This is not a vacation, it's my life.

Dead Journal

2005-06-14T00:39:18Z

Well, I'm back living in Los Angeles, though I'm leaving for New York for a month tomorrow. I've pretty much abandoned this journal, but I'm kind of keeping one on myspace.

Thanks for reading.

http://www.myspace.com/hobosapien

Back to the U.S.

2005-03-04T00:10:16Z

Well, I knew all long that this was going to happen. I just didn't think it would be so soon.

Although my mom's health has stayed about the same, with some ups and downs, it's just time for me to take responsability. My aunt Marcia has been gracious enough to take care of things for the last year and a half that I've been gone (six months traveling Mexico and Central America, one year in Costa Rica), but she has so much going on herself that she needs me to come back and handle my mom's month to month care.

Fortunately, there's no specific health emergency, so I have a little bit of time to get used to the idea that my time in Costa Rica is going to be cut short, or at least shorter than I was planning. More over, I have time to get used to the idea that I'm going to be back in the U.S., pretty much indefinitely.

And two of my best friends, Amy and Christine, are coming out for two weeks to go see and do those last things I'd wanted to see in Costa Rica but was putting off until my friends came to visit.

I haven't bought my ticket back yet, but it looks like I'll be coming back to Southern California around March 21st. I have no idea what my life is going to be like there, I can't even begin to imagine.

Sick on the Dream

2005-01-08T01:42:24Z

I had a dream last night that the dream was over,
I came outside,
you were opening the garage door,
“We got to talk,”
I already knew about what,
“C’mon!” I pleaded, “At least give me your attention.
Look me in the eye when you’re gonna break up with me.”
You turned to face me,
“You left a quarter inch of your penis inside of me,”
You took it out of your jeans pocket and showed it to me,
like a little piece of raw bacon it was.
“Keep it, I got plenty more.”
You were disgusted by my joke, I knew you would be,
I knew the joke would fail, but I had made it anyway.

Just then, a flock of ducks flew over the run-down house,
They swarmed together in a solid triangle,
flying impossibly close to each other,
“Look!” I shouted, “Ducks!”
You rolled your eyes, but smiled in spite of yourself.
“It’s not like I’ve never seen ducks before,”
“But they were flying in an unbelievable pattern,”
By then though, they had dispersed a bit,
“It’s still a lot of ducks,” I continued,
“More than I’ve ever seen in the sky at once,”
It was true, there was ducks everywhere,
almost skimming the rotted brown shingles of the rooftops,
You weren’t impressed, you were about to go back inside,
to all the people watching that weird movie about the old hotel,
and back to your new lover,
to lie on the dirty, green, carpet with him.

“Wait, I said, “Could you at least talk to me a minute?”
I wanted you to tell me,
I wanted you to explain why you were leaving me,
why they always do.
Somehow, I already knew though,
It was that same old reason,
Sometimes, something just changes, you don’t feel the same anymore,
And when the dream is over, it’s just time to go.

The Benediction of Judas

2004-10-01T20:50:42Z

This is a poem I wrote almost a year ago in Guatemala. It's gone through a few changes, so I thought I'd repost it. Personally, I think this is the best poem I've written so far. But poetry is just an excercise for me, like Sylvia Plath says, "Poetry is what we write when we're not writing," or something like that. Anyway, I like writing it, it's like recording pure thoughts. My only concern is that it's too abstract, and that the abstraction is just added on to obfuscate meaning in an attempt to add depth. I mean, like this poem, a lot of it came from the dreams I was having, and most of the first stanza was already in my head as words when I woke up, so even I don't really know what a lot of it means. Like the 10th note, I have no idea where that image came from or what it means, but I like it, so I wrote it down. So take it for what it is, I guess is what I'm saying.

-----

The Benediction of Judas

The 10th note,
how's that, Mr. Bukowski?
malaria inspiration
like pistols at dawn,
the sky rattles
silent as cigarette burns on dead Christs.

Channel 13 destructions.
the streets scream,
the cock crows
but only twice this time.
dogs howl,
howl for the sick,
howl for the dying,
howl for the cigarette god,

red light
blue light
no light
Christmas is over, the cock crows again
but the denials have always been there
I am Peter, I am Thomas,
I am the rope
still swinging in the Potter's Field
I am the unmarked grave.

the bottle of Cuban rum
taunts me with its near emptiness
down below the city is waking up
from sex attic, dead cousin, dreams.
the sun, I desire him
my ankles crackle and burn,
and I'm nearing the center of the world
but nearing empty,
that same emptiness of 5am bottles and 5am people,
and sleeping alone in Guatemala hotels.

the cigarette god will have to wait,
the Prophecy of the Smiling Egg is coming true.
Again.

Vomit-Mouthed and Sweating in the Rain

2004-10-01T20:47:50Z

I wrote this poem a couple months ago, but I mailed it to Kari in Norway, not realizing I didn't have another copy. Well she was nice enough to type it out and email it back to me, and here it is with a few changes. I guess I'm still not entirely happy with it, but oh well, I've done all I care to do for now, unless you have some suggestions, that'd be appreciated. It's basically just about living in Monteverde.

-----

VOMIT-MOUTHED AND SWEATING IN THE RAIN

Someone left a Rubic’s cube in the rain,
One side, the yellow side,
facing me, completed,
The colors seem forceful, rude,
obscene against the dirt and mud,
like another package tourist.

And the cube so brightly abandoned
looking very much like the 80’s,
and very much like my childhood,
and very much like a rubic’s cube,
As I shamble unsteady up another hill,
Vomit-mouthed
sweating in the rain,
Drank enough to bend a metal road sign-
crinkled like paper from too many shamble-home drunks before me.

Near the top, the moths come out,
to pass like bats under the streetlights,
And I stumble-stop, like the devil’s donkey,
up the last hill
my mind full of sand and fog, and all the things that don’t matter.

The guaro rots my belly eats my brain,
But it’s not for the tourists, not for the rain bats,
- It’s all for John the Baptist, an offering to good ol’ Jack Bap
And for that unloved little Rubics cube,
Hitchhiker-stuck on the highway.

Another Dream and then some Poems...

2004-10-01T20:44:01Z

This dream ended up being really damn cool, but sorry if you're bored of dreams, right after this I'm going to post a couple poems.

Anyhow, I was skateboarding around New York (where I've never been, but would very much like to go some day) and having a damn good time, landing tricks in slow motion I could never do in real life. Then I stumbled upon this huge debate between Bush and Kerry. Kerry was kind of just there talking to people rather nondescript and Bush was like on this huge platform surrounded by all these old, businessman looking dudes, and they were all screaming and shouting with bullhorns and making this huge ass noise.

I think it's cause I picked up a Time magazine and they're saying that Bush is ahead. Oh God, if he wins, I swear, that's the last of the hope I have for America. I think I'd be in full suport if it's complete destruction.

Bus Driver

2004-08-20T20:39:42Z

Man, another weird dream. Serves me right, I went to bed at about twelve the night before and slept until twelve thirty. God, that makes me feel like such a slob.

So this time, I find myself a grown-up in my kindergarden classroom. I'm working as an assistant to my old kindergarden teacher Mrs. Mowel (the owl), except I'm wearing this shirt with cut off sleaves and feeling really embarassed about all the tattoos on my arm. I ask the teacher to excuse me because I have to go pick up Alice and Victor for some reason.

When I get into the parking lot, I notice their is a whole in the windshield of the bus I'm now the driver of. Apparently, my Dad had come to meet me, but I was busy in class, and he had to wait for so long, that he went to the cafeteria and had a bowl of wine. Apparently, since it was an elementary school, they didn't have wine glasses despite the fact they had wine. Well I guess he got really drunk off this wine and he smashed a whole in the window of my bus!

I got in anyway and it was full of kids. I had to drive them all home, except I didn't really know the route. A lot of them looked liked younger siblings of kids I went to school with, so I kind of made up this route going by the houses where they used to live. Except for some reason, the steering wheel was way in the back of the bus, and I had to look over all the heads of the students to drive, I thought for sure I was going to crash this thing.

About that time I woke up and looked at my watch to see it was 12:30. Serves me right for sleeping so late, I thought, then I went down for some breakfast of salchichon and eggs.

La Migra!

2004-08-20T20:31:02Z

Some funny stuff happened last Friday, when Immigration came to town. I was at Moon Shiva, and I had just finished mopping up the women's restroom. I was trying to put the mop back in its place in the kitchen, but some people were in my way. There was salsa muic playing, so I started dancing around with my mop for a couple seconds, waiting for the cooks to move, when suddenly Nir comes from behind and says just short of shouting, "Alan! You're not working." I didn't know what exactly he meant, did he mean to say I should be working, or that he was dismissing me for the evening for goofing off and because we weren't that busy, or what. Why is it that when you fuck around for two seconds, dancing with your mop, your boss comes up from behind you? I had a real puzzled look on my face, then he adds, "Immigration is here, so you're not working right now if they ask you." He'd already explained they might come by, so I was relieved and amused. They started checking people's passports and stuff, and I just went down the little hill and hung out at Norberto's house with him and LeRoy for awhile. When I realized they were going to be staying for awhile, I went back up and sat around with Clara and whoever, still nor working. I guess they asked Clara for her passport, but all she had was her CPI ID, which they excepted. They never asked anything from me, and after about an hour and a half they left and I resumed working.

It was really weird to be on the other side, to be the semi-illegal alien working in the restaurant illegally and hiding from La Migra. Although it's also kind of odd that you come all the way to Costa Rica, and the English speakers are mostly the waiters and the Spanish speakers are mostly the cooks (at least at this restaurant).

Anyhow, I thought the whole thing was kind of funny. But then I found the next day, that one of my friends, Micheal, who also teaches English at CPI got deported! He also works at the Pension Santa Elena, and they came in there too and asked for his passport and he was two weeks past his 3 months. He never bothered going to Nicaragua and back because he had a plane ticket for a couple weeks from now, but Immigration nabbed him. He spent about five hours in the communal hall in Santa Elena, then got on a bus, the only gringo, everyone else in th bus was Nicaraguan, and they were all taken to the jail in Puntarenas. He was let go the next day because he had a plane ticket and allowed to stay until the day of his flight, but he's banned from Costa Rica for 10 years! Apparently though, they wrote his name wrong on all the forms, so he might be able to come back. Still, it was all somewhat of a surprise to me. People had told me that Immigration was really relaxed, that you can stay past the three months and it doesn't really matter. Now I'm really glad I went to Nicaragua before my three months were up and I stayed the whole three days before coming back to Costa Rica, as per the law. That would be really fucking ridiculous to get kicked out of Costa Rica before I managed to get my residency here. Poor Mike, and now CPI is down to just two teachers and there's about 10 students that want to start classes.

