NOTA #4: From Maya ruins and a faded Carribean paradise (HONDURAS) to splendid Spanish Colonial towns (NICARAGUA)

Before starting to wrote this blog entry I found myself lying in a perfectly comfortable hammock within the courtyard of a Granada-based hostel called "Bearded Monkey", finishing Alex Garland's second novel "The Tesseract" which started out as a pretty dull read and ended rather engrossing, exciting, well-done.

Apart from much reading and less relaxing I am still traveling, though, and am about to head on to quite a famous double-vulcano island called Ometepe tomorrow - by ferry (which only leaves two times a week) plus I am having free internet tonight, so that's when I figured it's time for a little update. I arrived in Granada just last night and spent all day long discovering the grand Andalusian namesake, still having enough time for a short, but interesting daytrip to another Nicaraguan city called Masaya (famed for its artesanía/handicraft). However, I will remember that town in particular for it's very weird-tasting wannabe-peach/syrup-juice.

Let me tell you about Honduras first, though: at the time of NOTA #3, I have just visited the Maya ruins of Copán (near the Guatemalan boarder), about to catch a bus to the Carribean Island of Utila (within the Islas de la Bahía some 60+ km off the coast). Utila had been, well, somehow dull and not exactly what I imagined of a dream-ridden paradise. This said, I was not diving there. In fact, I found myself to be very likely the only one person on the entire island that had no what-so-ever interest in diving - that made it dull; plus the utterly disturbing traffic, noise and the practical absence of (close-enough) fine beaches to swim and snorkel in. I managed to rent a kayak, however, and after one hour navigation through wild, smelly and crab-filled mangrove jungle I ended up on the wild and beautiful open ocean. A superb and Robinson-Crusoe-like moment! Also, I got a decent teint now, yippie.

I decided to leave after two nights (August 27) and while standing at the ferry pier towards the mainland I made the acquaintance with Ian from Seattle, Washington, who ended up being my companion for (almost) the next 24 hours. His next target had been San Salvador, I simply wanted to go to any place in Nicaragua - the big departure bus terminal in San Pedro Sula (Honduras' 2nd largest and fairly dodgy city, also - sadly - known as Central America's AIDS capital) had been our connecting point. We hoped to still catch a bus in the early afternoon - and were both endlessly frustrated after figuring we wouldn't. One can certainly imagine happier places to get stuck in over night. Berlin-Marzahn, e.g. Or maybe Wladiwostok (Владивосто́к). However, we pretty quickly found a way to turn our downbeat mood into something purely fun and dopamine-ridden. Vegetable shopping in a nice market, not far away from our expensive, jail-like, but otherwise colourful hostel - the eternal highly-praised ceremony of cooking - a delicious, rewarding meal - watching a Spanish-subbed Nathalie-Portman-film - cold beer.
Perfect.
And then we met a French girl who asked for a cigarette, thus telling about how she had been knocked down and robbed earlier this morning while standing at the exact same bus station we were about to take our buses from the next day. Her passport, credit card and cash all gone. Luckily she had friends in El Salvador who would now come and support her with money. Five o'clock in the dark and sweaty morning, waiting for a San-Salvador-bound bus, kicked in the face and robbed.
We were getting up at three a.m., taking a cab to the station half an hour later (not without a small breakfast) and finding ourselves waiting with our backpacks, feeling sleep-drunken and not quite as helpless due to better company.
My León-bound bus came first, and off I went. Ever since I'm in Nicaragua, I feel a dozen times more secure and relieved - even though it might just be a pretty subjective estimation. I like it here a lot!

Okay, time for some pictures, eh? Not quite.
Sorry. Your talk of hell threw me. I could have given you better answers.
This is the way it is. Galaxies drift away fro each other like painted dots on an expanding balloon, and hydrogen atoms have a single proton. There are hundreds of millions of hydrogen atoms in a single drop of water. Galaxies contain hundreds of millions of stars. [...]
Take six cubes and arrange them into the shape of a crucifix. Take two more cubes and stick them either side of the crucifix, at the point where the cross is made. Now you have a tesseract. A tesseract is a three-dimensional object. A tesseract is also a four-dimensional object - a hypercube - unravelled. A hypercube is a thing you are not equipped to understand. You can only understand the tesseract.
This means something.


GALERÍA DE IMÁGENES

I

Yummie breakfast in a Copán comedor. Hostel rules (look closer).


II

On the way to the Maya ruins at Copán.


III

Hidden temples.


IV

The one place where their king used to sacrifice himself for the deity (that sometimes meant, cutting off his penis).


V

Parque Central, Copán.


VI

En la noche.


VII

Sunset in Utila (Bay Islands).


VIII

A nightly visitor.


IX

Some swimming and good-bye.


X

Pepsi commercials are virtually ubiquitous!


XI

Cooking dinner at Tamarindo hostel, San Pedro Sula (Honduras).


XII

Discovering León, Nicaragua.


XIII

Revolutionary art.


XIV

At the theatre.


