To the woods!

On July 6th I'll be taking the train east to Montana to begin my walk back.  1,200 miles and around two months should bring me right back to the Washington coast.  I'll probably return about 20 pounds lighter and significantly more beardy.  I'll probably also smell terrible.  Ladies, please try to contain yourselves.

My living room is a mess of dehydrated food, backpacking supplies, and maps.  Somehow it's all going to fit into nice little boxes which will be mailed out to various towns along the way (thanks to Anders).  I had hoped that my buddy McGuire (or Saggs, as I guess I'm going by trail names now) could join me, but it looks like it's not going to work out.  I'm a bit nervous about attempting this on my own, as it's definitely not a popular trail by any means.  I expect that I'll go a couple of days to a week at a time without seeing any other people.  

Hopefully all goes well and I can get into the swing of things quickly.  I know from my limited experience on the PCT that the pull of the trail is strong, and I'm excited to see how things pan out on this trip.  If things go according to plan, I'll be able to send some updates to let someone know that I'm still alive every week or so.

If you don't hear from me I probably got eaten by a bear.  Don't feel too bad.  It's not a bad way to go out.

Adios Mexico!

Oaxaca City

So I'm a few days behind in writing this one, as I'm now sitting at my computer back in Seattle.  After leaving the beach, I stopped in Oaxaca for a few days.  Oaxaca was definitely my favorite city in Mexico.  It felt like the city that Antigua and San Cristobal are trying to be.  It was nice and clean, minimal traffic (comparatively), and the food was amazing.  Tlayudas, pozole, fruit in a cup with lime juice and hot sauce, elote, grasshoppers (!), 7 different varieties of mole, oversized empanadas, and much more.  Though I did a fair bit of walking, I definitely made up for it with some ridiculous eating habits.

When I first arrived at the hostel I had an entire 10-bed dorm room all to myself.  I made friends with the only other two people staying there (the girl had another dorm to herself, and Will from Spain had a dorm of his own too).  Luckily we were all over 27 and had no problem calling it bedtime at 10:30.  Even when a group of younger more partyish kiwis showed up, it was great to have two folks to give me an excuse to skip out on the heavy drinking.  Anyway, Oaxaca was great, and I'll definitely be returning.

Chapulines (Grasshoppers), a Oaxacan specialty

I jumped an overnight bus to Mexico City with a buddy, and spent my remaining day and a half wandering the city and eating whenever I could manage to fit more food in my pie hole.  Though I'd had a ton of warnings about Mexico City, I didn't feel any more unsafe than I would in any large city in the states.  Just pay attention to where you are, and maybe don't take sketchy looking cabs.

I wish I had given myself another two days to explore, but oh well.  Mexico is a short (and cheap) flight away.  If I can keep up on my Spanish, I'll be vacationing down there again real soon.  I probably have some stories to tell, but I don't feel like writing them up.  I'll save them for the campfire.

It's a bit strange to be back in Seattle again, though at least the weather was nice for my brief stay.  I'm hopping the Amtrak tomorrow towards Montana to begin the next leg of my trip.  I'm ready to lose another 20 pounds or so in the next 1,200 miles of hiking.  I've almost got all my food prepared,

Finally made it to the beach!

San Cristobal de las Casas

I moved from Palenque to the classic travelers' town of San Cristobal de las Casas in central Chiapas.  It seemed nice, but very similar to Antigua, and the weather kind of reminded me of Xela (50 and drizzling).  I felt bad moving so fast, but I could only stand to stay there one night.  The pull of warm weather and the beach was just too strong.  I spent the next day slowly moving towards Puerto Angel on the Oaxaca coast.

The beach near Puerto Angel is split into 3 separate pieces.  Zipolite, San Augustinillo, and Mazunte.  Zipolite is the most famous, and enjoys a reputation as a nude beach and legendary hippie hangout.  Since I love to generalize, I'll just throw it out there now: I'm not a big fan of hippies.  Can't think of a hippie that I've ever liked.  About the closest I can think of is "The Dude" but a quick google search reveals that he isn't actually a hippie.

**Sidenote: At first glance, the website Dudeism.com appears to be awesome, and worth further study.  In case you're wondering about hippies and dudes, they sum it up here "Thus the Dude mandate is the same as Voltaire's, Samuel Johnson's, and Thoreau's: Tend to your own little garden and mend your neighbor's fence.  Hippies, on the other hand, think the entire world is a boundless garden, and then get disappointed when people shoot at them for trespassing."  Well said.**  

San Augustinillo

Anyway...I passed on Zipolite, and set up shop in the tiny, one-street town of San Augustinillo.  Speaking of hippies, not sure of the name of where I stayed, but instead of a door, there was just a giant dreamcatcher suspended above a gap in the wall between the street and the beach.  Tuto, the owner, was a clearly crazy bearded old wildman who carved driftwood in the common area with a chainsaw for a living.  There were three simple rooms (Lluvia - rain, Sol - sun, and Cielo - sky).  I chose Sol.  It wasn't much, but Tuto was really nice and didn't seem phased that I clearly couldn't understand a word of his spanish.  Everyday he would accost the fisherman as they brought their boats in around 11am, and would buy whatever they had caught that day.  He insisted that he make me ceviche for lunch, and I didn't complain about that one bit.  Can't beat fresh fish on the beach while watching the waves roll in.

