The long awaited return of the blog

Hey guys, I’ve finally got round to writing another post for the blog. For those of you who don’t know I went to California for three weeks over Christmas to visit Liz while she was on Christmas holidays. Now I’m in Antigua doing another two weeks of Spanish school before heading back over to Livingston for more volunteer work.

Loads of stuff happened while I was in the US so I’m gonna be selective in what I put down.

Ok I was thinking I would skip through the journey to the states but I must have repressed all those bad memories cos now that I think about it, it was one of the most god awful experiences of my life. Well that may be a bit of an exaggeration but generally you can’t remember the really bad stuff until something reminds you of it. At the moment the only experience comparable was the time I was in a gay club with Simon and Vicky, and they both ended up pulling, so I’m left standing at the bar at my own and out of the corner of my eye I could just see this huge guy staring at me, it was pretty uncomfortable but I suppose I deserved it as I set Simon up with this really camp guy. I’m not gonna mention what happened to Vicky, but I guess all the skydivers know what I’m talking about.

Anyway, the journey to California started on a Wednesday, my flight to LA left at 8:00 or so on the Friday. The first leg was pretty short, I just needed to catch a Lancha to Livingston and take my gear to the hostel, I decided to stay at Casa del la Iguana that night rather than at my usual hotel because I’m mates with the barmen who work there and I guess most of them will have moved on by the time I get back.

So I have the usual problem getting a Lancha, no one seemed to know when one was leaving, this is the reason I added an extra day to the journey, I knew the most difficult bit would be persuading the Lazy ass Lancheros to give me a lift into Livingston.

So, I got up at 7:00am and piled my gear by the door and set up camp in the hammock over the river to wait for the call to Livingston, notice that by now I don’t even bother asking what time one will go because they never know the answer. If they happen to tell me a time, all I can be sure of is that that is not the time that the next lancha will leave, or indeed any lancha that day.

At about 11:30 the call came so I ran out with my gear and loaded it all then staked my claim on a seat, I was surprised because it was one of the cayucos, the cayucos take double the load (officially) of the lanchas at the project, but go at about half or one third the speed. Anyone who didn’t get what I meant with the officially comment go back and read some of the previous posts where I describe the loading habits of the Lancheros. Anyway, this cayuco was pretty reasonable, the seats were filled but there were no extras tagged on board, so we had about 8 people on the boat, but the seating only went about half way up the boat which confused me until I remembered what Wednesday was. Wednesday is the day that they transport all the rubbish accumulated at the project to the dump at Livingston. Unfortunately for me I had taken a seat on the foremost bench and all the rubbish bags were loaded directly behind me, I was facing backward toward the lanchero luckily so I didn’t have the worry of the bags touching me, but still it was unpleasant. As if that wasn’t enough it was the hottest day we had had for like 2 months, and remember we live on the Caribbean coast. So I was sat there downwind of a huge pile of crap which had the read hot sun beating down on it.

The boat started to move and the prow lifted as usual, unfortunately on this occasion that also meant all of that water that somehow gets into every rubbish bag in existence an manages to seep out at the worst moment had all accumulated under the enormous pile of rubbish and now washed down the boat, I had anticipated this so had my feet lifted but all the girls on the boat screamed and began whining, the straps on one of my bags also managed to absorb some of it as it washed past which was unfortunate to say the least.

I’m going to skip the detail on the hour and 20 minute journey that ensued, I’m sure you can picture it, if you cant just go stick your head in the kitchen dustbin for an hour and a half after someone after t hasn’t been emptied for a few days (this does not apply to Matt who I would guess would be sticking his head into a bin which is just filled with the cardboard boxed that microwave meals come in, I mean one that has rotting stuff in there you know). How these bags contained so much rotting vegetable matter I don’t know considering the only thing we eat at the project is beans and tortillas.

Anyway so we arrive at the dump and the boat stops, I didn’t anticipate the return of the crap water which washed nicely over my flip flop clad feet. Yum. They unloaded the bags, and took about ten minutes to getting themselves back on the boat again, if I had been paying attention I would have noticed that If I walked through the dump, on the other side of the road was Casa Iguana and I wouldn’t have to make the fifteen minute trek from the town centre with all my gear, but as you’d expect, I noticed approximately 3 seconds after the boat left the dock, so I had a nice walk ahead of me.

So now I’ll skip to the following morning when I went down to Muelle Municipal to catch the boat to Puerto Barrios where I would get a coach to Guatemala City. I sat on the Lancha ready to go, when the chief of the “police” came and sat next to me, “Hola Inglaterra” he said, I cant remember if I have told you about any of my encounters with the police in Livingston, don’t worry, it was never for criminal reasons, I think if I was a criminal the police would avoid all contact as they would be expected to do some work otherwise. Like I say I can’t remember if I’ve mentioned them before, if I haven’t someone leave a comment if you want to know, but I’m not going to write it all out again if I already did it and I can’t be bothered to read back.

So I had the chief sitting next to me talking to me like we were best mates and in case you hadn’t worked it out, the police aren’t the number one faction to be associated with in Livingston, it’s the equivalent of wearing a Christina Aguilera t-shirt while stood in a mosh pit.

After an uncomfortable ride with all the Garifuna on the back row staring at me like I was some kind of sell out we got to Puerto Barrios and I saw one of the Taxi drivers that I know, I asked him to take me to the Litegua bus station and we set off. It’s only two minutes away by car but it’s unsafe to walk alone with all your stuff in Puerto Barrios, it’s basically just a huge ghetto. On route the taxi driver asked me if I had any English coins, he collects coins and has over 150 countries but not England, this is something he asks me every time I see him, every time I tell him, no I haven’t been back to England yet.

I arranged the bus to Guatemala city, unfortunately the next bus to leave would be a first class one, the first class ones aren’t too much more expensive, only 15Q or so which equates to more or less 2 dollars or £1.20 (assuming the exchange rates is still more or less the same). The problem with the first class buses is that they give you a seat number rather than let you pick it on a first come first serve basis, in other words everyone ends up sitting next to someone, you cant find a seat and discourage other people from sitting next to you by putting your leg up on the other one or anything. Also they are generally a lot more full as Guatemalans don’t seem to have discovered that the economy buses are actually better. The other thing is that they play really bad quality pirate films on the tiny TVs at the front, so you just get a load of irritating noise played at you which is too difficult to listen to pay attention.

Anyway I was stuck on the coach for about 6 hours before it arrived in Guatemala City where I walked to my hotel. I had quite a nice hotel which had a private bathroom with hot running water and a TV which was pretty cool. I decided to catch up on the news but unfortunately that wasn’t really possible as all the international news channels are American owned, therefore all that was on was the Governor Blagovigovogavich scandal in the Illinois which no other country in the world actually cared about. Actually there was also the BBC, but all they seemed to be talking about was the car industry being pretty crappy in the states cos no one is buying American cars. Maybe if the made cars that could turn corners and were small enough to fit on a normal size road without taking out every unfortunate pedestrian on the side, then they wouldn’t be in so much trouble.

So my flight was the next day at 8:00pm, I was really bored all day since check out was at 11:00am so I couldn’t watch too much news, to be honest I was out of the room by 9:00am since my room was right next to the road so I couldn’t have a lye in as Guatemalan motorists honk the horn at absolutely anything, including pedestrians who look like they might try crossing the road, also matters are not helped by the fact that there are no traffic lights in zone 1 of Guatemala city, so people have to push their way through the crossroads at the risk of taking another car side on. On top of the honking vehicles, Blagofragovich still seemed to be the only merit worthy piece of news going on in the world at the time so I left the house to find an internet café to check in for my flight.

I’ll skip to the airport now as nothing particularly stands out about Guatemala City, imagine all the worst parts of London stuck together then add more tramps, that’s what Zone 1 of Guatemala city is.

So I went and checked my bags, I didn’t have enough money to buy any food so I went straight through the lounge, I got to the lounge 2 hours early since there was such a lack of stuff to do and Guatemala airport is so quick, there are no long lines or anything so I had no problem.

Got on the flight fine, but that’s where the new set of problems started, basically I ended up sat behind this little prick of a child who kept smacking it’s head against the head rest like it had serious mental problems, it kept making this sound when it hit it’s head, imagine the most retarded noise you can think of and that’s the noise this kid was making, it was like “duuuuuur, duuuuuuuuur, duuuuuuur”. The parent, who I guess was equally as retarded as they had spawned this little shit and not strangled it after the first year, told the kid to stop, but the kid just said “No papi, es divertido” basically the kid said it was fun. I guess it must have found it fun, that explains where all it’s brain cells went. So eventually the parent swapped places with the child, unfortunately he was one of those arseholes who like to have his seat back all the way, as far as it will go and wont move it the whole flight, even when the meals come around. Basically I spent the rest of the flight with this other guy’s headrest about an inch from my face. At least I wasn’t in the place of the woman sitting next to me, who had the kid’s headrest an inch from her face since the parent had left it that way, and had it bouncing up and down as the stupid little bastard smacked it’s head against it for the whole flight.

