Mig Quest

Fake Tweets

2010-04-09T23:23:00.003-04:00

Important note: I am actually home in Fort Lauderdale, but because I wrote so much material in my notepad, I was not able to sit in an internet cafe long enough to put it all on my blog while I was in Panama.

April 3rd, Saturday. waiting for a bus to Almirante:

pollitos (live baby chickens) at this bus terminal for 60 cents each. too bad I cant takem home, Chucho wud love some playmates #catfood

The most awkward moment of my Panama trip

2010-04-09T22:06:00.003-04:00

Sitting on a nearly empty bus that was headed to David, a 16 year old Panamanian girl (who looked about 12) named Alexandra sat next to me and started quizzing me in spanish. For the 45 minute trip to Panama's second biggest city, I decided it would be a good opportunity to rehearse my spanish and talk with a local. She was extremely friendly, and also attempted to talk to the Dutch girl in the seat in front of us, but the woman couldn't speak spanish.

Turns out, she was also headed to Changuinola, which is the bus I needed from David to get to the ferry for Bocas Del Toro in Almirante. Our friendship continued for another 6 hours on another bus. Conversations included local music, Linkin Park, favorite foods, Boquete, family, stolen passports, miel de sabe, etc. About 3 hours into our discussions, I began to fear the appearance of our friendship to the locals around us.

Near the end of the ride, I began talking to a local Bocas resident. After he answered my questions about the ferry departure schedule, he asked me "So is your girlfriend traveling with you to Bocas?", glancing at Alexandra.

I couldn't have been more adamant in tell the man that she was merely a friend I met on the bus from Boquete; nothing more, nothing less. My fear had become a reality. I tried to limit conversation with Alexandra after the man's comment.

When I got off the bus at Almirante, I hailed a taxi driver to take me to la lancha (small boat) dock. With a cop standing near me, I gave Alexandra a goodbye wave from afar, but she began walking towards me. It appeared like she wanted a Latin American style hug and cheek kiss farewell. I hunched over to give her an awkward hug, and said goodbye again. Apparently, she wanted to whisper something in my ear, so I hunched over again to hear what she has to say. Keep in mind, this police officer has his right eye on me the whole time.

"Can I have $5 for dinner? I'm out of cash."

I told her "lo siento (sorry)", hopped in the cab. As the taxi sped off, I saw her dejected face through the back window of the taxi.

As I reflect on the most awkward moment in my 2 week trip, I honestly still believe she was genuine with her overt friendliness. If we were in Vietnam, I'd think she was trying to scam me for sure. However, Central Americans don't usually talk to you for long periods of time to lure you into a scam; they will just pick pocket you or hold you up at gun point. In hindsight, I think she had a crush on me, and I was too excited to be speaking in spanish with a local to realize it at the time.

So, in case you are reading this Alexandra, I apologize for not donating you a bit of cash for dinner, but you put me in a strange position. I hope you understand that in my country, 27 year olds don't date 16 year olds. If you find this post, comment with your email address so I can send you the newest Linkin Park CD. Ciao.

¨Nescafe should be called No Es Cafe¨

2010-04-03T21:12:00.004-04:00

People that have drank my coffee concoctions know that I don´t drink coffee for taste; its all about the caffeine high for me. No trip to Boquete would be complete without a tour about Panama´s famous coffee. Unfortunately, Boquete has gotten so popular in the last 3 years that the tour´s price doubled from a reasonable $14 to $30 for the Lonely Planet recommended 3 hour coffee tour with Cafe Ruiz. Fortunately, Cafe Ruiz has an alternative tour for broke backpackers like myself that is only $9, and only goes to the roasting facility. There are so many things that I didn´t know about coffee, and after the tour I tried to jot down as many facts as I could remember. Here is what I scribbled:

- Panama is the smallest country that produces coffee
- 8 of the last 10 years, a coffee farm from Boquete has won the worldwide Coffee Olympics (I forgot the name). Cafe Ruiz won in 2001.
- Panama is the only producer of geisa, the tastiest type of coffee plant. It can only be grown at elevations of 1,000 - 1300 meters, with a sufficient level of rainfall per year. Other countries do not produce it because the plant requires more space and does not produce as many coffee beans. Ethiopa used to grow them, but they chopped them all down. Unroasted, the bean sells for $130 per pound to gourmet coffee shops around the world. Roasted, it sells for over $400 per pound. Cafe Ruiz only sells their beans unroasted (green beans or gold beans). This bean is the reason Panama keeps winning the Coffee Olympics.
- Dark coffee is not stronger. It just means that it has been roasted longer and has a more bitter flavor. The only way to make coffee stronger is to put more coffee and less water in your coffee maker. Expresso is pretty much slightly burnt coffee beans, hence the bitter flavor.
- the top coffee producing countries drink the least amount of coffee. No coincidence, most of those countries have extremely warm climates. The top coffee drinking countries are all in cold climates (Finland, Austria, etc).
- Coffee is being produced less and less in Panama. Over 60% of the country´s coffee cultivation is in Boquete. The influx of retirees are buying up coffee farm land at outrageous prices that locals cannot refuse (1.5 million dollars for 2 hectares of land, minimum of 350,000 dollars for 1 hectar of land). Cafe Ruiz already announced that they would not sell their 25 farms.
- from planting a coffee tree seed to the first quality coffee bean, it takes about 6 years.
- you should never put cream, milk, or sugar in quality coffee
- If a coffee bean sinks in water, its a good bean. If it floats it either means that bugs have eaten in the inside or that there is fungus inside. Folgers and Nescafe use the floaters in their coffee.

- Atleast at Cafe Ruiz, every part of the coffee bean is used. Obviously, the bean is the coffee, the skin is used to fuel the furnace in the roaster, the ashes are sprinkled in the soil of new coffee plants

- Cafe Ruiz has 25 farms in Boquete

- Over 70% of coffee made in Panama is made in Boquete

- Panama is the only Latin American country where the coffee growers are not controlled by the government. For that reason, you can enjoy quality coffee within the country because they don't export all of it

- Each farm's beans are bagged individually before roasting.

- The beans on the plant must be red before you pick them

- The bean inspectors have over 50 possible descriptions for the smell of a particular coffee bean

- The season for coffee bean cultivation in Boquete is from October to March only

- Their roasters can produce 267 lbs of roasted beans per 20 minutes

- Cafe Ruiz can only be found in gourmet coffee shops

- If a bag of coffee says mixed grains or chickory, it's not 100% made of coffee beans.

- "Flavored" coffee is not really flavored. Its merely scented with a liquid that is produced in New Jersey

I forgot a lot of stuff I learned, but I think I wrote down the important facts. I highly recommend taking the Cafe Ruiz tour if you ever go to Boquete.

Restricted Book Exchanges Can Go To Hell

2010-04-03T20:58:00.004-04:00

This is a note I wrote on the inside cover of Box Office Champions: The Biggest Movie Blockbusters of All Time, an uninspiring book that simply summarizes and reviews the top grossing movies from 1944-1984.

Dear Hostel X,

Sorry for ruining your book exchange by trading this piece of shit book for a significantly better one from your collection. I picked this up mainly because I wanted to dump my 800 page Stephen King book to save space in my backpack. Blame Luna´s Castle for having a bad book exchange with no good books to choose from.

Con amor,
Another book exchange victim

Thanks Luna for not letting me trade my quality Stephen King novel Black House into your restricted book exchange because it broke your ¨no thrillers¨rule, you f**king book exchange nazis. I could´ve had No Country For Old Men or Rolling With Dre (biography on Dr Dre), but noooo, now some innocent hostel will be stuck with the filth from your awful unrestricted book exchange. Now, I´m stuck reading my Spanish-English dictionary to entertain me before I go to bed.

Day 2 in Boquete: just the highlights

2010-04-03T20:44:00.002-04:00

- Hiked 2 hours roundtrip to a cascada (waterfall). I meant to hike the all day trek on the Sendero De Los Quetzales, but some dude with a mini machete pointed me in the wrong direction. Apparently, I could´ve still seen some quetzales on this other much shorter trail, but I didn´t. (see previous post on this annoying bird)
- Hiked 2 hours uphill to get a view of Boquete from a higher point. As my legs started to fail me, it became more of a personal challenge than a sight seeing hike. Came up with a lot of good business ideas on the downhill portion of the walk.
- Tried sancocho, the national dish of Panama. It´s a soup with chicken and vegetables in a delicious broth. Nothing spectacular, but a nice change from the usual carb laden meal.
- Had a good writing session (this is part of it) at Cafe Ruiz. This double expresso really hit the spot. I wish gourmet coffee was cheaper back home, I´d probably try to write at coffee shops more often. It also helps that the view from my seat on the cafe´s patio is absolutely amazing.

The day´s fake tweet:
Why did I trust the dude with the machete. In the middle of forest somewhere outside of Boquete FML (not really)

A new threat....bird watching?!?

2010-04-03T20:34:00.002-04:00

I have little patience or desire for bird watching. There is nothing that interests me about it and I´m typically not good at spotting wildlife. I sucked at finding Waldo, why do I think I can find a particular tiny bird in the middle of a jungle. That being said, in my total accumulated time in Central America (my 2008 summer trip + this trip), I have continually heard about this f**king bird called the Quetzal. Guatemala was so obsessed with the bird that they named their currency quetzales. The funny thing is, I have never met a traveler who has seen one or had photo evidence. Today, I woke up at the crack of dawn to find one of these elusive birds. As you can imagine, I failed in my quest. I am starting to think that the Quetzal is just one big Central American inside joke that they use to haze travelers. Before I am buried 6 feet under, I swear I will find one of these goddamn birds.

Day 1 in Boquete summarized

2010-04-03T20:16:00.002-04:00

Highlights of Day 1 in Boquete

- Walked around the city. Found some good photo opportunities of the cloud covered mountains and some old warehouses
- Met 2 friendly Panamanians, Pancho Palacios (owner of Hostal Palacios) & a woman who worked at a used clothes thrift store. Pancho might be the most energetic and enthusiastic person I´ve ever met. It was almost as if he drank Boquete´s famous coffee all day long. He was a bastion of knowledge about Boquete and the surrounding area. Also, he gives backpackers a cheaper rate because ¨we are tired from our long travels¨. Hostal Palacios, which also happens to be his home where his wife, son, parents, and dog live, gets my full hearted recommendation. The woman at the thrift store and I talked for about 30 minutes about traveling & universities. The highlight of our conversation was when she asked me if I had una novia (girlfriend).When I said no, she looked shocked then tried to convince me to date her 21 year old daughter because ¨she likes to travel too¨.
- drank my first (of many) cup of high quality Panamanian coffee at Cafe Ruiz, a world famous coffee producer and cafe.
- Had the strangest dream I´ve had in awhile. To summarize, I was an NBA player who was conflicted about playing for both my NBA squad and an intramural team which was coached by the actor who played the little brother in the remake of Gone In 60 Seconds. While I was discussing if I should play or not with my coach, I was hanging out at 1921 (a different version of the current venue), talking to Iggy Pop and some other famous person that I don´t remember now. Right before I woke up from the dream, I was taking a limo to my NBA game with the latest James Bond actor. So f**king weird.

Fake Tweets

2010-04-03T20:07:00.002-04:00

on Playa Bluff on Isla Colon in Bocas Del Toro, 2pm Thursday, Panama time

wow, just shotgunned a beer at the time when Jesus apparently died (3pm EST). i hope hell doesn´t exist

5 mins later

whew, turns out he dies on Friday and not Thursday. im safe. spring break in Bocas Del Toro continues

Boquete Raton

2010-03-30T21:54:00.003-04:00

On the main street, where the chicken buses from David enter the small mountain town of Boquete, there should be a sign that reads ¨Welcome to Boquete, The Boca Raton of Panama¨. Don´t get me wrong, I love this town (as well as Boca Raton) and have already stayed one more night than I anticipated, but I´m not entirely sure why this has become the hot new spot for retirees. Sure, it´s beautiful and the weather is just perfect, not too hot or cold, but there are plenty of cities like this in the world. Maybe it´s just me, but when I retire (ha) I want to be in an area where I have an array of options for suitable entertainment, sports channels, and cheap flights to visit different places. If you want to hike, go ziplining, or drink coffee all day, Boquete would be a fine stop to settle down before you die, but I´m guessing that most of these overweight German senior citizens sitting at the table next to me aren´t into that sort of thing, nor should they be; their fragile bodies and hearts might fail on them midway on the zipline.

On the positive side, the locals here are extremely friendly and the scenery is incredible. It´s full of tiring but beautiful hikes that can take you to undeveloped hot springs or through the home of rare bird, the Quetzal. Boquete is home to some of the greatest coffee this side of the world. I´ve also been able to try sancocho at a good Panamanian cafeteria, and will hopefully get a taste of mondongo tomorrow (small intestines). Overall, I´ve thoroughly enjoyed my 2 nights in this mountainous town.

On a related note, it´s hard for me to imagine retiring (assuming I will be able to retire) outside of the Miami/FTL area. In my head, I picture myself in Little Havana, playing dominoes, drinking cortaditos, wearing a white guayabera, and discussing Los Dolphins and when they are going to win a Super Bowl. Hopefully, I will also be going to Miami Marlins games, but unfortunately, I´d be shocked if the team was around in another 40 years (crossing my fingers)

I still don´t have diarhea, plus other interesting facts

2010-03-30T21:26:00.004-04:00

As I write this, I am sitting on the patio of one of the most famous cafe´s in North America, Cafe Ruiz in Boquete, Panama. The cloud covered mountains I can see from my table, the natural high that is frequently felt when traveling abroad, and the double shot of high quality expresso has inspired me to write a blog about the little things. Even on the most mundane excursions such as past Sunday´s all day bus trip to the uninspiring city of David, at least a couple interesting and unique experiences occur.

Here are some examples taken from that ¨unproductive¨and ¨mundane¨day:

- Tried chicheme, which is a Panamanian spin on the popular latin drink arroz con leche. As far as I know, the main difference is that they insert corn kernels into the drink to give it a tapioca-like texture.
- Helped 2 clueless Dutch girls who spoke minimal Spanish to get their bus ticket to David. They needed the bus to get to their spanish lessons in Bocas Del Toro.
- Bought some questionable meat empanadas. After I bought it, the 2 girls behind the counter began to snicker which made me feel a little scared about eating them. I eliminated these thoughts as simply paranoia, and bit into them anyway. It´s very likely that the empanadas were filled with rotten meat based on the strange texture. Needless to say, I ate 1 and a half of them. I did not experience loose stools afterwards (surprisingly, I have yet to have diarhea, a rarity in Central America. knocking on wood)
- Caught a potential pick pocket from stealing my wallet. While on the bus, I felt my wallet slip out of my left short´s pocket. I stood up from my seat and shined my iPod light on the seat to see what else had fallen out. The local Panamanian guy sitting next to me abruptly got up from his seat, grabbed his bag, and got off the bus in the middle of nowhere. My guess is that he failed to snag my wallet, and realized he was caught. It was a rookie backpacker mistake on my part; never put your wallet/passport/camera on the pocket closest to the person sitting next to you
- Stayed in a hostel that night that was all purple. Literally, almost everything in the hostel was either purple already or painted purple. It was quite an impressive collection and unique looking hostel. No coincidence, it was called Purple House http://purplehousehostel.com/

By far, that day was my least productive day, but so many small, nonchalant events happened that could easily be overlooked. I guess that´s one of the purposes of this blog, to write down the minute details and experiences while they are fresh and soon forgotten. The ability to find bloggable topics even on ¨slow¨days is also a key step in becoming a more interesting blogger, which I aspire to be. If only I could stray away from my love for parentheses and bulletpoints.

Fake Tweets

2010-03-30T21:23:00.002-04:00

7:04 AM lost in the middle of a forest outside of town
¿Why did I trust the dude with the mini machete? in the middle of i dont even know where, looking for a damn bird. FML (not really) #machetes

Panamanian Baseball League > Major League Baseball

2010-03-29T21:53:00.006-04:00

As a dedicated miser, I pride myself on my uncanny money saving skills. However, between the 3 night bender in Panama City and a few erroneos decisions, my dream budget of $25 a day is becoming merely a dream. On the plus side, it´s been money well spent on some unique experiences and hanging out with new friends. After epic nights like last night´s Panamanian League playoff baseball game between the popular Los Santos Herranos (not sure that´s the real mascot) and the Bocas Del Toro Torgtugas, I start to forget about my reckless spending .

Upon arrival to the stadium, I was initially impresssed by the sheer size of the structure. Unlike Ron Caña Stadium in Granada, Nicaragua, this stadium rivaled the size of South Florida sporting venues such as American Airlines Arena or the Bank Atlantic Center (my guess is that it holds 25,000 people). Fortunately for us, the size was the only aspect that was comparable; if drinks and food were only $1 each at American pro sporting events, I´d be a Florida Panthers season ticket holder. The parking lot was more full than anticipated, and the bootleg merchandise vendors were set up outside the stadium, trying to hock everything from car flags to team polo shirts. (little known fact, buying jerseys from unofficial Panamanian vendors outside the stadium will cost more money than the stores inside the stadium). Team spirit was apparent among the throngs of fans that wore matching colored clothing that corresponded with their favorite teams.

After purchasing our $4 general admission tickets, we proceeded to the traditionally best seats, 3 rows up from homeplate. Since we were outsiders and had no favorite team, we figured itd only be right if we rooted for the popular team, in this case Los Santos. Our seats were amidst a sea of orange, the colors of Los Santos; in the right corner of the stadium, by first base, was a small faction of green and yellow, the Bocas fans. Our section was a typical crowd at a Florida Marlins game, fairly subdued and overpowered by the opposing fans´cheers. It took one inning for us to realize that we would get a better experience if we changed sides. As quietly as 12 drunk American backpackers could sneak out of a full row of people, we escaped to the enemy´s section.

The best way to describe our new section´s atmosphere is a mix of Rio De Janeiro´s Carnival and college night at a minor league baseball game. There was hardly a moment when the Boca´s fans stopped singing, dancing, or playing their big band trumpets and drumline drums. Periodically, they would start an infectious dance to the beat of their instruments which I can only describe as a Spanish Cha Cha Slide. This dance was a favorite among the group of backpackers, and the majority of us joined in the dances and chanting which made for some good video footage and photos. It also helped that on average, each us downed 1.5 beers an inning.

Between the constant movement and singing, the frequent service from the beer vendors (we were by far their best customers), the green hankerchiefs that were given to most of us as a gift, and the better than expected quality of baseball, the local Bocas fans really made the backpackers feel as if they were rooting for their favorite teams back home. When our team won the game, the entire section of people started throwing their leftover drinks and ice in the air, spraying everyone within 15 feet. I was sufficiently drunk by the end of the game, but I felt sincere joy that the green and yellow team won the game. The fans began their chants again, and eventually started a new song dedicated to us foreigners. It was simple, but it went something like this ¨Extranjeros! (foreigners!) whistle whistle whistle, Extranjeros! whistle whistle whistle¨ None us clearly had a preferred team at the start of the game, but after the friendly treatment by the Bocas fans, its safe to say that we have become lifelong Tortugas.

side note: After the game, 7 of us decided that hitchhiking home would be our quickest and cheapest option. We found an SUV that was willing to cram all 7 of us for $1 each. For some reason, when he dropped us off in Casco Viejo, he decided not to charge us. I felt compelled to include this random act of kindess. I always appreciate a friendly local on my trips.

More fake tweets

2010-03-29T21:49:00.002-04:00

Sunday 7PM on a bus from Panama City to David
On a bus, the woman next to me is breast feeding and I am watching the Europe music video for Carrie. Lovin Panama http://bit.ly/oyW92

A quick summary about the rest of my days in Panama City

2010-03-29T21:17:00.004-04:00

Some quick notes about the rest of my days in Panama City

- After visiting the Panama Canal, I decided to kill some time rather than lounge around the hostel, so I hopped on a bus to Panama Viejo, the first version of Panama City before it was demolished by Captain Morgan (yes, the same Capt Morgan on the bottles of spiced rum) in 1671. Nothing to enthralling, just a bunch of scattered half destroyed ruins, a rebuilt convent, and tower. The more interesting part of the midday trip was busing through most of central Panama City, where I was able to get a glimpse of the areas outside of Casco Viejo. I also enjoyed getting caught in the rain by Cinco De Mayo where the buses departed. I was able to take some pictures of some of the Diablos Rojos as they lined up in the rain. If you care for more info, here´s the wiki link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panama_Viejo

- At night, we went to a reggae warehouse bar called La Casona. The owners of the bar put no effort into renovating the warehouse to make it appear like a legal establishment. I think that´s what made it feel so cool and underground. The only decorations was a trippy mural on 1 wall, a bunch of white sheets hanging from the ceiling, and blue colored stringed lights that made the sheets glow. When I used to live in a warehouse for 3 months, I always dreamed of it looking like this bar.

- Spent day 3 at a local beach was some new friends I made at the hostel. We were trying to get to Veracruz, but got too anxious and jumped off the bus as soon as we saw a shore (turns out we were 1km short). We spent the day under an undersized thatched hut, having ridiculous conversations, making jokes about our friend John who was flirting with a 60 year old woman for nearly 2 hours, eating $1 plates of patacones (thicker plaintain chips). It was an extremely relaxing day.

- At the very end of that night, we were persuaded to head out to Calle Uruguay, the main drag with the fancy clubs, to do a little fist pumping. As you could imagine, it wasn´t nearly as fun as drinking in the low key spots near the hostel, but I did want to check it out before I left the city. In the guidebook, it describes the street as similar to South Beach. Let´s just refute that idea right now. Not only is the strip on Miami Beach at least 10 times as long with at least 50 times more bars and clubs, the quality of bars are incomparable. I am not a huge South Beach fan, but I will stand up and defend it in this case. Our group eventually sobered up after we didn´t want to continue buying 4 dollar beers. We ended the night at Pio Pio, a Panamanian fried chicken chain.

