Security - Take Three

We mostly just played in the water and tried to relax so that we’d be rested when we got home. Natnee and I did a short mangrove tour on our last day there. It was disappointing, but we did get to see some animals. We did it mainly to have something different to do. While we were wandering around waiting for our ride, we found some buildings sinking into the sand. Someone built too close to the beach and on too unstable a foundation.

The only time we were stopped during our entire trip was just a few km outside the airport, and that was hassle-free. We returned the car. They tried to get us to pay fees for damages because a little plastic cover thingy was missing from off the rear windshield wiper. But we didn’t have to pay fees for damages thanks to a picture I had taken when we received the car (go me!). At the airport security check, we were stopped. Actually, they had questions about almost every carry-on bag we had. They said one had water in it, which it didn’t. They wanted to inspect my fingernail clippers before finally allowing me to keep them. (If they’d taken them, it would have been like the infamous Fingernail File Confiscation Incident of 2009!)

All other bags were okay except Natnee’s - probably because he looks like a gringo drug lord. Hehehehe. They wanted to inspect his bag by hand, so he and a security agent went to a nearby table. He looked at his flashlight, slowly pulling out the batteries like it was going to explode in his face. Then he wanted to make sure his camera was really a camera. He told Natnee that duct tape was prohibited, but let him keep it anyway. We’re talking like less than 5 inches of duct tape. That’s not enough to go around one wrist, let alone tie up a stewardess! No problem with the juggling balls this time (until the US border, at least), but he questioned the knife sharpener, which, of itself, is entirely harmless. After Natnee demonstrated that the sharpener couldn’t cut anybody, he spotted Natnee’s Bible. No questions about that, but he wanted to see his toiletry bag. Seeing nothing unusual there, he finally let Natnee go.

Once we got to our gate, they wouldn’t let us through without unzipping all our bags and feeling around one more time (for what? They’d already been x-rayed.). That makes THREE times we were searched. I mean, REALLY? Was all this bag inspection really necessary? But this is just a case in point of how little the Latinos trust other people. They are always locking and barring up their doors and peering down the streets. This fear of what MIGHT be leads them to be untrusting of others, themselves, and period.

Once we found a place to sit down, Daddy wanted some water. There was a small place nearby - a table, really - selling bottled water, but they wouldn’t let Daddy back to the gate with it. So he stood there and drank it. Grumbling. The flight back was without incident. US Border Patrol stopped us and questioned Natnee’s juggling balls (as expected) and x-rayed all our bags for illegal stuff, aliens, etc. There were some El Salvadorans in front of us who’d brought suitcases full of raw chicken and other raw meat parts. SERIOUSLY?!? Yes, and they were fined $300 on the spot for it. Ouch! Expensive mistake.

~Crystal

Posted on December 25th, 2009 by Natnee and filed under Mexico | No Comments »

Petting Zoos, Steam Vents, and the Wheel

The Jardín de Celeste really was the best hotel in the area. We looked. It had cozy cabins nestled in the hillside surrounded with beautiful plants and flowers. They owned a 270 acre coffee plantation and had a small petting zoo consisting of a few ducks, some sheep, and a pair of geese. There was a wonderful restaurant there at the hotel with good food and decent prices. The only thing this place didn’t have, well two things, were a view of the valley, and a market within walking distance. Nonetheless, we did enjoy ourselves there.

The town of Ataco was about 5km away, and we went there frequently for foodstuffs. We found some exotic fruits there: binches (mamones chinos - I should note that Natnee ate roughly 1000 of these during the trip), a strawberry flavored cherimoya (anoni), and an orange cherimoya-like fruit that we don’t know the name of. We also found a place in Ataco that made whole wheat bread, so we had them make us 12 “loaves”. These turned out to be thick tortillas and not the loaves you see on grocery store shelves in America. But they were good. Left are binches, and right is an anoni.

On a couple occasions Natnee and I just wandered the streets of Ataco, seeing whatever we could see. Interestingly, when you leave the actual city, there are houses and farms right there in the “burbs”. This is not so in Mexico. There, when you leave the city, there is nothing until you get to the next city. Natnee and I received strange looks all through this town because it was not frequented by white people, and they are more suspicious of others in this town than in others we’d visited. On one promenade through town, a little girl of not more than 5 called out after us, “Gringa! Gringa!” When we turned, she smiled broadly and said, “Hello!” to our “Hola”.

Another day we checked out the market at Juayúa since we had not as yet made it there. It was highly recommended by the guidebook as being one of the largest in the area, with huge numbers of vendors on Saturdays and Sundays. So we went on a Sunday to check it out. We were disappointed. It was too Americanized and too clean to be a market suitable for our delicate tastes. Really, though, there wasn’t much there to see, so we went to the nearby town of Apaneca to check out their market. It was even more depressing, with about 5 vendors total. After this, we were depressed enough to just go back to the room for the rest of the day.

One day we decided to do a coffee tour in a nearby factory. It was all in Spanish, so Natnee had to translate all of it for us. All their machinery was American-made and old (these days, it has to be old to be American-made). The guide took us through the process from start to finish - from the washing of the beans to the packaging. It was all very interesting (even for someone who doesn’t drink coffee), and at the end there was a video in English summarizing the process.

Later on during our stay at Jardín de Celeste, we decided to go to Ahuachapán to the ausoles, or heat vents. Daddy suggested that Ahuachapán was something Mother needed to do more often. There are volcanoes there that let off steam, and 10% of the nation’s energy needs are met through using the ausoles. We took a few pictures of bubbling water and steam (of course!) and we were going to go to the top where the baths were. But, the fumes and gases made Daddy sick, and the road was one of their customary back roads - long and very bumpy. So we turned back.

By the time we got back in Ahuachapán, we were hungry, so what better place to find food in than the market? We found several food vendors in a large open area with tables and chairs so we all sat down and Natnee ordered things from different vendors. But you couldn’t take dishes from one section to another. Why? Because the dishes might get stolen. Really?!? These people are so superstitious and so distrusting, it is hard to put it into words. All their houses and stores have bars and locks on them, and there is always a security guard with a sawed-off shotgun closeby. So, we ate in one section and then moved over to the next to try a different dish. While we were eating in this second section, a beggar approached us. We gave him our leftover tortillas and soup, and since he wasn’t too proud to take that, we gave him a dollar also. Not sure if that was the right way to handle that situation, but we figured it was worthy of some reward since most people wouldn’t take your leftover food; they just want your money.

On our last day at the Jardín de Celeste, we did some exploring by car (as we are wont to do) and ended up in Tacuba. It was a fairly good sized town, the only one we’d run into the whole trip that had one-way streets (how frustrating!). The town was clean, and the people were fairly friendly, since they want revenue from tourism. It was nice, but not spectacular. If you enjoy one-way streets, you might like it.

In all our driving around and exploring, we found some interesting things to note: Cows graze along the sides of the roads, and there are cows literally EVERYWHERE. As are the people. We tried finding a few bushes to, um, “inspect”, and everytime we found a good one, there’d be some man coming up the hill with a bag of corn on his shoulders. I’m not kidding. It got to be kind of funny. Also along the sides of the roads are fields of corn, beans, sugar cane, and coffee. Right up to the road in some places. And in every spot of arable land. Some places you’d have to rappel to in order to pick the crop because the hillsides were so steep.