Anyway I finally got off the plane and had no problems from then on, straight through immigrations within about five minutes as I ran in front of everyone else, my luggage was first out on the conveyor and I got through customs in no time at all.

For those of you (Skydivers) who only check this blog to read about crappy stuff that happens to me, you might want to skip ahead as I was with Liz for the next 3 weeks so I won’t be doing any complaining, Liz would kill me if I did (only joking, there was nothing to complain about ;) ).

Christmas was cool, they eat different food there on Christmas, it wasn’t a roast like we have, it was a load of different things like potatoes etc. They also had this green jelly/marshmallow stuff which they all seemed to like, I’m vegetarian so I didn’t eat it, it looked interesting though, I don’t know if it would go down well in England, gravy doesn’t really go with marshmallow, or I’d guess not anyway.

We went up to the cabin in the mountains again too which was cool, there isn’t really any heating up there but it snows quite a lot so we had the fire going all the time. The snow was like 2 feet deep in some places, or more maybe.

I also went snow boarding which was cool, by the end I could go down the hill pretty good and turn left without problems, turning right was a different story though, hence how I nearly broke my nose. My board dug into the snow when I was trying to turn, I ended up flying down the rest of the hill and landing on my face which would have been fine if the snow was soft but as it was in the shade it was a bit more like ice, it hurt but I lived I suppose.

When I got back to Guatemala I went to Antigua again to do more Spanish school which was good, my Spanish is a bit better now as a result and I plan on going back again before my trip is over.

I was 2 weeks there before booking my coach to Puerto Barrios and heading up to Livingston again, remembering the crap I had to cope with last time with the pain in the ass shuttle bus arriving an hour late, therefore making me take a later coach which resulted in me having to use a private boat to reach the project, I booked the shuttle to pick me up at 4 in the morning. The shuttle was supposed to take me to the city, then drop me at the coach station, buy me my ticket for the economy class coach then bugger off and take the other passengers to Copan, in Honduras. This coach was actually 15 minutes early, it had to drop someone off at the airport first, then take me to my coach, then take everyone else off to Copan. As it was so early I only managed to stay awake until the airport, at that point I nodded off, not waking up till about 7:30am, in the middle of the country side, it was a bit of a surprise as the coach station is about 15 minutes or less from the airport, and we had gotten there at about 5:25am. I resigned myself to a visit to Copan and hoped I had my passport in my hand luggage for the border crossing, but then the shuttle pulled over for breakfast. When I asked the driver what was going on he grunted and wouldn’t say anymore, I just went and had breakfast and thought screw it. When I got back out of the hotel/restraint, the guy had taken all my stuff off the roof rack and put it in the front passenger seat. The driver told me id be getting out further down the road so be ready to get off. When I got back in the bus some fat American guy (2 week holiday tourist rather than traveller) had sprawled himself across the only three remaining seats, one was mine and the other was the guy who went to the airport’s. “Why don’t you go sit in the front seat with your stuff” the guy said. I was in a bad mood so I asked him why he didn’t shift his fat arse so that he only took up 2 seats. The other people on the bus laughed at him after that and he moved, he didn’t seem happy about it though.

About 10 minutes down the road, in the middle of no where the driver kicked me out of the bus with my stuff and gave my ticket money to a tramp/bus peddler(the guys who hold stuff up outside the buses trying to sell to people on board.

I guessed I would probably have to pa for my bus again as there was no way this guy would stick round and actually pay the bus for me like the driver had (sort of) intended. To be honest I don’t think the driver gave a rats arse, he’d managed to blag himself about 40Q by dropping me off later in the journey and that’s all he cared about. When my bus came I nudged the peddler and he grudgingly gave my money to the conductor, it was the cheapest, crappiest coach I have ever been on, usually the coaches in Guatemala are far nicer than ones even in the UK, but this was like an old school bus, and very uncomfortable.

I got into Puerto Barrios at about 12:00 and caught the boat over to Livingston about 45 minutes after. The sea was as rough as I’ve ever seen it, it wasn’t too bad for me as I have got used to the boats in the rough weather, but there was this Israeli couple who were literally pissing themselves, the guy was this huge muscley military type, but he kept falling off his bench and he looked so terrified, it was great.

So anyway, no I’m back in Livingston and this time I have a laptop so I shouldn’t have any excuses not to write more often, that doesn’t mean I will though just to warn you.

Later

My new jobs and stuff

I’m gonna try and make time to write another post now, the last two weeks have been really busy so I haven’t had time to sit down to write anything and it looks like the next two will be a hell of a lot busier so if I don’t do it now you may not get another till I get to the US, so I’ll make my best effort to sort it out now.

Like I say, I’ve been extremely busy for about two weeks. Basically remember how I said they gave me like six jobs to do, if you didn’t read it then go back and read all the posts that you’ve missed out you rude, rude bastard, you should be keeping up, especially since it takes me so long to write new posts. Anyway, they gave me more, so now I have a huge list of jobs and I can’t actually remember most of them, but knowing how organised they are here they probably don’t know what I should be doing anyway. Basically the guy who run’s the restraint has finally sent me the Business plan for me to look at so while I’m here I have to try translating the thing to English so I can understand it. Once I’ve read it I’m not 100% sure what they want though, I’ll give you an example of they way they give me a new job here so you can understand that the reason I don’t know what I’m doing all the time is not all because I’m incompetent:

Maria (volunteer “organiser”): Hi Richard, I have something new I need you to do (In Spanish)

Me: Ok, what is it? (in Spanish)

Maria: Thathathathathathathatha (really fast Spanish, shes from Spain where they speak a

crappy type of Spanish)

Me: ( I look perplexed) Como? (basically means “what?”)

Maria: Ok, in Engilsh… Isaul would like you to write a business plan for Buga Mama (the restaurant the charity owns in town) can you do it?

Me: Well I can… but it’s not really my area, so I can only do so much.

Maria: That’s fine, just talk to Isaul about it. (translates as, I stopped listening after “I

can” and no longer care)

(4 days later in town)(everything else is conducted in Spanglish)

Me: Hey Isaul, Maria said you needed me to help with writing a business plan

Isaul: Hola Richard, yes we have a business plan, it’s nearly done, can you help us?

Me: Yea, I can help a bit

Isaul: Ok, good…

Me:…

Isaul: (looks like he’s about to wander off to do something else)

Me: Can I see the plan?

Isaul: Yes

Me: Where is it?

Isaul: I’ll email it to you

Me: Ok, do you still have my email?

Isaul: Ummm…. No

Me: Ok (I write down my email and pass him it)

Isaul: Ok I’ll send it on Monday

Me: Ok… wait no, the internet at the project never works, can you do it before so I can get it while I’m here. It would be better if you just put it on my Ipod now.

Isaul: Ok, I’ll send you the email (something tells me we don’t understand each other all

the time)

(1 week later, back in town)

Me: Isaul, I never got that email.

Isaul: Oh yes, we have been very bust with the restaurants

Me: Could you put it on my ipod now

Isaul: Yes I have another job for you (you’ll find out more on this later, so I’ll skip this part. In the end I don’t get it on my Ipod, he says he’ll email it again)

(1 week later, back in town)

Me: Hey Isaul, I still haven’t got a email from you

Isaul: Ah yes, can we have your email address (I write it again)

Me: It would be easier if you could just put it on my Ipod

Isaul: Oh, ok that would be easier (at bloody last)

Me: So what exactly do you need me to do?

Isaul: Help with writing it

Me: In what way?

Isaul: We need you to help write it?

Me: So you want me to write it?

Isaul: No, we’ll write it.

Me: Ok so what do you need me to do?

Isaul: Look at the plan and help us in writing it

Me: Ok (I still don’t know what kind of help they need but talking in circles tends to

make me slightly embarrassed, or at least frustrated)

So now, two and a half weeks later I have this business plan translated into English and don’t know where to start, there are a few problems but most of them cannot be solved by me as I don’t actually know what the “plan” they are writing is. I can tell them a few ways to improve what they have already written but we’ll see. Or maybe not, from the looks of the plan they started writing it in 2002 and stopped in 2006, all the deadlines in the target section are in 2007. In other words, it dosnt seem like they’re taking this too seriously.

