Messing about in boats

Despite 'Wind in the Willows' being a childhood favourite of C's, we have to disagree with Ratty about the pleasures of boats.

Our nautical nonsense began with a visit to the Panama Canal.  This seems like the obvious place to go in Panama and we searched for other things in Panama City to see and visit, but basically it's all about the canal.  There's an exhibition centre and museum at one of the three locks.  We saw a cruise-ship coming through, which was pretty impressive, and some parts of the museum had interesting facts and scale models of crazy, steam-punk, Victorian machinery.  However, the overall experience is actually kind of ridiculous, turning one of the world's greatest engineering projects into a low-grade local aquarium level of entertainment.  There were several pointless exhibitions about whales, pictures of wildlife, and a lack of any actual, in-depth history of the Franco-American project and war against Colombia etc (the museum made it out that Panama woke up one day, decided to become independent and the U.S. just happened to show up around the same time with a canal plan).  What there WAS was a 3D movie.  It used all the power of 3D to make you really believe you were at the Panama Canal.  Which of course we were, but you can never be sure until you've seen it in 3D film with lots of needless pointing and birds flying into the audience.  It should be said that we actually enjoyed this experience greatly.  How could we not?  We were next to one of the most incredible feats of engineering ever known, a testament to the genius and hubris of the Industrial Revolution.  But it wouldn't be the pinnacle of Western civilisation without a 3D movie, the lamest and most kitsch invention since nodding dogs.  The juxtaposition of the two couldn't be a funnier microcosm of our culture.

Still giggling, the next day we struck out for Portobelo, which we had been told was the best place to start finding boats from Panama to Colombia.  The port did not seem to exist and the local gringo hostel advertising itself as "experts" on the subjects of boats and local captains just wanted to sell you a $500 island vacation/sailboat cruise.  We camped out for a couple of nights, trying to gather information and exploring the town, which had lots of pretty colonial/pirate era forts, which are now the haunts of vultures.

Also, as you can see, we had our own tour guide.  A small dog with ridiculous ears appeared during our first day and proceeded to hang out with us until we left.  She never begged for food, just curled up near us, slept outside our tent, followed us to the shop and back and generally made sure we were all in order.  She is probably recounting to fellow street-dogs about how she had to look after some helpless backpackers for a few days.

When we moved up the coast to Miramar, as we had heard that more boats left from there for San Blas, we wished we still had someone as organised as her.  Our first real piece of bad luck was that the seas were too high for anyone to go anywhere for three days.  We amused ourselves swimming in the Caribbean, eating very tasty seafood in the little restaurant we were camping outside and by the second day finding a couple of other confused tourists.  Boats were supposed to leave on Tuesday, but for one reason or another did not.  By Wednesday we had multiplied to a crew of nine and were able to get a small launcha boat to El Porvenir.  We got completely drenched on this journey of about two hours and one of our companions spent the entire time cackling maniacally behind us.  El Porvenir is the capital of the Guna Yala autonomous region, which covers a stretch of the Caribbean coast and many small islands.

We caught another short, much drier, boat to Carti, a main port in the area.  Our tempers were a little strained here to discover there is actually a road from Panama City direct to Carti which two people we met there had successfully hitch-hiked.  We would recommend this route to anyone else trying to make it to Colombia, as even though in Carti things are still very ad-hoc, there are a lot more boats.  While cooling our heels for another day we went swimming in the beautiful, clear blue waters.  A cargo boat would have been willing to take us down the coast for $100 each though this would have taken five days.  In the end a gang of eleven of us got another speedboat to Puerto Obaldia, where we could get stamped out of Panama and he would wait for us to take us to Carpurgana in Colombia.  Of course, the migration office in Puerto Obaldia had closed at 5pm sharp (we arrived at about half past) and there was one more night to wait there.  The next day, we only traveled the half an hour to Carpurgana as rough seas meant there were no boats for the final leg of our journey until the next morning, Saturday.  Because there was neither Internet, Western Union, nor ATMs at many of these places, we were running short of immediate funds, not to mention desperately needing a shower.  Finally we crossed the bay and made it to Turbo, not sorry to see the back of the Caribbean and seas in general for a while.

We had a Couchsurf arranged in Medellin, but the aforementioned financial faff delayed us getting a bus until six in the evening for what was supposed to be an eight hour journey.  It turned into a twelve hour one due to delays, and meanwhile the brutal air-conditioning had us shivering (bonus luxury we do not think).  We rocked up in Medellin this morning and seem to have fallen on our feet as our host is lovely.  We've been discovering some of the many Colombian baked goods, showering, sleeping and generally starting to feel a bit more human.  Tonight we also enjoyed a Colombian movie, Contracorriente, which we'd heartily recommend if anyone feels like a very beautiful film about love, responsibility, and Doing the Right Thing.

Thus restored, we've remembered to be excited that we are on a whole new continent and shall begin exploring tomorrow.

