sara's travel page

Budapest - more dumplings and communism!

2011-10-06T02:48:00.001-07:00

When I was a kid, for a brief time I had a stamp collection. You could order stamps by mail, and there was some kind of book where you organized them. The only thing I remembered about this stamp collection was that I had an abundance of stamps from "Magyar Posta". I had no idea where that was. My parents didn't know either. Half of my stamps were from Magyar Posta, which sounded like a very exotic place, but it would have been nice to have some VARIETY of stamps. Then I gave up the stamp collection and probably went outside to climb a tree. I completely forgot about this until yesterday when I saw a truck that said "Magyar Posta (Hungary postal service)". OMG, I thought. Magyar is another name for Hungary. I finally made it to Magyar Posta!

After a train ride with in a car with a man who smelled like onions, I arrived back in Budapest and moved closer to the center of Pest, near a beautiful Basilica (above). Here is the view out my window:

What started as a marathon trip has really turned out to be "Sara's dumpling and communism tour". I don't know when I turned into such a history buff. I just can't get enough communism stories. You heard me ramble on and on about the Berlin wall. As my first order of business, I went on the communism walking tour. It was absolutely fascinating! Led by a woman named Aggy and an older man named Zoltar, they pointed out things around Pest that were left from the communist years, such as this locked, underground bunker:

Aggy grew up during "happy communism", or "communism lite". Prices were regulated by the state, and salaries were very equal. (but unfair because doctors and ordinary workers made near the same salaries - which led to resentment and laziness). However, when in your own home, you could do as you wished. Religion could be practiced quietly and privately. There was coca cola and MTV. But also state regulated, educational television (which both Aggy and Zoltar raved about). Here is the Magyar TV station:

Communism was horribly strict in Hungary until the 1956 uprising. It gradually got better and better for people through the 60s, 70s and 80s. People still couldn't travel, though except to OTHER communist countries. They made travel to Vietnam and Cuba very cheap for people. I loved hearing their personal stories about growing up here. Aggy went on vacation with her family to the Black sea. Train tickets were really cheap for everyone. But going to western Europe was only possible for a very small section of the population. It was easier to travel to, say, Vietnam or North Korea than to Rome or Vienna.

Western goods were sold, but not in huge abundance. And prices were regulated so that everyone could afford the same things, which led to shortages. They seemed a little wistful for the old TV programs, cars and prices. Like David told me in Cesky Krumlov - when communism ended, it was a very tough adjustment for senior citizens. I asked them about advertising after 1990. I got the answer I expected.

Budapest has a lot of homeless people who fell through the cracks after 1990. To get good care in a hospital today still requires a little bribery. Bribery is still a hidden part of the culture left over from the communist years.

Here is a soviet statue, which they cannot knock down because Russia still takes care of Hungary's military. But everyone wants it gone. It keeps getting defaced, so they had to build a fence around it. Aggy pointed out plain clothes policemen to us, hanging around the statue.

And what a coinidence, Russia built that statue to face the American embassy. Another coincidence, The United States built a statue of Ronald Reagan behind the soviet statue. Hmmm! I was the only American (there were a lot of South Americans and a few Australians) on the tour and was put on the spot a few times. There's your president! Zoltar said.

A statue of Nagy, Hungarian hero, who lead the 1956 uprising.

Here is an example of a modern business on the first floor, and a decayed second floor with bullet holes in it:

Alcohol was very cheap during the communist years. Going to work drunk was generally OK. They wanted to keep people happy and content. Here is a bar that still caters to the old workers, a dive. With crazy cheap prices.

Aggie told us about the communist architecture. People still live in the block apartment buildings outside of town. Originally, poorer people could have separate apartments but share a kitchen and bathroom. With the new block apartments (that look like CHA housing), they built VERY small kitchens and no common areas. The communists didn't want people to linger in kitchens with their friends and gossip. They also built this horrifically ugly building across from the basilica, that was just slightly longer - to show people that something could be bigger than the church. It was very symbolically placed. It's a real eyesore among the beautiful buildings in the square. And will be torn down in three years. Thank goodness. It is butt-ugly!

They showed us a tourism book for Budapest of photos that was published in the 1960s, for publication in the west. It was all UGLY communist architecture and showed none of the beautiful historic buildings of Budapest. This is the image they wanted to project to the world.

After the walking tour, I went to an old jewish restaurant I found in Lonely Planet. It was a bit of a walk, but the paprikash was phenomenal. The owner came over to talk to me. I went out for streudel and a little night-time walk around my hotel and basilica. It remided me a little bit of Italy - people lingering around a fountain drinking wine from the fancy wine bar next door.

In the dungeon with Russians - Eger, Hungary

2011-10-06T01:08:00.001-07:00

I had originally planned on seeing some smaller Czech towns south of Prague and slowly making my way to Vienna. Logistially, this wasn't going to work because ALL roads lead back to Prague and I was completely finished with that city. I bought a ticket to Budapest, thinking I could hop off in Bratislava if I got tired of being on the train. So I boarded the train that morning not knowing where I would end up that night, which is kind of fun. This is why I prefer to plan ahead, but not TOO much. What if I get tired of some town and feel like going somewhere else? Hungary suddenly sounded much more fun, and three weeks ago it wasn't part of the plan.

In the Czech replublic, I saw a lot of pets on public transportation. Here is some girl taking her cat on a seven hour train ride:

Honey cake on the train!

After I decided to go all the way to Budapest, I called a small guesthouse that got good reviews on tripadvisor. Tripadvisor is so helpful when I travel! I arrived to find two fussy but very friendly older men running a small hotel on the second floor of a grand, crumbling building. The staircase looked just like the one in single white female. It was a beautiful building that was a little ragged yet very atmospheric, but the guesthouse was very hip (and cheap!) Here is my cool chandelier over my bed:

Before I checked in, I got a lecture about the toilet. The message came loud and clear - don't break it. Don't put too much toilet paper in. Don't flush anything EXCEPT toilet paper. I got my key, and one more reminder to not flush any dental floss in the toilet. Because I was a female, and they were two men, they danced around the "feminine hygene products" topic which was funny but you could tell one of them wanted to say it. Here is the sign above my toilet, which I did not break:

I walked around the neighborhood and liked Budapest immediately. The train station is really rustic and dirty. The underground metro looked like it was from 1800. It was really old and squeaky and the doors don't shut properly. Downtown Budapest was full of cafes, beautiful old buildings and places to linger for hours. I tried to sort out my feelings about Prague. Prague is pretty too, but something about it just wasn't as inviting. There were so many casinos, bachelor parties, bars and tourists. But I can't blame a city for having too many tourists because I'm a tourist myself. Prague is like a girl who had a bad boyfriend for 40 years and is now on a bender. You want to tell her to just chill out and take a yoga class or something. Budapest seemed a little more dignified, a bit more like Paris. But still, nothing like Paris. I can't really make judgements like that about Prague or Budapest because I really don't know much about either city. Those are just my first impressions. I was EXHAUSTED, though. (and my cold and cough will not go away!) Big cities in general were just losing their appeal. I decided to spend one quick night in Budapest, hop on the train two hours to a small town I had read about in Hungarian wine country, then come back and properly tackle Budapest. This would mean I only have one night (at the end) in Vienna. That's OK. All of the sudden, Hungary just seemed right.

I had a nice dinner at a place the hotel owners recommended. It was fabulous. Everyone is eating outside because it's about 70 degrees during the day.

Train to Eger

After two hours, I arrived in a little village. I followed two students from Hong Kong to a bus and we figured out how to get downtown. One woman walked me to the hotel I had in mind. The fresh air in Eger was nice. The hotel was full of antiques and I had a little attic room that overlooked a little outdoor cafe and cobblestone street.

I had 24 hours. Enough time to see a castle and go to the little wine cellars on the outskirts of town.

The Eger castle is an important part of Hungarian history. They defeated the Turks here in 1552. The women played a big part in the legend - they helped the fight by splasing hot oil on the invaders. Good idea! This area makes a red wine called "bulls blood". Supposedly the Hungarians were able to fight the Turks because they were drinking the blood of bulls. The little wine cellar road is called "valley of the beautiful women".

Here is a lady with her bucket of hot, boiling oil. Take that, Turks!

After wandering around the castle for an hour, I went down some steps and found a locked gate. I peeked inside. It looked like the best dungeon ever! It was a hot day and I enjoyed standing there on the cool dungeon stairs. A sign said "enter only when accompanied by an official tour". Wouldn't it be great if a tour group came along right now? I thought. On cue, a bunch of people speaking some language I couldn't place came down the stairs and opened the door.

Of course I followed them in and tried to blend in. But it was hard to blend in with this crowd. I understood nothing they were saying. The tour guide acknowledged me and let me know that I could stay and it was no problem. The dungeon was really fun. There were (I think) torture devices and hidden passageways. But just as interesting was this group. I couldn't figure them out. There were two very effeminite and affectionate older men, one with a shaved forehead, as if his hair grew down too far and he wanted to tame it - and very expensive, hip glasses. There was a young guy in a bright orange disco shirt. There was an older lady in a skirt with big polar bears on it. There was a man who looked like his name was Igor. And two old grandmas with grey buns. Speaking some language I couldn't place. Igor came up to me and spoke english, translating a few things for me which was very nice. They were Russians! I was further confused when one of the older men came over to polar bear and gave her a flirty squeeze. I knew you might want to see the skirt:

They couldn't have been nicer. We spent some time in the dungeon together and then the door was unlocked and I set out to find the wine street. Here is my hotel:

I took a taxi to the wine cellars, where I found MORE Russians , several plastic tables and and old, shirtless man running around. It was like the village in "Borat". You know for me, it all comes back to Borat!

A series of little houses and each had a little cavern attached. These were mom and pop wineries, and nobody spoke English. I was only charged money twice and spent a total of 2 dollars. Some of the wine was actually good. I'd say about 50% of it was decent. The bulls blood was good. They had some very floral-tasting whites, too. I barely knew what any of it was because it was mostly in Hungarian.

My favorite winery was a sweet grandma who had wine in giant test tubes. Some people bought wine and took it home in plastic soda bottles! It was VERY local and home-grown. I got a lot of confused stares, because I was alone and wasn't Polish or Russian. I did meet some nice people, though. We communicated through pictures and hand signals. I didn't drink too much because I didn't really know where I was, and it was only 4PM. With the exception of Oktoberfest, I really hate drinking alcohol during the day. It just makes me tired and crabby.

There were no taxis or trolleys so I just made the 20 minute walk back into town. It was a really fun experience!

I was on a mission to find good chicken paprikash. Mission accomplished!

After dinner, I took a little stoll around the square. Eger has a beautiful church. It was nice to be in the country for a day. Tomorrow, back to Budapest!

Prague: Castle-challenged!

2011-10-02T06:29:00.001-07:00

To those of you who visited Prague 15 or even 10 years ago, I applaud you. I wish I had been smart enough to do so. I think it may have been better back then. I'm going to come out and say it - I don't LOVE Prague. It's OK. The history is interesting. The buildings are lovely. I think the town has sold itself out for entertainment a little bit. But after only two full days, what do I really know? It's just my snap judgement.

After the brewery tour in Cesky Krumlov, I got a taxi driver to take me to the bus stop. I was pleased that he was playing Deep Purple's "smoke on the water" at a very loud volume. With assigned seats, who was across the aisle from me on the bus but Daniel from the shuttle! We laughed at the coincidence and caught up on the last few days. The bus had free headphones and music. Two channels were available. Celine Dion type songs in Czech or really bad rock in English and Czech. There were also free gossip magazines with topless ladies in them. We had a few laughs over the absurdity of the bus ride and fell asleep. In Prague, we figured out the metro and went our separate ways.

My hotel was very old school with a hard bed. I was happy with the bed and the location. Kimberley, Steph and their mom were staying across town and we made plans to meet the next morning. Downstairs from my hotel was a very cool wine bar with many choices of Czech wine!

I shared a table with a couple from Prague. I just wrote in my journal and we would talk every now and then. We toasted and I told them that I liked dumplings. The woman got excited and told me that some favorite dish of hers with dumplings was served at the Imperial hotel, and showed me where it was. I had been exploring and it was about 10PM so I went straight there for a late dinner. It was delicious! Very ornate hotel dining room. I love that a person who lives here gave me the idea. I just showed the waiter what she wrote and said "I want that". Little did I know that I would have the same dish every day in Prague - meat, sauce and dumplings. I really think they eat this meal here more than anything else. But this one was the best!

The next morning I went to the extremely fragrant and nauseating breakfast buffet in a basement. There was a pineapple hog in the house. And no, it wasn't me. As soon as an employee carefully put out about 12 slices of fresh pineapple for the 10 or so of us, a man who got to the table first piled 6 or 7 slices on his plate. I took my ONE slice and several people were left sad and pineapple-less. At this buffet there was also laughing cow cheese with bacon in it, which I have never seen in the US. Feeling a little sick, I walked over to the Charles bridge and over to the castle to meet the Stedmans. Prague has HOARDS of tourists. HOARDS. The bridge was so crowded it was just moving with people. It was hard to get photos without 50 people in them. Prague is pretty, but it has nothing over Paris or Florence. I don't drink absinthe or hard liquor so I had no interest in going out at night to anything other than a cozy wine bar or beer place. Bachelor parties and all kinds of people come here.

Our texts went something like this:

I'm at the base of the castle, I think. But I don't see a castle.
We are climbing a hill. Are you near? Do you see a castle?
I think I see a castle but I don't know. Everything in Europe looks like a castle.
are you near a landmark?
Do you see the castle? I don't see it yet.

Here I am with Kimberley and Steph, at the castle. But we never saw an actual castle. I think it's just a government building that they took a very big stretch in calling a castle. Being from England, the Stedders family knows a castle when they see one, and being from America, I confuse everything with a castle. So we just went out for coffee and cake.

Old Czech cake - another thing I ordered without knowing what it was first. It wasn't bad!

My cold is coming back. My cough is still kind of bad. And my foot still hurts from the marathon. K and S made plans to go clubbing near my hotel. I couldn't summon the energy. I slept for a much needed 12 hours. K and S weren't the only ones out in Prague last night. In the morning, I shreiked when I opened the door and found a man curled up outside. I kind of stepped over him and used the computer in the hallway. I heard him rustle around, he muttered something and staggered upstairs. Apparently he came home and went to the wrong floor, just falling asleep in front of MY door. I know, I regret taking a photo. Sorry. I should have!

I couldn't stomach my hotel breakfast again so I went to Mc Donald's. It always tastes good when I'm sick. I never eat it otherwise! Plus, I thought it was a very fitting breakfast before the Museum of Communism!

Have you ever seen a better museum logo? I can't think of one!

Lots of great history. It was upstairs in a creaky building and people were smoking. They smoke everywhere here. I hate that. One of the interesting exhibits was about sports - they focused sports toward combat-type activities.

Shopping under communism!

They also spent YEARS making a huge statue devoted to Stalin in Prague. Dignitaries from all over came to the unveiling. It was just enormous. But torn down in 1962.

I also watched an interesting 20 minute video that outlined the history of Prague throughout the communist years. It made me kind of sad. Lots of footage of the 1989 student protests. It had even more meaning after talking to David the other night in Cesky Krumlov.

I moved hotels to a place farther away, but cheaper and very hip. I have mastered the subway system by now so I can really get anywhere quickly. K and S have moved on to Dubrovnik and I have one more night here before I go to Budapest tomorrow. I know nothing about Budapest. That's my plan for tonight - read about my next location!

Go home tourists! There are too many of you here!!

Medieval times in Cesky Krumlov

2011-10-01T08:51:00.000-07:00

I am an obsessive trip planner. I love researching vacations! I knew that I would want to find a nice, quiet place to recover from the marathon and Oktoberfest. I knew that my entire body would hate me. I read about Cesky Krumlov, in the southern Czech republic and knew that would be my spot!

I took the train to Salzburg and had a mystery snack at Julius Meinl. I enjoy pointing to things on the menu and just taking a chance. This was a lump of pastry with dust on top:

I met Kimberley and her sister Steph (Stedders 2) in Salzburg for lunch. Our trips overlapped a bit. They drove with Carrie and Brian. I wasn't going to fit in a tiny european car so I took a nice, peaceful train ride. Goulash for lunch:

I waited for my shuttle to Cesky Krumlov in this spot forever. The shuttle never came, so I called them. My shuttle driver got in a car accident! He was OK but they had to send another shuttle for me that would take 4 additional hours.