XV

The central and minor church.


XVI

Hostel life.


XVII

The city's namesake.


XVIII

Sunset cathedral.


XIX

Pacific beaches; at Las Pañetas.


XX

For cosy moments.


XXI

Insomnia, literally.


XXII

In Granada. At Lago Nicaragua.


XXIII

More cathedrals (I know, but they simply have heaps of them! And these ones here are by far the country's most impressive, they say).


XXIV

View from... you guessed it.


XXV

Public bus parade at Masaya market/bus station.


XXVI

Masaya oddities.


XXVII

No further comment.


XXVIII

Granada and Masaya. That's it! Off we go.



Daytrip to the the Pacific Coast at Las Peñetas, a little village close to León, Nicaragua.



This piece of popcorn seems to quickly move along the sidewalk, but is merely carried away by an eager group of hungry ants. Granada, Nicaragua.

Just a random note and some additional video material from the last two weeks. I'm in León, Nicaragua right now - a very pretty, secure and generally friendly colonial town (AD 1524) -, critically listening to the latest Peppers album "I'm With You". Still safe and sound, even though I heard a dozen rather eerie stories from fellow travelers. However, none about the places in Nicaragua (my fourth country on this trip) I am going to visit - I'll be trying to avoid Managua, the capital (but will have to pass through tomorrow, right after a little detour to one of these fabulous black beaches).

Right below you can (hopefully) see a Google map of most of the places I visited so far, alphabetically ordered. However, the sun is just about to set and I'll be heading out to take some more pictures before coming back to answer some mails. Hi Rita, I'm with you! Silke, sister-heart, I wrote you a second postcard this morning, more to follow.


Ver mapa más grande


I

Mighty magic Guatemalan thunderstorms, filmed from a farm at the Pacific Coast.


II

Crossing Lago Atitlán on a small motorboat from Panajachel (Gringotenango) to small and peaceful San Marcos.


III

Jumping into Lago Atitlán, a vast ancient vulcano crater lake in Guatemala; close to San Marcos.


IV

Enjoying the unspoiled view from Tikal's biggest temple (Templo IV) in El Petén (Guatemala). You can see, among other temples, Templo del Jaguar and hear a whole bunch of howler monkeys in the back. The setting had also been used to shoot the end scenes in "Star Wars IV: A New Hope" back in 1977 (the Rebel base on Yavin IV).


V

Spider monkeys close to the Maya ruins at Tikal in El Petén, Guatemala.


VI

Listening to Reggea music while traveling towards the paradise-like Belizean coast at Placencia.

NOTA #3: Entre los mayas en GUATEMALA y los garifunas en BELIZE

Internet, after all. I planned on updating the blog since some days now, but always something (or somebody) intervened and I just kept on having a good time. It's definitely never really getting boring down here. I'm in Copán Ruinas, Honduras right now - having crossed the boarder to the third country just yesterday afternoon (after an intensive one-boat-five-buses-trip from Guatemala's Carribean coast, goddamnit). I just visited the Maya ruins closeby (hence the name) with a fellow traveler from North Carolina and even if it wasn't quite as exciting as Tikal (no monkeys, no ancient skyscrapers and super-expensive, but boring tunnel tours), at least I got away without any of these bites that gave me a hard time last week. So far. The internet connection is fairly quick and I will even be able to upload pictures at the end of my writing, however, it's not exactly supercheap and definitely not stable (the electricity just went off, but luckily I didn't start writing then; the person responsible noted that would be fairly normal for Honduras, however, so I will just stop worrying and love the bomb). Personal soundtrack for the moment: "For What You Dream Of" by Bedrock (feat. KYO). As loud as possible.

Right then! Bored already? Well, here we go. I started my trip through Guatemala last Monday (August 15) with a visit to Quetzaltenango (Xela), stayed there for one night, met one amazing person right at the start (that made me smile throughout the day) and continued to Lago Atitlán, also known as possibly the most beautiful lake in the world (I'm quoting Aldous Huxley here). Huxley also said the following: "Lake Como, it seems to me, touches on the limit of permissibly picturesque, but Atitlán is Como with additional embellishments of several immense volcanoes. It really is too much of a good thing."
(Meanwhile the electricity collapsed again, but I use GMail for writing now, which basically saved most of the above written. I'd wish I have my own little netbook here.) I stayed in a beautiful little place called San Marcos (far away from tourist-ridden Panajachel) and met up with Kiva, the girl from the U.S. I worked with on the farm. We were basically jumping from cliffs right into a huge ancient volcano crater lake, surrounded by some rather recent ones, still pretty impressive.

