Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Creature Fears: Bed Buddies
So I thought I had my own room . . . I was up late last night writing and listening to music--I started writing some found poems using only song titles for fun--when I started finding my little roommates. Here are some pics. I couldn't bring myself to kill any of them. So I just let some of them be and took the others outside. And I also threw in a crazy turkey that looks like something off The Dark Crystal for kicks. No insects or animals were harmed in the making of this post.
Thursday, May 21, 2009
Come Away with Me
Here are some more pics. I have a few videos as well that have trouble loading. I´ll see if I can get them up. We went to the lake, lake Atitlan, on Tuesday. It´s amazing, and pretty close so I´ll definitely be going back
often. You get there by riding down the mountain in the back of a pickup. The other pics with the ninos are from a couple of days ago. Ramonita had a thing of bubbles and wanted to play with them. So one of us would make the bubbles and the other would try to pop them, or we´d try to keep blowing one back and forth and see how long we could keep it up in the air. Then she decided she wanted to play in the street, and every nino on the block came out to play. So we played bubbles and then someone pulled out a ball and we played keep away and then started using two light poles as baskets to play basketball. It was a lot of fun. The kids want me to come out and play everyday now.
Thursday, May 14, 2009
And I Said Hoo oo hoo oo to You (to be read while listening to “Last Tide” by Sun Kil Moon)
One of the things I love most is sleeping under a tin roof. The rain at night turns the roof into a veritable marimba. It gets foggy here most evenings too. Andy and I took a stroll down to the neighboring town and got lost coming back in the fog, but ended 
up taking a much more scenic route than we would have otherwise. Another favorite thing is having a simple dinner made with fresh ingredients and corn tortillas, and letting Tat Lu (Don Pedro, my host dad, he's more like a grandpa actually) talk and talk and tell all kinds of stories. Sometimes it's hard to understand everything because Spanish is his second language, but I can get the gist. Such an honest, good-hearted man. Last night we sat by the fire stove in their dirt-floor kitchen and he told me all kinds of stories. This one came out of nowhere, the poet in him standing up for minute. He said he felt very sad one morning. He got his horse ready and headed up to clean the milpa (corn) feeling heavy and worried. So he went up to the mirador (“the lookout,” this place has some awesome views of the lake below, Andy and I went yesterday to the mirador and it is breathtaking) where his land is and sat down to think things through, to let the hurricane of sorrow work its wonder and teach its lessons. He said while he was sitting there thinking, tw
o rabbits, a male chasing a female through the corn, ran straight into his legs (one into each leg) and then scampered off. And that was all it took to cure his mood. He decided to go after them because supposedly they're very rico. Two of his sons and his daughter live with him and his wife, as well as their daughter-in-law and her two daughters. Her husband, their oldest son,
lives in Houston right now. Tat Lu and his wife, Ramona, are both up there in years, and when she told me her dad was still alive and lived up the road, I almost fell out of my chair. The too granddaughters are so adorable. Ramona is like seven or eight I think, and Yakelin is like three. Ramonita danced and danced last night, showing me all the dances she'd made up. Yakelin was a little timid at first but yesterday she started talking up a storm and narrating everything everyone else said or did. And her laugh kills me! It jumps from her so suddenly and honestly. I played a game with them that Ramona made up as we went that involved a piece of paper she had torn up into smaller pieces and distributed to me and Yakelin. We entertained ourselves for a good while with a couple of torn pieces of paper, Ramona's endless imagination and Yakelin's infectious alegria. They're a great family, always worried about me being comfortable, and wondering if I'm homesick, etc. We had these really good mashed potatoes for dinner and I told them they reminded me of potatoes my mom makes. They asked about my parents, their names and if they missed me. I told them their names and explained that I have the best parents en el mundo. Which is the complete truth. And I always miss my family and friends, though I'm not necessarily homesick. I took my first bucket bath today. They knocked on my door and said, “David, David. Are you busy?” Nope, just sleeping. “Mom has already prepared your bath, do you want your bath first or breakfast?” I didn't know I was taking a bath today. Maybe they were tired of smelling me. I went and had my very first, very warm bucket bath. It worked much better than I had imagined. Then I had a really good fried egg with some salsa and torillas (I had mentioned for some reason at one point that I liked fried eggs as well as scrambled, but that I liked el centro duro and she remembered perfectly). I got a cheap cell phone down here because it's important to be able to keep in touch with my family and Andy, especially when we travel to other parts. I pay by the minute to make calls, but I don't have to pay a cent to receive calls, even if they're from the states. So feel free to give me a call (45488948, I think the country code is 502).
Oh, one thing I forgot to mention about the plane ride: At one point we skirted around a thunderstorm. I watched it out the window. I can sing with Nora Jones that one of the 
prettiest things I ever did see was lightning from the top of the clouds.
I need to go work on some poems because I have to turn in three this week. Hope everyone is happy and well. Love y'all pues. Chao for now.
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Every Path Has Lead Me Back
Now that we're in Santa Clara I have more time to do some recapping of the last week. I was going to add a bunch of pictures but the internet here has to be carried back and forth on a guys back. It's kind of slow. Guess it will have to wait.
For starters, the plane trip was very interesting. I sat next to a lady who said she does neuro-linguistics. Yeah, neuro-linguistics. She's kind of a therapist. She helps rehabilitate addicts or people with behavioral issues. But she also helps people work on building what she called body language rapport with others so that you can communicate quickly via body language and more subliminal messages. A very interesting lady. She talked about making your request of the universe every morning, for her that meant God, and setting up some way of knowing that the universe was working with you. She said that while she was on vacation one time she wanted to find a sand dollar, but she was conflicted because she wasn't sure if she wanted to have to store it and get it home. She ended up finding lots of sand dollars but not taking any home. She said we need to not be conflicted about what we want. We must solidly want it and ask for it, and then it will happen. Then I asked, according to her studies, what she thought about telepathy and telekineses (Nate and I have kind of been experimenting with telepathy a little to see if we can pass each other images or numbers if we concentrate, it's kinda fun). She says she thinks it's real. She also said she knows a guy that took spoon bending classes in Salt Lake and can bend spoons. She also knows a lady who told her son that he needed to behave because she had eyes on the back of her head and always knew what he was up to. He didn't believe her, so to convince him she took out a spoon and told him she would bend it to prove her “supernatural” mother powers. She prayed like crazy it would happen, and it did, and her kid freaked out and believed her. Good trick to remember when I'm a parent: Do what I say, I can bend spoons with my mind. It was a lot of fun talking with her. Some of it was a little hard to swallow, but hey, who knows. I think any of it could be possible. It would be very interesting to hunt down that spoon bending class. Would make a great first date, haha. Andrea, Spencer, Nate, Amy, Catie, Bucketry—you guys should look into that, and then, once you've got it down, go back to scones and drones and really freak them out.
We got into Guatemala City on Friday afternoon and met up with the family of Alonzo, a Guatemalan that lives in Utah and has connections with BYU. They let us leave our bigger bags and my giant sack of books with them while we traveled around and helped us get to the Metro Norte mall where we ate and waited for the bus to Rio Dulce. While waiting at the bus stop I met a Jewish Guatemalan that actually worked for the Jewish embassy here. His great grandfather was a Jew that somehow ended up in Guatemala and married a Guatemalan. Apparently there is a big Jewish community here. He was really nice and helpful. We had a great talk about all kinds of random things, including My Name is Asher Lev, of course. It's interesting how quickly strong bonds of friendship can be formed down here. After just half an hour of chatting he gave me his phone number and told me he wanted me to come down so he could sneak me into Synagogue sometime. He told me to call if we ever needed anything—money or food or if we ever ran into problems with thieves or people trying to hassle us—to call and he would help us with mucho gusto. I really liked him a lot. He was currently in town investigating the murder of a Jewish Guatemalan that was supposedly carried out by Arabs in the area. I never knew the Jewish-Arab conflict extended all the way to Guatemala City. He helped us find the right bus and off we went.
