Border Jump

Trip to Belize - Day One




3:40AM is a great time to get robbed. But the four o'clock shuttle is our best bet to get to Livingston before dark. I've gotta hop the border to renew my Guatemalan ninety day tourist visa. So I wait outside in the cold until it arrives. I hide behind a nook in the cathedral entrance on the one-way street, seen only when I want to be seen. My ride is late. I'm last on a list of about twelve people to buy my ticket, so I know I have plenty of time for an early morning spark session. *SHIKSHIK - PHOOM - HHHOOOP - PAHHHH*. 4:30AM and I got out of work three hours ago. Two months' work. No days off... Time to get into the holiday spirit.

The paddy wagon shows up, the driver hoists my bag to the top of the van and I cram in between eleven bobbing heads. I kick off my Chacos, spin sideways and jam my toes into the gap between the seat cushions. I curl into a tiny ball and rock with the sharp turns - forty-five minutes to the capital. We tumble out at the terminal. Taller travelers stretch their cramped up legs. I just smile and walk away. It's good to be travel size.

We jump on the massive coach bus for a lengthy bus ride up to Rio Dulce. I'm impressed at the quality of transit my two hundred Quetzales has purchased (about twenty-five bucks), but even more impressed with the land speed records our driver, Steve McQueen (apparently) seems to be breaking. Slow down, Turbo. One near miss with an oncoming semi was a little too close for comfort.

A few catnaps and short philosophical convos with my travel buddy Omar, and we're waiting for our water taxi. Due to Dale Earnhart's lead foot we're pretty early, so we post up in a cantina overlooking the bay. Nothing like two or three beers at ten thirty en la mañana to thoroughly drop you into "day off" mode. Next stop: Livingston.

We throw our bags in the front of the "lancha" and scramble for the seats nearest to the outboard; those give the smoothest ride. We push away and wind our way through two hours of absolute paradise. But before we do, we pass some of the most expensive real estate in all of Central America. Martha's Vineyard - Guatemala style. Mansions. No. Castles. With palm-thatched roofing, giant windows, guest houses, private marinas and massive shiny unused boats. Just one more reminder to the rest of us that rich people have nice cars. Wealthy people have nice yachts.

Our captain swings us south towards the narrowest opening in the sound. The east shore creeps up from the lake bottom into a proper swamp. Unnavigable. The west - steeply, and in the shape of an ancient fortress. One last bastion guarding freshwater Lake Izbal from real life pirates of the Caribbean. Built in 1644, it seems ridiculous by today's standards, but the stronghold closed a gap of less than 500' and was more or less effective against pirate raids throughout its lifetime.

On to the fun part, we flip a bitch and plunge north back into the jungle. Two curvy lefts and a right and we're very far away from civilization.  The water is smooth. The air is clean. THIS is the Garden of Eden. Everything wreaks of life. Gulls, hawks, and pelicans splash their targets from above. Herons and egrets turn their long necks to watch us go by. Cormorants pop up like prairie dogs. Kingfishers dart between the creeping banyon roots and vines. There is no shoreline, no sign of human footfall, just trees on top of trees on top of trees that grapple out into the water. The calibrated hum of the motor groans on.

We fall through a wormhole. A loophole in space and time. The deeper we go in, the further I feel from everything I've ever known. Yet certain things trickle back in. Blips of two-legged existence start to flicker on the radar screen. We are not alone.

I see a floating Clorox bottle. And then another. And another. And right before I get upset - I realize that this isn't pollution. This is the workplace. The office, if you will. Connect the dots. The scattered bottles trace a circle, and the circle holds a fish net. A slightly different type of cubicle. No perks, no Christmas bonus, but a hell of a nice commute. No road rage. No honking. No smog. The only traffic is the wind.

We come upon a water village of sorts. Every house/store/shed/outhouse is punched up on stilts. One boat buzzes by with a load of long timbers. A red rag flutters off the protruding ends. We stop at a small tienda to stretch our legs, take a leak and refill on beers. You can even buy more mobile phone credit. "Recarga Aqui! TRIPLE SALDO HOY!" Unbelievable. 

There's a small hot spring off to one side of the dock. Tiny fish smile and wag below the steaming pond. No one's in it so I give it a go. MAN! That's hot! But only at the surface. Heat dribbles out where the ripples lap the shore. From there it spills across the quickly deepening water, but never more than two or three inches down. This explains the very much uncooked fish swimming below.

Back in the boat. 

On the way out a young girl brushes her hair, naked and kneeling on the dock; the setting sun glimmers off her chest. I trace the light above. Two herons and six pterodactyls hang in front of cotton candy Monet clouds. I nudge Omar to take a look. He's on Facebook. I guess he bought some Saldo.

Enter: more boats, more nets, and more houses on stilts. I catch eyes with a local woman and her daughter. Being in utter vacationary bliss, I smile and wave trying to be polite. But I immediately realize I've made the wrong move. This is the tension between the inside and the outside worlds. They don't want to be my friend. They want things the way they were. Sometimes I forget. That even though we're pretty far off the beaten path - we're still beating it. We splash on.

Suddenly the river opens up to a parabolic horizon. Warm fresh air collides with cooler salty air. The same happens with water below us. Bienvenido, Atlantic Ocean. 

Livingston is an island off of the Guatemalan coast. We land at the dock greeted by Spanish speaking African descendant with dark black skin and bright blue eyes. “Wherejoo frum? Yoo ess ay – Ooooh Kay.” He takes us up the hill and points out the cheaper hotels and where we need to go to buy our lancha tickets for the next morning. We give him ten Quetzales for the trouble. This is his career.