The other job I was given has been fairly interesting, basically me and one of the students from the project go over to another town whenever a cruise ship comes in and try to sell the handycrafts from the communitys. They have to send me because cruise tourists seem to be under the impression that everyone in the world speaks English, the students can get quite distressed when the 20 stone wrinkly white people start having a conversation with them in a foreign language. And it isn’t that kind of “if I speak louder then they will understand me” thing. This is more like they will ask a conversation like “what is this made of?”, the student will then reply with something like “$6”because all they know how to say in the English is usually prices. The tourist then looks sceptically at the bowl/pot/bag/whatever the product is, as if they are trying to work out how you would make a bowl/pot/bag/whatever the product is, out of six dollars. Then instead of giving up or trying again, they’ll ask something else like “did you make this?”, the student will then look round frantically, not knowing what to say. Sometimes they will say “$6” again, but usually they’ll be to distressed and just want rid of the person, so they start talking Spanish back. This has one of two affects on the tourist, either they become terrified of foreign language and hurry away. Or they go on trying to talk back in English, as if it’s a completely normal conversation. Last time that happened to Byron, the student I work with, he pretended to drop something under the stall, crawled under and didn’t come out until I was free to divert the attention the persistent tourist.

When the job was proposed to me, in that conversation with Isaul, I was told that “you will got to Santo Thomas the night before the boat arrives, stay in a hotel for the night, don’t worry we will pay for all the food while you are away from the project, then you will get up in the morning and go to sell the things to the tourists and come back here in the evening.”

There were a few things wrong with what Isaul told me about the job.

1. HOTEL MY ARSE.

I became suspicious at first on the afternoon before leaving for Santo Thomas, I met Byron and he began referring to the “hotel” as a “room”. But I wasn’t worried, “how bad could it be” I thought. Anyway we got to Santo Thomas in the evening then ate, then we started walking down a dirt track and I was thinking, what kind of hotel would they have round here. Now don’t get me wrong, I have lived in Guatemala for a few months now and I don’t expect luxury from hotels, all I expect is access to running water and a bed with sheets on it etc. That’s all. Byron walked up to a gate and I heard two dogs barking, he opened the gate and went inside closing it behind him. I looked through the gate and saw him trying to calm down these dogs, one looked like Oscar the grouch on a bad day, but the other looked like the Hound of the Baskervilles on steroids. Byron beckoned me through the gate, I wasn’t worried because the dogs had calmed down and dogs don’t bother me usually anyway. After closing the gate I turned round and saw the bigger dog staring at me, then without making a sound it went for me, it nearly had my bloody arm, but I managed to stick the bag I was holding in its mouth before it got me. It spent a few seconds trying to kill my bag before the owner came out and called it off. The damn things name is Tyson, that just sums it up, although I think Kujo would suit it slightly better.

Anyway, we opened the door to “the room”, it was an empty room apart from one bare mattress on the floor, how nice, all that was missing were the spent syringes and tin foil covered spoons. The owner was kind enough to give us a second bare mattress, so at least both of us had the luxury of sleeping on a possibly bed bug infested mattress. Oh and mattresses in Guatemala don’t contain springs, so they’re more similar to hard duvets or something, not very nice to sleep on, even with sheets.

Also we had no access to running water, or water in general as it happened, the toilet didn’t have a functioning flush (obviously) and when I asked the owner he said, you need to pour water into the bowl. When I asked where to get the water he just shrugged. So you can imagine how pleasant it is staying there for the night, especially when you have to run across the yard inhabited by the man eating dog to get to the toilet or anywhere else for that matter as our door leads directly out there.

2. The trip there is a health hazard

Ok its not like Isaul said anything to the contrary but still I think he should have warned me that all the Lancheros between Livingston and Puerto Barrios are clinically insane. They are more mad than the Lancheros from the project, and these guys have more highly powered boats. Basically the lancha we set off in was about 16 feet long, the sea was extremely rough with waves that caused the boat to pitch 45 degrees upwards whenever we hits one, this meant that when the boat reached the top of the wave, the front fell about 10 feet back down to where the sea was, now if the lanchero was sensible then maybe we would have just felt quite ill by the end of the trip. As it was, the lanchero still thought he wanted to attempt the trip in 20 minutes, which would usually require a perfectly calm sea and a less heavily loaded boat. But this gut gunned it at 40 miles an hour or more, which is pretty quick for a boat, I swear we actually got airborne a few times. The front of the boat would fall and crash back into the sea then we would all fall after it back onto our seats, somebody was transporting desktop computers and you could hear all the boards inside smashing as they collided in mid air and crashed back into the boat while the deck was on it’s way back up again. Luckily my spine is still fully functional but I’m not sure if it’s gonna last me till April when Cruise season ends.

3. If when you say morning you mean 4am, YOU DON’T GET TO SAY MORNING

I don’t care what anyone else has to say about it 4am is still night for Christ sake, it’s not morning until the sun is out, and even that is too early.

I have to get up at 4am, evade the killer dog in the yard, wash my face in the one bucket of water that the owner might put out for us, if we’re lucky. Then try to get back to the room in safety, where I get the handy crafts ready to load into a taxi to get them to the port with the cruise ship for 6am. We have the stall ready before 7am and have to wait at least another 2 hours for any tourists to turn up. Guatemalans just seem to love getting up early.

The job is actually quite amusing, cruise tourists are strange people. Generally where our stall is only gets the older people because young people actually go out into the country. The complex we set the stall up in is only for the tourists who come off the boat, walk 20 meters to the building we are in, buy some local products, then head back onto the boat to play shuffle board or whatever. I’m not sure why they go on cruises because it seems to me they might as well just go on a normal holiday then shop at Oxfam when they get home, cos you can but the same stuff there and it would be cheaper than going on a cruise. The point is, they don’t actually see Guatemala, they see a port and a big room full of people trying to sell them crap that no one in Guatemala actually wants, like bowls made of crushed banana stalks and bags they claim to have woven by hand which fall apart within about 7 minutes of you putting anything in them.

The kind of old people are strange as well, there’s enough botox in that room to paralyze a blue whale, and enough hair dye to drown the bastard afterwards. Some of the old ladies look like aliens, they have eyes which are the size of grapefruits from the way they have been stretched out by the botocs. Also their faces don’t have a wrinkle on them as they are so taught, but then they decide to wear a strappy top or something and their all veiny and disgusting. Why don’t they just admit, they’re old and decrepit and aren’t young enough to dress like a 16 year old anymore.

Last time this guy came up to the stall in a cowboy hat, cowboy boots and he actually had spurs on. What the hell is that about, who the hell needs spurs on a cruise ship. I know the ships are pretty big, but I doubt there´s space for a coral on there for Christ sake. You can imagine what the guys personality was like, so I won´t bother going into details, needless to say, he was an arse.

So anyway I planned to write more but unfortunately I have to go off to another cruise ship soon, so I´ll leave it at this for now and write more later.

Later Guys

I can´t think of a title for this one

Hey guys, here’s the next instalment of my Livingston update. Ok, for those of you who didn’t get this from the last post, I spent a weekend in Tikal. I’m sure Zoë is feeling very intelligent right now, thinking “I know what Tikal is, ha-ha” but for the majority of you, who haven’t studied or travelled through Latin America, I will tell you. Basically it’s this huge national park in Northern Guatemala. Most of it is not accessible and is just a protected reserve, but the central attraction is a site of Maya ruins, there are six huge temples around the park and hundreds (according to the guidebook thousands) of other buildings scattered around. Also the site is in the middle of the jungle so you can imagine the amount of wildlife hanging around the area. Every time you climbed to the top of a temple you could see monkeys leaping from tree to tree, I was reminded of Matt and CJ swinging about on the scaffolding at the drop zone, congratulations boys, you look like a pair of spider monkeys… actually Matt probably looks more like a Howler Monkey but I don’t imagine many of you know what the difference is, basically just imagine a monkey with Matt’s head and you pretty much have it, those of you who don’t know what Matt looks like, don’t worry about, if you really want to know can do a Google image search on howler monkey, then imagine it with cloths on, walking around drunk and shouting unbelievably loud, it’s probably best to also imagine it following around an 18 year old female student.

Anyway enough of insulting Matt, I better get back on topic before I lose my non-skydiver audience.

So we started the weekend by heading upriver to Rio Dulce on a boat, as per usual the Lanchero filled the boat beyond the point anyone could have thought possible, if they hadn’t already been at the project long enough. I have started calling it “Lancha Buckaroo” it’s this game the Lancheros seem to play with each other, “how many suicidal people can we force onto the boat before it sinks”. They haven’t managed to sink one yet, but it has to happen eventually. Anyway if I don’t get drowned by these insane lancheros, I’m sure to lose my legs through blood loss, last time I actually spent the trip in a position where I went numb from the waist down, I had one leg tucked round under my seat and the other being crushed by a bag, then the seat is so hard that your arse goes numb and my waist was being crushed against the back of my seat by this huge suitcase that was thrown on my lap. This wouldn’t have been too bad if it was a short 20 minute trip, but no, unfortunately it was an hour and 45 minute boat ride. And what makes it worse is the fact that the lancheros go about 20 minutes out of the way to drop their mates off in the arsehole of no where, what the hell are they doing living out there, maybe they’re forced to live away from society because they’re so bloody inconsiderate. If you live that far away from everything, why haven’t you got a boat for Christ sake, and how do these people get to town, it’s not like boats would ever go past, they’re too far out of the way.