(Not so) Rapid Transit

We rented bicycles and set off to see where we could go and maybe find a quiet part of the lake.  Full of energy, the wind in our hair, J's bike broke after 5 mins of cycling.  We went back and swapped it for another bike.  We set off again, less cocky this time, but all was well and we cycled for a few hours around the island unable to see the volcano for the clouds or to find a route to the enormous lake that surrounded us.

After 45m of descent over a reproductive-ability damaging excuse for a road, we found a quiet strip of sand with a few little houses and numerous locals bathing and playing in the lake.  The water was as warm as the Pacific had been and we splashed and scrubbed and generally had a good time.  Of course by the time we cycled the twelve odd kilometres back we were sweaty again, but at least it was fresh sweat.  Since we've been in the tent lately we've been waking with the light at about 6am and often going to bed around 9pm since we lose the light at 6pm (and had failed to get new torch batteries).  Thus we were up and on a ferry back to mainland by seven for a full day's hitching into Costa Rica.  C had read about the very scary threat of a $28 tax on people leaving Costa Rica so we were prepared for the worst.

We got there fine, though we had to collect a form and pass a policeman through a gate to gain access to the immigration checkpoint.  Costa Rica were taking this 'having a border' business seriously indeed.  We were stamped out of Nicaragua (occasionally paying a dollar for seemingly random pieces of paper) and when coming in to Costa Rica we were asked how long we were planning to stay, where we were going next and for evidence of that (though not about yellow fever vaccinations which the internet had told us they would and the inoculation of which had led to C vomiting on a temple's grounds prior to leaving the UK (for which he remains very sorry)).  However, given that they accepted the printout for a flight leaving Beunos Aires on the 29th Oct 2012 with a hand scrawled note of "2nd June 13:00" as a valid itinary, seems to suggest it's still not nearly the Vogon hassle that the UK is. 

We actually managed to hitch from the border and were left at a crossroads with one route (the larger one) apparently taking a large coastal road towards Panama, the other being the Pan-American, that went by San Jose (the capital).  We decided that this was supposed to be a Pan-American journey (though sharp observers or those who know how to navigate Google Maps, will notice we've not been following it that strictly) and ... waited for a lift. 

The next day we got stuck in the urban sprawl of San Jose and Cartago and ended up walking about 8km with our backpacks.  It was like actual hiking or something.  We were eventually rescued by a very friendly cheese merchant who took us up into the moutains.  Which were surprisingly cold.  We shivered the night away, but in the morning very much enjoyed the Costa Rican equivalent of a road-side greasy spoon.  This consisted of a huge pile of gallo pinto, fried cheese, fried plantains, fried dead thing and strong coffee.  Thus heartened, we continued hitching.

Maybe we should take a brief interlude here to explain how we feel about Costa Rica.  Obviously it is great that it is relatively peaceful and prosperous for Central America.  The story of its development is interesting.  Although only a minority of places in the world can develop in this model (i.e. solely tourism) because the global economic system and global tourism industry rely on the existence of exploitation in other areas and gross inequalities in global wealth distribution, things that haven't existed in Costa Rica (natural resources to be seized or a large indigenous population to do all the work) helped to highlight the stories of other countries.  This does mean it is more expensive than everywhere else in Central America and Mexico (though the notes for colones are extremely pretty and colourful).  This is not great for us, also the tourist attractions are in national parks and beaches and we've done enough of both these things for our tastes for a while.

However, we will always habour a true resentment of the place for the simple reason that it is No Country For Hitch-Hikers.  OK, so we had been spoiled since coming south of the Rio Grande, hour-long waits were starting to seem almost unacceptable and we were getting too used to being in the back of a pick-up almost as soon as we put out our thumbs.  But Costa Rica gave us more consistently long waits than the U.S.A.  Meanwhile, the amount of insulting/baffling gestures and perplexed looks increased ten-fold.  It clearly just isn't the culture there, and in fact, pretty much everyone who picked us up was either not from Costa Rica or had lived in the U.S.A (mostly New Jersey for some reason).

But it really is as beautiful as everyone says.  We never saw the coast, but we went from flat plains, through rainforests and chilly mountains, to the world's largest crop of pineapples (which are not from trees at all, but a shrub/cactus like affair where the fruit sprouts out the middle).  Every half hour or so, we were in a different micro-climate.

Interlude ends.

The next ride we got took us across the cheeringly named Mountain of Death, which is the highest point on the whole Pan-American Highway (at 3,451m or 11,322ft).

Due to the speed of the hitch-hiking, we had to spend another night camping in Costa Rica and were rapidly running out of colones as we hadn't expected to be there for so long.  But we managed to make it to the border, thanks to some friendly Panamain truckers.  There we experienced about half an hour of panic/dread/depression as the customs official announced that the guys on the way in should have stamped us (though they did take our passports at two separate points they did not do this).  Without that, the customs man said he could not stamp us out.  We'd have to live here forever with a handful of colones and people giving us rude gestures from their large, spotless four wheel drives.

