Archive for September, 2007
Tikal
Sunday, September 30th, 2007
It never ceases to amaze me how every slice of Mayan culture, every relic, every ruin that we visit, is a new experience time after time. Maybe, the thing is, we never expect it. It being the thing we end up liking the most. It doesn’t have to be the ruin itself, but perhaps what we find inside aside from the structures themselves. For that reason, as a general rule, I do not enjoy being told what we will be seeing and, if at all possible, where we are going. The idea is if you don’t get your expectations too high, chances are you’ll end up surprised. I, for one, love being surprised.
3am. Flores – a tiny tourist town on an island from which we are to be picked up for the Tikal sun-rise tour, is asleep, but there is a feeling that every local knows they will be awaken in the middle of the night by groggy, impatient travelers, speaking too loudly, while waiting for their tour-vans.
It was supposed to be just yet another ruin. Then again, we’ve never gotten to a site this early, and soon sleepy eyes widened, not at the sight, but at the sound of the jungle waking up.
Tags: ruins
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Finca Ixobel
Friday, September 28th, 2007
Now here is a place which is just like women and good wine, only got better with age! It is amazing that Carol, the owner of this farm – Finca Ixobel, has stayed here for as long, even after Guatemalan soldiers have executed an order to kill her husband Mike with whom she built this place. The killing has lead to a lot of commotion in the day, and the US even discontinued help it was providing Guatemala with, until the right people would be brought to justice, but from those that have been caught, the general who gave the original order has mysteriously managed to escape. Nevertheless, Carol and her farm continue to welcome backpackers who seem very happy to be here.
So were we. Especially now that the Guatemalan roads have once again busted one of our back shock-absorbers, and Shurik while crawling under GreenGo found that we never had one of the front ones to begin with, so this seemed like a good place to set up auto-shop.
As it turns out, VeeDubs are not nearly as popular in Guatemala as they were in Mexico and all parts need to be ordered from the Guat (Guatemala City). Whilst the boys had their fun fiddling with the car (Shurik loosing trust in Guatemalan mechanics with every passing moment), I and Rita explored the finca’s substantial area taking pictures of everything from mating butterflies, ants carrying flowers (love must be in the air), and bizarre looking plants that I am yet to find out what they are.
Spending only one afternoon on a three hour tiny hike to nearby cave, also on Carol’s property, was not nearly enough time to appreciate and really soak up the majesty of the Ixobel area, even though we saw a beautiful cave with stalactites/stalagmites, cave dwelling spiders and bats. But we took what we could get – our friends had a time constraint, and as soon as GreenGo was fixed and no longer holding us back, we brushed off the ticks, kicked the tarantula out of the bathroom and onto the grass where I could take a good picture of it, and moved on.
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( Mystery Plant )
( The Cave )
( Butterflies )
( Spiders )
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First interview
Wednesday, September 26th, 2007
Recognize the bloke in the yellow rectangle, first from the bottom? That’s right – Shurik! His blurb reading:
Alejandro Bernstein (you can stop laughing now)
Tourist
We were coming from Coban wanting to travel the whole republic, but are now stuck.
Apart from the actual wording being completely fabricated (some of the words in the “quote” in Spanish we don’t even know), it’s not that far from the truth. We were stuck just like everybody else going this way, as the rain pretty much washed out the road leaving only a thin layer of tar that people could tiptoe over to the other side.
Not looking forward to backtracking three hours only to go back up a parallel road, we deluded ourselves into thinking that the repair machines are coming and the road is an important one so it is likely to be fixed soon, but when colectivos began exchanging passengers across the collapse, and the truck drivers stretched out hammocks under their freights for what a looked like quite an extensive siesta, we decided to face the music and turn back. What we didn’t know is that detour involved 70+ km of dirt roads that eventually broke one of the rear shock absorbers, yet GreenGo safely made it to our next destination.
