was more the weather....this god-awful pouring down rain that was cold and depressing. all.day.long. i also remember that it was a wednesday and seriously, there could not be a more boring day to have your birthday than on a wednesday. so that wednesday, i sat in my tiny, dark cuarto at the hostal and huddled under my blankets, listening to the rain dump itself all over the place and wishing the night would be over as quickly as possible.

2007 was a bit of an improvement. and this year was a complete turnaround. this year´s birthday fell on a saturday and that was the best thing ever! antonio and i made plans to leave apaneca this year, since it is always raining like crazy here in september. it was not looking good though as i headed into san salvador on friday for a doctor´s appointment. rain poured down as i got off the bus and it followed me all the way to the doctor´s office. by the time i came out it had subsided a little, but damn that rain! antonio and i didn´t want to waste a weekend going to suchitoto if it was just going to rain the whole time, so antonio kept calling me and asking me what the weather was like in the capital. often times it´s raining when i leave apaneca to go somewhere and when the bus pulls into juayua or sonsonate or ahuachapan it´s clear skies as far as you can see. but taking the bus back up to apaneca, there are dark clouds hovering over the mountaintops and you can´t believe you just left those sunny skies behind.

anyway, we decided to just go for it. antonio met me in san salvador that friday night and the next day, my birthday, was sunny for the first time in three years! we hopped on the bus out of the capital and sat back watching the farmlands of cuscatlán pass us by. i went to suchitoto back in 2005 during training, but i didn´t have a camera (well, i had that crazy 35 mm behemoth that i had to buy after my digital camera got fried. i took a few photos with that thing, but the photos were developed so crappy......i don´t ever think i posted any of them. i think instead i posted pictures that other people had taken and given to me. anyway....). but this time, the camera was working, the sun was shining and everything seemed to go fine.

suchitoto was the old capital of el salvador before san salvador was crowned the new capital. people (well, tourist books and the like) like to say that suchitoto is what antigua, guatemala used to be before all the tourists came. i don´t know if that´s the case because i still haven´t visited antigua, nor do i know what it was like way back in the day before tourists started coming in. but i´ve been to suchitoto twice and it is a beautiful, old, colonial pueblo that has managed to keep it´s architecture, small-town feel and pueblo pride intact. it felt somehow appropriate to be spending a birthday here in this old town, as i am getting to that age.....i´ll be a relic myself before i know it.

antonio had never been to suchitoto so i suggested we go out on a boat on the lake. the lake is not natural...it was filled in about thirty years ago to provide electrical power to most of the country. the río lempa, the biggest river in el salvador, flows both in an out of the lake and there is a dam on the eastern edge of the lake which produces the energy.

antonio was not crazy about going out on the lake, mostly because he can´t swim and fears any kind of water activity. i was like ¨oh for crying out loud...it´s a damn boat with a guy steering it and everything!¨ after finding our hotel, we walked down the long road to the lake and approached the dock and another family was looking to go out as well, so we shared the boat and the fee. i´m glad i ¨forced¨ antonio to go out there because he ended up really enjoying it. antonio´s a really friendly person and always gets in these conversations with people and it was no different with the boat driver. this guy was telling us all about how the whole lake used to be a town before they filled it in and how some areas are over 100 meters deep. then he was telling us that during the war, he and other fisherman who worked on the lake, used to have to take both guerillas and the military across the lake in canoes.

the interesting thing was when i was out on the lake in 2005, we went, i think in october. the water at that time was way higher, and we couldn´t even see the grass or land part of most of the islands. the trees just looked like they were growing out of the water. this time when we went out by the isla de pájaros and the other islands, the water was clearly lower because we could actually see the land.

it did rain a bit, but nothing like it normally does in apaneca at this time. it was just a normal invierno shower that fell on us as we circled the islands and listened to the boat driver tell us about the animals and life back during the war. he mentioned how the birds have altered the catch the fisherman are able to haul in, because the birds are able to dive at great depths and are catching fish while they´re too young to reproduce. this leaves the number of fish that are able to reproduce at lower numbers, hence the low numbers of fish the fisherman are bringing in.

when the boat trip was over we were able to catch a microbus up to the pueblo and from there, we headed over to the church. when i visited in 2005, the church was undergoing renovations and had a bunch of scaffolding in front of it. but it was scaffolding-free this time around. it is a lovely colonial church and i couldn´t help but be jealous that the church was not under construction, unlike the church in apaneca which still isn´t finished. we meandered around town taking photos of the architecture. it´s such a nice pueblo, really laid back but with a life underneath that you know is there even if you can´t see or hear it all the time.

that night it was spinach pupusas for me...mmmmmm. we went back to the hotel to watch el salvador play haiti in the second round of the world cup qualifiers. el salvador won - 5 to 0! it was an all around great birthday for me. gracias, suchitoto!

antonio actually having a good time despite being out in the middle of the water

the nimph flor

some of the birds

a moro tree

for the love of all that´s corn

2008-08-26T11:45:00.010-06:00

back at the beginning of august, antonio and i went to visit courtney in her pueblo, dulce nombre de maria, for their annual fiesta de maíz. their celebration of corn includes various vendors selling elote loco, tamales de elote, rigua, atole de elote, and of course, tortillas de elote. all i have to say to that is yum. they also have a little parade and groups of bailes folkloricas, as well as the crowning of the year´s reina de maíz (queen of the corn). the candidates for queen all have to make dresses made out of corn...the kernels, husks, tassels, etc. a group of young kids also did a play about how corn was a gift from the earth.

in keeping with the corn theme, the other day papa chepe, this guy in san jorge gave me half a sack of elote. i was like ¨thanks,¨ but then i was thinking - what the hell am i gonna do with this corn? it was a nice gift because anybody would kill to have someone give them a half a sack of corn. so i asked niña domy if she would teach me how to make tamales. so last friday i went over to her house and she taught me the art of making tamales de elote and unlike my unsuccessful attempts at making perfect tortillas, the tamales turned out really well. mmmmmm....tamales and crema, the perfect meal.

anyway, here´s to corn!

little girls dancing a baile de maíz

candidates for ¨reina de maíz¨

this girl won, not surprisingly. courtney was saying how the candidate from dulce nombre wins every year. (the other candidates were from surrounding cantones and pueblos)

elote loco!

honduras, the roundabout way

2008-08-04T15:01:00.026-06:00

so my fourth trip through honduras was pretty amazing. while it really was not what i expected it would be (things in central america rarely are) i was really glad i was able to see this part of honduras. like i mentioned before, most of the trip was spent on the beaches, but they are such historical places in the history of the colonization of the new world, that it wasn´t just that we were ¨on the beach.¨ we decided to take the maximum number of vacation days that the peace corps allows you to take at one time, and so for 21 days we explored lago yojoa, cerro azul, trujillo, roatán and triunfo de la cruz.

so back on july 9th, we started out in tegucigalpa (honduras´s capital) but only for the night. with the exception of the twisty road leading from el salvador to tegus which made both me and courtney frightfully nauseated, that part of the trip was rather uneventful. we had come on that road before the last time we visited tegus, but we were on a chicken bus that time and because of the frequent stops, the bus never got a chance to get up any real speed around the curves. this time we took a tica bus for $15 and it was cruising along....getting us there quicker, but definitely sicker. after spending the night in tegus, we headed out the next morning for lago yojoa.

LAGO YOJOA

this lago is about the size of lago atitlán in guatemala (or so i guess) but doesn´t have any volcanoes around it (there are no volcanoes in honduras). we arrived late in the day and decided to stay at this cheap place called D &D, owned by an expatriate american from oregon. he has a nice little place set up, along with a microbrewery (?) and a restaurant. the odd thing was, we didn´t really get what ¨the¨ thing was about the place or the owner. when we got our room, we were browsing around the sala outside of our room and found these old and current guest books. that night, after we ate dinner, we sat in our room like high school girls and read the comments from the guest book.....we really didn´t have anything better to do because it was raining cats and dogs. we drove ourselves to hysterics reading the comments people left in the books: ¨i´ve found paradise on earth here at bob´s place...¨ ¨oh, the blueberry pancakes are sooo good..¨ ¨thanks bob for showing us your artifact collection....¨ ¨i´ve been searching for heaven on earth my whole life and i´ve found it at the D&D...¨ and on and on and on. one after the other about bob and the D&D and all that. we passed bob in the driveway a couple times and he was nice and all, but why all the comments? we figured there must be a special club or something. the comment about the artifacts was quite funny though, as one night we decided to go for a walk down to the main road and we ended up by the soccer field. there was a game going on, so courtney and i found a bench and sat and were watching it when this jeep pulled up and parked next to where we were. then a couple minutes later a pickup with two guys in it pulled up behind us and asked us if we were the owners of the jeep. we´re like ¨um, no.¨ the jeep had illinois plates, which was strange. the guys from the jeep said that it was theirs and then later, one of the jeep guys comes up and asks us where we´re from in english. turns out, he´s from the states, but lives in mexico now. his friend, the owner of the jeep, is a latino from illinois (which is where courtney´s from) and so we started chatting with them. they had started a central american road trip some months back and ended up in lago yojoa. they initially were going to stay at the D&D, but didn´t like the idea that they´d have to be back in the hotel by 9:00 p.m., so they found a family that was willing to let them stay for however long they wanted. so they had been hanging around the locals for quite some time now. anyways, they told us that all the local people that live in the area called los naranjos (where D&D is located) think that bob, the D&D ownder is down here just so he can steal ancient artifacts. they kept talking about how he already has a huge collection of stuff and all this. courtney and i were laughing because of what we had read in the guest books about how he shows his artifact ¨collection¨ to all the gringos and backpackers that come through.

anyway, whatever it is that bob is doing, he´s got a nice, cheap place to stay. it seems to me that it´s like a little gringo enclave, though. for the life of me though, i don´t know why people want to travel to honduras and then eat, drink and sleep like an american while they´re there. why go to honduras when you can do that at your local pub and in your own home? it has to be cheaper, right? well, enough about that. let´s talk about what we did at the lake. our first day, we went outside of town to a huge waterfall called ¨pulhapanzak.¨ we took the bus and then had to walk a couple kilometers to the entrance of the park. the falls were amazing, and i liked the park because it had all these different trails to follow. there were so many crazy bugs and tons of anthills, as well as birds and butterflies. across a bridge there was also a really tranquil area by the river, before it went over the falls to just sit back and hang for a while. there are also caves behind the falls, but we decided not to go because it costs money to get a guide to go through them. everything costs money it seems, and seeing as we didn´t have that much and we were on the first day of a 21-day vacation, it was wiser to just enjoy the falls and leave the caves for another time. (besides, i see enough bats as it is every day of my life living in el sal, so having them fly around my head and freak me out more than normal i can live without!)

