Xela to Nicaragua

Xela was a great break from constant movement, and it's tough not to learn Spanish when you take 5 hours of 1 on 1 classes a day, but I "unintentionally" put up a good fight. Although I was slowly improving, I still found myself making mistakes and oblivious to the nuances of the language to the amusement of my teacher Ana. Here is one such conversation that seemed normal to me. It started when we got on the subject of food and cooking.

Me (in my poor Spanish)- "I like my chili. It's really the only thing that I'm proud of. What? It's actually really good. Why are you laughing? It's the best thing that I can make."

At this point Ana was on the verge of tears and told me that chile (pronounced "chili") is slang for Penis. She also found my explanation of chili competitions in Canada and the States to be absolutely hilarious. "People come from all over the continent to compare their chili's. There's even different groupings for spicy and non-spicy chilies."

After our two weeks in Xela were up, we drove down to the border and crossed over into Al Salvador. I don't know what I was expecting, but a calm decended upon me as we drove into the new country. Maybe it was the well maintained and pot hole free roads, the fact that there were road signs in the towns and on the highways or that the women seemed to be more beautiful, but I felt safe in Al Salvador.

We drove for awhile in the dark (about 1/3 of the country) and eventually found a sign that said hostel -->. It was poorly placed, but within seconds of stopping we had 2 people helping us out and directing us to the hostel which only cost $6/night. 3 delicious pupusas were only $1 and the national beer "Pilsner" was cheap and much better than Gallo -- sorry Guatemala.

We decided to stay one more day and learn how to surf. I was actually able to get up quite a few times on the surf board, but only with the help of the instructor. Unfortunately the only shirt they had turned into a belly shirt on me, leaving a well defined sunburn belt that I'm still nursing.

Honduras wasn't quite as nice... More than four hours to get across the border into it. Getting ripped off by the guys who pestered us until we agreed to their help. Most expensive vehicle insurance. And we got shaken down by the cops. Apparently you need to have a traffic cone in the vehicle at all times. We played dumb for awhile, pretending not to know really know Spanish (it was sad how easy it was for me). It seemed like the younger cop was learning the ropes from the wiley veteran. However, unlike most detective movies it wasn't how to read a suspect or interpret a crime scene, but how to leverage your authority to get money from gringos. Eventually the older cop went back to directing traffic, leaving the younger more nervous cop on his first shakedown -- part of a right of passage. We ended up paying $26 american to the cop before he gave us a nervous shaky hand-shake and gave me back my license.

From that point we were just searching for the first cheap hotel we could find. More difficult than it sounds in Honduras. Two were too pricey, and it seemed like something terrible happened at the third hotel we stopped at in a small town just before the border.

The outer entrance of the third hotel was only partially lit, and as we walked through it into the main courtyard we could hear a large dog barking -- trapped in one of the small rooms of the entrance. The main courtyard was a fully lit restaurant/bar with hammocks strung up on the outskirts and a myriad of white plastic tables and chairs evenly spread out in the center. Some of the chairs had been knocked over and were laying on their sides besides the tables. At the far end there was a bar set up with huge speakers beside it. Past this we could see an apartment like building with light sneaking out of its windows. Only one of the windows had the blinds puled back, and we could see a living room with a old flower pattern couch, old lamps with tassels, 70s faux wood paneling and several paintings of the Virgin Mary. We knocked on the door and waited. At one point we thought we heard talking, but nobody answered the door. We looked across the courtyard to were the rooms were and saw light sliding under the door of the room closest to the entrance. We walked across and knocked on the door, but as we did we realized there was a padlock on the outside locking anyone, if there was someone, inside. We looked down the row of rooms and notice that the light was on in the farthest room and for some reason the door was also wide open -- oddly enough we did not notice this before when we were looking across the courtyard. We walked over to the room and looked inside. There were 3 beds perfectly made up and the bathroom looked as though it had just been cleaned. It was a nice room, however, we still decided to look for another place to stay.