( Photos of the collapse, and around )
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Semuc Champey
Monday, September 24th, 2007
Finca* El Retiro was a classic case of good-place-gone-bad due to a positive review in the guide book. It’s sad, really, but unavoidable. We have learned to take the information in the so-called backpacker’s bible with a huge grain of salt, so when the bitchy blonde at the reception was acting, well… bitchy, even though the heading of the sheet taped to her desk read “No Bitching Policy”, we were not that surprised and tried to make best of a place that wasn’t really that otherworldly to begin with.
Looking back, there might have been a chance of me standing there in owe of it all if not only for the spoiled atmosphere in El Retiro, which was like a coveted passion fruit which you await for and then draw back, revolted, when served an overripe one with flies circling it like vouchers. But after all, this was only a place to sleep and eat. Semuc Champey was the real reason we were here. A natural stone bridge, 300m wide, with the river gushing underneath it and turquoise pools sharing crystal-clean water by way of small but surprisingly strong waterfalls, this place could definitely help one reach nirvana if one would only be lucky, or smart, enough to come here in between tour groups.
It’s gorgeous really, but like many other beautiful things in nature it takes only a closer, better, look to realize how dangerous and deadly this place just might be if you don’t watch your step. Watching the opening, the place where the water rushes under the bridge, each drop rudely shoving another out of its way, a second is enough for your mind to comprehend how helpless and fragile your body would be if only it was unfortunate enough to encounter such a force. My own mind, often being too overactive for its own good, has immediately sent me on a daydream of slipping on the wet edge and disappearing into the wet darkness to be obliterated by those bad-mannered drops. I stepped back and stuck my hand out to feel the harmless spray.
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Thank God
Sunday, September 23rd, 2007
Once again we leave San Cristobal. Last time it was because my mother and sister were waiting for us in Yucatan, and now we leave for Guatemala, where Gadi (![[info]](http://stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
gadikus), an inspector for Tel-Aviv’s drug enforcement, and his girlfriend Rita were waiting for us after Gadi got in touch with me through LJ and we made plans to travel together for a bit.
It’s funny, given Gadi’s occupation, that we had just turned down people who wanted to cross the border to Guatemala with us and split the cost of gas, because they fessed up to having a stash of weed with them. We don’t care much about other people’s recreational activities, but we simply didn’t fancy getting tossed at the border and consequently thrown into jail on either Mexican or Guatemalan side.
The border crossing was a zoo. Ask me today, and I will still not be able to tell you where was it exactly in that whole mess which vaguely resembled a market but was more like a circus with its own petting-zoo. We circled the narrow alleyways shoving people out of our way with GreenGo’s snout and finally weaseled into the right street leading to a stop in front of a cement cube. A man in a mask holding a little tank with a hose asked if we needed an “e-spray” for sixty peso. “We don’t want the spray,” I replied knowing all to well that this was a rhetoric question. For some reason, in Latin America, they always ask you if you want or don’t want something only to declare a second later that you only have one option. “No e-spray, no Guatemala,” the man smiled, and we paid through our teeth.
After this there were no more adventures at the border. A few formalities, a stamp here, a signature there, and we were in Guatemala, where Pepsi has clear dominance over Coca-Cola (the Mexican dominant), and the politicians’ mugs on huge vinyl posters are surprisingly more well made and feature more serious looking and slim individuals.
When we got to Antigua our friends were not at the hostel. They have taken a trip to a local volcano, and we spent the evening strolling around town, window-gazing, and in the process found the sort of craft I thought could be found only at Frida Kalho’s house. She has a whole wall of these, and they go something like this:
Rough translation by pofig37
Cost per plaque: around 50 dollars
It happened to Mr. Fernando River that he was very sick with fever and couldn’t come out to the toilet outside, so he had to do it in a bedpan and a scorpion climbed on him and by miracle of God didn’t bite, and make his disease worse, I dedicate this plaque for eternal veneration and ask God to grant him health and scorpion’s disappearance.
