So, a week´s gone by

So far, things are going pretty well. I started volunteering today with a women´s weaving collective called Trama, which was started after the civil war, when countless indigenous women were left alone (thanks to the systematic violence of the government troops) and impoverished because of the violence. WHat they did in response was form a weaving collective and school as a means of economic and social support. We´ll be seeing what things they need me to do.

In addition, this Saturday I will start tutoring a local with his English. He´s fluent, he just needs help with vocabulary and whathaveyou. Sounds fun.

Currently we´re trying out a local apartment with one American roommate, and the rest are all Guatemalan. That swhould hopefully mean some degree of authenticity. So far it´s alright, everyone seems nice for the most part, and they tend to be quite social, it appears. There are a few problems, however. Everyone seems to be allergic to washing their dishes, and the sink is therfore rendered absolutely disgusting. On top of that, on occasion the water goes out, and, as has been the case in the rest of Xela, we lose power pretty much every day for some time. Apparently the government of Xela is trying to fix shit and that means some parts of the city lose power at different parts of the day. Who knows what they´re up to...

Weird things have happened, mainly related to drama at the hostel where we were staying until recently. Mostly resulting in two people who are mentally unstable to begin with going completely batshit. The first guy, César, I didn´t know very well, so I will refer you to latinamericanrompings.blogspot.com to get the lowdown about this dude.

The second incident involved a whacked out old American thinking someone stole some of his food and WIGGING THE FUCK OUT at the poor little Mayan women who work at the hostel. IN response, our good friend Pablo tried to be like, "you don´t talk to them this way." So cantankerous bastard tries to start some shit with Pablo, and Pablo´s all, you´re old man, I´m not going to start with you...

I met the old guy at Vrisa books and he seemed semireasonable, but when you´re in a bookstore talking about Hunter S. Thompson and Kerouac with a bunch of old Gonzo beatniks, we´re on the same page because we´re only talking about one thing.

Old Bastard gets back to the hostel and starts screaming for Pablo, challenging him to a fight. All the guys in the hostel did what we could to prevent it, and nothing happened. They called the owner, and the curmudgeonly gringo was kicked out...but came back later that night and moved out the next morning. Good riddance....

Also, WEIRDEST thing in the world happened to me when I was looking for this place that apparently hires gringos. I walk into a tienda and asked where it was. The lady (wrongly) said that the restaurant didn´t exist. I thanked them, we did the whole "Adios/chau" thing, and there was this large Guatemalan fellow in the tienda, looked kind of like he could have been a professional wrestler, really excitedly says "chau," proceds to do the handshake/high five combo, then the handshake/highfive combo into the one armed hug, then to the full-on bear-hug that ended in being shaken up and down, before being officially welcomed to Guatemala.

It took me a few minutes to recover from that one, and after inspection, realized that he was really just a genuinely friendly guy really excited to welcome a gringo to his country. I was kind of happy.

We also said goodbye to Pablo, mainly by making a big dinner (complete with liquor filled pineapples) and a T-shirt we all signed that said "I Love Gringos". So that was fun.

As I said further up, we recently moved into an apartment. It´s alright. THey´re fun dudes and came to the Nuevos Horizontes benefit Halloween party.

Ah, yes, the Halloween party. I was sad not to be back in the states for Halloween because apparently both the Catholics AND the Evangelicals here had officially denounced the holiday. We need a pagan revival here, this religious psychosis (majority Evangelical) has got to go.

But, Halloween was fun. Nuevos Horizontes, the first battered women´s shelter in Guatemala, held a benefit party. Me and Michelle went dressed as Peter Pan and Tinkerbell, so that was lots of fun. Lots of cool costumes, met some really cool people there. Including a fantastic Fidel Castro, and an amazing Penguin, and my friend Chris as the most amazing Michael Phelps you can imagine. Also, when you put fresh fruit in a spiked fruit punch, it soaks up all the alcohol...

Anyway, we move on to Día de los Muertos. Me and Michelle, yesterday morning, went to the graveyard in Xela to dig the festivities.

First of all, there´s one graveyard for the whole bloody city. It´s HUGE, and the way they bury their dead puts ours to shame. I saw minipyramids, people, and miniature cathedrals!!!!

So, we walked around, and getting through the street to the cemetary was made difficult by the transport of every market vendor and beggar in the city to this one artery to the cemetary. Once in, however, we were rewarded by a great big field with lots of room to roam around...