Apparently, Panama loves the band Europe

2010-03-29T02:23:00.003-04:00

Every backpacking trip I've taken, I find an album or an artist that I associate with my travels. Last summer, it was Wolfmother & Piebald. 2 years ago, it was Mewithoutyou, NIN, Rage Against The Machine, & The Hush Sound. I haven't found this trip's official band, but I will note that I have continued to thoroughly enjoy the album Good Views, Bad News by the band Broadway Calls. Their brand of punk music reminds me so much of The Loved Ones, whose Keep Your Heart album made my top albums of the decade list. As now, they are the front runner for my favorite musical artist of my Panama Spring Broke Trip '10.

Here is some of their music http://www.myspace.com/broadwaycalls

I can tell you who is definitely not the band of PSB10, classic Swedish 80s rock band Europe. On my bus from Panama City to David, the bus steward decided to play this music video on full blast for all the lucky riders. Here it is:

Whether it's Vietnamese karaoke, Syfy channel TV movies such as Tyradactyl, James Bond rip offs such as Lazer Mission, or workout videos, I will never understand some of the choices local people make for enroute DVDs on long bus trips.

Venice ain't got sh*t!

2010-03-29T01:42:00.004-04:00

Coming from the mecca of canals in the US, most people would assume that Ft Lauderdale locals would be waterway oficianados. After perusing the Panama Canal museum at the Miraflores Locks, it quickly became apparent to me the magnitude of my canal cluelessness. I've always thought of a canal as a water pathway that connects inland bodies of water to the ocean. That might be the case for Ft Lauderdale's pussy canals, but defintely not for the world's most famous interoceanic structure. For instance, the Panama Canal has a series of locks that raises and lowers the boats to match the different water levels of the lake and oceans that it connects. I could try to explain it to you, but this video does it better.

Here is a video of a ship passing through the entire canal, sped up to under 2 minutes:

Without paying the extra $3 for the adjoined museum or researching the canal's process and history beforehand, the actual viewing of a ship passing through the locks can appear to be quite anti-climatic. The water is a murky cocoa color, most of the ships are not impressive to look at, the surrounding scenery is dull, the water trickles out to lift the ships at a painfully slow 35 inches per minute, and you have to stand on the end of your toes to see over the line of wrinkled gawkers to even see the water; not exactly what I imagined when I pictured this internationally famous site. However, knowing the back story and the massive effort it took to complete the canal, especially with the limited resources back in the day, made this visually boring event into a fascinating stop on the Gringo Trail.

Side note: I think someone needs to organize a massive tubing event through the Panama Canal. As far as I know, anything or anyone can float through the locks (google Richard Halliburton) as long as you pay the toll which is based on weight. I don't see why dozens of child sized pink intertubes wouldn't be allowed to pass through.

Double Feature: I'm in a new band & I got hit by car

2010-03-27T04:24:00.003-04:00

While sitting in Parque Santa Ana, listening to a senile local geriatric preaching over his megaphone about the dangers of disobeying Jesus Cristo, I got inspired to start a new Gray Guns side project, a latin fusion punk band....the name, Los Pecadores AKA The Sinners. Our first hit single, La Santa Joanna de fARCe (St Joan Of fARCe). oi oi oi! Facebook Fan Page to ensue.

Last night's tweet in my solo twitosphere:

3-25 6:57PM, somewhere on Ave Central near Casco Viejo, Panama City

Just got hit by a car on Ave Central in Panama City. Another 1st on the road. I'm ok, only nicked my heel #hit&run #panamacity

new blog section: I Would SO Tweet This Right Now

2010-03-25T21:32:00.004-04:00

Since I can't tweet, I managed to simulate what I would've tweeted throughout the day. I even manually counted the characters to make sure it was twitter acceptable. In a way, writing down my potential tweets on a piece of paper is almost like tweeting in FTL's twitosphere anyway; it's not like anyone pays attention anyway. Here today's tweet I came up for my twitosphere of 1.

3:00PM, bus stop in Panama City:

nuthin more ridiculous than seeing a business woman waiting to board an elementary school bus. gotta love diablos rojos.

Below: a Diablo Rojo

Isthmus Of The Dead

2010-03-25T20:58:00.005-04:00

It goes without saying, Spirit Airlines is my hands down favorite airline. It's entire business concept of undercutting on price (my ticket cost $213 roundtrip) and shock marketing (see: MILF or Threesome promo) is in line with most of my business ideas. Add to the fact, that they fly to Central America & some South American countries, AND they are based out of my hometown, the Venice Of America (FtL) and it might just be my favorite company all together (the other end of that spectrum is Ticketmaster, America's Backyard, & SunTrust Bank). That being said, a downside is the strange flight times, such as my red eye flight last night that put me in Tocumen Airport at 2am local time. I guess I can't complain though; I'm sure they fly out at weird times to keep the prices rock bottom. Nevertheless, for the beginning part of my lurk through Casco Viejo, I felt like an undead, walking through a post-diseased world. I say post-diseased because for every renovated colonial building in old Panama, there are 2 dilapidated structures that are nearly crumbled to pieces. It could be a perfect setting for the newest apocalypic zombie flick (Isthumus Of The Dead or Viente Ocho Days Later or something like that)Don't get me wrong though, in my own twisted way, I kind of prefer the half-demolished buildings; I compare it to Dania Jai Alai or the Orange Bowl, they're beautiful to us because they're so ugly and haven't been updated in decades. The mixture of nice, colonial buildings and eroded buildings makes for quite a lot of photo opportunities that make anyone try to mimic a professional photographer. Also, because Casco Viejo (Old Compound) juts out from the central part of Panama City, it also provides lots of views of the city skyline, the Bridge Of Americas, the Causeway, and other various major areas within the city.

I could bore you with the history of Casco Antiguo, but wikipedia does it so much better.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casco_Viejo,_Panama#Casco_Viejo_or_Casco_Antiguo

Caption: what I'm looking at right now from the hostel balcony

"It's like Miami, except they speak more English"

2010-03-24T17:10:00.002-04:00

When I tell people that I am going to Panama City for Spring Break, I usually get responses that are related to our trashy sister city in the panhandle, Panama City Beach, Florida. Although I had an amazing time on that particular Gulf Coast beach in 2003 with the company of some of my best college friends, my trip this year could not be more dissimilar. Let’s break down just a few of these cities' disparities:

Panama City Beach, Florida

Remember the classic MTV show The Grind. Well, a lot of those episodes were filmed at “the world’s largest club” Club La Vela. As a one time patron at this super club, I will say that it does not live up to the billing. The majority of wildlife you'll see in or around Panama City Beach will be the overpopulation of stumbling underage girls and belligerent, croakie modeling, frat boys that roam the streets. This north Florida city is best known for it’s pina colada scented foam parties, tribal henna tattoos, constant Girls Gone Wild footage in March and early April, shoreside keg stands, and official 20XX Spring Break beer funnels & g-strings.

Panama City, Panama

How can Panama City, Panama top the “world’s largest club”, you ask? Well, the Panama Canal is one of the largest canals in the world and connects the two largest bodies of water, the Atlantic and Pacific. Just outside the city, you can visit a park that is home to wild monkeys and over 500 species of birds. The city, known as Little Miami, is best known for being Central America’s only cosmopolitan city, a bastion of Panamanian urban culture, having world renowned nightlife, quality dining, and a variety of entertainment options. Plus it's allegedly the best city in the world to get your eye color permanently changed.

Despite the overwhelming differences, there are a few similarities:

- Both cities use the US dollar

- Both are good places to get drunk

- If you happen to stay in a hostel in Panama (I am), you’ll be crammed in a single room with a bunch of people ( I think in college we fit 10 guys in a double room at the Travel Lodge in PCB)

Don’t get me wrong, I love PCB, but my expectations for this upcoming trip are just a bit different than my 2003 trip. Although, partying will inevitably be a major part of this trip*, I expect to gain a little culture, enhance my Spanish, meet a bunch of interesting people, visit some incredible places, and start writing again. Even though it’s a only a brief adventure this time, I plan on updating a blog at least every couple days for my own recollection and to share some of my experiences while it’s fresh in my head. If you have any suggestions of places or things I should do in Panama besides the Panama Canal, Panama City, Bocas Del Toro, and San Blas, feel free to write a comment or email me at migbravo@gmail.com .

Enjoy the blog. I hope I'll be posting some interesting, potentially comical, and controversial blurbs in the next 2 weeks.**

*To get an idea of how ‘inevitable’ partying is going to be, check out the websites of some of the hostels where I’ll be staying (http://www.mondotaitu.com/ & http://lunascastlehostel.com). Should be a raucous time.

**To get some examples of my past controversial blurbs, check out my blog entries on:

Bangkok Ping Pong Show

http://migquest.blogspot.com/2009/06/ping-pong-without-paddles.html

Nicaraguan Cock Fight

http://migquest.blogspot.com/2008/08/here-it-is-highly-anticipated-cock.html &

http://migquest.blogspot.com/2008/08/rooster-fight-part-2.html

Malaysia's exploding pop punk scene

2009-07-01T15:55:00.002-04:00

I can't sleep.

I have watched very little TV in SE Asia, but I have seen a promo commercial for this particular band's upcoming LP numerous times. Their name is Bunkface and they are straight out of the exploding Malaysian pop punk scene (sarcasm). I couldn't find the exact commercial online which was being aired on a music channel called TV V, but I did manage to pull up a few youtube videos with their songs in it. Anyone under 25 could probably guess from listening to a few of their songs, but here is a list of some of their major influences (pulled from their myspace page):

MICHAEL JACKSON, COBRA STARSHIP, SUM 41, NOFX, BLINK 182, GREEN DAY, FALL OUT BOY, THE OFFSPRING, PANIC! AT THE DISCO, +44, PARAMORE BOWLING FOR SOUP, GOOD CHARLOTTE

If these jams don't want to make you sing karaoke, I don't know what will.

2 Countries Later....

2009-07-01T14:27:00.002-04:00

It's been awhile since the last blog entry, but that's not to say that nothing interesting has happened or that I haven't been writing. The 2 weeks following the controversial ping pong show blog post has included lots of personal firsts, "mosts", and "-iests": the most impressive religious structure, the "happiest" I've ever felt, the most annoyed I've ever been by locals, the strangest food I've ever consumed, the most scenic/interesting river ride, the busiest city I've ever visited, the most obnoxious American I've ever met, and the first time I've driven a motorcycle.

Needless to say, I have a lot of catching up to do, but luckily about half of these future online posts are already hand written in my hardback journal. It's already 1:44AM here tonight, and I'm supposed to get a decent amount of sleep tonight to make up for my insomnia during my nearly 2 week bender, so I will only write this quick post. Expect a barage of posts in the next week, which will hopefully bring our trip up to speed for everyone.

And just to keep you interested, there's another controversial post coming up real soon....

Currently in Hoi An, Vietnam

Listening to: Piebald (I forgot how much I liked this sarcastic Boston rock band. Too bad they broke up last year)

Piebald - The Stalker from amandalynferri on Vimeo.

Photos of the past few days

2009-06-18T10:10:00.001-04:00

A picture from inside Ta Prohm, one of the many temples of Angkor. Tomb Raider was filmed here.

Best pizza place in Siem Reap...I'll tell you why when I get home or if I finish writing my song about it. The song is called "Room 16".

Ping Pong without the paddles

2009-06-13T01:05:00.006-04:00

Let me prelude this post with a message to my parents. Mom, i told you on the phone before i left that a ping pong show was just a bunch of Asian people playing ping pong...i lied. If i were you, id stop reading this post unless you want to be disappointed in your oldest son.

Last night I learned something about the female body that isnt taught in any high school anatomy class. Apparently its taught in Thai anatomy classes, because I just witnessed some talented strippers last night that were able to use their vaginas in ways that i never thought was possible.

As soon as the sun drops, every tuk tuk driver in Central Bangkok is tries to get you to go to a ping pong show. We hate tuk tuk drivers (a post about this hatred will come soon), so we avoid them at all cost. Instead of hiring a pesky tuk tuk driver to take us to one of the shows, we decided to find a taxi to drive us Bangkok's most famous area for sex tourism Papong. In the past, Papong used to be full of Go Go clubs and people looking for sex. It still has that, but now a lot of non-dirtbags (like ourselves) go there for the spectacle of the famous ping pong shows. Upon arriving on the street, we are greeted by a local who tries to persuade us to go to a show at a place called Super Pussy.

After some negotiations, we get in for 200 Baht which includes a bottle of Singha. Apparently, every other tourist inside that we talked to paid 300 Baht, so we got a good deal. The second we sit down at a table, we are swarmed by 6 local Thai girls. They start crowding us, and rubbing their hands on our shoulders and chest, saying things like "suck and f**k, 100 Baht". We repeatedly deny their offers until they finally walk away from us and start attacking the old farang at the other end of the bar. We decide to stand up by the stage to avoid further contact by the hookers. It works for the most part, except for a few girls who sack tap Chris and rub our shoulders. The show took place on a stage on the inside the bar. There were probably 20 strippers who performed vagina tricks. Of the 20 strippers, all of them were extremely unattractive. Let's just say, the strippers in Thailand aren't big fans of 'trimming the hedge'. Anyone who legitimately gets aroused from these girls or the things that that they do on stage should be locked away from the human population.

Let me share with you some of the things I watched a vagina do last night.

- smoke a cigarette. imagine a girl squatting with a cigarette between her labia, puffing out smoke. this was my favorite.
- shooting darts at balloon targets. this girl used a straw, put the straw inside her vagina, and shot darts 5ft above her at balloons. she only missed once, and the dart went flying into the table of 40 yr old American sleaze bags
- pulling out 20 ft of glow in the dark ribbon from the vagina.
- drinking some sort of clear liquid from a coke bottle, then shooting it back in the bottle as Coca Cola. I have no idea how she did that. She then tried to give away the Coca Cola to one of the onlookers.
- shooting ping pong balls about 8 ft to a volunteer who is holding a paddle and hits the ball back. this was the main headliner.

Of all the topics I've written about in my past blogs, this has to be one of the easiest post to write. All I really had to write was "girl smokes cigarette from vagina" and the post would have been entertaining.

watching and betting on Muay Thai fights tonight. Look for the post tomorrow.

Bangkok: first 2 days, PART 1

2009-06-12T07:10:00.003-04:00

Here are some initial observations and experiences of Bangkok after 2 days.

Khao San Rd

When you listen to stories from backpackers traveling to Thailand, you will naturally hear about Khao San Road. Let me paint a mental image for you: Imagine the smelliest, grimiest, dirtiest, sleaziest street in your respective city. Add some neon signs, drunks throwing up in the street, bar maids with signs saying "Strong cocktails, we do not ID", street vendors selling boiled black scorpions, numerous flea ridden guesthouses, sketchy looking massage parlors. Essentially, that is Khao San Rd. It's a street where you don't want to live on, but the party scene is amazing. The downside is that it is loaded with tourists. In fact, the majority of Thais you will find here are working at the nearby businesses. We stayed on the street for one night because we got in so late and all our first options in the surrounding area were booked. We are now staying at Lamphu House http://www.lamphuhouse.com/default.htm in an alley ('soi' in thai) off of the main street. Soi Rambutri has a better selection of street vendors, and is a bit 'classier' with its numerous hookah bars and tiled street.

Like some 40 year old man told chris and I in the Taipei airport, "Bangkok makes Florida Spring Break and New Orleans look like teddy bears". That's a bit extreme, but I'm sure a big reason for his statement was the insanity of Khao San Rd. I hate that I love this road so much.

Thai Food

Unlike Latin America, where I am fairly familiar with local dishes and how to pronounce them, Thailand food is a bit intimidating. First of all, there are so many specialties so its hard to choose just one that you want to try. Also, I have no idea what they are called, so I end up doing a lot of pointing to other people's food. Despite what many people say, outside of the Khao San Rd area, a lot of Thais do not speak English, so it's kind of hard to describe what I want without hand gestures and broken English.

The food I have tried is outstanding. The spices and sauces that you can add to most of the foods is so hot that I thought I had burned a hole in my esophagus (and that was for breakfast!). However, unlike Coolio's hit single off of Gangstas Paradise, its never 'too hot'. I hate that I don't know the Thai word for napkin because every meal I eat, my nose is running like a faucet. (I just looked it up and its spelled ผ้าเช็ดปาก. That does me no good). All the dishes I have tried are some variation on noodles and meat. Today in Chinatown, Chris and I ate large bowl of noodle soup that contained shrimp, pork, and some kind of meat balls for 25 baht each (for those of you doing math, $1 = 35 baht). Last night, we ate some tasty chicken and egg pad thai in the street for 30 baht. Bangkok's street food selection is like one huge Dollar Menu selection, except for the fact the food is 237 times better than anything served at McDonalds.

Temples (Wats)

We've only been here for 2 days and we've already seen a fair share of golden buddhas and temples. I won't comment too much on this because its not very entertaining or humorous. I will mention that the architecture of the temples is so detailed and ornate that I could literally spend days taking pictures of different stuctures. Wat Pho was the largest and most interesting temple that we have seen thus far. Wat Pho is a huge temple that houses the gargantuan golden statue of the Reclining Buddha. Surrounding the big temple are multiple smaller structures, pillars, ornate cones, and of course more buddhas. The holy property covers over 20 acres of land and is home to 1000+ buddha statues.

A smaller temple we visiting yesterday had preserved monks sitting Native American style (got to be political correct these days) on a raised platform. Let me repeat: these are preserved monks, meaning that they are the actual bodies of monks who have died, just coated with some substance to keep their skin from rotting (does skin rot? I couldn't think of a better word). It was very House Of Wax-ish. I had a picture, but I accidentaly deleted it, a classic Mig move.

I have run out of time on this internet session, but I will finish this post tomorrow.

A witty migism

2009-06-12T07:04:00.002-04:00

You know how sometimes you say something that you think is so funny and witty, and you just want people to give you props for coming up with it. This was one of those moments:

Chris and I had just left the Temple Of The Reclining Buddha (see previous post). Outside, there is a traditionally clothed monk texting someone on his cell phone. Naturally, I took a picture of this because it looked completely ridiculous. I felt compelled to make a joke about the situation so I told Chris, "He's probably getting a buddha call" (get it! it's a play on booty call)

Immediately, I started chuckling to myself and looked over at Chris for verification that it was a good joke. It took Chris about 5 seconds to realize the joke, and he started cracking up.

I should probably do stand-up.

Photo Of The Day: Big Ass Buddha

2009-06-12T06:56:00.002-04:00

This is the famous reclining buddha at Wat Pho in Bangkok. It measures 46 meters long and 15 meters high. That's one huuuuge b*tch!

The Thai Ronald McDonalds

2009-06-11T07:52:00.008-04:00

This is a picture of a Ronald McDonald statue on Khao San Rd. He is doing the traditional Thai greeting, hands in a prayer-like position and bowing down.

A new feature I am going to try to incorporate on this year's travel blog is Photo Of The Day. I plan on taking loads more pictures than last summer, but rather than stress about uploading them all on facebook, I will post one at a time with a caption. Here is the first Photo Of The Day:

Mig Quest: Southeast Asia Edition

2009-06-11T07:21:00.003-04:00

Whenever I mentioned to family or friends that I was flying into Bangkok to start my 2nd annual "Mig Quest" Summer Trip, I typically got 1 of 2 responses.

Type 1: Sexual Related

These comments stemmed from the conception that Bangkok is full of farang (their word for white tourist) hungry hookers, chicks with dicks, and masseuses with wandering hands. In my one day in Bangkok, it's hard to disagree with that view of this city (no joke, but I think a young Thai girl was trying to come on to me as I am writing this in an internet cafe). Despite the fact that I am adamant about not dabbling in the local sex industry, I still would get lots of comments such as these:

"Mickey, I heard theres lots of sexual trafficking in Thailand. I'll pray for you every night"
- my mom

"They get some weird strands of herpes and genital warts over there"
- anonymous

"Let's make a bet which one of you will accidentely bring home a ladyboy"
- Matt T

"One second they are all nice to you, then they'll drag you to Diry Harry's Love Palace"
- one Chris' aunts

The other type is the "don't get arrested" comment. These are a little less humorous, but equally as ridiculous. These stem from the conception that Thai has really strict drug laws. It also stems from too many people watching Brokedown Palace or that sequel to Bridget Jones and thinking that happens often. Here are a few of the comments I received:

"Mickey, don't drink bottle of wine in the streets. I'll pray for you every night"
- guess who (love you mom)

"Don't try to smiggle drugs back to the US" (I know my soccer team used to call me Miguel Noriega, but seriously?!?)

"Have you seen that Claire Dane movie about the 2 girls who get arrested for life in Thailand"

Note to readers: Not to disappoint my loyal travel blog readers, but I will not be sleeping with any prostitutes and I don't plan on getting arrested for drug usage or distribution. I will attempt to find a traveler that has a funny ladyboy story so that I can relay it on this blog.

Don't get me wrong, the overt sexuality of cities like Bangcock will be interesting to observe from afar, and the shadiness of the drug laws is terrifying, but those 2 unique aspects of Thailand and S.E. Asia comprimise a small percentage of what this region of the world has to offer. I look forward to experiencing a completely different culture among Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Indonesia that I have never been exposed to in my travels throughout the US or Latin America. I won't list the specific sites and activities that I am anticipating; however, I will say that I expect this blog to be even crazier than last summers Central American blog.

There's only one way to jumpstart the first of my many crazy Asian tales: off to chug a liter of Chang beer. Lah gorn (goodbye in Thai)

New Threat...Scuba Mig

2008-08-23T21:45:00.002-04:00

I dont have a lot of time to write. The Bay Islands are known for great diving, but not great prices for using the internet. This actually may be the last post until I get back. We shall see.