Here’s an enigma smothered in secret sauce. Everybody carries things on their heads or their shoulders. Women carry things on their heads, and men carry things on their shoulders. Never the other way around. That just wouldn’t be right! I find this carrying distinction cute. Irrational but cute. They carry bottles of water, bundles of sticks, and many other things that way. These are sticks they walked kilometers to gather into a bundle less than 1m across and tied with string. This is water they walked kilometers to collect from the community well. The terrain in this region isn’t exactly level. It’s very hilly. So these people walked up and down steep hills on roads not fit to drive on with these things. Now, a few of them actually began thinking about what they were doing and created the wheel. Ta dah!

Isn’t this great?!? Well, only when you’re going downhill, since they don’t have gas or pedals, only brakes. Some of them had wooden wheels, some were covered with a little rubber. People would zoom down the road in these things alongside regular traffic back to their houses or stores. Incredible. Even fewer people used a vehicle for hauling wood to and fro. I suppose they just can’t afford it, even as a group, or else they simply prefer doing things in the more primitive fashion.

All in all, the people are very friendly and very healthy and very happy. More so than in other Latino countries we’ve traveled to.

After leaving the hotel, we headed toward some Mayan ruins. Mother wanted to see them. Natnee and I had seen the ones at Copán, so it was nothing new to us, and Daddy didn’t really want to see them. After seeing that it would cost us $12 to get in, we decided not to do it, especially since there was no tour guide for that price. After all, this is a pile of rocks we’re talking about! And, we could see them through the chain-linked fence. So we left and went to our next stop - a crater lake. It was pretty, but there was no place to stay, and had we stayed, there would have been nothing to do in the area or in the lake. So off we went.

Unfortunately, we had to go through San Salvador to get to the beach again without retracing our steps. Retracing our steps is against our principles! Driving through (or rather, as much around as possible) San Salvador was hectic. Daddy nearly clipped off a guy’s elbow. He was walking along the freeway carrying a bag of oranges on his shoulders. How stupid! Anyway, the guy barely kept his elbow. We stopped at a Burger King in the heart of San Salvador to rest and recoop for a few minutes, and also to have some “real” French fries, instead of all the wanna-be’s we’d found in the markets. Anyway, we ended up for the day, and the rest of our stay, at Costa del Sol, a small town on the spit of land on the southeastern side (near La Herradura), but more about that next time.

~Crystal

Posted on November 24th, 2009 by Natnee and filed under El Salvador | 1 Comment »

Back to the Land of Pupusas

We were undecided for a long time of where we wanted to go for our fall trip. We initially thought we’d go out west, but finally decided on El Salvador since it had a nice beach, mountains, and some interesting foods. So, off we went on September 30. We stayed in Houston the night before since our flight left early on the 30th. As we were going through the usual security checks, I was stopped and frisked because I was wearing two shirts on this particularly chilly morning. Last time I checked, it wasn’t a crime, but the metal detectors didn’t like it. The agent said it was a “bulky item”. And even after I showed her my undershirt, she said she would have to pat me down or else I would have to go back, take the shirt off and send it through the x-ray machine, and then come back through. I opted for the frisking, mainly because I was still cold and didn’t want to take my outer shirt off, but also because it would be a new experience. It was painless and fairly non-invasive, and afterwards we went along our merry way.

Once on the plane and in the air, I settled into my seat for a roughly 3-hour flight. I thought I might tilt the seat back a little since they’re so uncomfortable when they’re upright. What kind of people COULD be comfortable in those things? I mean really. Anyway, I pushed the button, gave a gentle push back, and WHAM! Only a whopping 3 degrees of tilt! I was just getting going good! I tried again. I asked Natnee if his chair was the same way. There was extra space on the flight, so if it was just my chair I would have moved, but alas, all the uncomfortable chairs were made all the more uncomfortable by not being able to tilt back more than a few degrees. [sigh]

We landed and got our rental car without incident, and then we headed to the beach! After all, this IS why we came here. We passed through La Libertad, stopping for some pupusas for lunch. A pupusa is a stuffed tortilla with sauerkraut and chile sauce on top. Most pupusas are stuffed with refried beans and cheese. Yum! We walked through the market there to get a few essential food items and then headed west.

We landed for the night at Playa Mizata, staying in a nice little room at the Mizata Resort (www.mizataresort.com). It wasn’t much before dark when we arrived, so Natnee went down to the beach to watch the sunset and wander around a little. Not far off was a giant rock which we, of course, HAD to investigate the next day. There wasn’t much of interest, but we did capture a few good pictures.

We were about to walk back to the room, when we decided we wanted just another picture or two from on this rock. While out on the rock, a wave twice the size of the regular ones came up and knocked both Natnee and me off our feet. Since he was closer to the edge of the rock, he sustained greater injuries. I escaped with a few scratches and bruises, but he lost a big chunk of flesh on the heel of his hand and the side of his foot, right where the sandal rubs. So, we began hobbling back to the room, but by the time we arrived there, the salt water had helped to heal Natnee’s foot wound so that it neither bled nor hurt. However, he spent the rest of the two weeks we were there hobbling around, which greatly hampered our exploring.

The next day we decided to move further up the coast. We liked where we were staying, but there just wasn’t much there to do, so we thought we’d try to find some place better. We ended up at Barra del Santiago. We drove through this little town and toward the beach. And we drove. And we drove. It took nearly an hour down a bumpy road to get to the beach, and once we got there, we had to use 4-wheel drive to get to the hotels. There were two. One was $250 a night, and we would have needed two rooms. The other one we talked into $90 a night for two rooms, since their rooms were ridiculously small. It was a night of living out of our coolers since no local food was available, and the air conditioning didn’t work so well. Also, Daddy kept getting bit by critters all night, so we left there the next day to find someplace better.

We wanted to go towards Guatemala and take a road back across the mountains toward Juayúa instead of going through the big cities. We stopped for breakfast at the market in Cara Sucia. The typical breakfast there is two eggs (fried or scrambled), fried plantains, queso fresco, sour cream, and tortillas. We had such a breakfast in the market for $1.50. We also obtained recipes of their sour cream and queso fresco while we were there. Onward we drove toward Guatemala looking for our turn-off. But we came upon the Guatemalan border before we found the road. It was in the guidebook, but there were no signs along the road anywhere. We tried a few roads that could have worked, but none did. The locals said it was possible to take this road, but it was not a good road, and it was best to go through the big city of Sonsonate. We cut off Sonsonate by a legitimate road and ended up in a guidebook-recommended hotel, Jardín de Celeste, where we stayed for a whole week, and which I will write about in my next post.

~Crystal

Posted on November 1st, 2009 by Natnee and filed under El Salvador | 2 Comments »

Mexico To… Home! Ondale! Ondale! Arriba!