I took a shuttle bus from Lago Atitlán (via Antigua and Guatemala Ciudad, the dodgy capital) right to Flores in the north - a pretty comfortable overnight-trip through El Petén, Guatemala's biggest (and jungle-spread) district. On the way there I got to know Oliver, a curious, superfriendly and highly-interesting individual from Vancouver, Canada who shared my itinerary. Flores is situated on a small peninsula on a rather huge lake, pretty touristy (but very secure, I would also get drunk there for the first time - on my last night in Guatemala) and, more than anything else, the major starting point for Maya ruins explorations such as Tikal. We stayed in one sublime and superkewl hostel called "Los Amigos" (very recommendable!), ate mostly fresh fruits from the market in another town just close-by (Santa Elena), went for a swim in the lake and eventually made our way to Tikal the following morning (August 18). Tikal is just amazing and rather hard to describe with mere words. As we went there early enough there weren't many tourists around and we encountered quite a buch of both spider and howler monkeys (even though we would merely hear the latter and one wouldn't believe it, but it did sound like one massive Tyrannosaurus Rex getting pretty pissed on something behind the next temple). Templo IV is Tikal's highest plus it had been exceptionally interesting for me, personally, since George Lucas used the view for shooting his first Star Wars film back in 1976 (the Yavin IV rebel base at the end). We did some Yoga excercises on a smaller but very pretty temple later on. Also, I carried away quite some disturbing bug (and/or mosquito) bites which kept on annoying me for the following days.

Did I mention that I liked the hostel? I really did. It's a shame, Oliver's and my ways parted that soon, pero así es la vida, creo. I took a bus to Belize the following day where I spent the two nights. The first in dodgy, but pretty interesting and reggae-ridden Belize City - in a hotel with other (pretty random, alcoholized and noisy) travelers who were on their way to Northern cayes. When they would get stuck playing cards I strolled through the city and hooked up with some locals (some who actually didn't try to sell me dope).
The next morning I took a bus to Placencia (via Belize's capital Belmopan and the 2nd-biggest city Dangriga). Placencia is quite a relaxed and still pretty laid-back place with dream-like and palm-ridden beaches where that is definitely made for couples (I met two young U.S. Americans who spent their honeymoon there). I stayed in "Lydia's Guesthouse" (being aware of the irony) and talked with Lydia (who is around 50) to negotiate the price (since I have to pay a lot more being alone) and she actually told me her brother-in-law's last name would be Wagner as well (So much for the irony?).
I had quite a good night with two rather noisy, but comfortable fans, in total darkness (I shut down the windows for safety reasons, people apparently do try to break in occasionally).

I left Belize via their southernmost "city" Punta Gorda, not without having a long and most interesting conversation with a local barber while waiting for my bus connection (buses don't really stick to timetables) and he apparently appreciated my traveler's advice for setting up a shop (since he spent more than an hour talking after he delievered a big package of toys for his baby daughter onto the Belize City-bound bus. Nice guy.

Before eventually heading on to where I am right now (Copán Ruinas, Honduras, remember?) I had to cross Guatemala one more time (via speed boat right across the Carribean Sea) and stopped over in Lívingston for one night. Quite a special place. I didn't really fancy it too much at first - it's pretty dodgy and not as relaxed as people claim; however, my hostel had been a blast again! We were some 20 people all sitting together, while having a most delicious (vegetarian) dinner. It felt like being on a school trip, just more mature, fun and exciting. I ran into two Israeli girls later that night and we would hang out together for quite some time, sharing awestruck, memorable moments.

I would take a boat to Puerto Barrios (Guatemala's biggest harbour town) the next morning (August 23) and after quite a delicious breakfast, five consecutive buses (medium and small, all local) and a little annoying boarder crossing experience I eventually made it to my third Central American country. Our hostel (praised in pretty much every edition of Lonely Planet and called "En la Manzana Verde") is quite a shitty, boring dive and I definitely wouldn't recommend it. I originally planned on staying longer in town (for doing some laundry, after all, e.g.), but it's not really worth it. I talked to some girls from Madrid this morning (flawless Spanish, yippie!) and they filled my brain with a big bunch of pretty curious-sounding information about the island of Utíla (as part of las Islas de la Bahía). This is going to be my next target. I will likely leave tomorrow morning. Apart from everything I feel safe and sound. The only problem are my slowly dying headphones. I miss you too, Rita. I'm pretty sure you're having an amazing time, Donnie. I tried to call you, but you weren't anwering, cK. One other human creature being stuck in my mind, but well - así es la vida!

So well, since I haven't had problems with electricity for more than one hour, I will now try to upload pictures and videos. Meanwhile it looks like there is quite some storm setting up outside. Very beautiful.


GALERÍA DE IMÁGENES

I

In Quetzaltenango (Xela).


II

Lago Atitlán.


III

On the boat towards...


IV

...San Marcos (Lago Atitlán).


IVb

Vista de San Pedro, otro pueblo.



IVc

In Flores.



V

In Flores (Hostal "Los Amigos").


VI

Tikal: Templo del Gran Jaguar. Oliver y la vista del Templo IV.



VII

Más Tikal.


VIII

Belize City.


IX

Dangriga.
Placencia.


X

La playa en Placencia.



XI

"Lydia's Guesthouse". View from its terrace.


XII

Más Placencia.



XIII

In Punta Gorda.


XIV

In Lívingston, Guatemala.