the pulhapanzak falls

some of the flying creatures around the falls

the next day we decided to try our chances at rowing from the canal out to the lake itself. we figured, how hard can it be? well, it really wasn´t that hard. it was a lot of rowing, that´s for sure. and it was the only day during the entire vacation that i got a hell of a sunburn. we were told that we could rent a lancha from this old man, don oscar, that lives down the road from the D&D. we headed over there and he gave us some oars and told us he´d walk down to the banks of the canal with us. we got down there, got in the boat and after a bit of a rough start we finally made our way out of his eyesight. the canal was so peaceful, just birds singing in the surrounding trees and the occasional other rowboat passing us. we finally made it to the marshes and the mouth of the canal out to the lake. it was hooooot and we tried to get out into more open water, but the sun was fierce and before long, we just decided to go back. i didn´t realize how far we´d gone out into the lake until we started rowing back. i thought we´d never make it! once we did though, we were rewarded by seeing these pretty, colorful little birds on the shores by the marshes. we rowed across one of the bays and a couple of fisherman in another rowboat passed us by near this humungous tree dripping with spanish moss. we decided to row back as we had been gone for more than three hours, but we still took our time, stopping to take pictures and just enjoy the scenery. when we finally made it back to where we started, don oscar was standing on the bank waiting for us. apparently, the two other fisherman that had passed us had come back and told him that they thought we needed help or something. don oscar said he was about to row out and see if we actually did need help! we were like ¨no, we were just taking our time.¨

the canal leading out to the lake

a view of one of the highest peaks in honduras from across lago yojoa

the big tree with the spanish moss where the fisherman thought we were in need of help

those two adventures made up our trip to lago yojoa. there are more things to do around the area, but we would´ve had to get a guide and spend at least two more days there in order to do everything. i really wish i knew more about birds...i know the basic birds of the states, and even now the ones in el salvador. but as far as all the birds that can be identified at lago yojoa, i really wish i knew more about their sounds and names and all that. oh well. we had a reservation for our hotel in roatán and sort of needed to stay somewhat on schedule in order to make the ferry to roatán the following week. so we packed up and on sunday morning, we left for probably the biggest mistaken detour of any of the trips i have been on!

CERRO AZUL

on the way to the desvio for the lago when we had first come, i saw this sign on the side of the road. it was maybe 20 minutes on the highway before we had to get off at the desvio to go to our destination at the lago.

so on that sunday morning, i thought ¨we have to go retrace our steps and go back to that area where i saw that sign.¨ i told courtney what i thought we had to do and she´s like ¨ok,¨ so when we got back to the desvio, i saw another bus going the way we needed to go and i told the driver and he´s like ¨hop on.¨ we got on and the bus took off and the cobredor asked us exactly where we were going and we said ¨cerro azul¨ and he didn´t know what we were talking about. so i explained where i thought it was and he said, ok, it´s 50 lempiras to go there. i thought that was really expensive, but we both paid it. then later, the cobredor came back and was like ¨we don´t understand where you want to go.¨ so the bus driver is looking at me in the rearview mirror through the door and tells me to come up front. so i did and i sat there in the seat by him and i tried to explain the entrance and the sign i saw and whatever. then the cobredor comes back up with courtney´s travel book and the bus driver pulls over to consult the book. i was embarassed because what did all the other passengers think when the bus pulled over like that? so i say, ¨i can tell you when i see the sign.¨ so he kept going and finally, i saw the sign above. so we got off the bus, got 2o lemps back each (because the driver thought the trip was longer), said gracias and were now on the side of the highway in front of this sign wondering what to do next.

we walked a few yards up the road we assumed led to the park entrance of cerro azul. we asked a couple women standing on the side of the road how far it was to the entrance and they both got this look on their faces like we were out of our minds. they said it was about an hour and a half climb. we asked if there were pickups or anything that went up there to the entrance. they said no. ok, so we decided that we were just gonna have to walk, even though we had our huge backpacks weighing like 50 lbs. on our backs. but what else were we gonna do? so we started walking and got about 1/2 kilometer when we see these two guys over on the side of the hill we were climbing. one of them, believe it or not, drove a mototaxi, and he kept saying ¨it´s a looong climb, you know you´re tired. why not just let me give you a ride for 75 lemps.¨ we thought it over and just decided to go. so this guy picks us up, he´s a real character, totally cracking himself up the whole ride up. after about 15 minutes in the mototaxi we realized we made the right choice in paying for the ride because there were no signs and lots of cutoffs and it was a lot of uphill insanity. so we get all the way up to this cluster of houses and he stops in front of this little white house and he says ¨ok, we´re here!¨ and i´m like ¨what? this is the entrance to the park?¨ i expected to see a ranger station or something and an entrance gate and all that. but no, we were in front of this little white house.

the driver keeps saying ¨this is where all the gringos come!¨ and we´re saying, ¨this doesn´t look much like an entrance to the park.¨ he gets this confused look and drives us up a ways to another house. a woman comes out and we explain what we want to do and she then explains to us that we´re looking for los pinos, the official entrance to cerro azul, which is on the OTHER side of the mountain, back where the desvio we had come from when we left the lake was. courtney then mentions that she saw a sign there at the desvio and i´m like ¨huh? i didn´t see anything, and why didn´t you tell me you saw another sign?¨ so anyways, as it turns out, no tourists really ever come to the part of cerro azul where we were...just scientists and researchers who are studying the biodiversity there. and also as it turns out, the little white house where the mototaxi driver took us is the home of two peace corps volunteers who are married and doing their time in the little village of cerro azul where we currently were standing wondering what to do next. the volunteers weren´t home at the time - they had gone to guatemala or nicaragua (we got several different stories on that) for vacation.

so the woman that came out to talk to us, odelia, she kept saying that if we wanted we could stay in a house there, but there weren´t any real marked trails or anything to follow. we´d basically just be in cerro azul, not able to actually hike cerro azul. finally after trying to figure out what to do, odelia just said we should stay there. because by the time we got down to the highway, got on another bus, hiked up to the park entrance at los pinos, the day would be over and we were planning to head out for trujillo the next day. i heard her mentioning to another woman who had drifted up and was observing our predicament that it was good because we spoke spanish, not like all the other visitors that come there only speaking english. we finally just took odelia´s advice and she walked us up to ¨the house¨ where we could stay. well, after some placticaring with odelia, we found out that they are trying to start tourism there, and the community had built a couple cabins behind this other woman´s house. that explained why odelia was somewhat trying to get us to stay, but was still a little unsure of herself in telling us that there were cabins for people to stay in. turns out, odelia is one of the people in the community group trying to get tourism started. the other woman, magdalena, said she would fix us food and all that and we could stay in the cabins for like 200 lemps a person. so it was a pretty good deal...that´s roughly $10 a person. by this time like 5 people had heard how were the ¨lost girls¨ and how we hadn´t even meant to come there. but we got our cabin, which was quite nice, and ate some breakfast with magdalena and her daughter, mariela.

after breakfast, magdalena told mariela to take us to the waterfall....it was the only place they had carved out a trail to. so we took off with mariela and her cousin up the mountain to this waterfall. the mountain basically had two things: bananas and café. there were other trees and what-not, but the mountain was just covered with these banana trees, and then rows and rows of coffee trees. we made it to the waterfall, which was damn pretty, and damn cold as well. after checking it out and watching courtney fall down on the rocks (ha ha!), we headed back to the town.

later that day, we decided to take a swim in the river that ran behind the house. i don´t know why i wanted to because it was cold outside and the river was even colder. but i figured as long as i was there, i might as well try it out. the water was crystal clear and the swim felt great. but it did feel nice getting OUT of the water as well. after the swim, we ate lunch and then we decided to take a walk further up the road to another cluster of houses. it was a long walk up, and we saw another trail in the distance that we thought perhaps we could tackle. but when we got back to the house and asked magdalena what she thought, she gave us the same look of ¨are you nuts?¨ that lots of people seemed to be giving us lately. later that night we were eating dinner and this guy comes in with this book and he´s like ¨so you´re the turistas perdidas?¨ everyone in that town must have heard about us by then. he wanted us to sign the ¨visitor´s log¨ for cerro azul and when we read the list of names, sure enough, the only people that had visited were biologists, researchers, zoologists, etc. he brought a map of honduras as well, and i was really surprised to see that we weren´t at that high of an altitude. i´m always surprised to see places that i think are at a higher altitude and find out that they´re still not as high of an altitude as apaneca.

me and mariela in front of the waterfall

this tree was completely hollow and so courtney and i took turns crawling in and taking our pictures. then when i got out, mariela and her cousin were looking inside it and found a snake skin! i was grossed out! i hate snakes and would have died if one was in there when i was!

the river where we took a swim

the big community stone oven up the street from where we stayed

in front of the mountain called ¨cerro azul¨ - even though you can´t really see it because of the cloud cover, this mountain was HUGE

our little cabin

after a crappy night´s sleep (i thought the sound of the rushing river below would put me to sleep, but instead it kept me awake), we caught the 7:00 a.m. pickup back down the road to the main highway. that was a nice ride, just passing along all the trees and birds and naturaleza. at the highway we sat and waited for a while for a bus to pass going to san pedro sula. i talked with this old woman that was down on the drunks. it sounded like she hadn´t had a very good life on account of her drunk husband and one of her sons. i felt kind of bad for her, but you know, that´s a lot of women´s stories in el salvador. husbands/fathers/sons hooked on the guaro. we finally caught a bus and were on our way to trujillo, by way of san pedro sula.

