We have made our way through Guatemala to a less tourist town called Quetzaltenango. Turns out, it is Kate and my favorite Guatemala spot thus far. This morning we started Spanish classes at some school I can not remember the name of. It is going to be a blast. I sat through my 5 hour lesson without much complaint (first time I have sat for 5 hour without complaint). Don’t be fooled by the photo, it is not from Quetzaltenango, but from Antigua. Anyway so Quetzaltenango is great. We have had superb affordable food, slept on a good bed, and enjoyed the smaller tourist population immensely. Yesterday we went to a LDS church that is about 5 minutes walk from our hotel and enjoyed the service and meeting all the members. Afterward we needed money to pay for the hotel and all the ATMs in walking distance were ether locked up or broken so we had to take a little taxi-van to a giant shopping mall about 6km from where we are staying. It was a strange experience; a mix of American shopping mall and Guatemalan market. Noisy, fast-foody, and clean. Oh there was a Nuskin shop in the mall, crazy. We made it home with loads of cash, paid our hotel, and then went to a dinner at Blue Angle’s Cinema Restaurant, or something like that, and watched 7 Years in Tibet while eating a spinach salad and smoothie. It was a nice day. Quetzaltenango is a fun little town. We are going to be here for a week and will keep you up to date on all its happenings.
Adios
If you ever want to pay $45 to sleep on a concrete slab simulation of a bed in a discoteca… head to Antigua, Guatemala!!!
Somehow, even though Neil and I have relatively extensive travel experience between the two of us, we managed to make every travel mistake in the book thus far. With perhaps the exception of getting robbed blind (knock on our wooden mattress). We came to Antigua with the promise of a house of a friend to stay in. Upon arrival, of course, the house was 30 min away from the actual town, and impossible to get to.
We made the mistake of following the travelers we were with to “a nice hotel for 20 bucks a night.” By the time we figured out it was $50 a night we already felt so flustered and agreed, hoping for a good night´s sleep at the least. When we came back to our room after walking around the town it was as if there were a discoteca in the adjoining room. We figured out after a few min that it was a Guatemalan Aerobics studio from the loud routines being shouted out. When we came back to bed down for the night we discovered that our bed was made of plywood, or so it seemed from how hard it was.
This morning we woke up at the rise of the sun due to the large skylight directly above our bed. Sun´s up, time to get out of bed. That wasn´t too disappointing since we were both black and blue and sleepless from the titanium sleeping surface we had (I won´t give it the dignity of being called a bed). The PUMPING disco versions of Selena favorites started blasting again before 8am. At that point we both got up with bloodshot eyes and decided to take the first bus out of Antigua. It may be a nice colonial town but, at this rate we may as well be camping… at least it will be free!
Kate and I arrived in Antigua yesterday and have been working through all the hitches associated with first time travelers and backpackers…except we’re really experienced at it…strange, I know. So far we have made every mistake in the book except for counting our money in public (don’t think I didn’t have to tell Kate to put her money away once or twice). You can read more about it on Kate’s article . That’s fine and all. We are a little rusty; it’s been a few months. What I really wanted to talk about is how creepy Guatemalan baby adopters are. It must be because Guatemala City is dump, or there’s something in the water, but it seems Antigua attracts white baby adopters by the truck load. Kate and I sat in the park last night watching, not joke, a hundred couples walking around with baby backpack after baby backpack filled with Guatemalan babies. Watching creepy looking white people tote around these little children I was reminded of another international human attraction I would see in Thailand…prostitution. For some reason I just got the hebby-jebbies (if anyone has a spelling for that please let me know) seeing all these white people with foreign babies. It felt the same as seeing those fat ugly white men in Thailand escorting their tiny Thai escort to their hotel room.
I have no proof, except what my friend Tristan told me he found during his research here, that foreign adoption in Guatemala is human trafficking. Women are coursed into giving up their children for adoption, and then the adoption agencies cheat adopters out of money by telling them there is X, Y, and Z fees or bribes needed to get the baby our of the country. Good meaning Americans think they are rescuing a baby from poverty and what not, but really the baby was only born or put up for adoption to make a lot of money. It is a sad situation and what I have seen in Antigua does nothing but support what Tristan has told me.