Luckily, the officials decided it was more trouble than it was worth (we had caught them right before their lunch-break) and stamped us out anyway (with no fee at all, hurray!).  So, we walked into Panama (making sure they stamped us in) and caught a bus as far as David (as it was cheap) to get away from the border.  We still had an hour's daylight left, so tried to get a bit further down the road.  First impressions were not good and we began to wonder if we were in another Costa Rica.  Night was falling and we pushed our luck under a street lamp, but were just giving up (this is not artistic embellishment, we'd stopped thumbing and started to pick up our bags), when a large car pulled up containing a large guardian angel.  Five minutes later, we were humming along in his air-conditioning chatting about all kinds of things.  A couple of hours later, we were munching yuca and coconut patties and drinking strong black coffee and an hour after that, we finally parted company but he left us with some friendly traffic police who let us sleep in their hut.

This morning we made it to Panama City quite easily.  We haven't found a Couchsurf, but as we had had neither a real bed, nor a shower in 2013, we've splashed out on a hostel (with beds and fans and breakfasts and free water and everything!).  After relaxing for a bit, we enjoyed a delicious meal of mystery meat stew and fried fish and a wander round the old town.

Tomorrow we're off to see the city and the world's most famous water-filled ditch.    

P.S. We're sorry, but there will be no pictures this week as the computer doesn't want to play along.

Happy New Year

We had booked our volcano boarding adventure with Quetzeltrekkers Nicaragua, and were very excited.  We booked into a hostel as we would return to Leon too late to get out to our camping and raccoon filled spot, ate some ice cream to cool us off, and with an hour and a half to spare J tripped gaily off to do some Couchsurf busywork online.  What she discovered was that volcano boarding was cancelled.

As we we had decided to leave Leon the next day it was our last chance, and she delivered the news to C before heading to the Quetzaltrekkers office to retrieve our money.  Somewhat forlornly she enquired if anyone else in town was running volcano boarding.  A man also loitering in the Quetzaltrekkers office waved and announced that his group were leaving a hostel opposite ours in twenty minutes.  This gave J just enough time to run to the hostel and beg pathetically and when they agreed to our joining at the last minute we jumped into action and joined the group.

In the interests of not breaking them, we left cameras at the hostel, but this image is of the same slope we went down and the same Guantanamo style jumpsuits.  The boarding was a lot of fun (even the bit where C fell off and bounced on his face for a bit) and the walk up the volcano stunning with views of the sunset and sulphur jets, some parts of the ground hot to the touch.  The tour group we had joined however gave us a lot to think about.  There were several very lovely people, of course, and though the whole activity was a bit beer-based and not everyone was lovely (the tour guide could have done a better job of reining in some of the young mens comments, given there were also kids and also that they weren't funny), its not really that that we are pondering.

The thing is, you can get by in certain areas of Nicaragua only spending dollars.  All hotels, hostels and tourist restaurants/bars are priced in them.  Tourist material is all in English.  And its terrifyingly easy to never talk to anyone from Nicaragua, certainly not in Spanish.  The tourist strip of the same destinations is like its own little world.

The next day we hitched to Granada (the centre of said tourist strip) and checked out some bookshops with books in English, a benefit of the cultural imperialism that we cannot help but enjoy.  We obtained, and J has since started and could not recommend more strongly, Open Veins of Latin America, an amazing work of history and analysis (including all kinds of imperialism) that anyone interested in the region should read.

In Granada we also visited the Chocolate Museum, as the museum part was free.  We did learn some interesting things about chocolate, but mostly the staff are just supposed to sell you the expensive "make your own chocolate" workshop and the all you can eat buffet.  Also, we felt like the museum's historical sections skimmed over the darker side of chocolate production.  It's not that every museum has to be a searing indictment of global capitalism's cruelties - though it would be nice =) - but the story of exploitation is so essential to the story of chocolate, that the way it was told came across as dishonest white-washing, designed to allow tourists to indulge guilt-free.

Our couchsurf was another hostel, and a very kind man he is too, to let us camp for free.  But the hostel was only another example of what has been making us feel uneasy recently.  Its an amazing place, basically a treehouse built up the steep side of a jungly hill

and staffed by volunteers.  Everyone there is young and english-speaking.  Everyone has been to San Juan del Sur, the big beach resort.  Most people are not even trying to speak spanish or learn how many cordobas there are to the dollar.  All the activities people go off to do each day are far beyond what the average Nicaraguan, let alone a poor one, could afford.  There's a sense the entire country is an adventure playground here for our amusement, and that each central american country is nothing more than its tourist centre.  When people ask where we went in El Salvador they mean which beach and are amazed to hear we didn't even see the sea there- they have never heard of the museum at Perquin.

