Last Thoughts on Latin America

I've been in, on, and among ancient ruins in three countries.

I've watched ocean sunsets and walked on beaches barefoot.

I've climbed an active volcano and stood next to glowing, flowing lava at dusk.

I visited a cloud forest and hiked around the rim of a gorgeous crater lake.

I ate a picnic lunch next to a green lagoon with 2 - 90 something year old sisters and the young daughter of one of their daughter's.

I rafted. I looked at tons of waterfalls.

I went to natural hot springs several different times.

I tried a steam bath...nice!

I admired countless beautiful, old churches. COUNTLESS!!

I learned to speak Spanish.

I visited the equator.

I touched giant starfish.

Looked at ancient gold artifacts.

Watched shooting stars and ate pizza at night on the beach.

Listened to the waves crash and fell asleep in the grass in the park in the warm sun...for hours.

I ate tuna sandwiches, olives and cheese and coffee for breakfast on the beach and then ate the same thing for lunch in the same spot on the beach, but switched the coffee to beer...This was a routine for a few days. I loved it.

I took a couple of little boat tours - Flores, Granada, outside of Bogota.

I met wonderful locals, especially in El Salvador, Colombia and Ecuador.

I stood under waterfalls and went horseback riding on the same day.

I saw the Panama Canal.

I have been to 10 countries.

I have felt tremors!

Australia - Give me more of the same!

Hola, Peru! Hola, Lima!

I'm in Lima, Peru...I think it has a population of 8 million or so....so it's no Denver. But what a beautiful city, built on bluffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean...wow!

I have 10 days left before I fly to Perth. I got a work visa for Australia, which I'm sure I mentioned already...but in any case, I have to enter the country by May 2nd or I lose the visa.

When I was granted the visa, nearly three months ago, I was in El Salvador, and I thought, "My god, how will I make it through South America fast enough?!" And the truth is, it's not possible to make it through South America fast enough. This continent is huge, and every country deserves a fair amount of attention and patience.

So, I've been to Colombia, Ecuador, and now Peru. Peru is certainly the sketchiest country in South America so far...I was scammed big time by the Peruvian taxi drivers (fuck them!), and today I was with an other America at the supermarket...he tried, unknowingly, to pay for his purchase with a 50 note (about $17), which turned out to be fake...along with another 100 soles that he got at the border...completely fake!

I was completely scammed by taxi drivers back to back on the Peruvian side of the border...which at one point, I thought this post would be titled, ¨I hate Peru¨ or ¨Thank god I eat fish¨ or ¨Get me the fuck out of South America." For the record...taxi drivers are scum...generally they screw you over in some sly method or another...don't get me started.

In any case, thankfully, I did not title this post that...Lima has been great...but I still believe Peru to be sketchy, and I can't wait to arrive in Perth.

However, Lima is a beautiful city, very metropolitan...beautiful skyrises, hotels, restaurants, but for me the best are the parks...along the cliffs overlooking the ocean.

Tomorrow night I head toward Cuzco, but I think I will probably make a stop 1/2 way because I'm not totally keen on a 20 hour bus ride.

So I guess that's it for now...

Ruta de las Cascadas

I had an action packed day today on four hours of sleep...and it's not over yet!

I rented a mountain bike for the day ($3.33) with two guys I met here in Baños. Paul from California and Vicente from Wales. We rode part of the Ruta de las Cascadas (Route of Waterfalls) about 10 miles (17K) fairly leisurely over the course of 5 hours with stops along the way to admire the many waterfalls and a few little side hikes to get a closer view. (Pictures soon to come.)

Oh! And how could I forget the bridge jumping ($15), which I happily observed despite the intense peer pressure. Watching was scary enough for me. Bridge jumping, I suppose, is a milder version of bungee jumping. Paul jumped. Vicente jumped. I took pictures.

At the bridge jump, we met a couple of Australians from Sydney (Simon & Jeff - ¨best mates¨) who also jumped, and who we met back up with towards the end of our ride and hiked up to the Pailon del Diablo waterfall.

The Pailon del Diablo (Pillar of the Devil) waterfall was amazing! Can't wait to post photos, but my battery is dead at the moment. It's not exactly Niagra Falls, but the water was really coming down fast and strong. You could walk right up underneath and have a bit of a ¨shower¨if you wanted...which we all did. It was a nice thrill!

Now it's off to thermal baths...which is what Baños (literally ¨baths¨) is famous for...this will be my second dip in the thermal baths. I also had a steam bath the other day, which was interesting and invigorating.