Omar and I get our passports stamped at Immigration. We pick out a room with two hard beds and a door. Good enough. I grab a very bad sandwich with fake ketchup, watch the creeping darkness drain the twilight, and promptly pass out. Day One. Long. Hard. Awesome.

Long Time Gone

4 February 2014


I haven't looked at this blog in a long time. I'd imagined when I first started this that it would be a tool to help me and others keep track of everything that happened along the way. I think the reason that it stopped was because I did. Ok. Duh. But I mean physically. I stopped moving. Originally, I'd planned to keep track of all the interesting people and places I experienced along the way, and writing about those things stopped making sense when I stayed in Antigua. So I guess, I'll just have to reconsider the original idea for this blog. From here on we'll just consider every day an adventure. Because here, you never know what is going to happen.

I'll bring you up to speed.

******


Traveling is something I'd always wanted to do. Moving a lot as a kid not only got me prepared for traveling, it got me addicted. That's because there is no other experience that heightens all of your senses, challenges you, terrifies you, enlightens you, inspires you and humbles you all at once. Traveling - REALLY traveling, living in a different country outside your comfort zone teaches you more about the world, yourself, and your fellow creatures than anything else possibly can. THAT is why I chose to travel. I stopped traveling... because I ran out of money. Money, they say, does not buy happiness, but it does buy a lot of the ingredients. And that is a lesson that I've learned the hard way. Save your money.

So I live in Antigua, Guatemala.

I didn't choose to live here, and to be honest even though it is definitely one of the most beautiful, affordable, interesting, amazing places to be in or travel to... I don't want to live here. Antigua is what I call a "pirate town". More or less, there are five distinct categories of people you will encounter here:

Locals

These are the Guatemalan citizens that live and work here in Antigua. They were born either in Antigua or one of the close by pueblos. I'm 5'7" and I am on the taller side of their average height. Some of them are kind of darker, but bloodlines have definitely mixed. They are what you would call middle class and are generally very nice people.

Indigenous

Women wear colorful traditional clothing. Both adult men and women are usually quite short and very stalky. They're like little bowling balls. Thick torsos and strong as hell. They have gold teeth, tons of kids running around, and generally speaking they are very, very poor - but not always. Spanish is usually not their first language. There are at least twenty-two distinct Maya language groups. Hearing them spoken cracks something open inside of you, and you can't help imagine them dragging around giant stones to build the pyramids. Some of their faces look exactly like a lot of the old carvings. It's very eerie.

City Folk

These guys are assholes. Ok. Not necessarily. But that is the stereotype that they've earned from me and a lot of people who live here. When I meet someone from the city, that's the pretense that they have to work past before I respect them because all of their fellow citizens have fucked it up for them. Here's why.

Just like anywhere else in the world, the taller, the whiter, the fatter you are - the richer you are. (Not a rule, but a rubric). In the United States, we have very rich people as well, but unless you are one of them or you're working for them, you probably don't really understand how much more money they actually have than you. There is a huge separation between the middle class and the ultra wealthy. Here, it is in your face. You'll see $100K cars roll by an 80 year-old woman walking down the street with no shoes begging for a tortilla. So Guatemala is NOT a poor country. It has a HUGE amount of wealth (coffee, produce, textiles, etc). It is the distribution of it that makes the difference.

These rich bloodlines go directly back to the first assholes who stepped off those ships. The difference here as compared with the US is that everybody knows it. It's no secret. So the prevailing attitude is "Don't you know who I am?!" These people push everybody around and you really do have to be careful how you deal with them because they can make you disappear. They and their rich asshole children come to Antigua to fuck around and tell people what to do. You never have to ask them how much of Antigua they own because they'll be sure to tell you. I almost always do not like these people.

Expats

Some of these American/Canadian/Australian/British/etc. aka "gringos" that live here have been here for a long time. A lot of them will tell you they're from here. And while part of that's fair - Okay, you should be able to choose where to identify with - but don't believe them unless they have Guatemalan residency. It's one thing to spend most of your time in a different country, and another to pledge allegiance to it. I know. I'm going back.

Most of these people are cool. REALLY cool, actually. They're well-traveled, knowledgeable, opinionated and NICE. But sometimes they're not nice, and sometimes they're very pretentious. But they're almost ALWAYS more interesting and manageable then a lot of the really dumb people I meet in the states. And oh yeah. Expats like to drink. A LOT.

Tourists

All expats were once tourists. And all tourists might have been dumb Americans at some point. Some haven't quite metamorphosed by the time they make it to my bar. So I'm glad they're on their journey. Most tourists are pretty fun (especially the Australians) and they're almost always very nice. Some are idiots and assholes, as well.

Here in Antigua, we get a large number of Americans. Mostly from the West Coast, Colorado, and New York disproportionately. A lot of Canadians, Australians, Germans, Swedes, Dutch, French, Israelis, and a few from the Far East. But really, everybody comes through here. It's normal to have three or four different languages spoken around me at any time. I think I'm going to miss that more than I realize.

Tourists come here because they're on vacation and want to have a good time. For the older crowd, that means air conditioned bus rides to pyramids, overpriced food and shamelessly staged "cultural interactions", but that's what they want... So... Whatever.

For the younger crowd, they might be searching out adventure options. Ziplining, volcanoes, surfing, all that stuff. And generally speaking, they party hard. Drugs, sex, and rock and roll. During the high tourist season here, the bars just throb with hordes of drugged up Rumspringas.



SO.

All of these things mash together to create quite an interesting culture where pretty much anything goes. Honestly. The other day I was watching a movie with Las Vegas as the set and I realized, "Ah. Las Vegas is just like Antigua. Only a whole lot bigger and with newer buildings."

That's all for now. Maybe now you have a better idea of what Antigua is.