Sorry this post has taken err… six months to get posted. Things like this seem less important when you’re home. Anyway I left off in San Cristobal; from there we booked a tour to go to the Sumidero Canyon for the day before we left. It cost 14$ each (although I later learned that we could have done it for 5$ each had we gone directly to Chiapas De Corzo and gotten on a boat ourselves). Still, it was cool. The canyon was a half-mile high straight up in the deeper spots, and we were on a fast boat that cruised at a good clip. The pictures pretty much say it all:

When we got to the end of the canyon and turned back, I inquired where were the crocodiles I had heard were here. He replied that they were in the water. With a smirk. He then said that to see them we needed a tourist to volunteer to go in the water. No one volunteered

Anyway, on the way back we did see a couple of different crocs, and got close enough to get some nice pictures of them, too:

On the way back we stopped at Corzo to have lunch and I had Pozole, which is what happens when you put a tortilla and water in a blender with some cocoa, basically. That’s not how they make it, but that’s pretty much what it is. It is a corn drink, very slightly sweet, with cacao beans in it. I liked it, but Crystal didn’t. Anyway back in San Cristobal we found some organic chocolate which I thought would make great gifts for the women back home. It said it was made in San Cristobal, but no address. So I walked all over the city, literally, looking for someone who knew where it was made, since I wanted to buy direct and wholesale. I spent about 3 hours that day and next morning looking for it, went down several blind alleys, but finally found it and bought 5 pounds of chocolate.

By now our possessions were starting to snowball and get to be quite a load to haul around, and it was to get worse! We lost track of time that morning (it was the day of our flight) and so we didn’t start looking for a taxi until it was almost too late to make it to the airport.

We almost, and I do mean almost, missed our plane to Mexico City that morning. When we finally noticed what time it was, we had 1.5 hours until the flight LEFT. Not to check in, but to takeoff. And we were about an hour or better away. I was having some stuff printed that morning, and before I left I had to pay him; however he gave me a different price than his boss had quoted me (a higher one, naturally) so after we agreed on a compromise and I went to pay him, I realized I was out of pesos, he wouldn´t take dollars, so I had to change some – running downtown to find a bank, changing money, signing papers, etc – and once that was taken care of, I had to find a taxi, and then negotiate a price with him, then the taxi driver wanted to pick up some extra passengers but they weren´t ready… by now we were getting quite anxious so we told him to forget it and just take us to the airport. And step on it.

Never say that to a Mexican taxi driver. Seriously.

The dude was a good driver, no doubts, but he literally passed a police car doing two-and-a-half times the speed limit. Granted, it was one of those stupid so-low-that-noone-even-tries-to-obey-it limits of 40kph, but still. I have to say though, e got us through a 40 minute ride in about 25 minutes.

Unfortunately, I didn´t have enough pesos to pay him (we agreed on a price of about 30$ for the ride and the speed) and he wouldn´t take dollars either. Apparently, it is a real hassle for Mexicans to change dollars here. It´s easy for me, but locals apparently have to explain where they got it, why they are changing it, who they are, where they are from, and all that bureaucratic hoo-hah. So he wouldn´t take dollars, even when I offered him 40. So when we arrived at the airport with just 10 minutes to spare until takeoff, we went to check-in and the clerk told us the bags had already left. After a momentary pause, we realized we could carry on all of our packages (at this point numbering 2 tubes, 1 box, 3 backpacks, and us).

So while Crystal got us ticketed, I ran off to find someplace to change dollars to pay the taxi driver - who, it cannot be denied, had earned his fare. I found a store who traded pesos in at 10 for the dollar, which was a criminal rate (at the time, 14.5 pesos to the dollar was what banks gave) but I was out of time. So I did that and paid him, plus gave him all my change as a tip.

Then we went through security. Mind you, we had planned to check our red backpack which had our knives in it. Since we didn´t have a chance to do that, we decided to try to run it through security. I´ve done that before, but this time no luck. They spotted them and took them away, both of our nice swiss army knives (although the total investment was only about 12$, still…) and I guess since they already had us stopped, they wanted Crystal´s scissors too. We are talking scissors with a blade a half-inch long. Seriously. While they were in her vanity pack they also took away basically everything else pointy too - her fingernail file, cuticle trimmer, mysterious femininely-used pointy thingy.

On the upside, our pack was lighter with less female stuff. On the downside, I´ve heard about the nail file 25 times since then.

Anyway, we made it on the flight believe it or not. They were still boarding and they let us on. And I looked at Crystal and said ¨See? No sweat!¨ - Then she hit me. I still can’t figure out why.

So after an uneventful flight change in Mexico City, we landed in Monterrey. The airport is quite a ways from the city, and there seems to be a sort of Taxi Mafia and it has all the taxi and bus prices hacked up to crazy prices for the ride from the airport into town. It cost us 5$ each on a bus for a 40 minute ride. A taxi wanted 30 for both of us. Mind you, it cost less than that to get across Honduras. I spent the better part of an hour trying to find or negotiate a better price (you know me) but 5$ each was the best. And then, there were only three of us on the bus! But it´s Mexico, can´t always understand it. Actually, you seldom understand it.

So we arrived in the inner city of Monterrey late at night. It was pretty creepy, reminiscent of Detroit or Chicago. Dark, dismal, knots of gang-like people on the corners. I had found a hotel on the internet and managed to find it after a few adventures. On the internet, they advertised $11 a person. On arrival, I was quoted $7, which I agreed to happily (most hotels in Monterrey seemed to charge almost US prices).

When I got my money out, he charged me $15 a person. Then when I balked it became $5. Then a few minutes later he knocked on my door and said he made a mistake, and tried to charge me $15 again. So we settled on $10 at last call. I told him I wasn´t paying more than I was quoted on the internet. I told him I paid him what he´s going to get and if he changed it again I was leaving. I meant it too, so he finally left us alone.

Anyway, it settled down after that. We were in a not-so-nice part of town. We tried to find a restaurant but all we found was halloween and druggies. Don´t ask. Anyway, we wound up back at the hotel eating granola. I really didn’t like Monterrey very much, although to be fair I didn’t see it under the best light.

Next morning we caught a bus for Reynosa from Monterrey. Again I got entangled in dialectic changes, since there “bus” was NOT an understandable alternative for “autobus”. “Bus” was not understood at all. And “Reynosa” was not an appropriate substitute sound for “RRRReynosa”. You have to trill the first R. I don’t know why, but “bus to Reynosa” got me blank looks, and then a few finally said “oh, an AUTObus to RRRReynosa!”

Spent the night in Reynosa – a seedy border town – found some food to take home (a case of Pineapple and a case of Papaya – about 70 pounds altogether), some Kahlua-like stuff that I am fond of which is only sold in Mexico, and did some general last-minutes-in-Mexico shopping. Crystal wanted some yogurt, and we were in a large chain grocery store, and she couldn’t find it at first.Then she found a little bit on the end of this aisle:

She said “that’s not very much”. I said “look around the corner”; that entire island, from one end to the other on both sides is FULL of nothing but yogurt. They consume a lot more of it down there than we do. So next morning we caught a bus for McAllen. We had to get off the bus and walk through customs into the US – carrying the fruit, which they looked at carefully but allowed to pass (except for the tangerine Crystal forgot to eat, which was confiscated) pay a tax on the alchohol of 2.50$ for 2 liters, and finally got to the bus station, where we awaited a connecting bus to Austin, where we were to meet my parents.

We had a 2 hour layover, and both of us were starving for Taco Bell. After 6 weeks in Latin America, Taco Bell was all we could think about. So the nearest one was 11 blocks each way. So 22 blocks of walking later, I was back with tacos! I was stopped in the yard of the bus station by a self-important guard who refused to let me in to the station. Mind you, I was 10 yards away from the unlocked glass doors which opened up onto the main room of the station. And I had tickets! But no, I had to enter through the other side of the building.

