A friend told me recently that I tend to write things that no one but me will understand. I suppose it is ok if this turns out to be one of those things.
A year ago today, following several days of airports and delays ,I left the USA, not knowing at the time I would lose the thing I valued most in the world, but find so much of myself; old and new.
I’ve gone through phases on this trip. Phases where all I could think about was a girl back home. Phases where I thought I could never leave my hammock. Phases where all I wanted to do was head back to the USA and hide from the weird wide world. Phases where I wanted a job and phases where I was afraid of the prospect of ever needing to work again.
I have learned a lot about love. I have learned to simply love and not worry about whether I am loved in return. Now that I have figured it out, it seems strange when I see others who haven’t “got it” yet. It seems strange that it was ever a foreign concept.
I’ve learned to be happy with nothing more than silence. I have learned to relish the company of friends because once you know these things every stranger is just a friend waiting to happen. I have learned that new friends don’t replace the old ones.
I learned that it’s ok to be sad and that dying from a life well lived is a better thing than living forever in the shadow of fear or inadequacy.
I have learned how to communicate with people in many languages, but I still think the best way is a smile and a hug.
I don’t know what kind of anniversary this is, and I’m not even sure it is something to be celebrated. If something does get celebrated, though, I hope it is more the feeling I left in a persons heart than any time frame I managed to keep on the move. I hope it is a small ache, or a secret smile that someone will remember; not just today, but often and without fanfare.
To everyone who has been a part of this scary and marvelous year, I say, “Thank you.”
The heat of the day doesn’t fade completely during the night, but 100 feet from the ocean as I am, the evening is quite palatable. Fresco, as the locals say. The howls of the street have dwindled to almost nothing and in the far corner of the hostel away from the others, I can almost imagine that anything about my life is normal right now. Almost.
Sleep is broken. I feel a little funny. I think it has something to do with the barista that was sneezing and wiping her nose repeatedly while giving me coffee and change from a $20 bill. Panama’s official currency is the US Dollar. They mint their own coins, but there are exactly the same as US coins, just different pictures. I think they are called Balboas, after a fuzzy wuzzy who magicked the religiousity of the public transportation or something.
It’s not long after taking out my earplugs I am prone to sleeping with that the howls, jeers, and inarticulate guttural belching of the locals wafts up to my window along with the scent of urine from the street. Funny thing about Panamanian Spanish. Everyone seems to have completely lost the letter “S” from their vocabulary. Odd thing to lose in a language whose name begins with that sound.
I just saw a guy with a Tarheels shirt walk by.
I’ve taken up trying to do a video diary once a day. Keep up on things… have a record of just how disreputable I look. I won’t be doing it this morning as, even though the light from the window is decent, the noise of the men whose full time job is seems is standing, shouting, and urinating in the street below, is a bit too loud for me to hear myself on the recording.
Onward! I have a full day planned. Today is to be my last day in the United States of Panama. I need to go procure some westernized goodies at the oversized mall/bus terminal before I head down to the uncivilized aboriginal South America; such as it is. I should probably stock up on toilet paper. The more I look around, the more I realize I have become too dependent on Target to operate effectively in the outside world.
First things first; I need to mail some things back to the States since I won’t need it in South America and I don’t feel like lugging it around. The front desk girl at my hotel doesn’t speak (or even like) English, so I get my big bag packed, grab my day bag and head out.
I wander up to Luna’s Castle, the reigning hostel in this region of the world for good reason. I swing in and ask the front desk girl where the nearest post office is to mail some things and she obligingly writes the address down on a piece of scratch paper. Walking outside, I find an equally obliging cab driver who agrees to drive me there. He does so, I pay him, I get out, he drives away.
Today is Saturday.
The mail is not open in this, or any other Central American, country. I have to assume that this is common knowledge to the front desk girl who simply forgot. I have to assume that this is common knowledge to the cab driver who was only too happy to take my money. The day starts off at a $6 deficit for round trip cab fares.
Ok, time for breakfast. Café Coca-Cola provides yet again lackluster food, but quickly and for a low price. Quite dependable, really.
Upon return to Luna’s Castle the same girl is running the front desk. I smile.
“Well, that was fun, but perhaps I should have been more specific. Now, is there a post office that is actually open today where I can mail this stuff?”
Her eyes get very wide and she suddenly sits up very straight; her game of Farmville temporarily forgotten.
“Oh, no! I forgot it was Saturday!” and I know she is telling the truth. She is kind enough to look up another shipping place and verify that it is open this morning.
DHL, here I come. Only DHL is not in the place that she told me it would be. A couple more cab rides and I arrive at the DHL office to be told that I can ship these few books back to the states for the low low price of $123.83 USD. Eh, no thanks.
$13 in cab rides so far, with nothing accomplished. I’m not having much luck with the public transportation in Panama City. I have a nerve pinched in my back to the left of the spine and in between my shoulder blades. This is a recurring thing, I need someone to crack my back. The chiropractor once fulfilled this need. There are none to be had, but there is an ad for massages on the counter at Luna’s. I am informed Laura, the massage therapist, will be in around noon so I settle in to wait; researching hostels and housing in Cartagena, Colombia as I do.
I made a dozen or so inquiries into couchsurfing in Cartagena yesterday with no success. I did get one reply, however, directing me to inquire with a hostel named San Roque. Luckily, they have a room ready for me and are awaiting my arrival at all hours. Honorable mention for my round of phone calls goes to Casa Viena who despite not having any room told me I could show up and they would help me find a place. That is what a backpacker hostel is all about; that tiny little feeling that even though you are a million miles from home and anyone you know, you are not alone.
When researching hostels in another country, I have found two somewhat unpredictable sources of information that have been a big help. Couchsurfers, and TripAdvisor.com user reviews. You are never guaranteed a hit, but often there is detailed, solid information to be had. The grain of salt to take with the trip advisor reviews is that when some people hit a hostel for the first time without knowing what to expect, they will give a big negative review, but they are easy to spot. Just look for a line akin to: “They didn’t even give me soap” or “I had to pay to rent a towel.”
I have three pairs of earbuds now after a recent trip to the mall. They cost $1, $5, and $12 respectively. They are each worth about what I paid for them. Amazon.com doesn’t ship to Colombia, so it appears I may be without any good headphones for some time. Oh, that reminds me. Go Craigslist.
Last night I jumped on Craigslist, after the disappointing smashed camera incident, and found someone selling a spare canon lens for $20. It’s not new or beautiful, but it works and will certainly do in a pinch. I’m still not going to use the Rebel as a daily picture taker, but it’s good to know I have it if I need it.
In my search for a daily camera I have come across the Olympus Stylus-Tough. Anyone who knows me knows that I am extremely hard on cameras. In my heyday I went through 7 cameras in about 12 months. Not good. I figure if I drop a little extra money on a camera that is designed to take a lickin and keep on tickin, I may be well rewarded.
Still no Laura.
The front desk attendant, hilarious though I never catch her name, calls Laura to find out what happened. Then puts me on the phone with her. This is unprecedented customer service. Laura won’t be in until after 1 p.m. so I have some time to kill. Time to catch a cab to the mall to purchase the Stylus-Tough. A quick check of my finances reveals that I am good, but not great.
Upon arriving at the mall, I head straight for a shop I bought earbuds at, Multimax! They have the camera in stock, though it is a bit overpriced. I decide to go for it, but notice one thing. It doesn’t use the memory I have. I would need to buy all new memory cards to go with it as well. That’s a deal breaker. I spend a few more minutes walking around to other stores and cannot find a suitable substitute, so I head back to Luna’s to get my back cracked.
Laura is great! One of the most genuinely friendly and warm people I have met. She knows all manner of tricks and really enjoys her massage. I learn she is from Texas, is the General Manager for Luna’s and also the barber… barbera… barbaria… she cuts hair. My muscles are in heaven by the time she is done. Unfortunately, she just doesn’t put enough muscle in to crack my back, and the pinch is still there. Ah well, it’s getting on in the day and I need to do some more shopping.
Walking the Albrook Mall quickly turns into just walking. I never find a suitable camera or anything else on my list for that matter. Panama City is a small place for taxi drivers. I saw the taxi driver who took me to the closed post office this morning later in the day. He even had the balls to ask me if I got my stuff mailed. Also, after bargaining with a certain cabbie in a red hat, he called me something like “duro de piedro” hard as a rock since I wouldn’t take his crappy prices. I saw him and negotiated three more cheap rides from him today. Eventually, arranging for him to pick me up and take me to the airport.
The whole ride to Tocumen International Airport, my cabbie was singing whatever song came across the radio at the top of his lungs, stopping only to ask me questions I couldn’t understand and to hit on the girls at the tollbooths. The evening air is lovely and it feels good to be leaving Panama.
Cool thing about Panama City airport, you can take water through security with you. Even open water bottles, as I did today.
I did see some interesting things today. Ghetto Santa. One legged man jumping around in circles in traffic looking for tips; perhaps that’s how he lost the first one. Lookalike to my playmate ex-girlfriend. Some beautiful views of the Pacific Ocean. A duty free store that charges more than the regular stores by a rather LARGE margin. The effects of crack on Panamanians. Even star shaped fried bananas.
I have to give a big shout out to Aromas café in Casco Viejo. That restaurant consistently served up fantastic food fixins for decent prices and stellar customer service. Try the Pollo a la criolla and you will not be disappointed. You may even sing the cooks praises, like I did. But you may just want to leave that up to me. I am quite the praise singer.
The trip to Colombia is nowhere near as difficult as everything I have read made it out to be. A little patience and a little smile combined with a lot of money will get you into the country. I paid over $230 for my ticket. Somewhere over $60 of that was just fees. One of our traveling partners was able to purchase his ticket online (I received a message saying I had to go to the airport) for around $150. There is a rule somewhere that governs this sort of thing but I don’t know what it is.
You can carry a total of 20 kilos or 44 pounds in your checked baggage. You are allowed 10 kilos, or 22 pounds in your carryon. In most modern planes, I don’t think this is an issue. As our plane from Panama to Colombia was an old propeller style plane, I think this whole weight thing may have come in to play.
Immigration is cool once again, as long as I best guess everything, they skate me through. Customs official takes one look at me and doesn’t even touch my bag, he simply waves me on through. Getting into Colombia was one of the easiest border crossings I have done.
The heat and humidity are amazing. It’s 11:30 at night and I am sweating. The ride to the hotel unveils that the taxi drivers here are the same as everywhere else. Prostitutes are plentiful and Colombian women seem to be much fatter than their Panamanian neighbors. As the Film Festival is just ending, there are a number of foreigners out mingling.
Wandering around Getsemani at night is technically a no-no. The guy at the hotel says as long as I don’t go down a certain street then I will be ok, but he doesn’t clearly define what that street is. I’m pretty sure I’ll be ok. I wander from club to club and manage to talk to a couple of Europeans, but everyone else is either dancing or otherwise engaged. I understand why everyone stays up until 3,4, even 6 a.m. Because that is the only part of the day that is enjoyable. Even the late evening is just too stupid hot.
It’s quite pleasant around 3 a.m. by the time I tuck myself into bed. I don’t get up until after 11 the following morning.
Two years and two weeks ago a person very close to me was killed. Today is his birthday. I spend the next couple hours just thinking about what this means and will spend the remainder of the day in contemplation. This doesn’t mean I should stay in, though.
Today is a day of experimentation. As I have had woes with cameras and would still like to figure out a way to preserve some visual record of these travels, I have decided to see what I can do with my dive camera and a mini tripod. The rest of the pictures from today are from that setup. Let me know what you think.
One thing I saw on the way into town last night was a big castle on the hill outside town; lit up like a Christmas tree. I’ve decided to go up there today and take a look.
This castle was built a while ago and has a wild tunnel system running through it. It is cramped and ugly, and the deeper you go, the more slick the floors get. There are sections of the tunnels that have lights, and there are large sections that are unlit. If you have a flashlight in your pack (thanks, Joe) like me, this is not a problem. It is super creepy though.
Walking around town, I am reminded of Pamplona. One can tell this city was built on Spanish influence. Strange that a few blocks after thinking that, I came across three hombres dressed like runners! Also, note how unccomfortable this photographer looks.
