Two Years Ago…

Wednesday, November 14th, 2007

Today, two years ago, we took our one way flight to Ecuador and stood in Quito airport with our “shiny new” backpacks and hiking boots with no idea what we were to do next. Of course, you could go with the “pro life” way of thinking and say it all started much earlier (our journal begins some time before this date and the idea was conceived even earlier), but I’d say that today is the birthday of our new life, and just like a baby, when first out of the “safe zone”, on that day, in that airport, we were ready to cry.
Read from the beginning.

Сегодня, два года назад, мы стояли в аэропорту города Кито в Эквадоре, со своими новенькими рюкзачками и ботиночками, не имея понятия что-же мы будем делать дальше. Не обратного билета, не брони в гостинице у нас не было. Сегодня “день рожденья” нашей новой жизни, хотя “зачатие” произошло раньше (да и журнал начинается раньше этой даты), и так-же как младенцу который покидает спокойство утробы нам хотелось плакать.
Читай с начала.

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Don Salvador

Sunday, November 11th, 2007

For the first time in the two years of this trip (or ever) after taking a first look at a place, and more accurately – at the owner of the hotel and the clown-faced hooker at the door (I wonder if she came with the room), and I came back to the Shurik with a firm: “I want out. Sails up. If we hurry, we might just get to Honduras before the border closes.” I am by far not a touchy prude, and have adopted a thick skin between the “hey baby” and “sweet ass” Latin American machismo often comes with, but the creepy vibe coming from the slimy-squirmy man at this per-hour hotel that was recommended by the guidebook, was nauseating, and before he had a chance to ask how much would I be charging, I bolted out. Santa Anna of El Salvador – the town we were in, was described by the same book as “pleasant”, though we felt like we would need our recently purchased machete as we go in search of food that night, so Shurik had no objections.

The sun was diving down faster then we could drive, and within a few miles of the border we decided to spend the night at a small village famous for its crafts. El Salvador’s most famous artist – Fernando Llort – lived here and taught the villagers his enjoyable, yet tacky, painting stile. Now, the crafts made in this village of La Palma are the main handmade craft in El Salvador and are exported all over Central America and beyond. As we were driving, you didn’t need to stop and visit a craft’s stand to find out what the style actually was. The walls of homes we passed by and even electricity poles were decorated with simplified images of farmers, their wives, rabbits, birds, trees, and armadillos, all in a colorful, slightly angular, and simplistic stile. Never the less we still stopped at an Artesania. I came out of the car with all intentions to visit the shop, but an old building with what looked like numbered rooms in the far end of the yard drew my attention. We were looking for a place to spend the night, and anything would look better then the last place I have seen, but I sill was holding back and tiptoed around not sure if I would like to meet the owner of the place. The facade of the rooms bore the same cheery style as the rest of town, and, as I was examining the hammocks near by, I noticed a men in his sixties was swinging in one of them. We got to talking, and Don Salvador, as turned out, was the owner of this hotel, the oldest in El Salvador. He was very excited about visitors from Ukraine and Belarus, and offered us the room for five dollars per person instead of the fourteen we later learned it was going for. I was just excited about the clean bed and the hot shower I was coveting for days. Thus, began a wonderful friendship that led to us staying a month in Don Salvador’s Hotel La Palma with all necessities like room, food, internet, and even spare parts for GreenGo which arrived at this destination emitting sulfuric odor due to the acid in the battery boiling up, (and us all this time thinking that we were just passing by volcanoes or hot-springs), all paid for by our generous host as a thank-you for Shurik fixing up his website which for the past five years no other passing by traveler managed to do.

( How to save an Armadillo and eat a baby Hammerhead too )

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THE Yellow Church

Friday, November 2nd, 2007

It’s big, it’s Yellow, it’s so much like a giant glaze covered cake your teeth hurt just from looking at it, and you can find it on every postcard stand in Guatemala.

We came, we saw, “click”, we left. It must have been the shortest excursion so far…

( a usual scene on the streets of Central America for the past five month )

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Day of the Dead

Thursday, November 1st, 2007

Lady! Are you serious?! In heels? On cobblestone streets, downhill, with a baby in a sling and a ton of flowers for the dead? I never could understand when and how stilettos made their way into the indigenous wardrobe, but we are yet to see one traditionally dressed woman without a pair, unless they are barefoot. It is the Day of the Dead, and we have been visiting cemeteries in Xela and Chichi. We would have been far from here by now if only Shurik didn’t spend a week trying to fix GreenGo yet again, but the final touches had to be left for a local mechanic. The repair man turned out to be a practicing Jew even if by a long stretch, with a handful of fellow worshipers he gathered above the garage to read from a fairly well bound xeroxed copy of the Old Testament. According to him, our van broke down because we were non-practicing Jews. He wasn’t too upset with us, though, especially after I gave him a crash course in all the different ways to refer to god in Hebrew.

As for the dead, I have never seen a festivity that colorful and family oriented as the one thrown for the deceased. Children were flying kites, some store bought, others made from plastic bags; while their parents set up picnics and arranged heaps of flowers on colorful tombs. Some of the crypts were as simple as paint drenched cement molds or even grass covered dirt bumps, and could be as complicated as five meter high mausoleums shaped like pyramids or spaceships. My favorites once of all were the multiplex ones with foundation for extra levels to accommodate the next generations. I would imagine it brings a sort of comfort to know that when your time comes you too will get your slot and vase of calla lilies.

Where I come from, a cemetery is a scary place where uneasy ghosts might dwell and tombstones have faces of our loved-once scratched into the cold granite. Here life and death don’t have such a colossal chasm between them. Here people come for a reunion, and while, I am sure, they miss those who are no longer around, they spend this time treating them as participating members of the family, instead of grieving and making the last memory of them a very sad one. Unfortunately, I have some cemetery experience, and I have to say that to me, having a day where the whole family would gather in joyous remembrance would have been more therapeutic than shrouding in black and crying over untimely death.

( More Photos )

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