El Salvador and on...

Sitting in an internet cafe is ok and fine when you´re in a smog-filled city, but when you´re in a beachy paradise, it can make for a pretty sad afternoon.

El Tunco is pretty fantastic. We´ve been here for almost a week, and it´s going to be really hard to leave in a couple days for Juayua (I´m not exactly sure that it´s spelled that way). I had originally planned to return to Honduras to complete my study of Spanish grammar, but those damn military coups keep getting in the way!

Let me think back to the last time I posted. Oh yes, I was in San Pedro for a couple days, basically just pissing around and enjoying the rain before i came down to E.S. I ended up going to San Marcos and cliff jumping down into the lake. There were two rocks, one of which was a little smaller, at about 20 feet high. You can find a picture of me jumping off of it under my ´Guatemala Photos´tab. There was another one that was 30 feet high that I also jumped off of (after a good 10 minutes or so of deliberation). I used that as my profile picture for facebook.

Geert (Daniel) came to meet up with us for Saturday night, and we went for a proper night of boozing. At one point, I was giving Matt a piggy-back ride while Daniel ran in front of me with a rum and coke, goading me horse-and-carrot-like. That night was good fun, but not enough fun to compensate for the next day, which brought Shiran and myself down to El Salvador on bus. It was something like 10 very painful hours, during the course of which I had to beg the driver to pull over so I could vomit. Here is a photo of Shiran and I passing through immigration. We did our best to not look suspicious.

We stayed 2 nights in San Salvador, hanging out waiting for Trev to come while visiting some cool spots. Some stupid bitch in a hostel got lippy with me and I shut her down-- which I feel was a step towards maturity.... or a step back. However you want to look at it, I went to bed feeling satisfied.

We´re now in El Tunco, surfing, relaxing, and coming up with excuses not to leave. You can find photos of me... ahem... ´surfing´ under the ´El Salvador´tab in this blog. I should take more photos of the beach, but here is one of the playa at sunset from our favorite seafood restaurant.

I haven´t accomplished too much here aside from learning how to surf and getting so drunk I end up running naked down the beach-- I think there´ll be more cultural insight in my next entry.

Back in Guatemala

Just gonna quickly update here as I´ve been on this computer for something like 3 hours trying to get my pics uploaded. For real, 3 hours for 15 photos... there´s something unconstitutional about that... but check out this cool pic I took of the rain falling over the lake. Sweet, no?

Back in Guatemala after 2 weeks of hard core studying Spanish in Copan, Honduras. I spent the first two days here back in Antigua boozing until I blacked out. Ohhh, Antigua.... then on to San Pedro (once again) to chill out and take a few more days of language school before I head to El Salvador. My new language school is half the price, but seriously a fourth of the quality of my last one. My instructor rolls into my lessons every day high as a kite and spends the majority of my 3 hour class philosophizing on the existence of shape-shifters. I haven´t gotten a word in edgewise, and I haven´t learned a thing in the last 2 lessons. Ugh.

I´ve been hanging with some cool peeps and running into tons of people I´ve met on my trip. This really is a very tiny region. Having a good time but I think I´m ready for El Salvador next week. Trev, are you reading this? Where are we meeting up??

OK... my head hurts from being on this thing for too long. Here´s a cute picture of a kid in the San Pedro market the day before yesterday. Her mother had a basket full of live turkeys for sale. I amused myself greatly here.

Copan Ruinas

I fucking hate this computer. One hour, 2 reboots (can you make it plural that way?), 15 minutes of frozen time, and one giant throbbing vein in my forehead. STUPID COMPUTER!

I'm going to bullet point to make this fast.

1. Working in a clinic every morning for 3 hours before language school and loving it. I've been jabbing old ladies in the butt, guessing people's blood pressure, extracting parasites out of screaming children, and teaching many horrified country folk how to use condoms.

2. Been loving language school as well--- going really fast through my lessons and learning a ton. I've met some really cool peeps and been partying a bunch... eating lots of street food and getting mauled by mosquitos. I will post a picture of my legs on my next blog. It's gross and cool at the same time.

3. I'm not sure why I'm still numbering... none of these make sense.

4. Leaving at the end of the week for Guat City, and then El Salvador to surf.

Fucking third world internet. OK... I can't handle this anymore. I'll update again later.

La Moskitia

Oh, civilization. Sweet, sweet civilization.

I left for La Moskitia on Wednesday of last week, after much deliberation over whether it would be worth the money and the hardship. I returned yesterday still not having answered the second part of that question. The money, yes. The sweat, bugs, and emotional turmoil... perhaps not. Let's discuss...

