Bueno, aquí estoy en the city of angels. But let me backtrack. .
December 6th, we got up early and headed out to the docks in B City where we grabbed a water taxi that took us about 45 minutes north to an island/cay called Caye Caulker. It's hardly 2 miles long and half a mile across, but it was so relaxing, and peaceful. This was the vacation part. By this time, we were joined by honeymooners, true vacationists, as well as a few backpackers. We stayed in the beach side hotel for 10$ each and spend the days reading, swimming, laying on the beach, and I found this yoga class that did yoga every night at sunset on top of one of the hotels. That was incredible. After a few days, Saria, the Canadian, decided she wanted to head home, so we said goodbye and I stayed on the island by myself.
I moved to a little hostel called Bellas and met a bunch of other backpackers. It was nice to be able to hang out with people closer to my age. There was a kitchen there, as well as free canoes, that we all made use of. I met these volunteers from Oregon and a Guatemalan and we canoed out and fed these giant fish. Later, we got a free ride out to the coral reef from the owner of the hostel who was going spearfishing, we rented snorkels for cheap and spent the day on the reef. Very awesome.
When finally a week had passed, I figured I should make my way back home, so I took off, and bussed back to Flores, Guatemala and stayed the night. The next morning I met these guys who were going to Lanquín, which sounded cool, so I decided to tag along. We got there in the afternoon and I was glad I joined them. Lanquín is situated in the mountains of central Guate, in a valley where the Lenca river flows through.
The next day I signed up for a cave exploration tour...We took a 45 minute bus ride with me, this Frenchie, a guy from Israel, couple Canadians, two Australians, and another United Statesian. We went to this cave, where the underground river comes out. We got down to swim suits and grabbed nothing more than a candle and entered the cave. The water was maybe up to my ankles, and the further we walked, the higher it rose. When it reached our necks, we took a turn and ended up swimming, and in many places I couldn't touch the bottom, even after intentionally trying. We would swim and climb up, and walk up waterfalls, and slide through crevices for 45 minutes, following our crazy guide. The water was freezing! When finally we reached a stopping point we turned around and came back out. This was one of the coolest things I've ever done.
When we came back out, we hiked up the side of the cliff where the river is, and ate lunch at a lookout point. The Lenca river below is beautiful. It waves out into 6 or 7 crystal clear pools that are separated by little waterfalls. We climbed down after eating and spent the hour swimming from pool to pool. Finally we returned to the hostel, roasted marshmallows over the fire and enjoyed the night.
The next day, I took a shuttle to Antigua, with the Frenchie, Julien, and the two Israelis, Maor and Raz. We arrived and stayed at the Yellow House, and enjoyed feasts of spaghetti almost every night that we made in the kitchen. The noodles were like 20 cents at the grocery store so we all pitched in and ate cheaply.
A few days before I had to be back to San Salvador, we hiked one of the active volcanoes in the region, Volcán Pacaya. It was really great, and we went around dusk to see the sunset. We were above the clouds on the top, and you could see for miles and miles. We hiked into the crater and the smell of sulfur as well as the heat from the ground began to take over. Our guide showed us a tiny hole in the rocks where he put a stick into, which immediately caught fire. We hiked a ways more and found a big crack in the ground the size of dresser, and we roasted the hot dogs that we had brought. They were delicious.
Finally, the day came to head home, and me and Julien headed on the bus to San Salvador, as he was headed that way too. We got in by dusk and made our way to my neighborhood. It was weird how much it felt like I was home when we arrived. Afterwards we went out for pupusas and I helped Julien find the place where he was staying.
The next day I spent with my family, hanging out and doing some Christmas shopping for my actual family. Yesterday I did the same before going to the airport around 4:30 and waiting my 7 o clock flight. I arrived in LA around 11 LA time, (1 am Salvador) and didn't get out of customs until 12, where I found Chelsea and together we headed home to her apartment, an hour away.
Today, I am relaxing while she is at work, and tomorrow or Thursday we make the drive home.
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
Monday, December 20, 2010
Christmas! (Part one)
*DISCLAIMER* My English spelling is suffering, I blame the Español....
I´m sitting here in a Ciber Café as I wait for 4 o clock to come, at which point I´ll make my way to the airport, 45 minutes away, where I will hop on a five hour plane ride to Los Angeles where I will stay with my good friend, Chelsea. Then we will make the 8 hour drive together to Flagstaff for the holidays.
Where has the time gone? I apologize for failing at this whole blogging thing. Maybe I will make up for it now...
October (last post..) through end of November:
Things continued through the months of October and November, and I settled into the routine and lifestyle of San Salvador, things became familiar and easier. I was able to navigate the city better (or at least the part where I need to navigate...) and with every other, or every couple of weekends, came a trip to a different part of the country. I continued to hanging out with the other volunteer English teachers, but also made some friends at the Universidad de El Salvador.
My English class was my favorite part of the day, and although I still don´t think I´m a professional teacher by any means, I feel like they learned quite a bit and had fun along the way. My Spanish classes became very exhausting, day after day, four hours, but I had the best teacher who taught me a lot more than just Spanish. We would discuss politics, and religion, and different global issues and ideas.