By the time we got on the bus it was already early evening. The nicer buses didn't seem to be coming by so we grabbed whatever we could headed to Rio Dulce. The first while it was pretty empty and we got a nice breeze with the windows open. A Senorita with two ninas was sitting next to us and she struck up a friendly conversation, basically the history of her life and how her and her husband now owned some land out in the campo they were working. The daughters were adorable and lots of fun. They would act like they wanted us to take a picture of them and then would hide their faces just before we'd take one. So any of the pictures I got were pretty blurry. It was a really long bus ride that gradually got more and more uncomfortable as more people crowded on and the roads got bumpier, but it was a great experience and a chance to see the Guatemalan countryside for the first time. We stopped everywhere along the way, in little pueblos or even just the side of the road for whoever was sitting there waiting. A crazy, possibly inappropriate experience to share (too funny to pass up though): Later in the night I really had to use the bathroom. I'd been holding it forever, and this bus had no bathroom and wasn't making any pit stops. I've never been in so much bathroom-related pain in my life. Finally I asked the driver if I could use a bathroom at the next bus stop. We stopped in front of this little restaurant with a couple of ladies sitting on the porch looking our way. I got down and the guy told me to just go. “Aqui no le dan multas como en los estados.” Basically there weren't any bathrooms around and they weren't going to make the whole bus wait long. So I went right there next to the bus in front of some old ladies. It was a moment of extreme desperation in the backwoods of Guatemala. Por favor, no vayan a pensar mal de mi. We laughed about it for awhile. We didn't get into Rio Dulce until nine or so. We hopped off the bus and a guy came up to us and offered a place to stay that we took because it seemed pretty cool and we were tired and didn't want to hunt around (which is probably what he banks on). It was a hostel called Casa Perico that we had to take a lancha (a small motor boat) to get to. It is owned and run by a guy that I think is from Sweden but has lived in Guate for a long time and speaks good Spanish. We stayed the night there and met another friend we spent the night chatting with. Her mom lives in Antigua, which is a really nice/safe area, and had come down to visit her and travel Guatemala a bit. Turns out she found a group of people sailing from Rio Dulce to Miami and stopping in Cuba and a few other places along the way, so she decided to cut her trip a little short and do that. Can't blame her. Sailing to Cuba had me pretty jealous. We talked and shared a bag of pretzels(the place had a restaurant but we showed up too late to catch dinner and just bought a bunch of snacks to hold us over) until around eleven at night. I hadn't slept since Wednesday night and got real drowsy real quick. Sleeping that night was a little crazy. The place sat right on the river and the rooms had roofs but were otherwise completely open. There was crusty mosquito netting for the beds we were reluctant to use because they already had some bugs tangled in them. Pero ni modo. We used them. At one point, before we went to bed, I was reading some Pablo Neruda—I've been working on memorizing “Significa Sombras” at the end of the first book of Residencia en la Tierra—and I looked down and saw the hugest black ant of all time. It was seriously as long as the first half of my index finger and kept stopping, raising its rear and stabbing my bed with its crazy stinger. I swept it off with the spine of Residencia en la Tierra and watched it disappear between a couple boards. Once we turned out the lights it was easier to fall asleep. We woke in the morning (for some reason I naturally wake up really early here, like six in the morning or earlier) without any problems. It was actually a really cool looking place that was a lot of fun to stay at. We took the safest boat we could find from their rickety selection and paddled out to a piece of dock anchored out in Lago Izabal where we did some swimming/bathing before check out. I got my first sunburn from the Guatemalan sun on that dock. Man I'm so white. Oh, funny side note: everyone here thinks I'm a total Spaniard. When we first showed up to the dock to take the lancha to Casa Perico there was a guy just sitting there leaning against a column like he owned the place, or like no one owned the place. When we came up he nodded at me and said, “Puro Barcelona, no?” He thought my hair and beard were straight out of Barcelona. Because people have a hard time pronouncing me name—Talor, Taylor, Toyler?—I thought about just taking on the nickname Barcelona. I've actually started telling people to call me David, my middle name, because that's a name that exists in Spanish. I think Amy Maxwell went by her middle name down here too.
Then we went to take a microbus to El Estor, a little town further inland on the same lake. Andy served in that area on his mission, so we went to visit. It is a beautiful little town right on the lake with lots of friendly people and some good places to stay. Andy knew one of the drivers of the microbuses (basically vans that they cram with way too many people to go fairly short distances) from the ward in El Estor, so we rode with him from Rio Dulce to El Estor. I jokingly told him I would ride on the top with the luggage because it was so crowded and he said that once we got out of town that would be cool, but in town la policia molesta. We rode up front with him, and it wasn't too uncomfortable. I just had to move my leg now and then so he could shift. Sure enough, once we got out into the country, he let me get out and climb up onto the top and ride the rest of the way. In the words of Grandma Evans: Oh my guy! It was too good to describe, but if I could wish one beautiful thing on someone that might be it. We passed through cattle fields and endless fields of banana trees. And me just relaxin on the top, taking in the wind and the sun and the country.
El Estor was lots of fun. We went to church on Sunday and met the ward. The meeting felt amazing. I've always felt the Spirit surprisingly strongly in Spanish wards, but this one was really good. There were to sister missionaries in the ward that we met as well. They seemed to be doing a good job strengthening the ward there. The town was great, but it was baking hot. We made friends with the store owner where the ATM was. He suggested a couple of places with great views of the city and lake where I could sit and write, but we didn't have time to get to them. But the town had such a great vibe, we plan on going back some weekend to spend a little time there. After church we gathered our stuff and started hiking down the dirt road that leads out of town back to Rio Dulce. About fifteen minutes down the road this guy came running down to the road asking if I was a Spanish gypsy. He invited us to come down and talk for awhile. So we did and had a great time. Turns out they've talked to a lot of missionaries and even remember Andy. One of their daughters has actually been accepted to a program where she lives with a family in North Carolina for eight years to go to school and comes back to her home every summer. Then we headed out, hunted down some water at the small shops that line the road, and then waited at a bus stop for a bus or possibly a jalon (a free ride, hitchhiking basically). A couple of taxis came by, but we didn't take them because they were all really expensive. We were headed for the coastal town of Puerto Barrio that you can only get to through Rio Dulce, so we were telling everyone that we were headed for Rio Dulce. Every time a truck passed Andy would head up to the road and put out his thumb. Finally a really nice truck stopped and offered to take us to Rio Dulce, and off we went. That was a really beautiful drive, and really fast too. He took us to a junction where we got a bus for ten quetzales to Puerto Barrios. We made it from El Estor to Puerto Barrios for ten quetz and in really good time. We were proud of ourselves.
The countryside gets more lush and stunning as you approach the coast, or so Lonely Planet accurately describes it. In Puerto Barrios we stumbled across a really nice hotel (well, nice compared to where we'd typically been staying), that had air conditioning (hallelujah) and a nice clean bathroom with a shower and hot water. It also had a huge dining area and a pool where we did some swimming. In the morning they offer a free breakfast buffet which was really good (eggs, black beans, fried plantains, sausage, strawberry licuados). Plus I was able to get some laundry done, and thank goodness because I was in dire need. That night I really wanted to get some sea food, so we hunted around town and actually came across an LDS church with some members hanging out out front. They pointed us to a place right around the corner from where we were staying. We went there and I ordered a chowder-like marisco soup that was much more adventurous than I'd expected (whole clams, shell and all, an entire fish, etc.). They had great licuados and arctic AC. And giant flat screen TV that we watched Man vs Wild on in Spanish. Later that night I read up on Puerto Barrios and saw that there wasn't too much to do in the town and it is usually a little sketchy, so the next morning we headed out to the docks to catch the 10:00 AM boat to Livingston.
