Tikal

Monkeys? Oh yes. Turns out we saw lots of monkeys at Tikal. Howler and Spider monkeys swinging around in the upper canopy, hanging by their tails, lounging on branches, grabbing and shaking tufts of leaves to get the tastiest ones. I could hear them biting and chewing. I could smell the fragrance of the leaves. And even though the zoom on my camera is nothing special, I think I got some cool photos but probably won't post them until after we get home next week. I'm still having connection problems.

There are signs around Tikal that say, "No moleste los animales (Do not bother the animals). There should also be signs that say, No moleste a los humanos. While we were sitting on the top of Temple V, a coatimundi (pizote as they are called in Guatemala) took a special fancy to the peanut butter sandwiches in M. Lee's backpack and was so persistent he even had fantasies of punting the little guy off the structure. That would have sucked. The day didn't start out all that well as it was. We caught the pre-dawn shuttle and along the way we encountered several animals in the road. The first was a mother hen and her chicks. The bus almost squashed them but M. Lee assured me they all got away. I heard them cheeping as we whizzed by. I was sitting in front and next we barreled around a corner and there in the headlights I saw a small white terrified dog cowering before the onrushing bus. He wasn't so lucky. A second later he disappeared beneath the bus and I felt the bump as one of the tires ran over him. It was wrenching. Not long after that, we came upon a band of horses sleeping in the road. One colt in particular was dozing with his nose just on the other side of the center line. I yelled, "Oh shit" as we roared by. I'm not sure the horse even woke up but we didn't hit him.

After the pizote on Temple V, I had my own "nature" experience with one. We were enjoying a mid-morning snack on the steps of another structure. I was feeding the birds, which is bad in itself, when the pizote showed up. Unknown to me there was a bit of a tamale in the side pocket of my backpack but he knew it was there. I was busy photographing him when he rushed me, grabbed my bag with his teeth and tried dragging it away. For a moment, he seemed to contemplate lunging at me but fortunately he didn't.

We spent two days at Tikal and in spite of the women tottering around the Grand Plaza in high heels and guys drinking beer in the shade of Temple of the Grand Jaguar, it was like I hoped, ancient and great, a Mayan metropolis lost and locked away for a thousand years and found in the mist buried beneath by the jungle. It was wonderful. We did our best to get off the beaten track and did. I'll tell you more later but right now, gotta go.

Yaxhá

Isla de Flores, Petén Basin, Guatemala
Today finally we saw monkeys. Monos. Howler and Spider monkeys. Wild. In the trees. Hopping around the forest canopy eating leaves and grooming themselves. And a coatimundi grooming herself on a branch. I did see a monkey in Nicaragua. It was sitting on the frame of a house but I only saw him from the window of a shuttle so M. Lee claims it doesn´t count but I say a monkey is a monkey. It counts. But today we saw lots of monkeys at Yaxhá, a Mayan site in the Petén. A little Yaxhá trivia: this site was the location for a series on the "reality" show Survivor. A group of hot model types spent a couple of months at Yaxhá battling to survive the cut. Anyway, it´s a huge site, some great pyramids and many many more not excavated. And, because Yaxhá gets far fewer visitor than nearby Tikal, it´s a lot easier to catch glimpses of wildlife including crocodiles as it´s built on a lake. No. We didn´t see any crocodiles but we were warned not to swim. Muy peligroso! Here´s a tip. You can stay at Yaxhá for free in their ecco village. It´s primitive. Hammocks (bring your own) under a thatch roof with mosquito netting but then you´d have a real chance of even seeing jaguars in the evening. Tomorrow Tikal will be crawling with humans so I doubt we´ll see much wildlife there but I am hoping for a few wild parrots because this is all the jungle time we get this trip. One can hope.

Bus to Tikal

Antigua, Guatemala
This evening we leave for Tikal which is north along the Beliz border in the Petén Basin. The bus leaves from Guatemala City at 10 pm. It's an 8 hour trip to the Island of Flores, jumping off place for the area. Can't say I'm looking forward to that but that is less than half the time it took going one way to Nicaragua so no problema. I could do it standing on my head. And this time I bought Dramamine. We're traveling on Auto Bus de Norte. It's considered a "luxury line", this in comparison to travel by chicken bus. I don't expect it to be luxurious, any more than the King Quality bus from hell, but "luxury" buses are safer in general and that is an issue.

When we hiked Cerro Negro in Nicaragua our guide, an American kid from LA, told us that the previous week he'd said good-bye to a friend of his, a young Dutch fellow and fellow volunteer at Quetzal Trekkers, who left for Guatemala on a chicken bus. Unfortunately for everyone involved, a gang of drug dealers hijacked the bus when it got to Guatemala, killed all 21 people on board, including his friend, beheaded one of the victims, drove the bus in a rival gang's territory and torched it. Chalk up another tragedy to the bullshit US "War on Drugs". Prohibition does not work. We should have learned that in the 20's during the alcohol prohibition. It's not a moral issue. It's the goddamn Bottom Line. Astronomical profit. How else are these gang members going to make millions? Not selling jewelery to the tourists. All drug prohibition does is feed the mafia and leave heartbreaking wreckage in its wake. Ok.