I had time to meet Kimberley and Carrie for dinner, then got on the shuttle with an Aussie named Daniel. Daniel is from Darwin and works as a technical person at a radio station. We had a nice conversation about travel, work, the usual. We didnt get to the Czech republic until almost 11PM. It was dark and foggy. The border had an array of sinister stip clubs and casinos. We lurched and bumped along Cesky Krumlovs (sorry, cant figure out punctuation on this computer) cobblestone roads to my amazing 500 year old hotel. Antiques everywhere, worn stairs, a fake cathedral ceiling painted on the wall!

Cesky Krumlov was absolutely beautiful and peaceful. I had a Czech combo platter for lunch of all mystery items and took a walk up to the castle.

Every stairway looked like it was going into a medieval dungeon. Everything had so much atmosphere!

my hotel:

I sat outside and met an old Polish man named Stanislaw. He had to heat up his beer with a special heater because it was too cold for him. He barely spoke english so we had a conversation with my German translation book. Stan has relatives in Chicago, and a divorced son in Austria. He mimed "divorce" by angrily pretending to rip off a wedding ring and throw it. That made me laugh. He kept saying SADA YOU A VELY NICE WOMAN. VELY NICE!!

He showed me his polish crossword puzzle.

I had to do laundry so I went to the only laundromat in town, which had three machines and two of them out of order. My hotel knew of a secret laundromat in a basement down the street where I could do my own laundry. They gave me a key and directions. I did laundry in a hidden stone cellar by just guessing how the machines worked. I love doing laundry on vacation, hate it at home!

I came across a group of Asians amusing themselves by dressing up in medieval costumes, laughing and photographing eachother. They were wearing crowns and robes and posing and pretending to joust.

I decided to take a break from meat at a vegetarian restaurant. I ordered something random from the menu. It was like Czech macaroni and cheese. VELY NICE as the polish man would say.

I had the best waiter. It was closing time and David brought me a free mead (hot honey wine) because he heard me coughing. He sat down and we talked about what it was like for him to live in Prague in 1989. He said that November 1989 (he is 2 years younger than me) was the most amazing and happy time. I learned about what it was like for him to grow up there in the 70s and 80s. He is somewhat of a free spirit, travelling to Africa, Latin America, all over Asia. We talked about our respective travels and countries. David spoke perfect english because he was one of three exchange students from Prague in 1991 to Phoenix, Arizona. He also ran the Prague marathon once. It was the most fun evening of conversation and so nice to get to know someone from the Czech republic. Just makes me smile to think about it.

The next day I took a tour of the Eggenberg brewery. Yes, the girl that fell off a bench at Oktoberfest took a brewery tour two days later. I met a fun older couple from Ottawa, Rick and Susan.

Eggenberg beer sells mainly to Cesky Krumlov, and a little bit to Austria and Scandinavia. Its a very local product. The machines looked very 1950s.

some important chart about beer making:

After the tour, we got a free sample in the restaurant and I ordered some stuffed dumplings with smoked meats and sauerkraut. I let the Canadians taste some. It was so delicious. I told them that I was changing my name to Sara stuffed dumpling. Earlier I mentioned that my last name means umbrella in German. "you can be Sara Dumpling Umbrella!" said Rick.

That sounds great to me. I think I'll just stay in Cesky Krumlov, change my name to Sara Dumpling Umbrella and live happily ever after.

Oktoberfest...we did it 100 percent

2011-10-01T07:21:00.001-07:00

I wasn't originally going to do Oktoberfest. Too touristy, I said. Too expensive. I'm too old. Just asking for trouble.. I remember telling Kimberley that if I go, I have to go in with 100 percent enthusiasm! My friends started making plans and I allowed myself to be talked into it. When ever again will I have several friends going to Munich at the same time? We warmed up for Oktoberfest in my German neighborhood in Chicago a few times. We got matching shirts made. We eagerly anticipated this for months. It was all of those things listed above. And more. But hilarious and amazing!

After the marathon, Jen and I did laundry at the most bizarre laundromat I've ever seen. It had a light up panel on the wall telling you which machines were free, and a very fussy man running the laundromat. The three of us had a celebratory beer, then hobbled down the block for a nice outdoor Italian dinner. We were too tired to join the others downtown for the official afterparty.

The next morning we were met by a very hungover and tired other half of our party. We had booked first class seats on the Berlin to Munich train, planning on singing and being borderline rowdy all the way. I pictured us with our arms around some Germans, swaying back and forth, singing Oktoberfest songs. It was the opposite of that. We napped!

SOMEBODY needed several bottles of water. I wonder why?

We arrived in Munich, which was in a celebratory mood. But also smelled of cigarettes, beer, vomit, desperation, regret and cheap cologne.

I took a walk around Munich, then found a quiet square to read and have a coffee. I got hungry and accidentally ate something that looked like a cookie but was really a wall decoration. We met for dinner at the original Hofbrauhaus, which is like a mini Oktoberfest in itself.

Jen practicing lifting some steins:

I had some bratwurst and spaetzle (not pictured). I think we all fell in love with spaetzle on this trip. I ate it as a kid, but never with cheese and onions!

The next morning, after a large breakfast, we headed for the morning shift at Oktoberfest. Oktoberfest goes in two shifts. AM and PM. Many seats are reserved, and you really have to scramble to get group seats together. We were lucky and got a great table at the Spatenhaus. We sang and toasted people at every table nearby. Some Italian guys were sitting at the next table and one of them gave Carrie some flowers.

Pankers and Steph:

The steins were so large, you had to look inside your glass as the tidal wave of beer came at you:

We made friends with a Pretzel guy. I called him Jazz pretzel because he kept doing jazz hands with his pretzel. We cheered every time he came by and waved and cat called to him like he was a celebrity. To us, he was!

I loved this family, all dressed alike. Kids and all!

The band played traditional Oktoberfest songs, and the Austin Powers theme. Every 10 minutes or so, they would play the "ein prosit" song, and everyone sings and prosts.

One of our meals. The food at Oktoberfest was fabulous!

Dave and his cauldron of sausages. Apparently they have to be peeled first, and sliced a certain way. We were doing it all wrong and were corrected by a German. Then we still did it wrong.

Between the AM shift and PM shift, we went to the GIANT amusement park on the Oktoberfest grounds. Oktoberfest is ENORMOUS. Grounds just built for this purpose.

We rode a crazy conveyor belt ride - it went up a steep hill and nobody was able to stand straight up. Carrie did a backwards tumble. It was really funny to watch. Here is me scared to go on another ride!

This was one of the funniest parts of the day, the fun house. You had to put on 3-D glasses and go through an indoor obstacle course. There was a giant METAL drum with hard metal ridges that spun around like a clothes dryer. The idea is that you walk through and might tumble a little bit.

But each of us fell over and tumbled around and around, helplessly. We all have big bruises. I was in the dryer with Kimberley and a little kid that looked like Manny from Modern family. (he is pictured above between K and Donna). I wonder how he felt having two adults thrashing around and almost kicking him in the head? I was also laughing so hard I almost peed. Here is Jen in the dryer, below. I love how two people in traditional German dress are waiting their turn, above. Tumble dry medium!

I love how this kid is just trying to crawl out while Jen is tumbling around and around. They would never have this in the USA. Amusement park rides with metal ridges while people are drinking?! And I was shocked at how many people wear lederhosen to Oktoberfest. I thought it would only be a few people. It was more like 30 percent or more. German outfits everywhere!

Time for some more food!

For the PM shift, we moved to the Hofbrauhaus (not to be confused with the one downtown). What a coincidence, the same Italians sat at the next table. One of the Italian guys was really gross. Actually they all were getting on my nerves. This kid made a lewd gestures to me with his fat little fingers and tongue.

After awhile at the Hofbrauhaus, everyone in the entire hall was standing on the benches and dancing. The energy level in the evening was MUCH more crazy and out of control. They played all kinds of Oktoberfest songs: take me home to the country roat, Hey hey baby (ooh! aa!) I wanna know if you'll be my girl, and of course "Ein Prost" 876,953 times. My arm got sore from Prosting. I swear we had to do it every 15 minutes! I was actually pretty impressed with the Oktoberfest grounds. There were enough bathrooms and they weren't too far away. It was controlled chaos. But chaos for sure. People were bumping and josting eachother while they were dancing on benches.

Below, some young Germans we made friends with. The Italian guys did not like them because they wanted to talk to us, and we were talking to the Germans instead. The Italians actually confronted these guys. "hey we are a trying to a talk to these a girls and you are getting in the way!" Security stepped in. The Germans just left. There were people from all over the world having a crazy time.

While we were dancing, we saw a guy in a Berlin marathon shirt. We all yelled to him and he joined us. He was actually from Chicago. Now we have a new friend, Jeff.

After hours of dancing on benches and getting jostled around, I was bumped and fell. Hard. On my face. We had to go to the official Oktoberfest medical tent. They examined me and took me to the hospital. I was horrified, but my forehead had swelled to an egg sized lump! It was huge. Pankers went with me to the hospital. They took my blood pressure, asked me several questions and just let me rest in a nice comfy bed with a bag of ice. I was very lucky. I didn't break anything or have a concussion. I was so grateful to have Pankers with me. People in the Munich hospital were very nice. Oktoberfest takes care of its patrons. They could have easily just let me go home after the medical tent, but wanted to make absolutely sure I was OK. Total bill, about 22 euros. amazing. And I got a cool hospital band as a souvenier!

Total damage for our group> one ER visit, two make outs, one person got lost for three hours, several hangovers the next day. We had an amazing time. And I never need to do it again! Truly a rite of passage. I gave the marathon my all, then Oktoberfest. Both were tests of endurance.

Where did you come from, Cotton-eyed Joe? The Berlin Marathon race report

2011-09-25T09:10:00.001-07:00

OK, I promise. PROMISE that after today, no more running talk. This is it!

Nerves were high at the Circus hotel Saturday night. Lots of marathon runners staying here! I ate dinner around 4 and just wandered around the neighborhood. I can't sleep on a full stomach, and I really wanted to sleep. I met up with C & J in their room downstairs early in the night to discuss details, then we all tried to go to bed at 10. TRIED. I got hungry at 10:30 and went across the street for a panini sandwich. Embarrassing and gluttonous, I sat in bed and just shoved it in my mouth. It was a pretty amazing sandwich, though. The hotel restaurant brags that Germany has the best bread in the world. That might not be an exaggeration. I read and tried to sleep. I slept for about 1.5 hours.

The next morning I jumped out of bed and ran downstairs to eat the breakfast buffet. I eat a lot before marathons. Everyone says, OMG Sara, how can you eat that much before a race? I feel awful if I don't. My blood sugar gets all wierd and I feel light headed.

I've never run a marathon in only kms before. I had to have a strategy. Miles are second nature to me and I never have to write down my pace. I decided to tackle this 10 kms at a time. I would only look at my watch once an hour, which is crazy! I would run by effort only. Here is what I ATTEMPTED to do, by writing on my arm for crib notes:

Here I am the last time I felt normal, this morning!

Km 1 - 5. Feeling OK. Not great, but OK.

Km 8 - My old boss, Ellen is in town with HER friends, one who also ran today. She comes to every chicago marathon and is always in the same spot. I always spot her right away. She told me she'd me at km 8 and I was so happy to see her. Even for a split second, it gave me a little lift. We tried to meet for a drink the other day but we are staying on opposite sides of town and our schedules didn't jive.

km 9 or was it 11 - ran right past our hotel!

Km 10 - 20. Right on pace, but feeling awful. During a marathon, I never ever feel awful until mile 17. I started feeling awful much earlier today. My head got cloudy, I was coughing, I got goosebumps when I wasn't cold, I just felt off. Lots of fun signs like "lauf, Klaus, lauf!"

Km 20-30 Losing steam and slowing down. I had no idea where we were going. I tried to think, OK now I am on the madison bridge heading east to UIC. Now I am heading north to Pilsen. I passed the time by trying to figure out where I would be on my beloved Chicago course that I know so well. I started to think about an email that my friend Laura K sent me yesterday to pump me up. I pictured her there talking to me. I thought about my friend Elaine and how she attempts any race and never gives up. I thought about all of my close friends from various corners of my life. I saw guys that looked like people I knew in Chicago and had imaginary conversations with them. Oh hey! How are you! blah blah blah-f-ing blah! We actually ran over a HILL. There were supposed to be no HILLS here. Ran past some factories and over some bridges.

Km 30 - out of a speaker at a deafening volume, a familiar song. Back in 2004-ish, my friend Kathy and I went to Belgium and we were entertained by a group of sloppy drunk 50 year olds in Brugges singing along to a dance version of rednex "cotton eyed joe". We had to learn the song because it was so catchy and stupid, and I think one of us bought it. ONLY in northern Europe will you hear that at a marathon, being blared through speakers with ladies in oktoberfest outfits dancing along. I laughed. It perked me up and I sang along.

KM 30 - 40. this is where you do the classic DIG DEEP. Another really bad song appeared, this time in my head. "I think I can I think I can I think I can come and ride the train.. ride it.. come and ride the train it's the choo choo train.. if you feel like dancin! come on, it's up to you!" Yes, the mid-90s hit by the Quad Cities DJs! I can't control what comes into my brain during a marathon. What a bad song, I thought. OK then sing something else. Something a lot more acceptable. Where did you come from, cotton-eyed joe? da da da da long time ago! (synth-fiddle solo here). Yeah. km 30-40 were bad. My legs felt like lead. I was trying to amuse myself and not succeeding. I enjoyed seeing random people spot their friends and family in the crowd and hearing them all cheer and slap hands or hug. We ran past some old fancy houses. In and out of downtown again. I feel some blisters and chafing. Lots of coughing and sniffling.

km40-42 - not pretty. I imagined myself running up north Michigan avenue, waiting for the turn at Roosevelt. Until I saw Brandenburg gate. Then I was filled with that happy accomplishment and rush you get after a long race, a long internal battle. I did it! I love Germany! We really are enjoying the food, the people, the attractive men, everything about Berlin. It's a big thumbs up.

End result: 4:22. My goal was 4:10. PR is 4:19. Not bad for a sick girl!

Saturday on schirmystraße

2011-09-24T09:16:00.001-07:00

Yesterday after exploring a lot of town, I discovered a little outdoor beergarden and public plaza with restaurants near the hotel. On facebook, I got several suggestions that beer will make me feel better, so I took the advice of all of my friends who have my best interests in mind yet zero medical knowledge and had one! And it was delicious. The weather here is lovely. Nice and cool but everybody is still sitting outside and low humidity. I finally slept through the night and got on the time change. This morning I bounced out of bed and put my race number on and prepared tomorrow's outfit!

I'm feeling better. I'm still coughing a lot, but it's more of the end-to-a-cold type of cough than an "OMG I'm gonna die" cough. After I hacked up a lung I took the self-guided walking tour of our area, in the former east berlin. It was great! I love exploring a new city by walking. Berlin is huge - it actually seems larger than I had pictured. But I saw all the downtown stuff yesterday so I was ready for some low-key exploration.

solar - powered bike vendor. I love it!

A lot of street names end in "straße". The ß is how they say two ss. I believe. I like it, a new character! ßßßßß! I'm 99.9% sure that straße means street. Typical street around the hotel - with a smart car. smart cars are everywhere.

I liked this straße and this apartment building. I'd like to live here and have a little balcony. A lot of BMWs and VWs in front.

The Berlin wall was a little bit north of the hotel. It snaked around the city. All over town, the former wall is marked with two rows of rocks and a little plaque.

Just in the middle of the neighborhood, up against a zumba billboard. Crazy! It was only knocked down 20 some years ago. You would never know!

The walking tour suggested a place under the train tracks for sausages. Well twist my arm, walking tour!

My currywurst. Yes, I had it again. It's the Berlin specialty!

View from my sausage table, which I shared with other people

I have missed out on some of our group activities. I haven't even seen my friends who are staying across town yet. I've been laying low because I don't want to get anyone sick.

Here is my race-eve pizza!

Last night I had the most delicious apple streudel ever, but today they were out of it. So I just got some at another place. It was pretty good!