There was NO reason for that at all. It wasn’t like I went through a line, the other side of the glass was a public space in the middle of the station, not a restricted area. It irritated me. But I walked around the whole bus station to get right back where I almost was (although in retrospect I think I should have insisted on going through the short way). Crystal then informed me that the security guard inside had made her not sit with her feet on the benches (the benches were steel, and it wasn’t like they were that clean anyway). So then I juggled for awhile to kill time and of course after a while the guard came over and told me it was prohibited. By this time I was weary of ignorant rules and demanded to know why. He said it was prohibited, I said why again. He didn’t know and didn’t care. I then informed him that this rule was stupid. But since I only had 10 minutes more, I let it slide. It just illustrates one of the major differences between the USA and Latin America.

In Central America, I could have built a fire in the middle of the bus station and no one would have cared. I could have roasted corn on it and opened a concession stand and no one would have cared. Here, in the “Land of the Free”, I juggle quietly, not bothering anyone, or try to walk into the bus station in a slightly unusual way, or sit with my feet on the bench, and a pompous security guard is there to tell me it’s against the rules. I missed Mexico already. Maybe I’ll go to Morocco next… ?

Posted on July 31st, 2009 by Natnee and filed under Mexico | 2 Comments »

San Cristobal De Las Casas, Mexico

Upon arriving in San Cristobal, we wandered through the market for awhile, bought some mexican roasted corn with mayonnaise, chili powder, and lime on it, empanadas stuffed with potato and beef (4 for 30 cents) and then bought some tangerines. Now usually in the states if you go to a fruit stand you’ll see a bucket with 4 tomatoes precariously perched on top, but they know that you subconsciously assume that the bucket is full of tomatoes, which of course it never is. So when I saw about 8 tangerines perched on one such bucket, I asked how much it was, she said 60 cents, and I paid her expecting 8 tangerines, which was an OK price. Then she held out a bag and I held it while she poured the tangerines into the bag. As you probably guessed, the entire bucket was full of tangerines. We got 21 tangerines - and they were delicious, sweeter than I’ve ever had at home - for 60 cents. And ten mangoes for another 60 cents. And a pineapple for 90 cents. And a papaya for… well, you get the idea.

They had the most charming way of displaying beans. I don’t know what it is, but I really liked the way the colors popped out of the trays.

San Cristobal was without a doubt our favorite town of the whole trip. Food was plentiful, gourmet, and cheap. I counted 5 whole wheat bakeries in town and two health food stores. For Latin America, that is astounding. Hey, for Texas that’s astounding. That’s why we chose to spend a week there, to rest and to eat. I had whole wheat bread at 3 different restaurants - one of which served it complimentary with the meal! And the food was great. All sorts of cuisines - Lebanese, Greek, French, Mexican, Italian, Argentinean, you name it.

No doubt the reason they had all sorts of cuisines was because it was a very eclectic town. This map was hanging in a phone booth store (like it sounds, a store devoted to nothing but phone booths for calling home), and you can get an impression for who visited the town. This was a pretty good sampling of the nationalities on the trip, actually. Only a few americans, but tons of europeans.

The next day we found an ex-circus performer doing crystal stix, an art with which I am well acquainted (think a cross between baton twirling and juggling), so we hung out and did that for awhile. Went and had some whole wheat pancakes. Traded in my Star Trek book which I had finished for The Adventures of David Balfour by Robert Louis Stevenson - in Spanish. Went to the local artesian market and bought gifts for people back home. Went and had cat soup for lunch. Apparently, there is no actual cat in it, but think tortilla soup with milk and avocado in it and you have a fair idea of what it is. It was excellent.

We had fresh squeezed orange juice off the street for 60 cents, a 14 ounce glass. And not-quite-as-freshly-squeezed pineapple juice (but still real homemade juice), and coconut milk, for the same price. We did eat at one restaurant that annoyed me - they provided free chips and rather hot salsa. As we were most of the way into our meal, I took out the water bottle to drink, had a good drink, then a waiter rushed over and said I couldn’t drink my own beverage. I said “what? It’s just water”, but he said it was prohibited. It was a scam. They give you “free” salsa, to make you thirsty, then you have to buy water or a beverage from them at a greatly inflated price. Well, I was almost done with my meal or I would have made an issue of it. Probably should have anyway. There was no sign out front that said “no BYO(Water)”, after all!

In wandering through the market one day, we saw this strange orange liquid in reused bottles. I naturally inquired what it was, and was told Rompope. I then asked them to write it for me, since I couldn’t quite figure out what it was from that. I then asked them for a taste since even being written I had no idea what it was. Turns out it is basically a Mexican version of Eggnog. A very, very strong, thick eggnog. It must be half rum from the taste of it. Quite good though, in a different sort of way.

Somewhere in here we decided that we didn’t really want to go the rest of the way through Mexico by bus if we didn’t have to. We were running short on time (we had to be home in 9 days), but we really liked this town and if we were going to go home by bus we’d only have 2 days here. And honestly, after 70 hours of bus travel, we were tired of it and needed a break. So we looked around for fares and found a flight from nearby Tuxtla to Monterrey for 85$ each. Since the bus fares would have cost almost that, we decided to take the cowards way out and fly most of the way home.

That night we had quesadillas, mushroom and peppers and all kinda things in them, for only 1 dollar each. They were huge and came with a serving tray with cilantro, beet-pickled-onions, fresh onions, jalapenos, and red and green salsa. See below:

The green salsa was hot. Coming from me, that means it was HOT. I took a drop of it and placed it in Crystal’s hand to lick it and then she said she had no feeling in her lips for an hour. I had two spoonfuls of it on my quesadilla and my tongue and whole mouth went numb. I could hardly breathe. It was awesome!

I won’t make you more envious with tale after tale of cheap food, huge portions, and gourmet meals. It wasn’t all great, anyway - but it is definitely high on my list of places to go back to, primarily for the food. ’nuff said about that. Basically, the next few days we didn’t do much. Went to the markets occasionally, did laundry, ate, slept, did what sane tourists do - nothing.

We wandered around some of course. I found that same juggler again and we passed pins for awhile. It had been awhile since I did it, so I was a bit rusty, but I thought it turned out pretty good:

If a bit comical at times:

Only one more post left of this trip and we’ll be home!

Posted on April 16th, 2009 by Natnee and filed under Honduras, Mexico | 2 Comments »

Lava In Guatemala

On arriving in Antigua, we finally found rooms with HOT WATER! It had been awhile, and I had forgotten how nice it felt. Of course, it was a tad chilly in Antigua so that explains why. And my bathroom wasn’t exactly what you’d expect. In fact, it was the smallest bathroom - and the smallest bathroom door - I had ever seen.

We found an enormous market in Antigua. All covered. The building just seemed to go on forever, everything imaginable was for sale there. We even found some Cherimoyas for the first and only time on the trip, and they were SO delicious. They look kinda like an armadillo but taste rather like a tangy custard pie. They don’t ship well so you never see them in the USA. Bought Crystal a shirt since it was a bit cold and I bought a sweater. We figured we were getting close enough to home that we could haul a LITTLE bit more stuff along. Up until now all of our belongings and clothes fit in one typical school backpack each. And we brought more stuff than we needed! Other travelers were constantly drooling over our packs, saying “Dude, how do you DO that!” and we stared at their 3-foot-tall, 2-foot-wide packs saying “Dude, how do you DO that!” with equal fervor. Going light is the only way to travel. My pack weighed around 15 pounds, give or take 5 pounds for food. Crystal’s was usually a bit lighter. After all, she was only a girl.