TRUJILLO

we ended up having to stand in the front of the bus we boarded because there were no seats. that gave us the chance to freak out oncoming traffic, which did lots of doubletakes at seeing two gringas standing in the huge front window of the bus! it also gave us the chance to realize that the cobredor of our bus looked EXACTLY like moe from the simpsons. seriously, he could have been his non-cartoon twin. the rest of the trip up to san pedro sula was uneventful, except for the high number of dead cows with vultures feasting on them on the sides of the road.

when we arrived in san pedro sula we were dropped off in this huge new bus terminal - seriously, it was like being in an airport. we had to get a cab to get to the place where the buses go to trujillo and so tried negotiating a cab. the first guy we talked to gave us this ridiculous price and i was like ¨wtf?¨ he then said that ¨you´re norteamericanas, you have money to pay the fare.¨ you know, fuck him. and fuck everybody else who goes around judging other people before they even know them. i mean it....this is an open letter to whomever goes around stereotyping and generalizing people before knowing ANYTHING about them other than their physical appearance. knock it off already. anyway, we finally got a cab for a not-so-unreasonable price and high-tailed it over to the other bus station. there we boarded a bus bound for trujillo.....we had a long six-hour bus ride ahead of us and i was not looking forward to it.

slowly we came to tela, then to la ceiba. i was chatting with the guy next to me, santos eugenio, and he was pointing out all the different trees and what-not. he then told me to look at the pineapple plantations and at first i was like ¨um, ok, they´re just a couple fields of pineapples.¨ but then those couple of fields turned into millions and millions of pineapples in like 100 fields or something. i´ve never seen so many of anything in my life! not even corn fields in the states.

after la ceiba we entered into kind of a no man´s land. most people who come to the coast, end their trip in la ceiba in order to take the ferry to the bay islands. we were headed for the bay islands as well, but we were going to visit trujillo first and then make our way back later in the week. the highway to trujillo became less and less populated with people, and more and more populated with groves of palm trees. i think they were date palms...they looked different from the palms that bear coconut trees, plus i didn´t see any coconuts on any of them. also i had read something about how some guy came to the area and planted african date palms. anyway, there were millions of these as well, on either side of the road. nothing but palm trees for miles and miles. then the occasional desvio or town.

finally we got to the end of the line. the bus dropped courtney and i off at this deserted-looking desvio because we were headed out towards puerto castilla, not actual trujillo. we had read about this cheap place to stay on the beach which was about 5 kilometers outside of trujillo. this desvio was deserted though, nobody in sight. then this kid comes out of nowhere, out of the sugar cane fields and immediately comes up to us and asks us for money to buy food. i gave him a 5 lemps and he took off and i was really hoping the bus came because that desvio was giving me the creeps. we waited what seemed like forever for the bus and it never came, so finally we were able to hitch a ride in the back of a pickup from these two guys. they had no idea where casa kiwi (the place we were staying) was, but offered to take us until they saw the sign. finally we arrived at this battered sign saying ¨casa kiwi¨ with an arrow pointing to the left. the guys asked us if that was it and we said yeah, but there was this really long road and we felt bad making them drive us all the way down it. they took us anyway and when we came upon the place, it looked abandoned (much as everything did since we left trujillo). we got out of the truck and offered to pay the pickup driver and he said something about how our amistad was payment enough. hombres, i swear. anyway, someone came out of the back of the restaurant at casa kiwi and we breathed a sigh of relief that it was still in business.

standing in the middle of the road to casa kiwi this is what you see.....

.....and when you´re leaving casa kiwi this is what you see

why did we want to come to trujillo? well, for some time, both courtney and i have become somewhat intrigued by a certain guy with the name william walker. in both of our travel books there are short blurbs about this lunatic filibuster from the united states who came down to central america in the 1850´s and basically tried to create his own republic in central america. he tried in nicaragua, costa rica and honduras. he was actually ¨president¨ of nicaragua for a short period, a presidency declared by himself. anyway, he tried and failed this republic like three times and finally, when he was driven out of nicaragua, he was captured by the british off of the coast of honduras. they eventually turned him over to the hondurans in trujillo, instead of sending him back to the states. so the hondurans took advantage of the opportunity and executed him by firing squad! so he was buried in trujillo and there is a monument in the old fort there marking the spot where he was killed. i think that´s a crazy story and both of us really wanted to see where all that took place. plus we heard trujillo was a nice relaxing area to chill out. unless you´re william walker.

so casa kiwi was something different. it´s pretty much a backpacker´s place, but there was hardly anyone there when we arrived...a few guys from germany and the czech republic and the u.s. casa kiwi is - as the name suggests - run by a new zealander and is one of the cheapest places to stay in trujillo...$4.50 a night! it´s set on a bay that includes trujillo and puerto castilla...from the beach at casa kiwi you can see trujillo to the left and puerto castilla to the right. there is nothing but vegetation on either side of casa kiwi...an almost deserted beach. the place got a real battering during hurricane mitch back in the 90´s and you can tell because there are no wild palm trees on the beach. they were all destroyed, along with all the other trees in the area. but even without the huge palm trees, you can still tell you´re in paradise! the only bad thing about trujillo were the sand flies. ugh, they went to town on us even though we had bug spray and baby oil and all that. they ate our skin and left us with what looked like chicken pox. i didn´t get it as bad as courtney did thank god....i got more bites on my arms, while courtney´s legs looked like she had some awful disease. and oh my god do the bites itch! yuk.

the beach in front of casa kiwi....you can see trujillo across the bay

we left the following day for trujillo. we first visited the fort which is one of the most beautiful places i´ve been. obviously, the fort was built by the spanish who came and conquered the area. it´s set up on this hill and everything out front is pure crystal blue caribbean sea. trujillo is also one of the areas of honduras where there are a large number of garifuna. i wrote about the garifuna when i went to livingston back in december 2006, so i won´t write too much about that this time.

one of the buildings from the fortaleza in trujillo, which houses the little museum there

standing at the front of the fortaleza, overlooking the huge sea

anyway, there is a small museum there with artifacts from both the native indians that lived there before the spanish conquest, as well as things like swords and whiskey jugs (those were great!!!) from the spanish conquistadores. we also saw the little statue where william walker was executed. (by the way, if you want more info on william walker, email me, because my friend ben says that i have enough information on psycho william walker for a master´s thesis or something..ha)

we met these nice, if not really touristy, families from the u.s. there. they were real chipper and friendly and kept offering to take pictures of courtney and i in front of the fort by the cannons. then they asked us what we did, and when we said we were peace corps volunteers in el salvador, they were kind of like ¨oooohhh.¨ everyone always gives us that reaction when we say we live in el salvador, like it´s this war zone and it´s sooo dangerous. i mean, it´s dangerous, but i´d say it´s no more dangerous than any other central american country. but hondurans and guatemalans and everyone thinks el salvador´s like iraq or something. it´s not. anyway, these two families we met were not related, but the two fathers were best friends. and one of the men, his father was actually born and raised in trujillo. he was white as white could be and had some kind of an accent, but i couldn´t place it. anyway, so this old man, in his 80´s, was showing his son´s family and the other family around trujillo and talking about how things were when he lived there. the old man said that now he lives in siguatepeque (near lago yojoa) and he´s a surgeon and spends most of the year in honduras, when he´s not visiting his family in the states. that was pretty interesting.

an old map of the fort in trujillo...this was in the little museum that had all the interesting artifacts

the monument marking the spot where william walker was executed

we stayed there a bit and then ventured off through town to try and find the ¨cementerio viejo¨ where william walker was buried. trujillo does not have a latin american feel, despite the reggaeton and ranchera music blasting in the streets. the houses are all wood plank type houses, not the adobe or cement ones found in places farther from the beach. even houses near the beach in el salvador don´t look like the ones in trujillo (and livingston and triunfo de la cruz, etc.). we found the old cemetery and the man working there was like ¨here´s william walker´s grave!¨ there is a little cement sidewalk leading to it, and the grave/tomb itself is enclosed in an iron gate. the cemetery was quite strange because the tombs were all like you´d find in an old cemetery in the states....no bright pink and turquoise and purple tombs like you find in almost every latin american cemetery. and the names of the people....all english, european people. i saw inscriptions with people from israel and palestine and spain and france and many from england.

flowers in the cemetery

william walker´s grave, which says he was killed by ¨fusilado¨

the cemetery entrance

we left the cemetery and made our way back to the center of town and walked down to the beach. the sun was absolutely fierce and we took shade under a roof on one of the piers. we decided to walk back up to the park to get the next bus out to puerto castilla and casa kiwi. as we were walking, we saw a bus coming and we were like ¨if we´re lucky, that bus will be the one we need and we won´t have to walk up this huge hill.¨ so we asked the driver if it was going to puerto castilla and he said yes, so we hopped on. we were patting ourselves on the back for timing it so well when the bus climbed the hill and back through the park. all these guys got on the bus and they were real loud and rowdy and we made our way through town, back out to the desvio where courtney and i had been dropped off that first night we arrived. but as we got to the desvio, the bus turned the other way...opposite of puerto castilla! courtney and i were like ¨whaaat?¨ the guy sitting next to me said they were going to turn around maybe. and then the driver started saying how the bus wasn´t going to puerto castilla, but the other town on the way to ceiba. we were like ¨wtf?¨ and courtney´s trying to yell at the driver, in spanish, how he told us the bus was going to puerto castilla. so we got up to get off the bus and hopefully catch a bus going the other way.

well, the joke was on us. the whole bus was playing us big time and when we went to get up they all started laughing and were like ¨no, we´re really going to puerto castilla!!¨ me and courtney were busting up laughing and saying how there must not be much for people to do in trujillo if this is how they get their jollies. but it WAS good joke, because we believed them!

the lovely sunset behind puerto castilla

anyway, we spent our last days at trujillo just sitting around and enjoying the beach. at one point, on our last day, we were relaxing on the beach when i turned to see what i thought was a mirage.....a herd of cows and goats coming down the beach! i did a double take and said to courtney ¨is that what i think it is?¨ sure enough, it was a herd of cows, goats and a few dogs, being driven by their owners down the beach and up to a ranch way down on the other side of casa kiwi towards puerto castilla. only in central america.

what´s this? a herd of cows?????