I came back to the hotel and visited J & C upstairs. The pre-marathon freakouts have already begun. Bananas have been purchased, race outfits tried on, overanalyzing when to take gels and shot blocks along the course, when to leave the hotel, how early to get there, what if, what if, what if... no different than if we were in Chicago I suppose. I have a feeling that Jen and Carrie could both PR by a lot tomorrow. They are both feeling good and excited to get going. I might have to manage my own goals a little bit. I need to be a little easier on myself after getting sick. I trained harder this summer than last (a 20 and a 22 miler, the addition of Yasso 800s), but I am definitely not 100% right now. I need to decide if I am going to run balls out, and follow the 4 hour pacers like I originally planned or go with the 4:15s. Who knows, maybe I'm more of a 4:30 tomorrow. I think that because I am already sick, I might as well just approach this like a wild, rabid mangy animal on the loose. The kind of animal that is foaming at the mouth and will tear you to pieces. Maybe I need to channel that kind of persona tomorrow. Well, this is it! Thank you to everyone who is so supportive of me and my running. I know that it takes a lot of time and my running chatter isn't always the most riveting stuff.. but you have to have passions in life, right? Travel and running and food are my passions, definitely. And I'm following them, sick or not! Will write a report tomorrow after the race if I can. Monday we leave bright and early for Munich. Either way, you'll hear from me on facebook.

Flammkuchen, ricola and unexpected anxiety about this marathon

2011-09-23T06:51:00.000-07:00

Wednesday I met Carrie and Jen at the airport. After we arrive, we'll meet up with other people from Chicago, London and Singapore. There is a huge, extended group of us running the marathon! They had seats together near a guy with a terrible gas problem, and I sat by a little kid. I read Anthony Bourdain's new book, and watched a British movie about four attractive, whorish people called last night.

I carbed up with some mushy lasagna!

Swiss airways has several music mix channels AND an entire channel of just Roxette. And its not just "the look" on repeat, which is how I would compile a Roxette list. They have 34 songs. Who knew!

In Zurich, we met another Chicago runner and a nice couple from France who was also running.

I have been sick for almost two weeks. Nothing flu-like, just a cold. It was 95% gone, it came back, it almost went away again but on the plane it came back with a vengence. I was blowing my nose the whole way to Europe.

We checked into our awesome hip little hotel, the Circus. I have a single with a huge mural of times square on one wall. It's eco-friendly and in the greatest little neighborhood of cafes and atmospheric little places. I am happy!

We went to the marathon expo while I was feeling horrible and my head was in a complete fog. Thank goodness for Jen. She took charge and mastered the subway and directions. She even speaks enough German to get us around. Usually at a race expo, I am feeling excited and confident. At this one I was filled with worry. What if my cold doesn't go away? 26 miles is incredibly daunting when you are feeling good - but sick is another story. I still have 2 more days though. I just tried to think positive and bought a couple of shirts. The expo was in an airplane hanger, and we had some flammkuchen (a cousin of pizza with speck, white sauce and really thin crust - awesome!) and a beer. We enjoyed the people watching at the expo. Germans are very attractive! They dress so much better in Berlin than Chicago for sure.

I came home and was able to select among a dozen flavors of Ricola:

Yes, my name really means umbrella!

my mural

View out Jen and Carrie's window:

Jen and Carrie with our flammkuchen:

Friday I tried to sleep in, then really got my money's worth at the breakfast buffet. I walked to the big train station to take care of an errand. While I was walking, I was suddenly struck with the need to go to a bathroom. Like magic, around the corner a most amazing bathroom appeared! (will post photo later). Berlin has several free-standing pod bathrooms. For 50 cents, you can have it for 20 minutes. It plays ambient mood music and even cleans itself when you are done. I was amazed and very excited about this toilet!

I went to the holocaust memorial (below) and Brandenburg gate (top).

I stopped to try a currywurst, a specialty of Berlin! I also broke my no diet coke rule. Yes, I gave up diet coke in January and don't even miss it.

I walked over to the Checkpoint charlie exhibit. There was a lot of amazing historical information posted. The Berlin wall is just fascinating to me. I was in college when the wall came down and remember it clearly. It was really fascinating to be up close to it and read the personal stories of people involved.

Well, hello Angela!

The checkpoint:

I took the U Bahn over to the east side gallery, the longest remaining section of the wall.

Messages of peace from all over the world:

Hey Nelson!

And messages that didn't make any sense:

And dumb messages that just speak to us all on the knock-off Berlin wall next to the real wall:

I like Berlin. It's just really liveable and nothing flashy about it. Nice people, neighborhoods, cafes, fascinating history. Can't wait to run 26 miles around it!

It's time to RUN, then roll out the barrel

2011-09-15T15:54:00.001-07:00

It was only a matter of time before I combined travelling with racing!

I always said I'd go to Germany when I had a good reason - I'm quite German by ancestry, but I'd always been more tempted by mediterranean countries and did my share of travelling through them before the dollar really fell in 2003-2004. I just never made it back to Europe, but boy I have been craving it! When a friend of mine said that she was going to run the Berlin marathon last December, I thought about it for about one day and entered. There is so much amazing history in Berlin, AND it has the fastest marathon course! It all fell into place - I've done the Chicago marathon three times and am starting to feel more comfortable with the distance, if that's possible. Two more good friends signed up, and several extended people I've met or heard about through the Chicago running community - now we have ourselves a party!

2011 has been a great year for running and racing. It's always been a part of my life. High school cross country holds some special memories for me - and I still stay in touch with my XC friend, Karenn (who also still runs amazingly fast). Some years I barely run at all. When I first moved to Chicago at 25 I ran a lot of races but never had the discipline to attack anything longer than 7 or 8 miles. I couldn't fathom getting up early to run. In 2007 I ran my first half marathon and loved it. Running has been there for me though high school, college, moves, family drama, birthdays, relationships good and bad. It empowers me and makes me happy. How many people can still practice their high school sport at 40 and LOVE it? I became hooked on the longer distances, and now can't imagine my summers without it. I've made some close friends through the marathon - especially in the past year and a half - we get together for dinners/drinks, enter races together and laugh. My marathon friends are particularly obsessed with food. Facebook posts have food pictures that are discussed at length. We never tire of discussing food, relationships, going to the bathroom and running. We even secretly meet at a park district track a few times a year to hold a one mile race while drinking a PBR each 400 meters:

I never do well in that race. But it's a great time!

What do I love even more than running? Travelling! I will spend 4 days in Berlin with the Chicago friends, then we take a train to Munich for Oktoberfest. After that, I'm going to recover alone in Cesky Krumlov for a few nights, then meet two of my friends up in Prague for a few more days of revelry. After that, I'll just go wherever I feel like in the Czech Republic, making my way through Slovakia and ending in Vienna. Goals for the trip:

Run a 4:10 marathon

Sing Oktoberfest songs

meet random Germans and feel related to them

sit at cafes for hours and ponder life

eat currywurst, sachertorte, spaetzle, and any encased meat that comes my way!

OK the meat goal sounded a little dirty.

watch european scenery go by on long train rides

meet strangers, have drinks with them and learn their life story (happens on every trip)

try wine made in Germany and the Czech republic

come home stuffed, happy and full of stories

which I will write about here. Please feel free to comment any time! I love hearing from friends at home while I'm on vacation.

Mazunte.. it´s groovy!

2010-12-28T09:22:00.001-08:00

I flew on a little 16 seat plane from Oaxaca to Huatulco, on aerotucan. I love an airline that has a cute bird as it´s logo:

The mountains of southern Mexico:

I checked into Alta Mira, a series of bungalows on a cliff. I made this reservation in September. This town is jam-packed full for the holidays. Many people sleeping in tents.

I realize I have been to this place before. It´s called Montezuma, Costa Rica. A laid-back beach town with a hippie vibe. I absolutely love it. This morning, there were tiny ants crawling all over my toothbrush but I just banged them off.

On the pacific coast, the waves are much stronger than they were in the Yucatan and the ocean is a little more feisty and less turquoise than it was in Tulum. Here it is during a calm time:

Having a michelada with dueling coke and pepsi chairs:

Most restaurants are just like this. Hand painted signs, simple food:

My hotel is at the edge of town. But it´s a tiny town, so it only takes me 5 minutes to walk to downtown. There is an interseting little cemetary near the back of the hotel:

I went into town and had some garlicky pasta for dinner, with some house vino for less than $10.

A little band came in and played:

I walked along the beach back to the hotel and came across a belly dancer. I didn´t get the chance to see belly dancing in Egypt, yet I saw some in Mazunte. I came across numerous people strumming guitars or just walking down the street with a can of beer.

I watched some fire dancers on the beach and fell asleep reading my book.

Grasshopper farming secrets

2010-12-28T08:34:00.000-08:00

My plan for Oaxaca was to spend two nights at the edge of town at quirky la villada, then moving to the center of town for a night. I checked into my fancy Posada San Miguel, above, which was one-third the space of my old room at La Villada and three times the price. It was nice to be right downtown, though, and I enjoyed all the luxurious touches in the hotel, such as my new lounge chairs and little balcony:

I went back to the big indoor market to have lunch. I had mole negro on Christmas, and this time I tried mole colorado (roja) on some enchiladas at a little stand called Comidas ¨Lupita¨. One thing that amuses me is how so many businesses put the owners name in quotation marks. Such as Carnes y Pescados ¨Miguel¨, or zapateria ¨Lulu¨. It´s almost like the name is a pseudonym. If I had a restaurant here, it might be called Enchiladas ¨Sarita¨. If that´s really my name. It´s in quotation marks so who knows!

In the market I also bought a little bag of grasshoppers. They don´t sell them at night, and I really needed a drink before I ate them, so I carried them around and was finally able to examine them after a tecate:

I took them to my hotel restaurant, where they gave me some limes and peanuts (and a mezcal) to eat them with. There was a couple from Zacatecas next to me, encouraging me. After a little mezcal, I had one. It tasted like nothing. So I had another one. This one tasted like grasshopper. I really have no reference for the taste. A little musty, earthy and definitely buggy. I sipped a little more mezcal. I´m not just making this up to be clever, the mezcal was a nice accompaniment to the ´hoppers. Mezcal is really smoky and smooth - it´s almost like they were meant to go together! Smoke and earth. I had one more. A lady my parent´s age from upstate new york was also in the restaurant. I called her over. Also a grasshopper virgin, she had three or four and I ate about 5 more. The restaurant staff also had some, and together we had a little chapulines party.

I had wondering for days (see my last post) how they were caught and fried, thinking it must be so labor intensive. I´m strangely interested in food, farming and production. Maybe because my grandfather was a cattle rancher for awhile and I grew up exposed to it. One of my favorite memories from being very young was when he took me to a livestock auction. I went to culinary school for fun and took an interesting class called ¨from farm to plate¨. I also volunteer occasionally for chef Efrain Cuevas in Chicago, who puts together underground dinner parties. Sometimes he sneaks in his uncle´s cheese from Mexico or puts a latin twist on one dish or another. I always learn something new from him. I just had to know about this grasshopper farming business!

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A bilingual lady who worked at my hotel filled me in. There is a grasshopper season - mainly November, and we just missed it. They catch the grasshoppers in the cornfields in big metal cages. They are dry-grilled with lime and chiles, (not fried as I thought) and they keep for months, sort of like bug jerky. There are slats with holes, which filter out the grasshoppers into small, medium and large. I still don´t know why they are ONLY sold during the day, and never at night. Anyhow, it was a very interesting day exploring the market and trying something new.

That night, Hugh and Craig came down from la villada to join me for dinner. ¨wow, you upgraded!¨they said when they saw my new hotel. We went to an authentic posole place. I had chicken with roja broth, it had cabbage and came with fried torta shells to sprinkle in. Completely delicious!

Next we went to a local bar where there was a pool table. This pool table had no triangle, a slanted table, no 8 ball, broken pool cues and no ¨4¨balls. So we invented our own game called ¨Cinco is the Ocho¨, where we substituted the 5 for the 8, and just played with what we had. It was fun. Here I am racking up the balls with my arms instead of a triangle:

Craig trying to break up my terrible rack job with Hugh waiting his turn in another riveting game of ¨Cinco is the Ocho¨:

Later in the evening, some young locals came in to join the game and tried to guess where we were all from.

Christmas in Oaxaca - Firecrackers, Grasshoppers and Mole!

2010-12-26T12:42:00.001-08:00

I had to wake up at 3:15AM, but was soon in a great mood when I checked facebook. Two more of my good friends might come to run the Berlin marathon next year! This trip was taken on my miles, so I got to fly first class all the way to Mexico City. My seat mate for the second flight was a nice Mexican-American guy named Danny, who told me all about the food awaiting me in Oaxaca. Mole, Chapulines (deep fried grasshoppers with lime and chile), oaxacan cheese... For culinary-minded people, Oaxaca is one of the great food destinations in the world. I have wanted to come here for years, and the time was just right. Danny made sure I got through customs and escorted me to my tram to terminal 2. It was a nice welcome to Mexico.

For my little flight to Oaxaca, all of the intercom instructions were in rapid-fire spanish. A recorded voice came on later in english, with the funniest pronounciation of Oaxaca. ¨Flight 2409 to Oh-hox-i-ca¨is boarding now.

I had booked two nights at a hostel at the far edge of town, purely because it got rave reviews on tripadvisor, and I could get a gigantic room with my own bathroom for one third the price of in-town (Oaxaca is a little pricey). My taxi driver winded up steep, steep hills and I arrived at a fun hotel-hostel complete with a little bar, a christmas eve party and plenty of friendly (and a few quirky) people to talk to. I had a beer with Matt, an older English guy who has been here for 18 years, 9 months. That is because his daughter is exactly 18 years old. He had plenty of colorful, fun stories to tell. I also met Hugh, a former wall street worker, now painter-writer who lives in different places (Niger, California, Mexico) for a few months at a time to paint portraits of people and work on his book. I called it a night after an hour and slept amazing in my huge room, falling asleep to distant firecrackers and faint music.

On Christmas I walked three miles into town, stupidly up and down hills in flip flops (did I not learn in Amman?). I love how most people with yards set up a little nativity scene:

I stopped in El Llano park where I custom-ordered a squash flower quesadilla that was awesome:

Virgin of Guadeloupe:

An unusually quiet street in Oh-hox-i-ca:

I took an almost identical photo like this in Merida last year. I had a conversation with a guy from Alaska about Merida. He agreed with me that Merida, in the yucatan, has many of the charms of Oaxaca but gets very little attention. I have been raving about it since I went last year. A cheaper, easier to get to sort-of clone of Oaxaca (with completely different but also delicious food) - Merida - it´s great!

ALL over Oaxaca, there are ladies selling fried grasshoppers. I have many questions about this. HOW do they catch so many? Don´t they hop away? Wouldn´t grasshopper-catching and frying be a labor- intensive, thankless job? How do they stay in business when I really don´t see tons of people eating them? I have seen people eating them, but it seems like the supply far exceeds demand. I really need to learn more about the business of chapulines. If only my spanish was a little better. My spanish is getting better by the year, though. I have entire (yet simple) converstaions and transactions in spanish. The Chapulines questions would require Trisha-quality spanish.

I hate to break it to you this way, but I have moved here and opened a fruit stand. See ya!

While I was walking near the edge of town, I came across a random party with a mariachi band. As soon as they saw me take the photo, I was invited to the party and offered food. But I declined this time...

View from La Villada:

Mole shops - everywhere in the markets! There are seven different types of mole here. So far I have had the black and the red. They are both amazing.

When I got back to the hostel, Hugh rounded up some more people to come back into town for Christmas dinner and drinks. From left to right (below) are Craig from England (teaches English in mexico city), Anton from Madrid (dating Gabi and writes for a magazine & makes films and commercials), Gabi (Architect from Mexico City), and Hugh.

Gabi and Anton had recently returned from living and working in India for a few years. They had some very entertaining stories to tell. Everyone did. It was a great group and a fabulous night out. I also tried Mezcal for the first time, a smoky, wood-aged version of Tequila that is found in the south of Mexico. It was smooth, I swear. Not harsh like some tequila can be. I don´t drink liquor as a rule, but this was nice to try. I might have talked Gabi into going to the middle east for her birthday.

We tried to find a Chapuline seller at night so that I could finally try some, since I refuse to try them completely sober. Apparently grasshoppers are only a daytime food. Every time I tried to ask about them after dark, I just got head shakes and laughs. Manana for chapulines!