Anyway back to the story, the Lancha took well over an hour and a half to get to Rio, then we went and caught a coach to Flores, which is like a little Island in the middle of a lake, you can drive to it via the bridge though. We found a pretty nice hotel for 40Q a night, that’s about £3. They had a shower there and if you turned it on a low enough pressure, low enough so that the water dripped out rather than ran, the water was actually not cold… Amazing, ok it wasn’t exactly warm but wow, that’s the closest to hot water I have had for over a month.

That night we had pizza, I ordered the double cheese one, don’t worry Skydivers, it was tiny compared to the one in Seville. It was great because in Guatemala you cant actually get good cheese, in fact there are only 3 types of cheese here, well I suppose there are 4 if you think that the kind of cheese in a McDonalds Hamburger counts. The types are Queso Blanco, Queso Duro and Queso Seco. These translate as white cheese, hard cheese and dry cheese. Basically Queso Seco is a dry version of Queso Blanco, and Queso Duro is exactly the same except a little bit less crumbly.

So pizza was great as they seem to import some kind of semi-decent cheese for that. Anyway, due to the extreme lack of cheese in my diet since arriving in Guatemala, my stomach wasn’t happy in the morning, I’ll spare you the details.

We left for Tikal at 2:00pm, well we were supposed to leave at 2:00pm but it was more like 3:00pm, I’m sure I have already laid out the principals of Guatemalan time keeping, it goes something like “get there when I tell you, then I’ll turn up when I have nothing better to do, but if you aren’t there when I arrive to bad, you still pay and I don’t wait round”. On occasion it turns out to be something more along the lines of “I will tell you a time, I may not turn up at that time or at all, but when you find me and ask me where I was I will insist that I sat there and waited an hour for you, I may lie and tell you I waited in the correct place but what this actually means is I am sat in the office watching Mexican wrestling and eating a Burrito or seven”.

So anyway after a frustrating hour of waiting for our bus to show up, it eventually arrived, as if it was on time, when we asked why the bus driver was so late he claimed he’d had to drive round Flores to pick up the other passengers, there are 2 problems with this: 1. it takes 20 minutes to walk the circumference of Flores, so a bus should do it in 5 at the most. 2. The bus was empty…

We decided to cut our losses and put up with the fact that the driver was covered in crumbs and sauce, probably from the 8^th burrito he had decided to eat on the way. The drive was about 1 hour and 15 minutes so I used the time to listen to one of my pod casts bashing the ignorant cretin known as Sarah Palin. On the subject of her, it’s the 5^th of November today and I’m pleased to find that she wont be blowing up the world in the next 4 years, obviously she would have had to wait a few weeks for McCain to have a stroke or get involved in another plane crash, or for his left gland to swell so much he actually floated away. But after the inevitable happened she would have had plenty of time to monumentally screw the world over the same as the current President, George “war on reality” Bush. Also hopefully Mr “I’m a fuckin’ redneck” won’t be forced to marry her daughter anymore, or has that already happened, I don’t know we don’t get good news coverage here. Imagine that, forcing that guy to be a father, what kind of idea is that. Although I did feel sorry for the guy as well, even though he has got to be one of the most pitiful examples of a human I have ever seen, imagine having that as a mother in Law for the rest of your life.

So anyway we arrived at Tikal and went to ask how much it was to stay in a Hammock at the hotel, it turned out the hotel no longer provided that service, we could however pay $15 (I hate the way touristy places charge in dollars, it’s cos the majority of the older American tourists don’t bother changing them, actually a lot of them think that the currency here is dollars) each and stay in a 6 person room. Now that may not sound a lot to you but in Livingston $15, or 108Q as it should be here, can get me a private room at a hotel and pay for all my food for the day, and then 2 or 3 beers in the evening. So I wasn’t happy about this. Basically before taking the room which we had to do eventually we went to check every where else, $30 each was the next best offer from a hotel. But we could rent hammocks for 35Q and hang them up in the campsite, I was defiantly up for that but one of the girls hadn’t brought a sleeping bag and didn’t want to get cold. This pissed me off as the plan from the start had been to stay in a hammock, the only difference would have been that the other hammocks would be hung outside a hotel, these were gonna be hung 100m away in the campsite. Basically exactly the same. After asking her why she had neglected to bring anything she said she didn’t have room because she only brought a small bag and she thought it would be warmer here. Let’s see, she was freezing in Livingston, in moving from Livingston to Tikal we have moved 7 hours further away from the Equator, 7 hours further up into the mountains and 7 hours further away from the Caribbean coast… hmmmmmmm. In England we call this kind of person a moron, apparently in Austria they call them doctors.

So in the end we had to take the room because she whinged so much and Christoph was anxious to get into the park to see the sunset from temple 4, the biggest one. So we went and got the room, unpacked, then rushed to the entrance of the park. Apparently it takes 30 minutes to reach the grand plaza, where temples 1 and 2 are, 20 minutes if you gun it. We got there in 12 which makes me think that whoever worked that out must have had short legs, which would make sense as I am at least a foot taller than most of the Guatemalans I have met.

It’s then another 15 minutes to temple 4 and as we reached the top the sun had just started to set. Ok blah blah blah, very nice, I’m getting bored of telling you about Tikal now, the next day we went in a 6:00am and were planning to get the bus back to Flores at 6:00pm, some of the girls were told however that the 6:00pm bus doesn’t always turn up. Christoph refused to believe this and got very grumpy, he wanted to catch another sunset at 5:30pm. Buses not turning up as you can probably work out is quite a plausible occurrence. The other buses left a 4:00pm and 5:00pm, the time was 3:30pm and we were not all together so we decided to search for the others and meet back at 4:15pm to try and catch the 5:00pm bus. Christoph insisted on going to talk to the bus driver of the 4:00pm bus to ask if there would be one at 6:00pm. I tried to tell him that if he said there would be it wouldn’t mean anything, they don’t like giving people bad news here so there was a good chance he would just lie. When we got there however the bus driver not only said there was a good chance of not having a 6:00pm bus, but also it was doubtful as to weather there would be a 5:00pm bus also. The bus driver agreed to wait for us until 5:10pm as no one else needed the bus.

I said to Christoph there is no way on earth I am paying for that room again. So we ran back in to tell the others to get back out for 5:00pm, Christoph was still grumpy having to miss sunset. We managed to hitch a lift with some rangers and arrived at temple 4 on time, but no one had found Alex and Nico, another two Austrians.

We went and searched the Grand Plaza and still didn’t find them so resigned ourselves to missing the bus, we headed back down to the entrance to see if they were waiting out there. We got to the car park at 5:07pm but they weren’t there. Then the bus driver popped up and said, don’t worry, there’s defiantly a bus a 6:00pm now. Great, there wasn’t time for us to head back into the park to see anything unless we felt like more running and I was sick of it by this point. Christoph had a grump on for the day and a half till we got back to the project and Nico and Alex came out just on 6:00pm to catch the bus.

We ate pizza (this time I had a bigger one but decided not to go for double cheese, I also saved some for breakfast, I learnt my lesson in Seville) in Flores again then travelled home on Monday, which was a day of as it’s a national holiday.

So that’s the massively cut down account of the weekend in Flores. Since I have the better part of a page left before I hit the four page mark, I’ll bulk this out with a few more Livingston Characters.

First let’s start with crazy voodoo lady, this is what we have started calling here, however we have no idea of her real name, no one seems to. Crazy voodoo lady has probably thrown you off a bit however, your probably picturing her as some woman with crazy hair and a bone through her nose, running round with some heads on a string and sacrificing chickens. This is not what she is like at all, in fact we have no idea if she has anything to do with voodoo. She is a pretty large old woman who walks round in some kind of orange dress and a summer hat. The reason we call her crazy voodoo lady is because she has a habit of hanging around outside our hotel and crotch grabbing as people walk out. The only way we can account for this is that she is a) crazy or b) practices voodoo and it’s some kind of weird ritual or something, since a prerequisite of the latter is that she would have to be crazy, we have labelled her crazy voodoo lady. Luckily she has never been around when I’ve been on my own so she has never gone for me before but I have seen her go for other people and it’s bloody funny, although quite disturbing. According to Berti she is also a serial flasher who is prone to sitting outside her house on the porch and shouting “amigo” then lifting her dress while wearing no underwear, luckily only Berti has seen this before, it’s not something I would imagine to be a pleasant site. Berti’s explanation is “eizer she’z crazy or she really juzt needs a prick or zumzing”.

