Archive for 2007
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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Head to head
Thursday, October 25th, 2007
No gates, no guards, or fancy signs. Just a one tree hill and a huge stone head peering out the charred ground. The head itself is black with soot – the locals have been coming to pray along its side and burned fires under its now chipped-off nose. There are candle remains and pieces of garbage on the ground. If it wasn’t so, I wouldn’t have believed this place is authentic. The air smells like sweet garlic, and I must admit that not having anybody’s permission to be here is a little exciting. This is somebody’s privsate property, probably the only reason this incredible relic is still here and not stuck behind glass in some museum where you are never sure if you are looking at a replica or the real thing. I prefer it here much better. Maybe because we actually had to hike up to this place, or for the fact that it is under the open sky, but one thing I am certain off: this one, to me, is the greatest, quietly exhilarating, experience I have had in Mundo Maya
Tags: ruins
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Quirigua – A Site for Sore Eyes
Tuesday, October 23rd, 2007
To make it easier to explain, a hot waterfall is, in many ways, a lot like a hot shower. For one, getting out is just as hard – you want to stay as long as time allows and just stand there under the pressure of the water, watching your skin wrinkle and feel your mind going a bit foggy from the heat. One way this hot waterfall was not like a hot shower, was that usually when we are in a shower, separately or together, we are not accustomed for a middle-aged Guatemalan man to sit there and watch us. At first, we hoped he is just going to see us to the falls, even though the trail was clearly marked, and leave, but he stayed “to guard our stuff” that needed no guarding as we took the camera into the water with us, and to “make sure we wouldn’t drown”. I thought about asking him to leave, and made sure he understands we were in no need of the above listed “services”, but nonetheless the man stayed, gawked, and finally, when his stare burned a deep enough hole in the backs of our heads, we decided to leave this marvel of nature with its relentless guard and continue for the Stellas of Quirigua.
A sight for sore eyes, the Stellas were magnificent and we would have thoroughly enjoyed them if only somebody, I will not point fingers (Shurik!), hadn’t neglected his contact lenses for months and then used them at the waterfall, where his right eye became a throbbing pink mass laced with alarming thin red veins. A site for sore eyes indeed…
Now, Shurik was in pain and I was faced with a dilemma: let my one-eyed hubby drive through the sunset on an, obviously, unfamiliar road, or take the wheel myself like our unwritten laws of emergency dictate? With all due respect, I was leaning towards letting Shurik keep driving. What? Have you ever driven our green monster? On Guatemalan roads? Aha, that’s what I thought. Shurik barely let me drive beforehand anyway, with excuses like: “Shurik, can I drive now?”-”What? In the mountains?! No, that’s way too hard.”-”Now?”-”In the city?! No, did you see that car swerve?!” So, to say the least, I was scared. To be entirely honest, I don’t even have the stature to drive GreenGo. Only to brake, I would have to practically stand with my whole weight on the pedal. And there are so many things to do, and with such force too! Left hand driving, right hand shifting, Left leg on the clutch, right leg motor. People should take a course in “rub your belly while patting yourself on the head” first, before being allowed to purchase stick-shift operated vehicles. Ah… (back of the hand on forehead). Now did any of you buy the “useless wife” routine? No? Good. Because, of course, I took the driver seat and did a pretty good job driving, going from “Yeeeeee! Mamachka!” when passing by trucks would send GreenGo into convulsions, to “Where is the fifth gear on this thing!” Yes, a great job up until the point I almost drove GreenGo off a cliff. In my defense, it was a small cliff, and who in their right mind builds a hotel parking on the edge of a cliff anyway?
Tags: ruins
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Contrasting Nature
Tuesday, October 23rd, 2007
One of my most favorite things on this trip are the little surprises. No, no. Not the “Wow, that pyramid is surprisingly tall”, or “Hey! Never thought I’d run into you at this end of the earth!”, but the more subtle ones that make me appreciate the world we used to live in. Revelations like “Wow, that toilet has a seat on it” or “Hey! And toilet-paper too!” make me smile. I love surprises.
Leaving ARCAS was hard. The animals became family, and the proud evidence of hard work, in the form of ugly blisters on our hands, made us feel like we really did something important here, even though it was something pretty much anybody could do. But we left, nonetheless, with now only two thoughts on our minds: Laundry and Hot Shower. I barely used any clothes on our stay here. The only thing I changed day to day was my underwear. There was just no point in wearing clean clothes knowing you will not only sweat through them, but also most likely get three different poo colors on it and, if you are really lucky, some vegetable residue from when the fruit-cart arrives and you have to carry forty pound bags of beets, on your back, a few hundred meters through the narrow paths. All that, just before breakfast. Now, the dirty and smelly stuff was isolated in a few plastic bags and ready to be boiled at the nearest opportunity. All, but one. My “Snoopy” shirt that I was wearing to work these past two weeks was beyond repair and on our last night I ceremonially burnt it in the campfire, right after we ran out of marshmallows and sausages.
The dirty laundry could wait, but our longing for a hot shower could not. It’s now been two weeks of cold showers that don’t really wash much off you, and you can roll the dirt off your skin as you stand there, dripping wet, trying to dry your hair when drying anything is impossible in this humidity unless you go stand under direct sun. Oh well, at least the cold water is supposed to be really good for the skin, and I figured that if I jump into the shower right after work, when I’m piping hot, there is a chance I will not freeze my eyebrows off. So now the mission is hot showers, but where is the nearest one? I suggested we go “regroup” for a night in Flores, but Shurik had a better proposition – Thermal Waterfalls! You’ve got to love this earth for what it comes up with…
( more… )
*Sorry for the big delay in the Journal. I’ve been out of commission with some stomach thing that sent my temperature to 103.6
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ARCAS Part 5 (or) Monkey Business
Saturday, October 13th, 2007
Oh the poo. The smell, the colors. I could paint with this stuff if it wasn’t so stinky.