After weighing in on a long running chess match, I decided to go get some food. Only problem is that 90% of the restaurants are not open on Sunday. I really need to start paying more attention. If you are ever in Getsemani, Cartagena, give the coffee at Hostel media Luna a pass, twice today it seems to have fueled a headache for me. But definitely go down calle triplita y media and go to Restaurante Coroncoro. They make a fantastic horse steak. Yeah… horse.
Jasper is a guy of unknown origin who I met this afternoon while eating breakfast before the castle. Jasper has come up from southern chile and argentina over the last 6 months going in reverse up the same route I will be going down. He and I rapped for a good length of time and I decided to catch the overnight bus to Merellin with him tonight and save the cost of a hotel and save myself the 12 hours of sunlight that the day bus would eat up. Here goes.
Disclaimer: please excuse the conspicuous lack of pictures. I explain that part later.
I learned today that you don’t actually need to understand the words to get the plot of any kung fu chop saki movie. I watched several in Spanish on the ride to Panama City today, nearly 6 hours, and I fully understood everything going on, even though the audio was in Spanish and the volume was indiscernibly low.
Panama City started out pretty weird. I went through several cabs by process of elimination. I walked up and asked them if they knew where Luna’s Castle was and if I got a half a second of hesitation, I simply said, “nope” and walked away. Finally, a guy knew where it was and offered $4. I counter offered and we arrived at $3.
This is where the magic happened. As soon as we were in motion, he asked me if I believed in Dios; God. The entire 15 minute ride was either questions about God, religion, church, Jesus, or exclamations about God, Jesus, the driver’s wife, or his 7 children and how much they loved Dios also. Uncomfortable.
Luna’s Castle is in Casko Viejo; the old part of Panama City that is being restored. It is busy, to say the least, there are people everywhere doing all manner of things. The staff is less than inclined to be nice or helpful, but at least they are honest. The guy at the front desk informs me that even though I reserved a private room online this morning, they gave it to someone else and there is no chance of me getting a private room for at least a week. The dorm room he shows me is an exercise in controlled chaos. I need a break so I walk over to a nearby place whose name I cannot pronounce and check in to a private room there before taking off to look around.
There is a cool café offering sangria on a corner nearby so I wander in and have a glass and some clams in some form of marvelous sauce. The owner, a Peruvian, and his assistant are both fair English speakers and do their best to help me with Spanish tidbits over dinner. They confirm what I heard earlier in the day; one does not walk past 13th street in Casco Viejo. You won’t like what happens next.
So, I leave and head back up to Luna’s to see what the night life is like. They have their own theater, such as it is, and are showing Tropic Thunder; in English! It’s a little slice of heaven. I am turned away from the restaurant downstairs because they don’t open for 15 more minutes, then when I wait the requisite minutes, I am turned away because I have my bag with me. Screw this; I’m heading back to my hostel.
There is a great little courtyard in the middle of the building that aerates both levels of the building. The only problem with that is that there is a skanky old European guy chain smoking in there waiting for unsuspecting young peoples to come in and absorb his wisdom and smoke. The lobby downstairs is choked with his stench.
The airline that books flights to Colombia has a relatively cheap flight leaving Saturday night nonstop. It also has an alarming number of flights that have 2 stops on what should be a less than 90 minute flight. Aires is the cheapest airline if you should ever need to do this.
I catch a little sleep over the night and get up at a reasonable enough time to start my day.
Eat
Print “onward” ticket for Colombia.
Go to airport to purchase flight to Cartagena
Go to Panama Canal
Look for any Americanized goods that I might need after I get to South America.
Eating is easy. Café coca cola serves questionable steak and ommelettes that are actually fried potato cakes.
The printing part is difficult. I have to go round and round with the website and the guy at the internet café to finally get the part printed out that I want.
I cannot stress to you how wary one must be to negotiate the public transit in Panama City. This place is mean and nasty and everyone wants as much of your money as they can possibly get. You must, here as elsewhere, pester the hell out of your bus drivers both before you get on the bus and after you are aboard. Make sure they know exactly where you aare going and tht they absolutely must tell you where to get off. They want your money, so they will help you to get on, but after that, they simply don’t care. You must make them want you to get off too. Just not so much that they tell you to get off early. A safer bet is to ask your fellow travelers, middle aged women seem to be the most reliable, to instruct you as to when you need to get off. It took me 2 busses, a taxi, and about 2.5 hours to get to the airport today; a 25 minute drive.
The Panamanian accent seems to be the hardest for me to grasp. Everyone speaks very quickly and does not enunciate anything. It’s like a 60 mile per hour slur/whisper.
Aires ticket sales are not at a counter. No matter what the information booth tells you. They, along with several other less prominent airlines are all stuck in nearly unmarked offices down a hallway rife with fumes behind the main ticket counters. The staff is relatively helpful, though the ticket comes out to be something around $100 more than it was online. The paperthin excuse I am given is that the price I saw was an online special. The only problem there is that those tickets cannot be sold online because they require special paperwork. It is aggravating, but when I try to discuss it, suddenly none of them understand English. This is a common shield, so get accustomed to it. Often, a smile and some kind words can help, but I’m apparently not smiling enough for these people.
I purchase my ticket with little event and leave. I am told numerous lies by staff and drivers as I leave as to the availability of collectivos and busses before I finally get a collective ride into town for about half his initial offer price. Little did I realize this means that it would be a near hour long ride playing brickbreaker on my blackberry while he dropped everyone else off first; a team of relatively wealthy Mexican businessmen in town for something or other. When he was quoting me prices, I said I would just take the bus for a dollar and he tried to tell me that there were no busses at the airport. I asked him if he felt that it was ok to lie to someone like that as I had just got off the bus to come here. He came up with several more lies to cover his initial fallacy and finally I just told him to forget about it. Well, he didn’t.
After he dropped all the other people off, he started getting angry about being called a liar; then he turned off the A/C to the rear of the bus. I reminded him that he did, very purposefully, lie to me in an attempt to get me to pay an exorbitant price for a ride. The farther we rode, the angrier he got. Soon he was cursing at me and calling me names between telling me that I should respect others. Finally, we got back to the bus terminal and I tried to get out. The door was broken or child locked and I could not get out. He told me I needed to wait for him to come around and open the door.
I wait. He opens the door, I get out with the agreed upon fare in my hand. I turn around to grab my bag off the seat and bid him good day while walking in to the bus terminal. About 50 feet later, I realize one of my pockets is empty; my left front pocket that holds my blackberry.
Fuck. Doublefuckingshanghaisallyfuck!
I run back out to the parking lot and ask the attendant if he found anything on the ground. His bored face tells me he did not.
A little backstory. My blackberry clips on to my packet with a remarkably strong clip. In a month of tromping around central America, running for busses, climbing stairs, and all manner, it has never fallen off; not once.
Recap.
I get out of the collective minivan with my phone clipped, partially exposed, inside my left front pocket.
I pay the angry driver who has just opened the sliding side door.
I turn around, exposing my left side to said driver.
I reach for bag inside the shuttle… the bag that is on the seat… where I have been sitting… for an hour.
I turn around and leave.
Somewhere between steps 4 and 5 of this story, our lovely Jamaican friend, Rogelio Brown, decided he would take the phone he had been watching me play with for the last hour. Not only is our lovely shuttle driving friend a liar, he is a thief. Not my best day.
Fine. Fate dealt me a shit hand. I can call it later and offer the blackguard money to return it as a reward for “finding” my phone. Time to go to the Panama Canal.
This is relatively easy, and costs about 40 cents. The entrance fee for students like myself is $5. The place is truly an engineering marvel; especially considering that it came in 6 ahead of schedule and under budget. For anyone keeping track, 1914 is the last time the US Government was involved in ANYTHING that did either of those two things.
Being the picture hound that I am, I set up my new mini tripod and set the timer to take a pic of me with the ship now coming through the canal.
I walk away. The tripod tips. The camera smashes.
Yup. 1-2-3. Now my filter, my lens glass, and the lens tube are all smashed into pieces. Not a good day for me. Despite this, I loved the canal. It’s a marvel and one of the last great works that the US was involved in IMHO. Also the French failed miserably at their attempt, so that’s funny.
I’m going to the store to buy a StylusTough tomorrow. It is a shockproof camera that I have seen three times on this trip. Each time the camera is ugly as hell from being dropped, banged, scratched, driven over, submerged, etc and the damn thing still works. I think this is the camera I need.
Multiple phone calls and text messages have been met with my phone simply being turned off. I’m going to the airport tomorrow to wait for him to come and try to pick people up. We’ll see if he wants to cooperate when I am telling all his passengers that he stole my phone and asking him to talk to the police. Maybe it won’t get my phone back, but it sure will make me laugh. I’m going out for some Sangria.
If I can find a way, I will simply sell all that I own and telecommute to a good job while living at Rockin J’s in Costa Rica. The murals should give you a good idea of the mentality here.
I read about the prevalence of drugs in CR. I heard about it. But nothing prepared me for the reality. I ate dinner with some folks and one of them simply brought out a bag of weed at the table. Then the waitress walked up and smelled it and offered to sell him some better weed. It was everywhere.
This place is something you have to see to believe. You certainly don’t want to stay in the dorms here. There is no rhyme or reason surrounding what time the music and partying begins or ends. However, in a private room I slept later here than I have anywhere in my whole trip, so it can be relaxing.
I am noticing a trend. the price quoted a gringo by a “reasonable” local is always 2/3 to 3/4 more than the accepted price for a gringo. This is generally 5 to 8 times higher than the price for a local. This is no different than I found when I went to rent a surfboard. Just ask for about 50% of what they are offering and you’ll wind up somewhere around acceptable. Just don’t expect pay the local price, which is often free.
North of Puero Viejo there is a superb break sporting big waves, and a very nasty landing on coral and rock if you mess up. I am terrible at surfing, but I still like it and go whenever I get the chance. That being said, I went a bit south of the city to the easy waves and the nice soft sand.
After about 4 hours, I could barely lift my arms to paddle. Every stroke was a mental exertion but I promised myself one last good ride. I tried about three different waves before I was finally able to ride one into shore instead of just getting pushed around by it. Today was my most successful surfing day in a short and ignoble history of attempting the sport. I loved it. The weather was perfect!
I retired to the hostel to spend a great evening hanging out with Simon and our new friend Mira from Norway. I am still undisputed Foosball champion of Costa Rica.
I slept terribly and awoke to a torrential downpour. I guess this is my sign that it is time to move on. The bus comes quickly enough, and I even manage to find a $1 pair of headphones at the asian market in Changuinola.
The passing to Panama is quick and easy. I am supposed to have a forwarding ticket to enter the country, but instead of going to the window, I just walked into the guys office and gave him a high five. He stamped my papers (yay, Panama!) without asking for a forwarding ticket and sent me on my way. Note: every single person that came after me had to go purchase a $10 bus ticket in order to get stamped.
Watching the sun set in the mountains of Panama was nearly a religious experience. Deep hurtful oranges, building a hellsgate in the clouds. Mountians built out of clouds built on other mountains. It was breathtaking. I was too caught up in watching it to actually get a picture, so you will just have to go to Panama and climb the mountains and watch it yourself.
The bus changes over in a city called David. I don’t believe that this is a coincidence, so instead of trying to grab the overnight bus to Panama City, I just got off the bus and started walking. About ten feet later, I saw a sign for a hostel called Purple House. I caught a taxi and it took me there.
Andrea, the owner, is a great person, and the place, though HOT AS HADES, is a nice place to kick back and relax. Clean and full of amenities. I think I enjoyed myself more getting a nights sleep before continuing on than I would have trying to get around Panama City at 4 or 5 in the morning after trying to sleep on a bus. My throat is a bit raw, though I don’t know why. Hoping I kick it in the next couple days.
Ok, so, when one thinks of the most memorable and enduring aspects of ancient civilization, one might think of the egyptian Pyramids or the Sphinx. Perhaps the Parthenon or Coliseum in Italy. But how about food?
or better yet, how about snacks?