Nicaraguan Joke

2004-08-20T20:24:06Z

Here's an example of a Nicaraguan joke. Basically, it's the standard kind of Pollack joke I used to tell as a kid, before I had any concept whatsoever of what a "Polack" was. Do kids still tell Polack jokes these days? I know I'm going straight to hell for repeating this joke and all, but I just wanted to give an example of the tone and humor of the Nicaraguan jokes told here in Costa Rica. It actually has some intersting social commentary in it, in that the Nicaraguan tries to immitate a Costa Rican, which I've noticed many Nicaraguans do, anxious to integrate themselves here. Many of them start pronouncing the final s and are embarassed about their native dialects.

It's not that funny, really, pretty cheesey actually. I think it was funnier for me in Spanish because there was the added delight of being told a joke in a foreign language and understanding it. It seems like almost everything is funnier in Spanish.

Anyhow.

So this Nicaraguan walks into an appliance store and he asks the clerk, (told in Spanish the Nicaraguan's accent makes more sense) "I like thi TV, how much doe it cost?" The clerk smiles and says, "Ah, you must be Nicaraguan. 40,000 colones." The Nicaraguan says, "40,000 colone! But how did you know!?" And the clerk replies, "I have my way of knowing."

So the Nicaraguan comes back the next day, trying to disguise himself as a Costa Rican. "I really like this TV, how much is it?" The clerk smiles and says, "Ah, you're Nicaraguan. 40,000 colones." The Nicaraguan is frustrated, "But, but, how do you know?" The clerk replies again, "I just have my way of knowing."

So the Nicaraguan comes back again in another disguise. "I like this TV. How much is it?" The clerk just laughs and replies, "Oh, so you're Nicaraguan. 40,000 colones." The Nicaraguan was upset, "But, how could you possibly know?" The clerk smiled and said, "Because this is a microwave."

Har, har, har.

Denet Dream

2004-08-20T20:08:30Z

I had this weird ass dream last night about the girl Denet that I was friends with briefly in 6th grade although we did go to high school together. I was cutting off Denet's arm, a little below the elbow, with like a big Katana sword. But it wasn't a clean slice, like I had to saw back and forth on it a bit. The weirder thing was, she was the one that wanted me to do it, and I was kind of hesitantly going along. So finally, I get the arm off, but we're both feeling kind of unsure about the whole thing. Although she felt to be around my age, she still seemed to have the mentality of a 6th grader, which is probably when I knew her best, us briefly being friends back then. I tell her, "We'd better hold on to that arm, they can sew it back on if you want."

The next thing I remember is I'm jumping around this swamp with all these snakes and crocodiles varying in size from small to cartoonishly large. I remember, someone, possibly Trevor (the herpatologist), was holding on to a very poisonous black snake by the tip of the tail. I was trying to keep my heel on his head so he coudln't bite me, because I knew just one bite and I'd be dead. So then I hopped away trying to avoid all the crocodiles as well.

Back to Denet. She seems to have sort of jammed the arm back into place, but she's stomping up and down on something on the ground, really polverizing it. She says, "I just want my arm, but not all the fingers." I look down and realize she is grinding her fingers into total mush beyond what you could probably reasonably due to severed fingers that you were jumping up and down on. I then looked at her arm and hand and although she had reattached it somehow, a few of the fingers were missing from the hand. "I don't need those fingers, do I?" she asks, "For like, rock climbing or anything?" I remember thinking in my dream that you sure as hell do need fingers for rock climbing, but not wanting to say anything since I felt responsibile for this whole severence thing in the first place.

Fucking weird. Denet Moldenhaur. Where the hell did she come from? I haven't seen her since like before high school was over, I don't even really remember her being around the last couple years of Charter Oak. Although for some reason, I remember hearing that she had been married and joined the army, but had gotten out of both the military and the marriage.

So the moral is, don't cut off your arms or fingers.

Nicaragua

2004-08-18T20:28:25Z

It's high time I wrote about the trip I made to Nicaragua about a month ago. By Costa Rican law, you're only allowed to stay three months. Then you have to leave the country for at least 72 hours before coming back in. I'd heard people talking about how they're actually pretty relaxed about the whole thing, that you don't really need to leave after three months and you don't really have to stay out for 72 hours, but since I'm trying to get my residency, I wanted to do everything as by the book as possible. Now it turns out I'm pretty glad I did for other reasons as well. So about a month ago, and I intended to write about it earlier but I never got around to it, I headed up to Nicaragua for a few days. There are so many foreigners living semi-legally in Costa Rica that going back and forth to Nicaragua or Panama has become something of a rite of passage.

Nicargua and Costa Rica are not on the best terms. Nicaraguans (called Nicas, which is actually a neutral term just like Costa Ricans are Ticos) in Costa Rica are very much like many Mexicans in the United States. They come here, legally or illegally, to work mostly in service and agriculture and all the things that Costa Ricans no longer want to do themselves. Yet they get blamed for taking away jobs, increasing crime, and any number of other social ills. They also are stereotyped in the typical fashion, being considered stupid, uneducated, criminal, etc. Also, their dialect of Spanish, like that which is spoken in many parts of Latin America (parts of Panama, Cuba, Venezuela, etc), is one that drops "s" from the ends of words and sometimes from the ends of syllables. So "Como estas" becomes "Como 'ta" and plurals, like two cows for exmaple becomes "do vaca" and they have the tendency to say "pues" (pronounced "pue") a lot, using it to puncuate their setences, something like "then" or "alright man" or "cool." So this feature of Nicaraguan Spanish is often mocked as well in countless Nicaraguan jokes much like a racist joke in English might make fun of an Asian by using "flied lice" or something. Of course not all Costa Ricans are racist towards Nicaraguans, and most understand they fill in an important role in Costa Rica, but racism or at least negative and discriminatory attitudes are alarmingly prevalent.

This is all stuff that I learned after arriving in Costa Rica as people whispered in hushed tones that so and so is, "you know, Nica," or my students told me Nicaraguan jokes, which like most racist jokes are pretty damn funny and I'm not ashamed to say so. Comedy is tradgedy, and the greater the tradgedy, the funnier the joke, despite, or rather because of, how horrible it is. Most of the jokes are actually pretty mild. But before I got here, I was ignorant of all this, so when I met some Nicaraguans in Mexico, I said, "Oh you're Nicaraguans, my family is Costa Rican" assuming that there would be some kind of Central American bond. Now I realized that's somewhat like saying, "Oh, you're from Compton? Well my family is from Beverly Hills. Aren't we just like neighbors?" Oops.

Let me now note, that in Spanish, the term they use for illegal aliens is "sin papeles" (without papers). I think this is a far more friendly term. Without papers, it sounds soft, like some kind of mix up, merely a clerical error waiting to be resolved. Whereas illegal alien suggests not only that a person can be "illegal" which is pretty strange when you think about it, but that they are aliens, foreign outsiders in the extreme.

Anyhow, I figured all this stuff was exageration and misunderstanding and flat out ignorance, just as many people thought I was insane to even attempt to travel across Mexico, several of whom were sure I'd be killed in a matter of days (my own father said, "Alan, in Mexico they'll kill you for two dollars, for your shoes.". Most of the Nicaraguans I'd met in Costa Rica (or the United States for that matter) where exactly like human beings all over the world, exhibiting marked tendencies towards being at least reasonably friendly and decent. But I was still interested to see the other side of the tracks as it were, see what Nicaragua was really like. So for the first time in two months, the first time since I'd come up to stay, I headed down this green mountain Monteverde.

The border between Costa Rica and Panama was fairly mellow, with a pretty low number of people yelling at you and trying to rip you off in some way. The border between Costa Rica and Nicaragua was one of the most crowded I'd seen. Crowds of men lulled about, wanting to exchange your money, or sell you stamps, or give you forms, or hussle you into cabs. They were pretty friendly on the whole, not too pushy or shouty. I felt really sorry for them actually, I can't imagine a more depressing place to spend my days than a border crossing. I kept imagining scenarious in my head where these men just couldn't find work and finally one day decided they only way they can make it is at the border. Their must be whole hierarchies and societies built around the whole thing. I seemed to be the only American crossing independently at the moment. There were some others in tour buses and things, but I was the only one that took a local bus to the Costa Rican side, walked across the border, and picked up a local bus on the Nicaraguan side.

Once in Nicaragua, the differences were obvious. There were still a fair share of hustlers on the other side. In fact, I had to ask a couple of people before someone told me where the buses left from, the first man told me there were no buses and that I have to take a taxi, which I know to NEVER believe at any time or place. But there was also people wandering around selling fruit, candy, homedade drinks, and what have you. There were a row of cookshacks leading up to the bus stop. There were people hanging around and talking, or shouting to each other, or just goofing around and pretending to fight, whistling after passing girls, kids asking for spare change, people riding in little carts pulled by horses or mules, people laughing. I liked it all right away. I felt I had entered Latin America again. As much as I love Costa Rica, and don't get me wrong because I absolutely love the country and the people, I have always had a nagging feeling that there was something missing- that there was something that Mexico, Guatemala and now Nicaragua had, but that Costa Rica did not. The feeling is still kind of vague, but being in Nicaragua helped flesh this feeling out for me. One thing that is missing in Costa Rica is chaos. Oh sure, there's some traffic in San Jose, and the government beaurocracy is not very well organized, but that's true of the United States and most Western nations for that matter. I miss the chaos, the human activity, that goes on in these places. People in Nicaragua got food from little cook shacks, people in Costa Rica go to fucking Quizno's for Chrissakes. People in Nicragua shop in open air markets and little corner stores, people in Costa Rica shop in supermarkets and megamalls. These are exagerations and generalizations of course, because Costa Rica does still have it's little corner stores (Pulperias), and there's not even a MacDonald's for a hundred miles from here in Monteverde, but on the whole Costa Rica is developed, developing, AMERICANIZED, with all advantages and disadvantages that entails. On the whole, it's good for the Costa Ricans. It would be naive of me in the extreme to think Costa Rica would be better off without that progress, even if it is laregely from tourism, which has always struck me as just a subtle and polite form of begging. I know I have the tendency to romanticize poverty, but there just seemed to be a kind of life, a kind of happiness, a kind of soulful humanity in Nicaragua that is disapearing in Costa Rica. Yes, they're clearly far better off than the Nicaraguans or the Guatemalans or even the Mexicans, but at the same time, Costa Rica is losing its soul, it's culture. There's gotta be a way to have both, the progress without the loss of identity. But fuck if I have any clue on how to go about it.