Do I try them? What do they taste like? Stay tuned to find out if I eat some ´hoppers!

Laufin sie schell!

2010-12-23T11:04:00.000-08:00

I leave for Mexico in the morning, yet I planned another trip today - well, the race registration anyhow. After three Chicago marathons, I am ready for something new - a destination marathon! My friend Kimberley from my marathon group is running this, and I was torn between Dublin and Berlin. Strangely I have never been to Germany. I have a time goal in mind that is just ridiculous - but this might give me the motivation to do it. I have another friend who PR'd in Berlin. Can I take 15 more minutes off my time? Maybe in the land of the autobahn and my ancestors?

And afterwards - a few days in Prague, perhaps. Europe, it's been awhile. You are so expensive but a week won't kill me. And your beer is so tasty.

Islamic Cairo - the neighborhood - in pictures

2010-12-05T06:51:00.001-08:00

Islamic Cairo is the more traditional neighborhood. I enjoyed walking around and taking pictures before I meandered all the way back across town returning to Zamalek.

Cairo - it's not as crazy as people say...

2010-12-05T05:21:00.000-08:00

Cairo was everthing and nothing I expected it to be. I kept hearing how crazy the traffic is, how loud it is, how intense it is.. but it's really not as "in your face" as people say, at least from what I can gather from two days of being here. The traffic is exactly the same in Rome or Athens. With the exception of the call to prayer, It's equally loud but does not exceed New York. Sure it's hard to cross the street in places, but if you just find someone who is crossing the street at the same time, it's not a huge problem. I'm staying in Zamalek, the embassy district (pic above) - with french architecture and old, tree-lined streets. There are THREE boutique cupcake shops within 5 minutes of my hotel. Bookstores and coffee shops share the street with food markets and shisha (hookah) pipe places. Cairo is old and new - traditional and completely cosmopolitan in parts. The only thing that really gets to me is the air quality - it's so horribly polluted here, there is a constant haze in the air - and there is a lot of chain-smoking. Every taxi driver I've had chain smoked in the cab while I tried to breathe out the window. I blow my nose and it's black.

I went to see the pyramids. They were allright. The people hanging out there were really annoying. Every minute someone would come up to you, try to get you to ride a camel (no thanks), a horse, asking what's your name, where you from? I have started to say I'm from Australia or Germany or Mexico just to mix things up. Aside from the people, the pyramids were kind of cool for about 45 minutes but then I was ready to move on. It was pretty amazing to see them in person (they are enormous), but temples in Mexico and Petra in Jordan were much more fun to me for some reason. I'm not really an ancient monument person so much as a culture person - city-explorer, walker, talker, delicious food-eater, music-listener and atmosphere soaker-upper. I would sooner spend two hours trying to find and eat in a good restaurant than spend the day in Giza at the pyramids. But I'm happy to have seen them.

There is a restaurant near my hotel called Abou el Sid that is just fantastic. I suppose it's a little touristy because I met Americans in there, but there were plenty of Egyptians in there, the food is Egyptian and just amazing. It is dark and so full of atmosphere with middle eastern music, people smoking sheesha, beautiful lamps and design. Because I had no reservations (it's popular!) I sat at the bar where I had fuul, falafel, tzatziki and the second night Fettah, which is tangy rice with veal, sort of an egyptian risotto. Friday I sat next to a fun couple from Oregon who are avid divers. We had been to a lot of the same places, including the same hotel on a tiny island off Nicaragua. They had also just taken an intrepid tour. We had a lot of the same views about travel. Saturday I sat next to Chris, cinematographer from NYC who is working on a documentary about an underground rock music scene here in Cairo, and one about the Swell Season. He was such an interesting guy that I invited him along with me that night to meet up with my friend Trisha's friend Ellen, her boyfriend Amr and his friend Gindi.

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Abou El Sid:

The remnants of my dinner that I was too busy to photograph because I was talking to the Oregon couple! Note the bowl of fuul is scraped clean and the falafel has sesame seeds on it here:

Travelling solo is fun because if you want to be social, you can be. If you want to just read your book in a bar, you can. I frequently do both. I tend to meet more people solo or with girl friends than I do when I'm part of a couple. I've travelled a lot as both. Maybe it's because I don't have someone else there dominating the conversation. I don't know, but I love the luck I've had on this trip with strangers opening up to me. Everybody has a story to tell!

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Ellen so nicely came to my hotel and we all went to a local bar, Bodega. I should have taken more pictures, but I have one on facebook. Ellen is going to the American University at Cairo and is doing some interesting humanitarian-type projects and studying. Her boyfriend also went to the University and finished his military obligation. It was nice to see a familiar face from home, meet two fun Egyptian guys and have my new dinner friend along with us. It was a nice evening.

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Now let's talk about my new obsession, Kushari!

When I was in Dahab, I met a Canadian woman who raved about a place called Abou Tarek. They had some kind of local dish and I didn't know what she was talking about at the time. They serve only one thing, Kushari. It's a mixture of tiny macaroni, spaghetti, chick peas, some sort of lentil, ground meat and fried onions on top. There is a garlicky vinegar and spicy tomato sauce to go on it. It is delicious!! It is nowhere near my hotel and I made a point to go there two times in two days. I think I can replicate it somewhat when I get home:

The real star of Cairo (according to me) isn't the pyramids, but just the city itself and all the fun contrasts. We have young veiled girls talking in front of a victoria's secret-type shop:

Sparkly shoes which I have actually seen women in full veiled robes wearing:

Dates:

Young guys just hanging in groups on the street laughing just like they would anywhere:

I walked all the way home from downtown yesterday, and all the way from Islamic Cairo (a section of town) today. Street signs aren't usually in English, but every once in awhile you come to a traffic circle and you can figure things out. I was not expecting the fancy French architecture!

Sometimes you'd think you were in Europe, if not for the arabic:

I stopped on the nile at the Sofitel for some mango ice cream. Check out that hazy sky:

View from my balcony. I had a great hotel that really was a complete bargain. (and clean!!). I recommend the Hotel Longchamps to anyone coming to Cairo. Nice people, good breakfast, I picked well at the last minute! It had a real Parisian feel to it.

Here's a fish shop next to a fruit store in the neighborhood:

Street signs even looked European. In Zamalek, anyhow. In other parts of town you just have to walk in one direction and hope you eventually figure out where you are:

Shark attack

2010-12-03T07:17:00.001-08:00

Wednesday I had another dive with Abraham. The first time I tried it, Monday, I could not get used to the breathing apparatus - every fiber in your body tells you "don't breathe underwater fool!" and I had to literally force myself to breathe, which I did too much, hyperventilating and getting dizzy. I am also claustrophobic, and it is a whole different world underwater - with so much equipment strapped to you, yet you are floating around weightless, your body just doesn't know what to do. I enjoyed the first dive, but not fully. I was paying more attention to my own possible death than enjoying the fish. The second time, I completely relaxed and it blew my mind. Diving is amazing!! We swam IN a school of fish. It is a completely 3-D, crazy experience, like a dream. I enjoyed it so, so much. I was so moved and amazed, almost like I felt privileged to be swimming down there. We saw so many creatures and dozens of species of neon fish. I made eye contact with fish as I swam alongside them, right in their school. It was one of the most amazing experiences of my entire life. Yeah, I know most people have been diving - but I hadn't before this. I had to really conquer fear and anxiety to do it, but it was completely awesome. If I had another week in Dahab, I would get certified for sure. And the prices there are very good, I thought. Two dives and unlimited snorkeling over 4 days for less than $100 USD. Plus, they cared enough to pair me with an instructor who was great with beginners.

I had a choice to make. I could stay in Dahab one more night and take a long, long 11-12 hour bus to Cairo the next day, or just move a few hours south to Sharm el Sheikh, spend the night and cut my bus ride shorter. Sharm el Sheikh is a huge resort town, with 4 star hotels, fast food chains and hoards of tourists. There is also good diving and snorkeling there, so I figured I would just get up very early, see the town for one night, get a nice hotel, dive or snorkel - then get the first bus in the morning to Cairo. I had a nice final night in Dahab, carefully choosing where to have my last meal, where to have my last beer, gazing wistfully off my balcony at the sunset, vowing to come back one day. I had one more errand to run - buying some arabic CDs!

Did I really need to buy four? No. Will you enjoy hearing them at my next gathering? yes! The young guy in the CD store let me listen to all of them before buying, too. He loved his job, recommending CDs and joking around with customers.

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The next morning, I took the bus to Sharm el Sheikh. I poked around town and hated it immediately. Thousands of european tourists, families, loud music, tackiness, chaos after Dahab. I actually heard a guy ask "how much is this in US dollars?" in a store, which made me roll my eyes in disgust. Dahab is more of a backpacker place, and there would be no more lounging around on pillows listening to cool music, drinking $2 beer in Sharm el Sheikh. According to my guidebook, you either love one or the other. I knew I wouldn't like it as much as Dahab, but I could appreciate it for what it was - a resort town, and it's not a bad place to spend the night. Oh, poor me. December in a resort town on the red sea coast! I read that the best coral reef was off the Sofitel property, and like fate I called and they gave me a very good rate - for once it was almost half what the guidebook said it would be. After paying $22 per night in Dahab it was a bit of a splurge, but there would be no cockroaches at the Sofitel. Yes, I found three cockroaches in my room in Dahab. But I was so smitten with the place that I didn't care. The happiness per dollar ratio was extremely high. However, it was time to move on and I happily checked into my beautiful room with a balcony in the Sofitel, thrilled that I actually had a real shower stall and more than just a sheet on my bed. It's amazing how low my standards become sometimes.

At reception, I was also excited to slip the arabic word for "pen" into the conversation. They gave me a form to fill out, but no pen. NO PEN!! hehe.. As casually as possible, I said "Qualam?" and the man handed me a pen. I know the following words/phrases in arabic:

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Hello, I wish you peace!

pen

book

yes

goodbye, I wish you peace

mountain goat

thank you

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Mountain goat I learned on Mt Sinai from Husam #2. He was bounding up the mountain so fast, that I said "you are like a mountain goat! what is the arabic word for mountain goat?" "Mazza!"

So if I were to form a real sentence in arabic, the only conversation I could have would be with a mountain goat, and it would go something like this:

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"Hello, mountain goat, I wish you peace! Is this a pen? Or is it a book? it's a pen, yes? no? thank you. OK, Goodbye."

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And I would say it like this:

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Esaalamu alikum, Mazza! Hathi Qualam? Hathi Kitaab? Nam? La? Shukran. Masallama!"

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After check-in, a man walked me to my room, and said "you speak arabic?"

"no, not really"

"you know the word for pen"

"oh, I only know about 5 words. Qualam, Nam, La, Mazza, Kitaab"

The man laughed at me.

Here's my new balcony, with real furniture. Sunset view from the balcony at the top of the page.

My lovely new room:

I unpacked as quickly as possible, and ran to reception to ask about a dive or snorkeling equipment. Where the man told me what I least expected - "there has been a shark attack, and there is no going in the water today". In the whole town. For two days. I pouted and asked him "even if I don't go far from shore?" He responded, waving his hand back and forth tentatively "eeeeh, I don't think good idea today". Apparently the shark attack made some international headlines because a friend in New York sent me a message via facebook to make sure I wasn't attacked by the shark, after my excited facebook posts about diving.

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I just relaxed by the lovely pool and wandered into town, spotted an egyptian place called Tam Tam, where I had a delicious dinner (grilled meat and more fuul!), then went to bed after arranging an early 5:45 AM "egyptian breakfast". For less than $20, I got all of this, and it was amazing!!

Falafel, fuul, black coffee, several pastries and breads (which I made into little cheese sandwiches for the long bus ride), spanish omelette.

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at 7AM after a very confusing taxi ride, I boarded my 7 hour bus to Cairo. Women and men can't sit next to each other, and I sat next to a friendly little 20-something chatterbox in a bedazzled veil. She talked to me in Arabic even though I couldn't speak back, so we relied on my arabic-english translation book. She had all kinds of food, too, and offered me everything first. sandwich, soda, potato chips, ice cream, cookies, etc. I refused everything with a nice "shukran" but finally I tried two pumpkin seed-looking things, just for fun. I pretended to like them so she poured about 30 on my book for me to eat. They were nice and salty but would not break down in my mouth, no matter how long I chewed. She wasn't spitting any seeds out either, so I knew I was eating them properly. I just ended up swallowing most of them whole. We stopped at a few gas station places, where I bought some cookies and offered them around to everyone just like she had. We stopped at a few official looking border-control type places where a man in uniform would come on the bus, walk up to me and me only, asking for my passport. I was the only non-egyptian on the bus. But everyone was completely nice and there were no problems whatsoever. My view to the left:

My view to the right, the entire way:

It was pretty monotonous, and I had time to read an entire book cover to cover.

I am now in Cairo in the embassy district, which is a nice safe neighborhood of tree-lined streets and old mansions. My hotel is run by Germans, and when I called them from Sharm el Sheikh and gave them my name, the woman on the phone asked me excitedly "are you German? Is a very German name!" I said no, but my ancestors were. I haven't taken any photos in Cairo with the exception of this sign which made me laugh:

Tomorrow maybe I'll go see the pyramids and I might meet up with my friend Trisha's friend, who is studying here at the American University. So far so good in Cairo...

I was a fuul for not trying it sooner!

2010-12-01T00:31:00.001-08:00

I wisely scheduled a good 4 lazy days here in Dahab. Every night I watch the sun set from my porch at 5PM. I can hear the cool music playing at the Penguin restaurant and the Funny Mummy (bar/restaurant) below. It's right on the main walkway, and yesterday I saw 2 camels walk by! Actually, they sauntered. They sauntered by. I tried to take a picture but it was too late. I love the music they play in the places near my hotel. The funny mummy plays such cool funky arab-indian flavored electronica that I asked them if they would put out a CD. They will, eventually. The other day I heard "fine day" by Kirsty Hawkshaw playing in a restaurant. What a good song that I completely forgot about.

Monday night I was walking down the street, tripped and sliced my toe open. Luckily, I was also walking by a pharmacy so I just walked in and within 10 seconds, I was in the back of the pharmacy with a woman was cleaning up my gushing blood and wrapping my foot up. She sold me bandages, tape, antibiotic cream and hydrogen peroxide all for less than $20.

Yes, that is a beer in the picture as well. It hurt!!

I was really worried about not being able to snorkel or dive again, but I went yesterday and it was completely fine! Yes, I know my feet are looking worse by the day. But there's really nothing I can do about it right now.

Like any sensible person, after the accident I consoled myself with a new purse. But we are in Dahab, so it's a $10 hippie purse. I love it!

The dilemma every morning is to find a place for breakfast without too many flies. What is it about Africa and flies? In the morning they are everywhere. You have to eat food with one hand, constantly swatting flies with the other. The one place that has great coffee also overcooks the eggs, which is a huge pet peeve of mine. I tried a new place yesterday, that had more than 5 people eating there, which is always a good sign. They play loud, LOUD ominous chanting music in the morning. I noticed that a lot of places do. The same spooky music. But only in the morning before about 10-30, 11AM - what a mystery! This place also burns so much incense that I feel like I am back at Michigan State University, circa 1989, poking around the skateboard shop that also sells hemp clothing, wind chimes, "free mandela" bumper stickers and bongs, before I go back to my dorm to change into my doc martens for dinner in the cafeteria. THAT level of incense smoke. There is a time and a place for incense and chanting, and I never thought it would be 8AM for breakfast. But no matter! The breakfast at this place was awesome. And I tried Fuul for the first time. A national dish of Egypt, stewed beans. It was delicious! The waiter told me that "80-85% of all Egyptians eat fuul every day". I told him that I had a 90% chance of having them again tomorrow. (I love percentages) It turns out the incense is to keep away the flies. It sort of did. You can see the fuul below:

After hearing more ominous chanting in the internet cafe, I asked the guy what the music was. It is the Koran, being sung/spoken. Many places play it in the morning to give them luck in business and to set the tone for the day. This is separate from the call to prayer, which you also hear several times a day, but on loudspeakers. Mystery solved! It does sound pretty cool. I get it now. I also want to clear something up for anyone who is wondering (I wondered before I came). There is no law in Egypt or Jordan that says anyone has to wear a veil or long robe (except in a mosque, maybe). Women do not have to dress that way, they choose to or want to - depending on their family, job, faith, and maybe what the people around them do. You see women in modern dress and in traditional dress. Both men and women cover their heads in many different ways but there is absolutely no law that dictates anything. Most places prefer that you don't show knees or shoulders, but in a beach/resort town anything goes.

