Central America 2007

an exercise for yáll at home

laurahooker — Sat, 24 Nov 2007 08:36:00 GMT

So,

in the event that you are wondering how I am getting to all of the fabulous places that I visit: sadly darlings its not all private jets and yachts for little Laura down in central america. In realitly it is mostly "shuttles"-code for some dude´s soccer-mom mini van with the decal of some badly misspelled english travel agency on the side. the worst is whne they pack those things full of fat gringos and you are so fucking hungover you think think you might just die and your traveling companions wont stop prattling on about "blumpkins" (if you dont know what that is IM not gonna be the one to tell you...google it)..But anyway, sometimes I travel by "taxi"-code for a mid eighties sedan with (Im not exaturating here)a black SPRAY PAINTED rear window tint job. It doesnt really tint rear visability so much as block it entirely. very useful for illegal border runs (not too difficult as at times border croosing guards are busy with other important official business like, say, poking at things in the dirt with a stick (true story, ask Kate).. Other times a "taxi" can be fourten year olds pickup truck and you get to stand up in the back and hold on to these metal bars sort of chariot style..This one is my second favorite..second only to: (and here is the part where reader participation comes into play) CHICKEN BUSES. If you want to get a feel for what a chicken bus is like I implore you to participate in the following exercise:

1. Remember back to grade school when you had to ride the school bus everyday,now think about how they were so uncomfortable that a fiftenn minute ride seemed like hours-try about four to seven hours. The typical chcicken bus is an old school bus painted up all perdy (usually some combo of bright red blue and green, maybe a little orange for good measure. usually the paint job includes some form of inspirational spiritual message on the front of the bus, such as "god is my warrior" or "I screwed jehovah and all I got was this crappy school bus" ..okay I made up the last one, but you get the idea). inside the sc hool bus is pretty much the same as it was decades ago (same broken seats) except for the ginormous stolen set of pioneer speakers in the front and back of the bus (oh, I forgot to mention the subwoofer-Dios help you if you get stuck sitting on THAT seat, your ass will get blown out)

2. Now go get something that weighs roughly fourty pounds and put it on your lap (for the sake of the exercise we will call this my backpack).

3. Find two grown men and ask them to also sit sort of on your lap (yeah they will fit three grown men into one school bus seat designed to fit for two children)

4. Next play the song " a dios le pido" by Juanes as loud as your stereo will allow..now play it again seven times in a row.

5. (optional) pay some drunk dude a dollar or somthing to sit really close to you and stare at you for an hour or two (oh and make sure his breath smells AWESOME like rotten avocados)

if you have followed my instructions carefuly and have even the slightest bit of an imagination you now have a better idea of my favorite mode of transportaion in central america..seriously though, I kid, but I live riding the chicken buses. The experience is so raw and funny. The last one I rode was at night-on our way to antigua...the dude collecting the fare made us pay extra for our bags (which we had to hold on our laps casue they wouldnt put them on top of the bus, so they could charge us for them of course, but no biggie). When we got to antigua instead of just letting us out with the rest of the locals the stopped the bus opened the back door and basically threw us out the back of the bus (almost leaving Kate behind).then they sped away leaving us in what seemed to be the midle of nowhere. OF COURSE, at that moment a souped up camero full of gangster types pulled up and laughed at us. At this point though I was also laughing hysterically at he absurdidty of the situation..In the end some guy in a pickup rode us into town where we got directions for our lodgings, and the rest is history...

more later on the happenings since Roatan...