Originally, I planned to go to Isla de Omotepe, which I had heard nothing but amazing things about, but I only had 4 days before I had to be back at work, and the island seemed liked the kind of place I should spend a week on. I opted for the beach instead and headed to San Juan del Sur, which I had also heard was pretty cool. It didn't take long to get there, and I was immediately impressed. San Juan had cobblestone streets and colonial architecture similar to that of Antigua or San Cristobal. Which means that each block consisted of a pretty solid wall of adobe, with all the inviduals buildings inside sharing common walls. The adobe was painted in pretty tasteful yellows, reds, and oranges with an occaisonal blue or turquoise. The roofs were made of beautifully weather-worn clay tiles, similar to the kind popular in Southern California, but far older and stained from the constant rain. Usually beach towns are touristy, cementy-looking pieces of crap, but this place was quite attractive. I settled into a cheap hotel and after a look around town and the beachfront, I just sat on the front porch reading for a few hours, to rest from the journey. For dinner, I had streetside barbaqued steak with gallo pinto (black beans and white riced cooked with onion, garlic, and cilantro). They make gallo pinto here too, and it's pretty much the same as in Costa Rica. Apparently there is some rivalry as to who invented it. I know it's pretty cherished in Costa Rica. It's a pretty common statement to say, "Yo soy tico como gallo pinto." (I'm as Costa Rican as gallo pinto). I'm not sure how the Nicaraguans feel about it, but apparently some claim their country invented it, to the amusing chagrin of the Costa Ricans. Most likely, the dish is older than Costa Rica and Nicaragua as they exist today. In fact, I found that Nicaragua is very similar to Costa Rica in just about every way, including a lot of the slang words they use like "tuanis" (cool) and 'mae" (dude). For all the difference the Costa Ricans shout about, they're really two sides of the same coin.

Well, the beach always seems an especially lonely place to be when you're alone, and it was raining on and off, so I didn't feel like staying. It's supposed to be a big surf beach, but I didn't really see that many surfers there, at least not on the main beach. Apparently you have to figure out a way to the beaches north or south of there and I didn't feel like doing that. Maybe I'll come back some day though, when I have my own board and all. I decided that I might as well go check out Isla de Omotepe. I could at least scout it out this time and come back later for more exploring. So another short bus ride and I was in San Jorge to catch the ferry across.

Now when I first arrived in Nicaragua, heading north, I looked to my right (east) and thought I saw the ocean. My brain kinda wobbled for a second. There was a huge body of water with waves rolling gently onto the shore. This must be the ocean, no? Then I noticed the two volcanos that dominate and form Isla de Omotepe, and realized that what I thought was the ocean was actually Lago de Nicaragua, assuredly, the hugest lake I'd ever seen. Standing on the dock in San Jorge, it pretty much goes as far as you can see in any direction. The waves were pretty substantial too, and rocked the ferry back and forth hard enough to make me feel a little naseous. An Israeli traveler even threw up over the side. After about an hour, I arrived on the island, delighted to not have a single person solicit me in anyway, as is the custom upon stepping off a boat in many other places I'd been. In fact, I found the people here to be especially friendly and genuinely curious about foreigners. The principal town, Moyogalpa, was even prettier than San Juan del Sur with that same colonial style. In fact, it was quite perfect in every way. Apparently, the island avoided all the fighting of the revolutionary 80's so the buildings and landscape are still in good shape. I can still barely remember Ollie North and the Iran-Contra scandal and Regean "not remembering" if he happened to be selling missles to Iran to fund counter-revolutionaries in Nicaragua, although I had no idea what it was about at the time. Anyhow, I just really loved the way that little village looked, it was one of the coolest looking places I'd ever been, like stepping back 50 years. I got this hotel ($4 with private bath) that was like an old villa with the rooms set around a central courtyard filled with hammacks, which is another style I've always liked. But I didn't have much time on the island, so I ate a late lunch and decided what to do. I saw that there was a little point called Jesus Maria that was good for swimming, and a little bit further past that was a village called Los Angeles. So I rented a bike and headed out, almost deleriously pleased with this place. It was Saturday, so lots of people were just relaxing in the little villages and farms that dotted the landscape. Still, a lot of people were riding around on horses (no saddles!) and I even saw one kid riding around on a cow. As I rode into the second village, Esquipulas, I came across a big soccer field, where people of all ages were involved in a game. The thing that impressed me the most was that there was almost an equal number of girls playing in the game, and they had possesion of the ball as much as the boys did and weren't being defered to in any way. They seemed to have full acceptance and respect on the soccer field, which is not something I've seen anywhere else before. After a quick little dip in the lake, I headed on a bit more to Los Angeles. On the way there, I came across a tree that must have had at least thirty parrots in it. Like birds of many species, they had engaged in that favorite bird activity, getting all together and making the most awful noises they can. It was deafeningly raucous, none of them were asking for crackers, just squaking for all joy.

So I arrived in Los Angeles, and how to describe it. Most of the little houses were of brightly painted adobe like in the larger villages, except they weren't attached to each other. The streets were all of dirt, and there were all kinds of pigs, sheep, cows, dogs, and chickens wandering around. I started talking to a man that was sitting around. It was cool, he asked me where I was from and I told him, "Los Angeles," which we both thought was pretty funny. Then he got me a coconut, which I drank, and then after hiding for a bit from a quick downpour, I got back on the bike and headed back so I'd make it before it got dark. I was pretty impressed with this namesake little village.

I returned the bike and went to get an ice cream. While I was eating it, I started talking to a couple girls that were hanging out in front, Flor and Esperanza. They were both from Moyogalpa, but were college students in Managua just visiting family at home. The three of us went and hung out at the basketball court and chatted and they told me all the gossip about the little town as the people walked by. Then we went down to the only "disco" in Moyogalpa, which was like a covered, outdoor, area right on the shore of the lake. It was pretty crowded, and I was definitely the only foreigner there. I had fun dancing with them, although I didn't know anything about salsa back then (I've taken a few lessons now and have learned a few moves).

The next day, I took a bus out to Altagracia, which is the second largest town on the island, mainly just to get a good look at the island itself. I saw a bunch of young men in somewhat outdated but clean baseball outfits getting reading to play. Because of the military occupations that have taken place in Nicaragua, they've taken up baseball to the point that it's even bigger than soccer there. Altagracia was similar to Moyogalpa, but more rural. It also contained some really old statues carved by the Chortega tribe. Later, I was waiting for the bus in the central park and talking to some teenagers. After about fifteen minutes of talking, they asked me where I was from. One of them said the United States, but another one said, "No, he's from Costa Rica." And then they all nodded and agreed that I was definitely from Costa Rica. I just smiled and didn't say anything, just being extremely stoked that I could talk to these guys for fifteen minutes and that my Spanish would come off as Costa Rican rather than American. I have been getting away with that more and more though. My Spanish is getting better all the time, but sometimes I feel like I really hit it, and my whole stay in Nicaragua was one of those times.

The next day I headed back to Costa Rica. The trip was pretty uneventful except for the FOUR checkpoints the bus had to stop at. Each time, police came on the bus and checked everyones papers, with genuine skepticism and scrutiny. I couldn't believe it was FOUR times. I guess a lot of Nicraguans do sneak in though. In fact, every time the police came on the bus, a woman sitting across from me crawled all the way under her seat and layed down on the ground. She seemed to have a child with her, but apparently the child and the rest of her family had papers, but she didn't. Everytime she got back up from under the seat, she had a cute, sheepish, smile. She made it though, and I was glad that she did.

Monteverde seemed very different when I got back, but also very much like home. I guess I've grown accustomed to my whole life basically revolving around one road, mostly just the couple of miles between downtown Santa Elena with its supermarket and bar Taberna on one end, and my job at Moon Shiva on the other end, with my house and my english school being in between.

Black Like Me

2004-06-21T23:08:11Z

One thing that has been cool and maybe somewhat of a surprise is that people constantly think I am Costa Rican, especially when I'm working as a waiter in the restaurant. Whereas in Mexico, occaisonally someone would ask if I was Mexican, and I probably looked Mexican enough to blend into crowds in large cities like Mexico City and avoid pickpocketing which I noticed tended to happen to the whitest, least Spanish speaking people. In most settings, I was for more likely to be called gringo, which is mostly true, or guero which literally means someone with light hair, eyes, and complexion, which was kind of annoying to hear from people of relatively the same hair, skin, and eye color as me. In Costa Rica, on the other hand, people tend to take it for granted that I'm Tico. If I'm talking to tourists in a bar, one of their first questions is often how I learned to speak English so well. It was only a matter of time before I started playing along, faking a slight accent, and telling people I was from San Jose. It's funny how quickly my attitude towards tourists has changed, because for 5 or 6 months I was one myself. But now all of the foreigners that live here, or at least many of them, have a sort of high and mighty, "get out of my country gringo" attitude. Then again, considering the breed of tourist in Costa Rica compared to say, Mexico or Guatemala, I can totally understand this. Whereas in those countries, the average young tourist was a backpacker from any variety of countries traveling for an extended time on a small budget. In Costa Rica, considered safe by Americans, the average tourist is from America, in a big package tour, for a week or two at the most, with a huge budget. Tunas abound, fat ass midwesterners abound, yuppies abound, even high school kids can abound at times. So I don't feel nearly the same comraderie with them that I often felt with travelers in other countries. In fact, those kinds of people are one of the best reasons for leaving America in the first place. So with these types, and even backpackers sometimes, I have taken to amusing myself in relatively harmless ways. Anyhow, the point was, that these people and often the customers in restaurants tend to take for granted that I'm Tico, timidly trying to speak Spanish to me or asking if I speak English. Additionally, it's pretty common for me to speak to a Costa Rican and for them to have this puzzled look on their face, I've come to recognize that face. It's the "How come this Costa Rican guy speaks with a gringo accent?" Sometimes they even ask, "But, aren't you Tico, why do you have an accent?" or I can tell that there's extra curiosity when they ask where I'm from. So this was a bit of a revelation for me. I really do look Costa Rican. Not so much Mexican or Guatemalan or Nicaraguan, although not enitrely unlike them, but specifically Costa Rican. Which I've also found out means I'm black. Many Costa Ricans, with varying degrees of racism, like to consider themselves white, even to the point that a common soccer taunt against other Central American countries is "Indio! However, the fact of the matter is, that although Costa Ricans do in fact have lighter skin on average than other Latinos, and they do have a higher concentration of European blood, a fifty year research project revealed that Costa Ricans are mestizo (or mixed blood), 40-60% white, 15-35% Indian, and 10-20% black, with the specific ammounts depending on social class. So if I'm half Costa Rican, I must be 5-10% black which is the coolest thing I've heard all year.

