Atlanta, Guate, Coban y Chisec

Whhhoooakay! It´s been a bit of a whirlwind. Ummm. where to start. Yes. Okay. So. Auna and I flew out of Portland at about ten on the night of Sunday the 27th. We got to Atlanta and flew down to Guate (Guatemala City). We didn´t sleep. We had read that Guate was a gigantic, smoggy, theft-ridden, shitty shit-hole. With shit on top. Pretty much true. Our theory was that we should get out as quickly as we could before the nasty stealers could get us. No really, there was nothing there to see and it was hard to breathe and frankly the two hours that we spent getting in and out of guate was enough. At about noon we got on a bus to Coban and arrived there at about six. We still hadn´t slept and we were getting some pretty decent culture shock going. However we speaking enough Spainish to get what we needed so why not get on a bus for six hours after flying all night?
Bad Idea. Bitchen Execution. We didn´t really know where we were going, but we kept it together, got to Coban and got led to a hotel by a kid who´s job it was to persuade backpackers (that´s us, ya´ll) to stay at his hotel. The hotel wasn´t the one we wanted, and cost a little to much, but no roaches, so we stayed. Phase one over and we had done really well. We ate. Mmmm, real enchiladas, empenadas y churriscos. We slept. Hard. Until the puking drunken expat girl woke us up at 4am. Felt no sympathy for her crying becuase I am a cruel, hard bastard. Then the we slept. Hard. Until the hotel staff woke us up to kick us out because they had rented our room to another group. So we went to the hotel we actually wanted and after paying less for a better, cleaner room, we. . . nope, we didn´t sleep.
A little reflection here. The guide books make you fear that your ass will be stolen from you if you don´t hold onto it with both hands. While this could be true if you are a complete, slack-jawed gaper, if you have ever been to New York and ridden the subway you´ll be just fine. I knew this from SE Asia, but allowed myself to lulled into good old (norte) american fear. The people here are really, really nice. Hell, a guy at the street stall where we had dinner tonight slapped the living crap out of this kid who said something innapropriate while leering at Auna. He apologized and gave us some extra food while we waited. We have gotten some stares, but, again, Hell, my hair sometimes gets me that in the states. So far everyone has been very friendly and very repectful. For contrast: my experience in SE Asia had alot of situations where people litterally mobbed me when I got off busses. Also as a major difference from my last trip: these people may be only a couple decades out of full blown civil war, but they have pulled it together far, far, FAR more than the cambodians. and they´re economy must have the vietnamese totally smoked. There is poverty here but none of the extreme desperation I expected. There are no naked starving children with distended bellies crying while they follow you down the street. Not that I have ANY qualifications whatsoever to make any broad declarations, but after a grand total of three days I proclaim this land for Spain! Hah, if you get that joke, I´ll send you a picture of a man with an automatic shotgun gaurding a Mc Donalds.

Okay, back to the storyline before the guy here throws me out because it´s late. I´ll post pics later. We left Coban and made it to Chisec this morning (wed.) and took a bus out to see the candelaria cave system, sacred to the Maya. The mini-bus culture here is a crazy story that I have no time for tonight, but after we arrived there and got a guide, we entered the caves. Holy crap! There are 30km of caves to this single area alone! We hiked around these three large volcanic mountains and then get this: floated under them. Yes that´s right we floated 30 meters through an underground cave. I´ll put up pics later, but they suck anyways, it was severly un-frickin-real. okay gotta go. off to Sayaxche en la manana.

Pre Travel Traveling Blues... and Reds... and even Aquamarines

So here's my first post on blogger. I had begun blogging on Myspace, but their format kinda sucks and I wanted to make me a grown up blog here. Mainly because I'm getting things together for a three month trip to Central America. It's hard enough to post a blog on Myspace when you're in the the states, I didn't really want to try it from El Salvador. Yeah.

It's a little weird to just jump into a journal or blog or anything. I guess everyone reading this already knows me but, still. So just for me, here's myself in a paragraph: I'm from Portland, Or. Yes it was once the coolest place to live ever, but all of you who have moved there since 1994 haved ruined it for me. I have lived in Seattle since 2001, I think things have always kinda sucked there. I'm a musician, singer and songwriter. I'm engaged to my girlfriend Auna, who is traveling with me this summer. I have a difficult to describe job at a Seattle art school. I have a sense of the world which makes it difficult for me to stay focused on anything and pushes me to bend something like this blog into a rambling, free form poem for the benefit of lint and those who love lint while stretching my sentences about the words that I find neato-special beyond intelligebility good. But I know that bores most people who know me to tears so I'll try not too. a little. Tacos.

I'm leaving on May 27th for Guatemala from Portland, Oregon. Auna and I left our jobs at the end of April, packed all our stuff into a storage unit and have been bumming around our home state of Oregon. Before we left we had some times. I played a gig at Conor Bryne's that went well:


and Auna and I planned our trip:

We had a really exhausting time packing all our stuff up and finishing up loose ends at work. It was really nice to get back home to Oregon (the best state in the Pac NW, which is of course the best area in the country). I don't have any pictures of that time. We've had some really intense ups and downs. I can't really explain it here for some reason. Normally I'm very verbose when it comes to that sort of thing. It just seems like Auna and have had a touch of the soap opera disease. But that's not what matters. There's no one and nothing that can hold us down. Rope burns on the friendly organs. But onwards, thanks for the sooper warm welcome resty time family people! We spent a week in Eugene and Portland. We saw Auna's and my family units and dealt with some last minute medical issues. I got to know Eugene a little better and Auna got to know Ptown a little better. Yeah. Then we went to my kind-of-sort-of uncle's ranch. It's way out in Eastern Oregon. It was a nice change of pace from Portland and Eugene. We took care of the spring colt and calves, battled a nasty turkey (I'm counting the days until november you bastard), dug out irrigation ditches, shot guns and bows and arrows...here's my Dad helping Auna kill something:

...annnnnnnnnd on a really beautiful Sunday (May 13th) I asked Auna to marry me. It looked like this:
Actually, there's better pictures of it and I'll upload them if anybody cares, but back to the story Auna said yes and we looked like this:

Yeah. I'm stoked. So stoked I'm not able to make some stupid over everyones including my own head joke that rambles. Almost. No joke. I'm in love.

We are finishing up our time in Portland announcing the news and seeing friends and family before we leaving. We are getting really pumped. Okay I'm bored now so more later.