The ancient Mayans leaned how to make a dark and tasty treat from a very unlikely source.
The pods of the Cacao tree go through a rather rigorous process to become the chocolate that we all know and love today. Being the adventurous sort, I decided to take a look at how it tastes before undergoing any presto changeo. Take a look:
As you can see, it leaves a little something to be desired. 🙂
Costa Rica is something I have been anticipating for a few years now. Unfortunately, I really don’t know that much about it. I’ve wanted to come here for years after hearing a wonderful girl describe being out on the ocean on a surfboard at sunset and sunrise and not being sure which was which. I’ve heard descriptions of a fantastic hostel on the coast painted all in murals and hammocks and filled with greatness. I had forgotten the name, but I got online and looked it up. Rockin J’s in Puerto Viejo. First though, I need to stop over in the capital. The ride has some great scenery.
The border crossing is pretty boring. We do need three dollars and they can’t break a $20, so the guy in the seat in front of me takes a break from his gameboy to loan me three bucks. I got change from the worlds slowest bank while everyone else stood out in the heat. I did get a Nicaragua stamp on the way out, which makes me happy, but the line that we need to stand in to get let into Costa Rica is wrapping around the building. It’s about 90 degrees out and there is little shade to be had. The bus driver comes back to tell us something in Spanish. If I hear him right, we need to leave all our bags on the bus and in order to gain entrance to Costa Rica we need to have a ticket showing our trip out of Costa Rica at a later date. This could be a problem. I have no tickets after San Jose.
I didn’t hear him right. We are supposed to take our bags with us.
I know this is my responsibility; to check these sort of things before I try to go to another country, but I’ve gotten lazy. The last 4 countries have all been a part of the CA-4 alliance, much to the chagrin of my passport stamp hunting, and I haven’t needed to do much more than show up and walk through. I could waste time and energy getting mad at the ticket sales people again for leaving this part out, but I’m over that.
On the way out of the bus, the hombre in front of me reveals that he speaks English. His English is about on par with my Spanish, which makes us a pretty good conversational pair. He confirms that you do need some form of return ticket. There is a Tica Bus ticket window near the front of the building, so I figure I can pick one up on my way into the building. No sweat.
An hour and a half later, when we finally get around that corner of the building, the Tica Bus stall has closed for the day. Oops. I read in my handbook that this rule is not always enforced. Yes, this is the same book that has been oh-so-accurate about everything else. Crossing my fingers can’t hurt at this point. We’ve been standing in the sun for about 2 hours by the time we roll in. If I start sweating, I’m sure they won‘t think anything of it.
A couple of tips for the Nicaragua to Costa Rica border crossing. You can cut to the front of the line. Locals seem to have a better time of it, but if you can speak to the security guard quietly in Spanish, you may be able to pay him to let you slide to the front of the line. I just watched two guys on awesome Suzuki Boulevards do it. Also, watch out for old ladies. They will just walk up to the front of the line and put their bag down in front of you as if they owned the place. I haven’t really found an effective way to deal with this, since most of the old ladies in this area have lived through a few civil wars and probably aren’t the least bit intimidated by some cracker from the U.S.
Next, while it may be good to get your ongoing ticket before entering the country, you can get it at the border before 5:30 p.m. Also, my little lady never asked for anything. She didn’t even say hi. She took my passport and paper. Stamped me and sent me on my way. You must submit ALL your bags to be checked by the border patrol. If you are a cracker from the U.S. this means they look at you and say, ok take your bags and go. If you look like a local or a strung out monkey, they will search your bags.
Roger is the guys name in front of me in line. Roger is from Honduras. Roger buys me a soda. We spend plenty of time talking and turns out his stepdad is from Alabama and has had 4 strokes. He is studying in Costa Rica and doesn’t take futbol as seriously as some of his fellow Hondurans. Once, just for wearing the wrong jersey he was attacked. The attacker tried to strangle Roger with his own shirt. In Roger’s memory he has seen a boy shot at a game because he was a rival fan of an aggressor with a gun. All that aside, he does enjoy the sport and even gives me a handmade bracelet for the Honduran National team.
Roger is familiar with San Pedro Sula and since it is a place close to my heart for housing my friend Arai, we get to chatting. He starts telling me about the three rival gangs that populate the place. MS-13, Dies y ocho, and one other I forgot. We are talking about all the wild things that go down there when another lady in front of us turns around and starts reading Roger the riot act. She is angry at him for making it out to be so dangerous and keeps professing her love for Honduras. I wonder if she would have the same reaction in she met Arai and heard her personal stories.
Ah well, back on the bus for another 5 hours. I’ll be rolling in to San Jose sometime after midnight if we make good time.
It’s a full moon tonight and the Costa Rican moon looks as beautiful as any moon I have ever seen. No clouds and no surrounding city lights to interfere with her majesty. I tried to take a couple pictures but as it turns out a moving bus isn’t the best set up for a picture of the moon.
Despite the heat and 3 restless kids running around the rear section of the bus, I fall asleep; fast asleep despite the heat. Each time the bus stops to let people off, I wake up bathed in sweat. Roger gets off the bus at some point, and I know I have another two hours until I can exit as well. Somewhere between the naps I watch a movie called Pandorum on my iPod and it’s actually better than I thought it would be. One of the kids is actually wearing a leash.
11:30. San Jose. Chilling out waiting for my bag to come off the bus, I note that Tica has it’s own Hotel attached. It is swank looking enough and charges a staggering $28 a night. This probably includes hot water and a private bathroom, but it’s a bit rich for my taste.
It’s a wonder that everyone in this part of the world isn’t constantly hoarse from all the yelling they do all day. I can’t believe there are this many taxis awake in the city. Then again, it is the capital and it is Saturday night. I pick out a cabbie at random and start to walk to his car with him. He quotes me a rate and I know I am getting screwed, but it is too late for me to care.
When I see his car, I stop dead. There isn’t a single identifying mark on the whole thing. Just a plain ugly white compact with some rust and scratch marks. I ask why it doesn’t say taxi anywhere on his car and he tries to tell me it is because he is a special private transportation service. Yeah, the guy looks like he hasn’t shaved in weeks and his laundry is well over do for a wash. Actually, when I say it like that, he sounds a lot like me. Despite our similarity in appearance, I turn around and walk right back to the cabbies and ask for one who actually drives a taxi. Some one volunteers and the unshaven unmarked cab guy yells to the other cabbie the price I agreed to. Now I am absolutely certain that I am getting raped on the price, but I still don’t care. It’s still around 10% of what I paid for a cab ride in Raleigh once… and that cabbie was a friend of mine.
Maybe I was being overly cautious. Maybe it is fine to get in unmarked cars that profess to be taxis in Central America. But with the amount of cautionary tales I am racking up, I thought it best to err on the side of caution. My new cabbie is cool and quiet. He asks a couple standard questions and drives less dangerously than most. At one point we drive by three separate girls that all look like they are going clubbing, but I see no clsub. I think to myself that all those women look like dudes in the face, despite dressing to the hilt. Asking my cabbie if they are prostitutes, as that is not uncommon for this city, he replies with a word I don’t recognize. I ask again. He says, “gay.” Travesti. Travesty. Apparently, my hotel is in ‘that’ district.
Cabbie waits for me while I go into Tranquilo to ask if they have room for one more. They are full up but direct me to Kabata across the street. Kabata is cool. They include breakfast and internet (slow!) for the low low price of $25 a night. That is the most I have paid for a hotel in about a month, by a very large margin. At this point, I would have been better off to just stay at the Tica hotel. Something to remember.
The owners speak French, Spanish, and English so far as I can tell, by may speak more languages. They are always ready to assist, and keep the door locked at all hours day and night, so you need to roust them to get in or out. This is not as big a hassles as it sounds. Once I did have to just walk into the underground parking and come into the building from building from below since no one was answering. I got lucky and a car was leaving. Someone even drove into the garage door once while I stood and watched. It was pretty classic.
Sleep comes slowly tonight after the napping on the bus. S’okay. Gives me a little bit to consider a few things. I’m moving too fast these days. I barely saw Nicaragua; somewhere I was interested in. I will barely spend time in Costa Rica, which is fine cuz it’s a bit expensive for my taste, but I’m not sure I have time left to do Colombia, Peru, Chile, Argentina, and Brazil. What with the recent earthquake, I may have to give Chile a berth, since I don’t really know anything about what is really going on on the ground… then again, maybe this is the perfect time to go there. Chaos is often to my liking. I want to slow down. I want to take another couple of months for the continent. That’s going to be hard to do and keep a hold of my girl back home though. Ah, well. Thinking out loud.
The “breakfast” offered by the hostel consists of coffee and a choice of cold cereal or toast. Still, it’s enough to get me going. I have laundry to do and a shopping list of things I would like to accomplish.
Fast forward. After having walked nearly the length and breadth of the map of San Jose the hostel have me, I can tell you that it looks and feels like most large North American cities like this. There are a few more Latin Americans that Los Angeles, but not much. This is also the first time in C.A. that I have actually seen marginally attractive girls just out walking around. No, I am not including the transvestites.
Over the course of the day, I smelled vomit and urine in considerably less quantities than in some other cities I have seen down here and met a higher concentration of English speakers across the city in a variety of different roles. Basically, if you are looking to get out of the U.S. you could make it in San Jose with little to no help. But it doesn’t really feel like you are OUT of the U.S.
The city has a lot going for it. Good public transit, artist support, you can walk everywhere, decent food, affordable food, though they are not always in the same place. The “sodas,” little restaraunts, are the cheapest place to get good local food. Quite nice really. The city does have a few drawbacks; petty crime, it’s expensive compared to other places in C.A. They have some truly motivated Fire and Brimstone preachers in the square outside the elegant main post office.
There is an awesome looking place for sale up the street! I want it.
I went to the mall to get a mini tripod for the camera and it was EXACTLY like any mall in the U.S. Only difference was that no one spoke English there. Many people were very helpful, and I bought 2 wild t-shirts for mega cheap at a Pakistani store since I am always running out of shirts before shorts. I think the Adidas running shirts were ill-advised. The T-shirt I brought gives me much more mileage. I may have said that before.
There are two French girls staying at the hostel mixed in with myself and the other vagrants. Sonia has hair like angels in coitus. It’s fantastic. They are a talkative sort and generally likeable. As disagreeable a person as I believe myself to be, I find I quite often like people just for saying hi to me or smiling. Simple things.
I’m still picking bits of volcano out of my knuckles.
Much of downtown is closed on Sunday, but I still manage to snap a few choice pictures. I gave the caballero all the coin I had in my pocket. He was simply too good to be true. I challenge any of you to come across a masterpiece like this and NOT give him money.
Again. I cannot repeat this strongly enough. ALWAYS check your receipt and your ticket before you walk away from the ticket counter. When paying for my ride to Puerto Viejo, I was sold the 6 a.m. ticket. Not the 12 noon ticket that I needed. I noticed this about 10 minutes to 5 p.m. I wonder how often the bums and strippers I bolted past see a crazy foreigner do the 4 minute mile through the ghetto? Probably more often than they should.
I arrived at the ticket counter at 3 minutes to 5 p.m. There was a gentleman in front of me talking to the ticket guy, so I figured I was cool. After a few minutes I figured out there were coworkers and were just gossiping instead of doing anything of importance. So I explained very nicely to the ticket counter guy that I had the incorrect ticket and I needed to exchange it. He told me it was after 5 and he wouldn’t help me anymore as they were closed. For about the next 5 minutes I tried to explain to him that I had to change it today because I needed to pick up a package from FedEx in the morning at 8:30 and would not be on the 6 a.m. bus. As you can suppose, my woes and his inadequacy did not a wonderful match make.
I slept terribly. I was waking up all night in a panic that I had overslept. I was dreaming wild orgy dreams and completely disoriented when I awoke.
4:59: Staring at my blackberry. I turn off the alarm and get up, get dressed in the same clothes as yesterday and wake the guy at the front counter to let me out. I tell him I’ll be back in a half hour and walk away. The morning is brisk and beautiful. There are bare hints of color all throughout the sky and a breeze is keeping the morning fresh long before the cars, buses, taxis, and urinating winos begin assaulting the air. It is one of the finer walks I have enjoyed.