And because my dad was born here, I have the right to permanent residence without exceptions. If I would have gotten my shit together before I turned 26, I could have had duel citizenship. That being said, actually figuring out what I need to get my residence has been a big pain in the ass. The Costa Rican immigration office and the lawyers I've talked to have told me one thing, while the Costa Rican consulate in Los Angeles has been telling my dad another. One thing both countries agree on is that they want my dad's birth certificate, my birth certificate, and my criminal record. Having my family get my criminal record was a bit of a pain in the ass as well, and I'm not even sure if I have the super offical version that Costa Rica might want (to get an offical government criminal record, I have to have my finger prints digitally taken in the United States, which doesn't do me any good now that I'm here of course). It turns out I do have a record though. I do have one MIS-DE-FUCKING-MEANOR count of fucking skateboarding without a fucking helmet in a fucking skate park. MIS-DE-FUCKING-MEANOR. SKATEBOARDING. Fucking California. I doubt it will bar me from getting my residency, but it's still bizarre as hell to me, which is why I put all the "fuckings" in there, I guess if I'm a convicted criminal, I should start to talk like one. Anyways, La Migra told me to get my documents stamped by the Costa Rican consulate, but the consulate wanted $40 a piece to stamp them, so I'm hoping that I can take care of that here. For such a small country, Costa Rica actually has a huge, bearueacratic, government. So it looks like this is going to be one of those things, where I have to keep bugging people, and keep throwing money at, until it goes through, it might not even be worth it. Most of the English teaching work is under the table anyway, although residency would allow me to legally work anywhere in the country as well as get a Costa Rican passport, which might help slightly if I ever decide to go to Cuba, but I don't think it really matters, and most countries actually require Costa Ricans to get costly visas before visiting, so I think my US Passport would be far more useful anyway, but you never know when something like an extra passport will come in handy.

So, because I haven't yet worked out my residency, I have to leave the country for the weekend. For some reason, you are only allowed to stay three months at a time, then you have to leave for three days before you can come back. I've heard they're not too strict about this if you happen to stay four months and come back after a day or even a few hours, but I don't want to fuck around. Besides, I'm looking forward to going to Nicaragua. It's one of those countries I feel I was robbed of when I had to go back to the US before I made it to Costa Rica. So from June 25th-28th, I will be on the Isla de Omotepe, a large island in a huge lake (I'm still kind of amused by the idea of islands inside of lakes). I hear it's really nice and it was one of the places I planned to go anyway and I'm also very curious about Nicaragua in general. There's a lot of racism in Costa Rica against Nicaraguans, so it will be interesting to see the place itself.

Live Journal

2004-05-20T20:18:21Z

Although that´s probably the last email I´m going to send home, and that´s what the bigger entries in my journal were, emails I sent home, I´m still probably going to update my livejournal at least from time to time.

Hour Long Series Finale of Friends (Emails)

2004-05-18T18:29:36Z

Welp, theese eez eet. Probably the last email for a long time, now that I have reached some kind of destination after so much wandering, I probably won't have too much to say, really.

I've been living in Monteverde for a little over two weeks now and I'm somewhat settled. The only thing I really need to do is either find a cheaper place or find another job, because the numbers aren't quite adding up. Right now I'm working twelve hours a week teaching English and making almost $4 an hour, which is pretty good wages for Costa Rica. It's weird to be back in the classroom, hell, to be working at all, since the last time I worked or taught was in June. The classes are going pretty well and the students really do want to learn, which is a welcome change from California public schools. Basically, they want to learn enough English to get jobs in the tourist industry in Monteverde, because it's cushier and they can make more money that way. In that sense, I feel kind of strange about the whole thing. Partly class conciousness I guess, or maybe just hoping they could have higher aspirations, because I mean who really wants to learn a language just so they can understand the whiney demands of its speakers? And teaching English as a second language to Spanish speakers kind of sucks. While the Spanish were only about as good as the English at making friends with Indians, they were a lot better at making a language that is consistent in its rules, pronunciation, and spelling. They even have a Royal Academy that keeps the language in order. So now I have to try to explain things like there is 7 ways you can pronounce the letters "ough" and that you have to "look for HIM," but you have to "look HIM up," without any logical reason that I can think of for the placement of the pronoun. And I have to answer questions like, "How come there aren't accent marks to tell you how to pronounce words? Isn't there a Royal Academy for English?" I hope they understand how much more fucked up English is than Spanish, and don't just think I'm a shitty teacher (which may or may not also be true).

Since I've had so much free time, I've mostly been hanging around my apartment, reading and listening to music, going for walks in the woods, or hanging out with the friends I've been making. Most of the friends I've made are other expatriate English teachers like myself, although I have made a few local friends. I find language is still somewhat of a barrier for getting beyond superficial aquaintance, although my Spanish is getting pretty damn good. Also, I think it's a little harder to find common ground, since I don't think there are many Costa Ricans that read a lot of Bukowski and listen to a lot of Velvet Underground, but so what, we'll find some way to relate. Actually, I was pretty damn shocked to see a Costa Rican about my age wearing a Total Chaos t-shirt! I think I kind of got off on the wrong foot with that guy, because I couldn't contain my contempt for that particular band, a contempt that is far more personal than musical, really. I tried to expalin that some of their music is OK, it's just the singer that's a wanker (although I couldn't think of a word in Spanish even remoretly like wanker, so I think I actually just said I didn't like him and he was a dumb son of a bitch, oh wait, now I know, puñetero!). Riot City Costa Rica! Nah, he's a good guy, I'd like to talk to him more about his musical tastes in a more sober environment. I actually feel pretty ashamed for commiting the greatest sin of scene whoredom: judging someone by their music tastes.

Hmm, I imagine some of you probably have no concept of what a young Costa Rican is like, so I hope you don't have the impression that they're uneducated, peasant farmers or anything like that. Even up here in the mountains, the Costa Ricans are pretty well educated, well spoken, and fairly concious of music and fashion trends, whether they are literally also farmers or not. For example, I've recently found out that Elizabeth, one of my more hiply dressed students, actually is in fact a farmer and that she milks cows on a daily basis. You never would've guessed from looking at her designer jeans that the hand now holding a pen was probably holding an udder just a few minutes ago.

So yeah, Costa Rica is a developed and rapidly developing country hovering in a limbo between "third" and "first" world. You could say "second world," although technically that term was reserved for the USSR and the Soviet Bloc, but since they're gone, maybe now it can stand for countries like Costa Rica. I don't want to go into too much detail, lest this email turn into some big lecture on Das Kapital, but I would like to give you a better idea of what Costa Rica is like.

Costa Rica has a strong tradition of democracy and peace. After the brief civil war of 1948, the military was abolished. This peacemindedness causes my various cousins to ask me if I had to serve in the military. From the US tradition of military conscription and warmongering in general, they were under the impression that all men had to serve at all times. Thankfully not, for now.

Costa Rica has free, compulsory, education up to ninth grade, resulting in a literacy rate of 95%, which is as good as just about anywhere in the world, and especially high for Latin America. They have socialized medicine, although I'm not sure of the extent and quality of their healthcare. They also have potable tap water just about everywhere except perhaps in some of the coastal areas. The water I get in Monteverde is way clearer and cleaner than the sea monkey lookin' sludge that came out of my tap in California, far tasier too. So it is immediately obvious that the Costa Ricans are generally of better health than the Guatemalans, for example. I think this also contributes to the general attractivness of the ladies here. I never realized that beauty was so closely tied to class, although I'm not sure exactly how it works. Is it the healthcare that minimizes sickness that minimizes blemishes? Is it the better diet? Is it more time and money for make up and clothes and things? Access to television and magazines that show Western standards of beauty that are more pleasing to my little, TV-brainwashed, mind? Is it all the hardwork in the sun in other countries that ages people more quickly? Or is it just that poverty has a way of making people ugly? Probably some combination of these factors, all I know is that the girls here are damn amazing.

Another interesting result of all this education and high standard of living is that many Costa Ricans have reached the point where, like in the US, they no longer want to do the shit jobs like picking bananas and coffee or cleaning toilets. So, like the US, their poorer neighbors come over to do this work. More than any other country, Nicaragua is the Mexico of Costa Rica. Many Nicaraguans, legally or illegally, come over here to work and find a better life, so, even though they are mostly doing jobs Costa Ricans no longer want, they are still criticized for "taking jobs away," crime, and any other number of social ills. Quite an unfortunate ammount of racism exists in Costa Rica towards Nicaraguans, Salvadorians, and Columbians especially. This was all a surprise to me, but really fascinating to see a country just begining to gentrify to that point, and how that point causes an increase in racism, for what is racism, really, but the hating of the lower classes by the upper classes? What is true in the US is beginning to come true here. Of course, the racism is no more universal here than in the US, and I really can't even say how widespread it is, just that it does exist.

A couple days before I came up to Monteverde, I went to my cousin's finca (farm) in the Peninsula de Osa in the very southwest of Costa Rica. I had been to this farm on my last trip to Costa Rica when I was seven. It's where I flipped over a hammock and cut my head open on the ground requiring two stiches and leaving that little scar on the back of my head, if you've ever noticed it when my hair is really short. My cousin Santiago (Iveth's husband, the cousins I've been staying with in San Jose), I'm not sure if I've mentioned, is pretty damn rich, a millionaire landowner, actually. He comes from a long line of cattle ranchers, and had worked with cattle all his life, although he was born a campesino. Campesino a word that has given me some trouble as the most literal definition is "peasant" which doesn't seem very PC. But here, it doesn't have a negative connotation. A campesino, derived from the word campo (countryside), is someone who works with the land and lives in close relation to it. It could be a farmer, or just like a country person or something like that. Even Costa Ricans from the city pride themselves on their campesino roots and talk about their "campesino sense," it's kind of like a mark of credability even. They also use the word peon for the workers who do the most basic labor, which really caught my attention, but this word too, it turns out doesn't mean "peon," like a worthless, expendable, person, but rather it just means laborer. Anyhow, a wealthy gringo investor came down, bought up a bunch of land, and hired Santi to run the show. After a few years of this, the gringo said, "Well, I've got more money than I can spend, just take the farms, I don't want to deal with them any more." So now Santi is one of the richest men in Costa Rica and has three sizeable cattle ranches. You know how they're always talking about how they cut down the rainforest to make grazing ground for cattle? Well, I'm pretty sure that's exactly how they got rich. I think his farms are pretty sustainable though, I don't think it's continous slash and burn or anything like that, because he constantly rotates his cattle from one field to another, giving the grass time to regrow in the latent fields. I don't know, I've been their guest, I didn't really want to go prying into it in some kind of accusatory manner. Actually, the government bought quite a chunk of his land for part of Corcovado National Park. The park, supposedly one of the wildest and most beautiful in Costa Rica, is within walking distance of the "finca," but I didn't get a chance to visit it this time.