Day 1 - Left at 5 in the morning to catch the first bus to Tocoa. Two waterproof bags, one waterproof dutchman, and two non-waterproof New Balance sneakers. We managed to catch the 6.15, and were in Tocoa by roughly 8. We met up with our driver, Fernando, in the mercado, and were escorted to our means of transport by which we were to go to Pueblo Nuevo... the last city before the lagoons of La Moskitia. This is me posing before a 5 hour ride through highway, jungle, and ocean. I suppose it made the most sense to put the able-bodied outside... but four-wheeling through the jungle and driving (LITERALLY) through the ocean while perching on top of several sacks of potatoes which were draped somewhat capriciously over a stove in a box, with nothing to hold onto but a fraying rope is NOT something that should be trusted to a couple of foreigners.

After arriving in Pueblo Nuevo, we caught a lancha out to Ra Ista, our last stop of the day... had a bean and egg dinner, and fell asleep to the sounds of the ocean and the steady hum of thirsty mosquitos.

Day 2 - I'm going to count this in Day 2, even though I'm not sure exactly when it happened... Sometime in the middle of the night, I awoke believing Sjors to be kicking my bed. I opened my eyes to a 7.1 earthquake violently swaying our hut-on-stilts in the middle of the jungle. After teetering around like a bowling pin for 10 minutes or so, we eventually settled down, and Sjors told me that that was the first earthquake he had ever experienced. In the complete darkness of the jungle, in a rickety shack built in floodlands, atop stilts. I give him points.

The rest of the day was spent in a boat headed upstream to the tranquil, one-phone town of Las Marias. This is the view from the balcony.

Day 3 - This was our first day actually hiking in the jungle. I'm not sure what made me think I was up to hiking this. Perhaps it's my I-can-do-anything-a-boy-can-do attitude... but no. No, I can't. I went with 3 guides, heart jungle men that do this shit barefoot at least several times a month, and Sjors... a tall dutchman that I think works as a personal trainer in his gym back home. And then there was me. This is me drinking hastily out of a creek we passed along the way. After mercifully stopping several times for my benefit, we arrived at our shelter about an hour after we were supposed to. A lot of the hike was uphill. Shut up. The cabin was on stilts, like everywhere we stayed by the Rio Platano.

Day 4 - The day we actually made it to the top of Pico Dama. Not much to be said about the actual hike, except that I was slow and fell down a lot... but here is a photo from near the top. Nothing but jungle. Beautiful!


The most exciting thing about this day was when we were about to go to sleep. The next picture is the critter that was dangling above my bed. He is the second monster we found. The first was a spider the size of a dinner plate (no joke). The next half hour or so we spent trying to push him out of the window with the blunt side of a machete. He was about a meter and a half long. We spent another half hour chasing out giant cockroaches, other monster spiders, and baby scorpions.



Day 5 - Woke up feeling like a piece of cargo. This is the barrack where I slept for 2 nights. I wish I could have gotten a photo with me INSIDE of it. There wasn't even room to bend my knees. Now I know what slave ships were like. Except for the urinating on myself, and you know... being a slave part of it. I awoke next to a hairy mass that I originally assumed to be a piece of straw. After further investigation, I found that it was not only a big momma scorpion, but it was all her 14 babies too. That's why it looked hairy... all the tails were sticking out in every direction. Spent the rest of the day getting back down to the river to head to Las Marias again. The shitty thing about walking downwards on wet jungle leaves is that if you slip, you really don't stop sliding until you've gone about 10 meters and lost your ability to reproduce. I fell a lot.

Day 6 - Ra Ista enjoying having a real bed and shower. We saw the sun set over the beach on the Moskito Coast. The beautiful thing about this beach that I've never seen before is that it's completely northward facing, so the sun sets right were the land and water meet. These are some kids we met out there that were total hams for the camera.


Day 7 - Went back to La Ceiba and took the first proper shower I'd had in a week.





I'm in Copan Ruinas now, spending the next couple of weeks taking language school and volunteering at a clinic. I'll update accordingly.

Moskitia

Just a quick note. Doing fine... been in La Ceiba for way too long. Shit this computer sucks. OK... gotta go. Headed to La Moskitia tomorrow. Will post pictures when I get back in a week.

Last day in Guatemala

So here I am in Livingston, Guatemala, sitting in an internet cafe while an oscillating fan scatters the mess of gum wrappers, napkins, and beer labels on which I've written the email addresses of my travelling comrades.

I've been here for 2 days already, and have accomplished exactly nothing. This is after 6 days of laying in a hammock in Lanquin, 3 days of meandering aimlessly among Flores' beautifully colonial streets, and 1 day of pulling (or at least trying to pull) backflips off of the rope swing at La Finca Tatin, a riverside hostel only accessible by boat (or 10 hour hike from Livingston) between Rio Dulce and Livingston.

I suppose the one big thing I've managed to do in the past week has been to go to Tikal... the largest and supposedly most impressive of the Mayan ruins found to date. I wish I could post the photos, but my camera died there (replay of Machu Picchu, anyone?) and I only grabbed a shot or two up top before my month-old camera ate complete shit.... not like it mattered much to me. I was getting the spins by mid-day.. probably a byproduct of my cavalier dinner the night before.. (slices of bread heaped with canned tuna and beans, and constructed through the use of our DEET covered fingers and an expired ISIC card).