Happy dogs playing on the beach...

Anyway, spent 3 days there doing nothing.  Read a lot of books, worked my ass off trying unsuccessfully to body surf in the particularly angry ocean, and sat and listened to Tuto ramble about who knows what.  I'm generally not much of a beach guy, but I can see how people could end up staying a lot longer than planned. The days go by pretty quickly when you just sit and watch the waves roll in.  

I finally left the beach and took the 6 hour van ride to Oaxaca city.  I was given a tip about buying some pills from the pharmacy that all the locals take for long bus rides.  Talk about a nice ride.  I passed out immediately and woke up in Oaxaca feeling great.  Hurray for medication!  Also, it only cost me $1.25 for 20 of these miracle pills.  Hurray for over the counter drugs!

The Arts Issue

Ok.  Most of you can stop reading right now.  I have an afternoon to kill in Tuxtla Gutierrez before catching an evening bus, and I'm going to attempt to bring some of my terrible culture into your lives.  Get ready.

So recently, I just finished a couple of books about expeditions into the Amazon and started working on Jared Diamond's "Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed".  As I'm approaching a few days on the beach, I realized that I probably need some more light reading.  I love my science and travel books, but you can only read about population density and ancient farming techniques for so long.  As part of my spanish studies, I picked up a copy of Antoine de Saint-Exupery's "The Little Prince" in spanish (El Principito), hoping that a book aimed at children would be right about my comprehension level.  Unfortunately, it was way over my head.  If anyone at home hasn't read it, and happens to speak fluent spanish, boy do I have a book for you.  Also probably worth picking up in English if you have $5 and an afternoon to kill...

In that same vein, I finally started reading "The Alchemist".  I know, the hippy/traveler community would kick me out if they knew I hadn't already read it, so it's about time.  It's another book that could be knocked out in an afternoon, and I'm trying to pace myself.  I'm finding it strangely applicable to my life and current situation though, and it's hard to put down.

Switching gears, I've noticed that when I'm traveling, I am a lot more aware of those moments where everything just seems to fall into place perfectly.  Maybe it has something to do with the fact that I don't have any real responsibilities, and my mind doesn't always have to be running in the background.  I'm not thinking of work, or what I'm going to be doing later, or even of friends & family.  I can just sit and take in everything that is going on, and enjoy it.  A few hours ago, I sat down to grab a snack, and from my seat, I had a perfect view of the crosswalk out in front of the comedor.  The angle was such that I had a perfect view of each person's face as they crossed the street for just a second, and I could just sit and imagine what they were doing and where they were going.  I had nowhere else to be, and nothing that I had to do but sit and watch the world go by.  Charles and Tom summed it up pretty well here.  Sorry to be a youtube linker, but I told you to stop reading at the beginning...

I'm not much of one for thinking about the past, and one of my favorite things about traveling is that I can be totally removed from anything that was going on at home.  I have no phone, no expectation of internet access, and I'm probably not going to run into anyone I know (except for bumping into a friend from high school in a 7/11 in Bangkok once).  I don't usually even have the desire to listen to the music that I enjoy at home.  Being in a new place with new sights, sounds, and smells is enough to keep me entertained.  Every once in a while though, I do feel the need to go revisit some things.  Not sure why, but these always bring me back to somewhere.
  - I'm not much of a dance fan.  Especially interpretive dance.  But here you go.
  - For some reason this one always grabs me.  Probably not appropriate for work.  Unless your work is ok with seeing Shia LaBeouf naked.
  - And just becase, another one of my favorites.

Oh, and to round things out, I finished the new season of Arrested Development last night.  I won't state my full thoughts here, but well...

Hola from Mexico

I spent my last evening in Sayaxche watching two local basketball teams battle it out in the central park.  They had nice uniforms and everything, but it's clear that no one takes basketball very seriously here.  The highlight for me was that the ref was wearing a completely over-the-top ridiculous Star Wars t-shirt.  In a franchise that spawns some stunningly dorky shirts, this one stood out.

The immigration office on the Guatemala side

I hopped the first bus north I could find in the morning with the hope of crossing the border into Mexico and making my way to the town of Palenque by early afternoon.  As I expected, it proved to be a long day of uncomfortable travel.  Google maps doesn't actually show there being a crossing, or even a road there, but the internet provided some extremely vague hint that maybe it could be done, and I was ready to get out of Guatemala and make my way north.