It's an eight hour drive to get out to his farm (and he does it every week!). With that drive under my belt, I've seen quite a large expanse of Costa Rica, almost everything at least in passing from the main highways, north to south, east to west. I really liked the farm, and I would have liked to visit for longer than two days, but I had to be in Monteverde for work soon. The farm has lots of fish stocked lagoons, most of which have an alligator or two in them as well. I went fishing with a couple of the kids that live there. It was the first time I'd done free hand style fishing without a rod and all just using a string with a weight and hook, and it was pretty fun even though I didn't catch anything (the kids did). I also went on a small roundup with a couple of the cowboys, early one morning, just a little after sunup. I know I was deluding myself to feel as mythic as I did, sitting tall in that saddle there, and all we really did was patrol the fields, and move a bull from one to another, which involved the simple opening of two gates. Still, I had a good horse, compared to the tourist horses, that could run pretty fast and it was a calm, misty, morning. I saw uncountable flocks of parrots flying around and it was just a time of high joy for me. The cowboys, who'd I actually met before at Santi and Iveth's house in San Jose, told me, "You know, the parrots mate for life, they only ever have one mate. But the rooster... the rooster has lots. Which one are you?" Funny guys, I don't think they knew what to make of this semi-gringo "cousin," as they called me, living in Costa Rica. They kept asking me, "You´re going to live here?" There's also beach front property with surfable waves which I barely even got to catch a glimpse of. Maybe next time, although I need to get a board first.

Another one of my cousins, Adolfo (I don't think they make the connection to Adolph, because it's still a fairly common name), gave ME a new name. "You need a new name, Alan. Something Spanish, something holy," he said, smiling. So he named me Alan de Jesus de la Santisima Trinidad (Alan of Jesus of the Most Holy Trinity). I'd have to say I like it, it's sure got more punch than "Arthur." That Adolfo is a really funny guy, always this mischievious smile on his face. And Santi is a good guy too, the most decent (and only) millionaire I've ever met. No, really though, he's got a heart of gold, always giving, especially to the kids that live on his farms, won't let anyone pay for anything in his presence. Completely unpretentious, still a campesino at heart, usually goes around in cowboyish clothes, doesn't go for like haute cuisine or any of that shit, always just odering the typical Costa Rica meal from the regular Jose little cafes. Almost deaf now, which makes it hard to speak to him, I just feel silly yelling at a 72 year old man. Every day at exactly 4:19 the alarm on his watch goes off for about ten seconds and he doesn't even blink at it, which I think is like the greatest thing ever.

Well, back here in Monteverde, the rainy season is threatening to bust loose any day. I'm getting mixed reports. Some people say it will be better because it won't be so windy and dusty, just a little downpour of rain for an hour or two every day. Some people speak of apocalytpic deluges, turning the roads into foot deep mud that ends up covering you from head to toe. I don't think it's going to be too bad. Either way, I've been trying to make the most of the last sunny days. I headed into the forest again and finally got to see the White Faced Capuchin monkeys in the wild (the one that posed for the photo with me was in a wildlife refuge and used to being around people every day - come to think of it, I need to go visit that little guy again). I watched the monkeys for about two hours, a family of four adults and two small children. It was definitely one of the coolest things I've ever seen, I got to see a wide range of their behavior, getting aggressive and jumping up and down and shaking branches when I came to close (but thankfully not throwing their shit at me), the children riding on their mother's back as she made a far leap from one tree to another, peeling off bark in search of food, wrestling with each other, usually taking occaisonal peaks at me to make sure I wasn't up to anything funny during all of this. The coolest was when they would quickly swing and jump from tree to tree. Unfortunately, I didn't get any pictures, because as it turns out, I seem to have lost my camera somewhere. The last time I remember having it was the last time I came to this forest, so it's probably gone forever. Ironic to bring it all those thousands of miles just to lose it at my destination.

Today, the top two Costa Rican soccer teams, Sarprisa and La Liga will face off for the North American Cup (out of all of North America, the two Costa Rican teams ended up being the finalists by defeating Monterey, Mexico and Chicago). So the game that will decide the North American championship, also happens to be "el classico," the big soccer rivalry of Costa Rica, so it should be a pretty big event for this soccer crazed country. Somehwat surprisngly, I've found myself becoming quite interested in Costa Rican soccer and have been watching a lot of the games, especially the big ones. I've never been a big fan of watching sports on TV, but I don't know, I really like soccer, I find it pretty exciting. Who knew? So 8 o'clock kick off should find me down in the local bar, which should be packed with shouting, chanting, drinking, fans. I haven't really decided my loyalties on this big game, but even though my family is from San Jose (Sarprisa), I tend to find myself more sempathetic to the underdog, Alajuela (La Liga), where I also do have some family. Then again, I still don't even really understand what offsides is, no matter how many times people explain it to me. I just know I like to watch. It seems there's a greater variety of things that can happen, maybe even more than basketball. A lot of grace and passing and headbutts and things. No commericals except at the half, which is probably why it hasn't caught on in the States, the networks can't make enough money off of it to shove it down our throats. (I didn't mail this when I expected, so the game already happened, and the underdog La Liga massacred the favored Sarprissa 4 to 0, which would be like winning by a 30 or 40 point lead in the NBA finals.)

So I guess this is it, unless something really huge happens. Speaking of pretty huge, I'm curious as to what the coverage of the Iraqi torture scandal is like in the US (and elsewhere). Here, the Sunday paper (from May 8th) had most of it's little Sunday pullout magazine devoted to it with the big title "Verguenza Americana" (American Shame) on the front. In the article, along with the shocking, but unfortuneately not at all surprising pictures, it includes an excerpt from an interview with the Joint Chief of Staff, General Peter Pace, saying unequivacolly that Bush and all the other muckitymucks knew about the torture while it was still going on, and didn't care to do anything to stop it, until it came out, then they tried to cover it up. There was also a related article about American soldiers knowingly and purposefully killing unarmed Iraqi civilians. Is that the impression that the American media is giving (or German, Norwegian, Australian, or Japanese)? What are your impressions on the matter? Write to me about it, and whatever else you feel like, you know, like, what you've been up to and all that.

I won't be writing any big emails, but I'll still be checking once or twice a week. So don't you forget about me.

Cuz I'll be there for you.
-Alley G

Could I have WRIT-ten any more emails?

(no, no, no, I haven't even watched the show once since like high school)

Sucks to be a Girl

2004-05-18T17:41:57Z

So the guy in the little apartment next to mine was a hairdresser from San Jose. I didn't want to assume he was gay, but, well, yeah, stereotypes about male hairdressers have the tendency to be true all over the world, and I had heard from other people that he was gay. So what, right? I've had gay friends, doesn't mean they're going to be all touchy feely or anything, right? Oh shit. I'm friendly to the guy cause he's a friendly guy, and he says come check out my apartment and I'm curious about it so I go over. I notice the smell of weed, which is preety scarce up here, and I ask him where he gets it. He said he gets it from San Jose, but that I should come over later and we'll smoke a joint and have a beer. Sounds good to me, I hadn't smoked any pot since arriving in Costa Rica. Just a friendly offer between neighbors, right? Doesn't mean he's going to say, start edging closer and closer while we're watching TV, does it? So I go over there, and we're talking about this and that. Actually, almost the first thing he asks me is if I'm gay. I tell him no, I like the females. Then he asks me if I've ever been with a man, and I tell him no, it just doesn't interest me. So as we're talking about whatever, he keeps touching my arm. Maybe I'm naive, or maybe he's just being friendly. What could I say, "Don't touch me, faggot."? I mean, that would have been pretty rude and presumptious. So we're smoking this joint and watching TV, and although I started to suspect things were getting a little fishy, we were both sitting on his bed because there was nowhere else to sit and watch TV in his little apartment. I notice he keeps shifting on the bed "to get comfortable," and every time he does so, he seems to be getting a little closer, a move I think I've probably pulled myself on the ladies at some time or another. Still, not an overt advance, so what could I say really? I haven't seen any TV in awhile, so I'm kind of putting up with the discomfort so I can get my fix of a drug I've realized I have a minor addiction to. I mean, if the screen is on, it's hard to look away. Then out of nowhere, he makes a grab for my cock. I stop him from reaching the goal and tell him, "Hey, don't touch that, I told you I'm not into that." He apologizes, and I pause to think for a minute, before I get up and leave, too stoned to really think about much.

The next day though, I wake up and kind of ask myself, "Did that really happen?" I suddenly come to the conclusion. "Damn, it sucks to be a girl. Have these guys obscenely grabbing at you. Thinking someone is just being nice when all the while they have this ulterior motive to get you stoned and then grab at your goodies." Pretty enlightening when I think about it like that. Something to think about the next time I'm trying to put the moves on some lady, be considerate for chrissakes.

Dead Dreams

2004-05-18T17:38:08Z

Last night I had my first dream in Spanish, at least the first one I remember. A few days ago, there was a transitional kind of dream that had accented English, so I'm pleased with how quickly it progressed to full on Spanish, although only part of the dream was in Spanish.

So the dream I had a few days ago was pretty cool because it had Czech Poet turned President, Vaclav Havel in it. I don't really know too much about the guy except that he's a big hero and savior in the Czech Republic. Sally back in Mexico told me a quote of his about Europe that I quite liked and even wrote in my journal, "In the West, everything works but nothing matters. In the East, nothing works, but everything matters." So in my dream, he told me, in accented English, "The future is not in the future, it is in the past." I asked him if he still liked to write and he told me, "I only like the vowels, not the consonants." This talk of of vowels and consonants must come from my constant mention of them in the English classes I teach, but I really like when my dreams give me memorable quotes like that, stuff I might be able to use in my writing at some point. After those two little nuggets, I mentioned to him that I myself had been to Czechoslovakia. This was to my later embarassment, I guess I was nervous in the dream and said Czechosolvakia even though I knew it was now the Czech Republic, and I thought Ol' Vaclav must've thought I was a fool.