Never be late for anything while traveling. Simply never do it. Be on time or be early. That being said, Never expect anyone else to be on time. It will not happen. Embrace this truth and prepare. You will be aggravated, but that will not change that the ONLY instance when things will run on time is the day that you are 5 minutes late. The ticket counter gentleman is about 15 minutes late to work. I am certain however, that the bus will leave on time. Despite the previous evenings exchange between the obese ticket vendor and myself, the exchange goes smooth as glass and I am off to go enjoy a shower.
More coffee and bread for breakfast with the French girls; they are delightful and leaving today for some place I have never heard of. We exchange email addresses and bid each other adieu. Now I am off on my grand adventure to find the Statue of Leon Cortes. Why, you may ask? Because that is the address of the FedEx office. No joke. I need to ask a cabbie to drive to 100 meters east of the statue of Leon Cortes. It is amazing to me that things work as well as they do here. The taxi quotes me 2200 and charges me 3500 when we arrive. Yuck.
8:30 the FedEx website tells me it opens. 9:00 the FedEx door says. Guess which one wins? To kill 30 minutes I walk over to the statue to see what is so cool about the guy. No placard, so I walk on. A Swedish girl and I walk around a bit talking and hang out in an internet café that is apparently closed, though the door is open to kill some time before I have to go get my card.
The FedEx guy is cool; the kind of cool that makes you want to ask a guy for his number just so you can go hang out. I never got his name, but he was a blast. I forgot the tracking number, but he looks it up with my passport and has it out in no time. It was opened by customs, but the card is there so I am golden.
The return taxi is somewhat less of an extortionist quoting 1500 and asking 1920 on arrival. San Jose taxis are something of a different sort. They are all red with a triangular yellow sign on the side. There are some that simply quote you a price, and some that use meters. Watch out for the taxis that use meters. Some of them are impossible to read or are broken and the taxi driver will claim he can read it. The meter runs based on time rather than mileage, so if you catch one during rush hour, you will be paying substantial fees. Just a word to the wise; the walk is usually nice, so go for it if it is within reason.
I managed to get some post cards in the mail, so keep your eyes out. Now that I have my new ATM card, it appears that someone has been using a credit card of mine in Chicago, IL. I have been the victim of some identity theft, so I cut up the other card and made sure my bank is taking care of it on their end. My towel still isn’t dry, so it looks like I’ll be using the autobus dryer on my way to Puerto Viejo.
In many ways San Jose is the same as any other city in C.A. Noone knows where anything is; people at work don’t even know what street is outside their office. You must harass the bus drivers to tell you where your stop is or they will simply drive past it and laugh at you when you ask them about your stop later. Bums sleep in the street, and it is entirely socially acceptable to urinate in public. I like it.
Returning to the bus station, I learn that there has been a road closure and the bus will take an alternate route which will add an hour to the trip. This means I have to walk back inside and exchange my ticket again. Getting on the bus, my headphones start malfunctioning. I expected this, I had to superglue the base of the cord together last week. By the time the bus leaves, the tape patch job I put on them has caused them to cease altogether. Wow. 5.5 hours of no headphones is ok if you have someone to talk to. Unfortunately, no one nearby seems to have anything worth talking about.
I planned for this sort of thing. I have the tools necessary to splice in a new headphone jack, but I need the jack, promptly supplied by the first gas station we stop at, but I need to get the tools out of my big bag. I can do it once we get to Puerto Viejo. Until then, to drown out the sorority chatter of the dozen or so overweight American girls surrounding me, I’ll listen to the sony headphones I just bought though they are quite painful. My Etymotic ER-6i headphones were expensive, but they have been worth every penny over the year or so that I have had them. Well worth repairing.
At the second stop off, there is a fantastic graveyard. People are buried in something of a filing cabinet with names and coffins drawn on the side. While I am taking the pictures a man in a generic New York jersey walks up to me and offers to sell me “gwanja.” Politely, I decline.
Once we get back on the bus, I grab a new seat and strike up a conversation with a Swiss guy named Simon. Next stop, Rockin J’s.
Rough morning, slept badly, 4 am I was awake, no water to be had. None. No shower I guess. I had hoped to scrub some of the awful of this place off of me. At least I will be out of here soon. It’s 5:30 and the hotel reception guy is asleep on the couch in the lobby in total darkness. It is only my talking to myself that wakes him and motivates him to turn on the lights.
Walking the 8 blocks to the bus station, the warning in my book saying “one should use cabs in this part of town if the sun is not up” plays through my head a few times. I am too frustrated to care. I dare someone to try and mug me right now. I would be more likely to bite the tongue out of their head than give them any money. Arriving at the bus station, I note happily that the door is open, always a good sign, and walk in. Stating my intentions to the man at the counter to catch the 6 a.m. bus to Leon, I smile confidently and begin reaching for my wallet. My hand is about halfway there when the smile disappears.
The bus has been rescheduled to 9:30.
“Por Que?” I ask.
No answer. I’m getting a little frustrated of the Central American tendency to simply not speak to the gringo. As if it will make me disappear. I am left with little choice. I don’t know the city. Even if I did, the little I have seen of it seems to be a putrescent stink-hole smelling of urine and filled with denigrates. I buy the ticket. Now what to do for the next 4 hours…
Not much. I suppose it is ill-advised to pull out my laptop in a bus station in the ghetto. The iPod is an acceptable risk, so I camp out and watch a few sessions of a show called Rome that I got from my friend Chris before I left. It’s brutal and I often feel pretty depressed after watching it, but it passes some time. Around 8:30 I wander down the street to an internet café. Asking the attendant if they have wireless, he says no with all the charm and grace of meat grinder without all the sophistication. When I try to explain to him that I can just plug in the cable, he again answers in the ignorant negative of a descendent of illiterate pirates. Yay.
After sampling the circa Bronze Age computers in this hovel, I swear a silent promise that I will never again complain about the slowness of my computer; the little netbook that could. I’ll probably break that promise the next time I use the computer.
9:30. Bus ride. I am sitting next to a pair of female Peace Corps volunteers. I never knew it was a popular thing to do. I hate to admit it, but the most exposure I have had to the Peace Corps previous to this trip was the movie Shallow Hal.
The bus ride is loooong. The cool thing about the Tica bus company though, is that on international busses, they collect your passport and your entrance/exit fee if there is any, and they go get your passport stamped for you at the border. You just chill out, stretch, grab some food, whatever. Makes things run quite smoothly. It does NOT change the fact that I am beset by beggars, moneychangers, and little children trying to stick their hands in my pockets as soon as I am off the bus. I take a moment to yell at the closest would-be-pickpocket and then walk away as they laugh amongst themselves.
I’m busy trying to procure a baleada from the closest little diner and don’t realize the bus is trying to leave without me. Little did I know, that it was only driving about 100 yards to Nicaragua to stop again so we could get processed in to the country. I cannot stress this enough. Central American border crossings can be chaos. Keep your eyes on the prize. Get to the window. Get stamped and get on your way. Don’t take the first taxi or shuttle that is thrust at you. Talk to the one that isn’t in your face. Even if the price is the same, it’s a better ride.
It’s another 2 hours to Leon from the border. I spend the time listening to Spanish lessons on my ipod but my mind keeps wandering and I realize at points that I have no idea what the people on the recording are talking about and have to keep restarting tracks.
Leon. Finally. Well, almost. Despite being a rather major city for vacationers, it doesn’t really merit a bus stop and I am rather unceremoniously deposited at a gas station. The resident taxi men are here, and hollering at me, so I just walk away. There is a bus stop right across the street and I head over there to wait for the bus. Most of the women have things balanced on their head oh at their feet in baskets. No one is breastfeeding, at least; that particular bus stop curiosity seems to have stayed in El Salvador.
Another of the seemingly innumerable taxi purveyors rolls up to the bus stop and says he can take me into town for 15 Colones; the local currency. This is less than a dollar and probably close to what the bus will charge, so I roll with it. Only problem is, he has no idea where to hostel I want to stay at is. No problem, I know it is 3 blocks north of Parque Central, so I just ask him to drop me off there. On the way, he picks up another woman bound for the city, not uncommon, and drops her off without collecting a fare, again, not that uncommon. Thereafter he drops me off at Parque Central.
Following the compass and the directions very carefully, I go to exactly where the hotel should be. Only it is not there. So I start asking around. I get a few completely different version of directions, and several nonverbal waving hands in response. No one knows. I stop and ask a dozen taxi drivers. No one knows where it is. No one has ever heard of it. It’s 95 degrees farenheit and the humidity is close to triple digits. I’m carrying 50 pounds of gear and have been doing so for close to an hour. The situation is getting critical.
Jumping into a taxi, I ask the guy to please follow the directions I have for the hotel. He does so. It is not there, but we are in a completely different section of the city. I repeat the directions and he drives to a new part of the city. This particular flavor of insanity happens 3 more times before I finally ask him to go to another hostel I heard was decent and he drives directly there. Then he tries to charge me double his quoted rate. He is holding my small bag with my laptop and camera in it. I’ve had it.
It’s obvious this grade school dropout of a man doesn’t even understand me when I speak Spanish, so why bother? I just begin yelling at him in English in the middle of the street for being a swindler and holding my bag for ransom because he is too stupid to follow directions or even know his own city. I am sweating like a fever patient. People are starting to stare.
Following a solid 60 seconds of turpitude from yours truly, the taxi driver finally hands me my bag, takes the money that he originally quoted me and drives away. I am truly a model citizen.
The Bigfoot Hostel is great. I recommend it to anyone who does not need to hold a private conversation. The place is filled with cool travelers and fluent English speaking staff and a café and music and pool table and pool, and even has internet. The only catch is that the internet is only available in the same area as all the other noise. Trying to have a conversation over skype often just results in confusion. All things aside, I think it is a great place. Also, they do daily tours to surf Volcan Cerro Negro.
Yeah. Volcano Surfing. I’ll get to that in a minute.
It’s hot. Stupid hot. I’m hallucinating even though I am securely tucked under the 12 inch fan tucked securely 12 feet about the floor doing what little it can to cool the sweltering punishment being doled out. Asking around someone confirms this is about the second hottest place in Nicaragua. That means there is actually some place hotter… it’s hard to imagine at the moment.
Shower. Showershowershowershowershowershower!!! The showers are kept quite clean and the water is blessed cold. My groovy 2$ flipflops are giving me my moneys worth, what with all the community showers I’ve been through. Walking the 25 feet back to my room, I am almost dry by the time I close the door. Mini-fan takes care of that pretty quickly.
I have a month of beard of beard on my face and haven’t had a haircut in at least as long. It is way too hot for this. Walking up to the front counter, I ask the British girl at the counter where there is a reliable barber nearby. She in turn asks the rather unshorn, but friendly gentleman sitting nearby and they give me perfect directions the 3 or so blocks to the barberia. Directions can be tricky down here. When they work out, it makes me happy.
The barber is as slow as anything I have seen in Central America. For as fast as the shuttles and busses drive, I can’t understand why everything else takes a small eternity. About 10 minutes later he manages to direct me to the only barber chair in the rather large building. I assume that his whole family lives here because there are about 8 people of different ages and gender scattered around the room doing what appears to be a rather robust course of absolutely nothing.
A bedsheet goes around my neck and my barber and I enter an interpretive dance of Spanish and gesticulation that results in his breaking out his electric razor and some attachments. In about 15 minutes, I am presented with this.
One of the most fantastic and good people I have ever had the great privilege of calling a friend sported a Mohawk with much more style and grace than I. he died two years ago this weekend, and in this far off sweltering place filled with misunderstanding and adventure, this is the best way I can think of to remember him. Brother Julio, this one’s for you.
15 minutes and I’ve got a haircut. I stand up and thank the man, but he directs me to wait and sit back down again. I must tell you, if you ever have the chance, go get a shave in Nicaragua. The next 45 minutes were spent trimming my hairline all the way around my head, shaving every minute area of my face, cleaning clogged pores, face massage, skin treatments, and shaving some more. He did all of this with a bare blade old school straight razor, much like Sweeney Todd. This guy was amazing. When he finally asked me the price, I gave him a strange look as he was asking for more than a doctor or a lawyers full days wage in this part of the world, but I paid him anyway. It was one heck of an experience.