That's it for now!

Happy Birthday to Me!

I had a great birthday in Quito yesterday...better than I expected. I didn't have any plans really. I hadn't really met a lot of people at the hostel that I connected with or really enjoyed their company...except my two roommates which was very fortunate. My roommates were Ivan from Spain and Majken from Denmark. The three of us went to the Mitad del Mundo (Middle of the World or the equator) with them the day before.

As soon as I got up that morning, Ivan wished me happy birthday and gave me a hug. I was touched.

I slept in because I could, because I didn't have anywhere to be, no obligations, plans, etc...BUT I did get up just a few minutes before 10:00 a.m., before the free breakfast at the hostel was over! I ate breakfast, hung around the hostel on one of the terraces and soaked in some sunshine, took my time getting ready (like I always do!), and went to make some phone calls and do some emailing. I guess my only obligation was to call the two people who brought me into this world.

I felt more or less fine with not having any plans or doing anything special for my birthday, but after talking to my mom and my dad, I began to feel a little depressed when they asked what I was going to do to celebrate. But oh well, I felt fine and didn't want to let their questions influence my mood...but I did start to feel a little down.

I did some more emailing, and thought I would hit up a museum before it got too late...it was almost 3:30 already. Where does the time go? And the next thing I knew, there was Majken leaning into my view... ¨Happy Birthday!¨ And she had a big serving of chocolate cake for me! How did she know I was there at that internet cafe?! She told me she had asked around at the hostel and apparently someone had seen me at that internet cafe. So we headed off to the art museum together...

The museum was closed. Bummer. A $2 taxi ride for nothing. But we took the bus back to our neighborhood for $0.25. Neither of us had eaten, so we ended up at a Mediterranean restaurant watching the Ecuador vs Brazil soccer game, and I finally felt celebratory and had a beer...two big ones!

After the game was over, Majken said, ¨Hey, do you feel like just going back to the hostel and playing some pool?¨ Wow! Does this girl know how to make my day or what? Of course I feel like playing some pool! We got back to the hostel and she says, ¨Do you like wine?¨ I've been told I drink wine like water. We got a $4.50 box of wine, and the games began!

I played pretty well, made some nice bank shots, and after a while we were joined by two Israeli guys, a Colombian guy, two Argentinian guys, and an American guy who is studying at Naropa in Boulder. The Argentinians and Israelis wanted to play as well, so it was a fun night of pool with light-hearted disagreements on rules.

I popped back in my room at one point and discovered a new roommate. He told me someone had left me a piece of cake.
¨Yeah, thanks. She found me. It's my birthday.¨
¨Happy Birthday! How old are you?¨
"31."
His response: ¨Ouch!¨
Yeah, ¨ouch¨is right, especially when someone says ¨ouch!¨
But no biggie!

The night was great. Pool was fun. Majken and I drank a carton and a half of wine. I tried to stay up with her until 3:00 a.m. when she needed to leave for the airport, but I think I only made it to midnight or so. Majken really made my day...you never know how the day is going to go when you are traveling or who you are going to meet or where you are going to end up.

I'm in Latacunga now. It's just a little south of Ecuador. I'm happy to be out of Quito. I really didn't enjoy it. I'm not sure why...a mix of things I guess: the hostel, the neigborhood I was in, the daily stories of someone getting mugged right outside the hostel, and maybe I just wasn't feeling very touristy. Who knows?

I came to Latacunga today with Ivan. Tomorrow we are going to head to a village near Laguna Quilotoa, which is supposed to be beautiful. It's a crater lake. And I think day after tomorrow we will hike around the lake.

After that, I need to make my way out of Ecuador fairly quickly. I only have a month left in South America before flying to Australia.

So that's it for now!

100 Bottles of Beer in Bogota and more!

Well Crystal told me she is tired of looking at The Wheels on the Bus post...and it has been a month after all since my last post...I guess I'm not really a blogger. I think real bloggers blog every day or so.

Anyway, I'm in Bogota, Colombia. I arrived almost a month ago from Panama City. I only spent a few days in Panama but I did see the canal which was interesting. I left Rosey, my British travel companion, in Panama City and met up with Chris, my Australian travel companion, in Bogota.

In Bogota, I met up with Sebastian and Mariana - a brother and sister who were like family to me when I lived in Germany. I met Sebastian in my German classes in Hamburg and through him met his sister. It was really great to see them. I hadn't seen them for about 3 or 4 years.