So last night, I had a pretty bizarre dream, where although I don't think I'd died, I had gone to this strange, afterlife waiting room. The place had a classic, marble and wood look, like an office from the 40's or something. Men were walking around in business dresses and full make up. There was also these weird guys who had the opening of a tuba for a head. The problem here was that my soul had been misplaced, so they weren't sure whether I should go to Heaven or Hell. I asked the receptionist, "So is this Purgatory then?" And she told me, "No, Purgatory is much more nondescript than this place," which I thought was pretty funny. After wandering this strange afterlife office, I found my soul, which turned out to be in the form of a beagle. I then noticed that everyone's soul was some kind of animal. I got to, like, customs or whatever, and I was about to go into Heaven, when someone realized that I wasn't even dead in the first place, so I was sent back to Costa Rica. Here is where the dream went into Spanish, or at least, where I was speaking Spanish and having it spoken to me. Now I was at an immigration office in Costa Rica and they didn't want to let me back in because they wanted more identification from me besides my passport. But I showed them my driver's license and they let me in.

I've been remembering large portions of my dreams every night, but I've also been sleeping ten hours a night, which can't be good. Maybe I need to excercise more or something.

Panama

2004-04-12T18:24:42Z

Then again, nothing could sum up my experiences of Panama better than the Van Halen song. This is EXACTLY how I feel, AMAZING!
-----

(Words by Van Halen)

Uh!
Oh yeah!
Ah-huh!

Jump back, what's that sound?
Here she comes, full blast and top down
Hot shoe, burnin' down the avenue
Model citizen, zero discipline

Don't ya know she's coming home with me
You'll lose her in that turn
I'll get her!

Panama, Panama
Panama, Panama

Ain't nothin' like it, her shiny machine
Got the feel for the wheel, keep the movin' parts clean
Hot shoe, burnin' down the avenue
Got an on-ramp comin' through my bedroom

Don't you know she's coming home with me
You'll lose her in that turn
I'll get her
Uh-oh!

Panama, Panama. Wow!
Panama, Panama oh-oh-oh-oh
Woo!

(Guitar Solo)

Yeah, we're runnin' a little bit hot tonight
I can barely see the road from the heat comin' off
You know what I'm sayin'
Ahh, you reach down put it between my legs n' ease the seat back

She's runnin', I'm flyin'
Right behind in the rearview mirror now
Got the fearin', power steerin'
Pistons poppin', ain't no stoppin' now

Panama, Panama
Panama, Panama oh-oh-oh-oh
Panama, Panama oh-oh-oh-oh
Panama

Panama Indians

2004-04-12T18:17:27Z

All the indigenous women are pregnant,
but their children think themselves ugly.
They already realize the world was stolen from them long ago.

Norwegian Reverie

2004-04-12T18:11:37Z

This is a short poem I wrote after Kari gave me this long, mystic, Thai massage upon returning from a day of snorkeling in Bocas del Toro, Panama. It kind of hypnotized me, put me in that between dreaming and awake state. I think that's been the best place for me to find poems lately, like undeciphered messages from my subconcious.

-----

Norwegian Reverie

Lion delta theatre crawl in,
Tino Vasquez? Yeah, he's into it,
red and black flogs perspire
tears like dancing,
because jellyfish pump pure light through their veins.
I want to pump pure light through mine.

The Passion of the Hobo

2004-04-03T21:53:25Z

"And Alan, who some called the Hobo, cameth triumphantly into the city, riding on his ass (in a bus). The people shooketh their booties and cried out 'Halelujah, blessed is he who cums in the face of the Lord!' And verily, his ass was sore."
- Pabst 2:11

And so it was. I was planning to just go back to San Jose and hang out with my cousins and see what kind of trouble could be found there. But I was really getting long with Kari, so I decided to travel around with her a bit instead.

First we headed to the carribean coast in Puerto Viejo de Talamaca. It was nice enough, but kind of touristy and expensive. Not too much to say about that place, except it had the tiniest ants I had ever seen, and every morning they would be swarmed all over the used condom, inside and out. High protein diet, I guess.

Soon we headed into Panama to the Bocas del Toro archipelago. This was a really cool spot, kind of low key and friendly. I went snorkeling here, only my second time, and along with tropical fish and coral, I saw a transparent squid which shot through the water, I'm pretty sure they actually use some kind of jet propulsion that I'd like to know more about. I also saw, almost swam right into actually, some kind of jellyfish that was really amazing. It was like a glob of silicon with pure, white, light pumping through its veins. It had all these little globules of silicon that kept going off and coming back on, I couldn't see if they were attached or some other creatures, strangest thing I'd ever seen. We also went bike riding across the island stopping at this batcave filled with thousands of bats. We'd shine our flashlight on them, and they'd get all pissed and start flying around right at our heads!

Panama is having presidential elections in May, so there was lots of campaigning going on. One of the candidates actually had a little ralley in Bocas del Toro while we were there. Jose Miguel Aleman, a vacuous cartoon of a smiling politican with half shut eyes not unlike John Kerry's. He gave me a hat, and after his speech, there was a little parade through the small town. I managed to put myself in front of him and shake his hand. He said something to me, but I didn't catch all the words. The only words I caught for sure were "gracias" and "hermanos." I think he said something like, "Thank you for being one of the brothers," which doesn't make much sense to me. I'm not sure if he thought I was Panamanian. Maybe he recognized I was foreign and was trying to say something like we were brothers in other countries or some shit like that. Now really, I hope that the best candidate wins, but since they're all probably corrupt bastards like anywhere else, I hope he wins so I can say I shook hands with the president of Panama. Incidentally, the current president of Panama is a woman, Mireya Moscoso. Apparently she's as corrupt as hell too. Doesn't really matter though, because presidents can only serve one term.

After Bocas, we headed across the country to the mountains. Nothing too interesting happened there, we went hiking a lot, and I don't think the old American couple that shared our dorm was too fond of us or the noises that came from our bunk in the night.

Here, though we'd grown quite close, we decided to split. I kind of felt like being on my own after about three weeks of being together nonstop. More over, curiosity was really starting to get a hold of me. I realized I was less than a day's travel to the annual worldwide Rainbow Gathering in southern Costa Rica. So it was a fond farewell, and I hope to visit her someday in Oslo. Her parents also have a house out in the country that's supposed to be really nice, and Norway is the one Scandanavian country I didn't go to (cuz I was stupid), so maybe I'll make it back that way someday.

The Rainbow Gathering is a place where a bunch of hippies get together and try and form some kind of cashless community of sharing and trade and goodwill towards man. That's the idea anyway. Now I knew that hippies have the tendency to bug the shit out of me, but like I said, my curiosity was mounting and I thought I should at least check it out. You know, don't knock it til you try it. Well I tried it, and KNOCK FUCKING KNOCK I hated it. The rest of this entry is basically just my rant on why. If you're not interested in that, or are hippie-friendly, you might just want to stop reading here.

After almost not making it across the border (because they said the crossing I was at was only for Costa Ricans) I arrived in the small town of San Vito, the town closest to the Gathering. There were lots of hippie types milling about, getting groceries, and all that. The first one I ended up talking too was this chick named Amy with tattoos all over her arms and face and with a great big German shepherd. She was actually of a hippie subgenre, the crusty squatter traveler type. Her and her friends were pretty tolerable. We sat around town drinking beer (Kari didn't drink, so I hadn't even gotten drunk since I got here) and waiting for something to happen. Nothing did, so we decided to hitchhike to the Gathering. The funny thing about Amy and her friends was they had this real chip on their shoulder about hardcore credability. It was like, "Nice backpack." "Thanks, I found it in the trash." "Oh really, I stole mine." Everything they owned had to be justified in some way. But like I said, interesting, literate, people, and way better than the hippies I was soon to meet.

So Amy and I get a ride almost the whole way there right off the bat, with her dog and all. But when we arrived at the last little town before the Gathering, she realized she left her passport in town and had to head back. So I was on my own. I started talking to a couple hippies at the little place that served food, I wouldn't even call it a restaurant, just a little house that served decent food. The girl was pregnant and they were talking about how they wanted to have a "dolphin birth." I was like, "Oh Christ, now it begins." Apparently, dolphins shoot out good vibes or something like that, so they were trying to find a dolphin midwife, which apparently there is in Costa Rica. But they were the only ones headed towards the Gathering, so I figured I'd hang with them. I mean, they were decent people overall.

As soon as we start walking, uphill, and me with my pack, it starts raining really hard. The road turns to mud and I'm slipping everywhere but still sweating cuz I have my backpack. Finally we get a ride from the owner of the land, and I exhaustedly make it to the camp. They graciously offer me some space to sleep under their tarp, but I kind of got the impression that they were only doing that because it was what they were "supposed" to do, not because they really cared too much about me. I got that impression from a lot of them, they were friendly to me because we were in a place of "love" and "friendship." It was remarkably Christian behavior. In general, most people didn't really seem that interested in me. They could probably tell I wasn't part of their little club, and therefore only offered the most basic of courtesies because they felt obligated.

So feeling a little awkward and disoriented, I headed to the food tent where they actually had some nice food, rice with mango chutney. Everything there was free, there's no money involved, which was a nice idea, although perhaps only practical in month long gatherings like this. After that, I was pretty tired, so I tried futilely to sleep. I couldn't get comfortable, finally I managed to sleep until sunrise. I was already thinking it might be time to go. But wait, I thought, give it a chance.

So I decided to walk around, it was like 6am, so only a few people were up, doing yoga or meditating or whatever. One guy was walking around in a robe, mumbling to himself. I smiled at him as we crossed paths. Then he gives me this patronizing "bless you my son" nod like he's Jesus H. Longdick. I was thinking, "Oh no you didn't." What a pretentious bastard. But that's what I found to be true of many of the people there. So many of them were trying to do the ol' holy serenity routine, it was really tiresome. All this pretense and all these silly affectations like saying "Blessings" instead of good bye. What the hell is that shit?

Speaking of shit, I had to take one, so I went into the woods and did so like a common pope. After I did, I noticed this little sign that said, "This is a sacred temple, please no shit." Whatever the hell that means. Oh well, I kicked a pile of leaves onto my shit then kicked the whole thing down the hillside. So much for the sacred.

Wandering around some more I encountered in English and in Spanish at various points, the strange legend, "Love is work." This, to me, bore a startling resemblance to the nazi slogan placed at the gates of their concentration camps "Arbeit macht frei," that is "Work is freedom." Who were these kooks?

Later on, I was sitting around with some other people when someone asked what day it was. I said "Monday" before someone else replied it was "Purple cosmic horseshoe" or some other Lucky Charm bullshit from Mayan astrology, which was all the rage out there. Astrology is definitely one of the most serious strains of intelletucal vice. All the other people nodded contemplatively at her answer, as if giving it great weight. Oh, and there was actually rain dances! And it wasn't just for fun or exercise or to you know, practice ancient culture or something, many of the people, and yes, I asked them, many of the people ACTUALLY believed that their pathetic gyrations could have an effect on the weather pattern. These are full grown adults in 2004, mind you! Besides, making it rain in tropical Costa Rica is like making Pink Floyd suck. Haven't you people ever heard of the scientific method? Science is a false religion, they tell me, not understanding that there's no such thing as science per se. Science is just a way of studying reality. It's not beliefs that someone made up, but facts that have been discovered and tested and proven over and over again. So aside from being physically miserable, not having a tent or anything, I was mentally miserable as well, although I was getting some pretty good chuckles.