All this starts to sound pretty smug if we completely discount ourselves, but we're not.  It's a constant niggle trying to find a balance between accepting you can't break every stereotype and privilege and just enjoying the odd slide down a volcano, and trying to get off the beaten track a bit, see the country itself and learn about where we actually are.  Hitching is a godsend here.  You end up making conversation in potted spanish with people from every different walk of life in the country.

Bearing this in mind and with all these thoughts, we undertook an expedition to the Caribbean Sea, which failed in all important respects, except getting far from the beaten track.

Google maps lied.  It says there is a road (the BR20) between El Rama and Bluefields.  Anyone who does not believe us look it up.  One hitch also lied to us about this road.  This road does not exist.  It is not there.  The only way from El Rama to Bluefields is by riverboat, which we could not afford.  So after a long day's hitch out to El Rama on New Year's Eve, we spent the night in a slighty suspicious hotel by the river that gave the impression of being patronised by pirates down on their luck, listened to some enthusiastic fireworks and the next day found ourselves in a town that had shut down for the 1st of January, trying to hitch-hike back the way we had come.

This made us look both desperate and pathetic.  Traffic was slow to the point of non-existance and we ended up in one small town (more a suburb of El Rama, which is not a metropolis)  for six hours.  The advantage of looking both desperate and pathetic are that people pity you.  We received:  free Fanta, a bag of doughnut-like things, two huge plates of chicken and rice, and two slices of cake.  Also a small boy let us play with his baby rabbits.  Eventually we got to Juigalpa that night and hitched on again today, with much more success.

With some free bananas from a friendly trucker, we got to Rivas, which contains a port for ferries out to the Ometepe islands in Lago Nicaragua.  It seems very pretty here, though we have not explored yet, though the views approaching the islands were quite something

We are squarely back on the gringo trail, although remain as cheap as ever, as we have begged a camping spot in someone's yard for a fraction of the normal prices.

Tomorrow we intend to give ourselves a much needed clean in the lake.

Leon, Nicaragua

We avoided San Salvador and hitched all the way to Perquin in the northern mountains near the Honduras border.  This area was a stronghold of the revolutionary FMLN forces during the civil war and is the location of the Museum of the Revolution at the site of one of the old camps.  We were able to camp there at the museum for only a dollar each.  The museum was created in 1992 immediately at the end of the war by some of those who fought in the war and still staff it today.  It receives no state funding at all and it was really interesting chatting with one of the guys there who drew a clear separation between the various guerrila factions united as the FMLN and the political party of the same name formed after the ceasefire (for example, he told us that of the thirteen commanders during the war only two joined the party that formed after the war).  The museum was a modest building and featured many weapons, both those used by guerrillas and those captured from the national forces.  There was the wreckage of the helicopter of the nationalist commander who oversaw the massacre at nearby El Mozote, where the U.S. trained division rounded up, tortured, raped and executed the village's entire population of 900 men, women and children.  The U.S. government at the time said no such thing had taken place and that El Salvador's forces respected human rights.  The local government offered an apology for the massacre last year.  The camp, with its trenches and hidden kitchen and medical tent was still in place as was the local radio station of the FMLN in the area which was a target of the nationalist forces (though how you conflate that with raping children I'm not sure).  Overall it was really interesting and talking to people there really informative.  One person there had also been in Nicaragua during the revolution and the (U.S. created and paid for) insurgency there and he was very scathing of the current president Daniel Ortega, criticising him for living in a palace, and the museum of the revolution in Leon, Nicaragua (more on which later) as little more than "government history".

Mortars at the museum

It was cooler up in the mountains (though not the "very cold" the people of the lowlands insisted it was) and in addition to the museum we wandered around the village, making the most of the delicious pupusas mentioned earlier and found somewhere selling real, strong coffee, which made J very happy.  Contrary to what you might think its not very common.  Coffee is grown in this part of the world and exported and day to day most people drink weak instant.

We set off towards the Rio Sapo that our Couchsurf in Suchitoto had told us about.  After a lift from the local (incredibly bored) cops and a bus down somewhere more gravel hillside than road, we were dropped off and walked 1.5km to a completely empty campsite right on the river.  We tramped to the nearest houses to see if we could buy water or food (which we could and did, thank goodness every second house is a tienda (small store)) and by the time we returned some other people had come for the weekend and the guy who minds the site was back.  There was a pan there as well as matches, so we enjoyed hot meals for dinner and breakfast, as well as swimming in the cold, but clear river.  The landscape was really gorgeous up there, but we didn't take photos as they can't capture the sounds and smells and light that makes somewhere so magical and peaceful.

Deciding to try and make it to Nicaragua by Christmas, we left after just a night at the river and hitched down to the Hondruan border.  We've come to the conclusion that it is quite hard to hitch from border points as buses outnumber cars and people just think you want the bus.  With only about 130km of Honduras to cross we just bussed it, and raced the (ridiculously early) nightfall to make it through and into Leon, Nicaragua by half past eight, even with all the border faff and paperwork.