Rusty next I think, he’s the owner of a local hostel and bar named Casa Iguana, he’s also very very gay. Not that that’s a bad thing, I just want to make it clear that we aren’t talking about your common, garden variety, Ian Mckellen type homosexual. No, we are talking about your full on Liza Minnelli, Madonna gay, the type that call everyone “darling”. He looks very similar to someone who used to be on the English big brother, but I can’t remember his name or what series it was in. Basically it was a bald gay guy who was obsessed with the transsexual woman. If you know who I mean, just imagine him but twice the height and you’ve got Rusty.

Anyway, I haven’t known him very long as he hasn’t been in Livingston recently, he left a few of the other guys from Casa Iguana in charge. But he got back recently and me and some of the other guys are regulars at Casa Iguana. So we were sat talking to him over a few beers, then he went upstairs suddenly, we were talking to some of the other customers at the time so didn’t notice. Then suddenly he came back wearing nothing but a fish net leotard and a pair of cat ears. He then began dancing on a table to Christina Aguilera and that just about sums Rusty up.

I was planning on telling you about Insane Mexican Restaurant owner woman (I think her names Maria), or Sid the drunken Barman, but I’m almost up to the four page mark, so I’ll save it until the next post and give you something to look forward to and me something to actually write about, since there is’nt much else meant to happen any time soon.

Later

Ps. Liz was complaining because she wasn´t in the last blog so... Liz, Liz, Liz, Liz, Liz, Liz, Liz, Liz, Liz, Liz, Liz, Liz, Liz, Liz, Liz, Liz, Liz, Liz, Liz, Liz, Liz, Liz, Liz, Liz, Liz, Liz, Liz, Liz, Liz, Liz, Liz, Liz, Liz, Liz, Liz, Liz, Liz, Liz, Liz, Liz, Liz, Liz, Liz, Liz, Liz, Liz, Liz, Liz, Liz, Liz, Liz, Liz, Liz, Liz, Liz, Liz, Liz, Liz, Liz. Is that good enough

Your long awaited post

Finally I have a chance to write the next part of the blog. I think it’s been about a month since I last posted, or 3 weeks at least, I don’t have internet access at the project right now so I have no way of checking, this also means I don’t know what I have already told you so I’ll try starting from when I stepped off the boat onto the dock at the project.
The sun had just gone down about 20 minutes earlier so it was dark, the boat had just pulled up to a dock in the middle of no where on the bank of the Rio Dulce and the lanchero ushered me off as quickly as possible, then left.
So I’m stood on this dock, there’s no light so I can’t see a thing and there’s no one around to ask what the hell I should be doing. As my eyes adjust to the light I can see all these faces sat in boats down along side the dock staring at me, it looked like something out of silent hill or something. I walked down to the end of the dock and all the eyes followed me, the problem was I had no idea where I was going, there was no light anywhere so all I could see was the outline of a building so I headed towards that. After standing around looking clueless for long enough someone a voice came from no where and asked something in Spanish, I don’t know what because I wasn’t expecting it so didn’t listen properly. Anyway I just said I was a volunteer then he ran off, so I followed him, he went up some steps which lead into a corridor, I followed him down it . Luckily he was wearing a white hat so I could make out where he was because there was just enough light to make out the hat bobbing off down the corridor. At the other end were a load of people wearing head torches, so when they looked at me I was completely blind. So I had no idea what was going on and there were these people blinding talking at me in Spanish. I couldn’t understand a word because the loudest one was speaking Spanish at a million miles an hour with a French accent, so it wasn’t the most comprehendible thing I ever heard.
Anyway it turned out that electricity wasn’t turned on till 7pm and was then switched off again at 9pm. Also the volunteers were not expecting me because the volunteer organiser hadn’t told them and wasn’t there at the time. I managed to find her number and rang her up and it turns out she was expecting me to turn up a week later because I had asked her for an extra week in Antigua to learn Spanish. All I could think was if you got that email, why the hell did you not reply to it so that I could have taken an extra week so I wouldn’t have had to go through all that palaver. I mean if there’s no reply, why would I take that as a yes?
Anyway due to the fact that they weren’t expecting me, there was no bed for me or job waiting etc. The volunteer organiser said she would call a few people to arrange them to start my job and have them make (when I say make, I don’t mean tuck the sheets in, I mean get the wood, saw it up and build a bed out of it) my bed etc.
So I went for a meeting the next day with the community development department, luckily for me the woman heading the meeting was completely incomprehensible also, all the indigenous people round here speak so softly that most of their words just disappear into wind, and it’s not even breezy round here usually. One of the volunteers could understand her, and she just happened to be at the meeting with me.
It turns out the job she wanted me to do was write a manual for the students, who attend the school here, on how to start up and run a business. It’s not really my background at all but as you can imagine, people who do have a background in it don’t usually volunteer. So I’m having to make the best of it, I have my GCSE business studies to fall back on, and I’ve been having to teach myself some stuff at the weekends when I get internet access but the manual is going ok. The English version is pretty much complete, it just needs a little reworking and I’m slowly translating it. I’ll have it complete before Christmas I imagine. Recently I have been given a few more jobs, I now have to write a manual which instructs on how to teach the people what’s in the other manual. This is because very few of the Maya which the project works with actually speak Spanish, most speak only speak one of the Maya languages, also most cannot read, let alone read Spanish, therefore a manual would be somewhat redundant for them. So the new manual is intended for translators to read and teach in workshops.
Another job I have been given is to find company’s willing to donate enough money for us to fund a new micro enterprise project. Up till now it seems that the project hasn’t been teaching about budgeting, financial forecasting, business plans or anything, therefore the people always end up spending all their money and not being able to continue reinvesting in new stock for the business etc. So there no funds available for any new businesses to start right now. Also after Christmas they want me to be good enough at Spanish to run the workshops myself so I’m definitely heading back to Spanish school at some point. My other job is advising some of the charity run businesses, such as Buga Mama the restraint we use for raising money, how to write their own business plans, as none of them seem to have one yet. At the moment I’m waiting for an email from Buga mama with their progress so far so I can check it and tell them what it’s missing.
You’ll also be pleased to know that we now have 24 hour electricity in the Galera, that’s like the shack over the river that we live in, because we now have solar power which was only put up 3 weeks late. I also have a bed which only took 2 hours for them to make… unfortunately they didn’t make it until I’d already been here for a week and a half but that seems to be the way things work here. There favourite word is “mañana” which literally means “tomorrow” but actually seems to mean something more along the lines of “not today”.