¨don´t mind me¨

one afternoon we were sitting in the hammocks by the restaurant and this guy comes out, says his name is otto and he orders us two rum and cokes. we´re like ¨who is this guy?¨ well, he´s the owner of the christopher columbus hotel, further towards trujillo. it´s this resort type hotel and it´s named christopher columbus because like every other beachland up and down the u.s. and central america, columbus landed there in trujillo. anyway, we suspect that otto is joy´s ¨special friend¨ (joy is the new zealand friend of the owner of casa kiwi. joy and the owner split the year working at casa kiwi...joy for six months while the owner travels, then joy goes on vacation while the owner ¨works.¨) anyway, otto was just one of the many characters we met on this trip.....like nelson, the poet/writer working at the fort in trujillo who was trying to get his book published; the czech dude and his german friend staying at casa kiwi, who bought brand new machetes because they were continuing on to the mosquito coast at some point, but who couldn´t even crack open a coconut with the new machetes...otto had to do it for them.....i wonder if they ever made it to the mosquito coast?; the man who we met at the abandoned desvio the first night we arrived, who was on his way back home from selling vegetables in the trujillo market all day and who´d just gotten deported from the u.s. like 3 months ago; shane, another backpacker we met, who cracked us up and told everyone he was 32, when he was really 40, because he didn´t want to feel like a ¨grandpa¨ amongst all the other younger backpackers...he fessed up on his little lie after i told him i was 35!!!

i really regret not planning to go the mosquito coast instead of some of the other things we did. we were so close to the mosquitia when we were in trujillo. but i think a trip to the mosquitia is a trip in and of itself, so maybe one day i´ll make the trek.

ROATÁN, ISLAS DE BAHIA

joy gave us a ride in the casa kiwi van back into trujillo on friday morning and we had to flag down the bus going back to la ceiba. it stopped and we got on and we were then in for another 3 hour bus ride. when we finally arrived in la ceiba, it was pouring down rain. the bus stopped right in front of these huge puddles of water and we couldn´t do anything but step right in them. we hauled our backpacks off the bus´s undercarriage and under a little tiny roof where there were cab drivers hollering if we needed a ride. ¨taxi? taxi?¨ we asked one of them if he could take us to the grocery store because we wanted to get some last minute foodstuff and boozestuff there. the hotel we booked for roatán had a kitchen: we were figuring that food prices were going to be sky high on the island, so we wanted to be in charge of cooking our own food so as not to be forced into paying ridiculous food prices. the cab driver said he could take us over to a grocery store, so on we went. but then came the dilemma of how we were both going to go into the grocery store but leave our backpacks in the car. the cab driver kept saying that he was honest, he wasn´t going to drive off with our stuff. but we were like on the fence, because that was all our stuff. obviously we were going to take our money and passports and all that in with us, but still, if our backpacks were stolen, we´d be screwed. we decided that i´d go in, but just as soon as i got in, courtney came in and said that our cab driver parked the car and got out and was chatting with other cab drivers. so she kept going out to check on him, and he´d wave at her. i felt bad that we were being so suspicious, but i guess it never hurts to be.

after we got all our stuff at the grocery store, we were then off to the dock where the ferry to roatán leaves. it was a little clearer, but as we bought our tickets ( a whopping 1,024 lemps!!! a huge surprise there....) and waited in the lobby it kept raining off and on. we sat there in the lobby watching revenge of the nerds on the lobby television (so hilarious! i forgot how funny that movie is...although it was even funnier when the part came where the nerds put those video cameras in the girl´s dorm room and they were showing everything, because one of the workers came over and changed the channel and waited like 2 minutes and then turned it back. apparently classic revenge of the nerds nude scenes are more offensive than reggaeton videos, which are shown everywhere, no matter if there are kids around or not! haha). anyway, finally we all boarded the boat and courtney and i were excited to finally be leaving for the bay islands! little did i know that i was in for one of the most horrible experiences of my life.

as we sat there waiting for the boat to leave, the crew started passing out barf bags and i was like ¨i´m not gonna need this!¨ the sky was a bit oscuro, and it kept raining, but the boat took off and we were on our way. from about the moment we left the shore line until we got to roatán, was hell. the boat picked up speed and the water was really choppy and so we were slamming into these waves and going up and down and side to side and immediately people started barfing. it was horrible! then courtney started barfing. i felt like i was in the story of gordie´s in stand by me where that fat kid makes everyone barf. at one point i looked to the side and the boat was really far over on its side before it righted itself. a young guy sitting next to us gave us a couple t-shirts to put over our heads because we were getting soaked by the incoming waves, so i was trying to just huddle underneath it and not think about how shitty i felt. i hardly ever get seasick...christ i was on that sailboat for 7 days and i never once got seasick. but i was definitely getting really close to barf bag time. finally, we approached roatán and we were about 10 minutes from docking when the guy behinds me barfs (thank god, into his bag) but with this sound like he was hacking up his kidneys and pancreas and liver and everything. i thought i was gonna lose it, but thank god, we slowed down and finally docked the boat. as we were slowly trying to get off the boat, courtney says ¨welcome to paradise.¨

but on dry land, everything seemed to get better! the queasiness went away and we got our bags and it was time to be really robbed on a cab fare to west end, where our hotel was. after about a half hour we arrived in west end and in front of our hotel, the argentinian owned posada arco iris, right on half moon bay. we had an awesome little place, with a kitchen and a balcony with a hammock and everything. the place had free use of its kayaks as well as a lovely little beach right out in front of the hotel. that first night though, basically all we did was crash.

the next morning we went out to try and rent bikes for the whole week, and when we did, we got the lowdown on where to go and what to see. we took the bikes back to the hotel and decided what we really wanted to do was hit the beach. so we set up shop out on the beach in front of the hotel and there we stayed for the rest of the day. it was so relaxing and the water was so tranquilo and calm.

so what are the bay islands other than caribbean islands off the coast of honduras? probably the single greatest thing about the islands is that the amazing coral reef lays right off the coast....like you can swim out about 10 feet and there it is! this unbelievable coral reef with colorful fish and sea turtles and coral like you´ve never seen is all right there, super close to where you were just sunning yourself. it´s also one of the cheapest places in the world to get certified in scuba diving. i´ve already written previously about how i´m not into scuba diving, so i won´t get into it again. but i still like snorkeling and boy is it fantastic on roatán. west end, where the cheaper hotels on roatán are located, is pretty much all foreign-owned. americans and europeans have set up shop in one of the most beautiful places i have ever been. the nice thing is, i didn´t get overwhelmed with all the tourists, as i have before in guatemala and other parts of honduras. i guess it´s because the whole place is like that, i don´t know. west bay, about 5 kms away, is foreign owned as well, but it´s much ritzier. it´s where all the resorts and fancier places are, and where lots of rich people have homes. i say ¨all¨ the resorts, but there really aren´t that many. i think i pictured roatán having MORE hotels and businesses than it did. but it surprisingly had much less.

anyway, the next day we decided to take the bikes over to west bay and see the beach there, as they say west bay has the most beautiful beaches on roatán. when we rented the bikes, the guy there told us that the road between west end and west bay was hilly and curvy so ¨bring water and sunblock.¨ we chugged like 2 liters of water before we went, but even then we weren´t prepared for the hell trip it turned out to be. we ended up walking half of it....riding down the huge hills and walking our bikes up them. i thought we´d never make it, but after much sweating, we did.

the view from the mirador along the road we biked to west bay

in the far right of the island you can see half moon bay, where we stayed in west end

courtney had made a contact back in el salvador when she accompanied her mayor to the international tourism fair in san salvador. the contact was this guy named tommy who is sales manager at this place called infinity bay, a resort in west bay. he said to call him when she got to roatán, so when we got to west bay we decided what the hell, might as well call him. courtney called him and he told us to come meet him at the bar in front of the resort. we locked our bikes up in the back of the place and then headed up front, feeling seriously like the hick cousins of all the well-to-do people that were out enjoying their sunday afternoon. we were all bit up (thanks to our stay in trujillo), we were sweating and we were beet red. tommy talked to us for a bit, but i wanted to go down on the beach, so we casually moved on and set up shop under one of infinity´s umbrellas. i couldn´t believe i was looking at that water. i´ve never been to the caribbean before, and sitting on that beach was like being in friggin´ paradise. the water was crystal clear, and it was the most amazing blue and turquoise colors. and you can see where the coral reef begins...where there isn´t turquoise water, that´s where the coral is.

nos llegamos! finalmente! the amazing waters off west bay. where the water isn´t bright and turquoise, that´s the coral reef

we sat and sunned ourselves all day and finally around 4:30 we decided we´d better try to get back to west end. i was not looking forward to that, because i knew every hill we rode down on the way to west bay, we´d have to climb up to get back. but somehow, the trip back didn´t seem so bad...maybe because i knew what to expect. we coasted into west end and about all i could do was crash. thankfully, i hadn´t gotten sunburned at all...i was just seriously drained of energy after biking/walking that road twice in one day.

the next day we went and priced snorkel gear, but by the time we ended up getting our asses in gear, we figured we wouldn´t really be able to do much snorkeling that day. so we planned to get it the next day and go back to west bay (this time by water taxi!). so it was another day just lounging around the beach, only this time we decided to lounge and drink beer...mmmm those tasty honduran salva vidas. by the time dinner time rolled around, we were both feelin´ pretty good and wanting to go out and do something other than sit on the balcony and ponder our thoughts. i said it´d be nice if we could go listen and/or dance to some music other than the boring american music all the establishments in west end played. a honduran guy selling sunglasses on the beach told us that all the latin music is in coxen hole (the capital of roatán, where our ferry came in)....none of the latin stuff can be found in west end. problem is, taxis to coxen hole are like $20, and we couldn´t pay that. so courtney decided to go down and see if there were any taxis that would take us for $10.

she came back with good news! when she told the taxi guys (who all hung out at this desvio at the entrance to west end) that she wanted to go to coxen hole and dance, she said ¨and i´m not paying more than $10 to go there.¨ one of the taxistas was like ¨if you go and hang out with us, we´ll take you for free!¨ we didn´t really know what to do...because hey, it was a free trip into town! but on the other hand...who the hell were these taxi drivers? well, we ended up just deciding to go and went with one guy, jonas, and another guy, roberto, followed in his taxi. we went to this place called the breeze bar..hahaha. they had reggaeton and bachata and everything! we didn´t dance much, but we got out of west end which was nice. we met another taxi guy, colin, and then this hilarious older black guy, we didn´t catch his first name, but his last name was walton, so we just kept referring to him as ¨walton.¨

anyway, walton was born on roatán, but lived in the u.s. for 35 years or something. he kept saying ¨the united states is the best damned country in the world!¨ he kept saying how it´s the only place in the world you can make yourself what you want to be. he kept saying ¨if you´re a hard-working son-of-a-bitch, and you save your money, you can make something of yourself!¨ he came back to roatán, he said, because it was too expensive to retire in the states. but here on roatán, he´s got everything he could ever want. walton was a character. it was his birthday too! and he was there all alone. so jonas bought him a beer and then it was getting late, so we all left. but right before we left, walton gave me a mango. i was like ¨huh?¨ jonas drove us back to west end and roberto gave courtney his number because he said that thursday would be super fun at another bar there. so we half made plans for thursday.