Chris and I just spent a few days in Bogota before heading to Cartegena on the Caribbean coast, but we visited the Gold Museum, a cathedral outside of the city that is built inside an old salt mine, and took a cable car up a famous hill in Bogota where there is a beautiful church and a view of the city of 8 million people!

The salt mine cathedral was interesting and not all what I expected...I guess I was thinking Disney because I had picture a big beautiful white cathedral made of salt. I must have overlooked the mine part of the description which would indicate dark underground tunnels! So it wasn't Disney, but it was interesting.

We headed up to the coast to Barranquilla for Carnival, which proved to be a little bit too wild for either of us. So after one day and night of being harrassed and ¨robbed¨by street hoodlums we headed back to peaceful little Cartegena and didn't experience Carnival at all. Once we got to Cartegena I was a little bummed that we didn't stick it out in Barranquilla and experience Carnival, but at the same time it's hard to have fun when you are constantly worried about your safety or getting robbed or pickpocketed. So maybe it was for the better.

Cartagena was a nice place with a beautiful walled old town - very colonial - with some beaches nearby. We didn't really do a whole lot there. We went to two different beaches, one for lunch one afternoon and the other so I could do a little tanning. It was hard to enjoy the time on the beach because we were constantly bothered by vendors selling ceviche, sunglasses, massages, pedicures & manicures - and just one look at the set up for massages (lay yourself right on the sand) with who knows what kind of ¨oil,¨ you would never take them up on it, no matter how cheap! At least I wouldn't! Same goes for the pedicures and manicures!

From Cartagena, it was an 10 hour night bus ride or so back south to Medellin - I think the third largest city in Colombia. In Medellin we really enjoyed the restaurant options because Cartagena was a week full of ¨tipico¨: for me that meant rice, beans, fried banana, salad, and a fried egg...and it was the same meal for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. There were some nice non-tipico restaurants in Cartagena, but they weren't for the backpackers budget. And I guess we splurged a little bit on dining in Medellin, but it was worth it!

It rained a fair amount in Medellin so we found ourselves passing the time in a couple of pool halls...which in Colombia appear to be strictly for men, but no one seemed to pay too much attention when we came strolling in, which for me was nice for a change! The problem for us was that we couldn't play pool at most of these pool halls because the tables had no pockets! This wasn't 8-ball. It was a pocketless game with three balls and the object was to use one of the balls to contact the other two. And each time you did that you got one point and another turn. I think they played 'til 50, and it was generally an hour a game. It was mostly older men who played. And there was always 10-15 men just hanging around each table watching maybe drinking some coffee, there wasn't much alcohol. We got a kick out watching them...I mean pool with no pockets!

We eventually found a couple of pool halls with a ¨normal¨ table but we could only play there (or I only felt comfortable playing) if it wasn't too busy because the only normal table they had always right by the urinals which were just up against a wall out in the open...so needless to say it wasn't an ideal set up for me.

We also visited a nice botanic garden in Medellin with beautiful orchids and banana trees...banana trees are fascinating!

From Medellin we headed by night bus back to Bogota to meet up with Mariana and Sebastian again, just in time for Chris' birthday. It was a wild night that started early that Friday afternoon in Sebastian's restaurant. We had done a little pre-celebrating the night before in the old town of Bogota which is now a university area, so by the time we showed at the restaurant, Sebastian was more or less done for the day, and friends were already there for Friday afternoon drinks. Once we had completely consumed all the beer and Aguardiente (literally hot water - a nice Colombia liquor kind of like Sambuca), we headed to a the apartment of one of Sebastian's friends. I think the night ended around 4 or 5 a.m. And I stayed in bed until about 5 p.m. the next day! The total count: 100 beers, 5 bottles of Aguardiente, 1.5 bottles of whiskey. What a party!

Sunday Mariana, Sebastian and their cousin Frederico took us on a little day trip north of the city. We saw some beautiful countryside, took a little boat trip, and had a nice lunch. We were all still recovering a bit from Friday night, so a mellow day with an early evening was in order.

Chris left for Buenos Aires earlier this week to continue his world trip, and I moved in with Mariana and Sebastian at their mom's house for the rest of my stay here. Once again, it has been such a treat to stay at someone's house and be out of the hotels and hostels. There's no place like home, even if it's not your own, I suppose.

I'm heading to Ecuador on Tuesday or Wednesday this week via night bus...ugh. It's 24 hours between here and Quito, but I'm gonna break it up and stay a night or two in Cali - a Colombian town about 1/2 way.