The place we decided to eat dinner had a power outage, so we ate by candlelight. We thought they were closed at first, but the food was good. Liver in tomato sauce! Yum!

Next day we took a tour to Volcan Pacaya. This is one of the most active volcanoes in Guatemala and one of the only places where you are practically guaranteed to see lava. It only cost about 10$ each, including the hour and a half ride each way, which wasn’t bad.

Hey, it was cold that morning! Then it was an hour and a half hike up the volcano, which was mostly a pretty drab hike after Chirripo in Costa Rica. Once we started getting above the trees though, it started being pretty cool. Lava dust and enormous rocks that only weighed a few pounds.

Then as we got closer we started feeling the temperature rising. And in one place we walked over a volcanically active spot with hot rocks, and one guy lingered too long and his shoes started melting! As we got closer to the top, the rocks got looser. Now I am quite sure on my feet and am very good at balance. But these other people were walking disaster areas. By myself, it was quite safe. With a bunch of 10-pound-camera-toting clumsy-boot-wearing-tourists walking above me tripping and dislodging rocks onto me it was rather like playing donkey kong. (Warning: 80’s pop culture reference). And it was a long ways down.

After finally getting to the lava flow in one piece however, there was only a space for about 4 people at once, and that was a bit precarious. So when my turn came around, I got up there, and the lava was quite impressive, moving at about 40 feet per minute or so down the mountain. As you can see in this video, which was not as stable as I would have liked, but it wasn’t all my fault…

I had planned to juggle in front of it, but it wasn’t to be. The volcano itself was starting to dislodge hot rocks to roll down the steep slope at is, so it was time to vacate the premises. Anyway, after everyone had seen enough we walked back down. Crystal scraped the back of her heel, gently, twice, against these rocks and it ripped the back of her socks to shreds. The rocks were really brutal. I of course, being me, walked the bulk of the way back down barefoot. But that’s not the sort of thing I would recommend to others…

On the way back down the mountain, Crystal’s knee flared up again (the strain that it took on Chirripo and later Corcovado still bothers her every now and then, when she exerts it), so we caught a horse that was on the way up and paid him to carry her down. The owner, not the horse. That is, we paid the owner, but the horse carried her. Somehow, that seems more confusing than it needed to be… anyway, you probably know what I mean.

So after descending and returning to Antigua to collect our stuff, we decided to skip Atitlan and go straight for Mexico. We were sorry to miss it, but it sounded pretty touristy and we were tired of bus trips and wanted to find a place to just chill for a week without having to move. At all. So we took the bus to Huehuetenango and spent the night there, had tamales with a spicy adobo-type sauce for dinner and a soup.

Next day caught a bus to the border. The road was rather curvy and downhill, and not too wide, and the bus driver must have been in a hurry because we arrived 15 minutes AHEAD of schedule (something that doesn’t happen often in Latin America). But the guy threw out the rule book in driving – he went around EVERY corner on what felt like two wheels. Is there even a WORD for “Traffic Violation” in Spanish?

This trip made me wonder. It literally required your full attention just to keep from sliding out of your seat at every corner. Seriously - having your hands on each side of the seat wasn’t enough. I had to cross my arms and hang on to the seat in front of me, with my hands fully tensed, for the whole ride, just to keep from crashing into the people across the aisle. But somehow we arrived intact and walked across the border, and caught a collectivo to Comitlan and from there took a shared taxi to San Cristobal. We shared it with an Italian who had moved to Mexico (we later learned that there were TONS of Italians in San Cristobal, although I never learned why). She directed us to a certain hotel when we got out of the taxi, so we thanked her and she left.

We tried to tell the next taxi driver where this hotel was (and she had even written down the street it was on) but he didn’t know it. So I told him to take us to a cheap hotel. Usually, those instructions get us to some decent hotels. But this guy took us into the most seedy district in town and I went in to the hotel, they quoted me 3$ (wow!) for a room, and I went to inspect it and seriously, it was one of the worst rooms I had ever seen. It would have been like sleeping on a towel in an old bus station. Needless to say, we moved on and I instructed him to take me to a slightly more expensive hotel! (Never thought I’d say that, eh?)

After dismissing the taxi driver in a hotelly district we finally settled on one in the middle of downtown, right off the main square, for 12$ p/p, and it was very nice. It even had hot water. In the SINK! I had to go get Crystal and show her that there was hot water even in the SINK (she didn’t believe me!) And FREE shampoo! Wow! The rooms really were nice, up to USA standards even. Well, almost.

Anyway, we were to spend a week in San Cristobal, so you can read all about it in the next entry…

Posted on March 31st, 2009 by Natnee and filed under Guatemala, Mexico | No Comments »

Surf El Salvador

So said the T-Shirt on Val Kilmer’s character in Real Genius (or was it surf Nicaragua? Oh well). So I decided to take him up on the idea. Getting into El Salvador was almost too easy. We walked across the border. Looking for the usual immigrations department, forms, fees, etc. On the way across we found a guardhouse, about like what you’d find back home for a gated community. Only not as nice of course. The lone guard flagged us down as we were ambling past and asked to see our passports. We had them in hand already and passed them over. He glanced at them and smiled and said “welcome to El Salvador”. Just like that. No stamps, no forms, no where are you going/what do you do/why are you here questions. Just poof, we’re in El Salvador.

Since that was too easy, I asked where we went next. He said nowhere, that was it, we’re here. So I wandered around for awhile in spite of what he said, not willing to accept that it was really that easy. Found a line I could wait in for awhile (that made me feel better) and finally come up to the front, handed over my passports dutifully and the person looked perplexed and said “well didn’t you see the guard out there?” I said, |uh, yes… ” and she said “well didn’t he look at your passports already?” I said, “uh, yes…” and so she handed my passports back and said “you’re in El Salvador. Have fun!”

Alright! That’s how a border crossing SHOULD be! That really set the tone for El Salvador in general. Nice people, no hassles, cheap prices, good- no, great food. From the border we walked a little ways in and found a money changer, who offered to change our Honduran lempira into dollars. After negotiating a rate I said no, I wanted Salvadoran money. He said dollars IS Salvadoran money. I was skeptical but took the dollars. Sure enough, every price I saw was in dollars so after an hour or two I conceded that El Salvador used the dollar. We were thankful for a reprieve from the constant recalculation of prices based on 18 to the dollar, 20 to the dollar, 550 to the dollar, and liked to just see a price and know “Oh… that IS dollars!”

So then we caught a bus to San Salvador, spent a few hours wandering through the market eating street food. Delicious street food. Something called an Empanada that was basically bananas and cream mixed up and deep fried. Two the size of half an avocado for a quarter. Basically everything in El Salvador was a quarter. And I saw more fruit for sale on buses as snack food than anywhere else in central america. Children came on board at every stop selling watermelon, mango, papaya, pinapple, all for about a half-pound for a quarter. We bought a pound and a half of small, delicious, local strawberries for a dollar. Then we discovered pupusas.