I also love the supermarket. I like dates and guava juice from the market. If I had a kitchen, I would go nuts and buy all kinds of mystery items. For example, what is this? pudding?

Yesterday I went snorkeling at the dive site. I am getting much more comfortable in the ocean, and went far off shore. There is the most amazing reef with a cliff that drops off and all kinds of beautiful fish. My favorite is a big greenish fish with a horn on its head. It's called the unicorn fish! I have dive #2 with Abraham in a few hours. I think he thinks I'm kind of a chicken but I'm making progress. I'm going to try to do it without clinging on to him and whining this time.

I've met a few tourists here, from the dive shop and hotel. Lots of Canadians here. I had a beer with some of them last night. Everyone is pretty friendly. This isn't a sceney place at all - everyone looks slightly grungy and is just here to dive. Now that it's finally OK to wear shorts and tank tops - I still feel kind of weird about it. I still cover up a little more than I would in, say, Mexico, when it's not blazing hot and I'm not in the water.

At night, there are no flies, but there are cats everywhere! This is a common sight while you are eating:

The shopkeepers and people are a little more nosy and outgoing than in Jordan. Sometimes the salespeople and guys at the restaurants on the walkway are a little exasperating. But it's the shoulder season and they are just trying to drum up business. It's like Greece, but some of the people here just make me laugh. Last night I was walking and a guy called out to me and said "hello! you are looking for me?!" we both laughed. They are harmless. I have yet to hear a rude or heckling comment (in English) I'm going to go out on a limb here and make a blanket observation. In Jordan, there is a sweetness to the people and in Egypt, more of a playfulness and showmanship. I don't know how else to describe it. They are both charming in their own way. But I haven't been to Cairo yet. We'll see what I say then.

There is a town across the gulf of Aqaba in Saudi Arabia that I see twinkling across the water every night. I would love to see what goes on in that town. Husam #2, Sam, used to work in a fancy hotel in Saudi Arabia. He hated it. Also there are no tourists there. I don't think I could go or would even want to. But the little twinkling town captures my imagination. It looks so close! What is it like?

I've gotten more hits on this site in the past week than I have in 5 years, combined - just a crazy amount. Who is reading? Drop me a note!

Dahab - Diving, Electronica music and Pillows

2010-11-29T05:22:00.000-08:00

I first read about Dahab through travel blogs - it's smaller than Sharm el Sheikh, famous for diving - sort of a traveller's mecca. I have been interested in coming here for years. Coral reefs surround the town on the red sea, and every restaurant on the water has pillows where you sit on the ground with low tables. There are no sandy beaches, but in its own way, it's paradise!

Crazy fabrics are also for sale, everywhere. I have a fantasy of decorating my entire apartment with Dahab fabrics. In reality, it will probably end up in my closet. But anyhow, this is where I am going to pull all the stops out on the salespeople and unleash buyer Sara. The salespeople here are all kind of annoying. Hello friend! Where you from? Because you are the first customer of the day, I give you special price! But I think at the end of the trip I can buy some cool stuff here and ship it home if I offer them a price for bulk. The more annoying they are, the more annoying I will be within the boundaries of still being polite. Everyone wins in the end with a sale. This is what I do for a living. How cool is this?! I love it! I could look at this all day long.

Remember when I told you how I laid on some pillows at Sawa beach all day and got devoured by mosquitos? Well, they really itch. We have ourselves a little situation:

Sorry for the gross picture. But this is my reality. I talked to a pharmacist, where I picked up some of this:

It stopped itching and is clearing up nicely.

Dahab is small. When you walk a few blocks, you just come up to desert:

Here is my balcony at Penguin Village, for only $22 per night. The shower is right next to the toilet, so when I shower, I am cleaning the entire bathroom along with myself. But whatever!!

View from my balcony of the Penguin restaurant, red sea and Saudi Arabia in the distance:

I came here to conquer a fear. I have never been diving before. I am not afraid of TOO many things, but the thought of breathing underwater terrifies me. I am pretty claustrophobic and really, really don't want to drown. I signed up for an introductory dive and went today. They remembered me from inquiring yesterday, and greeted me by saying "are you ready to drown?" which I actually thought was hillarious. I will not lie, It was every bit as terrifying as I pictured, perhaps more so. I had a really nice teacher, Abraham. He literally had to hold my hand every second. But I did it (didn't go TOO deep) and it was FUN!! Many people come here to get their PADI certification. It's tempting, but I don't think I'm there yet. Because I have 4-5 days, I am just doing my own version of an open water course. Beginning dive today, tomorrow practice snorkeling deeper to get used to breathing and reduce the anxiety of the ocean, day after tomorrow another dive with Abraham. I worked out a deal with a dive shop for reduced rates for three days of stuff. We dived around a coral reef not far from shore, and I saw neon fish, a few big fish. It is so peaceful under there. The thought of my mask filling with water and not being able to see or accidentally having the regulator slip out of my mouth is so scary to think about. There are things you can do in every situation, and I have to not think too much and just not be a spaz. I kind of can't wait to do it again! I'm making friends with the ocean bit by bit.

The Bates motel at Mt Sinai

2010-11-29T04:21:00.000-08:00

Dear reader, you are lucky. I seem to be getting more picture-happy with each post. I remember when I used to upload one or two pics for each entry, but with the fast internet here I can't help but upload 13 or 14! The above picture is one of my favorites from this entire vacation. Of course someone else took it, Portuguese George from the camera club. Thanks, George!

Next on our itinerary was Mt Sinai and St Catherine's monastery. St Catherine was a martyr who was tortured and thrown to the top of a mountain in the spokes of a wheel. Monks apparently found her body and entombed it. There is a very famous monastery there and some very famous religious artifacts, plus the one descendant of the burning bush:

This is the only kind of this particular bush. They tried to plant it in other places, but it died. People more familiar with bible stories can correct me on this stuff...

St Catherine's monastery. One thing that has really surprised me about the Sinai peninsula is how mountainous it is. Dry mountains everywhere! I don't know what I was expecting:

Brett, Sharon and Isabel took camels while the rest of us took a two hour (very vertical) climb to the top of Mt Sinai. Here is George, Kathryn and Helen sharing a laugh and Marie Antoinette in the background:

Husam #2, "Sam":

My God, it was exhausting. We kept asking Sam how far we were, and he kept saying "2%" or "4%". Thou shalt not lie, Sam!

At the top were a few stores selling fanta and candy bars. Not exactly a hypoglycemic's ideal, but I had some kebab-flavored chips in my bag!

This man, named Sala, made me hot chocolate for 10 egyptian pounds (about $1.75). He had a daughter named Sara. So far in Egypt, I have met 5 people who either have a daughter or niece named Sara(h). A good Egyptian name! they all tell me.

Me at the top. I like this picture. I was happy and it shows my contentment with the day and the trip in general:

We stayed until sunset, where the camera club had a field day. My little kodak easyshare did a sufficient job. Then walked down a different way (more switchbacks, less steps) in the dark with flashlights.

After this exhausting climb, most of us went for a buffet down the street. This is a SMALL town. Sam arranged for a restaurant to make a big dinner for us. It was delicious! I love the one salad they have everywhere - it's a version of greek salad. Middle eastern tomatoes are so delicious, red and sweet. We were alone in the restaurant and they put on some lite rock (i.e. Celine Dion) for us. Far more popular than Celine was "I want it that way" by the backstreet boys, which inspired a little impromptu sing-along when it came on.

We only had one more day - a 7 hour bus ride to Cairo where the trip ends. Because I have one more week, I told Sam that I was coming back to Dahab and he told me it was completely crazy for me to backtrack all the way back to the peninsula. I could save a 7 hour bus trip and a $100 plane ticket by just having his friend drive me the 1.5 hours to Dahab. So I decided to ditch the last day of the trip and just do that, making this my final night with the intrepid tour people. Here is the room I shared with Helen, on the very end. I put a diet coke outside the door, knowing it would be cold enough to enjoy in the morning. Note how deserted it is:

The group was picked up at 5AM, so that they could have a long afternoon in Cairo. It is dark until almost 6AM. I woke up along with everyone and bid them goodbye. I was really sad to see them go. Then, I walked back in the dark to my room at the end of the corridor, where I was the only one now staying at the motel. Cue horror movie music. EEE! EEE! EEE! EEE!

There was no moon, no stars, no lights, just creepy silence. If I heard anything, it would be a tumbleweed blowing across the dirt yard. There is no feeling like being alone in the dark in an Egyptian motel you don't know the name of, at the edge of a town you aren't entirely sure the name of, with a promise that a guy named Ali is "coming to get you at 8". I turned my light on and tried to read, giggling at the absurdity. Then I heard shuffling outside the door. The Egyptian Norman Bates? I was still groggy so my imagination was working overdrive. I peeked outside the door when I felt it was safe. Egyptian Norman had stolen my diet coke! When it was finally light outside, I walked outside to find the coke thief. Instead of Norman Bates, I just found a friendly guy named Mohammed who apologized profusely for taking my coke. And he has a daughter named Sara. Good Egyptian name! Here is Mohammed's office:

Ali came right on time. He drove me to Dahab while he listened to classical music.

Sawa Camp - welcome to Egypt!

2010-11-28T06:47:00.000-08:00

After packing up the Bedouin camp and taking some glamour shots by one of the old Jeeps, we headed to Jordan's port city of Aquaba, where we would catch our ferry to Egypt. We would have a new guide in Egypt, so we had to say goodbye and take the ferry without Husam. The ferry was enormous, and was just like a Greek islands ferry only with people in veils and robes. Half of our group went to sit in the First class section, but I chose to slum it by the men's bathroom, where I met these rambunctious little boys:

Every so often, people would kneel on mats and pray. We were able to go through Egyptian customs on the boat, but the customs man got annoyed and told us to be quiet at least three times, because we were chatting with some Argentinians and practicing our spanish. Near my seat, there was a long line for the bathroom, and one guy who had apparently been holding things up came out with wet arms, fanning the back of his robe, which was also wet. Sprayers are used in lieu of toilet paper here. But you can b.y.o.t.p., which I definitely do at all times. Actually that guy can be seen at the top of the above picture. The women's bathroom had a large puddle of water as well. When we arrived to the sketchy port area of Nuweiba and disembarked, we saw some little boys playing with some rifles that looked a little too realistic for my taste - but they waved at me like an old friend. It turns out they were my little rascals from the boat in the first picture! hey guys!
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After a 20 minute ride with our new guide, also named Husam - a younger and taller version who preferred we just call him Sam, we arrived at a lovely beach camp - a pretty beach, restaurant with pillows and reed huts with mosquito nets.

Thanksgiving dinner (white bean stew and pita bread) with my fellow Americans:

The next morning, most of the group went diving. I was going to save that for Dahab anyhow, and was completely wiped out so I spent the entire day on a pile of pillows with my books and some turkish coffee:

I spent about 9 hours in this same spot:

Every so often, I would go chat with Sharon, Isabel and Marie Antoinette. It was a beautiful, peaceful quiet day. Here is the hut I shared with Helen, who went diving with the others:

the huts:

After a day of complete comatose relaxation, I discovered that I was completely covered with mosquito bites. They itch like mad. While I was laying on the pillows, the mosquitoes had quite a meal of me. We had a nice group dinner on the pillows, and I went to bed embarrassingly early.
The next morning with all that rest, I bounced out of bed at a quarter to six and saw this lovely sunrise:

Saudi Arabia can be seen in the photos across the gulf of Aqaba. I did some yoga on the front porch to stretch out my back. Then I inspected my mosquito-bitten feet:

yeah, I'd go back.. for sure.

Wadi Rum - Bedouin fever!

2010-11-28T04:43:00.000-08:00

After Petra, our group had a fun dinner at a place called the red cave bedouin restaurant - to try Beduoin cuisine and to get us in the mood for our night with the Bedouins. I had some chicken stew I sadly forget the name of.. to accompany the meal, most of us tried a lemon-mint tea drink, which I loved. Below from left: Lori, Brett, Pirko, Helen, Annabelle, George, Husam, Kathryn:

A few of us went to the one bar in town (closes at 11!), then fell asleep early after walking miles and miles at Petra. Early in the morning I jumped out of bed because I had a secret plan..

Mocking our ghetto (but perfectly fine!) hotel down the street was the Movenpick. Movenpick is a fancy swiss hotel chain. When Kathy and I had reached our limit in Dar es Salaam, a movenpick buffet came to our rescue. After three or four mornings of hard boiled eggs and pita bread for breakfast and a night of sleeping outside ahead of me, I knew exactly where I was going for breakfast - the Movenpick buffet! After going through a metal detector to get into the hotel, I had not one but an embarrassing TWO omlettes, fresh fruit, two kinds of juice, amazing coffee, yogurt.. The Movenpick isn't really my scene of people - everybody there was 55+ and I would certainly not be seeing them in the desert later. But I love mass amounts of food, and I need a little luxury now and then. Luxury Sara loves the Movenpick and isn't afraid to admit it!

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Generally I am not a huge fan of group travel but I chose to do this group because I could do a lot of difficult things in a little time - and there was no way I could go camping in the desert by myself. This was an intrepid "basix" tour, which means really rustic accommodation, so I figured it would weed out the novice travellers. I had done group trips before to the Inca trail and Thai hilltribe villages that I enjoyed very much. And I was correct, this group has been nothing but fun. We range in age from 22 to early 60s - everyone is pretty adventurous. My roommate Helen (from the middle of England) is just great - low maintenance, she puts up with my flashlight-reading and has good sense of humor. No particular nationality dominates this group either. I have my other two americans - outgoing girls from NYC who make me laugh every day - Suvi (of Finnish nationality) and Lori. We have a good mix of introverts and extroverts as well. Roommates Brett from England and Joel from Australia are a little quieter but share their own special sly witty commentary with me daily. Isabel, our french canadian, told me all about the rastafarian lifestyle she had been a part of after living in Jamaica and marrying a musician that played with famous reggae bands. Marie Antionette (French but lives in Quebec now) lived briefly in central America during the 80s (crazy times for central America) and Lori volunteered with orphans in El Salvador. Everybody is well-travelled and interesting. I spent time with Pirko while descending Mt Sinai, who told me about living in Finland and Brussels. I really had no reason to fear group travel with an interesting crowd. We could leave and do our own thing whenever we wanted. I spent a bit of time solo at Petra which if you think about it, is a really good place to be alone and reflect. There are some serious photographers in the group - Kathryn, George and Anabelle - who we called the "camera club". Those jealous of the camera club formed the "chocolate club", and a few unfortunate people made up the "I keep losing things" club, which was the most successful club of all.

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After my embarrassing feast at the Movenpick, I tried to go further into town to look for a sheet - because most everyone brought a sleeping bag but me. Who knows what Bedouin sheets and blankets are like? I wanted to wrap myself up in something clean. I walked though town with a stick drawing of a bed and an arrow pointing to a sheet or blanket. People were extremely helpful with ideas, pointing me here and there - but there was no bed, bath & beyond in the town of Wadi Musa. I would have to snuggle up in whatever bug and dirt-infested nasty blanket I could find at the bedouin camp. The one shop that might have had a sheet (according to one man) but did not - had a fantastic grocery store section so I bought snacks from two completely veiled and covered women for the next few days: almonds, dates, dried apricots, turkish delight and pomegranate juice:

We split into three groups and headed off into the desert in jeeps. First it was paved, then we went off-roading in red sand.

Our guide for the Jordan part of the trip, Husam, was in my Jeep. I really liked Husam. He is a palestenian who was living in Kuwait until the Gulf war, then had to uproot and move in those painful times - he chose Italy. Now he lives in Jordan as a tour guide. He was quite professional but "got" our senses of humor so we enjoyed him. Sometimes he would double over laughing at us.

From left - Marie Antoinette, Helen, Lori, me:

My Jordanian headscarf provided some entertainment. Later that night, I wrapped it around my head to keep warm. We took turns posing with it in the desert like Lawrence of Arabia, which happened to be filmed right here. Red & white scarves are Jordanian, Black & white are palestinian, plain white are worn in the Gulf. Actually no woman wears it the way I have it - only men wear it down like that with the black rings on top of the head, but I liked it that way for photo opps.