Our Couchsurf lives 20km out of Leon on the coast and went out there to pitch our tent 50m from the Pacific Ocean.  The water is warm and the waves very powerful and we have dashed ourselves against them several times now.

Our host is really nice and keeper of a fair menagerie of animals including dogs, a horse, chickens, cats and a baby raccoon, who was taken to her by someone who found him abandoned.

His name is Pancho and he is a crazy, never-still, banana-fixated dude.

Christmas day consisted of lots of reading and chilling in hammocks,

drinking from (and then eating the flesh of) fresh coconuts, swimming in the aforementioned warm ocean and a dinner of plantain, yuca and coconut with lime juice!  It was very satisfying overall.

Today we came back into Leon and looked round the museum dedicated to Ruben Dario, the celebrated poet who is buried in the central Cathedral under a very upset looking marble lion.  The cathedral itself is the largest in Central America, built over 113 years.  We also went to the Museum of the Revolution we'd been told about, (apparently also known as Museum of the Treasons, though I imagine not to its face).  Like in El Salvador it was staffed by (and seemed home to) many old veterans of the war.  It is located in an old, crumbling presidential palace.  Also like El Salvador, it received no governmental funding.  However while the one in Perquin seemed glad of this, our guide in Leon simply said the government had other priorities, though it was regrettable.

Tomorrow we are going to slide down a volcano on a giant skateboard.  As you do.  Hopefully we will survive this and let you know how it goes.

Guatemala City and into El Salvador

Our host in Guatemala turned out to be very helpful.  Apart from the fact she put us up and the whole family couldn't stop shoveling yummy food into us, she was keen to show us everything about the area and drove us around for the next couple of days, full of information and recommendations.  This was a life saver as the city itself is huge and the bus system impenetrable, and we would have found it much more difficult to get our head around the place without help.  On Sunday we went out to Antigua, which was the capital before Guate city and is full of beautiful old architecture and looming views of the volcanoes which have leveled the town more than once.

It's pretty expensive though, and also pretty full of tourists who apparently by about nine pm start vomiting drunkenly on nearby culture.  It's a strange atmosphere in places which obviously don't appreciate this kind of behviour, but also continue to encourage people to visit as that is where all the money comes from, and a lot of the history is frozen in time for visitors.

This also makes it expensive, so we escaped and got a delicious lunch elsewhere and then went looking for some ruins, but they turned out to be closed.  How rude.

Monday we went into the city centre.  A lot of people, Guatemalans and travelers, have implied there's nothing there worth seeing.  It's a big modern city but not completely empty or dangerous.  There's a giant relief map of Guatemala that you have to view from a viewing platform (this made C very happy).  The map was made in 1904, prior to use of areoplanes for topography, making it an impressive achievment.  The whole thing was so clearly an expression of ´modern´ Industrial Era Guatemala, with its little model oil rigs and railroads (the latter of which no longer exist).  There is also an ice cream shop which claims to have 1000 flavours and certainly had some weird ones, including beans, gum and beer.

We got a tour around the palace.  Arriving at about one o'clock we were told we would have to wait a little while for the guides to be ready.  We settled down in the sun to watch the world go by, and it was at this point some walking stereotypes appeared.  They were white (turned out to be from LA), middle aged and a couple, and seemed deeply offended that the guards at the palace did not speak english.  Our host, who is Guatemalan, helpfully stepped in to help clarify the situation.  On hearing that we would have to wait for the guides to be ready to work the woman delcared (not for the last time but we'll spare you the repitions) "I´ve never HEARD of such a thing!"

They went on the emit such gems as,
"Gonna have a fiesta and a siesta, huh?  This IS Guatemala."
and
"What if they don't want to work at all?!  What are we supposed to do?"  J could not resist suggesting at this point that we sit in the sun and eat ice cream.  It seemed necessary to difuse the atmosphere of having been kidnapped or something equally terrifying.  Not familiar with sarcasm the woman registered the comment as a suggestion but did not seem comforted.
"We are at their mercy!" she said.

Given the time of day and the fact that when our guide did appear he was very friendly, patient and helpful indeed, we suspected he was actually grabbing a coffee and a sandwich rather than trying to emotionally humiliate us.  His spanish was very slow and clear and both of us managed to understand the whole tour and help with translation for the Californians.  They had attached themselves to our host announcing that they would 'stick with her' despite her not actually having offered to translate everything into what is her second (if completely fluent) language.  We saw the official 'point zero' of all Guatemala's major highways, beautiful architecture and stained glass

and the murals of the country's history.  Our guide compared them to Rivera's work in Mexico City, and they are indeed big stylised historical murals, but there the resemblance ends.  The context in which they were painted, the governments in charge, and the different artistic styles give them quite another bent.  Rivera's images of rape, in-fighting and political unrest are in Guate replaced with conquistadors shaking hands with Mayan women, big white chargers and bolts of lightning, and an indigenous population made up of 6'4'' broad shouldered men and slim waisted, tall women, half dressed and being mystical.  It was interesting to see the contrast.

