Maxie Trax

Tonight Megan and I learned how to make tortillas! Bety (mom of the family, and Carol’s cousin) was kind enough to give us a lesson in tortilla making and even demonstrated how to make a pupusa. After a few attempts, Meg and I got pretty decent at patting out our tortillas, and needless to say, we were quite proud of ourselves. We also have some delicious sounding pupusa recipes, so we hope our friends at home are ready to do some taste-testing!

The most valuable rooster I’ve ever met!

Face-off

Late this afternoon we headed up into the mountains around San Miguel (oh-so-fortunately escaping the 40 degree heat of the city!) to the cute little town of Alegria with the whole Monge-Morales family. We first stopped at a lovely little garden cafe to check out the view and try some of the local coffee and sweets. …and then we were brought around back…where there must have been at least a hundred roosters, all in cages. Apparently this is where roosters are kept for the local cock-fighting tradition. We didn’t go to a fight, but we did get to meet a bird responsible for over $8000 of winnings the previous week. Megan thought she was pretty tough, but still not sure who I’d put my money on here…

Megan, Arbeth, and me at the cathedral in San Miguel, El Salvador

For our few days and El Salvador, Megan and I are lucky enough to get to stay with my friend (from previous Australian adventures) Carol’s family in San Miguel. Arbeth took us around town on our first morning to show us the sights and make sure that we tried all of the local flavours. Below you can see our spread of local delicacies!

In the afternoon we headed to the beach with Arbeth’s boyfriend and a couple of her girlfriends to relax in the sun and sand. We hung out at La Tortuga Verde – a newish eco-hotel run by an ambitious American expat who, among other things, is trying to start a sea turtle conservation program (we’ve been invited back to do some beach patrolling and gardening…along with all our friends!). Anyway, the pacific waters were beautiful, we dined on fresh-caught fish, and enjoyed this gorgeous sunset over the ocean. To end the evening, I got to join in on a little family/community pick-up soccer game in the park. A great first day in El Salvador!

It’s time for me to say goodbye to Guatemala for the last time on this trip. What a fantastic country. Rich in indigenous culture, beautiful landscapes, friendly people, and always interesting adventures. I’ve come to like making lists of the goods, bads, and bests of the countries I’ve visited, so here’s to Guatemala:

• Good
  • Chicken buses
    • As I already wrote, the chicken buses are fantastic!
  • Tortillas
    • After returning from Mexico, my appreciation of Guatemalan tortillas was renewed. It’s so nice to be able to buy a stack of freshly baking tortillas from just about every other open door you pass by on the street. Sure they’re a bit stiff and awkward, but it’s definitely more of a heart-warming, cultural experience!
• Bad
  • Garbage
    • Though Guatemala is full of beautiful vistas throughout the highlands, the views are often obscured by garbage. Lots and lots of garbage, everywhere. Garbage cans are a rarity in cities, and the common practice on buses is to throw your trash out the window. Occasionally you see signs indicating that dumping garbage there is illegal and come with fines…but without fail you find the largest garbage piles around these same warnings.
  • Pee smell
    • More than anywhere else I’ve been, Guatemala seems to smell strongly of stale urine. It seems that peeing on the street here might be more common than elsewhere (it’s probably safe to say I’ve seen at least one man peeing on the sidewalk every day). I’m sure this gets a bit better with the rainy season though…
• Best
  • Scenery
    • Though I’ve definitely seen some great sights in Mexico and Belize, I just don’t think the beautiful mountainous highlands, punctuated every once and a while by protruding volcanoes, can be beat. Riding on a chicken bus with the wind blowing through your hair, winding up and down the zigzagging highland roads is unforgettable (sorry, maybe a little cheesy).
  • Culture
    • Maybe it’s because I spent so much of my time down here in Guatemala, but I am truly enamoured with the local culture. The indigenous culture is just so alive in the highlands, and is integrated so smoothly (well, seemingly, at least, as long as you don’t dig too much into the history and poverty?) into bustling city life. It’s always fascinating to see traditionally dressed Mayan women wandering around the city, yet still preserving so much of their heritage.