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We stopped to climb a big sand dune, then got to camp at sunset:

A few of the Bedouins made us mint tea, which I have really taken a liking to:

They made us dinner in a pit underground. Everything was cooked together - spiced chicken, potatoes, onions. Served with rice:

Most of us chose to sleep together outside, under the stars:

My bed:

The blanket wasn't exactly clean, but cleaner than I expected and I was so cold that I didn't care. No insects of any kind, except for a giant beetle that kept trying to crawl over. I have a thermometer on my clock, and it got down to 50 degrees that night. There was a little bathroom for us that was much, much better than any bathroom on the Inca Trail.

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Most of us sat around a little campfire after dinner with Husam and the bedouins. Bedouins were desert people who now live in little towns. They used to live this way, but still keep some tents out in the desert for tourists. There was an old Bedouin code of conduct that said no matter who you are, if you need shelter, a bedouin would feed and shelter you temporarily, friend or foe. They are really friendly people, who answered all of our prying questions and shared broken english laughs with us. After I returned from Petra the night before, I learned that Kathryn, Lori and Suvi got sidetracked with a couple of bedouins after the sun went down (it goes down at 5PM, so not late...) A few of the guys showed them a tomb or some structure (what was it?), and took them back in a car after dark. They all agreed that it was a slightly risky move, but all was fine and they shared some nervous laughs when they returned. It was just one of those situations where they were talking to them, the sun went down and they just went with the advenure of it all. But nothing to worry about with these Bedouins. Suvi and Lori have a way of getting any story out of a Bedouin - Suvi even interviewed Bdol at Petra for her love-themed podcast. Bdoul has been married 6 times, so he was a fun subject for her. I will try to get her podcast and link it here. When we arrived in Egypt, Isabel and Lori could not put my Jordan lonely planet book down "I know I'm in Egypt but I still want to read about the Bedouins!" Isabel said. We were fans, big fans, of the Bedouins. And with 12 out of 14 of us either single, divorced or travelling solo, the joke about hooking up with one, marrying one and staying in the desert never got old.

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We had morning laughs about snoring, giggling and being cold before we left for Egypt. It was a fantastic experience!

Petra - it's just crawling with camels!

2010-11-23T07:51:00.000-08:00

Today we had the entire day to run all over Petra. For sustenance, I bought some yummy dates with almonds inside!

Picture this lit up with just the full moon and candles. Incredible!!

Here I am with my "I don't want to touch the smelly large animal" face!

This camel's name was Daisy. Note the Johnny Depp pirates of the Caribbean look-alike to my right. He was the camel-keeper. Camels and donkeys were runnin' all over the place.

After hiking and climbing for hours, we made friends with the last living resident of Petra, Bdoul Mofleh, who signed my lonely planet because he is featured on page 229. Here is the flag in his yard:

Bdoul's back yard, where he brought us mint tea:

Bdoul, below. What a friendly guy! He loves visitors up in his rocky home. Bdoul's backyard is a breathtaking rocky cliff of red rock formations, it looks just like a music video where the artist stands on a rocky cliff and the camera pans around. He never wants to move. I can't blame him.

Sorry but on this post, I'm just going to let the pictures do the talking. I have to get ready for dinner. See you in a few days after camping in the desert!

Pudding that tastes like a Grandma

2010-11-23T06:53:00.000-08:00

Monday was special not because it was my birthday, or because I saw both Petra and the Dead sea, but because I discovered a fourth thing in this world that I will not eat under any circumstances.

I had breakfast with my group, and got to know them a little better. We have me, two french canadians Isabel and Marie Antoinette, A Finnish by way of Belgium lady named (I think it's spelled) Pirko, Brett from England, Joel from Australia, Suvi and Laurie from NYC, Helen from England, Mother and Daugter Sharon and Rachel from Vancouver, Kathryn from Australia and George & Anabella, the cutest couple from Portugal.

After a visit to a mosaic factory, we went to Mt Nebo, where Moses climbed up after 40 years in the desert, and died. The views (above) were amazing.

After this we went to the Dead sea - which I have been looking forward to for MONTHS!! The dead sea is 400 meters below sea level, and oxygen levels are 8% higher than normal. The water is 33% salt, so you float like a cork.

The fresh water pool:

The dead sea beach:

It is the strangest sensation, floating in the dead sea. It is IMPOSSIBLE to sink. You can't even put your legs down in the water for very long. You can lay back in the water, reading a book, not supported by anything! It was truly amazing and just as fun as I imagined it would be.

After this, for a few Jordanian dinars, we could cover ourselves in mud!

After the sea, I went in the pool, which was just a normal pool. It felt very hard to float, like I was made of lead.

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Then it was time for a buffet lunch! The lunch part was OK.. then there was the dessert platter. Rachel had tasted the white gelatin dessert and made a face. I went up to get an assortment of desserts:

Sometimes my friends like to laugh at me (opposed to with me) for the reason that I will eat ANYTHING, no matter what it is. Something gross in the vending machine? Sara will try it! drink condiments for $80? Sara will! Dare me to eat a candy bar with mustard on it for $5-$10? My pleasure!

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Before today, there were only three things I could never eat.

1. Circus peanuts

2. Canned peas

3. Salmon (except lox)

And now we have #4!

4. The white gelatin dessert at the Dead sea buffet.

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Gourmet magaine (sadly, RIP Gourmet magazine!) used to have a "reader request" column. You could write in to describe something delicious you had on your travels, and they would hunt down the recipe for you. Let's write Gourmet, shall we?

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Dear Gourmet - while I was travelling to the Dead Sea, I had the most amazing dessert! It was white, gelationous and tasted exactly like a Grandma smells. It had an unusual texture as well. My taste buds were singing! I will never forget this dessert, and if you could find the recipe, it would be wonderful!! Sara, Chicago.

Dear Sara,

You are in luck! We found it for you!

Dead sea style grandma-scented gelatin

2 packages plain gelatin

1 cup cottage cheese (to make it white and lumpy)

1 cup sugar (to make it sickeningly sweet)

30-40 vigorous sprays of the cheapest, sweetest perfume you can buy at Walgreens or CVS

Mix together, chill, invert

spray a decorative lattice design with aeresol whipped crem

accent with drops of red food coloring for a festive look.

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Actually I have had some amazing desserts here. The pastries (that remind me a little of baklava, or baklava with custard) are just incredible. But this dessert actually made me scream when I put it in my mouth because it was so gross. It tasted just like perfume!

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After all the dead sea fun, we climbed Kerak castle, and arrived in Wadi Musa, the town next to Petra. That night, most of us took a candle-lit tour/walk to the treasury. I will put pictures of Petra by day in the next entry (my camera does not take good night pics), plus - nothing would do this justice. It was magical, breathtaking. You walk through walls of red rock and there were luminaries every 10 feet or so. After you arrive through a narrow entry, you see Petra. We all sat down in rows while some Bedouins played traditional music for us, and made us mint tea, all with candle-light. Suvi and Laurie sang happy birthday to me and I blew out one of the luminaries. Seeing Petra at night was one of the most amazing things I have ever seen. Just beautiful. It was a wonderful birthday. I had one beer at the irish bar because it was closing, and slept better than I have since I got here.

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Below - road between Kerak castle and Wadi Musa:

repeat customer

2010-11-23T06:10:00.000-08:00

Really I have nothing important to say about Sunday. I lazed around my nice hotel room until the last possible moment, then I left my bags there while I made one last visit to the Hashem restaurant. I saw my waiter and gave him the "I'm baaack!" smile. He remembered my entire order from yesterday. "Hummus, bread, coke and falafel?" Then an old man that I have never seen before came up to me, smiled, pointed at me and said "I remember you!!". It actually looked like the same cast of characters as yesterday. The fact that they remembered me, remembered my order and weren't annoyed to see me return with all of my confusing questions completely warmed my heart.

another view of the Hashem restaurant:

you can actually see the same waiters in the photo today as yesterday. The guy walking in the door to the right was the old man. After that, I returned to Habibah, the delicious pastry place.

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I had to go up to the north side of town for my night before group meeting. I stayed up there too because that's where everyone else was staying, and it was super cheap. I even had my own little balcony:

This new hotel (which was super gross compared to the Hisham hotel) was one block away from the largest mosque in Amman. You know what that means!

It means that at 4:45 AM, I am going to be woken up by this:

And being one block away from the King Abdullah mosque, it was exactly as loud as I had imagined it would be. But I am getting much better at going back to sleep. And it does add some local flavor to my morning!

I had an hour to kill and my alarm clock is on its last legs. So I walked down Al Nubulsi street to maybe look for a shop that could have one. I saw a watch shop that was closed, with a connecting convenience store and adjoining travel agency. I bought some water and asked the man if he also owned the watch store and how I might find an alarm clock. Of couse I did not learn "alarm clock" at the discovery center, so I personified an alarm clock by pretending to sleep on my folded hands, then screeching "beep-beep-beepbeepbeep!!!" He knew exactly what I was looking for. He found me an alarm clock that was gigantic. It weighed a ton and was just too big. So I asked about a watch. Just then, a fistfight spilled out of the travel agency. I told the man I'd be back and walked down the street so that the men could cool off. I returned, and they were still fighting near the convenience store. The man (who had a 8 year old son with him working in the store) had me come into the travel agency to get another key to the watch store. This was all getting too confusing so I almost left, but he said he might have a smaller clock. Ok, whatever. He shut the door so that the arguing men wouldn't bother us, then he asked me where I was from and if I had a husband or boyfriend. Yes! is always the answer to that one. He tried to get me to go into a back room of the travel agency. I refused to go in the room with him. My bullshit meter was way up and it was time to leave. The man shook my hand goodbye and did not want to let my hand go, and he said "I kiss you. I kiss you now". HA! Hell no. I was smart enough to stay by the door at all times. I shouldn't have even shaken his hand. No more handshakes alone in a travel agency with a strange man, even if his 8 year old son is right next door. "he's climbin' in yo window, he's snatchin' yo people up!"

I met with my group, who all seemed very nice and for the most part up for a good time, then we all went our separate ways before our first day tomorrow. I took a taxi down to a different neighborhood for dinner. It was really quiet and I mostly talked to one of the employees of the restaurant, named Sultan. He was a sweet, very young looking 26 year old. We talked about the world cup, food, education, customers that come in the restaurant. After that, I had a taxi drive that used the meter and tried to refuse money when I over-tipped him.

I am a female Borat

2010-11-21T00:10:00.001-08:00

Every time I travel, I can't help feeling a little bit like Borat. Dressed just a little bit different, asking too many questions... combined with the fact that I am not shy, and thanks to 12 some years of being a media buyer, if you give me an inch I will take a mile. Amman I come to make nice with you!! Saturday I took the "walking tour" of Amman, plus my own walking tour. Wearing my cargo pants, chicago marathon tshirt and flip flops, stopping to look at a map every 15 minutes, I walked a good 7 miles yesterday I think. I went from my posh neighborhood to the second circle, to the first circle - going all the way to the more traditional center of town. Amman's streets have no rhyme or reason. They aren't straight and the city is very hilly so a street that might look close on a map is actually up the side of a cliff through an alley. Usually I try to NEVER pull out a map in public, but after a few times I noticed that nobody was paying attention. It all felt very very safe.

The first circle is really congested. I went to a place that is recommended for hummus called Hashem, which is in an alleyway. Men walk around with baskets of falafel, and you can order either hummus of fuul (sp?) which is some type of bean puree. I got the hummus (above) and they brought pita with a basket of mint. It was by far the best hummus and falafel I have ever had. Just phenomenal!! The bad news is, it may have ruined trader joe's hummus for me forever, which is usually the only grocery store hummus I will eat. Salam restaurant in Chicago comes close, but this was just on another level of tastiness and lightness. Not a lot of women in this restaurant, but nobody even looked at me funny. I was so happy. The view from my table:

A main street in the first circle:

After the hummus, I stopped at the pastry shop. The walking tour takes you around through different markets of gold shops, cell phone covers, kohl for the eyes, socks, colanders, spoons, curtains, everything random and nothing I wanted to buy. Except maybe this book:

Surprisingly, I was able to make use of my discovery center arabic class. I had left my pen at home, and I needed one. One day our teacher made us all practice saying "is this a pen? no, it's a book. Is this a table? No, it's a pen" over and over and over and over and over.. I remembered the word for pen! But I have no idea how to say "do you have a pen", just "is this a pen?" So I went into a store that looked like it might have pens and I said "Hathi Qualam??!" and the guy knew what I was saying. Even though I marched into his store and said "Is this a pen?" he handed me a pack of three pens and smiled. It was like a miracle. I was so proud of myself! Now for the rest of the time I'm here, if I need another pen, a table or a book, I can buy one. But if I need to buy anything else at all, no guarantees.

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I walked past another mosque, up hills (where everything is made out of the same smooth and slippery limestone), down hills, through crowds, through alleys until I was so exhausted and far away that I took a taxi home.

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One thing that is a little unsettling to me are the young guys in camoflage and rifles. Before you start worrying, this really isn't uncommon outside of the US and Europe. In Guatemala I saw this every day. They are usually just guarding some building, or have some sort of military job. But it makes my heart race a little bit everytime I have to walk past one of them. I'm all for my friends and family up in Michigan killing turkeys and deer - my feeling about guns is that I never want to see them, I don't want them in the city limits of Chicago, but I'll gladly eat whatever you kill with one. (well, maybe not deer..) But I don't really like seeing them when I walk down the street. I can't help the reaction in my gut.

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Last night after walking all over the place, I went to the fancy asian place next door to my hotel for some teriyaki and dumplings. Then I had a lychee martini! I am enjoying solo time because I know it is ending very soon. I read the book I've been saving for months - David Rakoff's Fraud, and had a nice little evening in a cozy bar. The book made me laugh out loud several times. I really like my neighborhood here. Amman has everything - in some places women are completely covered except for the eyes, and in this neighborhood the young and hip of Amman come to drink martinis to a hotel costes soundtrack.

Today I am going back to the hummus place. It is completely inconveniently located and I am going to have to take a taxi. One thing I've learned over the years of travelling is that if you like a place - GO BACK. Sometimes I go back to places again and again. In Paris, Kathy and I had a place we went to at least 4 times for an onion tart I was obsessed with. In Panama I had a chicken stew place. In New York, there is Joe's Shanghai. I never think "I'm so glad I went to so many restaurants!" as much as "man what I wouldn't do to go back to that chicken stew place.."
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Here is my hotel outdoor patio:

When I came home last night to the Hisham Hotel, I had another Borat moment. There are some Olan Mills-style family portraits hanging on the lobby wall and what look to be family vacation photos, framed. "Is that Hisham?" I asked, just curiously asking about the hotel owner.

"No! That is the king of Jordan!!"

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Oh.. haha.. well, I didn't recognize him. Then I noticed of course it is Queen Rania in the photo. The whole photo studio-style portrait threw me off. Then I did get the story about Hisham. He owned the hotel for 20 years, then sold it to two Iraqis and two Jordanians. They get a lot of repeat customers from the French and US embassies. It really is a nice place and very reasonably priced. The hotel owner told me sadly that Hisham died a few years ago. He seemed fond of him. Hisham would be happy that I like his hotel very much.

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I may not be able to write much after today - until November 29. I'm not sure what the internet situation will be like. I will be with my group and we are going to the dead sea and out in the desert. I will catch up when I get to Egypt for sure, and many times when I am in Dabab. (I might be able to sooner, at Petra). If you are reading, comment so that I know.

As Salaamu, Amman!

2010-11-20T01:53:00.001-08:00

Thursday afternoon I worked like crazy until 3PM, then raced home to get my backpack. I've been a little grouchy this week - so I am apologizing now, coworkers and salespeople.. I felt really bad leaving so much work - but not bad enough to cancel my vacation. It will be there for me when I get back.

