Me Encanta Guatemala

Upon crossing the northern Guate border from Belize I was immediately greeted by touts for taxis or shuttles at extraordinarily overpriced amounts. $60 US to my destination city of Flores? No gracias. I'd rather walk aimlessly around Melchor De Mencos, a nothing border town of 14,000 people, thank you. Fortunately it didn't take long for the public shuttle to spot the wandering gringo. For $55 US less I was cramped in the middle seat of a twelve passenger van dripping in sweat. A twelve person van stuffed with fifteen, yet continuing to stop and pick up more passengers. The van didn't really seem to have a capacity I guess. It didn't matter that people were "smushed" against the door or sitting cannonball position between rows of seats. Apparently safety regulations do not exist in Guatemala.

After four hours of Guate public transport I made it to Santa Elena and got to ride on my very first Tuc-Tuc. A tiny three-wheeled dome shaped taxi (I believe originating from India). Santa Elena leads directly by causeway to the island city of Flores. A beautiful little city with no room left for expansion. Hopefully a city stuck in a perpetual state of being. Jumping off docks into clean blue lake water and strolling cobbled streets became my daily routine.

The world famous, amazingly beautiful, ancient Mayan city of Tikal sits an hour north of Flores. The Mayans were geniuses. Plain and simple. Mapping their cities to the sun, moon, and planets. It took modern civilization until the 20th century to know what these guys knew and were able to predict two thousand years prior. Thanks to sonar imaging it's now known that the entire city of Tikal has some 17,000 stone builders. Most still buried by 1,000 years of jungle growth. Shamefully the Spanish burned most paper evidence of the writings of the Mayans so little is still known about what caused this amazing civilization to abandon their massive cities. (An abandonment which happened well before the arrival of the Spanish). What lessons will we never be able to learn from them? Are we heading down a similar road? No...I'm not going there...BUT shit, perhaps we need to remember the importance of looking in the past as advice toward our future. Millions...billions...have lived a life time of experiences and yet we often live ours without so much of a glimpse of thought into the rights and wrongs already started and ended a thousand times over. Sadly it seems to be human nature that most of us are incapable of learning certain life lessons without experiencing them first hand. In the sake of travel, I'm all about first hand, but in the case of reaping the land for resources with no thought to the long term, to the idea of tilling more land, to support more people in an Earth seemingly already stuffed to capacity...well, I hope we all don't need to experience poverty and starvation first hand in order to learn the lessons of their root cause.

I read an interesting book in the last couple weeks "The Story of B". It made a curious point about population. In the animal kingdom, what causes population growth? Answer: Lack of predators or increased food supply. In nature, when an animals population becomes too high for the food available the population stabilizes. Always. Add more food the population continues to increase. Always. Its a law of nature. More food = more population. Stabilize food = stabilized population. It gets only slightly more confusing when you throw predators in the equation. The population will fluctuate, but still remain stable over the long term. I'm talking about this because humans are not exempt from this law of nature. More food = more population. One of the many points of the book is you cannot cure hunger by making more food. We've tried this method for years and like a child continuing to try to stick the square peg into the round hole, we make more food, and amazingly more people are born and hunger and starvation doesn't go away. Population growth is the root cause of nearly all the woes this planet is facing. Interestingly, with controlled experiments it was found populations didn't suffer when a raising food supply was suddenly kept stable. No animals withered and starved. No fighting between animals over resources took place. Population stabilized. The only problem with this theory is we need to regard the human race as part of the animal kingdom. An equal subject to its laws and regulations. Not above it, but part of it. I'm capable of admitting that. Are you?

On brighter news while taking my two weeks of Spanish language lessons in San Pedro on volcano ringed Lago Atitlan I learned about the Guatemalan Civil War. 200,000 Indigenous murdered, 150,000 missing, 1,000,000 displaced from their homes. Military soldiers stormed towns, filed the villagers into churches, locked the doors and lit the churches on fire. Babies were smashed against rocks. Some grabbed by their legs and swung head on into concrete. Unfortunately, that only scratches the surface of the horrors committed, but I'll limit it to that. The survivors rarely got off without first losing an arm, leg, or hand with the swing of a machete.