As soon as I return, it is time for another shower. The hostel is filled with people from all over. Israel, Australia, Denmark, Britain, and places I can’t figure out from listening to them. The Israeli guy is really quite chatty, but has a habit of chainsmoking which is starting to make me feel a bit ill from all the smoke. After the womens figure skating Olympics is over, he invites me to head out to a bar with him. It’s late, and I don’t feel like getting locked out of the place. I’m going to bed.
Upon waking, I am feeling a bit ill, but know that I need to shake it off as I am going to the volcano today. A shower goes a long way towards healthy.
Another strange thing about this part of the world, if you see three women, ages 14, 30, and 60 passing a baby back and forth between them, you really can’t be sure who the baby actually belongs to.
Coffee and an odd, flat, salty omelet give me a bit of a leg up on the day. We have so many people going to the volcano that we are taking two trucks. Listen to the next part as this is important. When traveling in caravan, get in the truck IN FRONT. If you aren’t sure, say they are parked next to one another, get in the one that the tour guide will be riding in.
In Nicaragua, you can’t assume the road will be paved. When going to a volcano, you can almost assume it will not be paved. This combined with a healthy application of sunblock, means the people in the tailing truck will look like coal miners coming off a 72 hour shift by the time they are done eating all the dirt from the ride out to the mountain. It’s pretty funny, actually, but only because I was in the front truck. Now, Volcano.
A sea of nearly unending shards of volcanic glass spreading down the side of an active volcano, in the 95 degree heat with the lava rock baking through your shoes and heating the air around you. Sweat and dirt are your only certain companions for the 45 minute hike up the volcano do get to what passes for a “safe” area to participate in this masochistic endeavor. The view is magnificent; old destruction and the symptoms of heat are visible everywhere.
With my recent haircut, I have had to add more parts of my head to my sunblock routine. I’m not sure how much good it is going to do, since we all seem to be baking from the inside-out AND the outside-in in this temperature. This video of the ground smoking should give you an idea of what we are talking about. The already hot wind is scraping across these volcanic craters and baking us like a convection over.
The ride itself is rather short lived, but well worth it. It’s not exactly Barber Motorsports Park, but it will do. My jumpsuit is high fashion, and zip ties combined with duct tape can solve any problem.
Shower!!! I am certain that very near by, there are avid prostitutes that wash less often than I have been since arriving in this EZ Bake of a city. Now what to do with the rest of the day. I guess I should decide where to go next; or if I should even leave. I feel I should be clear about this; if this city were not quite so hot, or so loud and city-like, I would have a difficult time leaving Bigfoot. It’s been pretty good to me.
I’m beginning to think that the whole reason I’ve left on this mad adventure is so that my story can be a cautionary tale for others who will follow. What follows will be the cautionary tale of the Tika Bus, vol. 2.
Very conveniently situated next to both the Big Foot and ViaVia hostels in Leon, Nicaragua is the office of the Green Tours group. They arrange numerous adventure and relaxation tours, and sell tickets for the Tica Bus, one of the premiere and still affordable bus companies in Central America. Today, I am asking them to sell me a ticket.
For lack of any other clear destination, I decide to finally get to Costa Rica and pick up my ATM card that is waiting there for me. My tracking number says it is still there, and I should be able to pick it up less than 48 hours from now. The first bus leaves Managua, 1.5 hours away from Leon, at 6 a.m. That’s the bus I want. There is another at 7 and a third at noon. The Tika system is misbehaving at the moment, so they ask me to come back in an hour or so. I swing over to the café next door to use their internet whose slowness defies all definition by mortal man.
I return about an hour and a half later. The two women in the office both speak English quite well, and this makes things much easier for me, especially since they keep trying to put me on the 12 oclock bus after I tell them repeatedly that I absolutely must be on the 6 a.m. bus out of Managua. They tell me that there is food provided on the noon bus, but I can pay for my own food. Speaking of food, I ordered food in the restaurant ViaVia next door and need to go back and check on it. I ask the ladies is everything is good and I go grab food, returning about 30 minutes later.
They are still having issues performing their job. For reasons that are beyond the comprehension of mortal man, if there are two customers in their extremely spacious office at the same time, these two being myself and an amiable Australian guy, then all work must cease and the attending employees must sit there and look at each other blankly and not answer any questions. I’m getting really sick and tired of this, so I give them my money, re-vocalize my instructions and verify that they do understand me, and take a walk over to the grocery store to pick up something for this head and neck-ache that has been plaguing me all day.
I return a few minutes before 5, just in case they are going to close at 5, and summarily ignored for about 30 minutes before I am handed a $20 bill. It appears the ticket is less than they said it was. That’s good. Then I am handed a ticket. This is good. The ticket says 12:00 from Managua. This is bad. I think it is something about the heat that makes me so abusive when I am maligned. Today, these people get both barrels. No cursing, but I am loud enough to make my point. When they tell me I am welcome to go to another bus company, I nearly lose my mind. After explaining to them that I would have done so about 3 hours ago if they had been honest with me at any point in our exchange. I ask them if there are any busses leaving Leon to go to Managua earlier in the day and am told repeatedly that there are none, a statement that I know is a lie because it is the same lie that is told to me at every bus station, ticket counter, and taxi stop in the whole of the continent. Finally, after the employees tire of lying to me and my abuse they start trying to hand me my money back and tell me to go somewhere else. I’m pretty tired of it by now, so I take the ticket, and the additional change that they mysteriously forgot to give me before I looked at my actual ticket price, and I head out to be hot somewhere else.
Now, note, the problem is really unfixable at this point. It’s time to learn a little something from the experience so it isn’t a complete and total waste.
Don’t wait for 3rd world country computer systems or employees. Seek other options immediately.
Never let a question go unanswered. If you think the answer is important, it probably is. Press the issue.
Get a receipt for the exact cost and check it against what you paid.
Check the seat number if there is one.
Yeah, the last one came later.
I’m in a foul mood at this point. Food is a welcome activity. If you are vegetarian, you will be thrilled by the Bigfoot Café menu. There is not one piece of food on the entire thing for any meal. The closest they come is offering eggs for breakfast. They do make a delightfully spicy vegetarian chili for dinner. It may have not been the best choice when it is 90 degrees at 8 p.m. though.
Sweating this much, the logical answer is to take a shower. Aaaah…. I never thought I would love cold showers this much. Also, being this grouchy, the logical answer is to get some sleep. One thing to note, The one item I have used as much or more often than even my shoes, is a set of earplugs. Bring earplugs. A few pairs. You’ll thank me.
Morning comes with the realization that there may be other places that I would like to go before leaving Nicaragua. I rather like the country and the people I have met, so running a 12 hour bus day seems a bit silly if there might be something closer. My mission is defused rather quickly. Tica ticket office isn’t open until 10 a.m. and, I am informed by one of the Bigfoot staff, the Tica system is incapable of changing a ticket after 6 p.m. on the previous day. My options for going to Lago de Apoyo are simply to ride the bus as far as Masaya and get off, effectively wasting about $30 US and heading to Lago de Apoyo, and paying that money again when I can get to Granada and head south again. Yuck.
Now, back to those lessons learned… almost all hours of the day from early morning till late afternoon, there are innumerable shuttle busses, like the UCA group, who will take you in to Managua for less that $2 US. Don’t believe your ticket salespeople. You just need to show up at the terminal, they leave every 20 minutes. Now as for lesson #4: When I looked at the ticket, it was number 53. This didn’t strike me as odd, until I got on the bus. There are only 54 seats. The only way I could be closer to the bus toilet is if I was sitting on it. Note: this seat was assigned to me long before I was ever in a confrontation with the employees who gave it to me. Must be some private joke.
I can’t help but laughing when I realize that my flipflops fell out in the shuttle that brought me to Managua. Time to go buy another $2 pair of shower sandals.
After 2 hours on the bus, I think it is actually cooling off as we go towards the equator. I’m not sure why. I was dripping sweat in the bus for the first 90 minutes, but it seems to have lessened. I am still sweating, but not bathing in it as earlier.
Don’t misunderstand me. I have enjoyed Nicaragua immensely. There is a large expatriate population in the country, it is filled with volcanoes and apparently has some beautiful islands and coastlines. I will come back here for an extended stay at some point in the future. The super cool hotel owner from Lanquin is from Nicaragua, and they do have the whole rebellious vibe going for them. I want to return to go to Lago de Apoyo. I want to go to Big Corn Island and see Taylor and Erik’s friend, Ike Siu. I’ll be back, but for today, I’m outa here. 2 more hours to the border… or so.
The road between San Pedro Sula and La Ceiba is beautiful. There are orchards stretching onto the mountains on both sides of the road, and amazing countryside to be seen between the scattered little towns. You can get a ticket on a relatively secure bus for about 90L, or $5, and if you can ignore the frequent vendors walking up and down the aisle off the bus, you can have a good 3 hour relaxation period. This guy, selling the Honduran equivalent of Snake Oil, was too cool to not get a picture of.
Let me save you the suspense and tell you that La Ceiba is a place you should simply pass thorough. Also, the walk from the bus terminal to the city is quite nice for a city walk, but the map inside the Central American lonely planet book is completely wrong! The walk into the city laden down with gear is ok. The walk around the city for the subsequent hour is not fun and will hopefully result in some nice person giving you directions out of pity instead of laughing at you out of spite. Also, no one in the city knows where anything is. The city is sketchy at best, with hookers and pimps materializing even before the sun sets. The one part of the city that was quite nice was the Banana Republic Guest House, which is actually one block WEST of Ave San Isidro between 12a calle and 11a calle. Somewhere along the way, I saw this amazing person on his way to work… or something… I’m not really quite sure.
The guest house is filled with plenty of wild characters of varying levels of smelliness and a dozen different languages. There is a kitchen where you can cook, and computers for using the internet. The private rooms are nice enough and they do a great job of dispersing people around the dormitories so as not to pile everyone up on top of one another. If you wind up in La Ceiba and can’t get out before the sun goes down, feel free to look this place up.
The trip out of La Ceiba is just as weird as the rest of the time there. I spent the night and morning giving directions and assistance when possible to the other travelers, then finally packed my bag and walked out the door to catch a taxi. I would caution you against ever taking a taxi with someone already in it if you have any sort of timeline you are trying to adhere to. The taxi driver had a woman in the backseat and when I asked if he was going to the bus terminal he said yes. This meant, “Yes, I will go there eventually after driving completely the opposite direction and getting stuck in a traffic jam that will so frustrate my other passenger she will get out and walk away.”
The bus depot consists of more people yelling at me about taxi, bus, etc to go to anywhere but the place I want to go to. Another ticket vendor goes so far as to lie to me and say that the bus I took here yesterday, Diana Express, does not come to La Ceiba. Navigating liars and loiterers, I got a cheap ticket back to San Pedro Sula and spend the rest of the day in the bus terminal dodging flies and writing in vain hopes of catching up. Also, I found this excellent advertisement.
Throughout the day, I catch a glimpse of some of the smellier patrons of Banana Republic heading through SPS and on to Tegucigalpa. I am offered a taxi dozens of times, even when I am sitting down. I’m starting to wonder just that qualifies as a taxi customer…
Finally, I get a return call from Herman as he is approaching the bus terminal. He is to be my taxi to my next destination, half a world away where there are no phones, no computers or internet, almost nothing at all.
Heart to Honduras is a faith based organization that helps build facilities and provides improved health and sanitation for Honduras. It is a group of numerous Christian churches who work with individuals in Central America to coordinate North American volunteers, money, and supplies to safely improve the lives of Honduran families in rural areas. They are doing great work, and Herman is my first contact with them. I’ll be staying and working with them for a few days in Canchias, a village in the middle of no mans land.
On the drive in, I have the opportunity to talk to someone who speaks my language and will answer just about anything I ask. I learn that, yes, everything is corrupt. Chinese blackberries cost almost as much as real blackberries. Single parent adoption is easier in central America. There really is NO speed limit. You never ever ever want to get pulled over.