the next day, tuesday, we rented snorkel gear and took a water taxi over to west bay again. that water taxi ride was much more relaxing than the bike ride, that´s for sure! we docked near infinity bay and finagled our way under another one of infinity´s umbrellas (the lounge chairs and umbrellas are supposed to only be for guests, but we kept saying how we ¨knew tommy¨ and he said it was ok....ha). so it was off to go snorkeling! we got out in the water and courtney was having trouble with her mask, but we got going. some guy swam up to us and said there were some sea turtles out by this boat, so i started swimming out there. but the coral in that area was really close to the surface and i was afraid i was going to hit it. you´re not supposed to touch the coral because first of all, it´s endangered and any time something hits it, it kills that part of it and can kill the whole animal. plus, if you do touch it, it stings you, and you can get some pretty nasty infections from coral poison. anyway, i started feeling claustrophobic because i´d get to a bunch of coral that was really close to the surface and i´d have to swim over it really fast. it was weird. but the reef was amazing. i saw a lot more different types of coral than the last time i was snorkeling off the belize cayes - and there were just these huge walls of reef, like a whole other world! these little blue and yellow striped fish (like the birds, i don´t know fish names that well either) that would come up and look at me through the front of my mask, like ¨hey, what´s up, can i help you find something?¨ and those long pointy nosed fish would dart across, just under the surface of the water. i looked up for courtney and i realized she was way back where we started, and i started getting the creeps being out there alone, so i turned back. courtney was having major problems with her mask, so we just decided to take a rest.

views of the beaches as we took the water taxi to and from west bay

later, we went back out and decided to go on the other side where more people were snorkeling. i took my underwater camera and tried to get as many good pictures as i could....mostly of the fish that were every color of the rainbow. i couldn´t believe it. and the brain coral....that was so freaky! this area had more open spots...bright, white sand surrounded by HUGE walls of coral on all sides...fan coral, brain coral....with fish darting in and out of every crevice. i was out there for a while and realized courtney still wasn´t around, so i went back to where she was and lent her my mask so that she could at least go out and get a look around. i didn´t see any big animals (sharks, turtles, rays), but the fish were like something out of a photo book or something. i seriously felt like i was trying to find nemo, it was so cool. definitely the highlight of the trip for me. even though i am really weirded out by the whole thing....it is a whole other world down there and i´m up there floating on the surface. it really is creepy.

the next day we wanted to try out the snorkeling in half moon bay, right in front of our hotel. we decided to take the two-man kayak out and possibly go out a ways and then get in the water from there. well, that turned into a disaster! ha. we took the kayak out, past half moon bay and were maybe a mile out....coral was EVERYWHERE....obviously, i mean, that´s what a reef is. anyway, kayaking over the coral it was hard to find a place where you could get in, without jumping right on top of the coral. we found a couple open spots, but then courtney decided she didn´t want to get in. i did, but then i told courtney she had to keep the kayak where i was, because i´d freak out if i came up and she wasn´t where i was. courtney wasn´t sure if she could keep the kayak around me...she doesn´t think her coordination´s that good, which it wasn´t the greatest, but i thought she could at least keep the kayak in the general area where i was. but then i started thinking about being out there in the open water and it was creeping me out, so i just decided to not jump in. we could just snorkel out from the beach later. so we´re kayaking along, and i look over the side to look at the coral from the top of the surface and all of a sudden courtney screams and we´ve capsized the kayak! whaaaaat?!!!! so we´re treading water, with the kayak on it´s wrong side and all of our stuff is in the water! our snorkel gear, the kayak paddles, my camera (which thank god i put in a plastic bag), EVERYTHING! we were somewhat nervous - me, because i was afraid we were gonna hit coral. courtney wanted to get the stuff, but i said, let´s get in the kayak first. so we used all our strength to lift that damned kayak up on it´s right side, which was NOT easy....try lifting something up like that without having the use of your legs....it´s all arm strength!

so we got the kayak flipped over, i managed to get myself back in, but when courtney tried to climb in, we capsized again! now i was like - wtf!? we had to find whatever strength we had left to try and lift that stupid kayak up and over again, and we almost couldn´t do it. we finally did, and this time courtney managed to get in first. i was totally out of strength and tried a couple times to get in and my arms gave out. after a little rest, i finally climbed in and we were both in the kayak again. but our stuff was floating with the small waves all over the open water. so we paddled over to where the stuff was floating and collected all of it. however, courtey´s mask and snorkel tube sunk, as did my tube. and my sunglasses. all the rest of the stuff we recovered. we paddled around a while looking to see if we could see the mask and tubes on the bottom, but couldn´t see anything. so we paddled back to the beach....both of us a little freaked out. not so much because we were out in the water, but because it took us by surprise.

i took the snorkel gear back and said we lost the stuff we lost and the owner said we should go back out and we´d probably be able to find the stuff if we just paddled around long enough. that was the last damned thing we wanted to do, take that kayak back out again. but we did, and we were probably out there for another two hours and didn´t find anything. so we just took the loss and had to pay a small fee for the lost stuff. so everything turned out ok, it wasn´t that big of a disaster. and anyway, what stories would i have to tell if i didn´t have any disasters????

the tengereche that came to visit us one day on our balcony

the palms in front of half moon bay

just some of the sunsets on the beach in front of posada arco iris

thursday was our last full day on roatán and we just explored the area a little bit, mostly the beach again. it was sad to be getting ready to leave, but i suppose it was time. i can see why they give you an open return on your ferry ticket because it would be very easy to stay longer than you intended on roatán! that night, we met the taxistas down at the desvio and went with another couple of taxi drivers, victor and lando, to a club in coxen hole. the place was packed and they had karaoke and all kinds of latin music. courtney and i, the only gringas in the place, felt a bit overdressed as all the ladies in the place were hooched out big time. we hung out and drank buckets of beer and danced and had a great time....even if it left me feeling a bit hungover the next day.

i didn´t want to do anything the next day except sleep, but we had to return the bikes and pack up and ship out. we got a free ride to the ferry dock from a very, very hungover victor. i felt bad for him. courtney and i had a few beers left over from the beer that we had brought with us to roatán. we didn´t want to waste it, so we drank them in the taxi on the way back to the ferry and victor was like ¨how can you drink that!?¨ ha. anyway, we made it to the ferry and bid farewell to lovely roatán.

hanging out in coxen hole

the ferry ride back to the mainland was much more tranquilo and calm than the ride over. i don´t think i could have taken another ride like the one over. once we were in la ceiba, we caught a cab over to the bus terminal and then back to another bus terminal because our cab driver was an idiot. we were now on our way to triunfo de la cruz, another garifuna beach town near tela, about an hour and a half away.

goodbye roatán......(the remains of a shipwreck off the island)

TRIUNFO DE LA CRUZ

....hello triunfo de la cruz!

we rolled into triunfo de la cruz by way of a taxi we shared with this older woman named virginia. she got off the bus with us at the desvio outside of tela and she said we could ride into triunfo with her and the cab she had already called. it was around 6:30 p.m. when we finally got to triunfo and we had no idea where we were going to stay. we had a vague idea of one hostal, but when we asked the cab driver where it was, he hadn´t the slightest idea. so we just rode around in the cab until he dropped off virginia. then we just let the cab driver take us wherever he thought we should stay. he stopped outside of this place called ¨panchy´s¨ and the next thing we knew we were staying there. it was super cheap....about $7 for the two of us! we were pretty tired, so we crashed almost immediately and i fell asleep to the sounds of the AA meeting that was going on in the restaurant outside of our room.

the next day we decided to check out tela, because supposedly there was a garifuna museum there. we shared another cab into tela and then went in search of the museum. we ended up down this dead end street and saw no signs or anything, so we backtracked and asked a couple people and they said that it indeed was down at the end of that dead end street. so we walked back down there and hollered ¨buenos días¨ and some guy answered and we asked what was the deal with the museum. he said that ¨fijense,¨ which you know some shit is coming after that....anytime anyone starts out their sentence with ¨fijese,¨ you know it´s not gonna be good. he said that the museum was now closed because there was shitty management and they lost of bunch of the pieces that were in the museum. so we turned around and walked back down to the tela´s beach, but i was somehow uninspired to take it all in. it was a another beach. same as the one in triunfo. same as the one in trujillo. it was beautiful, but it was the same thing i´d been seeing for the past 2 1/2 weeks. the only thing that could have added a bit more to the ¨beach town¨ thing was the museum, and that was closed. we walked along the beachfront and stopped at a restaurant to get something to drink. courtney got her hair braided and i bought some earrings from this guy selling them along the beach. his name was benjamin and it was his birthday that day. he talked and talked and talked how his dream was to work on a cruise ship. he was a real character.

chillin´ out

baby coconuts!

later we headed back to triunfo on the bus and the rest of the day we just hung on the beach. there was not that much else to do. later that day, courtney was laying on the beach and i, tired of all the sun, sat in a beach chair under the palm trees reading crime and punishment. next thing i know, i look up and courtney´s chatting away with this garifuna guy. this guy ¨works¨ up and down the beach seeing if anyone wants to go see punto izopo or playas escondidas. he´s a guide, but not a very serious one. we didn´t have that much money left - which is why we couldn´t go to any of the national parks that were around the area. the only way you could get to any of these places is if you take a boat, and the only tours offered are ones through this outfit called ¨garifuna tours.¨ they have a monopoly on the area, and their tours cost something like $25 per person - which is outrageous - especially since what honduran family can pay to go on that tour? it´s like the only people they want visiting these national parks are tourists. what about the hondurans? anyway, we were so poor we couldn´t even afford this guy´s tour.

this guy´s name turned out to be victor too. only panchy, the woman who runs the hotel we were staying in, called him ¨vicky fresh.¨ i know, ??? he said he would walk with us down to the discoteca and maybe to see punta dancing - which is a garifuna dance - later that night if we wanted. so later we met up with vicky fresh and went to a local home where they were having a balnorario (i´m not sure if i´m spelling that correctly). a balnorario is a party that a family and community have on the anniversary of someone´s death, to celebrate them. a guy who was there explained to me that it can take place 3 months after someone dies, or 6 months or a year or whenever the people want to have it. we have something similar in el salvador, but it´s always held a year after. people stay up all night and have music and dancing and food and drinks. at the balnorario, everyone formed a circle around these drummers and then men and women danced in pairs, one at a time, in the middle. it was really cool to see the african influenced dance and see the people interacting with another because it was such a happy time. we were given cups of atole with avena and some other ingredient, i couldn´t tell.