Ok, there’s more to say about the charity but I’ll do it some other time or I’ll be home before you’ve finished reading.
So I’ll tell you some stuff about Livingstone. Basically it’s about 30 minutes down river, when we have a normally packed boat. Unfortunately the lancheros like to overfill the boat, the “lanchas” hold about 16 people, maybe 18 at a squeeze. However on the last trip back from Livingston we had 42 people on board, and that’s no exaggeration, on top of that we had a huge amount of luggage which took up about a quarter of the boat, and weighed about the same as 10 people. This means the top of the boat sits about 20cms out of the water, in turn this means the boat has to go at a speed comparable to a snail covered in pritt stick on its way home from a party with Lemmy Killminster. If you do the lancha basically sinks.
So after a one and a half hour boat ride we arrive in Livingston. It’s a small town, of about 17,000 people, however you only ever see the same 100 people give or take. The population consists mainly Garifuna with the rest being made up of Ladinos, there is also a separate Indigenous community about 1km up the river, but they don’t have much of a presence in town really.
There are a few local characters who I see without exception every time I go in. One of these is “Alexander” or “Alexander the Great” as he calls himself, his nickname is “Chiledrin” to the locals or just “Chile”, I know him pretty well so that’s what I call him now. He’s also a bit of a crack head but you have to forgive him that because if you hang round Livingston and decide you are going to not befriend anyone who has anything to do with drugs, you’ll have a bit of a lonely life unfortunately. He’s also quite a useful guy to know because he knows where everything is and if there’s anything you cant find in a shop (Lighter fluid is the main example I can think of right now) that you want he usually manages to find it somewhere. How I don’t know but he does, he has a nasty habit of always whinging about how hungry he is and if he doesn’t get any money that way he comes up with something else like how he cant walk so he needs to rent a bicycle, which he will tell you as he is walking with you down the road. Another favourite is when he starts talking like he has just eaten a kilo of sand and starts moaning about being thirsty and needing water, as he sips out of one of the coconuts from the tree in his back garden. You may be thinking that he sounds like a beggar, which is kind of true, but everyone here tries it on with the tourists and at least you can tell that Chile will try it on a mile off, he never pushes to hard as well like most of the others who don’t even try to get to know you first.
Another one of the locals is “Owens” I didn’t know his real name until yesterday when Berti, the German mechanic who has lived in Livingston for a few years, told me about (actually Berti is pretty interesting I’ll have to inform you about him in the next post). It turns out his name is Dario and I don’t really have a problem with him because he’s one of the few guys who has never tried to scam money out of me, and I’m pretty sure he isn’t on crack, meth or coke which is unusual. He is however a dealer and I think he has a tendency to smoke his own product quite heavily, what exactly he deals I don’t know because I’ve never asked, I’m sure if you did ask he would claim he sells every kind of narcotic you could think of. I suspect he’s just a dope dealer though. He tends to walk round in some kind of American sport clothing all the time, all from different teams and different players. We call him Owens because that’s the name on the back of his favourite football jersey, I have no idea who this player is and I guess he doesn’t either but he wears that jersey the most. He tends to walk like he has a razor blade under each arm and his ¾ length shorts worn round the top of his thighs so they look like regular trousers. This makes him walk a little bit like John Wayne on drugs. He has a habit of putting his arms in the air and shouting “RASTA” for no apparent reason on random occasions. He also has a wide range of ways of asking you to buy drugs, on favourite is “Hey bredren, come-on, let’s go to the candy shop to buy some sweets”. When I asked Berti about him he said in his “Ah, you muzt e speaking off Dario, you now talk of ze secont biggest asshole in town” so as you can tell Berti doesn’t like him. I don’t know though, after the first 2 days when he tries desperately to have you buy something off him, he chills out and you only get the occasional proposition maybe once or twice a week, he’s quite useful when your getting hassled by one of the hustlers as well because if you see him you can just give him a nod and he’ll think it’s another dealer so he’ll run over and get rid of them, of course you have to put up with him trying to sell you something again, but I can put up with it from him now since he doesn’t throw in any requests for spare change.
Polo is another guy you see all the time, he cycles round on his bike and just chats to the tourists. I quite liked him when I first met him, he looks like he’s about 65 and he’s always pretty chilled out, he went to university in the US and he can talk for quite along time about social sciences and so on. He is also a drummer in the band Punta rebels which is apparently the best Punta bands in the world, this sounds ridiculous but it’s not too far from the truth. Apparently they are definitely one of the most popular Punta bands in the world and that’s according to Berti, who, upon me asking about Polo said “Ahh yes, well now you are speaking of ze biggest asshole in town”. According to Berti he is renowned for stealing from tourists so if I ever get into a conversation with him again (which isn’t unlikely) I’ll just be wary of that fact. But that said he is definitely interesting to talk to.
Ok that will do for now, maybe I’ll give you a few more next week or something. This is 4 pages long on word right now so I’ll leave it before it’s too long.

Later

PS. I did’nt manage to post this on the weekend because I went to Tikal and all the internet cafes had broken USB ports, so next time I get Internet I’ll try again.

PPS. I calculate that I have eaten Beans Rice and Tortillas approximately 77 times since the last post, however this is not 100% accurate as there were plenty of times when the rice wasn’t on the menu.

Livingston... First few days

Ok, I thought Id just try getting in a quick update before I leave for Livingston.
On Thursday I hiked Vulcan Pacaya with a few other guys, there were only five of us and the rest of the bus was filled with another group, this meant an hour and a half on a bus with 7... Ex-Israeli army. They insisted on singing military songs the whole way there (we can’t understand hebru so guess they were military songs, if not then Israeli music is crap), I had the head phones in but someone said that some of the songs heavily featured the word Arab.
Anyway, when we got there we were immediately accosted by children waving sticks saying "you buy stick mr? Mr... You buy stick for 5 quetzal".
We met our guide and began to walk upwards. I finally gave in to the stick wielding children and bought one off a little boy for 2Q. Don’t worry, it wasn’t a normal stick, they were pretty long and robust so you could use them to help you on the steeper parts. I know that Ali had a picture in her head of a group of children waving twigs around.
As it turns out it was quite helpful on some of the steeper parts, maybe not as helpful as it would have been to have my hands free but helpful none the less. We were walking up through dense forest which after walking for about 45 minutes just ended suddenly and opened up into an empty landscape. The ground sloped up on the left and down on the right and was completely baron. It comprised mainly of black sand with the occasional black rocky outcrop, after struggling across the uneven and shifting terrain for a while we reached the top of one of the outcrops and the guide shouted "Miren, miren fuego" we looked where he was pointing and saw some rocks moving on the side of a peak about 300m away. The ground was rippling for a bit then a few orange rocks emerged and tumbled down the slope, these were followed by a few more and after the hill side was spattered with glowing cinders, lava began to pour out of the hole left by the rocks. We moved on and the land slowly transformed from a black desert with occasional rocks, to a craggy mountain side with occasional bouts of sandiness. When we got within 50m of the flow we had to start climbing across really rough stone which, from the shape, was obviously cooled lava from relatively recent eruptions. The rocks were extremely brittle and I saw a few of the Israeli guys put a foot wrong and fall as the rock broke under them, serves them right for singing the whole way. Luckily they had learnt their lessons by the time we got closer to the lava, so don’t worry no one got melted to death. We got pretty close but it was uncomfortable to stand closer than about 5m away and even that was damn hot. As we got closer we began to notice occasional holes in the rocks through which you could see an orange glow, or even flowing lava. I stood watching the flow while the others roasted marshmallows over the flow, I didn’t have any due to the whole vegetarian thing but after explaining this to the guide he took my stick off me and went over to the flow, he dipped it in and took it back out with a wad of cooling lava on the end, he quickly turned the stick so that none came off and it eventually solidified enough to stay on. He brought it back open then held it up to his mouth, I guess he was implying it was the veggie alternative. "He then mentioned that it was 2000 degrees centigrade.
We stood round watching for longer and all of a sudden I heard a cracking sound, you could hear quieter cracking sounds constantly, but this was loud. I looked down and there were cracks in the, what was a solid rock I was standing on. The cracks were glowing orange and the stone around them began to turn white, it got very hot very quickly and I jumped over to the nearest non luminous rock.
I left out the part where the heavens opened and it started to throw it down. I rained extremely heavily but luckily with it being so hot we dried off a few minutes after the rain started. It was strange, the rain would evaporate as soon as it hit the ground causing a kind of sauna effect. Also the rain couldn’t even touch most of the lava, it bounced of the cooler black bits but it vaporised before it even got to the orange and red parts. Sometimes the wind was so hot it was hard to cope with, the wind was blowing directly across the lava, meaning it got superheated just before reaching us.
The sun began to go down and our guide recommended we head off because the volcano is dangerous to descend at night.
The way down was far easier as there were less upward slopes, however the sun had gone down when we were half way down the sun had fully set so it was dark. I have pretty good night sight so I could see where I was going fine, I decided not to use the torch because you can only see a tiny area in front of you then. This strategy was working fine, unfortunately a large number of the Israeli guys, being military types who wanted to show off, had put on their high powered head torches straight away, which was fine until they got interested in what was going on behind them, every 5 seconds they would turn round and shine an LED lamp right in my face. I kept one eye closed so, when they lost interest and stopped looking round so much, I could still see, not quite as well though.
When we reached the bottom the kids were back energetically shouting "stick for me", it seems that the 2Q was only a rental fee. They persisted so much that I gave up and handed it over to some little girl, like I wanted to keep some scorched up stick anyway.
There was a bar at the bottom selling drinks, crisps and sweets. When the kids were sure there were no more sticks to be had they went and stowed the somewhere then began to pretend rummaging through bins to con sweets out of people.
Anyway, in case you haven’t guessed, I didn’t finish writing this in time and am therefore sat in the volunteer dormitory type thing at Ak’Tenamit as I write this. The trip across Guatemala was pretty crappy for several reasons but let’s not concentrate on that right now because it would take to long to do that much complaining.
Before I get onto the whole description of my arrival thing, just in case you're wondering about the severe lack of new photos, it's cos apparently 2 zip lock bags, a camera case and a water proof hold are not enough apparently to protect a camera from water. I have had my camera drying out for over a week now but it's still not working so I'll have to head over to Puerto barrios at some point to have it send back via UPS.
Anyway I arrived at the place last night but unfortunately they weren’t expecting me. I had emailed the woman who is the volunteer organiser a while back asking if it was possible for an extra week in Antigua to do more Spanish classes. I got no reply so didn’t risk it, but apparently she assumed I would take it so didn’t reply. Also she wasn’t at the site, she was in Antigua of all places so she wasn’t here to "organise me".
So I’m here with no bed, I’m having to use her room while she is in the city because they haven’t "made" mine yet. I do have a job now however but it's really hard cos the people here speak so much more quietly than people in Antigua, and there accent is different. The foods good though, last night was beans and tortillas, this morning was beans and tortillas, for lunch we had a nice change of rice... Beans and tortillas, and now I’m off for some beans and tortillas.
I'll update you again soon

Later

P.S this post has been delayed again due to the serious lack of electricity at the project, and that internet cafes don’t seem to like me using my PDA, Ill put details in the next post.