I just wanted to give a quick update about what has happened since the last post.

After my second round Leon visit, I decided to shoot all the way up to the Bay Islands. Because I am a very lackadaiscal traveler when it comes to getting from one place to the other at a decent time, I left late in the day from Leon to Tegucigalpa, Honduras. There were 2 reasons why I ended up leaving late. 1) The Dream Team III vs Spain game was actually on, so I had to watch it. 2) I had to have one last meal at the best comedor in Central America, El Buen Gusto in Leon.

Just know that I tested my luck, but I made it to Tegucigalpa, arriving at 10pm.
Next morning, I took a horid 7 hour bus to La Ceiba to catch the 4pm ferry. When I arrived at the ferry station, I started recognizing all these people that I had met in other places. Basically, it was a backpacker hangout at the station. In fact, the whole island of Utila is one big backpacker hangout.

Now for the cool stuff. I signed up to do my Open Water Diving Certification at Underwater Vision in Utila. As far as I could tell, it had the best accomadations and looked like a solid diving center. The hotel actually had hot water! (unfortunately, its so bloody hot here that I opt to not use it).

After 4 days of class and diving, I am now officially certified to dive 18 meters.

Scuba diving was awesome, and when I get back I will push everyone to getting certified so that I have someone to dive with. I wont go into detail about the things I saw underwater. We saw a lot of cool animals and coral. You can imagine the beautiful scenery without me name dropping fish.

Ummm, I think that might cover it for now.

Oh wait! There is a really cool bar called Treetanic in Utila. Its really hard to describe without sounding ridiculous, but imagine a tree house, surrounded by a large garden of strange and shiny mosaic art. Google Treetanic and something should come up with pictures and a description. One of the coolest bars I have been to in my life.

If I dont write another post, I want to thank my loyal readers. I will probably write a Conclusion Post when I get back.

For now, adios.

Granada Tiburones

2008-08-15T13:15:00.002-04:00

There were 3 things I definitely wanted to do/see when I went to Nicaragua.

- surf (check)
- watch a rooster fight (check)
- attend a Nicaraguan baseball game (check check check)

On this trip, I have been fortunate enough to stumble upon events or experiences without having to do much research. Around 7am in the morning, at this bar on the outskirts of Granada, I started chatting with some locals who informed me of a baseball game between Los Tiburones de Granada vs Los Indios De Boer de Managua at 4pm. Besides the fact that I really wanted to see what a Nicaraguan baseball game was like, I was craving for some American sports. I jotted it down in my imaginary itinerary.

At 4pm, Eduardo and I arrived at the Flor De Caña Estadio, a small minor league sized stadium. We bought the 20 cordoba general admission tickets ($1), the seats where the rowdy liquor drinking fans sit. The general admission seats were a series of multi-colored concrete steps with no shade. Luckily, it was overcast so the sun didn´t scorch us too bad. After standing for the Nicaraguan national anthem, the game had begun. It was a bit quiet for the first few innings. Managua scored right away in the first inning to go up 1-0. Unlike the MLB, there was contact on nearly every ball. It gave us the impression that it was going to be a high scoring game (turns out we´d be wrong). Every inning or so, Eduardo and I were buying Toñas for 16 cordobas each (75 cents for a beer in a baseball game!!!).

A few innings in, the first screams of ¨¡Puta!¨begin. The concession stand sells only two things, Toña beers and Mombacho aguardiente. Most of the locals were drinking the liquor and were starting to get rowdy. Throughout the game, there was a group of fans ranting out loud at the players and umps. It was comical how they´d the ranters would wait their turn. One person would scream ¨¡Puta! bla bla bla bla ¡Puta!¨, followed immediately by someone else who screams a slight variation of the last person. From the third to the ninth inning, this pattern continued.

Another cool thing about the game was the food being sold. There were no hot dogs or hamburgers. Instead, they sold quesillos (tortilla with cheese, onions, chili, and some kind of sauce) and vigorónes (yuca, chicarones, wrapped in a leaf, only made in Granada) for 10 and 20 cordobas respectively.

Some other observations.

- The music between the innings and at-bats was reggaeton and various latin american songs, sort of like a Marlins game.
- There were goats roaming just outside the home-run fence
- Local kids would climb the surrounding trees to get a free view of the game
- We tried to note of the popular players names just in case they made it to the MLB, but we could only remember one: Jimmy Gonzalez AKA Barba Amarillo (some local lady called him this because of his yellow dyed goatee. I am not sure if that´s his official nickname).
- The bathroom in the general admission section was possibly the most disgusting public bathroom I have ever entered. The floor is covered in piss. The set-up of the bathroom was a rectangular room with troughs surrounding the walls to piss in (if you have to shit, you´re out of luck. If you´re a woman, you´re out of luck). Because of the puddles of piss on the floor, people wouldn´t make it to the troughs on the other side of the bathroom though. They´d end up pissng on the wall as if it was a bush outside, adding to the large puddle in the bathroom. Unfortunately, I did not realize the floor was covered in piss until my third bathroom break, so I attempted to make it to the trough, trudging my sandals through the piss. When I got home, I rinsed my feet in the shower. Really gross.

The end of the game got really exciting. Granada was still trailing Managua 1-0 in the 8th inning. All of a sudden someone starts a Obama like chant ¨¡Si se puede, si se puede!¨ (yes, you can). Unfortunately, Granada ended up losing 1-0, a defensive battle. As soon as the game ended, the loud crowd quietly filed out and the lights were turned off. Throughout the course of the game, Eduardo and I had become fans of the Granada Tiburones and we were upset at the outcome of the game. We were definitely happy with the experience (we were also sufficiently buzzing after a good amount of beers each).

Extra comment:

I am sick of people talking about how baseball is boring. Sure, the game itself is kind of boring until the last few innings. Baseball is more than just the actual game though. It´s the entire experience of going to a baseball game and following the players. Come to a Marlins game with me someday and I promise you will love baseball forever.

Extra extra comment:

I am so proud of my Florida Marlins and am sad that I cannot be there to support their miraculous run to the division title. GO MARLINS!

Extra extra extra comment:

I am sad that Nicaragua did not qualify for the Olympics for baseball. I was ready to adopt them as my second favorite Oympic baseball team.

Christoween 4th

2008-08-15T12:55:00.002-04:00

Q: What do you get when you mix Christmas, Halloween, and July 4th together?

A: a Nicaraguan religious holiday celebration

Gritería Chiquita (literally ¨small scream¨) is a celebration in Leon, Nicaragua that falls on August 14th in honor of ¨The Assumption of the Most Holy Virgin Mary¨. This guys blog explains it best http://nineweeksinnica.wordpress.com/2007/08/14/griteria-chiquita-or-tiny-clamor/. Copied and pasted from that blog heres the rundown...

The story goes that Bishop Monseñor Isidro Augusto Oviedo y Reyes made a promise to the Virgin Mary as he sought her protection from the violent eruptions of Cerro Negro that occured from late July and early August of 1947. The volcano had been sending rivers of lava down its slopes and raining sand and ash down upon the streets of Leon with increasing fury for weeks. For her protection of the city, he promised that Leonesas would celebrate her assumption with city-wide processions every year on this day.

It started at about 6pm. I picked up a liter Toña for the road and headed to the front of the cathedral (beer and religion, great combo). Approaching the square, we see fireworks shooting in every direction AKA if you don´t pay attention you´re getting a homemade exploding roman candle shot in your face. We get closer and see a guy with a large wooden box over his head. On the box are tubes to shoot off the fireworks. Because he is dancing around, the fireworks get shot off in random directions and angles. After about 10 minutes, the locals brought out a large decorated woman manequin on a stick and they swung her around to give her the appearance that she was dancing. Around her were little kids with large blue cone hats playing instruments and dancing. There is a Nicaraguan marching band playing the background the entire time.

After 10 minutes of dancing, the fun begins. All the little kids (and a few grown gringos) start crowding the entrance to the cathedral. Some people inside the church were handing out things to the crowd outside. For the rest of the celebration, crowds of people (including myself and the group from the hostel) go from house to house asking for handouts. Anything is fair game to be handed out. I saw small bags of washing detergent, fake pearl earrings, matches, business card holder, bags of instant coffee, and candy. Instead of saying ¨trick or treat¨though, you have to say “¿Quién causa tanta alegría?¨ (who causes so much happiness). The person handing things out then says ¨¡Santa Maria!¨. Meanwhile, handmade bombs are being set off all around the city (the July 4th aspect).

After about an hour of begging for candy and other trinkets, we returned to the hostel to drink some more and watch Olympic swimming. It was an interesting experience, no doubt.

Check out that dudes blog if you want a more detailed account of the celebration.

Volcano Boarding

2008-08-13T19:23:00.002-04:00

There is a volcano about an hour away from Leon called Cerro Negro. It is the most active volcano in Central America. One side of it has lots of tiny little black rocks. This is the side that people volcano board down. Naturally, this sounded really cool to Eduardo and I so we decided to sign up. There are about 4 different places that offer this tour. Only 2 of them let you stand up on a board. The other tours only allow you to sit on a board and go straight down (borrrring). We walked around Leon trying to find a company that would take us in that afternoon to do volcano boarding where we would be able to stand up. Tierra Tours in Leon had a tour that started at 1:30 with boards where we could stand up. Woo hoo! Considering that I don´t snowboard, skateboard, or surf, I knew it would be very interesting.

We arrive at Cerro Negro. The volcano doesnt look like much. It looks like a large black mound of rocks and dirt. We pile out of the car and grab our gear (sandboard and gloves). Our tour guide Henry (I could have his name wrong) is really excited because he claims that he invented sandboarding in Nicaragua and creates the boards that are used by Tierra Tours. He claims that after experimenting with many different designs that he found the best sandboard design and that the boards we were going to use that day were almost brand new and should be extra quick. Henry was also excited because he hadnt led a tour in nearly 1 year because he usually only makes boards and runs another tour business out of Granada.

We begin the hike up the rocks, carrying our board and gloves. After about 25 minutes, we are at the top. Henry claims that that was the fastest time he has seen in a tour group. I attribute our speed to him hurrying up the hill in excitement. Regardless, I wasn´t that tired from the hike and probably could have done it faster. We dropped off our gear at the top of the volcano where we would be sandboarding down. Henry didn´t let us look over the edge yet because he wanted to see our "oh shit" faces. Instead he lead us to the other side of the top where we could peer down into the active crater. The inside of the crater didnt have any visible lava, but had spots that were yellow and smoking with sulfuric gas. Henry made us do all these crazy poses and action shots by the volcano that ended up coming out really good. If I had my camera cord, I´d attach them. In the distance another volcano erupted with ash. This was my first experience seeing a volcano erupt. It looked amazing. What made it look even cooler was the fact that there was a storm coming and lightning was striking all around the erupting volcano.

Now was the time to do the volcano boarding. He led us back to the ledge where we left our equipment. Finally, he allowed us to peer over the edge. "Ohhh shit". It was pretty darn steep. He gave us a 2 minute lesson how to volcano board and that was it. He helped us strap in to our boards. Henry only allowed one at a time for the first part of the run. He instructed us to stop halfway and wait so that he could take pics of us sandboarding down for the second half. This guy from California went first because he was a snowboarder. He struggled badly. Apparently, being a snowboarded hurts you when it comes to volcano boarding. He attempted to make the same cuts he would on a snowboard. If you do that in the sand, your board will get stuck but your body will keep moving. Watching him, I learned that the trick is to go straight for the most part, while making slight gradual turns. I was next. I would be lying if I said I wasnt a bit nervous. Without thinking about it, I lunged forward and went for it. I kept the board straight. For about 3-5 seconds I was picking up some serious speed. I was kicking ass.......until I had an epic wipeout. My whole body literally did a full speed roll in the rocks. Luckily, it didnt hurt too bad. I laid on my back for a few seconds, laughing it off, then started again. The pattern was the same every time. I´d get some serious speed, try to make slight adjustments, then wipe out badly. The funny thing is, I was doing better than most people in the group.

For the second half of the run, Eduardo and I decided to race down. On the count of 3 we went, and I started out fast....then I tumbled but flipped right back onto the board. The second time I tumbled I looked back to see how far back Eduardo was. The race was effectively over. He was maybe 20 or more meters behind me. I continued down the volcano with the usual pattern, speed, wipeout, speed, wipeout. At the bottom, Eduardo and I took a picture of the two of us with our boards. Because of all the dirt, we both looked like homeless people. I looked like a chimney sweep. My arm and old school Casio watch were covered in tiny scratches.

For anyone going to Leon, I highly recommend the standing up volcano boarding. Most people book the tour through Big Foot Hostel (which is a good hostel) but they only let you sit on the boards. Book through Tierra Tours if you want to stand. You don´t need to know what you are doing to stand on the sandboard and it doesnt hurt too bad. The volcano boarding ended up being one of the most fun things I´ve done on the trip.

Rooster Fight Part 2

2008-08-10T20:24:00.002-04:00

(2 posts back is part 1 of this blog post)

Inside the ring are the 2 roosters fighting, their trainers, and a wall clock hanging down from a cord in the center. Outside the circular ring are maybe 50 Nicaraguans, plus the tour group (maybe 8 or 9 people), screaming in anticipation of the bout that was about to go down. To rile up the roosters, another non-fighting rooster is held above the head of a fighting rooster in order to rile him up. The fighting rooster jumps wildly, trying to slash the rooster being dangled but missing it by inches.

As soon as the bell rings for the start of the fight, all you can hear is people screaming ¨DALE! DALE! DALE! PUTA! DALE! DALE!¨For those unaware of the spanish language¨dale¨literally means ¨give it. In Central America, its used for many things such as ¨step on the gas¨or ¨kick the other roosters ass¨. ¨Puta¨means ¨bitch¨. The 2 roosters immediately start jumping at each other, trying to cut each other with their blades. Lots of feathers go flying and the hits are subtle. It really just looks like 2 roosters jumping into a each other wildly. After a few of these jumps though, you can start seeing signs of blood and you know that the hits are landing.

The fight was getting intense. Our rooster was getting beat pretty badly. After about 7 or 8 minutes, we were sure we lost our 50 cordobas. We found ourselves not only rooting for a comeback, but for our rooster to survive the fight. All of a sudden the bout stops. Both the trainers blow on their rooster, as they had been doing periodically throughout the bout. When I say they blow on the rooster, I really mean that they put their mouth over the head of the rooster or directing on a wounded spot and blow. It is incredibly unsanitary and disgusting. We all think we lost, but luckily the blades needed to be replaced. At this point in the fight, there seems to be no chance of a comeback.

The fight restarts. Every tourist at the fight was totally immersed into the battle. We found ourselves yelling the same bad words and phrases as the Nicas. We felt legitimate pride in our rooster at this point. About 2 minutes after the fight restarted, Mariño gets a good hit on his oppenent. The other rooster´s head dips down. It felt like it was going on in slow motion (part of that feeling might have been the 4 liters of Toña). The beak hit the ground! The beak hit the ground! All the tourists start going wild. "It´s over! It¨s over!¨, we´re all screaming while pointing to the spot where the beak hit the ground. Well, turns out, we were just being rooster fight rookies and calling a fight too early. The referee says the beak did not hit the ground, so the fight continues.

It is a much more even fight at this point. The whole fight was shaping out to be a Rocky-like movie. We all thought that our rooster had a legit shot to pull off the upset. Both roosters were getting bloody. Anything can happen at this point.

The bell rings......15 minutes have passed. It´s a draw.

This result, as disappointing as it sounds, was actually a relief. We did not lose our 50 cordobas, our rooster survived, and we had a good ass time. Our rooster was badly injured though. Don Pedro cradled his rooster in his arms and showed us the damage. He went on to tell us that Mariño will not be fighting for another 6 months until he has time to reheal and go through rehab.

After the fight, because there was more gambling to be done, the local Nica men began playing betting games. They drew 2 lines in the sand, then formed a line behind one of them. The objective of this game was to throw your .25 cordoba coin as close as you could to the far line. I sucked horribly at the game. Eduardo won the pot on his first turn. This best part of watching this was this old man who was so proud of his coin tossing skills. In fact, someone told me every week he collects so many pots that he practically makes a living off of it. This man must have been 80 years old, 90 lbs, and 2 bottles of Caballito aguardiente deep.

Because we were having a kick ass time and we both spoke spanish, Eduardo and I decided we didnt want the fun to end and we talked to some locals about some local night fights going on. This young guy Jairo gave us the inside tip on another cock fighting ring that he was headed to. As the tour group went home, Eduardo and I followed some locals, including Don Pedro, the old guy, and Jairo, to the other cock fighting ring.

The rest of the night was a little hazy for me, but we ended up seeing 2 more fights at this new ring. We won once and tied the other. We kept buying drinks at the little bar, adjacent to the ring, and we drank with Don Pedro, the old guy, and Jairo for hours.

Another game they were playing in between fights was a Nicaraguan form of roulette. It was virtually the same thing excent the rows went up and down and not around the circle. You basically only bet on black or red in this game, if I remember correctly.

After awhile, our good friend Jairo started becoming a little sketchy, so we decided to cut our losses (although we never lost a fight, we spent so much money on drinks that night) and head home. We wandered the streets for an hour, not really knowing where we were. The good thing was that we had nothing for ladrones to rob (except my camera which I slyly kept in my back pocket), so we were fairly safe. We must have walked 30 blocks to get home, asking a hundred people directions. Naturally, we also got caught up in multiple conversations with locals on the way that hindered our journey. The funny thing is, it was only 9:00pm at that point. We got home safely to our hostal Via Via. We tried to go out to a bar, but it was Sunday and everything was closed.

This night was definitely one of the best nights of my entire trip. It had booze. It had culture. It had sports betting. Good people. I think the only thing missing from the equation is hot women. 4 out of 5 aint bad, and it was an experience and night I will not forget.

Mig Slater, a new threat added today

2008-08-09T21:24:00.003-04:00

Today at Playa Remanso, just outside of San Juan Del Sur in Nicaragua is the day I learned to properly surf. I don´t mean that I stood up once or twice. I was able to consistently able to stand up about 20 times or more throughout 6 straight hours of surfing. I was able to stand hop up in one fluid motion on a board at the peak of the wave, then drop down to the bottom of the wave without falling off. Mind you, the first 2.5 hours of the day I was unable to do very much on a surf board. I do not know the turning point or what I changed, but standing up on a longboard (7 ft 10 inches) is not a problem for me anymore. I am now completely knackered, sore, and slightly bruised. This is the reason I am not continuing the story about the rooster fight and instead writing about my great accomplishment today. Because of this great day, I have now figured out what I will be doing for the rest of my 5 or 6 days in Nicaragua, surfing. Not necessarily at San Juan Del Sur because you have to drive to the surfable beaches which makes it slightly costlier (although I do love this tiny little city). I will try to find a remote beach in Nicaragua, where I can rent a board cheap and walk to the beach.

Tomorrow, before the USA Dream Team game, I will attempt to surf again early in the AM on a shorter board. I will keep you updated on how it goes. For now, I´ve already attained one of the goals I set for myself when I left for Central America. Anything else I accomplish on a surf board will just be extra awesome.

(patting myself on the back)

Here it is, the highly anticipated Cock Fight post (part 1)

2008-08-08T14:18:00.003-04:00

In an attempt to make it to Leon, Nicaragua in one day, Eduardo and I woke up at 4am to catch the first pick up truck out of Perquin. 6 other different transports later, and we arrived in Leon early, around 1pm. Within 10 minutes of arriving, I can hear a Dutch guy trying to convince this Dutch girl to come on some tour with him. I am on the shitter, but am listening intently. Eduardo asks the guy what was the deal with this tour. When the guy said the phrase ¨rooster fight¨, I screamed from the toilet seat ¨I WANT IN!¨I quickly wiped my ass, and headed to the front of our hostal Via Via to meet up with the group. The deal they were offering was $10 for transport to the cock fight arena, a little explanation on how the fights work, and all-you-can drink beer and liquor.

After a short 5 minute taxi ride, we arrive in a very local neighborhood, where we are led to an dirt area where the circular cock fight arena was located. Eduardo and I both thought the 10 USD price was a bit expensive for Nicaragua, and we mutually agreed to drink as many beers as possible in the 3 hour time frame to get our money´s worth. Oh boy, did we get our money´s worth. In the span of 2.5 hours, we managed to guzzle 7 liters of Toña, the popular local Nicaraguan beer, plus one shot of Caballito, the local Nicaraguan aguardiente. In fact, the tour guide cut us off and made us start sharing liters because we were costing the hostal too much money on drinks.

Anyway, our tour guide Harry, with the help of a Leon local Don Pedro, explain to the group how the cock fights work.

Here are the rules:
- Beak hits the ground, its over.
- If a beak doesnt hit the ground before 15 minutes, it´s over
- If a rooster dies, its over (they arent supposed to in Nicaraguan fights, but it happens if a blade hits the artery in the neck)
- If someone jumps in to save their rooster, its over and that person can never enter a chicken in that ring again.
- If a rooster is clearly on the brink of death, its over

The roosters are fitted with tiny blades (much smaller than in other places) on their back claw. Only roosters of the exact same weight can fight each other. This means that a rooster that weighs 3 lbs can only fight a rooster of 3 lbs. A rooster of 3.1 lbs would not be fighting a rooster of 3.0 lbs. The crown on top of the rooster is shaved. They do this because the fight must be equal. If you ever see a rooster with a shaved head, you know they are fighters. Many times the roosters are named according to what they look like. For instance, a fat rooster would be called something like Gordo. To train a rooster to fight there are tiny boxing bags attached to the back claw. I am not sure how that trains them, but this is what they told and showed us.

So now to the actual fights. Don Pedro had a white rooster named Mariño that he was entering in the first fight of the afternoon. Because we formed a bond with him since he helped teach us the rules of the sport (plus his name is Don Pedro), most of the tour group decided to bet on his rooster. Mariño has won 2 fights (we didnt ask how many he lost). His opponent was a rookie and was entering his first match. We felt it was a sure bet. 50 cordobas on Mariño....HERE WE GO.