I applied for and was granted a work visa for Australia that requires me to enter the country before May 2nd or the visa will be revoked, so I'm on a bit of a time crunch now. I've decided to cut out Bolivia, Argentina and Chile. I've been to Chile once before, so that's okay, but I'm a little bummed about Argentina and Bolivia. I guess I'll have to take another trip down here sometime!

I'm planning to spend about two weeks in Ecuador before heading to Peru to see Machu Picchu, the Inca ruins. Then I'm hoping to fly from Lima to Sao Paulo, Brazil to visit Danielle - another friend from Germany. And then from Sao Paulo to Sydney or Melbourne or somewhere Down Under!

The Wheels on the Bus Go Round and Round...

I'm in San Jose, Costa Rica right now emailing from my hotel which is super nice and a real step up from some of the other places I've stayed recently. It's beautiful. Hardwood floors in the room and beautiful tiled hallways, and even hot water showers! I'm sharing the room (and king size bed!) with Rosey, a girl from Britain who I met in Granada, Nicaragua. I mean 3 1/2 weeks ago we didn't even know each other and now we're sharing a king size bed...traveling can be strange.

After I left San Salvador I went to Managua (the capital of Nicaragua). It wasn't exactly beautiful but I spent one night there and left the next day by noon. I visited a park that has the ruins of buildings and tanks left from their revolution as well as a small Sandisto exhibition and a nice view of the city and Lake Managua.

The ¨biggest¨tourist attraction, where I was the only tourist, was some footprints called Huellas de Acahualinca that were discovered in 1874 by accident by some construction workers. The footprints are 6000 years old and were left behind by a group of about 10 men, women and children. One theory suggests that the people left the area to escape a volcanic erruption, but the footprints don't indicate that they were running, so who knows? The footprints were left in a layer of volcanic mud and were preserved when they were covered by a layer of volcanic ash.

So besides that, Managua is pretty much a big, hot spread out city where for safety sake it is often recommended to take a taxi during the day. Not exactly the place for me.

I headed to Granada that afternoon. Granada is pretty and nothing like Managua really. It's smallish, quaint and colonial...and a big tourist destination, which has it's advantages and disadvantages. I took another week of Spanish lessons there and did a homestay which is a cheap way to handle accommodations if you can handle staying in someone's home. It was $80 for the week which included a ¨private¨room and three meals a day. The woman's name is Chagua and when she was younger she used to run one of the most popular ¨comedors¨in Granada. She's kind of famous. A comedor is kind a local restaurant often run out of a family home where they serve typical regional dishes. So, she was a great cook.

There was another girl staying with Chagua who arrived one day before me...Rosey, from Britain, who I'm still traveling with now. She was also taking Spanish lessons and had planned to stay another week, but ended up coming with me.

I made a nice little group of friends that week through the Spanish school...Rosey, Emily from Australia, Norbert from Germany, and Corey from the U.S. It was an awkward combination of people, but we had drinks together on several occassions, did a little tour of the islands, went to a baseball game, and did a cloudless cloud forest hike. I had a great time.

I left Granada with Emily and Rosey and the three of us went to Jiquilillo which is pretty far north in Nicaragua on the Pacific Coast. It was a bit of challenge to get there by chicken bus...but that's the only way. The chicken buses, by the way, are old U.S. school buses. So you can imagine that the buses are not very comfortable for adults...but Central Americans do tend to be small. At one point the bus was so full with school children that the bus helper was placing them two deep in the aisle between the seats. So they basically had to stand sideways in the aisle facing the windows...almost spooning!

We stayed at Rancho Esperanzo, which was beautiful and a little too intimate in the end. The three of us got a bungalow for $8 each per night. And there was basically a $12 a day meal plan, and an honor system beer fridge. When you took a beer, you put a tick mark by your name. We had a nice time, but because there's not much to do but hang around with every one else who is staying there, I guess we tired of the staff and other guests fairly quickly. And 2 days before we arrived two girls were robbed by two guys with machetes just down the beach a ways at 2 in the afternoon, so staying close to the ranch seemed like a good idea. We only stayed two nights. That was a lot of twos, huh?

In Jiquilillo I did try kayaking for the first time. It was a two man kayak and was frustrating at first with Rosey in the front seat barking at me about how to steer and when to turn, but after I offered to switch with her so she could do it and she declined, I had no problems ignoring her and taking in the beautiful views. And I eventually got the hang of it, so we had a good time. We went with Emily, the two girls who were robbed and the goofy little Nicaraguan guide.