First week in Guatemala... Pretty cool

Hey everyone, I know I said that I'd write again Friday but, as it turns out, I went to lake Atitlan with a few of the other students. I’m writing this on the PDA right now as travel back to Antigua in a shuttle bus.
It'll take about 2-3 hours to get back, even though distance wise it isn’t that far, roads wind up and down through the mountains.

Anyway, more about that later, Ill start where I left off. The lessons have been going well, in my second lesson my teacher gave me about 75 verbs to memorize, by the next day I had managed to memorize all of them and could fully conjugate all of them. So I turn up the next day expecting an easy lesson because id be able to do all the exercises first time round. 20 minutes into the lesson Cristina said "well done, now we can move on to something else", or something to that effect in Spanish, I can’t quite remember now. Anyway she then gave me every single irregular verb in the Spanish language to remember, which numbers at about 150 verbs. Not only that but irregular verbs have their own methods of conjugation, there are 9 new methods to learn as well as having to remember which rules apply to which verbs on top of the verbs themselves. Needless to say, it's proving difficult.
On the Thursday the school had a trip to the beach, I don’t know the name of it or anything, it seemed to be a place were Guatemalans go for a break rather than travelers. I had a lesson with my teacher for 2 hours, unfortunately she was not well so the lesson relatively unhelpful, the only thing I can think of that I learnt was that arriba means over. The bigger pity was how excited Cristina had been about going to the beach. Apparently it’s a trip the school does every year and all the teachers really look forward to it.
After the lesson we went down to the beach and ran into the sea, the waves were absolutely huge. I wasn’t planning to go in too deep at the time so I still had my vest on. What I didn’t think about was that the tide kept going out to form the waves so the next thing I know I’m hit by a wave as high as my neck. Needless to say I was knocked over and after that, being already soaked; I didn’t see any reason to not go deeper. I got deep enough that the waves were hitting me which was a good foot or two taller than me. It was pretty cool but then the life guard called us all in because the waves were too big.
I'm going to have to interrupt my own story for a moment because... Mirka, who I've been waiting to rant about all weekend, is half asleep and keeps discreetly attempting to rest her head on my shoulder and her hand keeps rubbing up against my leg. The only way I have discovered to keep her from invading my personal space is by putting Led Zeppelin on my Ipod at full blast and then dangling an earphone near her head, it seems to cause her to move the other way. I now have one of the earphones balanced on my shoulder, hopefully that will keep her at bay. Back to the story then, I’m sure she'll get another mention or two later in the post.
After being told not to go in the water we had a football match against the staff, remember these guys were all Guatemalan, which means they are Latin American. Two of the neighboring countries had a war after a contested football match. Anyway we were expecting to play against a team of Maradonas, they were pretty good as it turns out, but not as good as we expected. We were drawing 5-5 after playing for a long while, but we all started getting tired and people started leaving the pitch. But then a load of the staff rushed back on and scored like 4 goals, then declared the match over. They then had the cheek to start calling Bertie, one of my housemates, "Coche" (which means pig in Latin America) because he plays dirty apparently, most of us played much dirtier than Bertie and after they all pulled the little open goal trick at the end I don't see how they can talk. That said, the name has stuck, sorry Bertie.
After the match Carlos, the guy who runs the school started pouring everyone Cuba Libres, using Pepsi so no one bring up the Coca Cola, but the Cuba Libres seemed to have more and more rum every time I went for another one.
Thursday was also Stephanie's birthday (Stephanie is a girl from Minnesota) so when we saw a Mariachi band approaching me and Clint(a 6 foot 7 guy from Sacramento who's Surname is actually Lovelady) went over too them. Clint stood there saying "you play happy birthday... You know feliz (Spanish for happy). I told them in Spanish that it was Stephanie’s birthday and could they sing happy birthday to her, at that point one of the staff ran over and talked to them too quickly for me to understand, but the band went over and started playing. You'll be pleased to know she was extremely embarrassed, ha-ha.
We traveled back to Antigua on the chicken bus (I can’t remember if I explained what a Chicken bus was, basically it's an old US school bus, repainted in bright colors and it’s not uncommon to find locals transporting livestock on them, this one was hired by the school though so no such luck for us. The ride was so bumpy that I may now have spinal damage but I'm sure I'll be fine.
That, night we went out for the birthday girl but first we had a bit of a pre-party on the roof one of the student houses where I taught everyone to play queens, well it was actually a combination of Queens and the American version... Kings. After getting everyone nicely drunk we went to cafe No Se which in Spanish means cafe don’t know and also was a bar not a cafe.
There we got more drunk and I found myself talking to a girl who was ex Israeli air force and Army. So you all know what’s at the forefront of my mind the whole time, well it only took about 3 minutes for me to ask about the whole Palestine thing. I can hear you all cringing but she bloody well deserved it didn’t she. Anyway, this "conversation went on for a good 15 minutes" by the end I discovered that she was fairly liberal when it came to everywhere except Palestine and the other counties surrounding Israel. She also told me her mother was a non practicing Zionist, does that make sense to anyone, I personally can’t see how that works. If you believe in the formation of a Jewish state with Jerusalem as the capital and you already happen to live in the aforementioned state because you moved there, surely you are practicing by default, there isn't much left to actively do is there?
Next we went to salsa club where all the guys had been taking salsa classes could show off there moves, we were there for a while and a live band started playing, when I noticed, I thought it might be a laugh to get them to sing happy birthday and make Stephanie get on the stage. I went up and asked the singer in drunken Spanish (which according to me teacher is better than sober).
The guy called up Stephanie and some other birthday girl and started playing a spiced up version of Feliz complianos (happy birthday). It was funny cos the singer started dancing with Stephanie but she was too embarrassed, imagine a guy on speed dancing round a lamppost and you get a good idea of the scene.
The law in Guatemala is that everywhere has to close at 1am at the latest, so we were kicked out onto the street. We started walking to a place that had an after party when the guy from the band ran out after me and told me that we could get into the after party there for half price. By that time the others had started walking, I don’t think Stephanie liked the idea of another dance with the band.
We ended up going to one which was basically a boom box in someone’s back garden. The woman behind the "bar" rang a bell every half hour or so and you had to run to the bar and hold your mouth open, then shed pour tequila in until your mouth was full, it seemed like an unwise move which makes me think it probably wasn’t her garden. Also I'm calling it a garden, it was more of a courtyard as it was all paved. I haven’t mentioned so far that it cracking flags at the time, we were soaked to the bone as there was no shelter.
Anyway, I woke up just in time for the lesson on Friday, still drunk and headed to my lesson. My teacher found it very amusing and wanted to hear all about it.
We set off for Atitlan at 1:00pm, still tipping down so it made for a nice, stuffy, hung over 3 hour drive.
We got out of the shuttle in the pouring rain, the driver, being a kindly sort of chap, parked with the door directly over a huge puddle.
We went straight down to the dock and caught a boat over to san Pedro. About 300m shy of San Pedro, the boat ran out of fuel, luckily there was some spare on board so we were going again before long. From the dock, it looked like the road up the hill was a waterfall.
San Pedro is a small town built on a hill, it seemed to cater heavily for travelers. Most of the bars were run by westerners where as the hotels and activity type businesses were run by locals. There were a huge number of massage parlors and yoga classes etc. Lots of the stuff seems to have been set up by travellers who arrived there and then never left.
We were quite tired and hung over, as well as extremely damp. We used tuc tucs to get to the hotel (tuc tucs are like mopeds with 2 rear wheels and a cover. Me and Clint both got in the same one, which was silly because we are probably the heaviest guys. It would have been fine if for not trying to drive up a waterfall. Since we were trying to do that, our tuc tuc kept sliding down the hill. In the end the driver pulled into the turning circle and had a run up, once we reached a dryer part we got going. It didn’t take long before we overtook the others and got to the hotel. It was pretty good for 25 Quetzals (about $3) per night.
On Saturday the weather was far better and we went for breakfast in a little cafe overlooking the lake, the view was pretty amazing.
We went off to rent some kayaks after this; me and Clint were given these really crappy which floated really high on the water, making them really unstable. We paddled for about 45 minutes and arrived at a small beach where we stopped and chilled for a while. Clint suddenly remembered he was supposed to be meeting someone at the dock as she was arriving late. He headed off and we carried on paddling away from the beach, after 5 minutes a few people decided that they were going back as it was another 45 minutes paddling to anywhere. This left me, Mike, Tony and Bertie, the plan was for us to paddle over to Santiago. After going for another 20 minutes, the wind had picked up and was blowing against us, big waves were coming at the kayak making mine wobble all over the place. I didn’t realize this but the "water proof" hold was filling with water. The four of us decided that the whole Santiago thing wasn’t going to happen so we headed back for the marina, about an hour in the other direction. I was expecting it to be easy but unfortunately it was just as hard because the waves rather than helping, kept spinning my boat round because it was so light in the front.
When we got in sight of the marina I was with Tony but the other two were a way off. I mentioned to Tony that the Santiago thing was a shitty idea and he said something to the same effect. I lost concentration for a second and suddenly the Kayak rolled, tipping me into the lake, Tony came over and grabbed the Kayak so that I could climb back on, I didn’t have much trouble but unfortunately I hadn’t realized the back was so full up so as Tony let go it flipped again. When we looked closer we noticed the whole back end of the Kayak was submerged. What made it worse was that we could not drain it on top of Tony's kayak because his was an open top and I doubt he wanted broken legs. We couldn’t drag it to the side either because it was too far. The first thing I did was grab the gear out of the hold and throw it in Tony's, then we needed to empty the hold. The whole rear end was submerged though so door into the hold was covered in water. After trying for a while to lift it long enough to get enough out we had the idea of having Tony push down on the front while I lifted up the back and scooped, which isn’t easy with nothing to stand on. It worked and eventually it was possible to scoop out water without it filling up again. By this point though I was unable to hold on to the Kayak anymore I was so tired. I remembered seeing a life jacket in Tony's hold though so I had him throw me it and put it on. This solved the problem of me having air, but unfortunately the wind was blowing Tony and the kayaks one way and the current was taking me another, I rested for a bit and tried swimming back over, but the current was too strong. Tony managed to work out a way of pulling my kayak behind him, the pushed it over too me. After struggling for a while we managed to finish scooping out everything we could and I got back on, it was still unstable however so I had to paddle back very carefully. The only thing I remember Tony saying the, whole way through was "Man, I'm hungry as crap".
We went and got changed, then it was straight to a bar. My arms and legs were in agony so I thought alcohol would help to numb the pain.
The next morning we went horse riding, I only had a pair of flip-flops with me due to a minor packing error in Antigua. I ended up getting trodden on by my horse which was one of the biggest there, it wasn’t pleasant. I’m not sure what the horses are fed on because my one constantly tried to grab leaves etc from the side of the road, at one point it scoffed down a whole maize plant, while walking.
The guides took us to a beach, it turned out to be the exact same beach that we kayaked to the day before, hurray.
No near death experiences that day though, I probably ought to point out that I have been writing this blog over the space of 2 days on my PDA, you’ve probably worked out it’s pretty long already but it was a busy weekend.
I’m sat at the computer in my house right now finishing it off, I seem to have caught a bit of a cold which isn’t nice. By the way, I have bought a Guatemalan mobile, it cost me about £12 and now I can receive international or skype calls for free so just ask if you want the number.
Ok, that’s it for now… Later