We managed to roll into Flores at night the night before Tikal with no reservations or method of transportation, wake up at 3 thirty, walk up to the only other person who was awake at that time, and convince him to give us a private ride in his van all the way to Tikal for 80Q (about 10 USD). We were literally the first people there. From the parking lot, it was a mad scramble to get to the top of Temple 4 before the tour groups arrived.... and, having successfully accomplished that (with only 1 person beating us to the chase)... we had a solid hour of silence, watching the mist lift from the jungle, thus exposing the peaks of all the other temples. Ahhhh...

Other than that, there hasn't been much happening. The bugs are having their fair go at me, which is bothering me less and less as my skin acclimates. However, as my trip progresses, the bugs seem to be getting BIGGER with every successive town I get to. I was having a satisfying squat in La Finca Tatin's impressivly primitive bathroom, when a spider (literally) the size of a sand dollar waded out to make friends. Thankfully, no one was around to witness my bare-assed escape. I have since learned to scout the premesis before making myself so vulnerable again.

Overall, I'm doing okay. No more food poisoning, although a hideous rash seems to be taking over my wrists and fingers. (???) Hopefully I'll get that sorted before heading into La Moskitia, the western part of Honduras that has been considered to be Central America's Amazon. Oh shit, I think the internet cafe I'm at is closing down. Gotta go... Check out my new photos under the Guatemalan Photos tab!

Besos...
Sam

Sam Chu is bad at updating.

I know!

Anyway, Oh... from the waterpark...

Hmm... I ended up staying in Xela for a few more days, hanging out, learning Spanish, being yelled at by mi maestra for not studying, winning lots of games of Basta! ... you know, the usual.

I left on that Friday to head to Lago Atitlan with some girls from my school yet again, to San Pedro to dance to trance, yet again, and to buy the goucho pants I had had on my mind since going there 3 weeks back. It was marvelous! I also met up with a crazy New York lawyer to continue on to Antigua and Volcan Pacaya with.

This is us at Pacaya, an active volcano on the outskirts of Antigua. It takes about 2, 2 and a half hours to hike up, and another 2 to get down. It was pouring rain the WHOLE time up and the WHOLE time down. The only time that it let up was while we were there... thus the stunning pictures. I also coerced a stray dog to follow us up, and there are many pictures of me stroking his gangsta head on the top. Some will be on Flickr, some will be here. I haven't exactly worked out a method for keeping them all together yet. Hehe.

After Pacaya, Dave and I were off to Lanquin in a crazy and extremely long 6 hour minivan trip with a couple of Fins, an insane Italian named Annaliza, and a REALLY creepy old man from Berkeley who kept feeling up on our adorable Italian friend. It was bad news for Californians when that guy decided to go travel. The poor girl was squashed up against the window, curled into a ball of disgust while he stroked her trembling shoulder for 6 HOURS.

And now we're in Lanquin. Dave reckons he'll be off to Flores soon, but the sleepy pace of this place has sucked me in. We went to Semuc Champey yesterday with another American and two Israelis. This is Semuc Champey. Probably one of the most beautiful places I've ever been in my whole life. The pools are turquoise green (the pictures don't even do them a shred of justice) and the river partially flows underneath this natural limestone bridge, and the part that flows up top goes from pool to pool, cascading down in waterfalls from each while thousands of tiny little fish circle your body. Paradise!

The ride there was rough though. I'm not going ot lie. The way there, they packed us in the back of a pickup truck with 19 other people, including a baby whose mother sat him on the floor (of the bed of a pickup truck) for the whole 45 minute ride. He somehow managed to eventually get to sleep, disregarding the (numerous) times when one of the 19 other people standing in the bed of this truck would step on his face. This includes Dave, who wears a size 13 shoe and is over 6 feet tall. Guatemalan babies = Gangstahs.

The ride back would have been maybe decent, but Bret decided at the last minute that he wanted to jump off the bridge over the Rio. This was at least a 40 foot drop, so Rotem (our militant Israeli friend) had to scout the depth of the river in several places. After we had scouted out a spot (I'm not sure why I'm saying we... I sat on the sidelines eating cheap Guatemalan chocolate), we had to wait for Dave and Li to load their cameras, Bret to build his nerve, and loads of astonished Guatemalans to gather. He jumped twice. And still has legs, although from what i know of the first drop, that may not have been the case had he been a couple feet over. Anyway, by the time we were done, we had loads of great photos, smiles on our faces, and a story to tell.

We did not, however, have a ride back to Lanquin.

We managed to catch the VERY last ride back after waiting for about an hour. This was in a milk truck with about 40 other people.

Guess who rode on the roof of that milk truck for 45 bumpy minutes?

I don't think I've ever been so aware of wayward electicity lines in my life.

Anyway, that was yesterday, and I'm spending most of today in a hammock. I'm so happy here, I've considered working for this hostel... but I reckon it'll be time to get going around next week. Flores calls!