From Jiquilillo (pronounced he-key-leo) Emily and Rosey and I had a hellacious journey to San Juan del Sur...it was supposed to take 6 hours and it took 9 hours. All in all it was a 12 hour day of travel with a break for lunch and emailing. Everything went pretty well until we were duped into getting on the slow bus to Managua from Chinendega. The driver's helper told us it would take 1.5 hours. It took 3. It was the total back road bus through the villages on dirt roads and the driver insisted on driving on the side of the road most of time. And don't forget, we're on a school bus. We were absolutely pissed. Emily especially since we were making this long trek for her to meet up with her boyfriend.

When we made it to Managua three hours later, a kind lady helped us with a taxi...which we desperately needed, the help and the taxi, because the last bus from Managua to Rivas was leaving in about 45 minutes. We managed to catch that bus, and now we hoped that we would catch the last bus from Rivas to San Juan del Sur. Well I sat with one butt check on the end of a seat that was already holding two adults with someone's butt in my face no matter which way I looked for about an hour as the sun sat and that sardine-packed bus to Rivas broke down.

At first it wasn't really clear that there was a problem because the bus hadn't stopped running; they had just pulled over. But I was toward the front of the bus, and I could hear the tools clanking and see the strange objects being past forward. I called back to Emily and Rosey and told them they were making repairs...with probably like 85 people on board. Emily decided to get out to assess the situation. Apparently they some how lost the lug nuts. Dear god. After waiting around 45 minutes or so another bus to Rivas appeared and we hopped on that one, paid the fare again and were on our way...and our original bus eventually passed us. Fine with me though...who knows if they made it there with all of their wheels.

When we arrived in Rivas the last bus to San Juan del Sur had already left. We had to take a taxi...which makes me unconfortable sometimes, especially at night. I mean it's basically like hopping in a car with a strange man and well...who knows what could happen. So I interviewed him, checked his drivers license, his taxi license, checked the plates to his taxi license...we stood around a felt him out for a bit and about 20 minutes later we were off. We got into San Juan at 9:30 p.m. with no problems. We found some over priced food, if you could call it that, and then hooked up with some people Emily's boyfriend had met. And suddenly it was 4 a.m.

Rosey and I headed to Liberia, Costa Rica the next morning. The border crossing from Nicaragua to Costa Rica was uneventful, but confusing. There aren't many signs or officials telling you what to do or where to go. I mean to leave Nicaragua you wait in a line that says Entering Nicaragua. We paid our $2 exit fee to Nicaragua and almost slipped across the border to Costa Rica unnoticed. If it hadn't been for some guy hanging around who got the official's attention we would have walked right past that checkpoint without noticing it or them noticing us.

So you are probably getting the picture here...the last few days have been virtually one long bus ride after another. Yesterday was a 6 hour ride, today was 4, tomorrow Rosey and I are going to David, Panama - 9 hours. Guess what's on the agenda for Saturday? Another 9 hour bus ride to Panama City...BUT...once I'm there I'll get to rest up for a few days before flying to Bogota, Colombia. But once I'm in Bogota, I meeting back up with Chris the Australian for a TWENTY HOUR bus ride to Cartegena. Have a I lost my mind???

Goodbye El Salvador!

It has been exactly three months since I left Denver, and tomorrow I'll be leaving San Salvador for Managua (Nicaragua). It's a 12 hour bus ride - oh goody! But I was given 3 English-language Cosmos to read and a couple of Newsweek and Time magazines, so I am plenty weighted down with reading material.

So three months in and 3 of my, what? - 10 articles of clothing, have holes in them. I ditched The Lonely Planet before leaving Antigua but have since acquired a thinner, "revised" version. I gave my stainless steel water bottle to my Salvadoran mom. I left the over-the-counter anti-diarrhea drugs in Copan Ruinas (Honduras), along with my pop-up hairbrush/mirror which was stolen from my room by the cleaning lady. (She said it was very rare for something like that to happen.) I broke my sunglasses, which Guillermo fixed with super-glue, and which I broke again a few days later. I finished and gave away one of the two novels I brought and acquired one more. I gave away my awful Spanish/English dictionary that never had a single word I needed in it. I gave away my Spanish phrasebook and dictionary, because, well let's be real, how often do I need to say, "My room has not been made up." or "Is there a certificate of authenticity?"