after a while, we left to go down to the discoteca, which was supposed to be fun because everyone was in town for this balnorario. so we ended up there, but i was not feeling it. i just wanted to go back to bed. of course vicky fresh wanted to dance and so did courtney, so eventually some other friend of vicky fresh came and we all danced. we only stayed a couple hours or so and finally made our way back to panchy´s and to bed. the next day was more of the same...the beach. i was ready to go back to apaneca! we took our last pictures of triunfo and the next morning we left. or so i thought we were going to leave right away.

instead, we stood at the intersection outside of panchy´s waiting for either a taxi to pass, or for the bus to pass. some other dude came up and started talking to us forever and i was all talked out. i just wanted to leave! then we saw vicky fresh again. he said he was going to ¨work¨ - he was carrying a machete and said he was going out to work in the milpa or something. 15 minutes later, we saw him again, walking by the same intersection. this was life here in triunfo. when we had gotten up earlier around 6:00, not a soul was awake. me and courtney were saying how in el salvador, women are up at 5:00 making pupusas and frying up chicken for lunch and cleaning. not so in triunfo. people kind of just ease into the day there. finally the bus passed and we got on and were the only ones on the bus. the roads in triunfo are horrible...sand/dirt with huge potholes everywhere. so the bus crawled, and i mean crawled, down the long road to the desvio where the road then either goes to the highway or to la ensenada, another garifuna beach town. we get to la ensenada and the bus picks up a few people there and then turns around and crawls back to the desvio. then, instead of going up the road to the highway, the bus crawls back through triunfo! i was like ¨get me out of this town!¨ the bus crawled, picking up more and more people, women got on the bus and were like ¨buuuueeeennnnooooos dddddíííííaaaasssss........¨ all long and drawn out and it was like this for like another 1/2 hour. FINALLY, we made our way to the highway and in no time we were at the desvio to wait for a bus to san pedro. i thought we´d never get out of there!

we caught a bus and before we knew it we were in san pedro sula. i had been trying to get to the post office for four days now...we originally were going to stop in roatán, but victor the cab driver was too hungover to stop there, then we tried in tela and the post office was closed. so our last chance was san pedro sula. the cab driver who was taking us to the terminal agreed to take us to the post office, and when we got there he walked with me down the street to the entrance. finally with that errand over, we got to the terminal and were on our way to el poy. we decided to take the six hour bus ride to a different border...the one that goes to chalatenango in el salvador rather than go to tegus and stay the night and take the tica bus back to san salvador.

the bus ride wasn´t too bad and by the time we got to nueva ocotopeque we were making good time. after we crossed the border into el salvador, we went to the little bus terminal there and found out that the last bus to san salvador had left a half hour earlier! so we sat there for a minute while all the mototaxi drivers told us they´d take us to la palma for $25 or something. instead we called our friend ben who lives in citalá, a pueblo right there next to el poy. we took a mototaxi there and he met us and let us crash at his house for the night. the next day we were off and i slowly made my way back to apaneca and was glad to be home. it was a great trip, but really, there is no place like home (even though i´m still dreaming about roatán!).

the sunset in apaneca, where it´s just as pretty as anywhere.

back at last

2008-08-01T18:07:00.002-06:00

well, i don´t have anything to post right now. i just got back from a very long vacation (21 days!!) where i didn´t do much but explore different beaches in honduras (except for the few days we were at lago yojoa and cerro azul). it was amazing, but i am extremely glad to be back home here in el salvador. perhaps sometime during agostinas (the weeklong vacation el salvador has to celebrate salvador del mundo, patron saint of san salvador) i will be able to write a little about the trip. so that´s it for now, but i´ll be back soon to fill you in on my lovely trip.

adios.

then and now

2008-06-30T17:43:00.013-06:00

this past saturday, antonio and i decided to visit panchimalco, one of the oldest towns in el salvador. unlike the majority of the rest of el salvador, panchimalco is one of those quiet little pueblos that has managed to hang on to a few of it´s indigenous roots. panchimalco, nahuizalco, izalco, santo domingo de guzmán, and other pueblos scattered throughout the country are welcome sites sometimes. it´s easy to forget that el salvador was once filled with nahuat-speaking peoples dressed in colorful clothes and carrying on their lives without cars, cell phones and roads. while these pueblos have moved forward with technology and modern-day conveniences just like the rest of the world, they´ve also managed to preserve the almost extinct antiguan salvadoran culture.

we didn´t stay for long as it was quite a bus ride from apaneca to panchimalco, which lies to the south of san salvador, hidden away in the hills. it was very quiet, a few women selling fruits and vegetables on the street, and even a few movie pirates, selling their peliculas for $2 a piece. the main attraction in panchimalco is it´s 250+ year old church which is the oldest standing colonial structure in el salvador. antonio mentioned to me after walking through the church that apaneca´s catholic church was of similar antiquity before it was destroyed in the 2001 earthquake. (believe it or not, they are STILL not finished with the church in apaneca. in fact, it doesn´t look that much different than how it did when i arrived in december 2005. i don´t know what´s taking so long, but i mentioned before in a previous post how the father of the church has refused to accept any money from the government in repairing the church, so it is taking longer than if it were a government-sponsered repair.)

it´s floor was a mixture of bricks and dirt and the adornos were sparse and very, very distressed. but that´s what made the church so interesting. to think that this church was standing that long ago was something to think about. it´s transformation over the years, while physically probably hasn´t been much, the people that have congregated there have changed so much. whenever i´m traveling through el salvador on the bus (bus travel gives you lots and lots of time to ponder things) i sometimes think about what it was like here 200 years ago, or more. a lot of people here talk about how things were better ¨before,¨ the country was safer, the colón was still the national currency and things were much easier to buy. i can imagine for some nahuat-speaking indian who was living here all those years ago, they must have thought they were living in a paradise. i´m not talking so much about things like the fact that thousands upon thousands of indigenous peoples were murdered in the 30´s by el salvador´s then-president, but just in terms of the environment and daily life here. women ground their corn and made tortillas and spent a lot of time cooking food and taking care of the children - often breast-feeding one while the other sat and played in the dirt. the men went off to the forest to hunt or grow corn, using machetes. the only difference between then and now is that the forests have all but disappeared here, so men who do go out are finding less and less leña to start cooking fires with, families are preoccupied with how much ¨saldo¨ they have on their cell phones while they also try to come up with enough bus fare to get themselves to one of the bigger cities to take advantage of cheaper vegetable prices. everything seems to be such a struggle here, now, in the present. they essentially are doing the same things they did all those years ago, yet things are just so much more different. of course i´m speculating because i have no idea what it was like emotionally to live here 200 or 500 years ago; just the daily tasks that we know to have existed, through archaeological evidence made available to us.

i´ve just felt so pensativo lately with the fact that everywhere i turn in this world, what it all comes down to is money. i´ll have conversations with people here and inevitably, the topic turns to money....lack of it, price of food, bus fares, how someone in their family is in the states making more money. all this business with my computer....it´s all about how much money companies can get you to spend. you can spend much of your life without a computer, but once you make that leap to start using one, you can´t live without one, no matter how hard you try. and with that, comes the need for money. and companies know that and they prey on that fact. education is almost entirely grounded in money nowadays. tuitions are sky high, books for classes are some of the most outrageously priced items i have ever seen. i thought education was supposed to be about learning. it´s sad to see poor people be suckered, and i see my fair share of it here. vendors sell some of the shittiest products (batteries, clothes, shoes, toothbrushes, you name it) in the markets here, and these people who are struggling to clothe their kids or put batteries in their flashlights in order to see at night because there is no electricity in their house end up buying these crap items over and over and over again because the products are so shoddily made. i´m not even going to go into health care. i´ll just say what everybody knows - it´s all about money. most people here are willing to risk their lives to cross the u.s./mexico border, not because they want to be americans and celebrate 4th of july or see the grand canyon. they do it for the jobs that net more money than they´ll ever make here.

recently there was a news article on cnn.com that showed photos of these indigenous indians in brazil, who those taking the photos believe have never been contacted by ¨outsiders¨ before. the photos showed the indians waving things at the airplane as it swooped down over their village. apparently those taking the photos are part of a group that tries to protect the rights of these indians as their way of life is in jeopardy as a result of the destruction of the amazon. i didn´t know what to make of those photos. on one hand, i understand the mission of the group trying to protect them. on the other hand, i felt sad that those indians had to look up and see such a spectacle: the strange airplane flying over while a photographer leaned out and snapped photos of them....like they were animals on a safari in africa or something.

with that being said, sometimes i just think it´s nice to sit back and imagine what it was like in the past. a past without all these things that cost so much money that cause us to create our own obstacles to overcome. i´m not saying things were always so much more fabulous in the past or that progression is a bad thing, but i think somewhere along the way our societies have become somewhat misguided. i wish there was a way we could get back on track where we focus more on the good things like health and education and those things that, at their core, make a society a great one. money isn´t everything, we all know that, so i don´t know why it has to dictate our lives so much.

oh, and germany lost to spain in the euro copa final! antonio and i made a harmless bet of ice cream, and so i had to buy ice cream for antonio on sunday. what did i buy it with? yep, more money.

here are some photos of panchimalco. adios for now!

el salvador has the most amazing trees. the trees here are something i will remember forever.

a fun day for everyone

2008-06-26T14:51:00.006-06:00

yesterday i made a fool out of myself, but in a good way! i had english class with the third and fourth graders and we talked about clothing, so i thought it would be a good activity to bring a bunch of clothes from home and put them on. i had a big bag of clothes and i gave each kid a chance to pull out a piece of clothing and if they could tell me what it´s name was in english, i would put the piece of clothing on. i had everything from huge sweatshirts to underwear to big flannel pajama bottoms, and i had them on all at once. it was hilarious. i didn´t care that i looked like a complete idiot because the kids were in stitches and they were actually learning the names of the clothes in the process. elba thought it was funny too. then i asked if there were any kids who wanted to put the clothes on and so abby, this really outgoing girl, volunteered to come up front and put on my gigantic clothing and it was even funnier. good times.