The Heart to Honduras camp I will be staying at consists of several dorm buildings, a conference hall (with a guitar!!!) and some lecture halls. The support staff lives behind the conference hall in a single house. Herman and I have one of the amazing picturesque drives through the mountains above the jungles that do not cease to awe me. It takes a good long time, but I get to see the local jail and some of the homes that people live in here. I have never seen anything like it. As you can see, Honduras needs a little help with their infrastructure.
We pull in to the HTH camp at around 5:45. This means that the teams are just getting back for the day. I am rapidly introduced to Amy, Callie, Allison, and a number of team members from Arizona that are down here helping to build classrooms and water purification systems for the surrounding areas. I learn that the HTH campus is actually run entirely on hydroelectric power from the nearby river because it is a very long way from anything that might be considered a power line.
Dinner is provided by the HTH folks and I am welcomed into the group and am provided with ample opportunity to talk with all the members of the team. Cliff falls down. Doug is a killer. Battle is nothing of the sort, and Les is More. Allison is our interpreter and team leader. Amy has extensive experience in Argentina, and as is always a surprise to me, you can actually be employed full time by a church. I never understand how people get a salary from working with a church, but maybe that is because salaried religion was never a part of my childhood.
The shower that I head to after dinner makes me feel like a king. The sweaty walk through the last couple days is manifest in the measurable amounts of dead skin and dirt sloughing off me and the physical change in the color of my skin after the shower; a gross testimony to just how far I have come from my life in the USA. I manage to get back up to the conference center to catch the last few minutes of the nightly team debrief. Allison does her best to catch me up on the agenda for tomorrow and get me introduced to my teammates.
Breakfast at 6. Break camp at 6:30. We should plan on returning around 6 p.m. I’m no stranger to long work days, and the prospect of having work to do again excites me. The realization that there is a guitar in the building is equally exciting, but it is currently in use. It is only when the support staff finishes prepping for a surprise birthday party that the guitar is available for public consumption again. So while inside, piñatas are destroyed and music is played at volumes that I am positive wouldn’t be legal anywhere in the States, I sit outside and play and play and play my musical meditation. I play until my fingertips are raw, red, and painful. I will never claim to be a masterful guitarist, but I do really love to play. This is a special treat for me.
Doug is a killer. He is ex-everything, and trains MMA fighters for a career. He overhears some of my conversation with others and makes it a point to engage me in conversation. We get to talking about learning and fighting and learning about fighting and I come away with a couple new books to read by an author called Sam Sherridan; A Fighter’s Heart, and A Fighter’s Mind. Somewhat of a superhero:
The morning brings sickness. Not for me, but for some of the other men. Two of them can’t roll out of bed even to make it to breakfast. The ride back to humanity takes the form of a human cattle car where half of us are standing and everyone is in high spirits. Doug is one of the taller members of the team and is standing on the outside of the truck, closest to the tree branches. Someone yells, “Duck,” warning of the incoming branch and he turns to say, “What?” only to catch a branch in the face. This happens about 6 times.
HTH is a relatively wide organization for this area of Honduras, we stop a few places to pick up more people and even switch out for a larger more comfortable form of transport. Pulling up at the final location where we are to be building classrooms, it looks pretty much like I assumed it would. Church nearby, dirt everything, tiny little store selling nothing I recognize as food, and several dozen children milling about. The locals working on the project full speed ahead by the time we finish our 90 minute drive to the site. There is a tentative period in the morning until we all overcome the moderate language barrier and take up stations and move forward.
The work is hot. Yesterday, people were dropping out from heat exhaustion. Today, thankfully, we are a few blessed degrees cooler. I am still dripping with sweat within minutes and it doesn’t stop all day. Most of the work is over our heads. Ceiling drywall needs to be installed, then taped and spackled. Then sanded and painted. Everyone jokes and talks and works simultaneously. Everyone is sick. Except me.
People are peeling off to lie in the shade, or puke, or drink more water… anything that might help them get over whatever monstrous illness has beset the gringos. At the end of the day, people are literally falling over, though it is mostly Cliff. We do have a little bit of help from the locals, as seen below:
My arms are a sore, my neck is kinked, sweat keeps running in my eye, and I am very thankful for the opportunity to do good work: to be more than good; to be good for something. My filthy shirt is a witness to just how hard these volunteers have been working for the last week. Yes, that is the sweat I wiped off my face all day. Yes, it’s gross.
Halfway through the day, several of the crew break off to go talk to the local jeffe to confirm that they can continue a water purification project that will bring water to the local citizens. Prior to this initiative the local folks had access to clean water only on every third day, for 30 minutes. The local chief has been skimming the funds and now is asking them for more money so clean water can be brought to his people. Then he wants to charge them for it. Don’t think this is this only place in the world this sort of thing is going on.
The days is not without levity. Near the end of the afternoon, Allison rounds everyone up and sends us to the church where some wild chair/curtain structure has been raised. Everyone is handed hand made puppets, and we read a Spanish version of Dr. Suess’ “Are you my Mother?” As soon as it starts, we all start making animal noises, and generally acting like bigger kids than the ones out front who are quite a gracious audience. Battle doesn’t stop making bird whistles the whole time. As we are all skilled thesbians, we can’t help but receive a standing ovation.
These individuals left work, family, children, convenience, luxury, warm water, soft beds, bossy dogs, and rhinos to come down here, sweat and labor, sleep on cots, and eat potentially life threatening food all to help other humans they have never met and can’t even speak with. Be it faith in a higher power, personal strength, or the unity of mankind that motivates this, I think it is fantastic and I cannot commend every one of these people highly enough. The welcomed me as an equal. In this often harsh section of the world, after being hijacked, overcharged, sworn at, and swindled… a little acceptance does great things for me. Thanks, folks.
The next morning, the crew and I get to do some hiking before setting out and they are kind enough to drop me off at an intersection with numerous busses coming by. It takes a while for a bus to appear and in the meantime a Honduran guy walks up to me and says hola. His name is Andres and what follows my meeting him is about 4 solid hours of conversation in Spanish. I didn’t know I could possible speak so much Spanish, but I think I owe it all to Andres. He just liked talking to me. He would repeat himself and try different words as often as needed and would wait for me to finish my sentences, which is something almost no one else here does. It was a blast. Andres even bought me an apple and gave me his contact information so I could come and stay at his place the next time I am in Honduras. This guy is awesome.
He even helped me find a hotel closer to the bus stations than the one I was heading to, because it was on the entire other side of town. The upside is I am right up the street from the terminal. The down side is that this is the first hotel I have been to, despite costing more than almost any place I have stayed in my trip, that has cockroaches. The floor in the bathroom is soaking wet, and someone else’s hair is all over the bedding. Lesson: Always ask to see the room before you pay, cuz you damn sure are not getting your money back. Ah well, at least there is free coffee. I’ll just sleep in my clothes on top of the sheets. This is a rough transition after all the hospitality of Heart to Honduras. Time to sleep; I have a 6 am bus to catch.
Edit: most pictures removed from this post at the subject’s request.
***
I’m getting better at packing the bag and can usually take it from completely unpacked to packed in about 15 minutes without interruptions. Today it comes together pretty well and the owner of Hotel Los Gemenos agrees to put it in the office for a few hours until I can get my act together.
Fast becoming one of my favorite pastimes is simply walking the streets of a city. I’m not talking about walking down alleyways, but rather walking the city proper and listening to the people, wandering in and out of shops at random intervals and just looking at what passes for a business model in that town. I have met some of the coolest people on my trip by doing just this. It acquaints me with the city and often allows me to help out other people later, even if I have only been in the city for a short time.
Today, I see a couple of Irish girls who have that unmistakable “we’re lost” look about them. A couple quick words and I walk a couple streets over to the travel agency that can sell them the bus tickets they are looking for at a reasonable price and get them there much faster than a chicken bus. It’s times like this that I like humans. Most people will toss a quick “thank you” over their shoulder at you while they walk away, but these girls went out of their way to stop and thank me sincerely a few times before they went in to get the ticket.
Fresh bread is a favorite fare of mine while traveling. I picked up this habit in Spain a few years ago. It’s usually quite cheap and very tasty and simple to hold over hunger on long bus rides. Wandering around the neighborhoods away from the city center, I get to meet all kinds of folks while I am hunting for a decent panaderia. The only one closer to Parque Central is just a reseller and mostly vends pastries.
After about an hour, the only one I have come across is closed for the day, so pushing past 11 a.m. I figure I will swing into ViaVia again for some food. It’s nice and I still think that this restaurant has the most consistently informative, helpful, and responsive employees of any restaurant in the city. The internet is decently reliable and the food is tasty. The only drawback to this is that other people know this and there is never a quiet moment there. Fast forward another few hours. We are chilling in something of an abandoned dirt lot waiting to get onto a shuttle that seems similar to most of the minibuses I have been in over the last while, but the driver pats down all of the locals as they get on, refraining from checking me or the two Czech guys getting on the bus with me. I wind up in the seat right behind the driver with a slender San Pedro Sula native to my right. She works in Copan and is going home to San Pedro Sula, SPS, for the weekend.
The ride is at least as mortally dangerous as any vehicle I have ever entered, which makes me laugh out loud when I think of the security scan we went through on the way into the bus. As if any weapon that could be smuggled on to the bus would be anywhere near as dangerous to the inhabitants of the bus as the ride itself. At numerous points during the trip we pick up additional peoples for a short jaunt to the next stop and have as many as 5 people standing up at any moment. The added bonus of today’s ride is that about 45 minutes into the ride a girl in the middle of the bus got sick from our vertiginous route through the beautiful Honduran mountains and threw up in the bus.
The ride is eye opening. Iris, the girl sitting next to me works in the hospitality industry and has applied for a Visa to go to the U.S. twice in the last two years. The application process has taken up around a total of $500 USD of her money for hotel, travel costs, and the $150 application fee per application.
I know people who have visa’s and have come to the U.S. to work and have either stayed or left thereafter. I also know people who have come to the U.S. illegally and later realized what a mistake it is and gone through the proper channels for their citizenship. I have seen the conditions in which illegal aliens live in the U.S. and it is much worse than most of the people I have seen living in Central America so far.
Iris’ next words are startling. Starting at around $5000 USD a person can pay a smuggler to try and sneak them across the border into the U.S. This fee can go to well over $10,000 per person, and while perhaps offering a bit more chance of success, are by no means a guarantee that the person will make it into the States. In fact, she tells me, most women who make the attempt, no matter how much they are paid are raped on the journey; perhaps multiple times. The money is not a guarantee one will live. It is not uncommon for the guide to simply leave his people in the middle of the desert and leave with the money. In the better of bad circumstances, the guide is paid and he simply skips town with the money. Despite all of this, the people smuggling business is alive and well.
I can’t really process this so I keep asking her how it works, who goes where, and how many people she knows who have done it, and the story just never gets good. The only part that doesn’t make me cringe is that Iris has no intention of trying to go anywhere illegally and continues to have a rewarding life in Honduras.
When we finally get to SPS, Iris is kind enough to let me use her phone to call the couchsurfing host I am staying with for a couple days and my host is gracious enough to even come to the bus station and pick me up. She has limited space, and already has two people staying over, but has graciously offered me the floor, a roof, and a hot shower.
In the interim, my host needs to head out to classes at the University as she is finishing her Masters degree in Finance this year. She finds me a café to hang out at with wifi and calls Arai to let her know where I am so we can meet up.
Arai is a friend of a friend, really, though we have been communicating over email for some time, we have only met once, briefly about 3 years prior. Despite the look of it, she is not named after the helmet manufacturer, but rather the bearer of a fantastically Uruguayan name meaning, Roots of Heaven. I recognize her from memory and recent pictures when she walks in, but apparently she doesn’t realize I am me with the several weeks of beard growth obscuring the larger part of my face. She is even nicer than I remember and we cruise around the city checking out the sights and her house which is just about the nicest thing I have seen so far.