Enjoy your day. Hasta luego.

Saturday notes on the fly

Antigua, Guatemala
I hope you had a happy thanksgiving. We didn't do anything special here. It's no big deal in this part of the world, a fact I find very refreshing. We did, however, have treats. My pick... cheesecake but it turned out to be cloyingly sweet. So far the pastry in Centroamerica has been way too sweet for my taste. Babyland.

Our time is winding down here. We return to the states in about two weeks. Yikes! I'm not quite ready to go back into the box but, on the other hand, I look forward to seeing family over the holidays. There are a couple of things we still want to do before we go, visit Tikal and volcan Pacaya. We're planning to leave for Tikal at the beginning of the week. All in all, that trip will take about four days. And, before we return home, we want to climb Pacaya, a volcano just outside of Antigua. It's a short hike. M. Lee did it once already a couple of months ago but I was in school that day. Gotta see it. Lava pours right out of the earth and you can get as close as you want. If you´re a fire walker this is the place to be, or if you´ve ever wanted to roast a marshmallow over a volcano. Me? I just like lava and in Guatemala you can walk right up to it. This is a world that lawyers have not managed to strangle the life out of yet.

We did climb volcan Cerro Negro while were were in Nicaragua but I haven't gotten around to writing about that yet and so many other things. However, I did post some photos from Cerro Negro on Flickr if you're interested. There are more to come but now my camera isn't showing up on any computer. So it goes. I'll have to do a retrospective after I get home.

Other than that, last night some of my dreams were in Spanish. Oh, and I finally understand the answer to the age old question... Why did the chicken cross the road? Yes.

There and back again or so it seems

Antigua, Guatemala

After a 17 hour bus trip, during which I had an 11 hour bout of motion sickness because the first leg of the winding road was in a lumbering, smelly, double decker bus driven by a lead-footed pinhead who obviously thought it was a taxi in rush hour, we're back in Antigua under the same gray skies we left a month ago, our time in hot hot Nicaragua a phantasmagoria of images, smells, tastes, sounds, textures, and memories of several delightful friendships made along the way, including Paloma the dog. I´m still having trouble accessing my photos. I now have about 3000 on the 8 gig card in my camera so the cafe computers get hung trying to access them. I swear, we both swear, this is the_last_time we travel without laptops. But, in case we do, I did finally get a pro flicker account and from now on will (once I upload these) upload photos regularly instead of waiting until there are so many they would choke a elephant. Bad metaphor. Sorry elephants.

Anyway... about Nicaragua...
From Chinandega we did make it to the beach. Jiquilillo (He-key-leo). We didn't stay at Rancho Esperanza but that's the place I´d recommend. Nate, the owner/manager is a great guy and from there you'll get the purest experience of the place. On his recommendation we hired a local guy, Eddy, to guide us on a boat trip through the Padre Ramos Estuary, an irreplaceable, endangered wetlands reserve in Jiquilillo. Eddy is another great guy (28) who, since SELVA pulled out because of Nicaragua´s political instability, is waging what is basically a single-handed battle to save the estuary that is, among other things, the traditional nesting ground for endangered sea turtles.

Before leaving Nicaragua, we saw ongoing demonstrations in both León and Managua, the capital city. They were a drag. Sunday afternoon, M. Lee walked to the bus terminal to get our tickets for the next day and on the way back to the hostel found himself in the midst of a mob of masked protesters firing morter guns and being generally shitheads in any way they could. The blasts went on for hours. Seems they need to intimidate the losing side which is protesting the fact that the elections were not monitored or transparent.


Ironically, the next evening just after dark as the bus wound its way north through the mountains, I glimpsed two huge white Brahmas bedded down peacefully under the trees by the foot path through a small yard leading to an open air thatched roof hut. The family was gathered around the cook fire on the porch as the cows chewed their cuds in the yard. It was one of the most tranquil scenes I´ve ever witnessed.

Tonight, after the usual round of explosives, the bells of La Merced are engaged in a sad duet. I am awash with fragmented impressions, and detached memories. Anything is possible. At the moment, I´m not even sure which world I live in.

Sunday aftermath

León, Nicaragua.
Today we are hanging out online. Suits me. There is a big FLSN parade streaming by the door as I write this and small bombs going off to whistles, shouts and the barking of dogs. The riot police are out enforce. Seeing them is small comfort. The elections did not go well last week so there is a lot of unrest throughout Nicaragua. Shit. One of our friends at La Tortuga is a Chilean fellow. He grew up with this crap and is very nervous today. It doesn't settle too well with me either. Things are raw here. Centroamerica is not a tidy place. Things are exaggerated, over blown, past ripe. Life is in the streets. Its wild beauty and grace have a corresponding shadow of chaos and despair.

Otherwise, I am melted to a sticky pile of sweat. Showers don´t help. A second later, I am again a sticky, sweaty blob. And I have become addicted to ice cream. So it goes now that the rainy season has finally ended. What was I thinking? Well, gotta go. Keep the home fires burning.