I'm a USA fan. I see the fortunate life I was born into, but I sure as hell don't want it at the expense of unimaginable atrocities like this. In fear of Communism the US, during the 1980's, fueled this war by providing money to the Guate military fighting the mainly indigenous army. Not the 1880's or 1930's or even 1960's. This happen in the 1980's, less than 30 years ago. An indigenous Guerrilla army initially in search of fare labor rights and an opportunity to own the land they worked on. The land owned almost entirely by the US United Fruit Company. Later, filled with hate, they fought for other reasons. In case there are any "God Bless America", "Right wing Republicans never do wrong", "America is the greatest country in the world" people reading this...I'm not saying this to bash my country. We have done great things and are certainly capable of greatness, but we wronged here and unfortunately this is only one of several cases where the US became involved in foreign countries for causes shrouded in hidden agendas and in the past these incidents ultimately led to the death of thousands and thousands of innocent people. (I hope with the intention of protecting our way of life), but unfortunately at the expense of innocent lives. I, as an American, refuse to accept that as OK. It's important to admit we wronged, but America is too damn proud to do that. Interestingly we are involved in yet another foreign conflict as I write this with the nation of Libya. I hope for solely humanitarian reasons, but I honestly think we never know what our government is doing. Whether our president is liberal (Obama now) or Republican (Reagan in the 80's) I think it is all shrouded in bullshit.

If I've learned one thing so far from this trip it is that we are all people in this world. Whether your American (Estado Unidense to the rest of the Americas), Mexican, Guate, Spanish, Australian, or any of the some 200 countries in the world - you bleed, you cry, you feel pain and pleasure. You're no better than any one else. The people I've met are friendly, out going, love their family, and hard working. Qualities an person would respect. Love thy neighbor. Right?

Ahhh crap....I've gone off a bit haven't I?

Wrapping up...Thank you Tio Raymundo for coming to visit for ten days. We had nice walks and roof top chilling in Antigua and amazing coffee sipping time in San Pedro. It was nice to have a companion for a time.

I've hit the road again, now in Quetzaltenango (Known also as Xela - (shell-a)) and am immensely happy to be wandering again.

Peace and love friends and family.

Belize

Currently I'm in San Pedro La Laguna on Lake Atitlan in Guatemala. I have been here a week with my Uncle Ray and I am likely staying another two weeks to study Spanish. My location will stand still and give me a chance to catch up on what I did a couple weeks ago.



Corozal Town in northern Belize is less than a pleasant place. I'm not really sure why I was there. It was Sunday and it seemed like a ghost town. Nobody was there. I found a hotel thanks to my taxi driver, but even though the road looked no bigger than the street I live on in my small neighborhood in Connecticut, it was apparently one of the main highways in Belize. ALL NIGHT trucks and cars where zooming by my hotel and thanks to "habitaciones sin arquitectos" (rooms without architects) the acoustics of my room made it feel like I was at NASCAR event. I walked around to look for a place to eat and discovered the only restaurants in Corozal town are dirty Chinese ones. I dined solo staring at posters of half naked girls holding beer bottles while I timidly ate the heaping plate of lo mein in front of me. I thanked my lucky stars the next day when I experienced no ill effects. When you travel like I am doing it is not always a vacation. It is life. Sometimes you make stupid choices. This time mine was going to Corozal Town.

In the morning I got a boat that brought me out to the island of Ambergris Caye and the town of San Pedro. Prices in Belize are about the same as those in the United States and after having just traveled five weeks through Mexico, I wasn't liking the changes. They have their own money in Belize, but it is also okay to use the United States dollar. The exchange is simple for even the most inept person. One US dollar equals two Belizean dollars. One Belizean dollar equals .50 cents US. Got it? In San Pedro the prices were terrible. $12 Belize for an hour on the internet, $25 BZ for a decent breakfast, and $10 BZ for a bag of tortilla chips. I brought $60 US dollars with me on this trip in anticipation of needing to use them in emergencies. That bastard at the Mexican border took the first $20 US from me and I turned the other $40 in for the emergency of having no money to buy beers at the bar connected to my hostel. I saved $4 US in one dollar bills given to me as change. This has now replaced my $60 US worth of emergency money. Hopefully I don't have a very big emergency.