A pupusa is basically a stuffed tortilla. They take fresh cornmeal and wrap it around beans, cheese, squash, meat, whatever and fry them on a griddle. Sell them for about a quarter each - and they are the size of a pancake. Two are quite filling. Plus, they come with homemade sauerkraut called repollo, which piled on top with salsa makes a good meal for about 50 cents. They are uniquely Salvadoran although the repollo is common in Nicaragua and Honduras.

As I said in the previous post, Salvadorans are very helpful. When I made it known to the driver of the bus that I was headed to Playa Sunzal, a few minutes later half the people on the bus were telling me “Sunzal, Sunzal aqui!” and making sure I got off where I was supposed to. This happened several times.

We found a nice hotel a few hundred feet from the beach, that came with free internet, ping pong, pool table, darts, kitchen and was a very nice relaxing place to spend the weekend.

If you look at the rock on the left, from some angles it looks like an old sailor. Sunday morning I took some surfing lessons - 14$ for an hour with a board rental for the day. Unfortunately, the surf was so far away and I was so out of shape for paddling I could only catch two waves.

Equally unfortunately, because of my distance from shore and the fact that I was not the only one wearing a red shirt, Crystal repeatedly took pictures of the wrong surfer riding the waves. But here I am in this one. No, I’m not the cool one riding the wave. But if you look to the right, there is a black blob. That’s the top of my head. Hang ten, dudes!

I found someone juggling on the beach, so I juggled with them for awhile. Then that attracted a third juggler, and we set up a ball passing pattern with 3. No videos of that unfortunately, but it was a lot of fun. We found some tamales in La Libertad for 20 cents each, took 10 to go, but two each filled us up.

Next morning we were up to go to Guatemala at 5:30. We wanted to make some oatmeal in the kitchen before we left, but found it didn’t open until 6 so we waited. Then we caught the bus ride, which was remarkably uneventful except for the movie Titanic. Which is also remarkably uneventful, and would have been totally unwatchable had it not been dubbed in Spanish which made it just barely interesting - no offense to the millions of teenage girls who made this movie gross more than Star Wars.

But we finally got our passport stamped at the border to Guatemala, although it was still very easy to cross the border. From there we went to Antigua, which you will see next post…

Posted on February 25th, 2009 by Natnee and filed under El Salvador | No Comments »

Copan - Macaws and Deadly Ballgames

So after getting over my rapturous delight at finding real, cheap, food again - island food was getting old - we went to Copan Ruinas, the best preserved site in Honduras for seeing ruins. On our way, we stopped at the local market. As usual, I almost missed it - a tiny hole in the wall 5 feet wide lined with fruit enticed me in, then I found myself inside this gigantic flat space filled with booths selling all sorts of food and fruits. We had Tilapia and soup and tortillas for about 1.50$, bought a pineapple for 90 cents, then went to the ruins, just outside town.

The ruins were a bit pricy, 15$ each for entry, plus for once I decided to splurge on a guide since I would have had no idea what I was seeing. It was 25$ extra for a guide for 1.5 hours. It was worth it though.

About Copan.. what can I say. It was a well preserved, even opulent, pile of rocks which a great many peons spent millions of manhours carving and building for the enjoyment of a privileged few hundred people, and the honor of a few hundred pagan gods. It was impressive, yes, but… I dunno. You can find plenty of pictures of the statues and carvings and things like that on the net if that sort of thing interests you more than me.

Anyway, they had some beautiful scarlet macaws at the entry to the park…

 

Along with some Agoutis, I think they are called…

One interesting anecdote about Copan, is that this complex was built to have a gigantic ampitheater to watch a ball game played with a rubber ball weighing about 8 pounds. No hands or feet were allowed to touch the ball, and bouncing that off your head HAD to hurt.

This is the playing field, and the object was to touch one of the 6 goals on the sides of the field with the ball. But this game had an added twist - the winner got to be the next human sacrifice! (Should we really call him the winner? I mean, really??) Anyway, only the best was allowed to be offered to the gods, which was done on this altar here:

Again, I have to wonder if anyone ever took a dive for the team… I can imagine a comedy of players trying to under-play the others, trying to lose… at least, that’s what *I* would have been trying to do… professional sports just doesn’t have a future in a society like that.

Anyway, we got back to the actual town and it was about 4:30. We didn’t want to stay here for the night, but I didn’t really care where we went as long as it was south or west, towards El Salvador or Guatemala. So we walked through town, asking people, and everyone said the last bus had left already, but maybe THAT place would have a bus still… after playing this game for about 30 minutes, we finally found a FULL collective taxi headed in what I hoped was the right direction. Actually, I didn’t know where it was going but the road headed towards where I wanted to go in either direction, so… I figured I couldn’t lose.

Some people on the collective told me where to go next, so after a few more bus changes and several hours later we wound up at the border to El Salvador at about 11pm. Unfortunately, most of the hotels in town were full. One that wasn’t was a bit expensive, so as I was walking around looking for more hotels, a local saw us and decided to help us. He spoke English somewhat and had lived in Houston for awhile.

Well, he told us this certain hotel had rooms and he had a reservation there and they would let us in. I had already asked there and they said they were full, and told him this, but he insisted he could work it out, maybe a bribe was all we needed he said. I found the situation quite interesting so I decided to play it out and see what happened. Well, he banged on the door, the hotel clerk came out andsaid they were full. He said he had a reservation, the clerk said he didn’t, he said he did, then he said some people in the hotel knew him and could vouch for him, so about 15 minutes went by with the guy going back and forth into the hotel looking for people to vouch for this guy on the street. I found it all quite amusing, since I knew I had at least one option for beds and sincerely appreciated this guy’s help for us strangers.

Well, to make a long story short, (and you really had to be there to appreciate it) he finally said there were no rooms, but that his wife was in his room there and that we could take one bed and he could take the other with his wife. I explained to him that I appreciated his overwhelming kindness, but that we would seek out other options. He said that the town got unsafe later at night and we needed a place to sleep off the street and I told him again that the other place had beds and that we would go there, but if it was full we would come back and perhaps take him up on his offer. We finally agreed that if we didn’t come back in two minutes, it would be a sign that all was well with us. Thanked him again, and left and got beds in the other hotel.

It was just an example of how much out of their way people will go here to help complete strangers. I doubt that would have happened in my own country, but we have met this sort of behavior all the time here. Earlier that same day a local walked 3 blocks out of his way after dark to make sure we found the bus station to the next town alright and safely.

But I think of all the countries, El Salvadorans were the happiest, nicest, most helpful, and healthiest.  It was my favorite country, and you’ll hear about it next post…

Posted on February 22nd, 2009 by Natnee and filed under Honduras | No Comments »

Diving, Snorkeling and Eating In Utila

Upon arriving at Utila we were bombarded by people trying to get us to go to their dive shops. There are more dive shops on Utila than people. So we just put our heads down and ¨dived¨ through the crowd (so to speak) and got away from the hubbub. We wandered around town for awhile, noted that the prices were back up to Costa Rican equivalents, meaning 5$ a plate for food. Rooms were cheaper though. We were hungry, so we wanted to find something light. We were looking for Batidos, called Licuados here, which are basically blended fruit and milk. I asked about a dozen places, none of which had any. They said they were out of fruit. Finally I found a place that still offered Licuados, so I asked what type they had. They said Banana. I said ok, we´ll take one. We did, liked it, wanted another, so I asked for a second. He said he couldn´t, we ate the last banana. So apparently, since no other place had any, we ate the last banana on the island. Go us!