And watch people sweep old stuff off of the graves (the tombs are kind of above ground), putting new stuff on to make it pretty, and just generally hanging out and keeping the graves nice-looking. Some people were actually eating at the graves, I guess, to be with family.

Another interesting part of the festivities was the presence of lots of children running around flying kites. Apparently it´s all part of the tradition. Meanwhile, on our way back to the town center, amidst nearly getting knocked over by women shorter than Michelle with baskets on their heads, we ran into our friend Julia, from the hostel. She´s a Swiss girl, who is working at a clinic, and apparently the family of people she works with gave her a full-on Mayan woman outfit, so she was walking around dressed up as a genuine Mayan Woman!!!! This tall, blonde Anglo-European person, dressed as a MAYAN! It was almost hilarious!

Then, later yesterday, my life got even weirder, as someone I recognized from AU but hadn´t met until yesterday, walked in and sat down. I´d seen him pretty consistently since my freshman year, and the introduction was appropriately awkward. Oh well, there´s a new contact in Xela that can become advantageous.

As for the rest of yesterday and today, there´s not too much that can be said. I´ve been trying to change damaged 100 Quetzal bills after I put them in my shoe to prevent theft...I´ve already changed 2, with two to go. In addition to that, I´ve been reading from Hunter S. Thompson´s The Great Shark Hunt whenever I can, which means whenver the city doesn´t kill the power, which is a collection of lots of published and unpublished pieces from the journalistic aspect of his career. I find it fantastically entertaining and interesting. It´s also long, which is good.

Anyway, that´s it for now. My Habitat for Humanity position should be starting soon, and hopefully I´ll actually teach English next week instead of getting left out of the loop by the school´s brainless, dickless director. He´s kind of a schmuck, but if he´s going to pay me, I´m okay with it. We´ll see.

Xela and the worst day of travel of all time

Well, the good news is that I made it to Xela in one piece (barely) on the scariest bus ride of my life. The bad news is that I, in my infinate supply of wonderful luck, got robbed before the bus even left Guatemala City (which is a toilet that should be burned to the ground). These bastards pulled a fantastic scam on me, playing on my understanding that Guatemalan police are ridiculous and poke through everything because they´re corrupt bastards. Long story short, the robbers (who weren´t cops, or posing as cops, but rather as ticket takers for the bus) told me that because we had to go through a police checkpoint, all of our stuff had to be stored on the inside racks. I saw no one else holding their bags, so I fell for it. Meanwhile, they had one guy handing out shit to sell or whatever as one distraction, and a guy in front of me who spoke English pretending to be real nice to me so we were talking and evidently while this was happening they rooted through my bag and took my knife, camera, and iPod. My 2nd camera and my iPod, GONE. Son of a bitch. I realized this, however, as I was about to take my malaria pill (after we passed an actual police checkpoint but they didn´t do SHIT), then, after a brief freakout, my attention was diverted by the fact that the bus I was on (the stereotypical chicken bus with NO safety features) was speeding up a mountain and overtaking EVERY vehicle on the highway and taking curves like a Formula 1 racer...holy SHIT it was terrifying.

The day began quite interesting as well. I barely caught the 6am bus out of Esquipulas, and then we were held up for about 20 minutes while the ticket taker got into a fight with some guy outside, and since he was smaller, he was struggling. He got in a few good head kicks, but unfortunately the other guy had a death grip on this poor bastard´s nuts. But, after a while, nobody got seriously hurt, and we were on our way. We got to Guate more or less when I figured, and then I took a cab to the bus station to Xela, and it was then that I got screwed. Fortunately, I got to Xela in one piece, nothing else was lost, and I´m hoping to get some shit together here. There´s a Habitat for Humanity opportunity that looks really cool- I get to travel around Guatemala and interview locals about what they want in their new habitats. They pay for my travel and give me a stipend for food and lodging when I travel, which is cool, so we´ll see what happens there. Other options include any one of a million volunteer opportunities and teaching English. We´ll see what happens.

It is nice to be back here, and the hostel is sort of a family- last night we had a communal dinner with 10 people and that´s normal at this hostel, so I¨m looking forward to some good times.

That´s it for now.

Hi Everybody

Hey everyone!

I am now in Esquipulas, Guatemala, just inside the border. I got here today after an arduous bus trip that started at 6:30 this morning in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. Try pronouncing that one!