( More Plaques. NSFW, graphic illustrated violence, but there are funny ones too. )
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San Cristobal the savior – tamer of hardware
Thursday, September 20th, 2007
San Cristobal, you are a saint! Yes, yes, I know San Cristobal is a saint, but I’m talking about the amazing town of San Cristobal de las Casas in Mexico where we came back after almost a month journey in the Yucatan Peninsula and entered a magical zone where not only souls find peace and are able to unwind and relax, but harddrives as well succumb to the tranquil energy, stop giving error massages, and liberate, from their deathly digital grip, photos of Bassiliscus Vittatus that we have already considered dead and buried.
——-
Shurik came into the common area of Tata Inti hostel, where I was chatting up some Brits, with a victorious sparkle in his eyes. He took the computer from my lap and plugged in the card reader. “You…?!” I almost fell off the couch, but Shurik raised his hand in the air calling for complete silence and we held our breath as one by one the lost photos from Reserva Pantanos de Centla appeared unharmed on the screen.
Half an hour later I was done telling everybody and anybody in the hostel, who wouldn’t mind hearing, how much I love my husband and the genius man that he is. I came back to Shurik and demanded an explanation. After all, just an hour ago we were talking about how it sucked to lose these pictures, but sending the memory-card drive for recovery would cost thousands of dollars and was simply not an option.
-”I hit it,” said Shurik calmly
-”You did what?!”
-”I plugged it in, and when it started clicking again I just hit it until it stopped.”
And so, without further ado, the return of Uxmal and Reserva Pantanos de Centla which without these great visual aids, (this is me stroking my camera hand), would be unjustly unappreciated as I was lost in grief, and lost for words, in the time of their untimely death and implausible resurrection.
Toloque (Bassiliscus Vittatus).
A relative of a Parasaurolophus or a Charonosaurus perhaps?
Masks of the god Chac-Mol
Tip: if you go to Uxmal, buy bug repellent by the gallon and swim in it before the visit. Why? Well let’s just say that when I expressed to Shurik how I would like to take a photo of one of the suckers that were feeding on us, he said in all seriousness: “No problem, I’ll just step on its foot.”
( Three birds, two lizards, and a mystery reptile )
Tags: ruins
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Villahermosa
Wednesday, September 19th, 2007
Unfortunate but true, just like the book said, Villahermosa was not living up to its name. It was by far not a villa anymore, but a big town, and the only hermoso thing around was supposed to be the Park-Museum La Venta, were the original giant Olmec heads were put on display after being dug out in the nearby La Venta.
Heavily covered with bug spray, just like the guard and the ticket checker advised, we went in. The park was nice and full of archeological finds, but it also happened to be a zoo, and we were sad to find the only ones free to leave and enter this place as placed were Coaties, which here were something like the local rat. Besides them were turtles who didn’t seem to care much about being confined, Birds forced to enjoy a dirty cement pond that they are not able to leave after what was done to their wings, and restless monkeys in a green pit without as much as a spec of vegetation.
I interviewed a few furry prisoners and found out how deluded they are about the length of the sentence they are given in this prison. One expecting mother was showing me four fingers when I asked her, not realizing that both she and her children’s children will have to learn to accept the green pit as their home. In fact, even if she meant four generations, I suspect she was sadly mistaken as well. Many have already given up hope, and sit motionlessly with their arms folded, others hang from their tails, catch some sun, or lucky enough to get a conjugal visit. Looking at it all, I realize how much I dislike zoos and how in the future I would like to be taking my interviews in a place without cages.
( Inside )
Tags: ruins
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A Day to Hate and Forget
Wednesday, September 19th, 2007
The day was shit. No better word for it. Everything was wrong – our mood, the whether, the Coleman stove not working. We camped on a sea shore, but there was no breeze as we sat in the van, that seemed hotter and smaller then usual, for an hour – Shurik trying to fix the burner, and I, with the four eggs in my hands, ready to leap into breakfast making, without wasting a drop of precious fuel we were almost out off, and trying not to think about having to pee as that would mean opening the door and facing the mosquitoes that would not only bite me then, but get into the car and catch a ride with us for days, feeding on our bare feet.
( more… )
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