.......to be continued.

Perquin & El Mozote

2008-08-08T12:50:00.003-04:00

There are a few unique things that you should do in El Salvador.

1) Surf. El Salvador has the best surf in Central America (check)
2) Eat pupusas (I am so sick of pupusas)
3) Visit Perquin, the main base for the FMLN during the civil war and 10km away from the sad site of the biggest massacre in Central America.

If you have done those three things (assuming you´ve traveled through Central America and have seen lots of nature stuff) then you can say you´ve seen El Salvador. There are a few other things you might want to do such as La Ruta De Flores, but unless you go when the flowers are in bloom, its nothing different than other small villages in other countries.

I traveled to Perquin with the travel group I met in San Salvador. The group consisted of 2 Argentinians (Matias and Eugenia), a Canadian (Julian), and 1 Colombian (Eduardo). We stayed at a large posada about 200 mts outside of Perquin ¨downtown¨. It was a large warehouse converted into a hostel. Matias negotiated the price from $8 to $5 a night which ended up being a steal.

The first day we decided to hang around the central plaza of downtown Perquin. Julian bought a hard plastic ¨soccer¨ball and the 3 guys played keep-away for an hour. Some locals that were lounging around the parque were enjoying watching us play sloppy soccer. It was some good fun. I now remember why I stopped playing soccer after middle school. I am bloody horrible.

After our soccer session, we found a pupuseria that served...you guessed it, pupusas. These were by far the best pupusas I´ve had in El Salvador, and we decided to eat dinner there both nights we were in Perquin. 4 pupusas later, we walked back down the road to our posada in pitch blackness. Its been a while since Ive seen a clear night sky like the one we saw in Perquin. Every single star was visible and you could pick out different constellations without doubt. It was incredibly beautiful and peaceful. Before we entered the posada, Julian spotted a large toad. Normally, I would not write about seeing a frog, however, this toad was f**king massive. Easily the largest toad I have seen by atleast 2xs.

First thing in the morning, we headed to the FMLN museum. We hired a guide to explain to us the different rooms inside the museum. He spoke only spanish and all his words ran together as if he was drunk or had a speech impediment. We discreetly complained among ourselves that we couldnt understand a word he was saying. We later learned that he was an ex-guerilla and was shot in the temple. He went into a coma for 6 months and when he woke up, he was never able to speak clearly again. When we learned that, we all felt like douche bags. Many of the pictures and explanation in the museum were incredible. Most of the information underneath the pictures has already been forgotten, but I remember all the pictures and I was able to get a better feel for what went on in the town. Some other exhibits included weaponry used, a shot down helicopter, and a bomb crater. My favorite exhibit was the original (?) radio station that was housed in the far building. The radio station was a underground guerilla radio station that started during the civil war and was broadcasted illegally in hidden locations. Here is a better explanation of it from Wikipedia.

Radio Venceremos (Spanish; in English, "'We Shall Overcome' Radio") was an 'underground' radio network of the anti-government Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) during the Salvadoran Civil War. Despite the end of the war in 1992, the network continues to broadcast. The war years of the station and its national and international influence were documented in the Spanish-language book Las mil y una historias de radio Venceremos and its English translation, Rebel radio: the story of El Salvador's Radio Venceremos, by the author José Ignacio López Vigil (translator: Mark Fried), a book recorded by the American Library of Congress. An exhibit honoring Radio Venceremos, including a studio room with original equipment, forms a prominent part of the Museum of the Revolution in Perquín, Morazán, El Salvador.

This museum is a must if you go to El Salvador, simply to try to learn what happened during their brutal civil war. Like I said at the top, if you go to El Salvador and don´t try to learn about their struggle in the 80´s, you might as well not even go to the country.

Afterwards, we climbed to the Cerro de Perquin (cerro=hill) and you could get a decent view of the city and the Honduras border. Nothing special.

We all really wanted to go to El Mozote after the museum, but soon learned that the public transport was not running anymore. Matias and Eugenia were talking about staying another night so they could go in the morning, but Eduardo and I were set on leaving for Nicaragua at 4am the next day. I decided that I would try to hitch hike to El Mozote that day to avoid staying another night. The rest of the group agreed, and we rolled to El Mozote by jumping in the back of pick up trucks. It was a lot easier than we could have ever imagined.

In my last post, I copy and pasted some information about El Mozote. Basically, El Mozote was a tiny village that was host to the worst massacre in Central American history. I am not an expert on this, but I will try to explain the little I do know. I plan on reading more about their civil war when I go home.

Over the span of 11 days, over 1000 people from surrounding villages as well as El Mozote were brought in trucks and massacred in the village of El Mozote. This includes children of all ages (we´re talking months old to 17 years old), as well as elders. It didn´t matter to the government army. For them, this was a message to the guerillas. The different age groups and sexes were separated and eventually executed. The way that they convinced people to come to El Mozote from other villages was by getting a well respected priest and convincing him that they intended to have a fiesta in El Mozote with free drinks and food. The priest believed them, and gave his word to the different villagers that the army was being genuine. As we now know, the army tricked the priest and executed him like the others. Only a few managed to escape. The ones who escaped mainly got of town beforehand. The most famous survivor Rufina Amaya hid in bushes as she heard her friends and family being executed only a dozen feet away. As they were leading people to be executed, she snuck away from the bunch and hid for nearly all 11 days. She died recently, but devoted her life to teaching others about what happened during those 11 days so that it will never happen again.

The tour guide we hired showed us around the tiny village, taking us to locations where the executions were held. The side of the church was the place where the children and a few mothers were exectuted. On the bottom of the church, there was a list of hundreds of children executed and their ages. As mentioned above, there were kids as young as a few months old. The guide told us (this is truly disturbing) that the babies were executed by throwing them in the air, and letting the land on sharp spears. Simply standing there caused a wave of emotions. It made me feel angry and sad all at once. The sad thing is that the Reagan administration supported the El Salvador army with funds and arms and blew off the massacre as simply guerrilla propaganda and an exageration.

We were then taken to a location in the brush about 300 mts away from El Jardin de Los Niños where the elders were executed. She showed us the location where Rufina was hiding, no more than 20 feet away. Again, standing in the location caused a rush of different emotions. It makes you feel fortunate to live in a safe country, but angry at the US for helping it happen. Unfortunately, many Central American countries have justified beef with the USA for supporting the governments and indirectly killing many peasants. As an American, you almost feel like you should be apologizing to people at times for some of the actions by the American government.

Side story, more than once I have been called Bush by local Central Americans. Once in Guatemala City, a beggar came up to me and asked for a few quetzales. As a rule, I never give money to beggars. If I did, I´d be broke by now. Well, this one particular beggar was persistent, and kept asking even after I said ¨no¨multiple times. Finally, he got angry and let off a string of words that I could not understand, followed by ¨BUSH! BUSH! BUSH!¨, as he pointed to me. Like I said, this happened twice to me. George Bush really makes it tough for traveling Americans because many people do not differentiate the President and the people.

After the massacre had ended, the town was empty (1980) and stayed empty until 1992 (or 1991). Our tour guide told us that her mother was pregnant with her during the time of El Mozote. Luckily, her grandpa had caught wind that something bad was coming, and he took the family out of town days before, escaping being executed. If her grandpa did not have that foresight, she wouldnt have been giving us the tour that day.

Perquin and El Mozote was definitely a ¨wow¨experience. In fact, I cannot even write the words to describe in much detail the emotions you feel when visiting a location like this. If I tried, I feel like I would not be able to do it justice. This is a place you need to go and experience for yourself. Not to be cliche, but I promise it will change your life forever and provide a new perspective on some of our governments actions. Our government does a lot of good things in this world, no doubt, but what happened in El Salvador is partly USA´s fault. I love USA with all my heart, but no one (no one) can be proud of what the Reagan administration did in El Salvador.

Perquin & El Mozote Background info

2008-08-07T17:37:00.002-04:00

I am running out of time for this internet session, but I am assigning some required reading before I publish my next post about my experience in Perquin & El Mozote. Because of the serious nature of these 2 places, it is important to know a little about what went on there before I describe my experience. Taken from a few websites that I found, here are some explanation of the 2 places and what went on there.

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Perquin a Peaceful Town in Morazan...

The scenic mountain town of Perquin offers visitors a unique combination of history and natural beauty. Located in the area of guerrilla control during the civil war known as the "red zone", Perquin was known unofficially as the guerrilla capital during the conflict. It was often the site of meetings of the leadership of the Frente guerrillas and, after the cease-fire, of important events on the road to a permanent peace.

Taken from http://www.alfatravelguide.com/english/sv/perquin.asp

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Taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Mozote_massacre. I only post some of the article. Click on the link to learn the rest.

The El Mozote Massacre took place in the village of El Mozote, in Morazán department, El Salvador, on December 11, 1981, when Salvadoran armed forces killed at least 1000 civilian in an anti-guerrilla campaign. It is reputed to be the worst such atrocity in modern Latin American history.

The massacre was a low point in the Salvadoran Civil War war that ravaged this Central American country between the late 1970s and 1990.

As news of the massacre slowly emerged, the Reagan administration in the United States dismissed it as FMLN propaganda because it had the potential seriously undermine efforts by the United States government to bolster the human rights image of the Salvadoran government, which the Americans were supporting with large amounts of military aid.^[1]

December 10:

On the afternoon of December 10, 1981, units of the Salvadoran army's Atlacatl Battalion (named after a famous indigenous fighter who battled the Spanish troops for El Salvador) arrived at the remote village of El Mozote after a clash with guerrillas in the vicinity.^[2] The Atlacatl was a "Rapid Deployment Infantry Battalion" specially trained for counter-insurgency warfare. It was the first unit of its kind in the Salvadoran armed forces and was trained by United States military advisors. Its mission, Operación Rescate ("Operation Rescue"), was to eliminate the rebel presence in a small region of northern Morazán where the FMLN had a camp and a training center.

El Mozote consisted of about twenty houses situated on open ground around a square. Facing onto the square was a church and, behind it, a small building known as "the convent", used by the priest to change into his vestments when he came to the village to celebrate mass. Near the village was a small schoolhouse.

Upon arrival, the soldiers found not only the residents of the village but also campesinos who had sought refuge from the surrounding area. The soldiers ordered everyone out of their houses and into the square. They made them lie face down, searched them, and questioned them about the guerrillas. They then ordered the villagers to lock themselves in their houses until the next day, warning that anyone coming out would be shot.^[2] The soldiers remained in the village during the night.

December 11 and 12:

Early the next morning, the soldiers reassembled the entire village in the square. They separated the men from the women and children and locked them in separate groups in the church, the convent, and various houses.

During the morning, they proceeded to interrogate, torture, and execute the men in several locations. Around noon, they began taking the women and older girls in groups, separating them from their children and machine-gunning them after raping them. Girls as young as 12 were raped, under the pretext of them being supportive of the guerillas. Finally, they killed the children. A group of children that had been locked in the church and its convent was shot through the windows. After killing the entire population, the soldiers set fire to the buildings.

The soldiers remained in El Mozote that night. The next day, they went to the village of Los Toriles, 2 km away. Several of the inhabitants managed to escape. The others — men, women and children — were taken from their homes, lined up, and shot.

More San Salvador

2008-08-07T17:19:00.002-04:00

I am way behind on my blog posts. This is due to being busy and traveling to places with expensive internet. I will do my best to catch up. My favorite 2 weeks occured during this postles span, so I have a lot to write.

When I left you, I was in San Salvador. I went to see some churches. To finish that day....

- La Iglesia El Rosario is now the coolest non-pagan church Ive seen. I went to see it after I wrote the blog that day. I showed you a pic of the outside, but the inside was even cooler. The stained glass curved wall, changed the color of all the light streaming in to make a really cool effect. All the statues and decorations inside were made of scrap metal. The most artistic, unique church I have seen. Heres a pic I pulled off the web. I can´t find many more. I took some pics of the statues but I lost my camera cord.

- Returned to the hostal and drank some in preparation for the night to come. Met a group of travelers. This group consisted of 2 Argentinians, 1 Canadian, and 1 Colombian. I decided to stick with them and we headed out. I would later find out they would be traveling to Perquin the next day too.
- We went to La Luna Y Arte, but we are too late for the live music. It wasn´t so bad though, because the music sounded really slow and probably would have lulled me to sleep. I was already pretty tired at this point. It was a cool bar, and I am sure if it was in my city I´d be a regular.
- Nothing much happened really that night. The next day I left with the travel group and we headed to Perquin.

Overall, I found San Salvador to be an OK big city. Nothing too special, but not as bad as people make it out to be. I´m glad I spent a couple nights there.

Semuc Champey Part 2 - Las Marias Caves

2008-08-07T16:57:00.002-04:00

This is a really late update of something I did nearly 1 month ago, but I will attempt to rack my brain to remember all the details.

On my last Semuc Champey update, I ended on us heading to the Las Marias cave tour at 3pm. This is not in sequential order, but to keep it on the topic of one tour, after the caves we went tubing down the river. The tour guide made us put our feet under the arm pits of the person in front of us to make a train. It looked pretty ridiculous, and we thought that the tour guide was making fun of us. The tubing was really slow and boring, besides the fact that it was hilarious locking feet and armpits with strangers.

As we walked back to the hostal through corn fields and dirt roads with our tubes, we came to a bridge that went over a cold fast river. The tour guide then told us that we could jump off this bridge if we wanted. Even though I was completely dry and did not feel like getting soaked again, I couldnt resist a good jump. I climbed up on the top of the metal beam and jumped down 15 meters into the rivers strong current. It was an amazing jump that will raise the bar for any other water jump that I do from now on. Good times.

Now.....back to the Las Marias Caves.

We headed to the Las Marias Caves for the 3pm tour. As we booked it, we were handed each thin white candles. These candles would be the light for our journey. We walk over to the caves that are filled halfway with water and jump in with our candles lit in our hands. The water is waist deep. Immediately, we spot a hole in the ceiling with a family of bats that are flying quickly across our field of vision. Mildly frightening, but definitely really cool. We would see many bats during this 1.5 hour journey. The guide enters the water and we begin trudging through the caves. There are segments where we need to swim, holding our candle above the water. The tough part of this is that the way you have to swim when holding a candle above water means that your feet are flailing vertically and you obviously cannot see what´s in the water below. For that reason, your feet slam against large, sharp rocks, causing multiple scratches. My right foot got the worst beating, and ended up swelling up and getting infected days after the tour. You continue through the cave, climbing up ladders, crawling through small holes, playing bongo drums off natural cave formations, jumping off mini cave cliffs, sliding down pitch black water shutes. Again, like the Semuc Champey tour, there were many AYS moments. The water shute was just the kicker because it was towards the end of the tour. You literally could not see a thing and had to slide feet first down a pitch black hole into a deep pool.

The tour was as amazing as what people had told me beforehand. Just seeing 8 people behind you, walking through caves with candles was amusing in itself. It made you question, ¨Is this really going on right now?¨There were moments during the tour when different people would say, ¨This is crazy¨.

Unfortunately, I have no pictures to post. You can´t bring your camera into the caves because of the deep water.

For anyone going to Guatemala the Semuc Champey and Las Marias Cave tours are a must.

Open Forum About Cock Fighting

2008-07-30T13:45:00.002-04:00

I have not yet written a blog post about my first rooster fight experience in Nicaragua yet, and at this very moment I do not feel like writing it because I am tired and don´t have enough time. It was truly an epic day that deserves a full hour of writing. However, due to the negative comments on the photos I posted on facebook, I´d like to start a discussion. Usually no one comments on notes, so this might be a pointless post, but I figured I´d try.

Besides the negative responses, I am interested to hear peoples opinions because when I witnessed the fights, I found myself enjoying it immensely which I found strange and unexpected. Never in my life did I think that I would bet money on a rooster in a cock fight. Possible explanations I came up with were:

- Nicaraguan fights don´t end in death, unlike most countries. As soon as the rooster gets beat up enough, they take it out of the ring. Imagine UFC for roosters.
- the local setting I was in and its part of the Nicaraguan tradition.
- all-you-can-drink and I was hammered.
- the fact that I eat rooster a lot.
- that I put different values on different animals. A chicken would be of a lesser value compared to a dog or gorilla (I feel like this is the most likely explanation).
- that if I put myself in a roosers shoes (if they wore shoes), I think Id rather be a boxer than slaughtered.
- they told us that the winning rooster gets placed in the pen with the hottest chickens (no joke)
- its our natural instinct as humans to enjoy watching 2 living things fight

I am in no way trying to defend myself because I will admit openly that I found it very entertaining and I would go to another fight if it legally offered (like in Nicaragua or Ecuador). During the Michael Vick case, I was strongly against his actions and still am. I´m pretty sure the explanation I have written above about placing different values on different animals is why I was AGAINST the Michael Vick dog fighting case and in favor of the cock fighting. I have a dog and I love my dog almost as much as I love humankind so in my value system a dog would be just below a human (I suppose a dolphin and gorilla would be as well). This value system is not something that I deliberately do, but I have subconciously created it.

Those were my thoughts, now share yours. I am interested in hearing different opinions for or against cock fighting.

San Salvador Part 2

2008-07-24T17:22:00.002-04:00

I woke up around 8am, slightly hungover, but ready for an action packed day. I started my day off finding breakfast and coffee. I found it, and it sucked. I needed the coffee though to be alert and introspective for the next part of my day.

The next item on my itinerary was to vist the Museo de Arte Popular near my hostel. The museum was described to house local folk art from El Salvador. All coffeed up, I hiked to the tiny museum that was going to cost me 1 whole greenback. I am so glad that I decided to visit the museum.

Let me tell you about its main attraction, well Ill let wikipedia do the talking for me:

Ilobasco is a municipality in the Cabañas department of El Salvador.

Clay figures just before final paint
This little town is known country wide (and internationally) for its clay (other materials also used) craftsmanship or pottery.[1]
The clay is extracted and prepared locally. The clay work includes the "miniatures", which are small representations of daily scenes as lived by Salvadorans, no bigger than 2 inches tall.
One version of the miniatures are the "surprises", which are basically a scene covered with another piece of clay shaped and painted in the form of a fruit, an egg, a house or other things. The cover can be removed and then the scene can be seen.

So this museum had examples of these tiny little clay pieces from the city of Ilobasco. It sounds uninteresting, but when you see it with your own eyes, it was really cool. The detail and craftmanship of these microscopic art pieces was amazing. The typical pieces (the sopresas) were as they are described above: tiny clay art scenes inside of a clay fruit or egg. However, they also had minature scenes that depicted everything from Americans arguing, couples having sex, Salvadorans producing coffee, entire towns ravaged by an earthquake, a complete recreation of their national zoo, a busy market in an indigineous village, etc. They even had 2 little Miami Dolphin players running with a football. Ive tried to find good pictures, but I have had trouble finding good quality ones. I have attached a few that I found on the web. They had some other exhibits, but these sopresas were really the only ones worth talking about in my opinion. Really cool museum, and I am a big museum person.

Next stop was the city center to view some of their cool buildings. I hopped on Bus 30 towards Plaza Barrio (Side note, the bus system here is so much easier than Guates. I actually know where I am going most of the time). Plaza Barrio is the citys central park. This is the plaza that hosts many protests as well as park bench loiterers. Surrounding it is Palacio Nacional, some really cool church La Catedral Metropolitana, and their national library. I ended up walking into the cathedral to check it out. This was one of the coolest churches I have ever seen (I was going to rank it #1 but then I remembered another church that I meant to blog about in San Juan Chamula. I will write about that later). Inside, the altar was decorated with murals all the way to the domed roof. A different mural adorned the inside of the dome. Hanging from the ceiling, 10 feet over the altar, was a really interesting metal wreath. From the center of the wreath, hung the crucifix. The rest of the inside was epic in size. On the outside, the entrance was surrounded by colorful paintings. The external part of the main dome and the 2 smaller domes was painted yellow and blue. It almost looked like it was from a middle eastern country. Here are some pictures I found on the web.

This is the other strange church, La Iglesia El Rosario. I couldnt go inside this one, but I am going to try. I just saw some pictures and it looks bizarre.

After church gazing, I bought an ice cream cone and sat on a bench in Plaza Barrios and now I am here. Tonight, Im going to hang out with some of the Spaniards who didnt leave today and hopefully see some live music at La Luna. Tomorrow Im off to former guerilla territory, Perquin.

30 Spain-ish Girls, San Salvador Part 1

2008-07-24T16:37:00.004-04:00

Big cities in developing countries suck a lot of the time. They suck so much that sometimes as I am bussing to them, I find yourself dreading the arrival because I know when I arrive, I will soon be extremely lost, annoyed, and not meet any other travelers. At the same time, I am not one to skip the big cities because of those reasons. Its hard to argue that San Salvador or Guate do not encompass a large part of their respective countries population. In this small but densely populated country of El Salvador (the most densely populated country in Centroamerica), nearly 33% of the population lives in urban San Salvador (the most densely populated city in Centroamerica). So if my goal is to learn about the culture of other people, I have to atleast visit their largest metropolitan area. Sometimes its great and fun (Bogota and Quito). Sometimes you have regrets about visiting (Guatemala City).

Lucky for me, I have had a great time thus far in San Salvador, and I enjoy the city much more than some others....Guatemala City, ahem......Cancun, ahem. Lucky for San Salvador, due to my dumb luck (sorry to use the word luck alot, but theres been a lot of it lately), I stumbled upon a DHL office while walking down the street. I was in desperate need of finding one because I needed to mail a letter to my bank in Virginia and I had an address on a piece of paper but Im sure it would have taken me ages to find it, sans taxi...