Do not change money without being prepared beforehand. As we were rushed in and out of the Guatemalan customs on our way to El Salvador on our Ticabus trip, we needed to change our Quetzales to American Dollars (the currency used in El Salvador). Unfortunately as we had left at 4am this morning, we were sleeping on the bus and hadn’t got our affairs in order. So, standing in a crowd of about 10 heckling money changers (a clever tactic), we tried to count up all our Qs to change, for what seemed like a pretty good rate, into dollars…but got really ripped off. Unfortunately with all the haste to get back onto our bus that was trying to pull away, we didn’t do the math in our heads, and were short-changed by about 40%, which I realized when our bus had already left. So, when going to change money at the border from street changers, count what you have beforehand, and work out approximately how much you should get! Don’t trust them to give you a fair deal. This all seems like common sense, of course, but it can be easy to lose your wits and go with the flow.

So we decided to spend another day in Guatemala City on our way to El Salvador so that I could get my laptop repaired (cheap down here, probably more that my computer is worth to get it fixed back home). We weren’t really looking forward to spending more time in this dirty, smelly, noisy, dangerous…you get the idea…city, but it turned into a pretty interesting day. I ended up chatting for a while with the computer repair guy, Luis, when I dropped of my computer (he is from Columbia and came to Guatemala 40 years ago…he would like to retire soon and travel up to Canada and then down through South America), and when I came back to pick it up he asked if we would go out to lunch with him. He ended up giving us a fairly detailed tour around the city in his SUV, and bought us Chinese take-out food (random…) that we ate for lunch out at his house, which is in a suburb called San Cristobal. He also generously offered us a place to stay in his upstairs apartment, but as we already had a place to stay in the city, we declined. All in all an interesting experience though, and in the end I got a free computer repair in exchange for my cell phone (which I wanted to get rid of before leaving the country) and met a new friend!

Everyone needs a piñata. And here in Guatemala, everyone can have one! Much to our delight, Megan and I stumbled upon the piñata district of Guatemala City. So many piñata stores selling so many battable life-sized (or larger than life-sized) crepe-papered candy cages. I just want to shine up my bat and get crackin!

Going for a roundabout paddle up the stream from our hostel

Hm, what to say about Rio Dulce…Casa Perico is a great place to relax for a few days, and that’s just what we did. Though first, to get there, we took a boat trip up the Rio Dulce from Livingston, which was really beautiful with hundreds of brown pelicans, terns, gulls, and other seabirds flying through a steep-sided canyon. Unfortunately the weather wasn’t great and I don’t have any nice photos to post, but I’ll have to trust you to picture it for yourself!

Sunday, March 14, 7:42 am, Casa Perico, Rio Dulce, Guatemala

Sitting here on the beautiful Rio Dulce in Guatemala, I bid a sad farewell (at least temporarily, until I can find a computer repair place) to my trusted netbook. As you can see, it has had better days, and I think at this point it deserves a bit of a rest…so that it remains (mostly) in one piece with the screen still attached (though hanging by a thread…or something). It seems like the hinge is broken, and just as I was getting ready to do a makeshift crazy glue (Colo Loco!) repair, things disconnect to a state beyond repair. Blogging may be on hold until future notice (hence using it’s last breaths of life to catch up on over a month of posts…just the kick in the butt I needed!).

Oh Caribbean! It’s a different world out here. We’re still in Guatemala, in the town of Livingston, but the culture is of the Garifuna people. There is nothing much reminiscent here of the traditional Mayan culture that we left behind in the Western Highlands. I’m most excited about the food – tasty spicy Caribbean fare with fluffy wheat tortillas, saucy meat, and the freshest of fish…heaven!! You’ve got to try the traditional plantain/seafood soup called Tapado…que rico! Unfortunately I was pretty disappointed because we weren’t able to find any of the local Punta music (island reggae-type beats) during our visit, but I guess that means we’ll just have to come back another time!