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