After leaving Antigua I spent a week in Monterrico, Christmas and New Years in San Pedro, La Laguna, then headed for Tikal, which was amazing. From there it was Placencia (Belize)...a decision that was influenced by a need to renew my visa but mostly from a tiny little photograph of a beautiful beach that was pasted to a hand-painted, almost cartoon-like map on the wall inside of a travel agency in Flores. And the beach was just as beautiful in real life. From Placencia a trek to Roatan Island (Honduras) for nearly a week of rainy afternoons and lots of mosquito bites, but it was nice nonetheless. Roatan to San Pedro Sula (Honduras), the AIDS capital of Central America, where I had one of my worst experiences so far - I thought I was getting robbed by 5 or so men dressed in black with guns drawn who turned out to be police, at which point I thought I was still going to be robbed. Super-scary, but in the end nothing happened. From Central America's AIDS capital to Copan Ruinas to El Salvador/San Salvador.

I've been in El Salvador about 10 days and have experienced amazing hospitality from the locals as well as the mother (and her husband) of a co-worker of my friend Jenny's husband. I spent three days traveling around El Salvador with a family that I got acquainted with on the bus from Honduras. They really made me feel like part of their family and insisted that I join them for a few days. I got to travel in El Salvador like a middle-, maybe lower-middle class local taking the local buses everywhere, eating pupusas from street vendors, drinking coconut water and getting to have all my questions about El Salvador answered. I was well looked after and taken care of. And I was also humbled by how caring and giving this family was to those truly in need.


After traveling with Guillermo & Norma and their mother, Doris, I was delivered safely to Margaret and Don who have been amazing hosts and really invited me to feel at home in their beautiful home in San Salvador. I have been spoiled for nearly a week with my own comfortable and super-clean bedroom & bathroom (with a hot-water shower!), with an incredibly comfortable bed that is almost impossible to get out of, with delicious meals, wine, internet access, phone calls home...all of the amenities of home and then some! They have both spent many years working around the world for the U.S. Embassy and have collected gorgeous rugs, wood carvings, dishes, masks, etc. during their travels.

Margaret & Don in Suchitoto





One of Margaret's employee's daughter, Marcella, was kind enough to be my tour guide for the past three days (picking me up at 7:30 a.m. the last two days!) and has shown me lots of El Salvador...amazing ruins, beautiful countryside, lakes, and views. She was great company, a wonderful guide and we really had a lot of fun together. I even got to meet her 83 year old grandma and her 88 year old great aunt who still runs a plant nursery out of her home! And it was Marcella who loaded me up on Cosmos and Newsweeks for my trip tomorrow.
(Marcella & me with Lake Coatepeque in the background.)

I am having an amazing time, better than I could have ever imagined!

Merry Christmas! (again!)

Christmas was great here in San Pedro. It was a two day extravaganza involving big meals, relaxing, laughing, fireworks by the water and in the streets, and a cup that runneth over...

Andrea, Chris and I did stockings. If you look under Andrea's Christmas tree, you can see our three stockings on the right. In my stocking I got a package of gum, a mandarine orange, cough drops, used lipbalm, some ¨rubbish¨, a few starbursts, and a key chain. Not bad, huh?

I gave candybars, worrydolls, antibacterial wipes, little drink mixes, a few Sudoku puzzles, and I think that's it.

The three of us had a mimosa brunch at Alegre Pub with about 15 other people...many who we had already met. It was a great time, the food was good, the company was good.

After brunch I went for a siesta, and then Christmas dinner started back at Alegre at about 6:00. It was an enormous plate of food which I could hardly put a dent in, but the wine went down easy.

After dinner, we shot off fireworks. There was probably a crowd of 10 or 15. We went down by the lake and took turns shooting off little ones and ¨big¨ones. It was a good time.

Most of us headed back to Alegre for a couple more, and I ended up calling it an early night.

Today has been very, VERY, lazy...but it is the day after Christmas after all!

Merry Christmas!

I'm in San Pedro La Laguna again at Lake Atitlan and will be here for Christmas. The shuttle I was in was nearly hit by a chicken bus yesterday, so that was a little exciting and mostly scary!

I've made a few traveler-friends while I've been in Guatemala. Most of us have been traveling in and around Guatemala for the past few weeks, and it looks like we are all going to meet in San Pedro for Christmas...a place that everyone, including me, really seems to enjoy. Nick-the-Brit will be here and Andrea from Golden, Chris-the-Australian.