The crap thing about San Pedro are all the damn golf carts. Golf carts are the main form of transportation. The taxis are golf carts and every fat, lazy, and old tourist that comes to the town (aka - everyone) rents a golf cart to drive around the town, which cannot be much more than a mile long (The island itself is much larger though, but mostly uninhabited). I walk everywhere so I was in constant danger of being run over by a golf cart. Once again, I somehow survived. I was thinking about diving in San Pedro, which sits next to the second largest coral reef in the world, but opted to simply take a snorkeling trip. Well worth it. I swam by sting rays and only remembered Steve Irwin after I was safely on the boat. I swam down and ran my fingers over their smooth "back". Thankfully it didn't pop its' tail through my heart. Coral, fish of all colors, and crystal blue water. It was awesome. In this place called "Shark Ray Alley" there were loads of nurse sharks hanging about the boat eating food thrown in by our skipper, but they took off when we got in the water. I was hoping to have the chance to swim around the harmless sharks, but settled for the rays and loads of other impressive looking tropical fish. It was an experience I'll never forget. I spent three nights in San Pedro. A couple days being stupidly hungover thinking I was 'as good as I once was' hanging with some younger guys. There was also a nightly poker game at the hostel and I lost more than I usually spend in three days traveling. Aside from snorkeling in some of the best waters in the world, I've been making some stupid choices in Belize.

From San Pedro I took a boat to Belize City, and got on a US converted school bus from the 70's and headed to western Belize and the town of San Ignacio. Belize (and Guatemala) get all of the United States old school buses. These are the main source of transportation. I'm telling you. Mexico's transportation is unbelievably nice compared to those countries and I haven't even made it to some of the more difficult countries of El Salvador, Honduras, and Nicaragua. Mexico is amazing. Go there. I'm telling you. Not Cancun though. That isn't Mexico. Cancun is meat heads from the U.S. giving us a bad name getting plastered during spring break because they never learned how to drink because we're the only country with a drinking age of 21. Was that a runon sentence?

In San Ignacio I was staying in this guest house ten miles away from the main town on dirt roads in the middle of the jungle. Check some pics on facebook and you'll see. It was very nice. Jungle hikes, swimming in clear water having just emerged from underground caves, and enjoying the peaceful sounds of nature. An American family owned the guest house and lived there with their three children. One was a nine year old boy, who took it upon himself to bother the shit out of me. He was a nice kid and I had some fun with him, but it started to feel like I was babysitting after day one. We played cards, connect four, he took me on a hike, and we made paper airplanes together. It started to feel less fun. I like kids, I'm a teacher, but sometimes I want to throw them off a cliff. Does that make me a bad guy?

I was waiting in the border line to exit Belize and enter Guatemala when I over heard a couple of woman who had hired a guide to take them across the border and help them arrive safely to their hotel: "Does anybody ever just walk across the border without a guide??" I don't consider myself a special case. There are literally thousands of travelers like myself. Well, all of them have three times the amount of stuff I do, but still, travels traveling solo, crossing borders with no guide. I hear all the time people say how they wish they could do what I'm doing. How lucky I am, etc. It's not always easy my friend. In your head, you may think its easy, but when you cross that border, and realize you still don't know the language being spoken and you have no idea where the bus station is and how to get from one place to another and everyone sees that, and knows that, and is trying to rip you off, you may not wish to travel the way I and the thousands of others are. It's amazing and I love it and if you really want to do it YOU CAN and YOU SHOULD, but it's not a vacation, it's my current life. There are good days and bad. It's hard and sometimes scary. Understand what you're wishing for before you say it.

"What do you do while your in Guatamala??"

Relax, read, drink coffee, eat, walk around, sleep, REPEAT.