As November drew to a close, so did my Spanish and English classes. On the 22nd, we had graduation. All the students came, we shared a potluck, performed skits, and made speeches. After the celebration, we put on Salsa music and danced until just the teachers remained.
We all celebrated with a few beers and made our goodbyes. It was all very sad, I´ve really enjoyed these past months, hanging out and teaching with these guys. I have learned so much, and that statement is vauge, I know, but I couldn´t specify if I tried.
...but time stops for nothing, and the second part of my trip began on the 26th of November.
Life out of backpack.
I packed up 3 shirts, jeans, shorts, and some chonies, grabbed my sweatshirt, and a few vital toiletries and left San Salvador for the east country. I started off with one of the other volunteers, Saria, the canadian lady, as well as a girl from Washington, who was on her way to Nicaragua. We went to the annual carnival in San Miguel. It´s a huge month celebration that ends on a Saturday (the night we were there), there were over one million people crammed into the downtown with different live bands on every street corner, un montón de policía, as well as all the pilsner anybody could ask for. The night was very fun, ending around 2 in the morning for Washington and me, but in all the excitement and huge crowds, my camera was "lost", it either fell out of my pocket or was stolen, both are actually quite likely. Kind of a bad beginning but at the same time, from then on I felt completely free, not carrying anything of value (minus the passport) and therefore not worrying constantly.
After San Miguel, we headed up to Perquín, a very small town in the north, in the mountainous border of El Salvador and Honduras, that was affected greatly by the civil war of the 1980s. There was a great museum there that was based in an actual Guerilla camp, it was really awe-some (not awesome..) to see the reality of the war here in El Salvador. The following morning, we hiked up to one of the hills to see the sunrise, and it was one of the best views I´ve ever seen. The whole valley lay below us, with Honduras to our north. Perquín reminded me a bit of Flagstaff with the whole Pine forest/mountain thing going on.
The following day, we had planned to cross the northern border and make our way to Gracias, Honduras, but we had a bit of a complication when the bus broke down just after the border, and we had to hitchhike through Honduras in the dead of night, but that was probably the most excitement I had my entire trip :) (also another story unto itself..) We arrived a few hours (or maybe a lot of hours..) later in Marcala, a town that is actually only 32 miles away from Perquín. But the only road there is a dirt road through the craziest mountains I´ve ever seen.
The next day, we continued the pattern of long trips through another mountain pass that led us to Esperanza, Honduras and then finally to Gracias. Gracias, a small colonial town in a valley in the most mountainous part of Honduras, was once the Spanish capital in the 16th century. Originially "Gracias a Dios que hemos hallado tierra plana" (thank god we found flat land), now it is just called Gracias. I really liked this little town, where there were natural hot springs as well as a very spanish vibe without the tourists.
The next day, we took a trip north and west to near the border of Honduras and Guatemala to Copán Ruínas. Another valley that was once home to the Mayan civilization in the 300BC - 900 AD era. We toured Copán (the ruins...which is only slightly confusing...the town is Copán Ruínas and the ruins simply Copán) and it was one of the coolest things I´d ever seen. Like the Grand Canyon, you can´t capture this kind of beauty or place on film (not that I had any) but it was amazing to see in person.
Early December by now...
We left Copán Ruínas for the Guate border 13 kilometres away. There we took a hour bus to Chiquimula, a largish city in eastern Guatemala, and after that a 12 hour bus up to the very northern part of Guatemala, Petén. We stayed on an island called Flores that is situated in the middle of the lake Petén up north. The whole area is part of the Mayan Biosphere, a huge reserve with the most dense population of Jaguars in the world!
We got up at 4 in the morning, and took a shuttle from Flores to Tikal, an hour and a half away. Here we spent the entire morning hiking some of the highest, best restored Mayan temples in the world. It´s also the largest site known. This was even better than Copán...not to mention I saw parrots, tucans, a howler monkey AND a spider monkey. By this point we had moved away from the trails to the tourist path. But I didn´t mind. I met a bunch of people from Austrailia and a few more Canadians.
We stayed in Flores one more day before taking a van to the border of Belize and hitchhiking to the capital. From the capital we paid 3 US dollars for a bus to Belize City. We got to Belize City by December 5th, and made plans to head to Caye Caulker, one of the Cays (islands) that aligns the coast of Belize and the second largest barrier reef in the world.
Here I will leave you with the intent to finish my adventure later on tonight, from LA.
I´m sitting here in a Ciber Café as I wait for 4 o clock to come, at which point I´ll make my way to the airport, 45 minutes away, where I will hop on a five hour plane ride to Los Angeles where I will stay with my good friend, Chelsea. Then we will make the 8 hour drive together to Flagstaff for the holidays.
Where has the time gone? I apologize for failing at this whole blogging thing. Maybe I will make up for it now...