Antigua... Day 2

Hey guys, just finished my first full day in Antigua and im having a pretty good time as it happens.

But before i get on to the good stuff I have some complaining to do as usual.

We arrived (me, Liz and Liz's parents) at the airport at about 10:30-11:00, which gave me plenty of time to get my flight at 1:35am. However when we finally found the queue for check in it was about 100m long, not even exaggerating, it went out the door and down the road. Anyway when i finally checked still had plenty of time left to get through to the lounge, more then i thought as it turned out. I decided to leave through security at about 12:30, thinking that it would take about 45 minutes to get through to the lounge. However, after the 10 minutes of security stuff, instead of finding a ten mile walk through corridors that seem to be longer than the actual airport itself, i find myself in the lounge, meaning that i could have waited untill 1:20 and still made the flight. Not only did I have the burden of knowing i missed out on an extra 50 minutes with Liz, but i had also found myself in an an airport lounge, stuffed full of people meaning i had no where to sit and because most of them spoke spanish, thats the language all the announcments came in first. That wasnt a problem for certain announcments such as "now boarding rows 10-15 " which i could understand. But some of the others where more complicated, so every now and then I'd find myself being trampled by a heard of stampeeding Guatemalans without having a clue why.

Anyway, i finally made it onto the plane where i sat and watched the extrely historically acurate cinematique masterpiece that is "10,000 BC" the new version(what a load of bullshit that was). After this I looked out the window as we flew over what i can only assume was Mexico city, I assume this because of its sheer size, we were cruising at 30,000 feet and it was still enourmous, it looked very impressive at night. After taking in the view I did somthing very rare for me on an aircraft which was fall asleep, I say rare... i've never managed it before. Anyway this meant I missed breakfast, making the meal I had with Liz's family was all I had to eat untill about 2:00pm the following day. When we landed it only took a short while to get through customs and i was met by a strange little man in a wooly jumper at the gate. I mention the wooly jumper because it was about 25 degrees (thats centigrade Americans, dont worry sub zero temperatures arn't a problem here), anyway he didn't speak any english although he did say "ok" a hell of a lot, in a funny voice aswell, just imagive what a chol sounds like saying the word "ok" then speed it up and you'll get the idea.
Anway he showed me to the car and we started to drive. He threw me back a folder which had a map of the city in it and a few other bits and bobs, welcome letter etc.
after a 15minute drive we arrived in Antigua, at that point the ride got unpleasent, Antigua only has cobble streets so as much as I wanted to look round, it was all i could do to hold myself in place and not bounce around the cab.
He pulled up to a building and lead me down an alleyway where he rang a doorbell, he put my bag down inside but before I even put the rest of my stuff down with it he said was out of the door and gone. So Im in this house, somwhere in Antigua without a clue whats going on and on my own. Then I see a little head poking round the corner, it was a little kid, I worried that the school had accomadated me in a home stay program which is not what I wanted. Then I noticed a tiny woman stood behind me. "Tu hablas Espanol" luckily i knew enough spanish to reply with "poquito pero es no bien",she then showed me round the house speaking only in spanish, I understtod everything apart from when she explained how to make the shower hot, I later discovered that you can't make the shower hot, only less cold.

Ok i'm going into too much detail,I havnt even got 45 minutes into Guatemala yet.

I set up all my stuff in the room then decided to just chill for a bit because I was tired, I thought I'd wait for some people to get up so that i could meet my housemates for the next 2 weeks... I fell asleep as soon as I laid on the bed... I woke up again around 11am after 2 hours street, no one was around so I went to explore the city. Its actually quite a small town, I can easily walk from one side to the other in about 20 minutes-half an hour. It was really busy though, mainly because its independance day weekend,. I tried to find the school using my map, unfortunatley the map is difficult to follow and I couldnt see it, I decided to look for the supermarket instead, which turned out to be where it said on the map, so dont start blaming my map reading skills.

After getting back from the supermarket I met 2 of my housemates Bertie and Bridget, I ended up leaving again straight away and we went for lunch and they showed me the school. At 6:we went to check out the festivities in the parque central. It was heaving and we only stayed for about half an hour before going for food. I got a beer with my meal and it actually turns out to be very nice, also every place I have been to has loads of vegetarian options so I wont be eating any butchered animal carcas in Antigua, hopfully it will be a similar deal in Livingston.

I hyad my first spanish lesson this morning, it was 4:30 long and my maestra Christina didnt speak any English to me apart from the odd word that I wanted translating. Not only that but I understood most of it so I may be ok at this spanish thing after all.

I just got back from our second trip to see the festivities as its actually indepedance day today. Yesterday there were loads of people running around with torches, as in torches similar to the olympic torch, not battery operated ones. There were also lots of bangs, I assumed that these were fireworks untill I noticed the man launching motars into the air which exploded at the top of there arch, it seemed pretty silly to me, al it was doing was making a load bang, couldnt he have just hit a dustbin lid or somthing for a fraction of the price. Today the same man was there again but the runners were replaced by big bands playing while they marched round, some of them danced aswell, it was wierd to watch all the drummers perfoming quite complicated dance moves whilst playing at the same time.

Unfortunatley all my photos of the event are pretty poor, i cant get close enough to stuff for the flash to be worth using and i dont have a tripod so night photos come out blurred, Ive had to resort to using a very high sensitivity but they come out very grainy, I may purloin Bertie's photos as he has a proper digital SLR camera and claims his can take good night photos... we shall see.

Ok, thats it for now, maybe I'll write again friday or somthing, if theres anything worth saying.

Later