As we left, the couple did better than ever.  They asked our host the way to McDonalds as it was "the safest place for them to eat".  Thankfully it was in the opposite direction so they couldn´t see us laughing.

The next morning we hitched off towards El Salvador.  Guatemala continued to be the best place we've ever hitched and though none of our lifts were going very far at a time we made it to the border easily and then on to Santa Ana.  We were planning to get across to Suchitoto where our next Couchsurf was waiting, but the roads between the two were dead quiet and buses stop surprisingly early.  We ended up staying in Santa Ana, munching pupusas which are a big traditional food here and REALLY GOOD.  The next morning was C's birthday so we had a decent breakfast before bussing to Suchitoto.  We had to go to San Salvador (the capital).  All bus routes go there and people aren't even sure other roads exist.  We shouldn't have to go back with the route we have planned but may get sucked in again...

Here our host runs a hostel and lets Couchsurfs have a couple of free nights.  There's also a restaurant so we had some dinner there after a walk to the nearby lake, and then relaxed in the hammocks.  Today we explored the town and market in the morning (more pupusas for breakfast and the necessary papaya which is still plentiful) and then took a hike up the river to a set of two magical little pools where we went swimming.

We couldn't find the bottom, and we'd only recently seen an advert for a hotel with an 'infinity pool' and been wondering what it was, so concluded they must mean this.  It's warm enough that we just dried in the sun while we picnicked.

We move on tomorrow, hopefully not back to San Salvador, but will have to let you know...

Chico Mendes

During our time in Xela we had been told by three seperate groups of people about a mythical bakery of surpassing excellence.  A Mennonite bakery no less.  There were delicious Anabaptist treats to be had, but no one actually knew where the bakery was, only that it existed.  When we announced at Quetzaltrekkers we intended to find it, one person claimed knowledge of its location.  Four more claimed to have money for various orders(1). The person who 'knew' where it was placed four crosses on our map numbered by likelyhood of location.  C nobly resisted the urge to saddle J(2) or call her 'Sancho Panza' as we tilted off on our quest(3).  Minute after minute of walking followed, location 1 on our map was a blank brick wall.  If the magical bakery appears here it was not today.  Eventually we found, down an allyway and under a stairwell,

The Bake Shop!  You don't even have to spin round three times and say the password, but it DOES give the impression if you try and go back it won't be there.  Like all quests, the rewards were some 'phat loot'(4) indeed.  Large fresh baked donuts with hefty fresh fruit filling, strawberry, peach, fig.  Pumpkin pies and cinnamon rolls.  We collected people's orders and settled on one each for ourselves. The fig donut actually tasted like fig the fruit, not fig the brown stuff in fig rolls.  Back at the Quetzaltrekkers office, in return for a custard-filled, chocolate-coated donut, C got a much needed haircut. 

With a ample supply of cinnamon buns,(5) we set off to another project.  The Chico Mendes Reforestation Project, named after this guy who is very interesting himself, was recommended to us by several people in Arizona(6) and we, in turn, cannot recommend it enough to anyone who is spending any time in Southern Mexico or Guatemala.  Although it doesn´t seem to have its own website the link above is a good account of the project.  We spent a week there, helping organise and sort lots of tiny trees that will eventually be planted on public land to help reforest areas stripped bare during the difficult(7) times the local population faced in the 70's and 80's.  There are several different kinds of trees from pines and cypress to some we don't know the English name for, which thrive at different altitudes and encourage biodiversity.

Armando, who runs the project, welcomed us into his home and we had many chats with all his lovely family over very tasty meals.  There was a wedding on the weekend we arrived and we also got help with preparation and consumption(8) of tasty wedding food, such as spiced meat stuffed tamales, hot chocolate with sweet bread (though after Oaxaca, most hot chocolate anywhere else tastes too sugary) and of course pollo(9)!

We also got to help with the maize harvest, which is collected from the fields and laid out in the sun for 20 days to a month to dry.

After this, the maize is put into a machine (this is the part we helped with)

 which separates the kernals from the husk and the kernals are bagged up. Some of these will be sold, but mostly it will provide the year's supply of cornflour for tortillas, tamales and other Central American food staples.  Being from the UK, we were really curious about all the different colours of corn, from pale white to a rich yellow which look already cooked and covered in butter.  Some were red, black, purple or a mixture of colours.  They had different textures too, from big knobbly kernals to ones that were spiky.  Apparently they all taste much the same however.(10)
          

While working we met with various other nice volunteers from numerous different places (Australia to Finland).  There are exciting plans to build some cabins in the nearby forest and expand the project to include education on local Maya traditions and history amongst other ideas(11).  Our time there passed almost too quickly and we were sad to leave.  But after a week of constructive, useful labour the road was calling(12) and we could spread the word after all.  Despite some warnings about hitching, the hitch-hiking (called jalón (spelling unsure) here) was in line with our previous Guatemalan experience and we easily cruised into Guatemala City.  One lift even bought us lunch of delicious local chorizo and quesadillas, which hasn't happened in a while.