Livingston is a crazy town you can only get to by boat. The Garifuna people of Guatemala live there, an African people whose history in Guatemala I'm still not completely clear on. It's a very popular tourist area, kind of a party town. The boat ride over was excellent. It had been way too long since I'd been reunited with the ocean. When we got there, this Garifuna guy, Pedro, took us to a good place to stay (the African Place) and gave us a good rundown of the area. We tried looking for clean water but all of the stores were out, so we just started the long walk up the coast to Siete Alteres, a place with a series of waterfalls and pools to swim in. It was a fabulous hike. We past a number of shops along the way, none of which had water. Finally we found a really nice hotel/restaurant where we got some water and met a couple that was being shown around by a Garifuna guide. The guy gave me this crazy yellow fruit that tasted kind of like a bell pepper and a hundred other things but that totally dried out your mouth. Their guide told us Siete Altares didn't have any waterfalls because it hadn't rained for awhile so we started to head back, but then we decided we'd come so far we might as well go anyway. So we marched on. At the entrance of Siete Altares there was this dude at a little table making this crazy liquor out of roots that smelled up the whole place. He was a Mayan Garifuna mix. We gave him ten quetz and he let us go up. There weren't any waterfalls but there were still a couple of deep pools to swim in and it was a beautiful area. There we first met Anthony the Vietnamese French Canadian. Well, his parents had moved to France from Vietnam and he was born in France shortly after. At some point they moved to Montreal. Anyway, he was there with two friends from Montreal, who were both actually from France and were just studying in Montreal. There were three girls from Denmark there as well that we didn't get to talk to at the time, but ran into later on. Those six were all staying at the same hostel, Hotel Rio Dulce. So we made it a point to stop at the restaurant next to their hostel for dinner that night, and sure enough the three Danish girls were already there eating. We took a table close to them and exchanged glances for awhile before I finally got up and went over to there table to talk (something fairly out of character for me, but which felt fairly natural at the time). They had all recently graduated and, like most Danes, were taking time to travel before doing more school. They were a lot of fun to talk to. They were at a school “studying Spanish” in Mexico for a few months and had a week or so to travel so they had come down to Guatemala to visit a few places. They all spoke pretty good English and were really patient with my questions about how to say things in Danish. Apparently I somehow picked all of the hardest words to pronounce in Danish. Every time I asked a word they would say, oh, that's the hardest word to say in Dannish, oh, that's the second hardest. I guess they have a few letters that don't exist in any other language that are really hard to say. Apparently red is the hardest Danish word to pronounce. Moon is also hard to say. One of them was really into music so we talked about all kinds of bands and foreign films, etc. This didn't all come up at that one dinner meeting, but throughout the next couple of days as we traveled together. My food came eventually and started to get cold so I excused myself after inviting them to come with us to see some traditional Garifuna music. We didn't see them again until we ended up on the same boat out of Livingston the next morning. Anthony and his two lady friends showed up at the restaurant too and we talked with them. There was a short power outage we weathered on their balcony and then went down to a street cafe and had some cokes. He tried a shot of this crazy Garifuna drink. We were all planning on taking a boat out at 9:30 AM the next morning back to Rio Dulce to go to Tikal, so we decided to go together. Oh, earlier that night they had left their laundry with the hostel and they told them to come back for it at nine that night. But because the power went out the lady went home without doing it. This wild Garifuna guy came by and started asking everyone for help to open the laundry or when the laundry would be done. The restaurant next door seemed to be in charge but wouldn't do anything about it until morning. The guy tried to get us to pay him for helping. There are a lot of people there that try to beg money off the tourists or sell them random things or services they might or might not actually end up providing. But most were buena gente. There laundry wasn't done before they had to leave in the morning so they through it wet into some bags and took it with them like that. We did end up going to the bar where they supposedly play Garifuna music that night (lots of percussion on drums and even turtle shells, and blowing through conk shells, etc.). These two girls from England gave us a flier for it. Apparently they'd been living and working there for awhile. We went, probably later than we should have, and there wasn't much going on because of the power outage, but they did end up playing some Garifuna beats and I got some mango juice. The two girls from England had been traveling all over together for years. They'd been to Nepal and all kinds of other places and ended up in Livingston for awhile. There was a guy there from New Mexico also just traveling around the world hippie-style. There was a Guatemalan guy there who could play guitar and sing real well, even drunk. We left there after a short while and went to bed for the night. In the morning we got our boat tickets, bought some pan dulce to tie us over, and went to pay homage to the sad crocodiles they have in these tiny holding areas in the park before taking our boat up the river and into lake Izabal to Rio Dulce. It was a very scenic trip through canyons and jungle. A lot of it reminded me of air boat rides in Florida. Finally we made it to Rio Dulce and decided to all ride together on the same bus, the Danes and Canadians and us. We got tickets for a nice air conditioned bus from Rio Dulce to Flores for 3:00 PM and then went to eat at a dock on the lake. That's where I did a lot of getting to know the Danish girls. They were too much fun. We were told that our bus was having problems and would be late. It didn't end up coming until after five. The Canadians got separated from us looking for an ATM. Us and the Danes went down to a park under the bridge to be in the shade. We all met up back at the bus station after awhile. The attendant said it should be there soon, but then jumped on a bus and left us sitting there alone. But it turns out that he went to help the other bus and bring it to us. Finally it arrived and we got on but it continued to break down periodically throughout the trip. We didn't get to the island of Flores until late. We all got separated at the bus station by a swarm of taxi drivers. We met up with the Danes again after getting hostels and had dinner with them. We all ordered spaghetti and spent our last hour or so enjoying each others company. They had already been to Tikal and were taking a bus from Flores to Mexico the next morning at five. We said our goodbyes, but not before writing down some music suggestions and emails to find each other on Facebook. Our Canadian friends had completely vanished. We had planned on going to Tikal with them, but now we had no way of finding them before morning. We took a stroll around town up to the top of the hill where there was a big catholic church and some kids playing basketball. Then we went down to some docks on the lake and hung out for a bit before going to sleep in this prison-like hostel owned by a man older than most trees. But we slept like nenes and woke early in the morning and headed to Tikal. Tikal was amazing. I thought my vertigo would get the best of me, but it didn't cause me too many problems, nothing like Angel's Landing and its three foot wide razor backs where I had to hold up in the roots of a tree at the top and keep thinking about all the poetry there was left to read and write in the world to muster up enough guts to get down. I'm not as sissy as that makes me sound; heights just make me wobbly and weak in the knees. I think I understand why the concept of vertigo shows up in Octavio Paz's love poems so frequently, and understand a little better the line “the momentary vertigo of disbelief” in Nicole Krauss's “Valparaiso.” Anyhow, Tikal was superb. We did the whole hike on empty stomachs because we didn't have time to eat. Eventually we found our French friends and rode back with them on the bus to Flores. I had a lot of time to talk to Anthony then. He was very interesting, an incredibly sincere, honest and nice person. He has his masters in Aeronautic engineering (or something like that), speaks English, French, and Vietnamese fluently. He told me that he also writes music, but the hardest part for him is writing lyrics. He knew I was in Guatemala to write poetry so we talked a little about poetry and how he could work on writing lyrics. I gave him some good poets to study and some bands with lyrics I really like. Then he took out his ipod touch and let me listen to a song he had written. It blew me away. Seriously, the kids got skills. He plays piano, guitar, and works some sweet techno. The song had a very Muse feel to it so I asked him if he liked Muse and he said Muse was one of his biggest influences. He currently plays in a band for fun, but wants to do his own thing eventually. He is also working on his drawing/painting skills and learning how to use photoshop for the heck of it and all kinds of other things. He said he doesn't think he'll get his PhD because he has too many “projects” he's working on. A real nice, well-rounded and well-grounded kid. He wants me to come up to Montreal and visit him there. He says its great during certain summer months because there are music festivals and lots of people play free shows. He said he saw Bireli Lagrene live for free in France and it blew his mind. Real cool kid. We talked a little about Pho too. Gotta talk about Pho, so delicious. We also exchanged info to keep in touch. The girls he was with were really cool too, but didn't speak as much English, and my one semester of French was worse then their English. Their English wasn't terrible, but still enough to be somewhat of an obstacle. We all had a good time together though. We hopped off the bus at our stop, and that was the last we saw of them. They are still in Guate for a little while. They were going to fly from Flores to Guatemala City and visit Antigua and Quetzaltenango before heading back to Canada. (Antigua is a great place for travels, really clean and safe and also very historic. We haven't been quite yet, but everything we read and everyone we talk to says the same. There are also volcanoes close by you can visit. We are excited to take a weekend trip there sometime. I hear they have a number of good used bookstores I definitely want to check out.) I really think I might take him up on his invite to Montreal. It's weird yet amazing how firm these fast relationships on the road have been. I wonder about the impact we had on one another and how long it will last before becoming a weak inkling, a feeling so thoroughly assimilated it is no longer a specific memory but a means of interpreting new experiences, perhaps like most of the earliest years of childhood. I remember reading part of an interview of Roberto Bolano where he talked about meeting someone briefly. I'd have to read it again to quote it justly. He did some great interviews before passing away. I still can't believe he's gone. And Lorca and Neruda. I remember when I first heard that Lorca had been assassinated. It hurt for weeks as though he were family, or though his passing were something recent. Somehow it was something close to me, something that still hurts when I think about it. It's still strange why it feels so personal to me. We've met so many interesting people but had so little time with them. I think some how the scarcity of time makes our experiences together more valuable and potent. Somehow there are certain people, certain writers, musicians, coworkers, classmates, fellow travels I seem to get along with instantly, as though in finding them I'm remembering them, recalling something precious and lost, something that works so well it seems it must have always been part of me.