One thing that has made me laugh over the past several weeks is the complete panic that everyone is in about the new TSA x-ray scanners. You have the choice of (thanks to new technology) being seen pretty much naked under your clothes, or the choice of getting a creepy extreme "pat-down". Every single morning on the news, there was a story of people getting molested at the airport and completely outraged at the x-ray machines. I don't know why, but it makes me laugh. I even made fun of it on my facebook status. Sara can't wait to give the TSA scanners a cheap thrill at the airport tomorrow! One friend commented that last week he could have gotten a prostate exam, since they were already down there with plastic gloves. Another friend flew to Denver on the same day I did - and got BOTH the pat-down and the x-ray. I started giggling like the immature person I am as soon as I got to security. But I guess the TSA just "is not that into me". I got neither an x-ray or a physical inspection. I was just waved through, past an indian grandma in a sari getting what appeared to be a full groping. I am actually kind of insulted. It was so anti-climactic. As a person looking a big birthday in the face, I totally took it the wrong way. What does that indian grandma have that I don't?!

Turkish airlines really impressed me with the random on-demand entertainment. I read an entire book, then watched the 1980 movie Fame! Then, 4 episodes of Modern Family and several episodes of How I met your mother. Nice assortment, Turkish airlines! When you are faced with a 10 hour flight, the most exciting thing that happens is when dinner comes. It totally breaks up the time, and up there in the thin air and extreme boredom, it actually tastes pretty good. I ate everything but the garnish.

Yeah, that's the girl you know and love!

After an absolutely beautiful sunrise, we landed in Istanbul where I contemplated buying this:

I almost got an airport massage, but it was too expensive so I got some wierd pistachio ice cream instead. The guy who scooped the ice cream pretended to hand it to me three times, snatching it back with a crazy face and laughing at me each time I tried to grab it. 15 hours ago when I was all stressed out, I would have wanted to punch him in the face. But I was in a loopy mood, so it just made me laugh along with him. Oh, Istanbul airport, you are more fun than a barrel of monkeys!

On the flight from Istanbul to Amman, I chatted with a nice Norweigen couple, and read some more. The guy from my hotel was holding my name on a sign when I arrived, and we listened to Jordanian music on the way back into the city. I always love foreign pop music. This type sounds a lot like Greek music, minus the bouzouki and plus the more gutteral arabic language. It's a little bit dramatic, but very dancey. Oh habiiibiiii!!! Habiiibiii! Lots of angst about Habbibi. Habbibi means dear, beloved, honey - something like that. I liked the one song that sounded like a snake charmer to a disco beat.

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I checked into my hotel where I have an awesome room, and I picked it for the lovely outdoor restaurant/garden. It's in a really nice neighborhood near the third circle. The man who checked me in made very sure that I knew I had a NICE SHOWER in my room. Twice he told me I have a NICE SHOWER. Hmmm... was that a hint?

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I had one beer outside at 11PM, studied the map, wrote a little bit, then SHOWERED and went to bed. I was having a terrible nightmare when I woke up at 4:45AM. I leapt out of bed, heart pounding, and turned on all the lights. What was I dreaming about and why was there still a spooky man's voice singing through my window? I was so scared and confused. I had completely forgotten about the muslim call to prayer. Kathy and I heard this in east Africa. Starting early in the morning, and a couple times a day, there is singing and praying over loudspeakers. It's actually very beautiful to hear. But at 4:45, the man's voice made its way into my dream and gave me the scariest nightmare I have had in the longest time. I slept for another few hours, then ate the free breakfast!

Now I'm just wandering towards the heart of downtown, where I am going to take the Lonely Planet-suggested walking tour, that stops near some good kebab and dessert shops. I love middle eastern food and pastries. There is a place in Chicago, next to the Kedzie brown line station called nazareth sweets, that sells delicious baklava-type things soaked in honey and rose water. It feels really safe here walking around. Nobody has hassled me. Amman is a nice city. The call to prayer happened again when I was walking around, but I never actually see anybody face mecca or pray or anything. Nobody actually closes down shop to do this. At least not where I am. I wonder who does it and how many people do it? Maybe just in their homes? I have no idea.

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I did take 5 classes of Arabic at the discovery center, so I still can't read anything (including the sign below) but I know a few words, and I can recognize the letters. A lot of signs start with the alif, then lam character - which spells "al", which means something like "the". I keep seeing that. It's a lovely language written out:

Time to find some hummus and a kebab. I am at a beautiful place I read about in the New York times - it's called books@cafe and has a lovely rooftop garden overlooking the city, with a bookstore downstairs.

November and December 2010

2010-09-21T14:31:00.000-07:00

Tulum

2009-12-24T14:27:00.001-08:00

I had two nights left (not counting my last night in Playa del Carmen for the sake of catching my flight home), and I thought about going to an eco lodge, going to the biosphere, staying in Vallodolid longer or going back to Tulum. I really kind of wanted to stay in the interior, but in Late Feburary, when I am waiting for the brown line train on a wind-whipped platform and the most mexican thing about my day will be the lean cuisine chicken enchiladas suizas at 12:07PM, I don´t want to think ¨I really should have spent some more time on that beach in Tulum¨.
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I was worried about not finding a place to stay, this being extremely high season, christmas week and all. I had no reason to worry. I found a place to stay right away. Here is my casita at the Luna Maya:

I had to move next door the next night, but there were places to be found. Tulum is a little pricey, but worth it.

I missed happy hour and had my Drin after 5PM. But I bought it from the grocery store and had it on my porch so it was cheap anyhow, suckas!

I took a walk along the beach and through the woods:

and found a hippie sweat lodge!

I also went to see the famous Mayan ruin, Tulum. I enjoyed Uxmel more because there were less annoying people around, but these ruins were very impressive, despite the Cancun daytrippers with bad cornrows of braids:

When I got back to the beach, I discovered another Mayan ruin. It´s amazing!!

Not much to do in Tulum. It was perfect to be alone there. No nightlife to be found. Actually I´m not going to lie and say the food was good, because it was not. I could have been anywhere. I had above average wood fired pizza for dinner on the beach at a cute place, but it wasn´t like the culinary experiences I had been having in Merida and Valladolid. But really, it´s OK.

The view from my second casita room is below. After the sun went down, I laid on a beach chair and looked at the stars and listened to the waves for a good half hour. It was nice.

Das German youth hostel in Valladolid

2009-12-24T13:26:00.000-08:00

I was surprised by how much I enjoyed Merida. I could almost live there. Sometimes you just click with a town for no real reason. If you asked me why, I could not rattle off too many reasons. There is a lot of public art and I liked the vibe. It does actually have a small American retirement or ex-pat community. I really liked being ignored and not watched as I walked down the street or beckoned into every shop. People didnt start speaking to me in english as soon as I sat down someplace. I could butcher my bad spanish and nobody minded. For my final night, I went back to the town square to watch more dancing in the closed off street. I am a little bit of a Christmas grump at home but I enjoy Christmas in Latin America. I loved it in Guatemala, Brazil and I love it here in Mexico. People aren´t stressing about shopping or snow, they just eat and dance.
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Alas, it was time to move on. I only had a week to travel and I couldn´t be the village idiot wandering around Merida forever. Valladolid is another sorbet-colored town (pic above). It is famous for the area cenotes, which are wierd caves and underground pools scattered around the yucatan. I took a two hour bus, going through many small towns. They were typical modest little rough-around-the edges towns you would see anywhere in Asia or Latin America, but many of them were very clean. There was no trash. The houses had peeling paint but someone had cared enough to plant some flowers and mend the fence. I like the way the people dressed in the little towns - it was almost like they had a dress code. They wore the traditional clothes I saw for sale in Playa del Carmen and Merida - the men wear the button-down shirt with the two little striped designs down the front (guyabera?), and the women wear the white dress with the flowers emboridered around the yoke of the neck and on the hem. They have specific names, but I forget what the shirt and dress are called. After many bus rides over the years, I have noticed that all small towns must have the following things:

skinny brown mutt dogs that look dead when they are sleeping in the sun, or are pregnant and have 25 nipples.
an auto repair shop with an open garage door that is a complete mess with a fat man smoking inside
Rosa´s Cocina restaurant, or some variation
A store with a large display of plastic shoes
a cinder block school with faded pastel-colored paint
an inglesia, of course
the corner bar with one window

and in this area, a store for pinatas and balloons. I saw a disproportionate number of pinatas y globos shops in Merida and Valladolid. They just love balloons. In Merida, there were people selling balloons from huge bundles of maybe 100 balloons at once. If you spontaneously needed a balloon, that would never be a problem here.
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In Valladolid, I checked into the hostel to save some money. Germans and Dutch people love Valladolid, I found. Practically everyone in the hostel was from northen Europe. The guy who checked me in even pronounced my last name the traditional German way - it sounds kind of like Share-ieh-mecccch. Hans and Dieter (well, in my mind that is what their names were) lounged around on the couch and chatted away. It was also the first youth hostel I have ever stayed in where I may have been on the younger end of the average age. I had my own room, and my next door neighbors were maybe in their early 50s. Everyone looked to be between 30 and 60. It was interesting.
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I wandered out to get some lunch. I would hate to see the kitchen, but I had some delicious panuchos here:

Panuchos are just flat, fried tacos with refried beans in between two layers of fried tortillas, with a topping (like chicken and cabbage) on top. Delicious.

I walked over to the closest Ceynote in town:

There is even a special breed of eyeless black fish that live in the ceynotes. People go swimming in here. But nobody else was swimming, and the algae and the the thought of eyeless black fish scared me off. (I mean, wouldnt eyeless fish scare YOU off?) In case you didn´t know you were in a cave, they had the international sign for you are entering a cave:

and the virgin of guadeloupe had a shrine in the cave as well:

Unfortunately, the town square was under construction for renovation. It is going to be lovely when they finish it. Here is the church:

the front of my hostel room:

For dinner I had conchinitas pibil again. These were the best ones yet. They gave me a reasonable portion (not like that pile of pork I showed you the other day), and it was amazingly good. The masa tortillas tasted like they were made 5 minutes ago. There was a beautiful atmosphere in the restaurant, too. A lit up fountain and candles. I tried to stretch my meal as long as I could. I caught myself making faces and looking at my fork a little too suggestively after I was tasting the food and I had to stop that immediately. I would make fun of someone else doing that. Anyhow, conchinita pibil - yeah, very good in Valladolid.

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At night, in the Plaza right outside the hostel was a mysterious talent show going on. The talent was bad. I bought a couple of cans of beer at the convenience store, sat down, watched and tried to figure out what people were saying and singing. Perfect night out!

Estoy LLENA!

2009-12-20T14:28:00.000-08:00

After being a little partied-out in Playa del Carmen, I decided to be slothful in Merida. And after climbing up that damn ruin yesterday, I thought I´d just wander around town, eating as much as I wanted for 24 hours and write about it. Aren´t you shocked that I would do such a thing?

OK, I´m not just cramming it all in, I´m learning many things here. I´ve been a big fan of Rick Bayless for years and my dream is to feel like I am filming an episode of "one plate at a time". First of all, I can´t find a chile relleno to save my life. But we are in the Yucatan, and we have PIBIL!!

This is either pork or chicken, cooked in a banana leaf underground with spices. I´m not sure if they really dig a hole in the ground, or if that is an exaggeration. Either way - the pollo pibil I had after the ruin yesterday and my pork pibil for dinner (pictured above and below) - was delicioso! They give you tortillas, to make little tacos, see? And purple pickled onions to sprinkle on top.

Yes, I finished that big pile. And I loved every minute of it. With 2 beers, this came to less than $15 with tip. They aren´t crazy about cheese here. But that´s OK. the food is so tasty that I don´t miss it. No queso tamales to be found.

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The next morning, I ate a tamale, which I forgot to take a picture of. There is some sort of celebration going on, and everyone is selling food in the streets and people really eat spicy meats for breakfast. I thought maybe only a few people did - but nope, after walking around to the market and back, I noticed everyone did. As a person who has been known to have leftover thai food or pizza for breakfast, I had a chicken tamale. And then I had ANOTHER ONE. And what´s that I see? Churros?! well, don´t mind if I do!!!

This was all before 10AM. This is a typical food stand. Believe it or not, I did not have room for the barbacoa...

but don´t think I didn´t consider it....

Here´s a guy roasting some onions to put on those pieces of meat:

They have conchia pibil, the regional specialty and last night´s dinner!

I went thought the entire market, and watched people buy their groceries. As in most countries, people here want to see their meat up close and talk to the butcher first. Nothing is frozen, it´s all just hanging up by hooks.

You would think all that raw meat might kill my appetite. Well, think again. It´s time for CORN ICE CREAM and a MERANGE! woo woo!

The end.

When I get home, I am going on a huge diet.

Colors of Merida

2009-12-20T14:17:00.001-08:00

Not really a post, but just wanted to show you some photos of this little town you´ve probably never heard of, where I called home for three nights.. These were taken during the only quiet time, on Sunday morning.

Mayans and hard boiled eggs

2009-12-19T17:18:00.000-08:00

Friday morning JT and I bid a sad goodbye at the bus station. I took a 4 hour luxury bus north inland to the capital of the Yucatan, Merida. Merida calls itself the center of culture for the Yucatan, I could see immediately that this could be true. Art museums, bookstores, live musical and dancing perfomances every night! Merida also paints a lot of its buildings a multitude of pastel colors, which are beautiful in the hot, bright sunlight. I was happy to arrive to a bustling real mexican town where people were just going about their business. I walked out of the bus station bracing myself, expecting to be hassled and barraged with questions and offers to get me where I was going - but happily this did not happen. I walked about 20 minutes to a hotel that I had seen on the internet a few weeks ago - Luz en Yucatan. Like fate, they had one room due to a cancellation. I told the owner, Tom, that I was just going to take it one day at a time and I didn´t know how long I´d stay. Tom from Colorado, who was about as chillaxed as all the expat hotel owners I´ve met, said "that´s a good idea. And a good way to go through life in general." I took a walk around town, admiring and soaking it all in. One thing I like about Mexico is how they don´t put signs up as much as carefully paint on the building itself. If the painter had a good eye and nice handwriting, it has a nice aesthetic thing about it. There is also some bizarre drainage system that allows for large, dark random, bottomless holes in the sidewalk at various points in town. For many reasons, but probably this most of all, I am not going to drink much when I am here.
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My room is twice the size of the Playa del Carmen hotel and I have a private balcony and maybe 20 foot ceilings. The floor and bathroom are old marble. Plants, hammocks, palm trees and a twinkling christmas tree with a tray of various tequilas. I didn´t have any of the tequila but I like knowing it is there. I chose a cute old romantic courtyard place for dinner and tried one of the local specialties, papazules. These are hard boiled egg-filled, pumpkin seed sauce-covered enchiladas. OK....haha.. maybe not the best thing I´ve ever had. I strolled through the streets and stopped to watch the locals enjoying themselves. Near my hotel is the funniest place - there is singing all the time and fake smoke on the stage, but it seems to be a wholesome family place. I am too intmidated to go in there just yet but I know if my friends were here, we would. Merida isn´t that touristy, and I don´t get the sense that people care too much about ripping me off. They may be, but they hide it pretty well. There are more europeans here for sure. And that brings me to my trip today, to the ruins of Uxmal.
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I love these trips that throw a bunch of randoms together on a bus. Out of 21 people, there were three americans, four japanese people, some italians, some austrians and a guy from London. Our guide, Juan, is pictured above in the white shirt. I had a cup of chaya, which is a green plant that helps the stomach or whatever ails you. Also joining us on the tour were an octogenerian and his 30-something wife with the biggest, jaw dropping diamond ring I´ve ever seen in person. Uxmal was interesting. There was a wall where you could clap loudly and a wierd bird sound would echo off the wall. I wish Jeffrey had been there, my friend who can clap louder than anyone in the universe. The ancient mayans also played a game where you try to kick around a ball into a percariously placed ring. Sometimes it would take days to get the ball into the ring (and apparently the whole city had the patience to watch), but when it did, people ate and drank for days until they would fall down. Unless I didn´t understand Juan correctly, those mayans were quite dramatic. There were also plenty of phallic symbols scattered thoughout and many cool symbolic animals in the stone. We also went the ruin Koba, which was extremely spooky. The wind whistled and animals howled in the bushes. Between Uxmel and Koba, our bus was sideswiped by another bus when we were both going about 50 miles per hour in opposite directions. It broke part of the windshield and completely knocked off the rear view mirror. This w0uldn´t have been so bad except that I was right in front behind the driver, with no partition. I heard glass break and I screamed and ducked my head, thinking that glass was all over. Luckily nobody was hurt and we could keep using the bus. It was scary. We just continued on the excusion with a half-cracked windshield. I saw the whole thing and our driver was not at fault. Oh well... I am so grateful that I can be at the internet cafe right now, and not having glass picked out of my head in the hospital. But you can put your minds right at ease, because Lonely planet says the hospital is very good here.