Bellies less empty, we set about finding a dive shop. All of them were basically the same price and offered the exact same item (an open water certification) and so we were left to decide based on how we liked a place. After trying every place in town, we settled on BICD, Bay Islands College of Diving. The instructors were upbeat, fun, and didn´t ooze that ¨hey dude, ain´t weed great!¨ vibe that some of the other shops did. Total cost was 271$ and that included 3 nights of room rental and 2 free fun dives after the course was finished. Plus, they offered free internet for students!

We walked down to the beach on Utila, which isn´t much of a beach for an island, where they had a slackline set up. Which was considerably harder than it looked. It is basically a tie-down strap put between two trees and stretched tight. So it is a poor man´s tightrope. They said I did quite well for a beginner, but to be honest that wasn´t so great.

Later we had a ¨taco¨ in a ¨mexican¨ restaurant. It cost about 5$, and we were somewhat shocked to receive a plate with a cupful of chicken in the middle and chips stacked around the outside. I explained to them we ordered a taco, not ¨that¨. The menu specifically said it was ¨two tortillas deep fried with chicken¨. I pointed this out, and he explained that this used to BE two tortillas and they had been cut and deep fried into chips. And that this WAS a taco. I explained to him that this was NOT a taco, but that I would eat it. It actually didn´t taste bad, but it was a small portion for the price. This is a recurring theme on Utila.

Another recurring theme is that everyone on Utila quotes prices in dollars. And require payment in dollars, or in a very bad exchange rate for Lempiras, the local currency. But none of the banks or ATMs on Utila give out dollars.  So where do the dollars go? I never figured out, but bring dollars to Utila!

That said, if you don´t have dollars, you can go to the ATM and pull out money. In Lempira, of course. Then go down the street to Jose´s money changing shack (His name isn´t Jose, but I forget what it was) (and seriously, it was a shack!) and he gives a pretty fair exchange rate and has a gigantic wad of dollars under his falling apart desk. Unlocked of course. Sometimes things make little sense to me here, but I guess that is part of the experience of traveling

When we first walked into Utila, we saw a sign that said “Indian Wok Restaurant”. And I, being a fan of Indian food, promised myself we’d eat there before we left. So that night I tried to find it again. Now mind you, Utila has 2 real streets, that run at 90 degree angles to each other, and a few alleys around these streets. You CANNOT get lost. And we KNEW we’d seen this on Main Street. So we walked back and forth. Looking for it. Again and again. We just couldn’t find it! We asked people, and they pointed us in a certain direction, and it wasn’t there. We asked others, and it wasn’t where they said either. 3 days we walked up and down this street on various errands and never saw it. Finally, when we had all but given up, I went on one last quest to find it. After sorting through the various directions, talking with the few people who seemed to have heard of it, I finally traced it to a certain place. I went next door and asked them if they knew of the Indian Wok. They said no, they’d never heard of it. I went back around and finally found a tiny building by a pier behind another building, that had no sign, where they were cooking. Turns out it was the Wok. They had a TINY sign that the put out only when they were actually open, which was only about 4 days a week from 6:30 till 11 pm. And they SERIOUSLY need to work on their advertising, is all I have to say.

So to digress a bit, while Crystal was getting certified as a diver (I have been for some years now) I had some time on my hands so I wanted to go get some dives in while I could. The only boat leaving when I wanted to go was from Parrot Divers. I didn´t like the outfit very much, but it was ok. Cost 52$ for two-tank dives. You can tell how long it´s been since I dove with a wetsuit since I accidentally put my suit on backwards. (Hey, the full-length body zipper is easier to pull up in the front!)

The dives were ok. I still am not too impressed with diving. I guess I´ve never been in the right place at the right time. Snorkeling is always so much better it seems. But I was glad when they were over. The next day I had a full day while Crystal was getting certified (It is a 3-4 day process).

 

 So I noticed that they had three computers, but only one was turned on. I enquired why, and was told that the others didn´t work. Ah-hah! Something to amuse myself.

Having certain skills in the broken computer department, I volunteered to take a look at them. They said it was no use, someone had looked at them and said it was hopelessly broken. Ah-hah! A challenge! So they told me to knock myself out. 20 minutes later I had, to quote one of the instructors ¨three computers worth of parts spread out all over the floor¨. A swiss army knife was my only tool. This is how the computer looked when I started:

So you can see, it needed help.  Well, I fiddled with it for awhile and finally got one of them up and running. Then I made the other one run faster (it was terribly bogged down with cookies and background programs and the like).

I was just about done when another instructor comes over and says he has a mini laptop that has died. Apparently, his antivirus program had deleted user32.dll. Which is, apparently, a file that windows considers important. So his computer was a nice paperweight for now. But it was so small it had no CD drive, so the only options were a network or a USB boot. Never having done either, it took me most of the day to work out a decent USB boot system. It was so hard and took so long that by the time I was done, he was practically begging me to give up. Hah!

Naturally, I did eventually get it working at about dark. The next day I decided to go diving with Crystal and BICD decided to award me 2 free dives in exchange for services rendered. So not only did I get to have fun, but I got paid for it!

These dives were significantly better. People make a big difference in such things, and the people at BICD were the best. Kinda like a disfunctional family. That night we ate at the Indian Wok, and had Garbanzo Curry, and Curried Hummus. Both of which are recipes I will be working on duplicating when I get home.

Next morning we headed for Jewel Key, a tiny island off Utila that was entirely built into a town.  To get there we took a water taxi, which was actually a 12-foot boat completely filled with propane tanks and 8 people. The boat rode so low in the water that it was in considerable danger of swamping several times. Plus the waves were rather high that day, so we actually surfed - in the boat - to the island. It was quite fun!

We were never more than 50 yards from shore though, and we passed about 20 dive boats on the way. I commented to the others that if we WERE going to get shipwrecked, then doing it surrounded by literally hundreds of rescue divers was probably a good place to have it happen!

And the driver of the boat (err, captain) didn´t charge us for the ride. Which was cool. We walked through the small key/town and tried a local specialty - fish burgers. I was not impressed. But interestingly, prices on Jewel Key were LESS than Utila. I get that everything on Utila has to be shipped in from the mainland. So it´s more expensive, OK, I understand. But why does ANOTHER boat trip to an even MORE isolated island make prices 30% less?? It hurt my head, so I tried not to think about it much.

Next morning we rented fins (we had been carrying snorkels since Costa Rica without using them) and took a water taxi to an even SMALLER island called water key. Which had some good snorkeling, as you can see:

Literally thousands and thousands of minnows, it was like swimming through minnow snow.

   

 

After that, we headed back to Utila. Checked my internet, and in responding to Emails ALMOST missed the last boat back to the mainland. Seriously, it was pulling away from the dock as I was running up. Crystal had gone ahead and was trying to get them to wait for me and they didn´t want to. When I made it evident I was willing to jump onto the receding boat, they caved in and let me on. I had already paid the exorbitant 25$ pp (each way!) fare. I WAS getting on!