I mean, I'm sure the hippies were relevant back in the day, in the 60's and all, but today they just seem like a bunch of middle class white kids acting poor and searching, frantically, for spiritual meaning in a world that is completely meaningless. They seem to think they're going to save the world, but let me tell you, there ain't no pot o' gold at the end of their Rainbow.

So by eight or nine am, I knew it was time to head on, I'd had quite enough of this. I was sitting, waiting for a ride out and eating free fruit. And again, I think the ideas are good, the intentions are sweet, and most of the people were nice enough, so don't let me sound too harsh. Anyhow, I was sitting and a friend of mine from back home, Eric Carlson walked by. I knew he was here, but I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to see him. We talked a bit, and I told him I was leaving. He offered me a space in his tent, but it wasn't just that, this Rainbow Gathering was just way not my scene and so I had to get out. And get out I did. And enter into San Jose, in triumph, I later did.

Amen,
Alley G

Where the Streets Have No Names

2004-04-03T20:49:26Z

DATED March 12th, 2004

Well, I'm here. I've had the idea to come to Costa Rica for some time now, long before I started my trip. Even while I was traveling through Mexico and Central America, Costa Rica was always like this idea, like this abstract, some far away goal, and now, in twisting, roundabout ways, I am actually here.

My cousin Ivette met me at the airport, and soon we were back at her home in the neighborhood of Pavas in San Jose. It was nice to stay there, and I even have my own room, more or less. It seems kind of out of the way from the city center, and since I only ended up staying there one day so far, I haven't gotten to see much of San Jose. I'm excited to get back, because I do have some cousins around my age who want to take me out on the town. One thing I have noticed though, is that none of the streets have names, just like in that U2 song.

Originally, my interview was to be on the 12th, but they asked if they could move it up to the 10th. I was anxious to get it over with, so I agreed. I headed out to Monteverde, high up in the mountains in the northwestern area of Costa Rica. I arrived at night, in a cold and windy place, but the next morning I realized how amazing it was here. Now, I try to never say, "this is the best..." or "this is my favorite..." but Monteverde is easily the most beautiful place I've been. Green fields below, green mountains above, with a constant, pleasant, wind that carries drops of water direct from the clouds. From many places, you can see all the way to the ocean at the Golf of Nicoya.

I arrived at the Cloud Forest School a little before the time for my interview to check it out. Seems like a great school and I think my interview went pretty well. Still, in a very polite way, they informed me that there were other applicants with better qualifications than mine, and if they wanted the job, they could have it. So I don't think my chances of getting that job are very high. However, the woman, Jesi, who runs the hotel I'm staying in asked me what I did that day. I mentioned I had an interview and that I was looking for work as an English teacher and she told me about another school in Monteverde that is looking for one.

So the next day, I had an interview at that school, a private Adventist school. This school doesn't look nearly as good as the Cloud Forest School, but is still fairly prestigous around here and seems more genuinely Costa Rican than the CFS which is run mostly by North Americans. Despite being an Adventist school, it doesn't seem terribly strict and I informed them that I was a sober young man of upstanding character. I'm pretty sure the job is mine if I want it and I'd be making a decent "six figure" salary... 160,000 colones a month, which works out to about $400. It should be quite easy to live here on that, hell, I've lived alright on my own in the US on about $600 a month. That job would start early in May and continue until December.

So I've just been trying to get a feel for what life is like in rural Monteverde. I've never lived in such a small place before, but it seems to have everything I need. I've been talking to young people, Costa Ricans and foreigners alike, to see how they like living here and what there is to do. I want to check out the nightlife this weekend, but so far, I think I could see myself living here for about eight months. It is an incredibly beautiful area, although it seems like you can't even walk into the woods without paying $10, it's really developed for tourism around here. Unlike Mexico and Guatemala, where the travelers tended to come form all over and to be traveling independently for months, years, or even indefinitely, here in Monteverde, it seems like mostly package tourists from the US staying for a week or two.

As for the wildlife, it has been pretty amazing. I've gone on night walks and day walks and seen all kinds of tree dwelling porcupines, sloths, olingos, coatis, and every color of tropical bird and bug. I also paid a visit to the serpentarium and saw an impressive collection of reptiles. Most of this I've done with Kari, the Norwegian travel writer whom I met in Belize. She was in Costa Rica, so we decided to meet up here and it's been nice to have a friend these last few days.

After this weekend, I might go visit Jeff from Sierra Madre, who's at the beach in Tamarindo, fairly nearby. Whether I do that or not, I'll probably head back to San Jose pretty soon to hang out with my family and await the arrival of my dad on April 5th.

So far, I've really enjoyed being in Costa Rica. All the Costa Ricans get excited when I tell them I'm half Costa Rican, which is fun. I think I'm going to have a really great time here.

So I'll let you know how things go.
-Alan

P.S. Beware the Ides of March

Bad Journalist, No Donut!

2004-04-03T20:46:37Z

OK, so I've been neglecting this journal for awhile, but I'm back on the road and in Costa Rica, so here come the updates.

You Can Never Go Back Home

2004-02-08T19:59:24Z

Well, I've been back in the U.S. of Fucking A for a week now. My mom's health took a turn for the worse, she hasn't been eating or taking her medicine as much as she should, her mind is really going, and some important decisions are going to have to be made about her. So after four months on the road, I was suddenly ripped from this fantasy life of Mayan villages and volcano lakes into the harsh reality of fat ass America. I got no house, no car, no job, and one sick mom, on top of this country that has become completely intolerable to me. Every doughy suburbanite makes me sick to my stomach, every "you're so retarded, Sandra" makes my head spin. I'm going stir crazy here and the only thing keeping me from total despair is that I know it should only be temporary. But everything is pretty uncertain and I might have to spend a couple months here, I might even look for some kind of job. Tough decisions to make. I love my mom, but it's frustrating to see her this way with not much I can do for her. It's hard to judge her health too, but I don't think she is as sick as I was led to believe before I came home. I don't know, my life is thousands of miles away from here right now, so it's shocking and disorienting to be back and all I can think about is just leaving again. I know it sounds harsh, but I don't think I have it in me to wait around. I can't just sit here, slobbering like some ghoul, waiting for my mom to die. It's too morbid, too disgusting, too depressing, and I'm not that kind of martyr.

But I'm trying to make the best of it, spending lots of time with my friends and catching up on some movies and books and music, doing some skateboardering and going to shows. But I get flustered every time I think about Central America and where I should be, rather than stuck back in the shithole suburbs, bouncing around between friends' couches.

I haven't felt much like writing lately, but I guess I should what with all my frustrations.

I've been able to gauge now exactly how much my Spanish has improved. It's crazy to be back here and now have conversations with my friend's grandma when before I could only pick up a few words. My Dad and my aunts were real impressed too when I was talking to them. Before, I remember kind of tuning out their Spanish because they said so much I couldn't understand, but now I'm right in there with them and it thrills me to have improved so measurably.

Trying to make the best of it, trying to be optimisitc, but often I just get in these moods where all I can think of is getting back to Central America. I had like three dreams about San Pedro last night. I need to cut loose.

Quicksand Pedro

2004-01-27T22:13:16Z

Coli,

San Pedro is a place where many travelers go and get stuck, sometimes for months at a time, sometimes for years, they just never leave. They call it 'Quicksand Pedro.' Tomorrow will mark three weeks that I've been in just this one little Mayan village on the Lago de Atitlan. I think I was just getting a little burnt out on meeting the same people and having the same conversations day after day. I craved a little permenence, a little social life. And that's what I have here. I have about a dozen good friends I tend to see from day to day. We have parties, and favorite bars and restaurants in town, and hang out at each other's houses. It's a little vacation within my vacation.

Most days, I spend some time up on the roof. As you may have seen in the picture, it's a really cool place to hang out. There's always a nice hot sun up there, but it's balanced with a nice wind so it's just a perfect temperature to just lie around up there and read or shoot the shit with whoever else is living in the house or visiting. There have been some changes since last time.

A German guy, Eugen moved in. His name is the German equivalent of Eugene, but you pronounce it 'Oi-gen.' He is a really cool guy and fun to talk to. I use my limited German to make up new swear words and insults for him to take home. The best one is Krankenschwanz, ´sick dick.´ That's our big joke right now. He's also, I think, the first German I've ever heard fart, we're always letting em blast, just like old times back home. We're both leaving on Thursday to head to the market in Chichicastenango and then on to the legendary waterfalls of Semuc Champey.

Also, a very sweet Canadian girl named Valerie moved in. She's also real good company. Martian and Pia, the Danish couple, however, moved out on Sunday. So soon it will just be Dustin and Valerie in the whole house.

Last Wednesday, it was our friend Klaus' birthday party. Klaus is a friendly, well loved, gay man from Seattle who works at the restaurant/bar/movie house/library/internet cafe D'noz, a popular travel hangout here. He just turned 44 and he's one of the most well traveled people I've ever met. He's lived all over the world and done all kinds of crazy shit. Like he was living in Sri Lanka, and he had to leave because a civil war had broken out, but planes were getting hijacked, so he wanted to leave by boat. He happened to meet a couple Swedish guys with an old ship and sailed with them 114 days to Greece. Amazing, inspiring stuff. He's got the most well decorated houses in San Pedro and everyone is always hanging out over there and chatting and drinking and smoking weed. In fact, yesterday was the first day in my three weeks here that I DIDN'T smoke weed. It's just so cheap and so common I've become quite a pothead out here, usually smoking two or three times a day, which is unheard of for me. Anyhow, last Wednesday was his birthday, so we all went out to this guy's house on the other side of the bay. It was a really nice place with lots of trees and hammocks. There, we smoked a lot of weed and had an entire roast pig to ourselves. It was the deal where they put it underground and cook it all day. The thing was like butter, really tastey. I'd never done the whole pig thing before, so it was interesting to see a whole animal being cut up and eaten right off the body and all. Damn tastey too.