I love it. 9:30 comes and goes, and around 9:45 we hear from my host for the night. Sometime after 10 we make it back to her place and manage to fire a Port Royal around half of her kitchen. Moments later her other two surfers arrive and we have a great night of conversation about Car prices in brazil, the availability of holiday work in Central America, and what a vegetarian can do to survive on the road. Despite the delightful company and the newness of it all, I am quickly fading and upon learning that I need to be up and out before 8 a.m. I lay down on the floor sometime after 1 and am asleep before I can even put my headphones in.
Morning arrives with the usual chickens and I have time to grab the anticipated shower before my host gives me a ride down to Parque Central to find both a cel phone and some breakfast at a café I heard about. The cel phone was pretty easy to come by, because every, and I do not underestimate, every store in the mall sell chips and/or recharges mobile plans. The mobile communication industry is literally booming in Central America. I’m surprised that there is any other job to be had.
Dave in Honduras: 011-504-9704-9638
For voicemails, regardless of the country I happen to be stationed in, dial 1-919-747-4097, this will reach my computer if I am online, and will leave me a voicemail if I am out and about.
Parque Central in San Pedro Sula is brimming with my favorite people in the whole world: Money Changers and Taxi Drivers. And inexplicably, they are all my friends. Once I wake up enough to read a map for the morning, I realize that Café Skandia is on quite the other side of the park.
If the hype is to be believed, Café Skandia makes some great pancakes, though I have to say the coffee was mediocre, and the ommelette was good, basic nutrition with no frills. There is a weak WiFi signal there that managed to power my recently resurrected blackberry enough for me to check email.
Following up on my promise to Arai, I shoot her a call so that she has my mobile number for the time being and she surprises me by coming to meet me for breakfast. She knows the café and is glad that I chose it for food. A strange phenomenon starts up that is to follow me for some time. I start getting text messages… in Spanish… about Tiger Woods and Football scores. Arai tells me that I don’t get charged for incoming text messages, so I should just ignore them and maybe they will stop eventually. Arai has a loose work schedule for the morning, so we roll out to go check out the local market and I can tell you, if you have seen one Central American Mercado, you can certainly give this one a pass. Lackluster is a good description.
Nearly every parking lot in the city has a man in an orange reflective vest just standing around. When you get in your car and try to leave, he comes up to your window and beings whistling and waving at you. Apparently, standing around a parking lot with shiny clothes consists of a job in Honduras, because as a driver, you are required to give this man money before you can drive away.
All morning long, Arai and I have been practicing one another’s languages. I know that I need a great deal more practice than she does, but since she is much better at speaking English than I am at Spanish, we will speak English for long periods of time. I think this is also largely due to her discomfort at hearing me butcher her language so badly.
Tonight, the plan is to make a traditional dinner at Arai’s house and go sing karaoke. As my part of the dinner, I have offered to make guacamole. In order for dinner to succeed, we’ll need to go to the grocery store, since I don’t make a habit of carrying avocados around with me.
In leaving the grocery store, I realize something interesting. Thus far in Honduras, being here for a few days, I have never seen a centavo, a coin. Every transaction I have done has been for whole dollar amounts. This means that either everyone I have exchanged goods or services with has done an amazing job of tailoring their prices and taxes to precise dollar amounts, or the prices are largely imagined up on the spot depending on how much it looks like the customer should pay. I’m sure the truth is a little of both.
Life is good with food in hand, but food in belly goes a long way too. That being said, we head back to Arai’s house to deposit groceries and head out for some Mexican food with her roommate Sandra. I’m surprised at the big city prevalence of chain restaraunts and horrifying drivers, but perhaps only because this is the largest city I have been in for more than 30 minutes in some weeks. The presence of a large city not crippled by pollution and crime is a difficult concept to wrap my head around down here.
The days passes quickly and Arai bails out to go to an appointment in the city so I get to chill out at a couple of coffee shops with WiFi. I’m really surprised at the amount of wireless available in the city, and NOT present in people’s homes. It’s a trip from any residential area to any free wifi area, so it’s somewhat of a hike. If you are planning to stay in San Pedro Sula, plan accordingly. Get a place near downtown or ask your host if there is internet available. Tigo sells a cool USB unlimited cellular internet card, much like the Verizon aircard, for $16 a month; it’s slow, and moderately unreliable, but it’s progress.
I get a phone call from my couchsurfing host that she has to leave for Costa Rica at 5 a.m. in the morning, so I will have to be up and out in a strange city before then. Not really an appealing idea. So I ask Arai to drop me off at a hotel that I spoke with a couple of days prior. Turns out, she and Sandra have a guest quarters behind the house that is just being used for storage, and Arai invites me to come stay there instead. Arai even breaks out the cleaners and we go to work on the place. It is better than half of the hotels I have stayed at when we are done.
I am consistently failing at writing what I want to get done. At least it is consistent, eh? I haven’t nearly caught up with my writing when Arai calls me on my new Honduran phone and tells me she is going to swing by and pick me up. This means we get to go to her dance classes; hip hop and Arabic.
I amuse myself by making faces at the little kids running around and doing a bit of writing before the battery on my laptop dies, and finally we roll out to the house and commence the greatness that will become dinner.
Interesting fact about avocados in Honduras… there are a version of avocados called ahuacates hondurenias that really look nothing like avocados as I know them and are somewhat more duro, or hard, on the inside. If you can get them ripe enough, though, they make rocking guacamole. Combine red onions, lime juice, salt, pepper, garlic, and cranberries if you can find them, and you have some life changing guacamole on your hands.
Dinner is a combined effort of the two roommates and is a total success. Typical Honduran food with eggs, meat, beans, sauces, etc. Sandra can’t stop eating the guacamole. The secret to Honduran food appears to be the sauces. They are varied and include combinations that I have not ever considered before. You really have to see it to believe it.
My couchsurfing host was going to meet up with us for lunch and again for dinner, but she is otherwise busy. After dinner we have an appointment with a karaoke bar that should prove interesting.
Karaoke is something that seems to change with each culture, but retains the same horrible sound system. In America, it is largely boisterous, feel-good songs that get sung. In Japan, it is mostly sad songs about lost love. In Central America, it seems to be loud overly romantic ballads. A lot of heart in Honduras.
For no reason at all, the karaoke is interrupted at around 11 and music videos are played while people get up and dance. I do my best to eke out some salsa, merenge, and reggaeton dancing, with Jiemmy, but I’m a rather poor showing next to some of the guys up there. I rapidly retire my dancing shoes to protect Arai from the vultures circling our table.
We all requested a number of songs, and none of them have come up by 1:30 in the morning and everyone is flagging. Time to get some sleep.
The guest quarters were a great temperature all night long, the bed was relatively comfortable, and a cold shower feels good. Arai has a dentist appointment at 8:30, then 10, then 9:15, then finally it is rescheduled for Wednesday. This means we have the whole day to go adventuring. It also means that I won’t get any writing done today. The breakfast Arai makes of ommelettes and fried platanos is the best one I have eaten on the whole trip. Add in the guacamole leftover from last night, and it is an Oscar winner.
One hears of pirated DVDs all over Asia. I have never heard of pirated DVDs in Central America, but I tell you now, this is a booming business. I have seen people selling them all over the streets; in gas stations, bus stops, and mercados. When we are getting ice cream, I manage to get this great picture of the security guard and the guy breaking the law sitting hanging out and having a chat with one another. Note: if you are shy of guns, Central America may not be for you. There are guys with shotguns and assault rifles all over the place.
Not that I would endorse breaking the law or purchasing illegal goods; far from it. So you can be assured that I would never buy pirated DVDs. Not even for the purpose of learning Spanish. Never.
Throughout the day, Arai tells me stories of the perils of Honduras. Police are not something to feel secure about. Most of the time, one need fear the police more than the criminals. She has been robbed at gunpoint, nearly been kidnapped and falsely arrested; but she says these things are just part of life here. She says something else too. “The more good you are, the more good you see.”
This simple sentiment is her justification for being a good person. She believes that because she is good to others that truly bad things will not happen to her. Sound reasoning I think.
This was not the only piece of life changing greatness to come from Arai. She actually invented an entirely new number. Somehow, she has managed to see through the roots of Arabic and mayan mathematics to a number no one has ever imagined… Fixteen. Yes, you heard it. I believe it lies somewhere between 10 and 20, though I am not exactly sure where. I’ll let you know as soon as I find out for sure.
Travesty. Travesti. The first word means a mockery or a sham; false pretense. The second word means there is a name for the man dressed up as a woman with his bare ass showing standing on the street corner as we drive back to Arias house around 9:30. I wish I had been fast enough to take a picture, but then again, you probably do not want this mental image.
There is some truly fantastic food to be had at great prices all over San Pedro Sula, but if you don’t live here, you won’t be able to find it. Most of the accessible restaurants are chains or rather expensive. Luckily I have my own guide who is continually serving up new and wonderful places to eat. Dinner tonight is a large old house that has filled the courtyard with plastic lawn furniture and they crank out fantastic Honduran food. There is no menu, you simply say wether you want beef or chicken and what you would like to drink, then it is brought to you along with a wild array of sauces, picantes, and sides. This is another typical Honduran dish called, Parrilladas. Between this and baleadas I can see why some people here pack on the weight.
By the time Arai and I get back to the house, we are good for little more than laying around on the couches in the living room and mumbling. I head off to sleep with the two geckos that have taken up residence in the guest quarters.
Arai and I roll out around 8:30 the following morning after another fantastic breakfast and after some downtime due to a mysteriously cancelled bus, I get rolling out to La Ceiba.
I firmly believe that if all I get from this trip is bug bites and the friendship of one person like Arai, then every second, every dollar, and every mile will have been worth it.
Yay chickens. I wonder why I was concerned with bringing an alarm clock when I am awakened every morning at godless hours by pollo locos.
I am starting to think that Central America is actually (I had to go back and rewrite that in English cuz I started in Spanish) ruled by a secret army of chickens. They dominate the transport industry with their chicken busses, they control the breakfast market with their eggs, and are second only to corn or perhaps rice in their lunch and dinner proliferation. Not to mention they actively control the sleep cycles of all the humans. This could be a real crisis.
No shower today, since I left my sandals in Antigua and haven’t managed to purchase more, despite wandering the streets for quite some time last night. FYI: I love pupusas. Today is a leisurely morning. Pack the bag, pick up the stuff. Another lovely surprise is that somehow all my Velcro that I use to tie up cords and things has disappeared from the room. I wonder if grandmother was helping me out by cleaning and threw them all out. Nice.
Halfway through packing, grandmother brings me a cup of coffee, which is especially cool because the cup is decidedly cleaner than it was yesterday. I tell her I am rolling out and she tells me a whole bunch of things I don’t actually understand.
I make mention that the dog bite wasn’t the highlight of my week to grandmother and grandfather and they regale me with a wonderful story that, if I understood properly, goes something like this. Little girl walks down the street. She is wearing jeans and passes in front of their house. Awesome dog runs out the door and sinks all his teeth into her calf. Dog needs to be beaten and forcibly removed from her leg by grown man from across the street, but not before it has caused massive injury to the girls calf and shredded the jeans. The End.
Lovely story. I stop to take a few pictures of the chickens and am assaulted by the rooster; should have seen that one coming. It’s time to roll out, so we all say our goodbyes and I walk into town to get directions to the bus station from the only English speaking person I know how to find; Melissa from the internet café.
The walk feels good. It’s probably only about a kilometer, but the weight of the pack makes the work feel sincere; honest. Melissa really goes above and beyond by helping me to find a supercheap ($2.50) pair of sandals, and then hailing a tuktuk for me to take to the bus station.
Once I arrive, it’s time to play Musical Busses!!! I need to get to the city Angiatu. There is a conveniently marked bus labeled “Angiatu” near the rear of the dirt bus complex. In speaking to the bus driver, I learn that this is not the bus to Angiatu as the gigantic sign would lead me to believe, but that the bus is elsewhere. The next 20 minutes consists of me bouncing from bus to bus in some heinous recreation of a pinball game getting stranger and more varied answers with each bus. Half of this time I am accompanied by the only ambulatory person I have ever seen who is actually more drunk before noon than Jack Sparrow was. He makes the experience more flavorful.
