travel

i arrived on the scuba-diving pirate island of utila, honduras, on a friday night with a taller-than-me, drum-playing, dreaded and tattoed swede, after an hour and a half nearly-capsizing-the-whole-time boat ride through 15 foot seas, to discover motorcycles, four-wheelers, bicycles and golf carts speeding back and forth along the one pedestrian street, weaving their way between tourists and pirate-speaking locals who wandered to and fro below the sounds of reggae blasted from homemade balcony speakers. then i spent two days patrolling the streets in a haze of indecisive stress, trying to decide between twelve seemingly equal yet highly competitive dive shops, only to choose one which a day later i deemed too much of a coolness-oriented twenty year old hangout and switched to another one to take my diving course. now i am instructed, one on one, by a chain-smoking, speedo-clad german named ralf, who is quite nice and a great teacher. we have gone diving twice, and i have somehow survived with fifty feet of water over my head for halves of hours, drifting along the sides of coral walls with my ears gradually approaching one another due to pressure, without succumbing to the suicidal urge to laugh at the incredibleness and ridiculousness of being that far underwater, thereby dislodging my breathing apparatus from my mouth. i have yet to gain an exemplary degree of "control" or "comfort" with this bizarre sport, but i do have two more days and four more journeys beneath the sea in which to figure the shit out.*

*(two days later) i figured it out.

i think i´m felling in love with xela (it happened last week).
after just one day i was all into this fine guatemalan city...it´s native and mountainous around the edges, plain central american chaos throughout the thick outer core, with a creamy european filling in the center. everywhere you look there´s something beautiful or interesting...and not so touristy either. the lighting in this city looks like it was laid out by a hollywood lighting designer. women roam the streets in beautiful skirts and colorful clothes, looking more beautiful than ...
there are alot of foreigners here, but they´re all studying spanish, so the locals know they ain´t looking to spend a ton of money. it´s real, if not slightly upscale, guatemala.

um, chiapas.
san cristobal is quaint by all accounts, including mine...

Authentic Sombrero Sahuayo
why do you torture me so?
you are so wonderful for blocking the suns rays
couldn´t you just leave it at that?

must you carry in your tightly sewn straw weave
a thousand and one possibilities for me to be judged?

this is the town where they grow your coffee. it´s called san cayetano.

this is the roof of the house where they dry your coffee.

these are the coffee grower´s dogs running accross your coffee.

leaving for guatemala, i had many ideas about what i was going to get myself into down here. one of them was that i had no idea - that i´d be discovering the plan along the way...going with the flow as they say.

i am, in palenque. mexico that is. maybe you´ve been here. it´s a destination.

i´ve been here for 3 weeks. wow. never would have thought i´d say that. so the moving from place to place journey took a hiatus and palenque has been more of an inner journey. one thing and then the other kept me here over the last 3 weeks. and it looks like it will be at least 4 or 5 more days. it´s crazy... i have all these things i wanted to do and how to get them all done in the month and half i have left and who knows if or how they all will happen, but i´m kinda glad about that. a rare opportunity to let the plans go and trust that it will all work out.

watch out for "la chica fresita" - she´s busting out of her package!

merry christmas. what went on back there?
i was out in el remate, on the shore of lago petén itza. it´s a huge lake, and some of the towns near it are polluting it enough that you wouldn´t want to swim there...but here in el remate it´s plenty clean and a gorgeous temperature and highly swimmable. the hotel i stayed at had a windsurfboard (minus the sail) which i could borrow to go paddle out away from the shore a bit to get some perspective on the town, and to enjoy some quiet and a rare moment of being totally alone. i didn´t expect to do alot of "chilling at the beach" on this trip, i´m not seeking out the relaxing places...i feel like more than that i want to look for interesting cultural situations - but there are so many gorgeous places, and the people there are really nice, and it just seems to happen that once again i´m in a beautiful place and it´s pretty relaxing in spite of myself.
it might have something to do with hooking up with other people for travelling. most of them appear to be a bit more into chilling than me. i am ready to meet someone who´s doing something really adventurous and inspiring and going beyond the comfortable confines of our trusted lonely planet guidebook that binds us all together.

welcome to el petén,
where the busses are smaller,
the jungle thicker,
and the mosquitos, thankfully, seem to be on vacation.