A lot of people asked us if we were here for 'the end of the world'.  For those who don't know, this is a theory currently going wild in white hippy circles about ancient Mayans predicting the end of the world at some point this month.  Given that we are clearly young, white, and hippies by a lot of people's standards, its a fair question.  But it's actually a weird phenomenon.  For one thing, as you may have guessed, no ancient Mayan predictions mention the end of the world.  Its just the end of one large calendar made out of stone and the start of another.  But for another thing, no one who actually follows Mayan traditions or has Mayan heritage is paying attention to this.  And there are actually still a lot of these people living in Mexico and Guatemala.  For the trendy alternative crowd to ignore this is as insulting as when the conquistadors first arrived and decided a mythical race of gods must have built the Mayan temples because the people they met were simply too small and the wrong colour.  We haven't been able to visit any Mayan historical sites, which is definitely a shame, time and money and all that.  We would have liked to.  And you can't deny that there's a difference between the ancient cities and how people have lived since the combinations of different social problems drove them out of the cities and back into forests and smaller pueblos.  Of course its interesting.  But having been to Monte Albán and Teotihuacan we're not too sorry it was Tikal and Palenque (Mayan) that we had to miss.  The large crowds of white people telling you nonsense about things they don't understand would have been pretty hard to handle.  And we have met a few actual Mayan people.  One of them taught us Spanish for a week.  She was very nice and didn't once suggest we don't bother buying Christmas presents because the world will end before then.

When we got into the city we were immedietly struck by the return to a vast, sprawling mess of humanity and concrete, every square metre covered in advertisments for everything from soda that could 'refresh your world' to a chicken that was 'more chicken than a chicken' selling electronics.  On our bus to the centre of town we smashed a lorry's wing mirror and a clown who borded the bus to yell at us stopped because there was already a preacher doing so, so our bus already had its component of madmen.

We are off to meet our host here soon and then will explore the city some more.

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Footnotes

1 -  Including one person who slapped 20Q down and wanted "as much as this will buy!"
2 -  What with her ankle/knee issues.
3 - Windmills are often linked with bakeries.  See? Method in the madness.
4 - C would like to make it clear he has no issues differenciating video games and real life.  He just prefers video games.
5 - Which lasted all of twenty minutes.
6 - See our 'No More Deaths' post for more on the project where people told us about this project.
7 - Read 'racist and muderous'
8 - One of which we were better at than the other.
9 - Proper fried chicken, the kind of which Pollo Campero (see last post) is only a poor imatation.
10 - With slight differences. Armando told us the black corn made slightly better tortillas.  C wasn't sure of this, but his inner goth loved the black food anyway.
11 - Maya, because the people here are Mayan (see later in post)
12 - And our return to being drifting drains upon society.

Xela

You'll all be pleased to hear that we are now officially in the country, and also have officially exited Mexico (though never entered it which really is very impressive).  Once J was more mobile, we moved from our Couchsurf host's sofa where we had been enjoying some very nice food, and trundled back to the border to set things straight.  We had to pay Mexico a bit to get it all worked out, but the whole operation was an experience  We wandered, confused and fairly freely, between the two countries, presenting guards with stories like 'We just need to nip into your country for some money, we're coming right back' which, despite being true sounds rather weak and would not convince anyone.  Meanwhile under the bridge in plain view dozens of people (those without any kind of passport or our privileged treatment as obvious tourists) walk the river, packs held high on their backs.  The guards don't react or even watch- there's no way to make a quick quetzal or peso in it for them most likely.  Certainly this was all the Guatemalan woman who tried to charge us imaginary fees for entering her country seemed interested in (we avoided them by very convincingly appearing very stupid).

Things shut early in Guatemala and we missed the last bus back to Quetzaltenango (hereafter referred to as Xela.  The names are interchangeable and Xela- pronounced Shayla- is easier to type), but found a very cheap hotel and were back the next day just in time to get pounced on in the street by our Arizona friends.  We had known they were in town but hadn't been able to meet up.  It was a lucky chance encounter as we were able to spend the evening with them before some more sad goodbyes as they head back north, a direction we try to avoid.

Mexico is famously more rich and 'developed' (whatever that really means.  Same as richest perhaps?) than Central America.  You actually do see it, at least in this part of Guatemala, though it starts north of the border in Chiapas and Oaxaca.  The state of the roads, the amount of children working or begging, the way the ayudantes (conductors/shouters/loaders on the most common form of public transport, converted USA school buses known as Chicken Buses) play an even more enthusiastic game of human Tetris and of convincing you that you REALLY want to go the way they are going.