Finally, I walk up to what appears to be the El Salvadoran equivalent of a supermarket that has been placed inside the bus terminal and just start asking people if they are going where I need to go. This works VERY well, and within moments I add myself to a large pile of children and women in varying stages of gestation who are all bound in the same direction I am. A gentleman in a clean black polo materializes next to me and says a few phrases to me in English. “Hello.” “How are you?” “It is warm today.” “I have a car.” “Have a good day.”
I think he simply said every word he knew in English and then shook my hand and walked away. On a side note, women over 300 pounds should wear bras; No Exceptions. Here comes the bus.
The fun part about a chicken bus is that the emergency exit is not just for emergencies anymore! You get to climb in or out of it whenever you want! The bus fills up from both sides like a pair of Chinese fingercuffs. Promptly on the tail of the passengers come the vendors. Ice cream, vegetables, all manner of snack foods and drinks come through the bus and are purchased with surprising frequency. After a few minutes we are on the way. I ask how many stops there are between the terminal and Angiatu. The lady in front of me says there are none. Apparently I asked the wrong question. Our bus stops about 50 times between Metapan and Angiatu.
The Guatemalan border crossing is confusing to them because I just left two days before. Noone can figure out why I would want to come back so soon. Apparently they have never been to El Salvador. I catch a couple more shuttles for a total of about 50Q to get from one border to the next. One guy even lets me pay in American quarters, which blew my mind. I got a glimpse of just how loose the intercity busses run when we pulled up at Vado Hondo to switch shuttles to take me to the border of Honduras and the other shuttle was already several hundred yards down the road and leaving. Through a process of laying on the horn, screaming, and madly waving arms in the air my shuttle drivers were able to communicate to the rapidly disappearing bus that they needed to stop and wait for me. It all worked out in the end and I made it across the border to Honduras with minimal issue.
One thing to note, when crossing out of Guatemala to El Salvador it is free (unless you are stupid), but when crossing from Guatemala into Honduras it will cost you $2 US to leave Guatemala and $3 US to enter Honduras. There was no logical or discernible explanation given to me despite repeated questioning for why You must pay to leave Guatemala at one point and not another. There was also no signage indicating that one needed to pay. Again, I must assume this is an agreement between the border officials and the tour bus companies who filter massive amounts of turistas through the border there to go to Copan.
The first guy across the border offers me a taxi ride which I promptly turn down. The next guy was a wildly lazy eye and a shuttle he wants me to ride in for 20 Limpiras, but it won’t leave for at least 15 minutes. I decide I’d rather hitchhike and walk back up to the road and thumb down a car. It turns out to be the taxi driver and he will take me to Copan for 20L. At least I don’t have to hang around the border any longer. It’s a beautiful drive and I use the time to relax and review my next steps.
Procure a place to sleep.
Find internet and figure out what Schwab Banks problem is.
Get food.
Hopefully I can combine these last two. I chose a hotel to check out first from my book a while ago. Turns out they have one room left and it’s 150L a night. I get her to drop to 130L, about 7 dollars, and book it.
Luckily there is a place next door called Casa de Todo which is not a lie. They have internet, Laundry Service, Food, coffee, alcohol, books, souvenirs, and a cat. Platos tipical go a long way after being on a bus for most of the day.
Fed and watered, I go out to wander the city. The layout is really quite similar to Antigua; central park surrounded by a grid of streets. I spend a couple hours just wandering in and out of shops getting a coffee or trying one of the national cervezas and striking up a conversation with anyone there.
Things are progressing well, and I’m walking back through Parque Central to go grab my laptop and do some writing when I hear, “Genki desu ka?” come from behind me. Given the number of comparisons between C.A. and Japan that I have thrown out there lately, this should not really be that surprising, but it stops me dead in my tracks.
Turning around I see a rather unassuming Honduran man standing on a corner all by himself. He repeats,”Genki desu ka?”
I reply in the affirmative and greasing the wheels of the Japanese section of my brain, I rattle off a few more sentences at him. The lost look appears on his face that tells me we have passed the threshold of his Japanese knowledge.
Manuel, a caballero tour guide, tells me that there is a surprising number of Japanese turistas that come through Copan. He has managed to pick up a few phrases to pick up tourist business and even speaks English serviceably.
We sit and jabber for a while in the square with the barrage of startled and confused humanity flowing around us in the Honduran night. It’s fun to think about what the others wandering around us must think hearing our voices bounce in and out of several different languages without warning. Finally, Manuel gives me his phone number, so I’ll pass it on to you in case you are even in Copan and need a hand.
Manuel: 011-504-9823-3144
The rest of the night is passed at a wine and coffee bar with a pair of Japanese turistas enjoying a glass of Chilean red and trying to write with little success.
Morning in Honduras is somewhat of a novelty. For starters there are NO ROOSTERS screaming at me to get out of bed. I’m thrilled to have a shower waiting for me , so I make a small effort of getting my act together and getting into the shower. The “hot water” that is available in some of the hotels here in C.A. is actually an electric showerhead that, when wired improperly or hastily, can shock a person while they are trying to get clean. Luckily, Hotel Los Gemenos does not have that problem and I am able to get a decent warm shower by finding the delicate balance where the shower is heated and the water pressure is still strong enough to get me clean.
Outside of Copan there is a significant amount of rainforest. Over said rainforest, there are some gigantic steel cables that are used as ziplines. You won’t find this in any guide books, and you won’t see it advertised in town. You have to know about it and ask one of the locals how to get there. If you ask for a zipline, you will get a blank look. You will have to ask for “Canopy” and any local will pick up the phone and call Canopy Tours and have them come pick you up wherever you are and take you up to ride about 15 different ziplines that span a few kilometers. I learned about this from a family at dinner last night and it was confirmed by Manuel.
After Copan Ruins, this is my next destination; but first to go see another dead city. The Ruins are roughly a kilometer outside of the city. It’s a nice walk and happily I am not assaulted by the taxi and tuktuk drivers on the way, making it that much more pleasant.
Looking at the map, the city is compact, especially in comparison to Tikal which stretched over many kilometers. What in Tikal would have been a 5-30 minute walk from structure to structure was as simple as turning around here in Copan. The reality of Copan is quite different from the map. The buildings are beautifully crafted. Nearly every building is covered with ornate carvings and crafts. Entire gigantic staircases ornately carved telling the history of the Mayans in this valley and the story of creation. From time to time I hook up with a tour and listen to the guide filling in the people on what’s what. I even roll with a Japanese and Spanish speaking tour at different points, though I understand little of the Japanese with my brain primarily in Spanish mode. It’s interesting to me that the Mayans were making pokemon sculptures and emoticons a thousand or so years before anyone else. 🙂
Also, note that the combination Tiger/penis/flamethrower seems to be a recurring decorative tough.
The fun part of the morning comes in the form of a strange North American. He walks around the temple performing pseudo-yoga and wearing what appears to be a hotel towel as a headband while doing a Mister Miagi impression over his expansive gut.
After spending most of the morning in the ruins, I’m starting to get a little hungry and decide it is time to head back in to town. I’d like to find another panaderia in town to get some rolls for traveling food.
Café Viavia is in every guidebook I have seen. It’s a short walk from Parque Central west, and is popular for good reason. Wireless internet, good food, large portions, and a very cool environment. The bartender speaks a very small amount of English, so We chat for a moment and I order something called a baleada. This is basically a quesadilla about twice the size of any you have ever seen, filled with all manner of meat and spice and awesome. By the time I am done with it, I’m considering just laying down and going to sleep. Two things stop me from doing so. A pair of hungry looking dogs sitting and staring at me from a few feet away who I know are fully capable of eating my face, should I put it in range. And the thought of zipline greatness over the rainforest. I swing by the local bodega that I have been buying water at for the last couple days and ask her about the canopy tours. She says she knows the guy and picks up the phone to call him. Informing me that he’ll be right over and that I should wait, she goes back to work. This whole scenario sounds awfully familiar to Antigua, so after waiting for about 5 minutes, I get bored and walk off to Parque Central to find my own ride there.
Noone driving a tuktuk speaks English; this is a fact you must realize and deal with if you are traveling. If they WERE bilingual, they would be working a better paying job. My new tuktuk driver makes pleasant conversation over the bone rattling ride through the cobblestone streets of downtown. I don’t bother to reply for fear of biting my tongue off on accident.
In typical Central American form, the Canopy guide is asleep when we arrive. He seems a likeable enough fellow after waking up, though, and I would surprised if he were even 20 years of age. We do a brief introduction, then he starts giving me a TSA-familiar brushing of the inside of my legs while he is hooking up my harness. Now that he has felt my member and we are properly acquainted, he gives me a brief demonstration of how to hook up to the line and where to place my hands, which when you look at the following video, you’ll see that I completely disregard.
The view from the top is everything that we have been promised it would be. Wild and unspoilt, the forest is inspiring, even at speeds that seem properly unsafe. I must say, if you ever get the chance to do something similar, do not let it pass you by. If given the chance to go upside down or ‘Superman’ style, do it… and try not to puke.
Garrett is the other gentleman on the ziplide ride with me. He is an English teacher from the Virgin Islands with a love for travel and an extremely well endowed girlfriend. I imagine that this works in his favor while his students are hitting on him, as seems to be commonplace. Over the course of the tour, we discover that he and I are staying at the same hotel and traveling to the same city tomorrow. We pay the kingly sum of $35 each plus tip and head out for happy hour at Twisted Tanya’s.
Tanya’s is also in every guide book you will find. I’m not sure why, other than the prolific use of garlic in their cooking which makes my mouth water so much I’m going to look like I just wet myself from the slobber. The food I can’t speak for, not having eaten here, but the drinks are mildly weak and the waitress, Victoria (NOT Vicki as I am informed), has a left eye that is decidedly lower on her face than her right. Britons being as they are, a somewhat challenged gene pool at times, I have to assume this isn’t actually a setback in her country. Though, perhaps that is the reason that she came to Central America.
Garrett informs me that rather than pay 200L for dinner at Tanya’s there is a place down the road that serves great tacos for next to nothing. Little did I know that “down the road” also meant “IN the road.” Thus far I have been quite lucky. I have brushed my teeth with the water, I have had drinks with local ice, and I have eaten fresh vegetables and fruit from time to time. Having a go at some grilled meat tacos doesn’t seem like too much of a stretch.
Perhaps this was ill advised.
After chowing down on some rather bland tacos to fill my stomach up in the lobby of the Hotel Los Gemenos, Garrett and I kick back and chat for a little while until a slender dark haired Briton comes into the hotel and asks for a room. The hotel owner quotes the standard rate of 150L a night and the girls is obviously too tired to do anything but nod. Catching her attention, I tell her quietly in English that she can easily get 20L taken off the price just by asking. She thanks me, though I have no idea if she did, since I bid Garrett good night and wander off to find a wireless signal.
After a few minutes on the web, I start to feel terrible. By the time I get back to the hotel, I am having chills, sweats, and my stomach is doing backflips. As one can rightly assume from this knowledge, I had a long night.
Hallucinations can be troubling, especially when they are so close to real life. Between ill fated visits to the restroom, I imagine all manner of weird and awful things. Just about the only good part of the whole night is when I dreamt I was driving my truck. What a distant memory driving a vehicle is after just a few short weeks.
The morning light finally filters in and I make a show of getting dressed. Today is the first day I have worn pants, because it is completely overcast and there is a light rain coming down. Casasolas sells relatively cheap $6 tickets to San Pedro Sula, so that is my first stop for the day before heading out to find something to put back in my stomach and hope it won’t come right back out again.
Welchez gourmet coffee house has become my base camp for the last few days. They serve something for every meal, and have lovely coffee drinks of just about any kind and a real espresso machine! You can choose from a two level courtyard, open air seats, a balcony, or the main dining area. The staff is helpful, though none of them speak English, and the bread they serve is among the best I have tasted. Try the Mocha.
Breakfast comes in the form of a very basic ommelette and their lovely bread with some black coffee. Despite repeated waves of nausea, it all seems to have stayed down and I need to head back to the hotel and pack my bag before killing a couple hours. Checkout time is 10:30.