The bus was one of the more crowded that I had been on, and I finally got to live the dream of spending the four hour ride hanging out the door because we just couldn´t fit any more people.  I was hoping they'd ask for volunteers to ride on the roof, but unfortunately it never came to that.  Anyway, the border crossing was quick and painless, though I did discover that my watch had been taken off my pack on the bus ride.  Not a big loss, as it was a cheapo watch, but it's been quite inconvenient since never knowing what time it is.

On the mexican side, I started walking the 8 blocks through the empty streets of Frontera Corazal to the bus terminal where I could catch a ride to Palenque.  I knew that Mexico was going to be great when a cab driver stopped and offered to give me a lift to the bus station.  For free!  First nice thing anyone had done for me in three days.  I instantly felt better, and booked a very reasonably priced ticket on an air conditioned, new van headed to Palenque.  A big change from the beat up old VW bus type vans in Guatemala.  Each of the 4 riders was assigned their own seat (a big deal after one ride that crammed 32 people into a vehicle only slightly larger than a minivan) and the bus flew off down the well maintained road.  Yay Mexico!

Ruins of Palenque

Palenque was much nicer than I expected, though everywhere I checked described it as being kind of a dump.  I stopped at a roadside taco vendor, and the guy next to me randomly bought my meal for me (ok...only $1.75, but still!).  Yay Mexico again!  I visited the Palenque ruins, got there early, took a nice nap on top of a pyramid.  Probably the oldest place I've ever slept (700 AD).  I sure wished I had my camera here, as the jungle-backed ruins were just perfect in the morning sun. The best part about these, in my opinion, is that you can go pretty much any

where you want.  They don't seem to be concerned about people climbing all over everything, napping where ever they want, and generally exploring every nook and cranny.  My kind of place.  There's even more as yet uncovered ruins in the jungle behind, and I took the opportunity to go explore those as well.  Especially in the early morning, before the tour bus crowds arrived, it definitely felt like an Indiana Jones moment.

Last day in Guatemala...

The town of Sayaxche

After getting out of Chisec, I tried to make one more stop in the town of Sayaxche, from where I could hopefully visit the ruins of Ceibal.  I arrived in town around noon, and wandered the streets for 3 hours looking for a hotel.  I finally found a little concrete block cell that I could have for $13 a night.  Way overpriced considering that this wasn't a high demand area, and all I got was rickety old fan, uncomfortable bed, and the sweatiest bathroom imaginable.  When I started to take things out of my bag, I found that my camera had been stolen.  Pretty sure it was the ayudante (the luggage guy on buses), as he saw me put it away just before getting on the bus.  Not totally bummed about the camera itself, but it's sad to lose all my pictures...

The next morning I started the search for a ride to Ceibal.  According to my book, I could catch a ride on any southbound vehicle and get off to walk 8km through the jungle to the ruins.  And again, every driver told me that he couldn't drop me off and that there was no way to get there.  Taxis wanted $25 for a one-way trip, and this would still leave me stranded when I finished.  Not gonna happen.  I returned to my hotel, defeated, and tried to ask if there was anywhere in town that I could rent a bike.  Nope, but maybe one of the construction workers renovating the place would rent their bike out to me.  Ah, now this is what I'm all about.  The kid didn't seem thrilled about the idea, and wasn't convinced that his bike would make it on the 30km round trip ride (half of which was down dirt roads), but the girl running the hotel convinced him to let me take it.

The internet tells me this is what I missed.  No big loss...

It was far too small, the brakes didn't work, and I had to stop to re-inflate the tires every 15 minutes, but somehow I made it down the highway and out onto the back roads.  Some of the rocky, downhill descents were a little frightening, as I had no brakes, but after a long hot ride, I made it to a fork in the road with no signage.  Probably due to wishful thinking, I took the downhill branch, which led me to a tiny river community, but no ruins.  I found out there that I should have taken the other fork, and now had to ride 2km back uphill in the heat of the day.  I finished the last of my water, and started the uphill slog.  It was getting pretty hot, and I was beginning to feel the heat.  After taking a few increasingly long rest breaks in the shade, I knew that I wasn't going to make it.  If there was no water at the ruins (and I had no idea), I'd be in trouble for the ride back, and I just couldn't risk it. 

I pedaled back slowly, just dreaming of the tienda that I had passed on the highway on the ride in.  During one rest break, an old cowboy caught up to me and sat down on a log to rest as well.  We had a brief conversation, and it ended when I tried to say that we could really use some horses (caballos) to make the trip easier.  He didn't say anything and gave me a confused look.  I may have said we needed onions (cebollas).  I always get those two confused...