We were able to make it from Flores to Dangriga, Belize that same day. We had to rent a microbus just for us, kind of pricey, and then the driver tried to back out on us when we were almost there because he didn't want to have to wait on the road construction going on. We talked him into taking us the rest of the way and we crossed the border around fiveish. All that was running at that time from the border to other cities were taxis. So we took a taxi to Belmopan where we hopped a bus to Dangriga. We got to Dangriga pretty late, like nineish, and the bus driver helped us find someone who took us to a local hostel. I took a picture of the name of it because I figured Aaron, Nate, Spencer, etc. might appreciate it. The hotel “Double H.” Anyway, the room wasn't too nice, but we had a nice balcony we could see the beach from and catch a good sea breeze. Man, the sky in Belize looks just like the sky in Florida. It felt a lot like being in the keys. The sky especially felt like home. We went down to this restaurant close to the bus stop to have dinner. Houston and the Lakers was on TV. I got some really tasty fried chicken. Belize has a good amount of Mayan people, but lots of Africans as well, and the national language is English. And strangely, most of the shops are run by Asians. We walked back and sat on our balcony for awhile and I did some writing. People kept mentioning this place called Placencia. So the next day we took a long walk on the beach and got some breakfast and then used a special shaped stick to find where the internet was buried and looked up Placencia. It looked pretty awesome so we took a bus to Independence and hopped a lancha from there to Placencia. In the bus station at Dangriga we met Dustin, a guy from the states who was taking a year or so to backpack around Central America. He reminded me so much of Dad's brother John, in appearance and especially his mannerisms. He was probably early forties, late thirties. Real nice guy. He was also headed to Placencia, so we went together. He'd been to a lot of places, including Cuba, which really interested me. He said if I could get to Mexico, it would only cost about $500 to spend four or five days in Cuba. He also told me there's a guide for hitchhiking on sailboats around the world. He really shouldn't have told me that. Haha. He was really nice and talkative. All three of us stayed at Lydia's Guest House in Placencia. Beautiful Placencia de mis suenos. That was an awesome spot. It's a really thin peninsula with a main road and then a famous sidewalk that runs right along the beach and most hotels, restaurants and shops. There are lots of hotels and restaurants right on the beach with chairs and tables, but the whole beach is public. We spent the first evening just hanging out on some chairs under some coconut trees right on the beach. I took a quick dip to get salty and say hello to the ocean. Dustin had come to do some diving with whale sharks. I guess during the spring and summer whenever there's a full moon there are whale sharks that show up off the coast there. I just wanted to go snorkeling on the reef. I was really tempted to go do the whale shark thing with Dustin, but didn't have the time or money. So we walked around trying to get that set up. We also ate at this outdoor place that served breakfast all day. I got a sweet French toast meal that came with four mighty slices of brilliantly seasoned French toast, eggs, and bacon. The temperature there in the evening is perfect. The next day I went snorkeling, Andy felt it was too expensive and Dustin was going to do the whale shark thing, so I went alone. We took a long boat trip out to a small island called Ranagua, I think. It's a privately owned island that they let people use for a fee. It was an awesome little island and the reef goes right around it. There are a couple of bungalows out there and I found out that they rent one of them out, so people could actually stay on the island. Snorkeling was awesome, as always, but my facial hair kept the mask from sealing well, so I had to deal with salt water up the nose. Dustin let me borrow this bag you could put a normal camera in that sealed up tight. So I used his bag and an old camera of his to take pictures, but it didn't work too well, so I only have a few good pics. We had a guide that took us around the reef. We did one trip on one side of the island, came in and had lunch, and then did the other side of the island. On the second trip I got lost from the group falling this school of dark fish with neon stripes on the edge of their fins. After awhile I swam back to the island. I ended up getting back a little early but had some time to talk to another French Canadian who was there snorkeling because of his wife. They took turns choosing an activity each day, and today was her turn. He was a hockey coach and said water wasn't his thing. Being the smart Alec that I am, I added, unless it's frozen. He laughed and agreed. He said something about how the guy that used to own his team bought the Jazz, or vice versa, or something like that. Anyway, I got the impression he was doing some big-time coaching, but didn't think to ask him which team. The boat ride out and back were so good. I love the ocean. The guide wanted to know where he could get a bag like I had for the camera. He said that the guides drop their phones in the water all the time. He'd lost three in as many weeks. Probably more expensive than getting a bag. That night we spent some more time hanging out on the beach and in the hammocks in front of our hotel. Dustin showed me his pictures from Cuba. We talked some about the probability of finding a wife that would be cool with raising a family abroad. I guess if bending spoons is possible, that might be possible. The next morning Dustin took off early to go hunt whale sharks, and we started heading toward Punta Gorda. Bus rides through Belize are beautiful. We rode out listening to some American tunes on the radio like Chicago, Usher and that “I don't want to fall in love” song. I also heard “Lady in Red” in Spanish in a little tienda earlier that day. It got me wondering how much culture effects are concept of love, romantic love that is. I think the root of it, the heart of it, is basically the same, with some cultural differences in manifestation. I started thinking about how many people there are in the world and that really, once you've honestly found one out of all of them that truly rocks your world, you had better doing something about it (I know, not very profound, but a self-lecture that might do me some good). I thought of Beck's song about finding “true love” which Sun Kil Moon sums up pretty well in a line in one of their songs on April, “Our true love finds us when it is time.” Beck says true love will find you in the end, but that you have to put yourself out their because true love is looking too, and how can it find you if you're not around to be found. For some reason I firmly believe what Beck and Sun Kil Moon say, that our true love finds us when it is time. Even if we are buried somewhere in Belize or Guate, or Provo. I know it sounds really sappy and idealistic, but for some reason it rings true for me. All this push to get out all the time and date and go crazy trying to find someone and smooth them into wanting you doesn't jive. Not that it's bad to be really social, it can be great, but I don't think it guarantees success. There's too much involved. Too many variables for you to get it all figured out in a few weeks of dating a small population of people. Not putting yourself out there at all however, can might keep you from finding or being found when it is time. I love long bus rides through the countryside of Guate and Belize. In Belize there are lots of orange groves and these really cool trees with red or orange flowers. I asked Anela, whom I'll introduce shortly, what the flowery trees were called, but she said she didn't know. So I figured I'd just call them Anela trees.
In Punta Gorda we arrived at the dock where we would take a boat back to Puerto Barrios, Guatemala. They showed us where we could buy tickets for the boat and where we would pay our exit fee and get our passports stamped. I really had to go to the bathroom and they pointed me to a place that didn't actually have one. So I went to the police station and they let me go up these windy stairs into a big sala with a bed in the middle of the floor. I found the bathroom, used it, and split quick. Back at the dock we met Anela, a very nice, very beautiful Belizena who sold the boat tickets and manned a little snack shop. We had a good talk with her while we waited for the boat and the very polychronic immigration office workers. She was so sweet and sincerely interested/interesting. I told her her name was almost cinnamon in Spanish (of course I thought of Buck and his “Cinnamon Girl”). She said my name was easy to remember because she has a friend named Tyler. Michael Jackson was playing on the radio, so I asked her if she liked Michael Jackson, and she kind of looked at me strangely, and then laughed and said that her last name is Jackson and kids used to tease her calling her Michael Jackson. There have been very few anomalous people who have had the force to disrupt the strange pleasure of passing through; she was definitely one of them. I crossed the sea on a small lancha, madly in love with the waves and the sky, soaking my arm in the spray from the boat, composing lines in my mind for sweet Anela in Punta Gorda, Belize. That boat ride has been one of my most favorite moments so far. Man I love the ocean. We got to Puerto Barrios, and ate at a small out-door cafe where I got some tacos and a really good strawberry licuado. The waitress seemed a little distracted, and later confessed that she was. She would occasionally start dancing or singing to the love songs on the radio. I think she was a little tipsy on strong dose of infatuation. We couldn't tell if it was with her boss or someone else .But she was able to serve us and dance and daydream all at the same time just fine. We waited at the bus station until 1:00 AM and caught a bus to Guatemala City. In the station we saw most of Gladiator and Troy in Spanish on TNT. Kind of funny to see that down here. We got to the city at like six in the morning, waited for Burger King to open (it was right at the stop), ate and hung out until eight when we met up with our friends from the capital, picked up our stuff, took a cab ride to the bust station, and started our way up to Santa Clara. The bus ride up in the mountains was a little hairy, but beautiful. Anywhere up here by Atitlan is great. Panajachel is a bigger city, fairly touristy. There are lots of good places around the lake. Santiago Atitlan is also cool, they have a really cool traditional dress there. All of it is very native Guatemalan with beautiful countryside.