Please, please be more careful about adopting little babies from Guatemala, they might have been farmed just for that purpose and you might be doing more harm than good.
After a few weather related delays we have made it into Guatemala City.
We arrived about an hour late and made it to the hostle without an problems. So now it is the morning we had a nice breakfast of cracker hard toast and “orange juice” that barely passed as bad tang but it was good anyway. So we are getting ready to shuttle up to Antigua except…of course…there is a teacher strike and they are blocking all the roads. So we might have to stay another night in Guat City. Anyway all is well, we are happy to be here and excited for the future.
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We are heading out! Off into the wild blue yonder that is Central America. We are flying into Guatemala City, and then to Antigua the next day. Neil is going to learn Spanish in a one-week language course & we should be set.
Then we’ll border hop & make a beeline for San Cristobal, Chiapas (Mexico).
Adelante y arriba!
This afternoon Kate and I went to see An Unreasonable Man, a documentary about the rise, and rise, and fall and rise of Nader. Even though it was a little long and boring, the documentary was great. It did a wonderful portrayal of Nader’s history, advocacy, and the controversies surrounding his presidential runs in 2000 & 2004. leaving the theater I was once again convinced Nader is the answer to America’s political problems. He is honest, unsympathetic to corruption, care little of his personal situation or legacy, and want more than anything to fix the injustices in the US and the world. Some of you might not know, but I campaigned for him with some close friends for the 2004 elections. He was the right person to vote for because, like they mention in the film, wasn’t in the pocket of the mega corporations. He turned down millions of bribe dollars and threats to no run, because he knew our two parties are corrupt and heavily manipulated by large corporations, and he wanted to fight it. Even though he did not get elected, he made a strong stand against government corruption, two party politics, and the failure of the democrats to address social issues because they too have sold out to the corporate world and to conservative rhetoric. Next elections unless the democrats start being more liberal they are going to end up disenchanting their voter base that will, if we are lucky, vote Nader or someone like him into office.
Nader you have my support, even though you come off crazy.
The 20th of April is Earth Day! Hurray. To celebrate I have decided to make to make a list of earth friendly goals as my way of celebrating. I will follow my do & don’t list for an entire 24 hours starting at 12:01 AM on the 22nd.
- I will not burn fossil fuels in a vehicle (i.e. I will ride my bike everywhere I go)
- I will not eat any packaged foods; only breads, grains, legumes, fruits and vegetables I can carry home without packaging (of course I will refrain from meat as well).
- When I leave my home and office I will turn off/unplug all standby electronics.
- I will use as much ambient natural light as I can.
- I will take a 1+ hour nature hike up Rock Canyon, and will collect and haul out as much garbage as I can.
I hope everyone will find a way to celebrate our beautiful earth this Earth Day in a productive and eco-friendly way. Let me know what you decided to do.
Do you ever wounder what effects fast food leftovers have on bugs and small mammals? It probable has been proven, enough McDonald’s, Twinkie, or Cheeto’s will kill a man, so what happens to the little guys who are eating our fast food nation crumbs? Recently there has been buzz (no pun intended) about the missing honey bee. Even though bees don’t eat junk food, maybe there is a correlation. Most likely larger meaner bugs are eating the junk food and are abnormally developing to gargantuan sizes with ravenous A.D.D. behavior and are killing bees as sport. Ether way I think we should keep junk food out of our bodies and off the ground.
So here is my question. Why is the Penguin global warming’s logo? Aren’t there thousand other animals affected by global warming? Isn’t the Walrus as at risk as the Polar Bear, the Blue Whale, or the Penguin? In fact as far as evolutionary adaptations, Penguins are doing rather well. There are penguins in the Galapagos, aren’t there? Maybe it’s because Penguins are so cute or look as though they are in their formals. Actually the one thing they have going for them is their communal adaptations to deal with the cold. At least among the Imperial Penguins they must work together as a group to keep warm enough to survive the bitter arctic winters, just like humans must work together to save the earth from further warming and environmental degradation. Yet the Blue Whale, the Walrus, and the Polar Bear are much more interesting, at least I think so.
We should replace the Penguin with the Walrus because they are ugly and vulnerable, just as global warming is ugly and ecology vulnerable.