Anyway, I finally made it to Monterrico which was my original planned destination. I spent about a week there with an Australian travler, and we met up with two American guys in there mid-20s traveling that we shared a bungalow with on the beach.

There was a little living area and kitchenette and a fridge that we mostly used for coconuts and beer. And we had a little pool right outside the bungalow. There was a nice bar beachside that served food, and from there you could watch beach soccer (yep, in the sand!) and volleyball. I even saw a couple of whales way out in the ocean blow up water and flip their tales!

We got to know a couple of "amigas" who were ten and twelve - Erica and Selena. They were best friends and basically knew each other since birth. Their families owned restaurants, and they were always trying to usher us in to their restaurant. We ate at their restaurant several times, and my Spanish is at a level where I could chit-chat with them a little bit.

They were fascinated by Chris the Australian, who is blonde haired and blue eyed and who also has quite a bit of blonde forearm hair. Several times the girls sneaked a quick tug at his arm hair or neck hair and shyed away and laughed. They told me secrets "that were just for women." It was pretty amusing.

We set off fireworks with them one night as well. It attracted a crowd of kids, and we all had a great time. At Christmastime apparently, everyone here sets off fireworks...including us!

After the American guys moved on, we moved over to another hotel with an awesome pool, and I basically spent 4 or 5 days just relaxing by the pool, drinking beers, having a dip in the pool, another beer... There was also a tree pruned like a chicken. How bout that?!

There were some nice people staying there and one not so nice German lady that we liked to call Inga-bitch. Her name was Ingaborg. She was probably in her late 50s, early 60s and had definitely spent too much time in the sun. She seemed to hate us everyone and everything- music, conversation, smiling, laughing. What the hell is she doing on vacation?!

There was also Jon, a Brit, who was something like 6'4" and had a nice round hairy belly that he seemed quite comfortable with. He was always in his bright yellow swim shorts with this colorful cotton scarf around his neck, that served as his towel. He was a riot and loved to talk shit under his breath about people under the assumption that they couldn't understand English well or at all or at least not his heavily British-accented English.

Jon introduced us to a group of Canadians who had driven a caravan all the way down from Canada with a stop at Burning Man. They were probabaly in their early 50s. They were a lot of fun.

A group of about 10 of us went to the local cirus, which was fairly bizarre, but entertaining. 2 scrawny little monkeys had been chained up outside of the circus tent for a couple of days as advertisement for the circus. They were cute, but of course I felt sorry for them.

Anyway, I think we all checked out the circus for lack of any thing else to do. There were a couple of contortionists, a few skits with a lot of sexual undertones, a couple of dancers dressed in bikinis with beads draped around their waists, and there was an acrobat bar and rope that was never used, and the monkeys sat on the bleachers at watched the whole performance. Well, what do you expect for $3?

There are tons of guns in Guatemala and lots of problems with alcoholism. Everyday in Monterrico, you could spot several men carrying a guns in holsters on their hips and it was never uncommon to see a man passed out along the sidewalk with his buddies just sitting around him.

At one bar we liked to frequent, one night the bartender/owner's nephew was walking around with a laptop back slung across his chest all night. He was mixing drinks and serving beers and changing the music on his laptop which was blaring full blast. Finally, I asked him what was with the bag. He keeps his gun in there. Interesting. He hadn't carried a gun around the last few times we were in there. He explained that he didn't have any staff there that night, that he was alone, and that it was just a safety precaution...as if it were perfectly normal.

--The gun-wielding bartender.

I really had a great time in Monterrico...got eaten alive by mosquitoes, but I managed to decrease my whiteness a bit so I'm not quite so blinding.

I'm looking forward to relaxing in San Pedro for several days with my friends and then I will be heading to Tikal.

I'll try to send more pictures soon.

Merry Christmas!

Thanksgiving!

I don't know where the time goes. I thought I would have tons of time on my hands once I FINALLY left on my trip, that it would no longer be go-go-go for Mo, that I would be tanning (or burning) on a beach somewhere... but I guess I'm a person that goes-goes-goes and somehow I struggle to find time for Spanish homework, emailing, posting to my blog, etc. Maybe on this trip, I can learn to slow down, to do less and relax more. Hard to say. Too early to tell.

Today I'm feeling a little lonely, I'll be honest.

Several people I've met while I've been here and around Guatemala have asked me what it's like to travel alone, if I'm ever afraid, if I get lonely, etc.