Here in Santa Clara we found a hostel, and then the wrong Don Pedro. But today we found the right Don Pedro and should have everything set up to move in with families tomorrow. Don Pedro, or Tat Lu, works in some fields he gets to on horseback (I think), and supposedly I will be able to go to work with him whenever I want. I'm excited to see how things go. I think it was good to be in the town on our own for a couple of days and get to know it well. Now we can move in with families and get used to that. We ran into another gringa here from Virginia working with the Peace Corps. She's been here for a year, and has a year left. She's teaching English in the school. Supposedly there are others around this area too. We ate dinner at this little place that served pizza and hamburgers and shakes. It was up on the second floor balcony area of a big building right in the centro overlooking the main court area. I think I'd heard about it from Andrea so we gave a try and had some pizza and shakes. It was definitely the joven hangout spot. There were teenage kids all over the balcony with their girlfriends. They got a kick out of us being there. The place blasted American music like Knocking on Heaven's Door (a couple versions of that actually), Coldplay, Cranberries, and more. Well, we are here and pretty much set to go. Hope things go really well. I'll try to keep everyone informed. I'm currently trying to find this really cool style of hat they have down here, and some good shoes to work in. It rains pretty often here. A nice rain but with some good thunder and occasional lightning. I've missed real thunderstorms. Right now, at night, I can here all kinds of dogs barking in the streets and confused roosters going off at midnight. Its a really safe tranquilo place. A good place for us to hold up for awhile. We're also excited to take a few trips to the surrounding areas and to places like Antigua or Quetzaltenango. This is a lot to read. Good job if you made it this far. Sorry if it's a little rambley and incoherent. I wrote it in one night and tried to get in as much as I could. Miss you all and hope you're doing well. Keep praying for us and keep in touch too.
We just woke up and there's something making the craziest noise. Like someone sawing a chainsaw in half with a pig. We both agree that nothing posthistoric can make that sound. Maybe it's a chicken and a pig and horse all dying tortuously at once. Anyhow, there's a lot of crazy livestock here. Oh, and Andy loves playing solitaire. Haha. We're off to start our first day with our host families.
For starters, the plane trip was very interesting. I sat next to a lady who said she does neuro-linguistics. Yeah, neuro-linguistics. She's kind of a therapist. She helps rehabilitate addicts or people with behavioral issues. But she also helps people work on building what she called body language rapport with others so that you can communicate quickly via body language and more subliminal messages. A very interesting lady. She talked about making your request of the universe every morning, for her that meant God, and setting up some way of knowing that the universe was working with you. She said that while she was on vacation one time she wanted to find a sand dollar, but she was conflicted because she wasn't sure if she wanted to have to store it and get it home. She ended up finding lots of sand dollars but not taking any home. She said we need to not be conflicted about what we want. We must solidly want it and ask for it, and then it will happen. Then I asked, according to her studies, what she thought about telepathy and telekineses (Nate and I have kind of been experimenting with telepathy a little to see if we can pass each other images or numbers if we concentrate, it's kinda fun). She says she thinks it's real. She also said she knows a guy that took spoon bending classes in Salt Lake and can bend spoons. She also knows a lady who told her son that he needed to behave because she had eyes on the back of her head and always knew what he was up to. He didn't believe her, so to convince him she took out a spoon and told him she would bend it to prove her “supernatural” mother powers. She prayed like crazy it would happen, and it did, and her kid freaked out and believed her. Good trick to remember when I'm a parent: Do what I say, I can bend spoons with my mind. It was a lot of fun talking with her. Some of it was a little hard to swallow, but hey, who knows. I think any of it could be possible. It would be very interesting to hunt down that spoon bending class. Would make a great first date, haha. Andrea, Spencer, Nate, Amy, Catie, Bucketry—you guys should look into that, and then, once you've got it down, go back to scones and drones and really freak them out.
We got into Guatemala City on Friday afternoon and met up with the family of Alonzo, a Guatemalan that lives in Utah and has connections with BYU. They let us leave our bigger bags and my giant sack of books with them while we traveled around and helped us get to the Metro Norte mall where we ate and waited for the bus to Rio Dulce. While waiting at the bus stop I met a Jewish Guatemalan that actually worked for the Jewish embassy here. His great grandfather was a Jew that somehow ended up in Guatemala and married a Guatemalan. Apparently there is a big Jewish community here. He was really nice and helpful. We had a great talk about all kinds of random things, including My Name is Asher Lev, of course. It's interesting how quickly strong bonds of friendship can be formed down here. After just half an hour of chatting he gave me his phone number and told me he wanted me to come down so he could sneak me into Synagogue sometime. He told me to call if we ever needed anything—money or food or if we ever ran into problems with thieves or people trying to hassle us—to call and he would help us with mucho gusto. I really liked him a lot. He was currently in town investigating the murder of a Jewish Guatemalan that was supposedly carried out by Arabs in the area. I never knew the Jewish-Arab conflict extended all the way to Guatemala City. He helped us find the right bus and off we went.
By the time we got on the bus it was already early evening. The nicer buses didn't seem to be coming by so we grabbed whatever we could headed to Rio Dulce. The first while it was pretty empty and we got a nice breeze with the windows open. A Senorita with two ninas was sitting next to us and she struck up a friendly conversation, basically the history of her life and how her and her husband now owned some land out in the campo they were working. The daughters were adorable and lots of fun. They would act like they wanted us to take a picture of them and then would hide their faces just before we'd take one. So any of the pictures I got were pretty blurry. It was a really long bus ride that gradually got more and more uncomfortable as more people crowded on and the roads got bumpier, but it was a great experience and a chance to see the Guatemalan countryside for the first time. We stopped everywhere along the way, in little pueblos or even just the side of the road for whoever was sitting there waiting. A crazy, possibly inappropriate experience to share (too funny to pass up though): Later in the night I really had to use the bathroom. I'd been holding it forever, and this bus had no bathroom and wasn't making any pit stops. I've never been in so much bathroom-related pain in my life. Finally I asked the driver if I could use a bathroom at the next bus stop. We stopped in front of this little restaurant with a couple of ladies sitting on the porch looking our way. I got down and the guy told me to just go. “Aqui no le dan multas como en los estados.” Basically there weren't any bathrooms around and they weren't going to make the whole bus wait long. So I went right there next to the bus in front of some old ladies. It was a moment of extreme desperation in the backwoods of Guatemala. Por favor, no vayan a pensar mal de mi. We laughed about it for awhile. We didn't get into Rio Dulce until nine or so. We hopped off the bus and a guy came up to us and offered a place to stay that we took because it seemed pretty cool and we were tired and didn't want to hunt around (which is probably what he banks on). It was a hostel called Casa Perico that we had to take a lancha (a small motor boat) to get to. It is owned and run by a guy that I think is from Sweden but has lived in Guate for a long time and speaks good Spanish. We stayed the night there and met another friend we spent the night chatting with. Her mom lives in Antigua, which is a really nice/safe area, and had come down to visit her and travel Guatemala a bit. Turns out she found a group of people sailing from Rio Dulce to Miami and stopping in Cuba and a few other places along the way, so she decided to cut her trip a little short and do that. Can't blame her. Sailing to Cuba had me pretty jealous. We talked and shared a bag of pretzels(the place had a restaurant but we showed up too late to catch dinner and just bought a bunch of snacks to hold us over) until around eleven at night. I hadn't slept since Wednesday night and got real drowsy real quick. Sleeping that night was a little crazy. The place sat right on the river and the rooms had roofs but were otherwise completely open. There was crusty mosquito netting for the beds we were reluctant to use because they already had some bugs tangled in them. Pero ni modo. We used them. At one point, before we went to bed, I was reading some Pablo Neruda—I've been working on memorizing “Significa Sombras” at the end of the first book of Residencia en la Tierra—and I looked down and saw the hugest black ant of all time. It was seriously as long as the first half of my index finger and kept stopping, raising its rear and stabbing my bed with its crazy stinger. I swept it off with the spine of Residencia en la Tierra and watched it disappear between a couple boards. Once we turned out the lights it was easier to fall asleep. We woke in the morning (for some reason I naturally wake up really early here, like six in the morning or earlier) without any problems. It was actually a really cool looking place that was a lot of fun to stay at. We took the safest boat we could find from their rickety selection and paddled out to a piece of dock anchored out in Lago Izabal where we did some swimming/bathing before check out. I got my first sunburn from the Guatemalan sun on that dock. Man I'm so white. Oh, funny side note: everyone here thinks I'm a total Spaniard. When we first showed up to the dock to take the lancha to Casa Perico there was a guy just sitting there leaning against a column like he owned the place, or like no one owned the place. When we came up he nodded at me and said, “Puro Barcelona, no?” He thought my hair and beard were straight out of Barcelona. Because people have a hard time pronouncing me name—Talor, Taylor, Toyler?—I thought about just taking on the nickname Barcelona. I've actually started telling people to call me David, my middle name, because that's a name that exists in Spanish. I think Amy Maxwell went by her middle name down here too.
Then we went to take a microbus to El Estor, a little town further inland on the same lake. Andy served in that area on his mission, so we went to visit. It is a beautiful little town right on the lake with lots of friendly people and some good places to stay. Andy knew one of the drivers of the microbuses (basically vans that they cram with way too many people to go fairly short distances) from the ward in El Estor, so we rode with him from Rio Dulce to El Estor. I jokingly told him I would ride on the top with the luggage because it was so crowded and he said that once we got out of town that would be cool, but in town la policia molesta. We rode up front with him, and it wasn't too uncomfortable. I just had to move my leg now and then so he could shift. Sure enough, once we got out into the country, he let me get out and climb up onto the top and ride the rest of the way. In the words of Grandma Evans: Oh my guy! It was too good to describe, but if I could wish one beautiful thing on someone that might be it. We passed through cattle fields and endless fields of banana trees. And me just relaxin on the top, taking in the wind and the sun and the country.