Anyway, the past few days, nothing has really happened that´s much to speak of. for one, I left Nicaragua Monday morning after a barbecue with Kevin and Marita, my Austrian friends in Leon. I decided not to go to Estelí, because, despite the fact that it sounds somewhat cool to visit, it´s 4 hours on apparently the worst road of your life, and I already lost two days in rainy San Juan Del Sur.

The traveling has been fun, I finally made it to the FSLN (Sandinista!) museum in Leon, took in a view of the whole city from the roof, have been practicing Spanish, helped Kevin and Marita and their friends make a SHIT TON of gnocchi, made the best grilled veggies ever, spent 2 whole days busing, made a travel buddy in Honduras yesterday, checked in with Kittie Fatass in Granada, and...that´s about it. I should be arriving in Xela tomorrow at around dinner time, hopefully all will go well on the way there.

The past two bus rides have been absolutely hilarious. I haven´t even been on Chicken Buses, and they have been cramming people in as if it were one. Last night I had the misfortune of being on the last bus of the day to Tegucigalpa, and they were actually cramming people underneath in the luggage hold!! I´d never seen anything like it. Today I spent the San Pedro-Santa Rosa leg of the trip standing up. No big deal though, Ryan (travel buddy from Lake Tahoe, CA) is a cool guy and has a lot to talk about a lot of things. He got off at Santa Rosa de Copan, and maybe will show up in Xela before he heads home.

Anyway, I think that´s all there is right now. I´m looking forward to Xela, and looking forward to any work that I´ll be doing there...stay tuned!

Leon

Hey everyone!

I´m back in Leon, Nicaragua. For those that don´t remember, Leon was my favorite city in one of my favorite countries, and considering what I´ve seen so far, that´s pretty big. I met up with Kittie Fat Ass in Nicaragua and finally took a picture of her and her overgrown furry self. Also, today, I met up with Kevin and Marita, and I´m looking forward to hanging out with them in the next few days. I also hope to see some of Leon that I didn´t the last time, and I'll hopefully get some pictures in.


I feel as if I´m a little behind schedule with my original goal of making it to Quetzaltenango by the 20th, but if I can get there even by the 22nd, I´ll be happy. Who knows. The absence of interesting things in Western Honduras might bring me to Xela more or less on time.

Stay tuned!

Nicaragua!

Hey everyone,

I´m currently in San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua. I made it here the other night, when my original plan failed thanks to the bus company in Costa Rica. First of all, the bus didn´t leave until about 40 minutes after it was supposed to. Second of all, we were held up for about 45 minutes (and even went BACKWARDS!) after the driver broke the windshield after driving into a tree branch...

We got to the border crossing by 5:30, and by this time there were no more buses anywhere. Fortunately, I had met a couple from Seattle, and they were heading to San Juan del Sur. I figured it would be safer to tag along with them, and it worked out cheaper after we split a cab. We were also traveling with a pair from Norway.

We got to the hostel, went to dinner, and then hung out for a while.

My original plan was to leave straight for Granada yesterday, but I figured that, since I haven´t been to the Pacific coast of anywhere during my travels, I would stay for the day. Unfortunately, much of the day it rained like hell, so we basically just spent the day hanging out, and when it wasn´t raining, walking around. It´s a really cool looking place. Very touristy, but this is one of those places where it´s touristy for a reason. It´s been pretty fun. The SEattle couple is very nice, and I´ve had a bunch of chances to practice my Spanish helping them out, since they don´t speak any.

Today I plan on getting some souvenirs and then heading further north. I got in contact with the Austrian couple from Leon, so I´m looking forward to meeting up with them again later this week.

Costa Rica

Hey Yonki Fans out there,

I just want to let you all know that I arrived in San Jose today, safely and a little bit wet. Next stop is Nicaragua!

Pictures!

Hey everyone,

I finally got around to posting the pictures that our good buddy Dan took for us from Mindo and Colombia. Eventually I´ll post the ones from the salt cathedral.

www.photobucket.com/ayonki

ENJOY!

Bogota!

I´m in a small village right now called Zapiquirá (I think, I´ll get back to y´all on that one) where the main attraction is a salt cathedral. Yes, a salt cathedral. What they did was dig a whole cathedral into the mountain that was and still is the source of quite the salt mine. It sounds odd, but once the pictures come up (FROM MY NEW CAMERA!!!), you´ll see why it´s so friggin´cool.