If Captain Van reads this I am screwed

laurahooker — Sat, 10 Nov 2007 09:46:00 GMT

day after my birthday, and so much has happened since I last blogged...

first, they are called the bay islands not the key islands.yes Im a bit of a dumbass.

next, day of the dead was very interesting.above ground graves with families alternating between crying and making out over them..weird. got lost with a friend in the back streets trying to return to our super gross hotel...apparently I sat down at one point and decided it would be best for us to just sleep in the street until our other companions found us in the morning...or so im told. fortunetly the voice of reason spoke, and it was off to the bay islands the next day...a journey that would take FOUR very long days of chicken bus rides through several countries and many unexpected towns.

we didnt realize that it would take us so long to get there by land, but we kept just missing the last bus out of each town! it ended up to be a really fun few days...we are trashing hostels and hotels all over central america...just kiding...kind of.Turns out that its a bad idea to try to do a chin up from the doorway of a hotel in chiquimula (spelling?), guatemala.Who knew. (by the way that one was all Kate)

several impromto pool parties and and feasts later, (oh yeah and we also hit the copan mayan ruins.amazing except for the pouring down rain and the loss of one very emotionally important walking stick by one of our traveling companions)we arrived on the bay island of Roatan in honduras. Guess we should have checked the weather forcast because the day we arrived was the beginning of the rainy season.What this means: Puke Fest 2007 on our TWO HOUR boat ride to the island from the mainland. ever watched 150 people puke for the entire duration of the movie "along came Polly" (subtitled in spanish of course)? well i did. it was amazing, and I have never been so motion sick.Kate was green.

Got to the island and it continued to pour, but weve been hear a few days and had some sunshine. Yesterday was my birthday and it was prety great. Tried to scuba dive but it just didnt take (turns out i CANNOT handle breathing through a mouthpeice, but at least I tried.) instead I rented a scooter for the day and drove myself around the island. it was beautiful and super fun until I acccidently took a turn weird and crashed into a ditch.full of raw sewage. it was horrible and hilarious all at the same time. im fine except for the bruised shoulder and the broken side mirror.

Later that night: after a cold shower that sort of washed off the sewage, Kate and our new friends and I enjoyed a yummy seafood dinner and then returned to our cool island hostel where Kate suprised me with a birthday cake! totally unexcpected. apparently she had to improvise on the cake pan thing, but shes known for her baked goods. later that everning we met some locals and one of them replaced my scooter mirror. thank god because the place where I rented it from (captain vans)would have been totally pissed and charged me an arm and a leg for it.literally (just kidding mom, and it should be noted that everything was totally within the realms of legality when I was driving it-also for mom, but true)

all in all a great week. We are trying to decide wether to go to Nicargua after this, or back up to Guatemala. that is if I dont get dengue fever from all of the mopsquitos feasting on me as I write this...

Day 8 (?)

laurahooker — Fri, 2 Nov 2007 06:06:00 GMT

so, I have reached Lake atitlan and it´s probably one of the most beautiful place i have ever been. Huge lake in the middle of volcanos and mountians..incredible.. Staying at this cool little hostel "la iguana Perdida", 5 dollars a night and amzing food made by these mayam women. Hiked an active volcano, took boat trips to and from little vilages around the lake, brushed my teeth with the water, stayed in the nastieest hotel room I have ever seen . One of my new traveling companions (this psycho Canadian we met at the ¨jungle Party¨ hostel (neither Jungle nor party) used the new testament to wipe his ass because there is no toilet paper in public bathrooms..good stuff. This is the same guy who peed on molten lava therby sending a spray of urine and hot magma on the rest of the tour group..

played Baby Boomer trivial pursuit the other night and it turns out I know way more about Johnny carsen and Barbara wlaters than anyone generation x-er should.

Going to go to a Day Of The Dead celebration in Panajachel tonight and then on to Copan ruins and Tikal. Hope to be on the KEy Islands for my B-day On the 8th ..

Started shaving my armpits, but compromised by not doing laundry.

Very funny about the overpacking Steph! my Pack weighs about 50 lbsd all together and I´m going to throw most of it out soon! who am I kidding, i´m gonna add to it soon!