El Estor was lots of fun. We went to church on Sunday and met the ward. The meeting felt amazing. I've always felt the Spirit surprisingly strongly in Spanish wards, but this one was really good. There were to sister missionaries in the ward that we met as well. They seemed to be doing a good job strengthening the ward there. The town was great, but it was baking hot. We made friends with the store owner where the ATM was. He suggested a couple of places with great views of the city and lake where I could sit and write, but we didn't have time to get to them. But the town had such a great vibe, we plan on going back some weekend to spend a little time there. After church we gathered our stuff and started hiking down the dirt road that leads out of town back to Rio Dulce. About fifteen minutes down the road this guy came running down to the road asking if I was a Spanish gypsy. He invited us to come down and talk for awhile. So we did and had a great time. Turns out they've talked to a lot of missionaries and even remember Andy. One of their daughters has actually been accepted to a program where she lives with a family in North Carolina for eight years to go to school and comes back to her home every summer. Then we headed out, hunted down some water at the small shops that line the road, and then waited at a bus stop for a bus or possibly a jalon (a free ride, hitchhiking basically). A couple of taxis came by, but we didn't take them because they were all really expensive. We were headed for the coastal town of Puerto Barrio that you can only get to through Rio Dulce, so we were telling everyone that we were headed for Rio Dulce. Every time a truck passed Andy would head up to the road and put out his thumb. Finally a really nice truck stopped and offered to take us to Rio Dulce, and off we went. That was a really beautiful drive, and really fast too. He took us to a junction where we got a bus for ten quetzales to Puerto Barrios. We made it from El Estor to Puerto Barrios for ten quetz and in really good time. We were proud of ourselves.
The countryside gets more lush and stunning as you approach the coast, or so Lonely Planet accurately describes it. In Puerto Barrios we stumbled across a really nice hotel (well, nice compared to where we'd typically been staying), that had air conditioning (hallelujah) and a nice clean bathroom with a shower and hot water. It also had a huge dining area and a pool where we did some swimming. In the morning they offer a free breakfast buffet which was really good (eggs, black beans, fried plantains, sausage, strawberry licuados). Plus I was able to get some laundry done, and thank goodness because I was in dire need. That night I really wanted to get some sea food, so we hunted around town and actually came across an LDS church with some members hanging out out front. They pointed us to a place right around the corner from where we were staying. We went there and I ordered a chowder-like marisco soup that was much more adventurous than I'd expected (whole clams, shell and all, an entire fish, etc.). They had great licuados and arctic AC. And giant flat screen TV that we watched Man vs Wild on in Spanish. Later that night I read up on Puerto Barrios and saw that there wasn't too much to do in the town and it is usually a little sketchy, so the next morning we headed out to the docks to catch the 10:00 AM boat to Livingston.
Livingston is a crazy town you can only get to by boat. The Garifuna people of Guatemala live there, an African people whose history in Guatemala I'm still not completely clear on. It's a very popular tourist area, kind of a party town. The boat ride over was excellent. It had been way too long since I'd been reunited with the ocean. When we got there, this Garifuna guy, Pedro, took us to a good place to stay (the African Place) and gave us a good rundown of the area. We tried looking for clean water but all of the stores were out, so we just started the long walk up the coast to Siete Alteres, a place with a series of waterfalls and pools to swim in. It was a fabulous hike. We past a number of shops along the way, none of which had water. Finally we found a really nice hotel/restaurant where we got some water and met a couple that was being shown around by a Garifuna guide. The guy gave me this crazy yellow fruit that tasted kind of like a bell pepper and a hundred other things but that totally dried out your mouth. Their guide told us Siete Altares didn't have any waterfalls because it hadn't rained for awhile so we started to head back, but then we decided we'd come so far we might as well go anyway. So we marched on. At the entrance of Siete Altares there was this dude at a little table making this crazy liquor out of roots that smelled up the whole place. He was a Mayan Garifuna mix. We gave him ten quetz and he let us go up. There weren't any waterfalls but there were still a couple of deep pools to swim in and it was a beautiful area. There we first met Anthony the Vietnamese French Canadian. Well, his parents had moved to France from Vietnam and he was born in France shortly after. At some point they moved to Montreal. Anyway, he was there with two friends from Montreal, who were both actually from France and were just studying in Montreal. There were three girls from Denmark there as well that we didn't get to talk to at the time, but ran into later on. Those six were all staying at the same hostel, Hotel Rio Dulce. So we made it a point to stop at the restaurant next to their hostel for dinner that night, and sure enough the three Danish girls were already there eating. We took a table close to them and exchanged glances for awhile before I finally got up and went over to there table to talk (something fairly out of character for me, but which felt fairly natural at the time). They had all recently graduated and, like most Danes, were taking time to travel before doing more school. They were a lot of fun to talk to. They were at a school “studying Spanish” in Mexico for a few months and had a week or so to travel so they had come down to Guatemala to visit a few places. They all spoke pretty good English and were really patient with my questions about how to say things in Danish. Apparently I somehow picked all of the hardest words to pronounce in Danish. Every time I asked a word they would say, oh, that's the hardest word to say in Dannish, oh, that's the second hardest. I guess they have a few letters that don't exist in any other language that are really hard to say. Apparently red is the hardest Danish word to pronounce. Moon is also hard to say. One of them was really into music so we talked about all kinds of bands and foreign films, etc. This didn't all come up at that one dinner meeting, but throughout the next couple of days as we traveled together. My food came eventually and started to get cold so I excused myself after inviting them to come with us to see some traditional Garifuna music. We didn't see them again until we ended up on the same boat out of Livingston the next morning. Anthony and his two lady friends showed up at the restaurant too and we talked with them. There was a short power outage we weathered on their balcony and then went down to a street cafe and had some cokes. He tried a shot of this crazy Garifuna drink. We were all planning on taking a boat out at 9:30 AM the next morning back to Rio Dulce to go to Tikal, so we decided to go together. Oh, earlier that night they had left their laundry with the hostel and they told them to come back for it at nine that night. But because the power went out the lady went home without doing it. This wild Garifuna guy came by and started asking everyone for help to open the laundry or when the laundry would be done. The restaurant next door seemed to be in charge but wouldn't do anything about it until morning. The guy tried to get us to pay him for helping. There are a lot of people there that try to beg money off the tourists or sell them random things or services they might or might not actually end up providing. But most were buena gente. There laundry wasn't done before they had to leave in the morning so they through it wet into some bags and took it with them like that. We did end up going to the bar where they supposedly play Garifuna music that night (lots of percussion on drums and even turtle shells, and blowing through conk shells, etc.). These two girls from England gave us a flier for it. Apparently they'd been living and working there for awhile. We went, probably later than we should have, and there wasn't much going on because of the power outage, but they did end up playing some Garifuna beats and I got some mango juice. The two girls from England had been traveling all over together for years. They'd been to Nepal and all kinds of other places and ended up in Livingston for awhile. There was a guy there from New Mexico also just traveling around the world hippie-style. There was a Guatemalan guy there who could play guitar and sing real well, even drunk. We left there after a short while and went to bed for the night. In the morning we got our boat tickets, bought some pan dulce to tie us over, and went to pay homage to the sad crocodiles they have in these tiny holding areas in the park before taking our boat up the river and into lake Izabal to Rio Dulce. It was a very scenic trip through canyons and jungle. A lot of it reminded me of air boat rides in Florida. Finally we made it to Rio Dulce and decided to all ride together on the same bus, the Danes and Canadians and us. We got tickets for a nice air conditioned bus from Rio Dulce to Flores for 3:00 PM and then went to eat at a dock on the lake. That's where I did a lot of getting to know the Danish girls. They were too much fun. We were told that our bus was having problems and would be late. It didn't end up coming until after five. The Canadians got separated from us looking for an ATM. Us and the Danes went down to a park under the bridge to be in the shade. We all met up back at the bus station after awhile. The attendant said it should be there soon, but then jumped on a bus and left us sitting there alone. But it turns out that he went to help the other bus and bring it to us. Finally it arrived and we got on but it continued to break down periodically throughout the trip. We didn't get to the island of Flores until late. We all got separated at the bus station by a swarm of taxi drivers. We met up with the Danes again after getting hostels and had dinner with them. We all ordered spaghetti and spent our last hour or so enjoying each others company. They had already been to Tikal and were taking a bus from Flores to Mexico the next morning at five. We said our goodbyes, but not before writing down some music suggestions and emails to find each other on Facebook. Our Canadian friends had completely vanished. We had planned on going to Tikal with them, but now we had no way of finding them before morning. We took a stroll around town up to the top of the hill where there was a big catholic church and some kids playing basketball. Then we went down to some docks on the lake and hung out for a bit before going to sleep in this prison-like hostel owned by a man older than most trees. But we slept like nenes and woke early in the morning and headed to Tikal. Tikal was amazing. I thought my vertigo would get the best of me, but it didn't cause me too many problems, nothing like Angel's Landing and its three foot wide razor backs where I had to hold up in the roots of a tree at the top and keep thinking about all the poetry there was left to read and write in the world to muster up enough guts to get down. I'm not as sissy as that makes me sound; heights just make me wobbly and weak in the knees. I think I understand why the concept of vertigo shows up in Octavio Paz's love poems so frequently, and understand a little better the line “the momentary vertigo of disbelief” in Nicole Krauss's “Valparaiso.” Anyhow, Tikal