October (last post..) through end of November:
Things continued through the months of October and November, and I settled into the routine and lifestyle of San Salvador, things became familiar and easier. I was able to navigate the city better (or at least the part where I need to navigate...) and with every other, or every couple of weekends, came a trip to a different part of the country. I continued to hanging out with the other volunteer English teachers, but also made some friends at the Universidad de El Salvador.
My English class was my favorite part of the day, and although I still don´t think I´m a professional teacher by any means, I feel like they learned quite a bit and had fun along the way. My Spanish classes became very exhausting, day after day, four hours, but I had the best teacher who taught me a lot more than just Spanish. We would discuss politics, and religion, and different global issues and ideas.
As November drew to a close, so did my Spanish and English classes. On the 22nd, we had graduation. All the students came, we shared a potluck, performed skits, and made speeches. After the celebration, we put on Salsa music and danced until just the teachers remained.
We all celebrated with a few beers and made our goodbyes. It was all very sad, I´ve really enjoyed these past months, hanging out and teaching with these guys. I have learned so much, and that statement is vauge, I know, but I couldn´t specify if I tried.
...but time stops for nothing, and the second part of my trip began on the 26th of November.
Life out of backpack.
I packed up 3 shirts, jeans, shorts, and some chonies, grabbed my sweatshirt, and a few vital toiletries and left San Salvador for the east country. I started off with one of the other volunteers, Saria, the canadian lady, as well as a girl from Washington, who was on her way to Nicaragua. We went to the annual carnival in San Miguel. It´s a huge month celebration that ends on a Saturday (the night we were there), there were over one million people crammed into the downtown with different live bands on every street corner, un montón de policía, as well as all the pilsner anybody could ask for. The night was very fun, ending around 2 in the morning for Washington and me, but in all the excitement and huge crowds, my camera was "lost", it either fell out of my pocket or was stolen, both are actually quite likely. Kind of a bad beginning but at the same time, from then on I felt completely free, not carrying anything of value (minus the passport) and therefore not worrying constantly.
After San Miguel, we headed up to Perquín, a very small town in the north, in the mountainous border of El Salvador and Honduras, that was affected greatly by the civil war of the 1980s. There was a great museum there that was based in an actual Guerilla camp, it was really awe-some (not awesome..) to see the reality of the war here in El Salvador. The following morning, we hiked up to one of the hills to see the sunrise, and it was one of the best views I´ve ever seen. The whole valley lay below us, with Honduras to our north. Perquín reminded me a bit of Flagstaff with the whole Pine forest/mountain thing going on.
The following day, we had planned to cross the northern border and make our way to Gracias, Honduras, but we had a bit of a complication when the bus broke down just after the border, and we had to hitchhike through Honduras in the dead of night, but that was probably the most excitement I had my entire trip :) (also another story unto itself..) We arrived a few hours (or maybe a lot of hours..) later in Marcala, a town that is actually only 32 miles away from Perquín. But the only road there is a dirt road through the craziest mountains I´ve ever seen.
The next day, we continued the pattern of long trips through another mountain pass that led us to Esperanza, Honduras and then finally to Gracias. Gracias, a small colonial town in a valley in the most mountainous part of Honduras, was once the Spanish capital in the 16th century. Originially "Gracias a Dios que hemos hallado tierra plana" (thank god we found flat land), now it is just called Gracias. I really liked this little town, where there were natural hot springs as well as a very spanish vibe without the tourists.
The next day, we took a trip north and west to near the border of Honduras and Guatemala to Copán Ruínas. Another valley that was once home to the Mayan civilization in the 300BC - 900 AD era. We toured Copán (the ruins...which is only slightly confusing...the town is Copán Ruínas and the ruins simply Copán) and it was one of the coolest things I´d ever seen. Like the Grand Canyon, you can´t capture this kind of beauty or place on film (not that I had any) but it was amazing to see in person.
Early December by now...
We left Copán Ruínas for the Guate border 13 kilometres away. There we took a hour bus to Chiquimula, a largish city in eastern Guatemala, and after that a 12 hour bus up to the very northern part of Guatemala, Petén. We stayed on an island called Flores that is situated in the middle of the lake Petén up north. The whole area is part of the Mayan Biosphere, a huge reserve with the most dense population of Jaguars in the world!
We got up at 4 in the morning, and took a shuttle from Flores to Tikal, an hour and a half away. Here we spent the entire morning hiking some of the highest, best restored Mayan temples in the world. It´s also the largest site known. This was even better than Copán...not to mention I saw parrots, tucans, a howler monkey AND a spider monkey. By this point we had moved away from the trails to the tourist path. But I didn´t mind. I met a bunch of people from Austrailia and a few more Canadians.
We stayed in Flores one more day before taking a van to the border of Belize and hitchhiking to the capital. From the capital we paid 3 US dollars for a bus to Belize City. We got to Belize City by December 5th, and made plans to head to Caye Caulker, one of the Cays (islands) that aligns the coast of Belize and the second largest barrier reef in the world.
Here I will leave you with the intent to finish my adventure later on tonight, from LA.
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