...Just a side note, I have not taken a single taxi since I have been in Central America. As many of you know, I hate taxis with a passion because the drivers can be annoying and the high cost to go short distances. Ok, back on topic.

Anyway, because I found this DHL office (and some free coffee provided by the wonderful DHL staff) I was put in an extremely good mood. You do not comprehend how much of a hassle it is to find a notary and mail a letter off to the states (with a formal receipt) from some of these places in Central America. It took me a month to give it another solid effort. My happy mood made me want to drink and celebrate. The only problem was that it was only 2pm, not that 2pm is not perfect drinking time, but I was by myself and I thought that aimlessly wandering the streets of San Salvador drunk, lost, and solo would be a bad idea that early in the day. Plus, I wanted to be alert for the good nightlife.

Technically, this was my second time to the city, so I considered myself an expert (atleast of there one main boulevard, Blvd De Los Heroes). I walked briskly to the hostel La Almohada (The Pillow), the one that was full the last time I tried to sleep there. Well, surprise surprise, it was full again on this particular day. Some attractive Spain-ish girl told me it was full through the barred window, but as I began to walk to the next hostel, she invited me to a party that was being held at the hostel that night. Naturally, I said I would return to party with her and the other hostel guests. I was unsure how serious she was, but I figured if worst came to worst and there was no party, I could just walk 2 houses over to La Luna Casa Y Arte to watch some live music and drink some Pilsiners.

I checked into Ximenas Guest House, a few blocks west of the full hostel, and began to unpack my stuff. The Bible described this hostel as being amazing back in the day, but not so much anymore. I could understand what they meant. The set up of the hostel was perfect, but they overcharged for tiny things like bagels and internet usage. The walls were becoming a bit dilapidated. Overall, its really your best bet in San Salvador. I decided that 5pm was a good time to start the celebration, and I would head to the party around 8pm.

6pm rolls around, and I break open the tiny pint of El Salvador vodka I bought in Santa Ana. I met some American girls from my hostel and we talked about music and Fox News for almost 2 hours, drinking Nicaraguan rum and my bottom shelf vodka sodas. bla bla bla, we end up leaving the hostel around 8; they go straight to La Luna, I go to the party which is practically next door.

When I enter the house, I am greeted by 15 or so Spain-ish jovenes, mainly all girls and mainly all attractive. You could tell they were shocked that I actually showed up, but they all introduced themselves and we sat down at the dinner table and talked. They were making a proper Spanish feast because half of them were leaving the next day. They were a group of volunteers that came from Madrid. Almost all of them had that silly lisp when they spoke Spanish, and I have to admit, it drove me a bit crazy over time (no offense to the Spaniards, I just prefer hearing non-lisp spanish). Its true, Spaniards eat super late. 10pm rolls around, about 15 more Spain-ish volunteers show up and they begin their dinner. The table looked really fancy. They bought about 40 tiny candles and made white cylinders of paper to put around them. The setting looked romantic and intimate. Meanwhile, I am pretty intoxicated already and itching to go out, and they havent even started on their first cervesas. Also, this many new people that knew each other already (near 30 people, at one large dinner table) was becoming a bit overwhelming. It was tough having conversations with people in Spanish, while hearing about 6 other lisp filled conversations around the room. I did manage to sample some of their delicious dishes they cooked. The torta was was incredible.

Finally, I decided to head to La Luna to meet up with my other new friends. Unfortunately, when I entered the live music was over and it was pretty empty. Guess San Salvador isnt immune to weak Wednesday nightlife. I came back to the house and stayed for another hour, but decided I needed to go home. The part of San Salvador I am staying in is fairly safe, so I was able to maintain my "no taxi" streak and I staggered home. As I fell asleep, I blasted the Beloved CD through my headphones.

The reason I went into so much detail about this night that may seem uninteresting was because I wanted to illustrate how random things just happen on the road. You can never plan on experiences like that. Although, it ended up being overwhelming in the end, I loved it. I got to learn a little about their culture and the conversations that I did have were great. The setting was amazing. Just thinking of the night, one American dude, in the middle of El Salvador with a bunch of good looking Madrid girls, was priceless. It reminded me alot of the story last week, when I hitchhiked and go picked up by the 2 Guatemalan girls, en route to the beach. There was a point in the back of their car, as I was petting their black lab puppy, looking through the open moon roof, gazing at the clear night sky and listening to some trippy experimental stoner music, that I thought there was no other experience I wouldve wanted at that moment. (was that a run-on sentence?) How could you ever predict that happening?

Anyway, its unpredictable moments like that that I live for. I dont know if I relayed it well in words, but I hope you sort of understand what Im talking about. I also realize that this is a really long blog post and if actually read this far, you are awesome.

Im going to break this up into 2 blog posts since its getting kind of long.

Scare Tactics plug

2008-07-22T19:40:00.000-04:00

Watch Scare Tactics, hosted by Tracy Morgan, on the Sci Fi channel on Wednesday nights at 10pm EST. You will not regret it. If you don't like it, I'll give you a nickel when I see you. There arent a lot of things that get the Mig Guarantee, but this is one of them. Enjoy this clip I have attached. You can go to the Sci Fi Channel website to see a full episode. Lets make sure this show never gets canceled again. If my attachment doesnt work (for some reason, I dont think it will) you can click on this link to watch the teaser. http://video.scifi.com/player/?id=272010

...

2008-07-22T19:29:00.000-04:00

Today I did absolutely nothing in Juayua. Nada. I planned on hiking to some waterfalls and walking around town, but the impeding rain clouds scared me off. It hasnt been so bad though. The day started when I woke up way too early at 6:30am. I proceeded to try to mail something to my bank but the post office here wouldnt give me a receipt so I didnt mail it. I came back to nap.

When I woke up, I walked around trying to find lunch. I ate. Then I came back and laid in the hammock. Still laying in the hammock, I turned on a movie called Voces Inocentes which is about the El Salvador civil war from the perspective of some kids. It was a good movie. I then took another nap, this time in the hammock (this might have been the best hammock Ive ever laid in). Now Ive been surfing the web for 2 hours, talking about how Scare Tactics is back on TV (best show to ever grace the human world) and spending way too much time on facebook and gmail chat.

In the past 24 hours Ive watched 3 movies. Fracture was pretty good. Check it out. The Golden Compass wasnt my cup of beer, but it was entertaining and original.

Oh yeah, I did laundry today. That was pretty productive.

Tomorrow I shall be off to San Salvador again, and hopefully will find a room to stay. If not, I need to find a Fed Ex or DHL office where I can mail this damn letter.

Im getting really excited for Nicaragua. Sounds like a good time from everything Ive read and heard, and its the cheapest country in Central America.

Stay tuned for another blog post that I will most likely write tonight.

7 Ferris Wheels!!!

2008-07-21T13:15:00.000-04:00

Heres a quick update, post sickness.

Yesterday I hopped on 2 chicken buses so that I could make it to San Salvador. My plans in San Salvador were to get a notary and mail out a letter. I also was excited to go to this famous cool bar called La Luna Y Arte. Unfortunately, because of my sickness I missed the Red Hot Chilli Peppers tribute band on Saturday night and the bar didnt open again till Wednesday. Strike 1. Strike 2 came when I realized that the only hostel worth going to was surprisingly full. This was after I walked around the city for 2 hours trying to find it and waiting in front of the hostel for an hour for someone to answer the door. The hostel worker directed me to another place to sleep but it was going to cost me 30+ dollars. Strike 3 never came, but I decided to avoid striking out all together and decided to head to Santa Ana, El Savadors second biggest city. I had a guesthouse in mind that sounded promising in the guidebook.

Upon arriving in Santa Ana, about an hour north of San Salvador, I managed to find my way to the guesthouse, despite Lonely Planets convenient ommision of the address. I ended up having to wait another hour for someone to open the door for me. This is apparently common in El Salvador. Because there arent a lot of backpackers, many of the hostel owners dont stick around all day, thinking that no one will show up. This has occurred in all 3 hostels I have stayed in (or tried to stay) in El Salvador. Finally 2 backpackers came to my rescue and let me in the guesthouse. The 3 of us sat in the living room of this elegant home, drinking Suprema (one of El Salvadors beers. Not so good) until the owner returned and checked me in. The owner was getting drunk at the local fair and didnt think anyone would check in. He said that his place was empty for the past week.

The owner Javier was very friendly and invited us all to go to the fair with him for some drinks. Santa Ana was having their Saint Festival this week, so they had lots of events going on, including a week long fair, complete with rides, cheap drinks, pupusas, and carnival treats. It looked like your typical state fair but much smaller. Something that caught my eye was the fact that in this tiny fair they had 7 ferris wheels. 7 ferris wheels!!! I found that pretty ridiculous. Id find 2 ferris wheels ridiculous. Anyway, we ended up drinking beers for a couple hours, while eating some pupusas revueltos and watching some live music (pupusas are a mainstay in El Salvador. Imagine fried corn tortillas filled with stuff). Unlike American fairs, the food and drinks were the same price as a normal bar on a normal night (70 cent beers and 25 cent pupusas). In the end, it was a blessing in disguise that I ended up going to Santa Ana rather than San Salvador because I wouldnt have done anything in San Salvador that night. I dont believe in fate, but sometimes on this trip, I tend to think Lady Luck has been on my side. If you ever drop by Santa Ana, El Salvador, I recommend Javiers guesthouse Casa Frolaz.

Something I learned which I thought was funny. In Central America one of the beers that is popular is called Brahva. If youve ever had the Brazilian beer Brahma, it is the same company. The logo and taste of the beer is the same. The only difference is one letter change. I asked the local hostel owner why they changed the name of the beer for Central America. Apparently, in Central America, Brahma means "when a girl gets wet" or something along those lines. Basically, it has very sexual connotations so naturally the company decided to change the name for Central America. I hope this little blurb was educational for you. Have a nice day.

Sickness Strikes...well, struck

2008-07-21T12:40:00.000-04:00

Its about time! I finally got a stomach illness in Central America. It took 6 weeks. For awhile I thought I was traveling in Europe or something. 2 days ago, I woke up around 6:30am in my room in La Sombra in Playa El Tunco. I had been planning on leaving that day for the city, but my stomach apparently had other plans. Deep in my gut was an extremely uncomfortable feeling. I scurried to the bathroom and squirted out straight liquid out my butthole. I knew I was sick. I didnt know I would be going to the bathroom 11 more times that day. By the 11th bathroom break of the day, I had nothing left in my stomach and my asshole was on fire from constant wiping all day. I literally laid in bed (besides the bathroom breaks and to watch a horror movie for an hour and half) from 6:30am to 6:30pm. I didnt eat anything during that period for fear of an additional bathroom break.

The night before, I had eaten a meal of straight vegetables and fruit. The girls who had left the morning before had left me all this food, so to save money, thats what I ate for la cena. When I ate it, a lot of the food tasted a bit rotten and funky, but I managed to eat around the gross parts. That must have been what made me sick. Other than that, I ate pupusas from a street vendor for lunch the day before, but I doubt that was the culprit. In my fecal matter, I found many tiny bits of pineapple and carrot. The pineapple tasted particularly funky when I ate it and somehow I still ate the whole pineapple.

Around 7pm, I struggled out of bed and went to the tiny tienda to buy some bread and soup. When I got back, I decided that I needed to get out of my room a bit longer so I sat under the movie hut to watch another film. A girl and a guy were playing the Sex And The City movie, and rather than return to my dark, un-air conditioned cave, I decided to give the movie a shot. Lucky for me, it was only 17 minutes in so I got to see almost from the beginning. I wish I could say that the movie surprised me and was actually enjoyable. I really do. Unfortunately, the movie was horrible and as chick flickish as I imagined. At the 1 hour 45 minute mark of the movie, I debated going back to my room but I decided to finish what I started. Besides the fact that I was suffering through the movie, I already knew the ending because someone told me. In the end, I made it through the whole movie, so no one can say I didnt give the movie a chance. To balance it out, prior to the Sex And The City movie I watched a New Zealand horror movie called The Ferryman. It was an ok horror flick with lots of blood. I wouldnt recommend it to others but it helped pass the time while I was sick.

Anyways, the good news was that it was only a 24 bug and I am completely fine now.

Editors note: I apologize for the graphic descriptions of my butthole and shit in this latest post but I felt it was necessary for the reader to get a detailed glimpse of my sickness to better understand the dolor i was going through. I actually had to delete a few sentences of the post because it was even to disgusting for me to read. I gave you the PG13 version.

Punta Rock

2008-07-18T21:57:00.001-04:00

Livingston was really cool. Like being in Belize, it was a nice change of pace. Not to hurry through this post, but Ill be honest, my hand is getting tired from this 2 hour session of blogging and facebook wall posting.

The coolest thing I did was go to this small dark local bar to watch live punta rock, the style of music that the Garifuna people play. I did not think I was going to be able to see live music because I was in Livingston during the weekdays. Luckily, someone had the inside tip on a live music bar that had music every night. The bar was really dark and the walls were covered with cool murals of Caribbean culture. At the bar I ordered a shot of the local alcohol called guifiti (could be spelled wrong). In the guide book, it was said to have recreational as well as medecinal properties. I had no idea what was in it, but it was actually pretty good. It was in an de-labeled jim beam bottle with a bunch of herb looking things floating in it. It was dark, so I couldnt get a good look at what was in it. I also had a coco loco, which is a cut open coconut with rum poured in to mix with the coco water. The band on stage was a group of 5 or 6 Garifuna people playing really really fast music. To me it sounded like African tribal music, mixed with punk rock. One of the instruments on stage was a set of turtle shells. I had no idea what the singer was saying, but it sounded good. In front of the stage, there was a local woman dancing the punta style which consists of a lot of gyrating hips. The setting and the music made me feel as if I was far away from Guatemala and in some remote island off of Africa. Im really glad I had a chance to see the preform their style of music.

Besides that, I was able to:
- Walk 6 miles round trip to some cascading waterfalls
- Eat the local dish, tapado. Imagine every possible sea animal in a bowl with coconut milk and some other flavoring.
- Observe the town by walking all over the place

Below are some videos of a band playing punta rock and some women in a punta dance contest. These are not my videos and I stole them off youtube. It was too dark to get any good video or pics of the band or bar.

Beard No More

2008-07-18T21:41:00.002-04:00

Today is a sad day. My travelers beard is no more. In my head, I fought with myself on whether or not I was going to shave it off. The deciding factor was the fact that I now have another month and a half of my trip. It took me about a month to grow it to its perfect length. 2 weeks later though, it got a bit scraggly even for me. Far away (like in these pictures Ive attached), it looked really frickin cool. Up close, mainly on the neck, it was getting unkept. It took me almost 40 minutes to shave it with the crappy razor I bought and shampoo I used in replacement of shaving cream.

Q: Why not trim it, rather than shave it all off?

A: Well, its simple. I dont feel like maintaining it every week for the next 6 weeks. Plus I dont have scissors or an electric shaver. Id rather just regrow it so by September 3rd, it will be nice and long and I will be more apt to maintaining it.

I also played with the idea of leaving the moustache (as you can see in the picture I attached. Look at my shiny, wet chest), but I didnt feel like having a moustache conversation everytime I met someone new. The moustache looked surprisingly cool though. Maybe back home, I will sport the stache. Whose with me?

Dont worry friends and family, you will get to see the beard in all its glory in 6 weeks time. For now, I will cope with my loss and probably regret my decision.

First thing I did when I arrived in sketchy El Salvador...hitchhiked

2008-07-18T21:08:00.001-04:00

After countless hours of ferrying and bussing from Livingston to la frontera of Guatemala and El Salvador, I decided to walk the border, rather than take a tuk tuk to immigration. Unfortunately because of the 4 country agreement between Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, and Nicaragua, I was unable to obtain a new stamp in my passport. I dont consider myself a passport stamp collecter by any means, but I felt like an El Salvador stamp wouldve been pretty cool in my unimpressive passport pages. Not many people travel to ES out of fear and the high cost of a flight. Anyway, I left Livingston at 5am and arrived at the border at 6:30pm. As I walked to El Salvador, I was greeting by immigration officials. They told me there were no more buses to San Salvador, where I was planning on staying the night. Luckily for me, there was an SUV pulled over 10 feet away with unsketchy looking people inside. I decided, rather than camp out at the bus station till 5am, Id go an ask these girls for a ride. Fortunately, they decided to give an homeless looking dude a ride, despite their fear of picking up hitchhikers. I´m not going to lie. With my beard and my 3 day unwashed hair, I looked pretty dodgy. Im surprised they decided to pick me up. The fact that they were pretty stoned (which I found out later) probably helped me out because Im sure their judgement was clouded.

So literally, within minutes of arriving in this mysterious, notoriously dangerous country I hitchhiked (it was totally safe mom, dont worry). Turns out though, they weren´t going to San Salvador. They were 2 Guatemalan chicks (and their awesome labrador puppy) looking to surf, and their plan was to find the first beach on the Pacific Coast. I decided to go along for the ride and they drove me all the way to Playa Tunco where we all found habitation at La Sombra, right off the beach. Lucky for me, one of them was a surf instructor.

Playa Tunco, slight west of La Libertad, is a small surf village. It seems as if every inhabitant in Tunco is a surfer dude. The uniform of the citizens and visitors is no shirt, bathing suit, and There is a definite lack of females in this village. Thats not to say that there arent any females who are representing for the surfer chicks though.

sun bleached streaks in their long hair. Its a really cool village, thats for sure. There is only one thing to do in this town, surf and relax.

Ive only been here 3 days and I can tell you the daily routine of ppl here.

- Wake up early to surf

- Return at 11am.

- Smoke pot and watch surf videos

- Repeat the above every few hours.

As I try to learn to surf off the beach here, it feels as if all the pros are snickering. Id probably do the same though. Some of my wipeouts have been legendary. I did manage in 2 days to stand up on my board a few times. Coincidentally, I first stood up at Punta Roca which is notorious for having the best waves in all of Central America. Granted I was nearer to the shore and just to the left of these giant waves, but its kind of cool saying that I learned at Punta Roca. Man, some of the waves here are terrifying.

I tried to surf today but the ocean was way to rough today. This morning I tried, and ended up getting caught in a riptide that was taking me towards some serious rocks and out towards South America. I´d be lying if I said I was not scared as hell. At the time I did not know the proper way to get out of a rip tide (swim parallel to the shore), and no matter how hard I tried to swim out, I kept getting pushed. Not only was I scared of being wisked away or getting smashed against the rocks, but I was also worried about damaging my board. The previous day, I broke a fin and leash off my rented board and I had to pay 15 bucks as a penalty. I definitely did not want to incur any other fees beyond the 10 dollar a day rental. After I managed to escape from the ocean, I was greeted on the shore by a gang of surfer dudes who began making fun of me. They called my "bouy! buoy!". I wanted to say something back, but alas, I did suck at surfing and paddling so I just put my head down in shame. Later in the day, I tried again to surf, but thats when the ocean was super rough. I was about to give it a go anyways because it was my last day here, but I saw a beginner with a long board snap his board in half, and I decided that I just didnt need that. I swapped my surf board for a boogie board thinking that I could manage that in these rough waters, but within 5 minutes of entering the water with the body board, the leash broke off. Thats when I decided to call it day and wait to surf again when Im in Nicaragua.

The black sand beach is gorgeous. This was my first experience with a black sand beach. As you can imagine, it looks like a beach, but with black sand. I think I prefer white sand beaches. The black sand makes you feel dirty all the time. The surrounding area is incredible. Mountains and various levels of colorful houses surround the beach. Whenever I was out trying to surf, sometimes I just liked floating around and checking out the beautiful scenery. One thing I did not like was the amount of rocks. Much of the shore was lined with large smooth rocks. You would never come to this beach for a casual swim. I reckon, locals who want to swim would go to the nearby lake.

My time in this surf village has been great. After I do a few more things in El Salvador I might return to another surf village. If not in El Salvador, Im sure I will go surfing again in Nicaragua. Because I was cut short one day off my planned surfing, I am itching to give it another go.

Tomorrow, Im off to San Salvador. Big cities are hit or miss when traveling. Because its a Saturday and Ive already met some people heading that way from El Tunco, Im hoping it should be a fun night. We shall see.

I have bought a ticket home

2008-07-14T15:50:00.001-04:00

For all of those who thought I would never return to America in lieu of a life of adventure in the jungles of Mesoamerica, have no fear. I have purchased a ticket home today. I will be returning on Sept 3 to FTL, departing from San Pedro Sula, Honduras. I extended the trip 2 more weeks from my previous estimated date of departure because Matty T has decided to fly down to Honduras the last week of August. I figured it would make a good grand finale to my epic journey through Central America.

So its official, the ticket has been purchased. No more extending the trip. For anyone who would like to come join for a week or so, Id love the company. Ill be around here for another month and a half.

(sorry mom, but flying to Raleigh would have cost 400 dollars more)

Because of the latest news of Matty Ts flight to Honduras, I will be saving Honduras for the end of my trip rather than going there next. That means Im off to El Salvador either tomorrow or the next day. El Salvador should be interesting given that
A) I dont know much about it and
B) what I do know about it is that its supposed to be dangerous.

I do know a few spots I will be hitting in El Salvador, including La Libertad, home of Central Americas best surf. I am prepared to be pummeled by the waves. I will be sacrificing my body to the Ocean God. I figure, why start out at the bottom, when you can start learning how to surf on some of the best waves this side of the world.

Natural Alarm Clocks in Guatemala

2008-07-14T14:39:00.000-04:00

I just bought a new watch (the same old school casio I bought a month ago and lost) because I thought I needed an alarm to wake up for early buses and lanchas. Well, when I bought it I forgot that you dont need an electronic alarm clock in Guatemala. There are plenty of other natural alarms surrounding you already.

Take your pick

- No matter if there is no farm around you, there always seems to be a rooster that loves crowing around 4am.