What I usually say is that I haven't really been afraid and sometimes I get lonely, but not very often and sometimes it's okay to feel lonely anyway, but that usually I'm good at meeting people so it's not so, so often that I find myself alone.

On this trip when I'm feeling lonely or depressed, I really try to nip it in the bud before it gets out of hand. I think, "Why I am feeling like this? What can I do to change how I'm feeling?" or "It's okay that I'm feeling like this, and it'll pass." Sometimes writing in my journal helps. Sometimes calling home to friends or family helps, but sometimes I can't because I don't feel like talking about how I'm feeling. And sometimes an extra dose of fish oil is all I need!

Today I took the fish oil, called my Grandma, and now this post is kind of like writing in my journal, but I'll spare you the real journal entry for today! What I thought I'd do is respond to some questions about my Thanksgiving and share with you an excerpt from my journal on Thanksgiving. (I'm feeling better already.)

Thanksgiving day, I had my usual Spanish lesson in the morning. Oliver and Becky stopped by in the early afternoon to retrieve some stuff they had left with me. We lounged around my room for a while chit-chatting, which I really enjoyed. Doug popped by quickly. Nancy popped in and out a few times. It was lazy and casual and felt like Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving dinner may have been the least traditional one I've ever had. I ate in a little Guatemalan restaurant in the back of a "tienda" (a little convenience store, but not like 7-11. Think way smaller, dingy-ier, no slurpees, etc.). I dragged Oli and Becky (who were recovering from food poisioning, bad water, who knows?) along with me to meet Nancy (my Canadian "mom") at the tienda restaurant with no sign or any indication of a restaurant. Nancy was there with an 80 year old gentlemen named David.

David has been living in Guatemala for the past 19 years or so working with the indiginous poor here in a village somewhere outside of Antigua. He was fascinating, hard of hearing, and thoroughly enjoyed his boxed red wine. I think he's married, but he's wife doesn't want to live in Guatemala with him.

There was no menu at this place, so when I was tried in my best Spanish to politely order something that didn't contain meat (or chicken for that matter!), David suggested I order the "caldron" or something like that. It was basically a vegetable soup - made with a chicken broth, I'm sure - but I ate all the rice, potatoes, and other vegetables out of it and pretended that one bite I had with something weird and rubbery in it wasn't a little piece of chicken, and I left most of the broth in the bowl for fear my stomach may not receive it lovingly.

It was a mellow Thanksgiving. Turns out David didn't know it was Thanksgiving until this week. Nancy is Canadian, so her Thanksgiving was in October. Oliver is German, so no Thanksgiving and recovering. And Becky, who is American, was recovering as well. So those two weren't all that jovial, and even so, Oli was kind enough to go back to the hostel twice to retrieve the boxed wine I had left. First to look for it outside of their room door where I told him I left it, and a second time to get it from the kitchen where I actually left it, which I remembered once he returned the first time and told me it wasn't there.

So although the evening and the food weren't exactly exciting, the company was great and in any case, I was thankful. From my journal:

"...in the spirit of Thanksgiving, I think I need to list and explain some things and people for which/whom I am thankful..it's really more people than things.

1. Doug - my first friend in Antigua who is sort of like my Simmel of Antigua.
2. Nancy - my "mother" who feeds me regularly, checks in with me daily...and likes to talk about men, Guatemala, yoga and the magic of Antigua, etc.
3. Victor - my Spanish teacher who is fascinating, knowlegeable on a very wide variety of subjects, and most importantly a firm believer in God and the miracles he has experienced. I could write a whole book on Victor's experiences with miracles.
4. Becky & Oliver - who have really been my best friends here. I care for them greatly and they for me. They have been a constant source of companionship & entertainment, and I will really miss then when we finally have to part ways. They have become like family to me.
5. I'm thankful for Nick-the-Brit and Nick-the-American who both individually and separately gave me insight on life and love and travel and relationships, from two very different perspectives...and very different than my own.
6. I'm thankful for my nice room (with the occasional big spider or cockroach) and the hot shower, which could never compare to the U.S., but I'm thankful nonetheless.
7. I'm thankful for the safe & uneventful travel I've experienced.
8. And last, but not at all least, I am thankful for my family and my friends who support what I'm doing, for those who check on me regularly as well as those who think of me often.

I am so very, very blessed."

So, although my shirt was on backwards most of the day today, at least I don't have my undies on inside out! I succeeded at feeling better and am looking forward to meeting up with Andrea from Golden, CO in a couple of hours!

As always, thank you so much for your emails and comments!