A couple days before that, I met two really cool girls, Allison from New York and Andrea from Calgary. I hit it off with Andrea right away because there was this guy in the bar that looked just like Nick Nolte, and we immediately got into this whole cult of Gary Busey kind of thing. I drew up all these little tracts about him. Cuz like, San Pedro is really religious, evangelical to be exact. All over town you see all these signs painted up on people's houses like, 'Jesus, the only hope for you' and 'Look for God', and all that kind of stuff, except in Spanish. So I made all these tracts with makeshift drawings of Gary Busey and using the same slogans. So things have been going real well with her, been seeing her about every day. I really like her and I'm kind of bummed to be leaving on Thursday, while she'll be staying longer, working at one of the restaurants and studying Spanish. But man, I really gotta get the hell out of here.

But I don't just hang out with other travelers. We've all made pretty good friends with our next door neighbors, Eliseo and Elvira. Elvira is a pretty Mayan woman with a beautiful nose. She does all our grocery shopping for us at Mayan prices, because they always charge gringos more. Eliseo is always doing all kinds of stuff for us to help us out, or just coming over to hang out and have a couple beers. It's their kids though, Victor, Lucia, and Nicolas, that really love us. They're always coming over and making lovable pests of themselves and demanding 'el avioncito,' the little airplane, that is, grabbing a leg and an arm and spinning them around. They know us by name, but they call me Mono (monkey) because of my hairy, ape-like arms. I was the one that suggested I had arms like a monkey, and I've been Mono ever since. All the kids in the neighborhood yell out 'mono!' when I walk by. It's kind of cool, I like it. They're sweet little kids. I've also learned a few words of the local Mayan dialect, Tzutuhil. Hello, good bye, how are you, thank you, that kind of stuff. It's a language spoken by about 50,000 of some of the friendliest people spread out on five villages on this side of the lake. On the other side of the lake, they speak a different dialect that is mutually incomprehensible.

All this time, I was waiting for a sign, waiting for it to feel like time to go. And now is definitely that time. It was nice to feel like I had a home again and to feel like I belonged somewhere, but the road is calling once again. So on Thursday, me and Eugen will be heading off.

Na'an
-The Hobo

Maize and Marijuana

2004-01-13T20:16:52Z

Well, I haven't moved or done much since the last e-mail. As planned, I left Antigua as soon as I finished riding it and caught a bewildering array of buses to arrive in Panajachel on the legendary Lago de Atitlan. I think the buses deserve some mention. Now Mexico had classy, comfortable, buses with reclining, cushy, seats and they often showed movies or even came with free snacks. Guatemala on the other hand, has old school buses from the US and Canada commonly refered to as 'Chicken Buses' although it was only yesterday that I actually did in fact see chickens on any of them. Most of them are painted and decorated pretty colorfully, with some really nice paints and with little stickers running the gamut from Jesus to naked ladies. Inside, they all have that smell of sweaty leather unique to school buses, which really takes me back to all those field trips to bread factories or wherever. The coolest thing about the buses is that they all have a driver, of course, but also this other guy who's kind of like a runner. His job is to hang out the door of the bus and hustle people onto it by yelling the destination and trying to get them on as quick as possible. Sometimes, he jumps out of the bus to direct it around corners and watch for oncoming traffic and stuff like that, only to jump back on. Then he comes around and collects the fares. Seems like a hard, dangerous, job. Now, Guatemala is a country on the move. The buses are always jam packed with people, often three to a bench seat and standing room only. Yet at the same time, the buses are NEVER full. There is always Room For One More. There's also a lot of pickups that do more local transportation. The pickups have frames in the bed to hold on to, and everyone just crowds in them too, sometimes standing on the bumper and holding on, but they're pretty fun rides and usually cost about 12-25 cents for anywhere you want to go.

Each time I got onto a bus towards Panajachel, I thought it would take me straight there, but it actually took me about four buses to get there. As I got closer, I started seeing men on the side of the road in native dress, which is an extreme rarity just about everywhere else in the world except around Lago de Atitlan. Still, Panajachel is kind of a shithole, and I don't use that term lightly. Guatemala City and Mexico City have vast slums, yet I would not describe them as shitholes, because they're just poor and they can't help it. It takes a place like Panajachel, that developed in such an ugly, touristy, garish, fashion ON PURPOSE to truly deserve that moniker.

The Lago de Atitlan itself on the other hand is an earthly paradise, some kind of dreamworld. It's a large, clean, dark blue lake in the crater of a collapsed volcano completely ringed by mountains on all sides, some of which are inactive volcanos themselves. All along the shores are about ten or twelve Mayan villages where most of the women and even a great deal of the men still wear the traditional, colorful, clothes of their tribes. The women wear bright, striped dresses and flowery blouses. The men where what kind of look like board shorts, shorts that come past the knees, some of which are embroidered in blues and purples, and some of which are white with purple stripes and all kinds of plants and animals stitched on. Sometimes they wear these kind of checkered blankets wrapped around their waists. Usually they just have some kind of cowboy type shirt on, but sometimes they also wear bright coats in rainbow colors, and generally they wear cowboyish hats as well. Around here, it is more common to hear people speaking Mayan languages than Spanish. In fact, many of the elders as well as many small children don't even speak any Spanish at all, or speak very limited Spanish, like worse than mine, even, where I catch THEM making mistakes or have trouble figuring out what they're trying to say.

So I didn't spend much time in Panajachel. I rented a bike and rode out to a couple villages, Santa Catalina and Santa Antonio, all the Mayan villages are named for saints. The ride was pretty fun, pushing it up the hills and then speeding down the other side, sometimes passing the pickups.

The next day I got the hell out of Pana and headed across the lake to Santiago. This was a fairly attractive little Mayan village that is supposedly the most visited, but I felt like I had the damn thing to myself. I hardly ran into any other travelers there. I had a kid guide me to the local idol, Maximon, who resides in a different house every year. He's an interesting, mischievious, little fellow, a strange combination of Pedro Alvarado, the conquistador of Central America, Ry Maaj, a Mayan god, and the biblical Judas. The statue itself is this squat little dude about three and a half feet high draped in colorful fabrics and wearing a spiffy little hat. People make offerings of rum and cigarettes to him. His caretakers drink the rum on his behalf, which is pretty nice for them, but the cigarettes are given to him directly. They light them, put them in his mouth, and even ash it for him as it burns down. When I was there, a town elder in colorful clothes was burning incense and swinging it in one of those braziers I think they're called and chanting in Mayan. It was an interesting site, I'll tell you.

Next day I took a pickup to the nearby little town of Cerro de Oro and climbed the little mountain of the same name. The mountain was covered in coffee plants, which I had never really seen before. The bright red little berries on the green plants reminded me of Christmas. I peeled one and sucked on the little white bean inside, and it was actually kind of tastey like that. Along the roads, I saw people carrying huge burlaps sacks and weighing and selling them. They grow lots of coffee (and corn) around here, although ironically it can be hard to find a good cup. The very best coffee is marked for export, so mostly the people have to drink crap, although in certain touristed places, it's possible to get some mighty fine brews.

After a couple days in Santiago, I caught a boat across the bay to San Pedro which is where I've been almost a week now. Now this is a little paradise, I must say. I checked into a hotel with a private, HOT, shower, for about $2 a night. I've also been very pleased with the deliciousness and affordability of great food in San Pedro. I can get great, full, sit down meals for $2-$3, amazing cakes and cinamon rolls for 62 cents, and delicious blended fruit licuados for 37 cents. I've been eating like a king for pennies.

There's also a pretty huge traveler and expatriate scene here. Lots of people from all over the world liked it so much here they just decided to stay, and many travelers, myself included, find it hard to leave. My first day here, just walking around I met this interesting and crazy guy named Joe from Texas who runs a bar. I was walking by and he asked, 'Hey, you lookin for weed?´ in his excited Texas drawl. And I thought for a second and realized, ´Yeah, yeah I am.´ ´Well come on in, I got the best weed in town.´ Then he took me in and showed me what he had, I could tell it wasn't bad, then we went back and smoked a couple joints and I knew it was probably the best I'd seen on this trip, although it surely no chronic like Mama used to bake back home. And he started in on all kinds of insane stories about his life. How he was abanoned at birth and raised by a foster family as John Doe until he found his family at twenty eight. ´I found out I gotta sister,´ he told me, ´I hear she´s fat... I don´t care, I´d fuck her anyway.´ I was dying laughing, then he went on, dead serious, ´Now, it's only been the last hundred years that men haven't been fucking their sisters. I wish I wasn't a pervert, but I´m sorry, I find all women attractive, and I can't imagine any reason why I wouldn't want to fuck my sister.' Then it was stories about how he'd been living on the run in Guatemala for about eight years when he ´got some old whore pregnant´ who snitched on him to the FBI, who then came down, arrested him, and extradicted him back to the US for a couple more years in jail, which he had already spent about 9 nears in, off and on. I don't know how much of his stories were true, and how much was bullshit, but it was entertaining as hell to listen to him. I ended up going back for a few more stories and a few more beers just about every night. I ended up buying some weed from him and he gave me what must have been about an ounce of pretty decent stuff for $12! Fuckin' A.

So some days I spend relaxing. I reread the brilliant Fanny and Zooey and now I'm starting in on Jonhn Cheever's short stories. I've been watching a lot of movies at the various restaurants and bars that show them. I finally saw Requiem for a Dream, which was pretty damn harsh. I thought it was going to be a ´feel good´ heroin movie like Trainspotting or Basketball Diaries, but it was just depressing. I also saw some old favorites like The Big Lebowski and Princess Bride. Other days I get adventurous and ride horses, climb mountains, swim in the lake, visit the other little villages around here, and stuff like that. Some nights I drink quite a bit, and just about every day I smoke a fair ammount of weed.

After a few days in the hotel, I met this dude from Colorado, Dustin, and a Danish couple, Martin and Pia, and I moved in with them in the house they are renting for about $75 a month between the three of them, less than a dollar a day! The house is really sweet with a nice, big, flat, roof for sunbathing, relaxing, and reading. Dustin is almost a tuna, but he's a little too smart and interesting for that, but I bet he hangs out with tunas, which would make him a Dolphin. They're OK people and we have some fun together though. So I'm not sure when I'm going to leave, it's certainly not taxing my budget any to stay, but I do need to move on to meet up with my Dad in Costa Rica sometime in March. I hate having a fucking deadline now, otherwise I'd probably stay a couple weeks here.

Shit, I guess I've been doin more the last ten days than I thought at first. But the sheer beauty and fun of this place is going to make it hard to leave.

One last little note. Guatemala is dirt cheap. For those of you who don't think you can afford to travel, think of this. If you could save $2 a day for a year, you could travel in style in Guatemala for a month or more, and my understanding is that the neighboring countries are just as cheap, and you'd be amazed how well I see people getting by, even if they speak little or no Spanish. Just a little thought.

So soon I should be heading up oneside of Guatemala, down the other, and then on to El Salvador. We'll see how it goes.