- Gotta love the sounds of children crying in the house next door to the hostel

- Even better, I love the smell of smoke filling up your dormitory making you feel as if you are being smoked out.

- Little kids waiting outside your dorm at all hours of the morning to sell you chocolate.

- The loud irritating song of the tree frogs and cicadas

This is my favorite natural alarm so far. Last night, I was sleeping on the top bunk at La Iguana Hostel in Livingston, Guatamala. Before I went to bed at 10pm, you could hear the sounds of rats scurrying along the roof. The roof was made out of weaved palm frond squares. There were plenty of gaps where a rat could slip through. Somehow though, I was able to fall asleep. Around 1am, I wake up to the feeling of something falling on my feet. I quickly realize it is a rat and kick it off against the far wall. The rest of the night I can hear the rats and see the rats with my flashlight, walking along the beams next to my bed. I talk to someone that works at the hostel and they tell me that they arent rats and whatever they are wont bite. My ass!!! I was sure they were rats and that they could bite. I try to sleep with the covers over my whole body. Im pretty sure another one fell on me, but I was paranoid at this point and every bed movement scared the living daylights out of me. I didnt go to sleep until sunrise around 5am, when the rats apparently go to sleep. I have since moved to a higher dorm where the rats will be below me.

Semuc Champey, part 1

2008-07-13T17:50:00.000-04:00

Semuc Champey was as awesome as advertised.

Before I begin, let me explain what is Semuc Champey. Semuc Champey is a natural limestone bridge that runs for 300 meters. Underneath the bridge are caves that channel a river. The water on the top of the bridge is from the nearby mountain. What makes it pretty is the array of colors. The water on the bridge is a blue-ish green, surrounded by orange. Many people say its the most beautiful natural formation in Guatemala. Wikipedia it for a better description, but thats basically it.

From Flores it took 9 hours to arrive outside of Semuc Champey. We were planning on staying at this hostel El Retiro in Lanquin which was 30 minutes outside the park but it was full. A pick-up truck came by advertising there amazing hostel right outside the park. Because the locals are always trying to con the gringos, we were very wary of their offer. In the end, we didnt have many options so we took the ride and ended up staying at their hostel. The name of the hostel was El Portal and ended up being amazing. Who knew that hostels not listed in the Bible AKA Lonely Planet were any good.

The next day we booked a tour through the hostel to take us through Semuc Champey. We had no idea what to expect. Let me describe the tour in bullet points for you.

- Carlos was our tour guide. He enjoyed making random animal noises and messing around with us througout the tour. He was hilarious.

- First, we trekked up a mountain so that we could get to the scenic overlook. Because it had rained the night before (just like every night in Guatemala) we ended up sliding alot in the mud. Wearing flip flops didnt help either.

- When we reached the overlook, we got a beautiful view of the limestone bridge. The picture at the top is from the scenic overlook. The array of colors was incredible and....well just look at the picture.

- Next stop was hiking back down so that we could go swimming in the pools and jump off some tree. The hike down was even harder than the hike up because it was harder to navigate the mud on the way down. My sandals nearly broke and I had mud all over my legs and bathing suit from wiping off my sandals.

- Carlos took us to the opening of the limestone bridge, where the river entered. Peering over the edge into the cave with raging waters was a bit intimidating. Next we were lead to the swimming area.

- In the swimming area, there was a tree branch that hung over the pool. Carlos shimmied his way up like a monkey and told us that we could jump from this tree branch. According to him, the tree was 12 meters high. Because America refuses to adapt to the metric system, I do not know if that was an accurate calculation. Just know it was really really high and really really scary. Of course, I couldnt resist making the jump so I too shimmied up the side of the mountain and onto the tree branch. This pic on the right isnt me. I did not have my camera near me when I jumped. I google imaged this picture. Im pretty sure its the same jump. After doing the jump 2 times, I was sure that that was and would be the highest jump Ive ever completed. I would later found out there would be much more jumping.

- Next we made our way down to the pools towards the other end of the limestone bridge. When we reached the end, you could see a waterfall where the river was agressively pouring out the cave. This is when Carlos dropped his dodgy rope ladder and told us we would be climbing down a waterfall so that we could enter the cave below. He wrapped the rope ladder around a large boulder and proceeded to climb down himself. One by one, each of us walked down the rope ladder, fighting the rushing water. Midway down the rope ladder, my hand got caught against the rock and I was holding only with one hand. Fortunately, everyone made it down successfully.

- From the rock where we now resided you could see under Semuc Champey. The cave system looked incredible and dangerous. This is when Carlos told us we would be climbing through a tiny hole so that we could get a better look into the cave. There wasnt much rock between this hole and the dangerous river below. Climbing through the hole, I bashed my back against a stalagtite where I obtained a nasty cut. Apparently I have neon red blood.

- The view from inside the cave was incredible. We hung out inside the cave for 5 or 10 minutes then returned to the rock via a much easier route. Carlos just liked to make things sketchy apparently.

- Again, from the rock you could see the waterfall of the river pouring out of the cave. This is when Carlos told us to jump from the rock into the fast river. Basically, he pointed to a spot and told us once we hit the water to swim as hard and fast as we could to the shore on the other side of the waterfall or risk being carried away by the river. Naturally, I jumped and survived. It wasnt as high as the tree, but equally as sketchy and awesome. Only about 6 of us ended up making the jump. The others had to climb back up the waterfall. The people that jumped then had to find there way back up. The way we were told to get back up was to climb up the side of the waterfall. There was no path and we had to find tree branches and foot holes to get up. Again, this was super sketchy and we could have easily slipped and fallen down the rocks. Luckily, no one died. I was sure that the this would be the final sketchy activity of the day.

- We were going to go tubing next but because half the tour group wanted to do the Las Marias Caves tour at 3, Carlos said that we could go tubing after the caves.

....to be continued. Stay tuned.

I blame expensive internet cafes

2008-07-08T19:44:00.000-04:00

Sorry for my lack of updates lately. Thats what happens when you start traveling in "expensive" countries.

I will comment more on each bullet point in individual blog posts but just to keep you in the loop here is what ive done since my boxed wine-induced blog posts about a week ago...

- slept in a bus station for over 8 hours. I was trying to get to Caye Caulker, Belize from Cancun Mexico and I planned poorly. I was able to read the entire book Gang Mom (expect a full review soon).
- chilled in Caye Caulker, Belize for 3 nights. What a great little island! I saw sharks and sea turtles (no manatees thought DAMMIT), caught a bunch of baby fish with an old school string and hook, and celebrated july 4th obnoxiously with a couple Americans. Oh yeah, and I chilled alot.
- Found some other English travelers and joined on their trip for a bit. We went to San Ignacio, Belize for a couple nights, drank Death Mix (a mix of rum, vodka, coconut rum, lots of sugar poured in, and pineapple juice. its poured into a a large bowl, almost like PJ at a frat party), slept at my belizean grandparents house, found the best hot sauce in the world (Marie Sharps habanero sauce) and I almost puked after swimming in a dirty watering hole.
- slept in a hammock in the jungle, got bitten by man eating flies, perused tikal, saw lots of monkeys and other cool creatures
- now im in flores, guatemala. tomorrow off to semuc champey which is supposed to be the most beautiful place on earth.

ps, for those of you who havent seen me in awhile. my beard is as long as ever and my tan line is the most extreme its ever been.

heres a pic of me. check out my beard and tan line
Now that im back in cheap country I will update more frequently and comment more on the bullet points above. I bought a new camera but these damn computers wont let me upload the pics. So until i found a competent computer, no real pic updates for a couple more days.

Shithead

2008-07-01T05:04:00.001-04:00

A big part of my travels has been this card game called Shithead. Here is how we play it. Know that I have already played this game over 100 times in 1 month. Everyone plays it differently, but this provides the main gist.

Players and Cards

From two to six may play. The game is best is with at least three.

The game requires one regular 52-card deck (plus 2 Jokers, when six play). The cards rank highest to lowest 2, A, K, Q, J, 10, . . . , 2 (twos are high and low - see below).

Deal

The dealer is randomly selected for the first hand. The deal rotates clockwise after each hand.

The dealer deals a row of three face-down cards to each player, one at a time.
The dealer deals three cards face-up to each player, one at a time, covering the face-down cards.
The dealer deals a three card hand face-down to each player, one at a time.

Any cards remaining undealt are placed face down to form a draw pile. The players pick up their three card hands and look at them.

Before play each player may exchange any number of cards from the hand with her face-up cards. A player may never look at the face-down cards until they are played. (Players usually take lower ranking face-up cards into their hands.)

Play of the Cards

The first player is the person who receives the first 3 dealt face-up. If no 3 is face-up, the first person to call a three in a hand is the first player. If there is no 3 dealt to a hand, then the same procedure is followed for the first 4, and so on, if need be.

The first player begins a discard pile on the table, playing face-up from her hand any number of cards of the same rank, and taking cards from the draw pile to replenish her hand to three cards. Taking turns clockwise, each player must either play a card or a set of equal cards face up on top of the discard pile, or pick up the pile. The card or cards played must be of equal to or of higher rank than previous play. This continues, possibly several times around the table, until eventually someone is unable or unwilling to equal or beat the previous play. If after playing you have fewer than three cards in your hand, you must immediately replenish your hand by drawing from the stock so that you have three cards again. If there are too few cards in the stock, you draw as many as there are. When there are no cards left in the stock at all, play continues as before, but without replenishment.

If at your turn you cannot or do not wish to play a card, you must pick up all the cards in the discard pile and add them to your hand. If you pick up you do not play any cards on that turn, but your left hand neighbour, who is next in turn to play, starts a new discard pile by playing any card or set of equal cards she wishes. Play then continues as before.

As long as you begin your turn with cards in your hand, you are not allowed in that turn to play from the cards you have on the table; you can only play from the cards in your hand on that turn.

The Endgame

If you begin your turn with no cards in your hand (because you played them all last time and the draw pile was empty), you may now play from her face-up cards. When you are playing your face-up cards and cannot (or do not wish to) play a card of equal or higher rank than the card(s) played by previous player, you add one of your face-up cards to the pile before taking the whole pile into your hand. It is then the next player's turn to begin a new discard pile by playing any card or set of equal cards. Having picked up the pile, you will have to play from your hand on subsequent turns until you have once more got rid of all your hand cards and can begin playing from your table cards again.

When you have played all your face-up table cards, and have no cards in your hand, you play your face-down cards blindly, flipping one card onto the pile when your turn comes. If the flipped card is playable, it is played, and it is the next player's turn to equal or beat it. If your flipped card is not playable (because it is lower than the previous play), you take the whole pile into your hand including the flipped card. It is then the next player's turn to start a new discard pile. Having picked up the pile, you will have to play from your hand on subsequent turns until you have once more got rid of all your hand cards and can flip your next table card.

When you completely get rid of all of your hand and table cards, you have successfully avoided being the loser and can drop out of the game. When you flip your last table card, you can only drop out at that point if it beats the previous play (or if you are flipping it to an empty discard pile). If you flip your last card and it is not playable, you must pick it up along with the pile. As people drop out of the game, the remaining players continue playing. The last player left holding cards is the loser (also known as the shithead). This player must deal the next hand, and must also make tea (or perform any other duty the group require for general comfort and wellbeing).

Special Cards and Plays

Twos may always be played on any card, and any card may be played on a two.

A ten may be played on any turn, whatever the top card of the discard pile is (or even if the pile is empty). When a ten is played, the discard pile is removed from play and the same player who played the ten takes another turn, playing any card or set of equal cards to start a new discard pile.

If someone completes a set of four cards of the same rank on top of the discard pile (either by playing all four cards at once or by equalling the previous play), the whole pile is removed from play, and the same player who completed the four of a kind takes another turn, playing any card or set of equal cards to start a new discard pile.

When Jokers are used (and they must be for the six-player game), they may be played at any time, singly or in a group, and serve only to reverse the direction of play (from clockwise to counter-clockwise or vice versa). Therefore, if the next player after you plays a joker, the turn comes back to you and you must now beat your own previous play, or take the pile. Jokers are not wild and cannot be played in combination with other cards.

Variations

A different method of dealing is commonly used: first deal a row of three cards face down to each player; then deal a hand of six cards face down to each player. The players look at their hands and select any three of their six cards to place face up on top of their three face down cards. This has the same result as the method of dealing given in the main description above, except that in this version the players will not have seen any of the cards which end up in their opponents' three card hands.

The game is occasionally played to find a winner rather than a loser. In that case, the winner is the first player who manages to get rid of all their hand and table cards.

Some people play that a ten can be played at any time, clearing the discard pile. (In the main description a ten cannot be played on a jack, queen, king or ace). Ciaran Gultnieks gives the following extra rules for special cards:

When a seven is played, the next play must be lower than or equal to seven, or an eight (see below), or a ten (tens can be played at any time).
When an eight is played, the direction of play is reversed (so its function is similar to that of the joker in the main description). In this variation an eight can be played on any card. Eights are transparent - when playing on an eight, you must beat the first card under it that is not an eight. If an eight is played to the empty table, it reverses the direction of play as usual, and any card can beat it. If an eight is played on a seven, it will be the person who played the seven who has play a lower or equal card (or another eight or a ten).

Sean Daly, describes a version of the game Karma, from Radford, Virginia, USA. The differences are as follows:

When placing cards face up on top of your three face down cards at the start of the game, if you have two or more cards of the same rank, you can put them face up on top of the same card. You still place face up cards on each of your three face down cards, so if you have placed two or more equal cards on top of the same card, you will have fewer than three cards in your hand. You now replenish your hand to three cards by drawing from the stock. If you draw further cards equal in rank to your face up cards, you can put these face up too if you wish, on top of the matching cards, and replenish again to three cards; this process can be repeated as long as you continue putting out matching cards. At the end of the process you should have three cards in your hand. In the endgame, sets of equal face up cards in the same pile are played together as a group.
Example: Your six visible cards are A, K, K, J, J, 9. You place the ace one of your face down cards, the two kings on another and the two jacks on the third. You now just have one card in hand (the nine) and must draw two cards from the stock - say a jack and a six. You put the jack on your jacks and draw again, getting another jack. You put this on your jacks too and draw again, getting a six. At this point you must stop. Your hand is 9, 6, 6. Your four jacks will be useful for clearing the table in the endgame.
When a player picks up instead of beating the previous play, the next play is made by the previous player - i.e. the person who played the last card before the pickup - not by the next player in rotation.

William J Putt describes a version (locally known as Smeghead) with the following differences:

They use several decks of cards shuffled together.
At the start each player has four cards face down, four face up and a hand of four (rather than three, three and three).
The first person to play a 10 or complete a four of a kind, clearing away the pile, is known as the "flush" person, and has to clear away the pile each time this happens in future.
As players run out of cards they continue playing until only one player has cards left. This player is known as the "smeg head".

Chris Winter reports that at West Kent College (UK), Smeghead was played by 2 or 3 players with a single pack, 5 cards each face down, 5 face up and 5-card hands.

Jane Guarducci has contributed the following variation(s):

A seven can be played on anything and is "glass", meaning that the next player must play a card which could legally have been played on the card before the seven. For example, if a 7 is played on an Ace, the next player must beat an Ace. If a 7 is played to the empty table (nothing under it) it has the value of 7.
When an eight is played the next card must be lower than 8, or another 8, or a joker.
A ten can be played on anything except an eight and causes the pile to be cleared as usual. The player of the 10 plays again to the empty table.
A joker can be played on anything and next player misses a turn. If there are just two players in the game this means that the player of the joker immediately plays another card of any value. In games of more than two players the joker is treated in one of three ways: as glass (like a 7) or with a value of 7, or with a value of 2. To avoid arguments decide before starting which of these variations is being played.
At your turn you can play an ascending sequence of consecutive cards in a single suit, provided that the first card beats the previous play. All the subsequent plays must also be legal, so the sequence would be terminated by an eight, since after an eight the next card is required to be lower or equal. If the sequence reached 10 the pile would be thrown away and the same player would start a new pile with any play.
An optional rule for games with more than two players: when the pile is picked up, play reverts to the previous player, rather than passing on to the next player.

And finally, some travel updates

2008-07-01T03:56:00.000-04:00

Since I last left you, I was in Palenque, en route to Tulum. I wasn´t planning on going to the Yucatan of Mexico, but when you backpack, I´ve learned that nothing is really set in stone. My friend Cass and Suz, 2 girls I met in Antigua, were heading to Tulum for a couple days of relaxation on one of Mexico´s finest beaches.

In Antigua, I had relayed a dream I had one night. In this dream, all of my Antigua friends were hanging out at an empty beach in Mexico. On this beach, we would camp out and shoot off fireworks all day and night. We would drink tequila throughout the day and pass out at 10pm. I would sing some traditional Mexican canciones to everybody and drink out of coconuts which I cut from the palm trees on the beach and opened with my trusty machete. When I told my Antigua friends this dream, we decided to make it happen and meet up in Mexico. Weeks later and after a dozen messages via the best travelers website Facebook, we finally decided that Tulum would be the spot for the reunion. Luckily, others from Antigua decided to show up and a date was set for a giant fiesta.

Tulum was great. We didn´t really do much, but we had some good time hanging out, drinking, and playing cards. The beach was as incredible as the company. I´m so easily convincible that I decided to follow my Antigua friends for a few more days to Isla Mujeres (Island of Women literally) and Cancun for a final send off. Mind you, this is about 11 hours more north than I had planned originally. I´m glad I made the last minute itinerary change though.

Isla Mujeres was a quaint small island. Not much to do but spend money and swim in the touristy beach, but it was great nonetheless. Probably the best part of it was the hostel. The hostel staff wasnt the friendliest and the rooms were a little sterile and fucking hot, but you couldnt beat the nightly beach party they had. The hostel was located on the sand, so when the clock struck 11 and people had to go to sleep, the party moved to the outdoor bar by the beach. The beach would get packed with drunk foreigners dancing and chatting the night away. By the time the party had ended at 4 am , I was drunkingly laying in the sand with Cass and Ali. Cass was passionately massaging Alis head which was in her breasts. It was a great party that I will never forget.

Cancun was Cancun. Everything you picture it to be, it was. I hate to sound unpatriotic, but it seemed like every shithead redneck American had convenced in the Hotel District for this Saturday night in Cancun. I have barely met any Americans on my trip thus far, and it sucked to meet them all in this horrible souped-up Mexican Myrtle Beach. Cancun is expensive. Cancun is tacky. Cancun is expensive and tacky. The beaches were its saving grace, despite the strong currents. We went out to some of the typical bars because my foreign friends longed for the ¨spring break experience¨. There were no breast exposures, but it was everything we expected and we had a good time in the end.

Something I thought was really interesting. My friend Meabh (whose knowledge of bands was amazing. She likes Fiery Furnaces for Jah´s sake) made a comment a few days prior to our arrival in Cancun. She said that back home in Ireland there was an ongoing joke about American Spring Break. Her and her friends would obnoxiously scream SPRING BREAK like meat heads would whenever her and her friends would get hammered back home. I had no idea prior to her comment that our Panama City Beach-esque spring breaks were so internationally known. Let me also say that Meabh didn´t intend on this comment to be derogatory either. It was just something that they joked about in Ireland. She also said they sometimes wish that they could experience the phenomenom known as American Spring Break and that it was part of the reason they used to shout it all the time in Ireland. The stuff you learn when you travel is so unexpected.

Like I said earlier, I am off to the laid back but expensive country of Belize for a week or 2. The main goals are to read this new book I have acquired (stolen) from the book exchange called Gang Mom while fishing for my food and cooking it. I also plan on doing some amazing snorkeling and meeting lots of interesting characters to potentially travel with.

In Cancun
Off to Caye Caulker, Belize and Tobacco Caye, Belize a few days later.

While I have the computer to myself, I will post some more thoughts

2008-07-01T03:00:00.000-04:00

It´s 2am on my last night in Cancun, and I have the free internet all to myself. I´ve been meaning to write some of my thoughts down earlier, but never had the chance. I apologize in advance for the barrage of posts, especially because they are merely thought posts and not travel update posts.

Thought #1:

I was on a bus about a week ago, en route to Tulum, Mexico. It was a shitty bus, but it was really cheap and saved me a lot of money. They played a movie on this bus called Laser Mission. This was possibly the cheesiest Mission Impossible imitation that could have been ever been made. Cliche after cliche, with the most ridiculous action scenes you can imagine. There´s many questions I asked myself while I watched this movie intermittenly between quick naps. Why did the bus company decide to purchase this movie? Of all the Hollywood movies that are sold in bootleg movie stores, why this one? Why not the real Mission Impossible movies? Why not classic James Bond films? Surely, they were all the same price. Also, what would Brandon Lee (the main actor) think of his movie being played on random Mexican buses. I´m sure he would be extactic that someone is watching his movie. At the same time, I can imagine telling him this story and him replying with ¨Really?!?!?¨

Thought #2:

For a while, I´ve been thinking of a name for my backpack. It started when I watched Full Metal Jacket again in Cabrican, Guatemala (Sara´s indigenous village of which I havent commented on yet on this blog). In Full Metal Jacket, the soldiers were required to name their rifles. In the movie, they named their rifles after girl names. I had a hard time coming up with a good girl name to name my backpack. When you travel, your backpack and your passport are your life so I feel its only appropriate to give your pack a name. Because I´m obsessed with alliteration, I naturally thought of M names such as Meg and Mandy. However, I also limited myself to Mayan names because of where I was traveling. Nothing good came up, so I decided to think outside the box and include any word that was somewhat related to my travels. I started to think of my favorite spanish words that I have learned on this trip. Easily, my two favorite words have been bolo (daytime drunkard) and cucho (street dog). I have gone with cucho. My backpack´s name is Cucho.

Side note: Due to some funny comments made earlier tonight by my Irish travel friends, I have also come up with a tentative name for my penis. Although, I do not believe in naming one´s penis, if I were to name mine, it would be Pacaya. Google Pacaya if you´d like to figure out why.