I finally made it back to Sayaxche and the kid wanted $13 for 4 hours of bike rental.  It should have been $4, but I hadn't agreed on a price beforehand, and he wouldn't back down so I had to pay.  I scrapped any plans of continuing on in Guatemala.  Tikal can wait for another trip.  My string of bad luck was just too much, and I figured maybe Mexico would turn things around.

Onward!

On leaving Semuc Champey, Alice and Anna almost convinced me to stick with them and head to the coast, followed by Belize and then up into Mexico.  It would have been a great plan, and I could have found a real cheap flight out of Cancun.  Of course, instead of making the smart choice and following two beautiful girls to the beaches of Mexico, I made the Alex choice and hit the dusty road north towards uncertainty.  I guess my travelers' luck finally caught up with me, because I hit a string of 3 shitty towns in a row, where I'm pretty sure I was ripped off quite a few times, people were generally unhelpful, and accommodation was waaaay overpriced.

Army in Coban.  Protecting the market?

My first stop was back in Coban, where I figured on staying at the same comfy place I did on the way into Semuc for $6 a night with TV, WiFi, and a private bathroom.  Unfortunately, no one came to the door when I rang, so I was forced to try another selection from the book.  Casa D'Acuna was just down the hill, and was listed as "a near-legendary travelers' haunt".  Turns out that the building and restaurant were quite fancy (even had a doorman and white-suited waiters), but the 4 rooms they had were strangely placed right in the middle of the restaurant.  I could look out my two windows, and see people having a fancy lunch not 15 feet from my bed.  I can only assume that they could see me as well, and I'm quite sure I didn't improve the ambiance for them.

I headed out the next morning for the town of Chisec, which was small and dirty, but nearby the "stunning, jungle clad" Lagunas de Sepalau.  Supposedly three turquoise lakes ringed by jungle, perfect for swimming and relaxing.  Sounds like my kind of place, right?  Well I wasted the entire first day trying to figure out how to get to the lakes.  Everyone pointed me to a different place to wait for a bus.  The guys at the terminal said to wait on the corner, the owner of the corner store told me to wait on the highway, the drivers on the highway told me to go to the park, and the guys in the park said there was no bus.

Frustrated, the next morning I set out walking (it was only 12km), and of course, after I'd walked for about an hour, a pickup came by and I hopped in.  It dropped me off in the tiny town of Sepalau, and again, I just started walking.  As I walked down the road, I was joined by a guy named Santiago, who seemed dead-set on walking me to the lakes.  I was a little confused, and his spanish wasn't much better than mine, but we had a good, awkward, silent walk together for about 30 minutes.  When we finally arrived at the "entrance" to the lakes, I was surprised to see him pull out a set of keys and open up the gates.  Ooooohhh, why didn't he tell me he worked there!?  He pointed to a sign that said the price was $Q60 and then insisted on charging me $Q150.  I showed him the sign, confused, but he insisted.  I would have walked, but I'd spent so much time and energy to get here, I just gave in and paid ($19 instead of the $7.50 that I'm pretty sure it should have cost).

Guate's finest?

There are a lot of pictures on the internet that make these lakes look amazing, but this one, from the Guatemala tourism board (of all places) is the most accurate representation.  The first two lakes were just stagnant ponds, but good ol' Santiago tried to convince me that they were something special.  We even spent 20 minutes draining a kayak so that he could paddle me around the lake (small enough that I could throw a rock across it at it's widest point).  As we were hoisting this kayak up to drain out the water, I almost asked how much it would cost to skip the kayak tour, but Santiago seemed pretty set on it.

Anyway, after a quick 3 minute circumnavigation of the lake, I got out of the kayak and went to grab some water out of my backpack.  When I turned back around, Santiago was suddenly in his underwear staring at me.  I was at least a foot taller than him, and at least 30 years younger, so I figured I could hold my own if we were going to have an issue.  Luckily, he was just waiting to go for a swim.  Somewhat relieved, I joined him for a quick dip before moving on to the third and final lake.  The third lake turned out to be what is commonly referred to as a "field".  It was totally dry, and looked like it might have been dry for some time.  The surrounding jungle that was described in my guidebook had been completely replaced by farmland, and I told Santiago that we could call it a day.

Back in Sepalau, I waited for a bus for about 30 minutes, then figured I'd just start walking at catch one on the road.  Of course, no bus ever came, and I spent 3 hours walking back to town.  I rewarded myself with a strawberry cheesecake ice cream bar.  

The only positive memory I have from that day is a great churrasco dinner (a set plate of grilled meat, cabbage salad, refried beans, and tortillas for $2.50) in the park while a guy across the street played some panflutes.  I was almost tempted to buy one, but then I remembered this handy chart.

**Again...none of my pictures.  Thank you internet.**