So, Bogotá is a huge city, the biggest I´ve been in since we´ve been traveling. 7.5 million people, it´s basically the same size as New York City. And so much of it makes me think I´m actually in New York. First of all, there´s a pizza place that serves pizza (vegetarian friendly, for once) by the slice, and it´s cheap as hell. Second of all, something about the streets, especially the other day when we were looking around for stores. Also, there´s a wicked public transit system that works quite well (though not an underground subway). there´s also a cool bar that makes it´s own (GOOD!!) beer. Yeah, i know, I haven´t had good beer since Guatemala.

Speaking of Guatemala, it´s almost time for me to go back. And for Michelle, it is time for her to go back to Guatemala. I leave Colombia on Tuesday, and will be traveling up to Guatemala by buses and staying in hostels like I did on the way down. This will be an experiment in Yonki Travels on his Own. It may sound scary to many of you, but honestly, since I´ve done it the other way, it shouldn´t be too much of an issue. Besides, there is always the possibility of travel buddies you meet on the road.

Next trip- OSTRICH FARMMMMM!!!!

Medellin (Pronounced Med-a-yeen, not like Magellin with a D)

Heyo everybody,

I'm currently in Medellin, Colombia, formerly the drug trafficking capital of the world, but that lost its title after the impressive execution of Pablo Escobar. For those who don't know, it took an elite team of 1500 men 499 days to find the bastard and they gunned him down like whoa back in 1993....

ANYWAY, let's talk about Colombia (who lots its title of Kidnapping Capital of the World to Iraq in 2005 or something like that).

We peaced out of Ecuador the night after their new constitution passed, which happened the night me and Dan got back from Mindo.

Have I spoken about Mindo yet? It was really cool, it's a cloud forest about 2 hours from Quito, lots of cool nature stuff to do. Me and Dan got soaking wet walking to and from the many waterfalls that were there. In order to access the waterfalls, we took this hair raising journey across the 530 meter cable car, over a gulch about a few hundred feet deep. When I get time to skank my pictures from Dan, those will be posted. Anyway, fun times, and a moth the size of a bat at dinner.

So, onward to Colombia. We took the 5am bus from Quito to the border town of Tulcan, crossed the border in a surprisingly painless fashion, and hopped on the bus to Popayan , the first town of any actual substance after the Ecuadorian border. We got there late at night and stayed in a hotel, and peaced out the next morning for Cali. It was a long ride, but we got there in the afternoon. Cali was really cool, kind of reminded me, weather-wise, of somewhere in Florida. We basically took those few days to relax and just sit out on the hammocks listening to music. Also, as much as I didn't like Aguardiente in Ecuador, the Colombian aguardiente is especially nasty, thanks to its licorice-like flavour.

After Cali, we headed over here, to Medellin. Medellin is quite the city. They have this subway system that is gigantic and ultramodern and clean. Quite nice.

The people in Medellin, and I think Colombia in general, are a little odd. They're very nice...VERY nice...TOO FREAKIN' NICE. To the point that it's a combination of rude, inconsiderate, and condescending.

ITEM- Michelle and I get arepas at this panaderia, and the lady sitting in the table next to us first of all starts cracking up at watching Michelle cut the arepa, and then proceeded to spend the next 10 minutes of her and our lives trying to teach her how to cut the arepa the correct Colombian way...please, it's a freakin' arepa. There's no wrong way to cut it as long as it gets cut.

ITEM- The hostal we're staying at, we can't tell if it's a hostal (there aren't really too many travelers), a halfway house (lots of older transient Colombians) or a drug den (lots of hyperactive, older transient Colombians). The people are very nice, and were really nice about taking care of Dan (somehow he contracted a similar stomach infection as Michelle did and spent most of the other night hugging porcelain), but it got to the point at the 9th person that entered the room to pet him and make sure he was okay.

ITEM- Being woken up like, 12 times in the morning by people coming in and out of the room and having casual conversation in their normal (LOUD even by my standards) voices, leaving the door open to let the light flood in (when we haven't really slept thanks to an older transient Colombian's extreme snoring), or running the water in the adjacent bathroom at full blast with the door wide open.

ITEM- They just have too much friggin' energy and I don't drink enough coffee to deal with it.

Anyway, we're bound for Bogota once Dan gets better, which will hopefully be soon. From there, Michelle is headed straight for a volunteer position in Xela, and I will by not too far behind. I start off in Costa Rica on the 14th, and aim to be in Guatemala on or before Halloween. That will hopefully be an interesting experience. But maybe not as much as the ostrich farm outside of Bogota....


STAY TUNEDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD (Cue lame ass music...)