Thought #3:

As of 8 days ago, I have decided to run for mayor of Fort Lauderdale. Not for this upcoming election, but the next. I believe that with the proper campaign and support, I can atleast impact some of the issues in our city. I love FTL and would do anything to help put it back on the map as a major destination and not just Miami´s burnt out stepchild. Even if I lost, I feel like I could help influence the issues in our city and with the help from the media, get FTL some national coverage.

Mig For Mayor 2012: Your 2012 Vote, M.I.G. (Make It Good!)

Thought #4:

I have decided to embark on an extensive journey through America within the next year. The main purpose of this journey is to determine the best places to send a foreigner when they visit our beautiful country. This trip will be sponsored and paid for advertisers. The journey around our nation will be by motor vehicle, possibly a moped if need be. We will hit every major area and site in the US and will naturally write about it, as well as maintain a video blog/ website/ book throughout the extent of the adventure.

The key will be to break even on travel costs while helping a business advertise. This will be the first leg of a busy year of traveling the globe. I believe it is important to know as much about your own country as you do about others. I feel like at this moment in my life, I know more about other countries than I do my own. I love my country and I am disappointed in myself that I do not know enought about our history and western regions. When you take US History class in high school or uni (another word used in the American-English game mentioned in the previous post) you aren´t interested in learning about your own countries history. I have found that post school, I am much more engaged in learning about myself and the occurences around me. University was merely a measure of my capacity of knowledge. Now I am applying my capacity of knowledge into the real world. My relative lack of expertise on my own country will soon change when I start Mig Quest 2: The American Road Trip Isn´t Dead Yet Tour. I will begin recruiting for this mission ASAP when I return back to my home.

The other inspiration is high gas prices. Initially, its very easy to believe that the road trip as we know it is dead. As most of my good friends from college know, I love driving around the nation. Sadly, due to where I live and high gas prices, this road trip excitement has taken a downturn. I refuse to let the road trip die. America was made for road tripping.

This journey is one that will hopefully get started after 2 months of my return to the states. The journey will go for about 2 months. This will not affect the tentative plans for Argentina/ Bolivia in December and January. The key is finding a way to make money during this journey. I will accept any recommendations on ways to make this happen from anyone interested in sharing this dream with me. I know I have many ideas that never get started. I have a bad habit of saying every idea that comes into my head. I´d really like something like this to happen and would appreciate any suggestions and/or peope interesting in partaking in this journey.

Slang Wars, United States vs England: Round 1

2008-07-01T02:36:00.000-04:00

To help improve the mood of this blog, I will now comment on a game Ive been playing for the last couple days with my friend Cass. This game started in San Cristobal, but became official in Tulum.

As many of you know, I am an American. Cass is English. For the last week or so, Cass and I developed a game where I would attempt to use English phrases without her noticing and she would use American slang without me noticing. If one of us successfully tricked the other person, that would be 1 point. If one of us catches the other person trying to use foreign slang, then its a negative point.

The game is really hard as you can imagine. For instance, one of the words used by Cass was aluminum. I believe the exact phrase she used was ¨I think I´m going to buy an aluminum colored dress¨. As an American, I would think nothing of that comment. However, europeans dont say aluminum, nor spell it that way. They say aluminaeum or something ridiculous like that. How the hell would I ever catch that? That´s how hard the game was.

In the end, I learned a lot about English terminology. Luckily for me, all the people around us were from Europe so they helped me with new words to trick Cass. Unfortunately for Cass, there were no Americans around to help her out.

Some of the words I used against Cass, successfully or not:
- bloody
- bollocks
- rubbish
- knickers
- birds
- fancied
- bothered
- dodgy (which didnt count because i use that word too)
- mate
- willy

There were many others that I cant remember now.

The words that Cass used were great. If you decide to comment on this blog Cass, please write down some of the words that you used. A lot of them were Ninja Turtle-like words, such as awesome or buddy.

In the end, Cass and I tied. She was up 1 on me right before she departed to Panama, but I pulled a quick one on her. Before she left, she let me know that she beat me by 1. I couldnt take defeat so right before I said my final goodbye, I made this comment, ¨my stomach is bloody fucked up right now¨. This was after a hard night of drinking in Cancun, so it wasn´t a totally random comment. Tie game, count it!.

We decided that the next time we meet during our travels (most likely when I work in England for 6 months so I can finally afford to travel Europe or when we both travel to southeast Asia next summer), we will have to finish the game. We never decided on a final consequence for the loser, but I have no doubt our paths will cross once again, and we will be able to finish this insanely fun and educational game.

Hilariously, I have learned about as much of the English culture on this trip as the Guatemalan/ Mexican culture. The English are invading Central America apparently. Not only have I learned many strange but catchy English slang (many of which I´ve already incorporated into vocabulary unknowingly), but I´ve become somewhat fond of the yeast extract Marmite, the equivalent of Vegi-Mite I believe.

¡ Ladrones ! Debatebly the worst day in the last 5 years

2008-07-01T01:55:00.000-04:00

For my avid fans, I am sorry I haven´t updated in over a week. I´ve been traveling in northern Mexico with some great friends I met in Antigua, Guatemala and haven´t had much time to sit and write. I am sad to report, that this post will not be a pleasant one. I´ve been robbed, not once, but twice today. When I say twice, I mean 2 completely different robberies. I know the chances of that are extremely rare, but I have been known to break the odds, especially in the last couple days.

Before I go on my mini rant, I would like to say that the trip is going extremely well, and I have decided to not let this day alter any of my plans for this trip. This trip is bigger than any robbery that could happen (unless it was my passport) and I will not let those slimy ladrones (thieves in spanish) beat me.

ok, so lets start from the beginning.

My friend Ali and I were going to try to swim with the Whale Sharks in Holbox, MX today (google whale sharks. They are some big fucking fish). We jumped on the first bus this morning to Chiquila where we could get a connection to Holbox. Because I was wearing my bathing suit, I put my wallet in Ali´s big purse. We were both stupid for not realizing it was a really easy purse to rob. Anyway, when we arrived in Chiquila 2 hours later, her wallet and camera were missing, as well as the money in my wallet and my debit card. For her it sucked really bad. For me it wasn´t so bad. Unfortunately, we were in the worst town to get stuck. There was no phones, no internet, no ATM, and one lazy policeman (will comment a little later on this). So how do we get back to Cancun without money to buy a bus ticket you ask? Thank jah, that the majority of Mexicans are extremely amiable. Ali and I would not have survived today without their help. The lovely Mexicans at the tienda/bus terminal gave us a free ticket to get home and a free cup of noodles for lunch. This was after the only policeman in town decided to drive off and ditch us after we told him we wanted to file a police report. When we approached him and told him what had happened, it looked as if he shit his pants. God forbid, a policeman files a police report. We told him we were going to find the internet (which didnt exist) and that we would return to complete our report. He told us he´d be waiting for us with an expert that could help us. When we started walking back from the imaginary internet cafe, we saw him driving away, giving a bunch of little kids a ride in the back of his truck. We never saw him again. All day long we were being directed around town for different amenmities. Here are some common things we heard for 2 hours:

- The man with the phone doesnt have a phone.
- The people with the internet are on permanent vacation.
- According to the locals, the pay phones havent been installed, despite years of requests by the villagers.
- The police will be back, dont worry.
- The next town has everything I need.
- The ATM is only 30 minutes away.

Blah blah blah, we get a free ticket back to Cancun. Once in Cancun, some local at the wrong police station gave us 40 pesos to get to the station where we needed to file the report. These were two of the many nice gestures by the fine, good intentioned Mexicanos throughout the day. We fill out a police report which takes 2 hours and a couple of redirections around town.

I get back to my hostel and cant find my camera. It´s gone. Someone has come in and cleaned up our room because it was a mess. I´m not going to make assumptions, but its looking very likely that the cleaning lady or the woman in our room (who was overly friendly) stole my camera. I´m leaning towards the cleaning crew. Unfortunately, I can´t say I did everything I could to avoid this situation. I didn´t necessarily keep a tidy room. You live, you learn, I suppose.

As you can imagine, I become livid. The camera is about the only thing I care about. Why bother to travel if you can´t record your experiences with pictures. Words can only go so far, especially when you are a limited writer (i actually think I am a decent writer, but you can only describe so much in words).

So without ranting too much, I have accepted the fact that today totally sucked. I don´t know what I wouldve done if I didnt have my 2 travel buddies with me, Ali and Meabh, to help me endure my financial pain. In the end, I will never let some fucking scum bag thieves ruin the fun times I am having. I will also always remember the locals in Cancun and Chiquila that helped us today and will do my best to pay the favors forward.

Side note: because I suspect the camera robbery was an inside job at the Weary Traveler in Cancun, I have stolen 6 books from the book exchange as some sort of retribution. I know it doesnt hurt the hostel so much as it does people who want to exchange for good books, but life isnt fair and I´ve had a shitty day.

Ive also found an large arrowhead in my room that I am going to make into a necklace. This arrowhead will symbolize the worst day I have had in 5 years. Why would I want to remember this day? Because when I have another shitty day (assuming its not as bad as this day), I will look at the arrowhead that I found on this shitty day and I will always remember that there was once a shittier day and that it aint so bad.

Oh yeah, Ive also developed a cold yesterday.

Anyway, off the Belize tomorrow for a week of fishing and some good snorkeling. I´ve been a little too chill for the last week or so. I plan on speeding myself up this week in Belize so I can finish whats leftover in Guatemala and then do some surfing in El Salvador. Plus, Belize is insanely expensive.

I miss everyone back home and wish you were all hear to drink some cheap boxed wine with me and possibly give me a nice upper body deep tissue massage.

A night in El Panchan

2008-06-22T14:49:00.000-04:00

I will quickly sum up my night in El Pancha. As I described before, this tiny little location was in the cut of the jungle.

At night, it got pitch black. After I left the internet cafe (when I posted my blog on Palenque), I escorted 2 Israeli girls to their hotel because they were too scared to walk by themselves (I am such a gentleman). Luckily, I packed my little flashlight for just this situation. After dropping them off, I snagged my bottle of brandy, leftover from San Cristobal, and started to walk around to the different hostels to check out the live music.

My hostel, Mono Blanco, had some insane fire dancers and drummers. It was really cool watching the young people spin their sticks around to the beat of the drums. I took a short video of it, but of course this computer wont let me upload it. It made me wonder how someone would get into that type of dancing.

After they were done, I headed to Don Mucho to see what kind of live music they had. The band that was playing there was incredible. An array of musicians playing spanish music to a throng of salsa dancers. In my old school Bulls Jordan jersey and bathing suit, I leaned against a tree and watched, sipping straight brandy. Watching the dancers and the band play, it hit me, "Im in frickin Mexico".

After the band was done, I thought the live music was over, so I headed to my concrete bed where I wrote in my journal and eventually tried to fall asleep. As I turned off the lights, I could here an incredible drummer in the distance, probably from Don Muchos. I decided to skip it, and I tried to fall asleep to the sound of drums and millions of bugs and birds.

How well did I sleep on my concrete bed, you ask? Horribly, ha. Besides the fact that the bed was concrete, I was forced to wrap myself with the wool blanket even though it was 100 degrees out. If I didnt I would have been eaten alive my the local insects.

In the morning, I ate a cheap breakfast of tortillas, eggs, and beans. From the breakfast place, I swear I saw a monkey in the tree faraway. I know it was either a monkey or large squirrel. Regardless, the siloutte of it was cool.

Currently, I am sitting in a internet cafe, waiting for a 5 o clock bus to Tulum to meet up with a friend I met in Antigua. (11 hour trip). That reminds me, I need to find a firework store! I plan on lighting off fireworks from the beach and drinking tequila 24/7 for the next week.

Worth noting, I have broken 2 watches today (one is now lost). That is pretty hard to do.

Most Important Trips, follow-up to a previous comment

2008-06-22T14:36:00.000-04:00

To follow-up on my last long post, Id like to comment on my "most important trips" comment (I also am waiting for a bus at 5 and have time to kill). Here is how I rank my most important trips.

1) Mig Quest (this trip). For the reasons I listed before. I make all the decisions on this trip and its definitely the most adventerous trip I have undertaken, mainly because Im started it solo and everyone Ive been traveling with are people Ive met on this trip (besides Sara who was an excellent tour guide for a week).

2) South America Trip. If I was being lame and counted ties, Id probably rank this tied for #1. My current trip would not be happening if it werent for the south american trip.The only reason I push it to #2 is because I feel it was merely a gateway drug to future travels. I had fun and experienced unforgettable memories but it didnt have the same feeling of adventures the decisions werent always mine. We were also on a much tighter schedule so we had to have the trip "more planned out". Great trip though. It pains me to list it at #2.

3) Mig and Mikes Great East Coast Tour. This trip was important because of what it symbolized, the end of college and the fake world we were living in. This trip also exemplified the randomness that I enjoy in trips. No money and no plans. Thats how we rolled.

Others receiving votes:

Daytona Trip 2002 (this trip was my first road trip away from my parents. Sad but true.)

New Orleans Trip (just because New Orleans was such a sick city and it ended up being an epic trip)

St Louis Trip (Just a good time all around. Me and Mike crashed Birds wedding and we partyed in St Louis for 4 days)

The theme songs to my trip thus far

2008-06-21T21:58:00.000-04:00

There have been a few theme songs to my trip thus far and I would like to share them with you.

The first 3 tracks on the latest mewithoutYou album Brother, Sister. Every bus that Ive taken so far, I start the trip with these 3 songs, Messes Of Men, Dryness And The Rain, Wolf Am I (And Shadow).

The entire Rage Against the Machine album, Evil Empire while I was in San Cristobal. It really started when the whole Zapatista village idea came up, but then I kept playing it anytime I walked around the city. The Nine Inch Nails album, Year Zero, was also played a few times in San Cristobal.

Oh, and add LCD Soundsystem - North American Scum to the list.

Do not look at the lyrics of these songs to find out why I chose them, although some of them do work melody and lyrical wise. Ive always been more about melody than lyrics (unless the lyrics really sound dumb).

Migdiana Jones and the Temples Of Palenque

2008-06-21T20:53:00.000-04:00

Today I discovered that there is Fort Lauderdale/Miami heat, and there is muthaf**kin jungle heat. Holy howler monkey! Palenques weather forecast everyday: 95 degrees, 337% humidity.

Palenque is one of Mexicos best Mayan ruins. What makes it really cool is that it is set deep in the jungle, hence the muthaf**kin jungle heat. I think Im going to plan on writing up a long blog entry that explains the buildings and history of Palenque later on (not that you care. More for my purposes I suppose).

Due to my poor timing, I arrived in the city of Palenque too late on Friday night to get to the jungle area that I wanted to stay in (I could have paid 4-5 bucks to taxi to it, but I refuse to succumb to overpriced rides). Instead, I stayed in a very basic hotel with no excitement or people. Just me and my thoughts.....

Surprisingly, I woke up early like I had planned. Unfortunately, I was not able to do the things I wanted to do because ETrade wasnt picking up their phones (they wont give me the money that is mine and I am running close to a little financial situation). I will keep trying to call them. Luckily, I have another week of money before I am all out. However, I did call my mother after 3 weeks and assured her that God and His Choir of Angels were indeed watching over me (love you mom). I ate some breakfast so that I could break my large bills, then hopped on a colectivo to El Panchan, a jungle area near the ruins where you can stay for cheap. I heard cool things about this area so I wanted to spend one night there.

After getting dropped off, I walked down the path surrounded by lots and lots of green foilage. It was more jungly (is this a word?) than I imagined. I looked around for my friend Scott that I was supposed to meet, but alas, I was too late and he had left. I checked into Mono Blanco because it was the cheapest. The dormitory was a series of 7 beds in a cabana. The cabana was open air and had wire around it to keep out mosquitos. Did I mention the beds were made of concrete? Thank Jah there was a nice breeze to keep me cool...(Im being sarcastic). There were lots of hippies as I imagined after hearing stories of nighttime drum circles, live music, and an abundance of mushroom dealers. Despite the heat and the concrete beds, I immediately fell in love with this place. This is how I pictured Central America. If only I had my machete.

After checking in, I decided to head to the ruins. The colectivos were trying to charge the same amount of money (1 USD) for half the distance that I traveled before. I decided to walk for 30 minutes. After about 5 minutes of walking I soon realized: cocaine is to cusco, as mushrooms are to Palenque. I was offered ongos 3 times on my 30 minute journey. Eventually , I reached the museum were I perused the artifacts and tried to learn as much as I could before entering this epic Mayan site. I ended up having to walk another 15 minutes from the museum to get to the entrance of the ruins. I guess a lot of people decided to shell out the big bucks (1 USD) rather than walk. The museum and the ruins cost a total of $4.80 USD. Before I even saw the ruins, I thought that was a good deal.

When you enter the site, you immediately stare at 4 incredible looking Mayan buildings. I was already in awe of the shear size and magnitude of some of these buildings. The building to the far left, Templo de las Inscripciones was 8 levels high. It was one of the few buildings you were not allowed to climb. Apparently, the great Pakals tomb lies in that temple. It was my favorite looking temple and I took way too many pictures of it. One of the temples you could enter and look at the empty coffin of one of the great citizens of that civilization, The Red Queen. To the left of these 4 buildings was El Palacio, The Palace. It was by far the most fun to explore. It had lots of artwork, tunnels, an observatory tower, decapitation room, and even Mayan toilets.

I could go on and on about the different buildings that I saw and explored, but I wont (I promise I will later though even if no one reads it, ha). Whats important is my takeaways.

My takeaways:

- Mayan artwork is incredible. The stonework is mind baffling. What was really cool about this site was that there is artwork everywhere to be seen. The art isnt even labeled. Its up to you to find it. Luckily, I brought my trusty roadie light so that I could find some art in dark places. I took lots of pictures of art.

- I got inspired from this experience and I came up with 2 really good business ideas. One involves me temporarily moving to a Mesoamerican country to start it thought. Its not a hostel either.

- I saw 2 huge black iguanas. Not really a takeaway, but I forgot to mention it above.

- Some of the buildings they built were massive. I was impressed with the intelligence and skill. It was like going to a Radiohead concert. Whether or not you liked Radiohead, you admired what the bring to the music scene and you gain a respect for them when you see their live performance.

- Although these are 2 completely civilations, I would be lying if I wasnt comparing this site to Machu Picchu. There is no denying that the location that Machu Picchu was built is extremely impressive in its self. How and why they chose that location to build their Incan civilization is unknown to me and many others. However, I found that the buildings of Palenque were much more fun to explore and were more impressive because of their size and artwork. Overall, it is not possible to pick one over the other. You must visit both. Also worth noting, I have only been to one Mayan ruin to this point. I will be going to 3 more in the next month: Tulum (next), Tikal (the biggest in all of Mesoamerica), and Copan Ruinas (when I go to Honduras).

I planned on sitting down on one of the temple steps to write some stuff in my new journal, but Im pretty sure I suffered from heat exhaustion and I was not in the mood by the end of my 4 hour lurk.

Not to be too dramatic but, today I realized that this trip is the most important trip I have ever taken. The adventure of traveling to these kind of places and doing it alone will shape me into a better, more well rounded, human being. The natural high I experienced being in the presence of one of our worlds greatest civilizations was noneother. I am not a great writer, so it is difficult to describe every thought that I had today, but I think you get the picture.

Currently in: Palenque (El Panchan)

Leaving for Tulum tomorrow night to see more ruins and party on the beach for a week.

! Rage Against The Mexican Army ¡

2008-06-19T13:21:00.000-04:00

It´s been a week or so, since I had a sketchy experience. I was fiending to do something sketchy. It´s the best part of traveling, no doubt. On my bus boner-less shuttle from Lake Attilan to San Cristobal, I met a guy from Colorado, Scott, who asked me if I was planning on visiting a Zapatista village. I have to admit, I barely knew what he was talking about. I started looking into my trusty guidebook to see what this Zapatista movement was all about.

To sum it up for you in a few sentences, the Zapatistas are a rebel group that dwells in the Chiapas state of Mexico. They represent the indigenous Mayans. Some of the main issues they are conscerned with is the delegation of old Mayan land, freeing Zapatista prisoners, and in general making sure the Mayans have a say in Mexico. They came on the international scene in 1994 when they stormed the Municipal building in San Cristobal. For the most part, they are a non-violent group. Their uniform consists of a super intimidating ski mask for men, and a handerchief around the mouth for women. They must disguise their identity to avoid problems with the Mexican government. Typically, they are carrying guns as well, but they barely use them. I think its more for the image than anything. They are led by Subcomondante Marcos, a pipe smoking masked man. I don´t know much more about them. If you´d like to learn more, I´m sure wikipedia has a nice little article on them.

Anyway, I was immediately intrigued after I read a little information about them. After we arrived in San Cristobal, Scott and I went to a Zapatista information center to learn how to gain access into a village. The lady told us that we had to take a collectivo to Obintique (probably spelled wrong) where we would have to face a junta (council) who would drill us with questions and determine whether we could enter the caricol (literally means snail, but they call the Zapista zones this).

We headed to the market where we would pick up a collectivo for the hour trip to the caricol We did not know what to expect or if my spanish would be good enough to get 2 Americans into the village. I practiced in my head what I would say to them when they asked us what the hell we were doing there. I came up with (in spanish of course) "we are hear to learn about your way of life. We came to Mexico to learn about the Mexican way of life, and we know that the Zapatistas were a big voice for the indigineous Mayans, bla bla bla". Halfway through the trip, we see a sign on the side of the road with a large Zapatista logo (a female wearing a bandana over her mouth) that lets us know that we are entering Zapatista territory. It was getting sketchier and sketchier....I was loving it.

Finally, we arrived to the outside of this tiny village. There was a fence that led inside that was guarded by a woman wearing a bandana. We ask her if we can enter. She makes us give her our passports. She immediately takes it to a masked man a few yards away. After a few minutes she comes back and tells us we may speak to the junta.