We eventually made it to Granada, and now I am reunited with my little sister. We live in a house that used to be the Voodoo Bar. Today we are going to Managua to pick up my parents. Times are good, except for the shake downs from the cops. My new strategy (inspired by David Stewie) is to only speak French until they get so frustrated that they will take a smaller bribe -- my last one was only $4.

Into Guatemala

I guess last time I left off as we got into Belize.

As we neared the Guat border we randomly pulled off the highway and booked a room in a nice hotel. It was the first room that had that proper hotel room smell of just-been-cleaned. It also had cable, so we made the most of it by watching He-Man in Spanish.

We seemed to be pretty much the only guests at the hotel, but as we were eating supper in the restaurant/bar a tour group walked in to the hotel, and by chance we had met one of the girls in San Cristobal a couple days earlier. Their guide was nice and not only invited us to go out drinking with the group, but wrangle us a couple free drink coupons for the bar. After the bar we offered everyone rum partially out of kindness and partially because it was Campari (Belizean rum) and we wanted to get rid of it. Campari is one of the few drinks that tastes worse going in than it does coming out, and coke is powerless to cover up its flavour. At the same time I just couldn't bring myself to waste it.

The next morning we drove into Guatemala, having a bit of trouble at the border because we didn't have enough currency on us. Luckily it was Guatemala, so a cab driver drove me across the border to an atm and then back to Belize.

After the border we drove straight to Tikal and set up camp. The first night it poured and we ended up wandering in the rain at night looking for some place to eat. Luckily the closest restaurant was nice enough to open up for us. The next day we lounged around, saw the ruins, a crocodile, and I wandered off on what I thought was a short hike. I must have gotten off the short loop at some point and ended up wandering the jungle by myself convinced that a Jaguar was stalking me.

Flores was nice and we ended up staying at a great hostel called "Los Amigos". Amazing vegetarian cuisine. Some of the best sandwiches I have ever eaten, and they didn't even have meat in them. We stayed a couple of days in the hostel and were able to get our first passenger. We originally planed to drive down to Rio Dulce, but the when we tried to leave in the morning the sliding door would not close (different problem than before) and we needed to drive into town to find a mechanic.

I stopped at the first place I saw, and was waiting in line when one of the other customers started talking to me. It turns out that he was from Las Vegas and back in Guatemala opening up a new business. He found us a good mechanic, translated for us and let us hang out at his new business which consists of a soccer field, a children's play area complete with trampolines, a restaurant/discotheque and the only limo in Peten. He also gave us advice about Guatemala. Here is an exact quote from him when I went with him to pick up his truck we were driving back, "If you ever kill someone in Guatemala just drive because the police will send you to church for life." You can imagine that I looked a little confused half thinking to myself (That's what happens?) before he corrected himself, "I mean jail." It was a curious mental association. He then told me how he one a drag race a week ago with this truck and proceeded to burn out and fish tail down the street laughing that the other drivers were scared of his wildly fishtailing driving. At that point I wanted to buckle up, but didn't want to offend him since he had been so helpful, so I just prayed that we wouldn't hit someone and be sent to church for life. I know I'm making him sound unstable, but he really was a nice guy.

All the help that I have been getting on this trip has set me way back on the Karma meter. I might need to nurse a leper back to health after this trip just to get back to normal.

Anyways the van was fixed (welding involved)for less than $50 Canadian, but it was too late to leave that day and we had decided to go to Coban, so we wouldn't have to drive through Guatemala City. We wandered back to the hostel to stay another night. The next day we left for Coban and Ofri still decided to come with us even if we weren't quite as reliable as a bus, considering the date of departure and destination changed.

We spent a day in Coban I saw some orchids, and we left in the morning for Xela. Unfortunately we heard reports that part of the highway to Xela had been destroyed by rock slides. Some said it was impassable while others thought we could make it. And whenever they asked why we didn't take the other highway, all we would have to say is that we did not want to go through Guatemala city and they would understand. It was normal to choose rock slides over the capital.

The road was a little rough to say the least, but we made it to Xela alive.