was superb. We did the whole hike on empty stomachs because we didn't have time to eat. Eventually we found our French friends and rode back with them on the bus to Flores. I had a lot of time to talk to Anthony then. He was very interesting, an incredibly sincere, honest and nice person. He has his masters in Aeronautic engineering (or something like that), speaks English, French, and Vietnamese fluently. He told me that he also writes music, but the hardest part for him is writing lyrics. He knew I was in Guatemala to write poetry so we talked a little about poetry and how he could work on writing lyrics. I gave him some good poets to study and some bands with lyrics I really like. Then he took out his ipod touch and let me listen to a song he had written. It blew me away. Seriously, the kids got skills. He plays piano, guitar, and works some sweet techno. The song had a very Muse feel to it so I asked him if he liked Muse and he said Muse was one of his biggest influences. He currently plays in a band for fun, but wants to do his own thing eventually. He is also working on his drawing/painting skills and learning how to use photoshop for the heck of it and all kinds of other things. He said he doesn't think he'll get his PhD because he has too many “projects” he's working on. A real nice, well-rounded and well-grounded kid. He wants me to come up to Montreal and visit him there. He says its great during certain summer months because there are music festivals and lots of people play free shows. He said he saw Bireli Lagrene live for free in France and it blew his mind. Real cool kid. We talked a little about Pho too. Gotta talk about Pho, so delicious. We also exchanged info to keep in touch. The girls he was with were really cool too, but didn't speak as much English, and my one semester of French was worse then their English. Their English wasn't terrible, but still enough to be somewhat of an obstacle. We all had a good time together though. We hopped off the bus at our stop, and that was the last we saw of them. They are still in Guate for a little while. They were going to fly from Flores to Guatemala City and visit Antigua and Quetzaltenango before heading back to Canada. (Antigua is a great place for travels, really clean and safe and also very historic. We haven't been quite yet, but everything we read and everyone we talk to says the same. There are also volcanoes close by you can visit. We are excited to take a weekend trip there sometime. I hear they have a number of good used bookstores I definitely want to check out.) I really think I might take him up on his invite to Montreal. It's weird yet amazing how firm these fast relationships on the road have been. I wonder about the impact we had on one another and how long it will last before becoming a weak inkling, a feeling so thoroughly assimilated it is no longer a specific memory but a means of interpreting new experiences, perhaps like most of the earliest years of childhood. I remember reading part of an interview of Roberto Bolano where he talked about meeting someone briefly. I'd have to read it again to quote it justly. He did some great interviews before passing away. I still can't believe he's gone. And Lorca and Neruda. I remember when I first heard that Lorca had been assassinated. It hurt for weeks as though he were family, or though his passing were something recent. Somehow it was something close to me, something that still hurts when I think about it. It's still strange why it feels so personal to me. We've met so many interesting people but had so little time with them. I think some how the scarcity of time makes our experiences together more valuable and potent. Somehow there are certain people, certain writers, musicians, coworkers, classmates, fellow travels I seem to get along with instantly, as though in finding them I'm remembering them, recalling something precious and lost, something that works so well it seems it must have always been part of me.
We were able to make it from Flores to Dangriga, Belize that same day. We had to rent a microbus just for us, kind of pricey, and then the driver tried to back out on us when we were almost there because he didn't want to have to wait on the road construction going on. We talked him into taking us the rest of the way and we crossed the border around fiveish. All that was running at that time from the border to other cities were taxis. So we took a taxi to Belmopan where we hopped a bus to Dangriga. We got to Dangriga pretty late, like nineish, and the bus driver helped us find someone who took us to a local hostel. I took a picture of the name of it because I figured Aaron, Nate, Spencer, etc. might appreciate it. The hotel “Double H.” Anyway, the room wasn't too nice, but we had a nice balcony we could see the beach from and catch a good sea breeze. Man, the sky in Belize looks just like the sky in Florida. It felt a lot like being in the keys. The sky especially felt like home. We went down to this restaurant close to the bus stop to have dinner. Houston and the Lakers was on TV. I got some really tasty fried chicken. Belize has a good amount of Mayan people, but lots of Africans as well, and the national language is English. And strangely, most of the shops are run by Asians. We walked back and sat on our balcony for awhile and I did some writing. People kept mentioning this place called Placencia. So the next day we took a long walk on the beach and got some breakfast and then used a special shaped stick to find where the internet was buried and looked up Placencia. It looked pretty awesome so we took a bus to Independence and hopped a lancha from there to Placencia. In the bus station at Dangriga we met Dustin, a guy from the states who was taking a year or so to backpack around Central America. He reminded me so much of Dad's brother John, in appearance and especially his mannerisms. He was probably early forties, late thirties. Real nice guy. He was also headed to Placencia, so we went together. He'd been to a lot of places, including Cuba, which really interested me. He said if I could get to Mexico, it would only cost about $500 to spend four or five days in Cuba. He also told me there's a guide for hitchhiking on sailboats around the world. He really shouldn't have told me that. Haha. He was really nice and talkative. All three of us stayed at Lydia's Guest House in Placencia. Beautiful Placencia de mis suenos. That was an awesome spot. It's a really thin peninsula with a main road and then a famous sidewalk that runs right along the beach and most hotels, restaurants and shops. There are lots of hotels and restaurants right on the beach with chairs and tables, but the whole beach is public. We spent the first evening just hanging out on some chairs under some coconut trees right on the beach. I took a quick dip to get salty and say hello to the ocean. Dustin had come to do some diving with whale sharks. I guess during the spring and summer whenever there's a full moon there are whale sharks that show up off the coast there. I just wanted to go snorkeling on the reef. I was really tempted to go do the whale shark thing with Dustin, but didn't have the time or money. So we walked around trying to get that set up. We also ate at this outdoor place that served breakfast all day. I got a sweet French toast meal that came with four mighty slices of brilliantly seasoned French toast, eggs, and bacon. The temperature there in the evening is perfect. The next day I went snorkeling, Andy felt it was too expensive and Dustin was going to do the whale shark thing, so I went alone. We took a long boat trip out to a small island called Ranagua, I think. It's a privately owned island that they let people use for a fee. It was an awesome little island and the reef goes right around it. There are a couple of bungalows out there and I found out that they rent one of them out, so people could actually stay on the island. Snorkeling was awesome, as always, but my facial hair kept the mask from sealing well, so I had to deal with salt water up the nose. Dustin let me borrow this bag you could put a normal camera in that sealed up tight. So I used his bag and an old camera of his to take pictures, but it didn't work too well, so I only have a few good pics. We had a guide that took us around the reef. We did one trip on one side of the island, came in and had lunch, and then did the other side of the island. On the second trip I got lost from the group falling this school of dark fish with neon stripes on the edge of their fins. After awhile I swam back to the island. I ended up getting back a little early but had some time to talk to another French Canadian who was there snorkeling because of his wife. They took turns choosing an activity each day, and today was her turn. He was a hockey coach and said water wasn't his thing. Being the smart Alec that I am, I added, unless it's frozen. He laughed and agreed. He said something about how the guy that used to own his team bought the Jazz, or vice versa, or something like that. Anyway, I got the impression he was doing some big-time coaching, but didn't think to ask him which team. The boat ride out and back were so good. I love the ocean. The guide wanted to know where he could get a bag like I had for the camera. He said that the guides drop their phones in the water all the time. He'd lost three in as many weeks. Probably more expensive than getting a bag. That night we spent some more time hanging out on the beach and in the hammocks in front of our hotel. Dustin showed me his pictures from Cuba. We talked some about the probability of finding a wife that would be cool with raising a family abroad. I guess if bending spoons is possible, that might be possible. The next morning Dustin took off early to go hunt whale sharks, and we started heading toward Punta Gorda. Bus rides through Belize are beautiful. We rode out listening to some American tunes on the radio like Chicago, Usher and that “I don't want to fall in love” song. I also heard “Lady in Red” in Spanish in a little tienda earlier that day. It got me wondering how much culture effects are concept of love, romantic love that is. I think the root of it, the heart of it, is basically the same, with some cultural differences in manifestation. I started thinking about how many people there are in the world and that really, once you've honestly found one out of all of them that truly rocks your world, you had better doing something about it (I know, not very profound, but a self-lecture that might do me some good). I thought of Beck's song about finding “true love” which Sun Kil Moon sums up pretty well in a line in one of their songs on April, “Our true love finds us when it is time.” Beck says true love will find you in the end, but that you have to put yourself out their because true love is looking too, and how can it find you if you're not around to be found. For some reason I firmly believe what Beck and Sun Kil Moon say, that our true love finds us when it is time. Even if we are buried somewhere in Belize or Guate, or Provo. I know it sounds really sappy and idealistic, but for some reason it rings true for me. All this push to get out all the time and date and go crazy trying to find someone and smooth them into wanting you doesn't jive. Not that it's bad to be really social, it can be great, but I don't think it guarantees success. There's too much involved. Too many variables for you to get it all figured out in a few weeks of dating a small population of people. Not putting yourself out there at all however, can might keep you from finding or being found when it is time. I love long bus rides through the countryside of Guate and Belize. In Belize there are lots of orange groves and these really cool trees with red or orange flowers. I asked Anela, whom I'll introduce shortly, what the flowery trees were called, but she said she didn't know. So I figured I'd just call them Anela trees.