We enter a tiny wooden house, decorated with rebel mural paintings. Inside our 3 masked men sitting a table. They ask us to sit down and they begin asking us preliminary questions. Name? Profession? Organization? Country? Reason for coming? Since Scotts spanish was sub par, I did all the talking. As you can imagine, initially this was very intimidating. We really had no idea what to expect or what they would say. Finally, one of the masked men gets up and tells us to follow him. He takes us to another bigger wooden house where a bunch of people are waiting outside. Coincidentally, I ran into some guys that I went on the volcano tour in Antigua. They were sitting there before we got there. The man who led us to the house, poked his head in the door and told whoever was inside that there were 2 Americans waiting outside, one was a teacher (thats what I put as my profession). He then told us to wait....for what, we didnt know. Outside the building was another masked men guarding. A million thoughts were going in my head. At first, I thought that they thought I was in their village to teach them something because they kept saying maestro. Basically, we were waiting for the unknown.

After 10 minutes, we are told to enter the room. The room is decorated with revolutionary posters and pictures of Zapatistas storming San Cristobal. In the room was 6 or 7 masked men and women sitting in a semi circle behind a table. In front of the table are some benches. We are asked to sit in front of the table. If I had to rate the moments in my life where I felt the most intimidated, this would rank in the top 3. Immediately, they begin asking questions. I tell them why we came to their village (again). They kept asking "but why, but why" and I kept telling them that was our only reason. Finally, they hand us a piece of paper with the official Zapatista stamp allowing us to enter their village. On the paper it says some basic information we had given them. For the name it said "Miguel plus one guest". The only rules they told us was "No pictures of people, no pictures off the main street, no pictures of cars" We could only really take pictures of their murals, which I was fine with. The murals they paint were really cool. Who knew rebels could be such good artists?

We walked around the village taking all the pictures we could. Everyone in the town was very friendly. In reality, the village was like anyother Central American small village. Everyone says "buenos dias/tardes" as you pass them. They all politely move out of the way so that we could take pictures of their art. The little kids knew the drill. The second we whipped out our cameras, a little boy would scurry behind a wall. This village had food stores, clothing stores, schools, basketball courts. I think that was the most surprising aspect of the visit for me. As intimidating as their masked looked, they were all very friendly people and they lived in a normal village. Granted, I was told they run their village like a Socialist community, but I need to read more about it.

We left the village without really learning more about the culture of the Zapatistas then when we arrived, but we didnt really expect to learn much besides what we ended up seeing for ourselves. The main takeaway was what I had mentioned above . Besides what I had observed from the villagers, I was just really glad to partake in the sketchy experience. Entering the room with the main village junta was a memory I will never forget. I was proud of myself for not stuttering and answering in clear and concise spanish. I would recommend visiting a Zapatista to anyone who visits the Chiapas and can speak average spanish. I definitely plan on reading more about the Zapatistas and their revolution.

Bus Boner

2008-06-15T21:45:00.001-04:00

When I am placed in tight or cramped spaces, I tend to get what I call a bus boner. I call it a bus boner because it typically happens on buses that are not built for long legged people. I am unaware if this phenomenom happens to other people and would like to know that I am not alone. This occurs independently of having sexual thoughts. The erection occurs merely because of being cramped. It does not last the duration of the trip, but comes and goes in spurts of 20 minutes or so.

As you can imagine, the buses in Guatemala are always overly full of people and are built to hold small people such as a child or adult Chapin (another word for Guatemalan). The bus boner happens very frequently when traveling on camionetas and it is rather uncomfortable and awkward to hide when walking down the bus aisle.
For that reason, every once in awhile it is nice to book a shuttle or luxury bus to avoid this uncomfortable experience.

If you experience the bus boner, please share.

Now off to Mexico, bus boner-less because I booked a shuttle this time ;)

Xela (shell-la) la vie

2008-06-15T21:27:00.000-04:00

From Antigua, we decided to head to a Peace Core party in Quetzaltenango, abbreviated to Xela (pronounced shell-la). Xela is Guatemalas second biggest city. Most tourists go there for Spanish schools. The first building we saw when we entered the city was Hiper, Guatemalas version of Walmart. Apparently, Walmart owns most of the super mercados in the country, but they arent called Walmarts. Upon entering Hiper to buy some supplies (booze and chips) I wandered off to the deli to find some strange meats. The coolest item I saw was Seso de Res (cow brain). I wanted to buy it so bad to cook it, but no one else was into that idea and I didnt want to have to eat a whole brain to myself.

On the way to the party, we got to look at the city. The city center was beautiful. By far the best looking city among Guate, Antigua, and Xela. I took lots of pictures of it that I cant upload at this moment.

bla bla bla

The party didnt end up happening, so we hung at someones house and played Alaskan version of UNO (much better than the original way to play). We ended up staying at Oscars house, a local friend of the Peace Core and a really amiable guy. Because his house was on a hill near downtown, his house had an incredible view of the city at night. I knew wed be back in Xela after a few days so I wasnt so conscerned with walking around the city until then.

A cool local story I found out through Oscar described how the Quetzal (the national bird) got its color. When the Spainards invaded Xela, the Mayan warrior Tecun was killed in the city center. At that moment, a quetzal landed on his bloody chest. Since that day the quetzal got the red color on his breast.

--------------

I promise to offer some more insight, but these particular days of the trip (the last post on Antigua and this one) did not produce a lot of introspection. Im trying to catch up to the stuff where I did have enlightening moments. The next post will be about Saras tiny village Cabrican, so expect some insight.

Currently in Panachel
En Route to San Cristobal, Mexico

Ponder This. Top 3 cities in America that you would recommend to a foreigner

2008-06-13T13:55:00.000-04:00

Before I run out of time in this internet cafe, I want to write a quick post about a debate Sara, Cate, and I had while boiling in a natural hot spring.

If you had to tell a foreigner 3 cities or locations in America they had to visit, what would you recommend to them so that they could get a feel for American life.

My 3 were New York City, Washington DC, and the Grand Canyon. I could sub out DC for a city in Cali like San Francisco, but Ive never been there.

Sara argued that New York City does not encompass American life. Cate and I did not agree with her opinion and we debated for an hour about it. That was the main disagreement, but there were definitely others that we discussed as well.

I realize that it is impossible to come up with 3 cities that encompass a diverse country like America, but I'd be interested to see what people think.

I'm a little behind with my updates. I have been to 3 other places since Antigua. I have to leave this internet cafe for now though, so expect a couple more updates in the next few days.

Currently in Xela (again)
En route to Lake Attilan

***Correction from a previous post. It has come to my attention that you can see pictures and videos in the email and facebook updates.

Adios Antigua

2008-06-13T13:22:00.000-04:00

When I last updated everyone I was still in Antigua. The rest of my stay in Antigua consisted of partying and roaming the streets. For anyone ever thinking of going to Antigua, The Black Cat Hostel is the spot. I met many cool people in the span of a few days. After staying at hostels like the Black Cat and the Point in Cusco, it seems so easy to run a successful hostel for young backpackers. Allow people to put everything on their tab, and you will make so much money. A bar is essential clearly.

I was in Antigua for far too long though. However, as I mentioned above, the cool people and atmosphere at the hostel really makes you unmotivated to leave.

On the last night in Antigua, the hostel held an 80s party. A few of us went to this huge thrift market to find some vintage clothing. I never thought I would say this but there was too much clothing to pick from. It was quite overwhelming. There must have been atleast 500 racks of unorganized used clothing. We didn't know where to begin in our search. Luckily, I struck gold and found a pink and green windbreaker (with shoulder pads) that I ended up rocking all night long. Believe it or not, it was tough finding cool clothing. I ended up going back to see if I could find some cool t-shirts, but ended up leaving empty handed after 2 hours of searching. After the 80s party, some of us ended up going out (still in our 80s clothing) and had a great night all up to when someone got robbed at the late night bar. (Jumping ahead of myself, within 24 hours 2 people that I knew got robbed. Cate got robbed on the bus to Xela the following morning.)

The next morning I finally packed to leave and said goodbye to my new friends and Antigua.

Final thoughts on Antigua

- i never thought that crumbled buildings could look so nice
- a very solid nightlife despite the fact that the bars are supposed to close at 1am. however, there are bars that stay open later despite the law. it perplexed me how they never got in trouble. if a bunch of gringos knew about the late night spot, im sure the police did too.
- the nearby volcano might be one of the coolest things ive seen in person
- infested by tourists, but i knew that going in. ill take touristy antigua over non-touristy guate city anyday
- biggest thrift store ive ever seen.
- needs more authentic restaurants. i searched long and hard to find some legit restaurants that served traditional dishes.
- should take only 2 days to throughly check out the sites, but like i said, the nightlife and hostel atmosphere make you unmotivated
- I learned 2 great card games, Gannath and Shithead. On the nicest day in Antigua (its rained everyday), we found ourselves playing Gannath for multiple

Antigua did not trigger the inspiration Im looking for to write my next big novel or business idea although the volcano came close......

it will come though....it will come.

Force Feeding My Blog On You

2008-06-09T14:00:00.000-04:00

Just a quick note. Im going to save my major update for a few more days.

As you may have seen by my domination of the mini-feed on facebook, i have found yet another way to force feed my blog on people. Facebook has a feature where i can autimatically import my blog onto my notes section. This is very useful because I only have 12 people subscribed to my blog as of today, so this will allow everyone to have a chance to read my life altering blog.

The ONLY problem with this however is that you do not get the accompanying pictures or videos. So as convenient this is, if you want the full Mig Quest experience, you must still go to the URL http://migquest.blogspot.com

This also applies to just reading the emails.

That is all. Thanks for stopping by.

Currently in: Xela
In route to: Sara´s indigenous village which i cant remember how to spell.

M.I.G.

2008-06-07T17:56:00.000-04:00

Nothing too exciting has happened since the last blog update a few days ago.

- I met up with Sara and her friend Lesa

- I bought a sweet 80s windbreaker for the 80s party tonight. its pink and green.

- I got super drunk and super hungover

- Got really lost again

The main purpose of this post is that I added another bullet point to describe my ideal girl.

M.I.G. (Migs Ideal Girl):

- must be rock n roll and obviously cute or hot

- must love horror movies

- must like talking about music

- must like me

- must like to party, but she cant party harder than me

and now for the latest bullet point.....

- must be able to travel with me to poor countries such as Guatemala for atleast 3 weeks

Sulfur And Marshmellows

2008-06-06T14:46:00.000-04:00

Antigua is known for its invasion of gringos. The second you get off the bus, you see what everyone is talking about. Again, I find it tough to find my hostel because there are no street signs. Luckily, its a much smaller city so it didnt take me long. I find Black Cat Hostel, which was described as being a very social hostel. True to the description, the bar attached to the hostel is slammed with people drinking the happy hour special. As I enter, the young bartender reaches out his hand and says "Sup bro. I´m Todd. This is the place to be". I knew I was in for a fun time. The view from the 3rd story where i stayed was amazing. You can see a volcano, the colorful tops of buildings, and a cathedral that was demolished byt the big earth quake. Its tough not to meet people here.

I decide before I start partying I should check out the city. I walk aimlessly through the city, walking through parks, churches, crumbled buildings, more churches, and more parks. Beautiful architecture, but boring stuff to write about. There was one really cool art exhibit at one of the crumbled buildings. It was called The Disappeared (in spanish of course) and was a tribute to a group of young children in Argentina and other locations that randomly disappeared. The art piece was really cool. I´ll attach a picture.

I get back to the hostel, put all my stuff in order, get some food to eat, and pick up some Gallo 40s at the local tienda. I roll up in the bar and sit down with a big group of people. A few hours later (and a lot of beer later) a couple of girls decide to surprise their friend with a Barney piñata and a Barney and Bebop cake. We hang the piñata from the bars archway, for all the public to see, and everyone takes a whack at it. Some little kids are nearby and we let them take a swing. finally, the birthday girl beats the shit out of Barney and a bunch of candy and condoms fly out. We tried to keep the condoms away from the kids because we thought theyd choke on them. After all the candy was dispersed, we burned Barney in the street and returned to finish our last drinks before we ventured into Antigua bars. We hit a couple bars then found a late night bar that closed much later than it was legally allowed to. I was running out of money, so I started stealing beer out of the tap when the bartender wasnt looking. After about 30 minutes of doing that, I finally got kicked out. i left peacifully. I did not feel threatened by the bouncers because I was pretty sure I can successfully defeat about 3 Guatemalans at a time (as long as they didn´t have machetes). It was a very fun night to say the least. I had big plans of hitting the big Mayan market in Chichi in the AM.

As you can imagine, I did not wake up in time to catch a bus to the market. I went down to the bar to enjoy my free breakfast (amazing quality breakfasts. I now look forward to it before I go to bed and the first thing I think about every morning). I meet a girl who is planning on hiking the Volcan Pacaya at 2pm. I decide to join her so that I can salvage some part of my day.

About 10 people meet on the corner and hop into a shuttle to the volcano. Volcan Pacaya is one of three active volcanos in Guatemala. I was pumped to see some lava up close. After about an hour of driving through the mountains, we reach the volcano and begin our hike. Nothing really interesting on the hike to the top. Half the time you are staring at the floor avoiding stepping in a hearty pile of horse shit. When we reached the top however, it was unlike anything I¨ve ever seen. Imagine a valley of black magma, with smoke coming out of every availble crack. Better yet, picture being in a giant barbeque pit. If I believed in hell, this is what it would look like. We scurry over some magma rocks in search of some lava action. Here and there we being seeing little cracks where you can see small pools of flaming orange lava. Naturally, we take a million pictures; little did we know that we were about to stumble upon a creek sized lava flow. We climb over a small mountain of rocks to find massive amounts of lava pouring out of a larger crack and streaming for about 50 yards. The rocks under our feet were so hot, that half of our tour groups shoes were melting. No joke. Some guys shoe soles melted compeltely off. The heat was intense. We threw rocks at the lava and surprisingly the rocks would just bounce off the top layer of the flow. Some person brought a huge bag of marshmellows and sticks, so we began to roast marsh mellows over smaller lava pools. There were times when I was roasting my marshmellow were I felt like I burned my hand. Walking over the rocks, you can see lava flowing underneath the rock you are standing on. You can´t help but feel a bit scared that the rock will crumbled and your feet will be scalded. When the tour guide stuck his walking stick in the lava, it immediately went up in flames. Pretty insane stuff. Definitely one of the coolest things I have ever seen in person. It reminded me of when I was a kid and used to play the game where you can´t touch the floor because of lava. I was playing that game in real life. Never in my life did I think it would be safe to get that close to lava.

When we got back to the hostel, I ate some sushi with some people from my tour group, then passed out.

I woke up at 9am to a loud parade and police siren. Ive decided to chill out today and wait until I meet up with Sara at 5 at my hostel. Can´t wait to meet up with her and Cate.

The Lurk in Guate

2008-06-06T14:36:00.000-04:00

So it took me about 5 hours to see everything in Guatemala City. Granted, I probably missed some sites since I only lurked Zona 1, but i felt like i had seen everything i´d want to see. I was ready for some drinks and other young backpackers in Antigua. The pictures I took of Guatemala City were mainly architectual AKA boring. Some stuff worth noting though:

- I found the Guatemalan restaurant i was looking for the night before. I asked the waitress what was a typical Guatemalan dish and she pointed to something called Kack-kick (could be spelled wrong). Kack-kick was a turkey leg in a bowl of soup. It was served with a strange salad, some corn tortillas, some kind of dry casserole, some mango pudding (fucking delicious), with some coco cinnamon milk (again, fucking delicious). I was a bit weary about the coco milk because of the ice and my lack of hepatitis shots, but it smelled too good to pass up. Who needs a healthy liver anyway? By the way, all that cost about $4. All i thought i was getting was rice and turkey, but they kept bringing me more and more food.

- I am a giant. I was on a bus of about 50 Guatemalans, 30 of them standing. i was atleast 2 or 3 inches taller than everyone.

- I got very lost again via the bus system in route to finding zone 7 to get a bus to antigua. After 3 buses, I found Zone 7. I asked a bunch of people where 1st avenue and 3rd street was, and they kept telling me they needed more info. as if it wasnt confusing enough, there are zones within zones. Somehow, some unforseen force led me to the corner where the buses were heading to antigua.

- I bought not only 1, but 2 watches this day. I needed to the know the time so I bought this clunky but cheap watch at the super market for $3. I wasn´t in love with it so as soon as I passed by a local merchant selling old school digital Casios, I picked up one of those for $5 bucks. I was really close to buying the blinged out wrist watch with 50 Cents pic in the background, but alas, I needed a watch with an alarm. I plan on selling my extra watch in Pana, so that I can claim I was a professional street vendor in Guatemala at some point in my life.

- during my lurk, i found a building with Ron Jon Fort Lauderdale (worth noting, this was not a ron jon store nor anything related to surfing merchandise) spray painted on it. It made me proud that the work Ive done to rep Fort Lauderdale has finally paid off. We global now!

This concludes Guatemala City....

Day 1: Oh no! It´s hard to understand Guatemalan spanish

2008-06-04T11:00:00.000-04:00

I arrived at FTL airport 2 hours early like a good ol traveler should. Turns out, Spirit Air has a line outside the terminal for international flights. By the time I check in, it is 10:50am, the time that the plane was supposed to leave. The long line had so many beautiful women in it. I felt like i was in Bogota. Coincidentally, most of the hot girls were indeed Colombian and were flying to Cartagena. There were 4 other people traveling to Guatemala behind me so I knew they couldn´t leave us all. Right away, I chatted it up with a cute girl from San Francisco who happened to headed to Guatemala too. Unfortunately, her group was headed straight to Antigua and I was set on spending the night and day in Guatemala City AKA Guate. I might run into her though tonight when I head to Antigua because we were planning on staying at the same social hostel Black Cat. It appears that many travelers skip Guate to go straight to Antigua. Why would anyone want to skip this smog laden, run down, confusing city is beyond me? I like to hit up the big cities, even for just one night. I know they are all pretty much the same, but I feel like in order to get a full view on how Guatemalans live, you got to visit their big urban center.

Back to the plane though. So we finally board the plane 1 hour late, and begin our flight southwest. As we begin our descent into Guatemala City, the cloud coverage and rain is intense. At the last second the plane abruptly ascends. A lot of people were freaking because they didn´t know what was going on and the engine sounded like it was running off one propellor. Turns out, the pilot couldnt see the runway, so we headed to Managua, Nicaragua for a refueling. The airport in Nicaragua reminded me of the scene in Blow when they fly into Colombia to negotiate to buy the farmers entire cocoa field. Luckily, about 1.5 hours later, we return towards Guatemala. The second round the same thing happens, although we don´t go back to Nicaragua. We circle for about 30 minutes, and try to land from the other side. By the time we land, we are 5 hours after our original estimated arrival time. Better safe than sorry I suppose.

Because I am shoestringer, I opt to take the local bus system to the hostel I chose. I followed the directions my guidebook listed to get to the airport bus station. Looks like my favorite word in Guatemala is going to be "permiso" (excuse me). After a bunch of ¨permiso"s and questions on how to get to Zone 1, I finally hop on a bus. The buses don´t stop for you. They just roll and you better not be parapalegic, because your going to have to pay the man and hop on the bus as its moving. Around the time I was boarding, there was no seats on any buses so you have to hang from the bus door. So I can barely understand Guatemalan spanish for some reason. I did about a dozen nod and smiles as people tried to put me in the right direction. I had to hop on 3 different buses (should have only been one) just to get to my Zone. The city is laid out in 15 different zones. Every zone has repeating street and avenue numbers. So if someone told you go to 8th Ave, it wont help you unless you know the zone. And oh yeah, there are no street signs. There was a point on my third bus that I thought id never make to the hostel and I was very close to hopping in a cab (for 20xs the price. The buses were $.65, a cab costs $8). I am stubborn, thank god, and made it successfully by walking a bunch of blocks in the rain and the dark. Call me naive, but I feel a sense of safety in this city because of very tanned complexion these days and my shady hat ive been wearing low over my eyes. My large backpack gave me away though. Fortunately, I packed a smaller pack for after I checked in to my hostel.

Because this is dragging on, and I know you don´t like to read long passages, I will sum up my observations and Day 1 experiences below.

- hostel was very nice, but no sign of other backpackers. all i wanted was a beer.
- i attempted to venture out to a bar by myself to listen to live music, but either lonely planet had the wrong address or it wa just closed. dont worry, i only carried enough money on me for 2 beers, so if i got robbed, they weren´t gonna get anything. i also wore my hoodie to look extra shady. shady people don´t rob shady people.
- i found the local beer very quickly, Gallo.
- i had light diareahha this morning. Damn! not even 1 day.
- it was tough finding a local guatemalan eatery, so i opted for a (local?) fast food franchise Pollo Campanero. It was recommended by my friend. It was basically the Guatemalan KFC with some awesome spicy jalapeno sauce.
- i have to get used to the high denominations of currency. for every 1 dollar it is 7.35 quetzals. I feel like im spending a shit ton of money, but im really not.
- apparenly, miley cyrus is big in guatemala too.
- people are amazingly nice thus far. some dude bought me candy on the bus after he helped point me in the right direction. i liked that.

Thats all ill write for now. It has been interesting to say the least. The rest of the day, I´m gonna continue getting lost in the city, trying to see the few sights, then hopping on a bus to Antigua.

Sorry for the bad grammar, but this computer lags and it is aggravating to backspace and fix the errors. When I get home and pùt all these blogs in some sort of formal diary, I will correct these errors and edit the posts so they sound more intellectual. Arg, Ttese international keyboards have these annoying symbols in strange places ¿¿¿¿¡¡¡ÑÇÑÇÑÇÑÇÑÇ