i know these pictures are a little dark, but here´s abby with my clothes. totally hilarious!

this brings me to my almost end of service evaluation of my work here. i´ve discovered that i´m a much better teacher than i ever thought i was. while i don´t feel like i want to teach in a traditional school setting, i´ve learned from my work here that i do want to work in some kind of educational setting. the things i´ve been most successful with here have all been related to working with the kids and teaching the teachers new techniques in the classroom. for example, anytime i do an activity with elba´s kids where they´re participating and being creative and having a good time, she notices whatever activity it is and makes really positive comments about it. with mirna it´s completely different because i´ll notice things she changes about how she teaches and she never inferences that it´s because i taught her this different methodology, but like she came up with this idea all on her own. which is a great thing because it´s exactly how it´s supposed to work! she needs to think it was her idea because she´s going to be the one teaching here forever (well, maybe not forever, but for a very long time). the deal is, as environmental education volunteers working in schools we teach the teachers in a way that they start emulating what we´ve done, but also in a way that they are thinking of these things on their own (when we are gone), making changes in their teaching styles in order to get the kids participating and being creative.

i never ever thought i´d enjoy teaching english. i always said that i´m not here to teach the kids english, they need to learn spanish first. this is why at the beginning of the year i told elba and mirna that i didn´t want to teach english to the kids in first and second grade because i thought they needed to spend the few hours they are in school learning spanish grammar. but i agreed to teach 3-6 grades and although i was a little reluctant to do it at first, having an actual english class with those grades every week, i have come to really love it. i like being creative and thinking of new activities and teaching methods in order to make teaching english more than just giving them a list of vocabulary words every week. i´m not trying to get them to be english speakers or anything, but just introducing them to english beyond the whole ¨i love you¨ and ¨goodbye¨ and ¨hello¨ that they normally remember is actually quite fun. i really enjoy doing environmental activities with the kids too....it´s such a good way to be creative and get the kids to be more outgoing and participatory.

being down here and having salvadoran men yell stuff like ¨goodbye¨ and ¨i love you¨ and ¨hello¨ because that´s all they have ever actually learned of english makes me think how dumb we americans probably sound (or at least i did before i learned spanish) when we go to mexican restaurants in the states and say ¨gracias¨ and ¨adios¨ or whatever. latinos probably think we sound like idiots. i´ll never forget that tourist i saw in ataco who was had just got off this big, clean, almost antiseptic tourist bus in front of one of the artesanias there. he was wearing one of those big, bright hawaiian shirts and was drinking the beer and in front of the artesania were these little wooden chairs (i might have written about this before, so if i have and it´s a repeat story, you can stop reading here….i hate it when people repeat the same stories over and over again and i don´t want to be a hypocrite!). anyway, one of the salvadoran workers from the artesania was outside and the tourist walked by and in this really southern accent drawls ¨that´s pequeyyyyño right?¨ and laughs heartily while pointing at one of the wooden chairs that was small. the salvadoran working in the artesania just gave him a look like ¨uh, yeah¨ and i was thinking that salvadoran probably thinks americans are sooooo weird! i just cringed and turned to walk the other way so i wouldn´t be mistaken for being with this group of people.

anyway, nobody´s perfect, and i don´t expect them to be. but, my point is, if i have a chance to teach these kids something in a way that they´ll more likely remember the information and not be those salvadorans that only yell out ¨i love you¨ at whoever, i´m all for it. i´ve definitely felt more successful educating in the school than with the adults in the community. i know i´ve made a difference in terms of the trash and forming the committee and all that, but i feel like i´m not the greatest at motivating people on a community-wide basis. i guess i have motivated people, but it´s been more on an individual basis. actually, though, most peace corps experiences come down to that….it´s not the big projects you work on that end up making the difference, it´s the little, everyday relationships that do it. i feel more effective in the classroom, working with the kids because i can be there on an everyday or weekly basis. and let´s face it, it´s easier to motivate kids than it is to get adults to change their ways of thinking. i mean, i haven´t avoided working with adults, i´ve put myself out there, worked with the community. but i definitely feel like i´ve made more impact on the kids and teachers in the school.

and you know what? these salvadoran kids are great. they´re all super smart and creative….they just need to be given the chance to work at their own pace and actually be given the opportunity to work creatively. there are so many kids here that i can see going on to university and i just hope that they and their families find a way to make that happen. people give peace corps volunteers all this credit for what we do, but it would be impossible to do it without the participation and willingness to learn and teach by the people of the countries we are working in. so, you know, i have to say, i´m really proud of the kids in my school. they come to class every day (if they can) and they are ready to learn. with the classes that i teach, the kids are excited about english and environmental classes and reading. they come prepared and with their minds open and i just feel like the least we teachers and volunteers can do is spend our time making their educational experience a great one. so one of my biggest priorities before i end my peace corps service here in el salvador is getting the teachers, who will continue teaching the kids when i´m gone, to foster that idea of giving the kids a great educational experience.

adios!

p.s. noticias importantes!! so the euro copa is down to the final two......germany and spain. who´s gonna take it? i don´t know, but i´ll be cheering for germany as my family name makes it impossible not to. antonio´s grandmother´s family was from spain (actually his father´s last name literally means ¨spaniard¨), so i guess it´s safe to say he´ll be cheering for spain. sunday´s the day!

let´s talk fútbol!

2008-06-23T16:41:00.011-06:00

ok, well i know that many of you don´t follow fútbol, or soccer as it is known up north, but let me re-cap the ups and downs of what´s been going on lately with this sport in el salvador.

long live once!!

first, back in may, i was totally bummed because the soccer team for the department of ahuachapán got demoted to the ¨segunda división¨ of the national league. for almost the entire year, once municipal (11 municipal), the canarios, were playing without a head coach, or without the players receiving any paychecks. through some political battling being waged by the owner of the team and the other members of the front office, the owner simply decided that he wasn´t going to pay the players anymore. as the season continued, the team kept tying their games, neither winning nor losing, and ended up at the end of the season having the lowest number of points in the entire league. not only were they not receiving any money, their head coach quit (or was fired depending on who you ask) sometime before mid-season, and so one of the players was trying to be coach and player at the same time. so when the final game of the season came to pass, once needed to win the game in order to say in the 1st devision. well, they gave a mighty effort, but ended up not winning and being demoted. it was hilarious after the game though because all the players, including the captain of the team, went off on the front office during interviews and were actually smiling and laughing and whatever because they knew they gave it their best shot and were just glad to be rid of the disasterous season. most of the players will now either be scattered throughout the rest of the 1st division league, a few will end up playing for the team as it participates in the 2nd division (kind of like the triple A in baseball). mind you, this is the same team that actually WON the closing national championship (clausura) in 2006! and now they are no more, at least as far as the national level is concerned.

11 municipal, before they were demoted...

on to el salvador´s national team......last night´s match between el salvador and panama was probably one of the most exciting matches i´ve seen in a long time in any sport. i´m not sure if any of you follow the world cup (i posted about the world cup back in 2006...how argentina lost and italy went on to win....). right now the ¨euro copa¨ is going on which is super important, right up there with the ¨copa sudamerica¨ and the world cup. television channels here pre-empt telenovelas, even the news, to air these matches. spain beat italy yesterday and the day before that, russia beat holland. so it´s down to germany vs. turkey and spain vs. russia for the semi-finals.

anyway, in order to qualify for the world cup, the granddaddy of all fútbol tournaments, countries like el salvador can´t simply just show up for the games. big teams like italy and france and germany and spain and argentina and brazil can pretty much do that. the style and quality of play is different in those countries. first off most of the big talent comes from these countries - many of the most talented players on the european teams (and in the world) come from brazil and argentina. so when it comes time to compete for the world cup, there´s no way brazil (who has ronaldinho and lionel messi) is not going to be competing. but tiny el salvador? no, they´ve got to fight for the chance to compete, even though it´s not likely they´ll make it very far. but it´s such a thrill to be able to play in the world cup it doesn´t matter if they go far or not.

so last night was do or die for el salvador´s team as they participated in the first qualifying tournament (with the ultimate prize being a spot on the world cup rotation). both el salvador and panama were playing for the right to go on to the next qualifying round. they previously played in panama and lost 0-1. panama then had to come to el salvador and play. because panama won the previous game by 1 goal, they only needed to win by 1 goal in order to qualify for the next round. el salvador, on the other hand, needed to win by 2 goals (since they lost by 1 in the previous game). it was a tall order for el salvador, it would be for any team, to go into a game HAVING to score 2 goals more than their opponent.

estadio cuscatlán during last night´s game (this photo is from el diario del hoy, one of the national newspapers here)

so they started the opening and played panama´s national anthem. then they played the salvadoran national anthem (¨saludemos, la patria orgullosos.....!!!¨) and i have to admit i was somewhat emotionally proud, seeing all those salvadorans in blue and white, stuffed into estadio cuscatlán. the game started and about 15 minutes into the game panama scored a goal. antonio was watching the game with me (of course he was watching the game, he´s male and he´s salvadoran, and more importantly, a latin american) and was like ¨they´ve lost it!¨ i was like ¨don´t say that yet, they´ve still got another whole half an hour, and then the other 45 minutes of the last half of the game.¨ but in all honesty, it was looking even more grim for el salvador because now they had to score 3 goals, not just 2. if the thought of scoring 2 was hard, 3 was almost an impossible order.

so the first half of the game eventually passed, it had poured rain for most of the time. there was even cloud cover on the field and i was wondering how the players could even see each other. half time was over and they started the second half and it was like el salvador couldn´t move the ball on the rain soaked field. panama was basically just trying to eat up the clock as they pretty much had the game in the bag. well, about 20 minutes in, el salvador scored a goal on a penalty kick and it was like ¨ok, yay!¨ but still, they needed 2 more goals and with only 20 some odd minutes more, that was a lot to ask. but after that goal, el salvador started to play much better....they were managing to move the ball, despite the puddles of water all over the field, they were passing better and they just seemed generally more ¨with it.¨

then by some miracle, at about the 38 minute mark, panama, who had started to play a little dirtier, committed a penalty in the box on el salvador. panama´s player was issued a ¨tarjeta roja¨ (red card), meaning he had to leave the game and panama had to play with only 10 players. on top of that, el salvador was given a penalty shot (when the penalty is committed in the box, the free kick is from a very short distance, where it´s just the goaltender and the guy getting the free kick...this is opposed as to the penalty kick i mentioned above, which was committed from farther away, so the kick was made in front of a line of players). whenever a team gets a penalty kick from close up like that, it´s like a 90% chance that it´s gonna go in. well, i guess it´s less than that, but it´s so random. the goaltender has to know which side the guy´s gonna kick the ball as well as if he´s gonna kick it low or high. this is how they end games that are tied...with penalty kicks from a very short distance. and it just seems like such a farce, because then it doesn´t really show how good a team is....it just shows whether or not the goaltender can read the mind of the guy kicking the ball. for example, in 2006´s world cup, argentina lost their game not on the game itself, but on penalty kicks.