06:45am. As many nights before, we spent the last night playing “Asshole” – a European card game, while the Germans, who now are the dominating nation between the volunteers, chose to ditch the rest of us and play “Yaniv” – an Israeli card game we taught them the night before. So now I drag my sleepy self out of bed and into foul-smelling work clothes, shove lenses into my tired eyes, and leave the volunteer dorm-rooms towards the Quarantine. If passing by the young loro cage is not going to give me the awakening jolt that I need (or deafen me permanently), the juvenile Spider Monkeys will.
We really are not supposed to interact too much with the animals. It’s detrimental to their successful return to the wild, and we are pretty much supposed to ignore them. Now, that being said, how exactly am I expected to ignore something jumping on my head? Ha?! How about my broom being stolen from underneath my nose by a swift wave of a tail, and the thief climbing with it up a six meter wall? Or wait, here, here is my favorite one of all. How about bouncing on my cage mate’s back, as she bends down for the water hose, sending the stream of cold water straight for my behind?! I bet they actually do understand what they are doing, and I think they think it’s mighty funny too.
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The juveniles are the only Spider-Monkey cage we are allowed to enter. These rascals have not yet reached their sexual maturity, and so are not aggressive enough too actually, let’s say, seriously hurt a volunteer. Chances are you will end up with poo on your shirt from one of them trying to catch a piggyback ride, but that’s as far as it might go.
Tags: arcas
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ARCAS Part 4 (or) Green
Thursday, October 11th, 2007
Green is my favorite color. See me walking on the streets of Guatemala today, and you will most likely notice me wearing my bottle-green pants (held up by grass-green belt), lime-green shirt, and swamp-green hat and hiking-boots. It is all part of my repertoire, and this very limited wardrobe, padded only by few more (non green) items, has grown on me with its limitations (I miss my closet), but has also liberated me (What closet? I finally don’t have to break my head deciding what to wear! Woo-hooo!), just as this trip has thrust all green and slimy on this earth into my hands with the words: “Love it, or leave it!”
I’ve chosen love. Be it small and slimy falling on my head like the Tree Frog or monstrous and warty-growths covered toads from the compost area – bring them all on! Just to think, if I’ve chosen otherwise, I wouldn’t had the chance to feed Baby Crocodiles, prying their long jaws full of tiny razor-sharp teeth with my nail and shoving drop-sized pieces of raw chicken down their throats. (I was not being a bully. This is the only way to make them swallow.)
On our day-before-last in ARCAS the project received an addition. Nobody I asked was sure exactly where from, but a two meter crocodile with half its tail missing has arrived to Quarantine, his massive jaws bound together with white tape and his body tied with rope. I have never seen a Crocodile this size that close up. The few minutes others deliberated on where to put it, I spent on my stomach, crawling around the reptile examining every green scale with great admiration.
( Close-Up )
Tags: arcas
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ARCAS Part 3 (or) Kinkajou – I choose You!
Wednesday, October 10th, 2007
I am a cliché. Out of all the crawly-cutie-fuzzy-wuzzys I chose the softest and most adorable of all – I am in love with Kinkajou! I never even knew such an animal existed. You could say it is a sort of cross between a monkey and a bear, but it’s so much more. Much softer then any monkey that I have touched, and as for bears… Guess I should consider myself lucky never being touched by a bear yet.
the Kinkajou and I
This Kinkajou was brought to ARCAS by people that bought him from traffickers on the border of Guatemala and Mexico (if I remember correctly), and right now it is young enough to be handled, but soon it will reach sexual maturity and will become quite aggressive. In retrospect, this is actually for the better. This way his contact with grabby humans (such as myself) will be limited, and it will remain wild enough to be returned back into the jungle.
I couldn’t remember some of the names of the animals we encountered in ARCAS, so I turned to Wikipedia. It turns out, Kinkajou is in fact a Raccoon! Well at least from the same family, which is Procyonidae (raccoons), just like the Pizote (see under the cut) which ARCAS had three of: Adult male, female, and a juvenile. A perfect little family, only that the “father” was extremely aggressive. Wile the adult female was very friendly and climbed the walls of her cage for the passers by to scratch behind her ear, the male bit anybody he got a chance to. Wendy – a girl from the States who left the project a day after we arrived, entered the Pizote’s cage (not knowing that this cage was off limits) for one last photo, and got bitten so badly her wound wouldn’t stop bleeding hours after the incident. I and Tiffany (a former nurse from the States) had to pressure-bandage her that evening with our own supplies.
Speaking of aggressive, all the animals mentioned above are from the same Suborder: Caniformia (the Order being: Carnivora (carnivores)), and the most hostile of which, at least in ARCAS, I found were members of the Mustelidae (mustelids) family – the Tayras. Seemingly harmless at first, they would be the animal I would least like meeting in the jungle. Give me a full-grown Jaguar over two of these any time. At first, I couldn’t understand why their cage was off-limits for the volunteers at the first place. To me they just looked like magnificent weasels with their coffee-colored bodies, and beige heads. They looked like something my Kinkajou cold grow into, but after Alejandro (our twenty-four-year old ARCAS vet) has let me join-in on one of the feedings, and I almost lost a hand trying to feed a banana to one of them, all the gentle feelings I had towards the Tayras have dissipated.
Tayra
( Pizote )
( Raccoon )
( Jaguar )
( Margay – The only Feline in ARCAS whose cage we were allowed in. )
( Ocelot )
Tags: arcas
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Howler Monkey
Tuesday, October 9th, 2007
Tags: arcas
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