In Punta Gorda we arrived at the dock where we would take a boat back to Puerto Barrios, Guatemala. They showed us where we could buy tickets for the boat and where we would pay our exit fee and get our passports stamped. I really had to go to the bathroom and they pointed me to a place that didn't actually have one. So I went to the police station and they let me go up these windy stairs into a big sala with a bed in the middle of the floor. I found the bathroom, used it, and split quick. Back at the dock we met Anela, a very nice, very beautiful Belizena who sold the boat tickets and manned a little snack shop. We had a good talk with her while we waited for the boat and the very polychronic immigration office workers. She was so sweet and sincerely interested/interesting. I told her her name was almost cinnamon in Spanish (of course I thought of Buck and his “Cinnamon Girl”). She said my name was easy to remember because she has a friend named Tyler. Michael Jackson was playing on the radio, so I asked her if she liked Michael Jackson, and she kind of looked at me strangely, and then laughed and said that her last name is Jackson and kids used to tease her calling her Michael Jackson. There have been very few anomalous people who have had the force to disrupt the strange pleasure of passing through; she was definitely one of them. I crossed the sea on a small lancha, madly in love with the waves and the sky, soaking my arm in the spray from the boat, composing lines in my mind for sweet Anela in Punta Gorda, Belize. That boat ride has been one of my most favorite moments so far. Man I love the ocean. We got to Puerto Barrios, and ate at a small out-door cafe where I got some tacos and a really good strawberry licuado. The waitress seemed a little distracted, and later confessed that she was. She would occasionally start dancing or singing to the love songs on the radio. I think she was a little tipsy on strong dose of infatuation. We couldn't tell if it was with her boss or someone else .But she was able to serve us and dance and daydream all at the same time just fine. We waited at the bus station until 1:00 AM and caught a bus to Guatemala City. In the station we saw most of Gladiator and Troy in Spanish on TNT. Kind of funny to see that down here. We got to the city at like six in the morning, waited for Burger King to open (it was right at the stop), ate and hung out until eight when we met up with our friends from the capital, picked up our stuff, took a cab ride to the bust station, and started our way up to Santa Clara. The bus ride up in the mountains was a little hairy, but beautiful. Anywhere up here by Atitlan is great. Panajachel is a bigger city, fairly touristy. There are lots of good places around the lake. Santiago Atitlan is also cool, they have a really cool traditional dress there. All of it is very native Guatemalan with beautiful countryside.
Here in Santa Clara we found a hostel, and then the wrong Don Pedro. But today we found the right Don Pedro and should have everything set up to move in with families tomorrow. Don Pedro, or Tat Lu, works in some fields he gets to on horseback (I think), and supposedly I will be able to go to work with him whenever I want. I'm excited to see how things go. I think it was good to be in the town on our own for a couple of days and get to know it well. Now we can move in with families and get used to that. We ran into another gringa here from Virginia working with the Peace Corps. She's been here for a year, and has a year left. She's teaching English in the school. Supposedly there are others around this area too. We ate dinner at this little place that served pizza and hamburgers and shakes. It was up on the second floor balcony area of a big building right in the centro overlooking the main court area. I think I'd heard about it from Andrea so we gave a try and had some pizza and shakes. It was definitely the joven hangout spot. There were teenage kids all over the balcony with their girlfriends. They got a kick out of us being there. The place blasted American music like Knocking on Heaven's Door (a couple versions of that actually), Coldplay, Cranberries, and more. Well, we are here and pretty much set to go. Hope things go really well. I'll try to keep everyone informed. I'm currently trying to find this really cool style of hat they have down here, and some good shoes to work in. It rains pretty often here. A nice rain but with some good thunder and occasional lightning. I've missed real thunderstorms. Right now, at night, I can here all kinds of dogs barking in the streets and confused roosters going off at midnight. Its a really safe tranquilo place. A good place for us to hold up for awhile. We're also excited to take a few trips to the surrounding areas and to places like Antigua or Quetzaltenango. This is a lot to read. Good job if you made it this far. Sorry if it's a little rambley and incoherent. I wrote it in one night and tried to get in as much as I could. Miss you all and hope you're doing well. Keep praying for us and keep in touch too.
We just woke up and there's something making the craziest noise. Like someone sawing a chainsaw in half with a pig. We both agree that nothing posthistoric can make that sound. Maybe it's a chicken and a pig and horse all dying tortuously at once. Anyhow, there's a lot of crazy livestock here. Oh, and Andy loves playing solitaire. Haha. We're off to start our first day with our host families.
Friday, May 8, 2009
Placencia, Belize
Now we are in Placencia, town at the end of a long, skinny peninsula on the coast of Belize. It's a beautiful and really chill spot. I did some snorkeling today out at a reef that surrounds a little island. This has been a great place to spend a couple of days. We'll start making our way towrds Atitlan tomorrow, hopefully get their by Monday. Once I'm there I'll be able to write some real posts and put up pics.
Thursday, May 7, 2009
Belize
Well, we are in Belize now in a town called Dangriga. Tikal was amazing. I'll put up pictures of it as soon as I can. We were able to make it from Flores to Dangriga the same day. The sky and weather here are just like Florida. It feels like being in the keys. It feels so good. I love the salty air. Our place has a little balcony we sat out on last night and watched the ocean and let the air salt our souls. We'll probably leave town today and head further south. Sorry these posts have been so quick and random.
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
El Estor was a beautiful little town on lake Izabal. The ride out was amazing. Andy knew the guy that drove the microbus from his mission and once we were far enough out of the city he let me climb up and ride on the luggage rack. How I wish I´d had my camera then. We caught a ride in the back of a nice pick up that took us halfway to Puerto barrios and then took a bus the rest of the way. The countryside gets really lush as you get closer to the coast. We stayed one night in a really nice place in Puerto Barrios and then took a boat to Livingston where the Garifuna people live. We had some fun there and met up with a seven other young tourists from Canada, France, and Denmark that we a traveling with to Flores today to see Tikal. The bus we will be takng had troubles with two tires so it will be arriving a little late, so we are waiting for it to get here and using internet. Andy and I are the only ones that speak spanish in our little party so we´ve kind of become the offical translators/guides. It is hot and sweaty all the time. You pretty much get used to it and it feels normal. The bus we´re taking now will be airconditioned and first class so that will be nice. Oh, we took a boat from livingston up to rio dulce and that was great trip. Guatemala reminds me a lot of Florida. We´ve had a great time, been a lot of places and met a lot of really cool people. I know these posts are short and shallow, but I will write better ones when i´m in santa clara and have time. Some more pics--
Saturday, May 2, 2009
Well we are in Guaemala. We got into the city and met up with a really great family of members that is related to someone we know at BYU. They helped us get started. We rode a long bus to rio dulce and stayed in a hostile on the river. It was pretty sweet. I have a lot to report about this part of the trip. We met some really cool people and had some crazy experiences. Here are some pictures. I´ll write more later, I promise. We´re off to eat and head to El Estor. Chao.
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