J no longer limping, we had arranged a 45km trek from Xela to Lake Atitlan, with Quetzaltrekkers.  We knew the profits go to local kids, but the organisation is really worth a mention.  They fund a school, with dormitories for those who live further out of town, and were only started as a way to do this (rather than the charity being tacked on as a second thought once someone is making a profit).  They're also totally volunteer run and non-hierarchically organised, the guides volunteering at the time making all the decisions.  We'd recommend them to anyone interested in hiking trips in this part of the world, or those who are into hiking already and want to volunteer somewhere that sounds like a lot of fun.  Even if you don't have great spanish, if you have a bit of money and time this is no problem in Guatemala.  The country has really made a name for itself as a great place to learn spanish and schools are everywhere, of every shape size and level of cost.  Xela in particular is full of them, and other volunteer organisations.  A lot of international travelers are here and getting involved.  It's a city full of people from all round the world (including someone we already knew, from London, proving that world is small).  In some ways its like a giant hostel, and whilst its nice for a change we're glad we don't always travel this way as it can get oddly samey no matter where you are and it gets too easy to just spend time with other young English-speakers.  But its also full of energy for genuinely interesting projects like Quetzaltrekkers or PLQ language school and very lovely people full of ideas.

Ruminating all this (and some slightly suspect hot sandwiches, which was not pleasant) we set forth with our two guides and small band of co-hikers.  We covered 20km the first day, past fields of corn

bamboo forests and gorgeous views.  The trek price includes all food and accomodation, and we picnicked in the hills before staying that night in a municipal building in an almost deserted village.  Hurricane Mitch hit the town and caused half the population to leave, destroying buildings and infrastructure in the process.  What remains is like a ghost town, made all the more eerie by the fact some people still live there.  But some of them run a temazcal sauna, traditional Mayan steam baths, and we all got to take one that evening.  It was amazingly cleansing and felt very good on the day's aches and pains although we were very scared of burning ourselves on the low tin roof.

The next day we set off early and covered another 20km.  Almost needless to say, the views remained spectacular

and the hike was challenging but satisfying.

That night we stayed with a local family, who have been housing Quetzaltrekkers Trekkers for seven years.  They made us amazingly welcome, with a delicious meal, smoothies and a song and dance show by the kids of both local and popular songs, which could not have been cuter.  There was also a cat, which always makes C happy.  We also toasted marshmallows on a fire and the family were playing some Christmas songs.  The whole evening was very cosy and everyone discussed Christmas in their country.  Did you know the traditional Czech Christmas dinner is deep fried carp?  (Though our Czech guide is not a fan...)  Or that in the States they have one TV channel playing nothing for weeks but a picture of a Yule Log fire so that if you don't have one you can watch it on TV instead?

Here in Guatemala, Christmas is in full swing, much more than in Mexico.  There are lights and decorations everywhere and at least one huge tree in every town, though because they are mostly sponsored by the beer company which has almost total monopoly here and is called Gallo ('rooster'), they are mostly topped by a gigantic rotating chicken.

This is actually rather appropriate.  As far as we can tell, chicken is the national religion.  When they're not being eaten (and they do not have a lot of spare time from that) they are advertising other products (the beer a case in point, also seen on electronics stores...) and appearing in lots of imagery (one pueblo even had a statue, there was one of Jesus but it was much smaller and hidden away).  When a Guatemalan chicken fast food place opened in Los Angeles, ex-pat Guatemalans from across the States queued around the block.  We tried it tonight but don't have much to report that you couldn't guess about fast food chicken.

After the kids at our host family had taught J a dance, we took an early night as we were up at 4am.  This was to hike the short distance to a viewpoint to watch the sun rise over Lake Atitlan.

We breakfasted on porridge and coffee and relaxed for a while watching the views until descending the hills to the towns which surround the lake.  Some of it is beautiful to look at, but the sight of the rising waters engulfing peoples' homes and livelihoods is horrible.

Not surprisingly, this is most likely due to human society.  Lake Atitlan has no overground entrances or exits for water, only submerged tunnels which were once lava flows when it was a super volcano.  Pollution is not only causing the layers of thick algae, but probably clogging these tunnels and thus raising the water level.

We passed a lot of coffee plants and people picking them.  Maybe we're especially ignorant, but we never knew a coffee bean growing looks like this:

and is juicy, almost like a grape though not that soft.  They start green and then turn this red by the time they are picked.  It's weird how little you know about things you use all the time.

Several resort towns edge the lake (hotels and bars of course safely higher up than low income farms) and our trek finished with lunch in one of these, before we wished everyone goodbye and good luck on their varied and exciting travels and jumped on a Chicken Bus back to Xela (after J had got her papaya fix.  It's turning into a worse problem than the iced coffee).  Sadly, our bus was not a happy bus.  It broke down three times and we ended up squashed into a minibus (C not so squashed but clinging onto the back) and almost two hours late back.  We are here though, and taking a night and morning off before joining another interesting-sounding project in the area.  More on that next week...