anyway, so the pressure was on eliseo quintanilla, who was the player to make the free kick. anything could have happened, really, but in the end he was successful and the ball floated in the goal perfectly. so now it was 2-1, in favor of el salvador and they needed to score just one more goal in order to not only win the game, but to go on to the next qualifying round. so the game continued and we´re yelling at the television ¨come on!!!!!¨ like crazy people. the minutes were winding down and there was literally no more time to score a goal when all of a sudden, luis anaya of el salvador had the ball and from 89 or so feet, kicked it towards the goal. the ball sailed through the air, hit another salvadoran player, chepe martinez, in the head and before we knew what had happened, the ball went into the goal. i kept yelling ¨no friggin´way!¨ and antonio was like ¨si es la verdad!¨ (it´s true!). it was completely insane. everyone who had fireworks in apaneca let them off and it was like christmas day or something. it was so unbelievable. seriously, i just kept yelling ¨no puedo creerlo!¨ and it was like i had just watched a badly scripted inspirational movie or something. it was so bananas! the thing is, they had to play the game for like 3 more minutes because of the extra time the árbitros put on the clock so it was like ¨please, for the love of god don´t let panama score!¨ because even if el salvador won the game, if it wasn´t by 2 or more goals, they´d not make it to the next qualifying round. but the minutes wound down and they did it. as all the papers said today ¨sí se pudo!¨ (yes the team could!).

here is a video of the highlighted moments from el gráfico, the sports paper here. remember, el salvador is BLUE, panama is RED!

here´s another one...if you´re into the whole thing. i can´t stop watching highlights of it. it was so nuts!

anyway, so now el salvador gets to compete in the next tournament to see if they can make it to the world cup (which isn´t until 2010 believe it or not, in south africa). but i´m sooooo excited!

so that´s what´s going on in deportes here in el salvador. basically that´s what i´ve been doing instead of writing blog entries....watching loads and loads of fútbol!

adios for now and felicidades a el salvador!

on why i would make a lousy meteorologist

2008-06-03T16:46:00.009-06:00

besides the fact that i would be horrified be taped, live, standing in front of a green screen, trying to coordinate my hand movements with a map of the united states and clouds and suns and temperatures that are visible to the viewers, but aren´t actually visible to me, with a smile plastered on my face and my hair formed into an updo, i would never, ever, be able to make a correct enough prediction as to what the weather will do in five minutes, let alone overnight or the next day.

what i´m getting at is the fact that last friday, if you readers will recall, i talked about how tropical depression alma, didn´t really affect us here at all. and i also wrote about how it hasn´t rained very much at all around here, despite us being a month into the rainy season. let´s just say i was pretty much waaaaay off the mark on that one. remember how i said that it started pouring while i was typing my last entry? well, it hasn´t stopped. it is STILL raining, and it´s TUESDAY! i haven´t seen the sun since friday morning. school has been all but cancelled, not because the ministerio de educación has cancelled school, but because no kids have come to school because it has been pouring rain every single minute of the day. and the cold.......holy mother of god is it cold. you know, when i visited lago atitlán in guatemala back in 2006, i bought this wool blanket in the market. i remember after we visited the lake, we went to the beach in monterico, and i as i lugged that bag with my new wool blanket in it, i thought ¨what in god´s name was i thinking buying this damned blanket?¨ it was 100 million degrees with a 100 million degrees of humidity and i was carrying around a WOOL BLANKET? but am i ever glad i purchased that thing. that and the scarf i knitted (i finished it on thursday, as a matter of fact) have been my saving grace in this cold, november-like (well, november in ohio) rain.

seriously, i haven´t seen so much rain in one continuous stretch since hurricane stan, back when i was living in molineros and trapped in my host family´s house for two weeks. let´s pause for a minute while i remember that lovely lockdown....me and anna trying to get to spanish class at megan´s host family´s house, me going out of mind with the constant sound of rain for a week straight, my first experience with mold growing on not only everything i own, but on me as well, a volcano eruption, me not being able to speak spanish......ahh, such good times! so why all the rain now? well, it IS the rainy season. but aside from that, apparently, after ¨alma¨ dumped it´s share of agua on us, next came ¨arthur¨ with it´s buckets and buckets of cold, sleet-like rain. after the news channels here decided to stop airing footage of the salvadoran airplane that crashed at honduras´s airport on friday, they were kind enough to start reporting on ¨las lluvias¨ that have been inundating el salvador for five days. they stated that the parts of the country that have been most affected are the western departments and the higher elevated areas. bingo! where´s apaneca? the westernmost department and lucky for us, it´s at one of the highest elevations in the country! i´m not complaining though. for the most part, i was waiting for the rain to come and it´s not like i have to go anywhere. not like back in the states when i had jobs with time cards or only a certain number of ¨days off.¨ if the weather is crappy here, most likely everyone else is staying at home, indoors, because of the ¨mal tiempo.¨ i called the school on monday to see how it was and elba is like ¨DON´T COME HERE!!! IT´S TOO DANGEROUS!!!¨ ok, ok, i get the message! anyway, i don´t know if it´s dangerous as much as it´s just a hassle.

the good thing is because we live in the mountains, all the rain basically just flows downhill after it hits the ground. i would HATE to live in the lower-lying areas, where everything eventually ends up. the only scary thing about the rains is the fact that the ground here is really susceptible to ¨derrumbes,¨ or landslides. the highway that runs past apaneca is basically a mountain road, and either way you go - to sonsonate to the south, or ahuachapan to the north - the highway weaves around and around, hugging the mountain. all the earth and rocks and trees that make up the beautiful mountains can fall at any minute.

i´m supposed to go visit courtney on thursday (not sure if i´ll end up swimming there or taking the bus), and once again, i´m left with what i like to call ¨the clothes decision.¨ you see, every time i have to go to the capital or i´m going up to visit courtney, i´m at a loss of what to wear. not because of my non-existent fashion sense, but because when i get up in the morning here in apaneca it´s so COLD. i´m talking scarves, gloves, winter hats and coats cold. sometimes it´s also raining like cats and dogs. so i dress accordingly.....hiking shoes, jeans, long-sleeved shirt, sweatshirt. by the time i´ve made it to san salvador i´m sweating like a pig, obviously. all i want are my flip-flops and tank top. i end up making the return trip with all this cargo in clothes and shoes that weigh my backpack down and leave me wishing i´d have not worn jeans or brought those heavy shoes. then the bus starts making it´s ascent just outside of sonsonate, and by the time the bus has left juayua and is climbing, climbing, climbing the mountains to apaneca, i wish i would have worn the jeans and put on the hiking shoes.

like i said in the beginning, i´m horrible at predictions and being prepared. good thing i´m just a peace corps volunteer and not a meteorologist! adios for now!

la biblioteca

2008-05-30T15:38:00.006-06:00

well i thought i´d get one last entry in before may 2008 is gone forever. i can´t believe june is practically here..... may was supposed to bring a bunch of rain and it really hasn´t yet. the weather has been really odd this year. right now as i sit here and type this entry, clouds are rolling through the pueblo and into the windows and doors here at the internet place, making it look like i´m in a haunted house. the past couple of days have been dry and really windy, which is not that normal for may in apaneca. we were on alert yesterday for tropical storm alma, but it never really materialized here, which is good. of course, right after i typed that it hasn´t been raining here, it starts pouring. anyway.....

we finally got the school library up and running. well, not completely up and running, but the kids can at least now come into the classroom where the libary is and read. it was actually quite a lot of work to get the libary ready. we had to cover all the books with plastic to protect them. then we made up cards to put in the fronts of the books so that when the time comes to introduce the borrowing system, we´ll be able to take the cards out of the pockets and keep a physical record of what books have been taken out without having to write all the info down. we´re planning on making i.d. cards for the kids so that when they want to take a book out to take home, they can leave their card with the card from whatever book it is at the school. i drew some pictures and stuff to put on the wall to make it less industrialized. we still have a couple things to do yet, but for the most part, it´s a wrap.

this system may sound arcane to you, but this whole library system is completely new to the teachers and the kids. they´ve never experienced being able to take books home with them, and i will admit, i´m a little nervous about the whole thing. but i guess my feeling is that they can´t be prohibited from doing this forever. kids don´t really care for books here like we do, or like most of us do. they write in them and tear the pages and steal them. but not all kids do this, just like not everyone who is familiar with a library takes care of the books they take out. but i guess my feeling is that maybe they don´t know how to take care of books because they´ve never had a lot of books around them. i don´t know. it´ll be a learning experience, that´s for sure. and i know some books will be lost or whatever, but that just goes with the territory.

anyway, after getting all the books covered and put on the shelves, i looked at the library and i was like ¨it´s so small!!!!¨ we have maybe 200 books in all, including some reference books as well as some books in english. 200 books doesn´t sound like much for a library, in comparison to what we have available to us in the states, but believe me, 200 books to these kids is a lot! so i think all in all it can only be a good thing.

mirna and her first graders were the first to have ¨lectura¨ in the library. it was fun to hear all the kids reading. the plan is to have some kind of project where we work on comprehension, because a lot of kids just like to look at the pictures. there´s nothing wrong with just wanting to look at the pictures, but they also should be reading. so i´m gonna help mirna with some kind of comprehension project where she can get the kids to talk or write about what the book was about. i´ve been doing this a bit (last year and this year) with the first graders. i take a group of like 5 kids and we read a book together, then i ask them questions about the book and they write the answers in their notebooks. hopefully, she can start doing this with the whole class.

anyway, so here are some pictures from the new library! adios for now...... (oh, p.s.....i´ve finally learned how to add video! i added a video to the ¨carrera de cinta¨ post at the end to show exactly what happens there. hopefully i´ll be able to upload more videos of more stuff in the future.)

first graders reading

leydi telling everyone why she liked her book ¨¿Qué ve el sol?¨