I am in love with this place

day 3, decided to stop shaving my armpits...

laurahooker — Sat, 27 Oct 2007 10:06:00 GMT

Okay, so day two completed . It turns out that I have free internet access at our new hostel, so I´m gonna blog as much as possible for the next few days. Don´t know what kind of access we will have once we leave antigua on sunday. yesterday turned out ot be a great day overall. made a few great connections with other gringos living here. Found out about some volunteer projects going on around and in antugua, but due to the the fact that the cost of living is the highest in antigua (almost as high as columbus for food etc..) probably won´t volunteer here...we walked about a half mile with all of our gear today to change hostels and I have decided that I want to get rid of a lot of my stuff. I´m gonna give it a month or so though until I make that decision. Along the same lines I was showereing this morining and decied that Im gonna try to cut out as much as can stand in the way of hygeine etc. (hence the title of the blog...mostly a joke, but you never know)...

We did alot of exploring today . Saw these huge amazing ruins of an old monestary. Unfortunetly antigua had many really large earthquakes that lasted until mid seventies or something, so much of the original beauty of the buildings is gone...

Arrived at the "jungle party" hostel today. It´s this really cool looking hostel geared towards, you guessed it, middle class travelers in their twenties. Ive been here about twenty minutes, and have decided that they can be an obnoxious breed (realize the hypocrisy of this statement, but whatever). It´s the quiet season now so its more like "the day after the junge party", you know subdued with the toilets all plugged up from the previous evenings excursions...

missing some people right now :(, but i´m overall happy...

the ego has landed...

laurahooker — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 05:13:00 GMT

Well babies, I´m here in Guatemala in the amazingly beautiful colonial town of Antigua. Its hard to describe how truly gorgeous this place is. Huge stone churches, cobblestone streets, and mountains surrounding as far as the eye can see (ethereal mist not sold seperatly). I would love to include some pictures, but I didn´t check the size of memory stick I bought and I got greedy and got the 2gb one-too big for my camera, so now I only got 50 pictures! Oh well, i will get that sorted out soon!

About the trip here: The wartchword for the day is EXHAUSTION! I stayed up all night packing because i hate to procrastinate, and so I got like an hour of sleep. Was DYING the next day (Kate was in a similar way). Fell asleep all over the miami airport and once while sitting on a toilet. Fortunety Kate was hopped up on enough caffeine to power a defibulator so we made it to all of our stops on time! arrived at Gutemal airport kinda nervous but Itwas practically empty and we hade no trouble getting a shuttle out of the city to antigua (only ten dollars for a trip of an hour and a half!) I was complelty entralled wiht Guatemala city, this bustling metroplois that looks like how I think miami should. Kate and I are discussing returning when our espanol is improved. About that: i'm actually doing pretty well comunicating wiht people all in spanish! (Yes, 35 thousand dollars of college debt put to use!) we arrived in antigua after dark so just basically got to check into the hostel and catch some much needed sleep. The hostel is clean and quaint,except that poor Kate chose the rickety top bunkbed with a matress about as thick as the ones the have in jail...today we awoke to sunlight,hot showers and a really yummy breakfast included. Pancakes with bananas and eggs with black beans. Coffee, thank God.

At an internet cafe now but gotta go an explore some more. Alread haggled on a dress for my neice, and heard the song INFORMER from a passing car at the bank...so far so great... more tomorrow or the next day.

Thanks for the comments...

24hrs and counting...

laurahooker — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 16:00:00 GMT

so, it's the day before Kate and I fly out of columbus (via skybus) and take a five hour (!) layover in miami before heading down to guatemala city. I 'm very excited/nervous/sick with ad cold and exhausted fomr goign out to much partying with my amazing and wonderful friends and family. A few teary and/or bittersweet goodbyes in the last week/24 hrs, but I'm feeling okay. I keep telling myself that I really wanted to do this, so I must accept all of the emotional stuff that goes along with it. I'm partially writing right now to avoid the inevitable packing that needs to ensue, but Kate's hemming a pair of pants in the next room, and I can practically hear her disapproval at my lack of motivation through the hum of the sewing machine..damn this head cold! flight leaves at 7 am....