Anyway. I didn´t really like Utila that much. It was hard to find good food that wasn´t white flour based. Street food was pretty scarce and restaurants were pretty expensive and portions were small. It was noisy on the weekends and it was just… not too nice. I didn´t think. Not to mention the streets were about 10´ wide and was shared by trucks, mopeds, people, and bikes. There was a constant danger of being run over by something from one direction or another.  So I was SO relieved to get back to the mainland and have some REAL food. Tamales, Batidos, Soup, and affordable again!

Next we headed to Copan. Don´t touch that dial! (So to speak!)

Posted on February 20th, 2009 by Natnee and filed under Honduras | No Comments »

Granada to Utila

So we got to Granada next, which was nice enough, but I wasn´t that impressed. Just another big town. We did find some unique foods - like fried cheese with honey on top. Which was… not as good as it sounds. And we found a food I´d been craving for a year, ever since Ecuador… Humitas! Well, they call them something different here, but they´re the same thing. Young corn ground up, stuffed in a banana leaf and made into a tamale. They are sweet (naturally, without sweeteners), and absolutely delicious. They are also a decidedly messy food, since they get everywhere. But it´s worth it!

After that we caught a bus to Masaya, intending to wake up and go to the Volcano there in the morning. We got off the bus too early in Masaya however, which was a much larger town than I had thought, so we had to wander ¨6 blocks¨ into the center of town to find hotels. It was closer to 2 miles, after dark in a strange town, but it was nice anyway… I got to eat more street food, which is my number-1 favorite thing to do in Central America. This time fried potato cakes with sauerkraut on top!

So we finally found a hotel and next morning we were up at 7 to go to the volcano. Negotiated an appropriate price with the taxi, got there, only to find out it didn´t open for another hour yet. (Who knew volcanos closed at night??)… so anyway, we didn´t want to wait so we skipped Masaya and went on to Managua. From there after finding a bus in yet another hectic bus station, we headed for the Honduran border. But first, the bus had to cruise through the local market, very slowly, trying to find more passengers. This made me unbearably hungry by tempting me with food on all sides, so I hopped out to go buy food. This freaked Crystal out, who stayed behind, but… I knew what I was doing. Really! So I found some more Humitas and hopped back on the bus just in time and this way I didn´t have to ride hungry!

At the border, we were disappointed to find that they didn´t stamp our passports. But they did give me a FREE Honduras map … (after I paid them 7$ to let me into their country) … hey, maybe the map wasn´t free…?

Anyway, I did learn a lesson here that I already knew, but this helped to cement it. That lesson is, always agree on a price firmly up front before letting anyone do anything for you. See, this is a rather long walk across the border here, and we were tired, so these tricycle taxis showed up to take us across. I asked how much, and he said ¨a small tip only¨ so I left it at that. Big mistake. They took us across the border, guided us through immigration, not that we really needed any guiding, it was a snap, and then they asked for their tip. So I gave them 3$ for the both of them. They had a hissy fit and demanded 20$. For a 30 minute ride. I said not a chance and offered them 4. They demanded 15 and were both screaming at me and quite a crowd had gathered. So I offered 5, and they were protesting and demanding 10. What I should have done at this point was, instead of offering more money, start offering less. Less or nothing. That would have solved the problem.

Anyway, I think I wound up paying them 10$ to make them go away. Then the tension broke and the locals all started laughing. One of them who wasn´t laughing pulled me aside and told me to always agree on a price before hand because I had just been fleeced. He said these guys had earned about 50 cents and I´d given them 10 dollars. He was quite angry at them. Oh well. I learned the lesson and so I consider it money well spent.  So then we caught a collectivo, (shared taxi-bus), which is always cramped and overcrowded. Then we caught a real bus to Tegucigalpa, spent the night there (it was raining, so it wasn´t a very nice impression the town left) .

Catching a bus in Latin America is always interesting. The buses hire hawkers to go out and pull you in from the street to their bus/ticket window/office. And these hawkers will lie and do anything they have to do to get you to their bus. They´ll tell you the other buses leave later, are slower, are broken - even when the other bus hawkers are right there, telling you that these buses have bad seats and stink, then they start cussing at each other, it´s quite an experience. I generally assume both are lying and ignore them and find my own way if possible.

As we left Tegucigalpa the next morning we passed through a market, so I leaned out the window and bought some more humitas from a lady on the street. Just asked for them and she ran up the bus window as it was pulling away and I gave her the money. Like a dollar for 4 huge humitas.

After we got to San Pedro Sula, we saw our first real bus station. Up until now they had all been, even in the cities, scattered over several blocks with independent stations. But in SPS they had a real, huge, bus terminal where all the buses stopped. Which made it much easier to find your connection. We stopped there for awhile and had lunch, which was nachos and mondongo. Mondongo, for the uninformed, is essentially beef gut soup. It was better than it sounds. Gigantic bowl for 2$ too.

Then we took a bus to La Ceiba, where the ferry leaves for Utila. Had plantain french fries for dinner, with fried chicken. I ordered one, but he understood one for each of us, so we got two. Then I tried to get a to-go box for the one I hadn´t eaten and he put in an order for a third one. Luckily I stopped him before he got it made and explained that no, I JUST wanted a box, not another meal!

It was still raining the next morning, and we had heard the boat left at 9 am. So we were up early because the taxi drivers told us the bus system was very hard to navigate. I was skeptical, but I wanted to make sure we didn´t miss it, so at 7am we started walking towards the bus stop. Found it and in a half hour we were at the boat dock. So it wasn´t that hard after all, it was yet another taxi driver lie … after all, us taking the bus cost him a 5 dollar fare!

As it happened, the boat wasn´t scheduled to leave until 9:30. As it happened, it was late and didn´t leave until 10:30. So we had 3 hours to wait. The ticket counter had one extremely slow woman taking the tickets, and at least a 150 people in line, so it took about 2 of those hours just to get everyone a ticket.

Then, as the boat loaded, they loaded the bags separately and put them in a dry hold. So most of the people finally got on, and then as we were pulling away from the dock, there were about 10 people who the boat refused to let on. They said it was full. But they already had stowed their bags on the boat, and they had bought tickets! So of course the people started raising a stink and eventually they consented to let them ride.

The boat ride over was extremely rough. A large percentage of people got sea sick. I would have loved to have the dramamine concession on that boat. I of course thought it was quite fun. Some of the swells were at least 15´ tall and the boat had quite a bounce when it dropped to the bottom. Most of the boat was wrapped in a plastic cover to keep the passengers dry, and it was quite a large boat. However, there was space outside the plastic in the bow of the boat for passengers to ride, and I knew the bouncing was worst on the front of the boat, and naturally that is where I wanted to be.

It was rather cold this morning, and as I said, somewhat rainy. And with these waves, we were constantly drenched while being bounced. For about an hour. And I mean, really soaked. I have a picture of one of the waves hitting us, but I can´t upload it right now. But it was quite an exhilirating ride. When I got off I had been soaked so many times that I had salt caked on my skin. And that brings us to Utila, where we spent nearly a week, and that will be the next entry…

Posted on February 15th, 2009 by Natnee and filed under Honduras, Nicaragua | No Comments »

Subscribe To My Posts!

(If you don't know what those mean, just click one; your browser should do the rest)

Enter your search terms

Web www.TravelWithNatnee.com Submit search form