Gringos, Escuela, Blogging troubles, and enough heat to fry an egg in my shorts

This is a blog that´s actually getting published on 26June because after three attempts at traveling long distances only to have the power go out in the middle of writing it I gave up. I am not actually in Santa Elena writing this. I am way far away in Livingston and two weeks in roughly two weeks in the future, blogging has become a serious pain in my frickin ass and now I´m trying to finish off a post decribing the tense in a more recent past tense. And after three weeks of intense spainish studies it´s really difficult (no joke) to write in English. Here´s my mind in the pasado imperfecto:

So, We´re currently in the city of Santa Elena for the afternoon. It´s a hot, dirty and very Guatemalan city just south of the city of Flores, which is a hot, clean and extremely touristed city. There is some bitchen salsa music blaring at a volume that nearly makes thought impossible. And I likes my music loud peoples. But this, this is so loud no me thinky. Auna and I are here for the day to send out some emails and such. In fact we were here yesterday and in Flores too. Since both of these cities kinda suck compared to where we are living right now it took alot of effort to talk myself into coming back today solely to write this email. Also, we´ve aclimated (or at least I have) and today is fricken friggity frack hot (I should be at the beach celebrating our host father´s 70th with a couple cuba libres!). But I love blogging. Especially while typing on a keyboard with to n´s.

Okay enough whinny white whale. Last time I wrote something substantial was in Chisec. After that we got up in the morning and caught a microbus to Sayaxche on our way to Santa Elena and Flores. The microbuses in this country, and the culture surrounding them is totally new to me. It´s possible there was something similar in Vietnam and Cambodia, I just didn´t speak enough of the languages. Basically two guys get a toyota mini van bus thingie, get a route connecting a couple large cities with a bunch of smaller cities, and they drive it. Anywhere along the route, people can flag them down and pay a fraction of the total rate to go as far as they like. They yell out the name of the main city they´re headed to everywhere they go. It´s pretty cool. Actually no, it´s really cool. And for some reason even the few things that are a little scary make the whole process even more fun. There are no schedules, and no real parent companys, so whether you´re waiting in a major city outside a hotel or soaking wet outside a cave in the middle of the jungle; you just have to wait. Also they drive really, really, really fast. Which is very good for getting there fast and helps quite a bit with Auna´s motion sickness, but when there are 25 people in a three row bus with seats for 11 and lots of curvy roads with lots of free range livestock it can be..... well almost as much fun as a pack of smokes, some cherry bombs and a dead raccoon.


We got to Sayaxche in the middle of the day and we didn´t think much of it, so we decided to keep going after some carne asada for lunch.

Here`s the river crossing in sayaxche:





That´s right, Auna has been eating red meat. And from what I can tell loving it. Lewd jokes aside we got on another bus to Santa Elena. We had crossed a river (the name escapes me) via lancha in Sayaxche and in doing so, crossed from Verapaz into the state of Peten. Peten has been very different for a number of reasons. Far, far, far more tourists/gringos/estudiantes. Probably because of the Mayan attractions and the super amazing Lago de Peten Itza.





We moved into a hotel in the super touristy town of Flores for two nights and I proceed to get a little case of the sicky sailor and no it wasn´t brought on by the liter size beers. Flores was really beuatiful really over priced and that´s where I got some stomach action that it took the wonders of modern medicine to resolve. Here`s the view from our hotel:



But all and all, Flores kinda sucked, so we were really happy when we got everything squared away for our first week at the language school in San Andres. San Andreas is a small town across the lake from Flores. We hired a lancha (boat) and started out the guy started speaking spainish to us and as it turns out new everybody at the school we were headed to and was so excited to meet gringos actually trying to speak spainish that he walked us up to the school and helped us find our host family. This was no small task for this man becuase he had been attacked by another man with a machete and could barely move his legs.
The next three weeks in the Eco-Escuela de San Andres has been a complete blur of serious studying spainish. We made a few friends and had a few adventures and made a few sweaty nasty trips to the near by cities to try and write blogs. We had a complete blast. Our family was amazing, our teachers were amazing and we took our free time to do some seriously cool things. I will cover these things in another post because I have to try and actually get this one posted. Also in the next post I will cover what has happened between leaving San Andreas (June 23) and arriving here in Livingston.

Oh and this could quite possibly be my last blog with pictures until I figure out how to stop blogspot from cropping my posted pictures so hard that ya´ll are only seeing half of each. I have some awesome pics and I promise to upload more soon as learn how to not be dumb. This stuff is a pain in the ass, people do this for fun? Posting some what comprehensible blogs has been the hardest part of the trip though so I really can´t complain. Actually I keep thinking of a friend on my trip to asia who responded to another friend complaining about how hard traveling was with the comment,¨Hard? what exactly about it is hard?, like deciding whether or not to get pissed before noon? or possibly having to choose between accomodations and which delicious food to eat for ridiculously low prices?" Actually spainish school was hard. But I just understood the lady telling me that my free internet time is up here, so.....



Oh yeah, what in the hell is RSSing?

Here's some pics from the last blog

Okay, I read my last blog and realized that I sound like a complete ass. I really don't have the brains, the qualifications or the street time to be making any of the comparisions I made in my last blog. I guess all I can accurately report is that one "third world" country is not like another. Well that and so far there is less desperation, starvation, mal-funk-shun than I expected, or I'm an idiot and not seeing it. After you've been to both places we can sit down and talk about it mmmm kay? Yup, still an ass. Siempre.

The next blog will have more stories and such I promise. Here's a view from the top of the water park that was built in out hotel in Chisec:
This is weird because with Chisec was bulldozed twice during the civil war because it was a hotbed of anti-government activity. All the citizens were reportedly moved into government run "ideal villages". Sound like the hamlet projects in Vietnam anyone? But that's not why this swanky, waterpark having hotel was so strange. Chisec is a mostly Ke'k Chi town (Mayan descedants). We thought our Spainish was bad, but their's was worse. It made it fun to find things and buy things. Especially things like food. They had there own little Mayan language, who knew? But we really really really like it there and in all of verapaz for that matter.
Here's me coming out at the bottom of the water park and spraying water all the way onto some not so happy locals with my big fat gringo ass:
Here´s Auna getting ready to go tubing through the Grutas de Candelaria:

Here's the end of the cave we tubed through:
Folks, this simply does not do the scale any decent justice. For example that tree root on the left of the roof of the cave probably went for fifty yards. It was truly an mindblowing to realize that some of these cave go all the way to Mexico.
Here's the mountains we tubed under:

This whole blogging process is running desperately behind events currently. In fact a week or so. I´ll start another post to tell that story. Cheers.

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.