It doesn´t count as the REAL Mexico but....

2009-12-19T16:42:00.001-08:00

I didn´t plan on blogging about the first 5 days of my trip. The idea was to go to the beach, get out of the cold, recover from a work project (JT) and as it turns out, eat. Gaining 5 lbs was not our intention, but I think that might be what happened. Planning a beach trip to Mexico was completly frustrating and like stabbing in the dark - all of the places sounded exactly the same to me, and everything was kind of "eh" on the internet... so I picked Playa del Carmen simply because they don´t allow buildings over 4 stories, and the beaches are supposedly some of the best in Mexico. Indeed this was all true. The hotel, La Tortuga, was charming and boutiquey - I loved the design. There was a jungle in the middle with a little lazy-river style pool where you could sit and watch the neon-colored birds, read about Winston Churchhill and Ghandi (JT) and the story of a Somolian refugee (me). The beach we had access too was great - so clean and the water was perfect. Playa del Carmen was pretty tacky, but fun. We made fun of the horrible shirts that said such things as "I´m not a ginecologist.. but I´ll take a look!". Massages were $30 per hour. We drank and danced. We put bad songs in the jukebox. JT took a lot of naps. We took a side trip to Tulum, which was awesome. Actually some of the restaurants in Playa town were fabulous, particularly John Gray, where JT took me for a belated birthday dinner. We met a nice older couple from Vancouver because we accidentally sat next to them at three different restaurants at three different times. JT looked him up today and he is a world-renouned concert pianist. I had time to explore my love of chiliquiles, a mexican breakfast that I´ve had in Chicago. Meaning I had them every day. Chilaquiles always remind me of JT because we had them on our first date, and they remind me of Mexico. Playa del carmen was fun. Neither of us counted it as "travelling" in the sense that we normally do. That´s about all there was to it... JT left yesterday and I went on to Merida. I will try to blog about Merida today if not tomorrow.

Today I saw a Broadbill mot mot, and it was awesome!

2008-12-03T17:45:00.000-08:00

The great thing about being in your 30s is that you (well at least I feel this way) can easily slip between the beer-chugging hostel scene and a nice hotel. I woke up on my sweat stained mattress in Carti, fully intending to stay another night (and perhaps get my own island) and I thought... I'M DONE. I have spent over half of this trip in hostels, and it has been fun. The easy company, spending $20 or less a night, it's a great thing. But once in awhile I need to be around a different crowd. I read about Canopy Tower a week ago in Lonely Planet, thinking I might check it out. Just an hour from Panama City, it's one of the best birdwatching spots in the world. Jimmy Carter, Martha Stewart, Angelina Jolie have all been here. It's been mentioned in National Geographic, Traveller magazine and a bunch of others. Not fancy, but in a fabulous setting in a tower in the forest.

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I took a bus from Panama City, got off at an intersection and hiked up a hill for a mile or so thought the woods and came up to the green tower. Everyone said "you WALKED up the HILL?" because they all had taken a private taxi. This was a different crowd. I admired the amazing view from the roof and took a shower. This place has a feel of a scientific station, a hotel and a lounge. All the rooms open up to a big interior balcony and there is a library of nature books and birding magazines. The third floor is a lounge where you can sit on couches, lay in a hammock, eat, drink, read. I took the 3PM tour and was joined by Dianna and Eric, a couple from Bermuda, Rachel from England, Tony, an animal rehabilitation guy and pipers plover enthusiast and Larry, former cardiologist and hummingbird enthusiast. Our guide drove us out to an abandoned road in the forest. "better wear hiking boots and long pants!". When in fact it was just an easy stroll.. for me. Everyone had binoculars and I had to borrow some. Larry had the biggest camera I'd ever seen, he was a genuine bird paparazzi. His photos could be in National Geographic.

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To me, all forest sounds kind of blur into one big soundtrack of random cheeps and chirps. Insects and birds sound similar to me. Not to these people! We heard another random chirp, and Tony or Larry would say "Oh, there's a flatbill over in that tree!" and we would all point our binoculars, and our guide would point a big telescope. Sure enough, a neon colored bird would be hiding in the leaves. Something I NEVER would have seen. Everyone busily jotted down the birds they saw in their own personal log books, and I happened to have my journal with me. This is what I saw:

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Broadbill mot mot

Olivaceous flatbill

bi colored antbird

brown woodcreeper

white whiskered puffbird

flycather atilla

scarlet rumped cacique

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along with a literal RIVER of army ants, a river of leafcutters, termites and frogs. It was also the best smelling rainforest I'd ever been to. It was great to be around people who care so much about birds, their enthusiasm was so contageous. When I got back, I laid in the hammock and checked out "birding" magazine. Did you know that there is a world series of birding? It takes place in May, lasts 24 hours, you stand in a 17 foot circle and have to identify as many birds as you can in 24 hours. Last year it took place in New Jersey. (New Jersey??). Kirtland's warbler made the cover, and there was a whole article of what to do when a preditor comes to eat your baby chickadees. Just like Jimmy Carter, I love this place and it was a great random spur of the moment decision.

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We sat down to a nice dinner of wine, salad, beef, potatoes, etc, etc. It was fabulous. After dinner we looked at Larry's photos on his computer and all clapped when he was done showing us. I have to get up at 6AM to not miss the morning feeding outside the observation deck. It was fun to be a birder for a day! Tomorrow I might finally go to Isla Grande.

My night with the Kuna indians

2008-12-03T11:23:00.000-08:00

The San Blas islands are some of Central America's most beautiful, but they are hard and expensive to get to. I decided to do it the last minute ghetto way, by taking a 4X4 (instead of flying) from a hostel in Panama City. The San Blas are completely run by Kuna indians, it's called the comarca kuna yala. They all live in villages of thatch huts with dirt floors and sleep in hammocks. A group of us were picked up at 5AM, then drove down three hours of bumpy, washed out roads. My knees were pretty much in my chest, we were squished in the truck. After a ride down a river in a canoe, then a half hour ride out in the ocean, we arrived at the most rustic place I'd ever seen. A cluster of junky bamboo huts - very much like the hilltribe villages in Thailand only much more crowded. There was a super ghetto hostel in the village of Carti, where we stayed upstairs in a dirty, hot bamboo house. The company was fun - three guys from Brooklyn, a girl from Canada, two finnish people and an irish couple. The package included a visit to the islands - we took another hour boat ride out into the ocean to the most picturesque island I've ever seen (pictured above) - isla pellican. And true to it's name, there were pellicans dive-bombing into the water for fish.

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Along with the rustic accomodation was rustic food. Fish and rice (pictured above) - it wasn't too bad. The NYC guys had been there for three days, and ate fish and rice at every meal. We spent the entire day there, snorkeling, reading under the palm trees, swimming (we fed baby sharks our leftover fish - I was too scared to go out into the deep water where the sharks were, so I didn't see them!) After a perfect day, we went back to the hostel. I love camping, and rustic stuff, but this was too ghetto even for me. the mattresses were stained, and for a pillow I had a couch pillow. We were all so grossed out by the pillows that we had to put towels on them so they wouldn't touch our faces!

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After a communal dinner and a couple of beers, we decided to go to the little kuna museum on the island. I learned that Kunas are a matriachal society, and they've battled with the Panamanians quite a bit (but the US helped them during the building of the canal) but they love foreigners. They also sleep in hammocks, get married in hammocks and give birth in hammocks. Really. They have their own religion - sort of like Chrisitanity (heaven and hell) but with a lot of mystcism thrown in, and a lot of hinting toward good and bad karma. It was interesting. Sort of like the hilltribe villages in thailand but a lot more ghetto and uncomfortable to visit.

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I came back to Panama City today with the Brooklyn boys, and now I'm at a nerdy, expensive and super cool bird watching obervation-station hotel place. I had to take a bus and walk a half hour up a sweaty hill through the jungle to get here. I was completely soaked in sweat and everyone was sort of surprised that I walked from the highway. There are bird books everywhere, and the whole hotel is in a tower so there are killer views! I'm going on a tour in about 10 minutes (I think it's a bird tour) and supposedly we can see monkeys and more birds at dinner. It's so scientific and nerdy, my dad would love this place. well, I'm off to be a bird nerd... also check out the sloth pic I uploaded!

2008-12-01T13:58:00.000-08:00

This is gonna be a short one...I'm in another panama city hostel and it's been a loooong day!
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I think I've been a pretty good sport about all of this rain. I learned that this is the worst rain period Panama has had in over 30 years. Raining ALL over the country. I really was starting to like Boquete, but I was getting tired of being the gringa wandering around town in the orange plastic emergency poncho. After 2 amazing nights at the panamonte hotel (the place that cut me the great deal), I moved to a normal hostel on the river so that I could see some friendly non retiree faces and save some money. In the lobby, I looked a little glum and desperate so one of the owners (A nice guy from Gary, Indiana..the accent reminded me of home!) told me of a place that would cheer me up, an animal rescue center run by some British retirees on the outskirts of town. I hiked up a hill and out into the misty woods, and 30 minutes later found Paradise Gardens, where they rehabilitate neglected exotic animals in a beautiful setting. You can pet some of the animals, and learn their stories. Like the two scarlet maccaws that were confiscated from some drug dealers. And the two toucans, Bonnie and Clyde, who were found injured at the side of the road. And a wierd cat-otter mix that Ive never seen before. They even had a baby sloth, wrapped up in a blanket, that they would take out for you to pet. Im not the biggest animal lover you've ever met, but even I was amazed by this place and it completely cheered me up. Bonnie and Clyde, the toucans, were amazing. I asked if they ate fruit loops.. haha. Paradise Gardens gave the animals such nice areas to roam around in, way better than the spooky zoo in El Valle!
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Today I flew to Panama City (it was cheap and I was lazy) to arrange a trip to the san blas. I'm going tomorrow at 5am, Im super excited!! look it up on the internet. I'm going to stay in a rustic cabin. rock on! I won't be able to blog for a few days because I'll be kickin it with the Kuna indians!

whitewater mania!

2008-11-29T14:36:00.000-08:00

I left the Lost and Found lodge in hopes of getting to Boquete for the western union transfer. Originally I was going to go to Panama City, but the fondue-making Dutch flight attendants at the L&F told me that Boquete was fine, it had opened up again to tourists. I really wanted to see it anyway, so I decided to go. It´s so easy to travel here, I´ve never waited more than 10 minutes for a bus. Andrew from the lodge dropped me off in David, then I got on a yellow schoolbus for $1.45. 45 minutes later, we arrived in Boquete. A pretty little town up in the mountains with a river and pine trees, it reminds me a lot of a colorado town. The western union office was easy to find, and the transfer went though so I treated myself to a nice hotel on the edge of town. They cut me a great deal because the town was basically closed a week ago due to the massive floods. One block from my hotel is a big washed out bridge. Tourists are a stil a little sparse. Unforntately I´m still not going to be able to go to Bocas Del Toro, the devastation there was just too bad. I REALLY had wanted to go to Bocas del Toro. Oh well, sometimes you can´t tell mother nature what to do.
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The restaurants in this town are either uber-panamanian cafeteria type places, or tourist places with english menus. There are a few nice places, but I still miss the Libertad restaurant in El Valle. A place with a menu in spanish, but with ambiance. The town itself is cute, though. I´m not complaining. I arranged for a full day whitewater rafting trip for today, then had dinner at a bistro place, then an atlas at a jazz place.
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The guide, Tini, picked me up bright and early. ¨Tini¨is supposed to be like the nickname ¨Tiny¨. But unlike an ironic mobster name, he actually was sort of tiny. Also in my boat was a Californian family: Herb, Wanda and their son Sam. They were great, very adventurous and well travelled family. We were joined by a kayaker (who picks up paddles and helps with rescues in case something happened to Tiny) and we drove about an hour and a half up to the Costa Rican border to the Chiriqui river. This is the same river that flooded last week, so the water was VERY high. While we were unloading into the river, we saw toucans (my first) and some monkeys. I was really excited about the Toucans. Growing up in Battle Creek, I always pictured Toucans with big smiles like a bowl of Fruit loops. Ive been rafting a good 7 times before (class 5 in West Virginia and a very cold class 2-3 with my dad in Colorado), and never once fallen out of the boat, so rafting does not really scare me, although my chiropractor 5 years ago made me promise that I´d never do it again.. oh well. a good minute after put in, we already had a class 4 rapid. I know what a class 4 rapid feels like, that was a class 5 rapid. We had class 5 rapids for the first hour of the trip, one after another. I sat in front and was actually scared, which was fun (hey, I´m getting my money´s worth!). When you sit in front, you drop into rapids and just see a wall of water coming at you. Everyone was soaked the whole time. I was screaming, but it was really fun. Each rapid is named for something, usually for who falls in it or who´s boat tips in. For example, we approached one and Tiny said ¨Thees rapeed es called Mexian family!¨ meaning that a mexican family fell in not long ago.
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About 45 minutes into the trip, when we were going over a class 3 rapid (which is actually class 4), I was tossed out of the boat. I don´t actually remember falling out, I just remember all of the sudden being UNDER the raft, looking up through the muddy water and seeing yellow, and thinking, holy crap, I actually fell out of the boat and Oh, I hope there are no rocks! When that happens, you are supposed to claw your way over to the side of the boat, and have someone pull you up. Which I did. We were moving so fast, it was actually pretty terrifying. Herb pulled me up, and we were still going over some rapids. I was all disoriented for a minute, I couldn´t tell which end of the boat was in the front.. then after a few minutes I stopped shaking and was all fine. SO much fun! Tiny said now we can call that one ¨Chicago rapid¨. haha. It was truly the most exciting and rough rafting trip I´d ever taken, which to me is a good thing. And the hot shower and hot coffee I had after getting back to my hotel was life-changing!
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Arriving back in Boquete, it started raining again and I had to go to the Lavanderia to wash my clothes. It was a busy laundry day and the lavanderia wouldn´t take me, and the women were really bossy and kinda mean, so I had to find the OTHER lavandaria, on the edge of town. I kept asking people where it was and not understanding the answers. I almost gave up and took my laundry back to my hotel, which I know would have been expensive. One guy took me to the river and pointed at it, and said that I could wash my clothes there. A half hour of walking in the rain later, I found the other lavanderia that was run by the world´s nicest woman. I talked to her for awhile, then another guy who was washing his clothes. Finding the second lavanderia just made my day. That´s what´s fun to me about travel. Sometimes you try so hard to do the simplest thing like find a laundromat. Then, when you do, it´s just so satisfying. You feel like such a winner.
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During the clothes-washing I stopped at a cute mexican reastaurant for a taco and a beer. On the window near me I was horrified to see the biggest wasp I´d ever seen. I backed away from the table and got the waitress and asked if the insecta was a vespa. They killed it for me. I tried to tell them that it was the largest wasp I´d ever seen in my life, then I realized later that I kept telling them that there was a ¨wasp in my life¨, haha. Which sounds kind of metaphoric, doesn´t it?
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Tomorrow I think I´m going to go to David in hopes of catching a bus or plane back to Panama City. The weather forecast for the whole country is BAD. I seriously might fly to Costa Rica and just go to my old town of Montezuma for the beach, where the weather forecast is good. I don´t know. I might not be too tan when I get home but I´m definitely having lots of fun adventures here in Panama.

The Smokeskis/How dare it rain in the rainforest!

2008-11-28T14:24:00.000-08:00

In 1988, while I was busy making my hair big and listening to Guns n Roses, the U.S. imposed sanctions against Panama for Noriega's shenannegans. Little did I know that just 20 years later, Panama would impose sanctions against me personally.
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I left El Valle on a rainy morning, and took the bus with some uniformed schoolkids through the woods to the Panamerican Highway, where I caught a bus to what I thought was David, but actually went 2 hours in the other direction to Panama City. I was tipped off by the huge skyline... When I said "necissito voy a David" the person told me that there was no direct bus there, but I had missed that little detail. I got on a giant megabus to David with two stories, and had a great seat in front in the top row. 3 peacefull, blissful hours went by until we stopped at a truck stop for a meal (I had some sketchy pasta), and to pick up more passengers at the halfway point.
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I could hear them before I saw them, two older, overeager americans in their 60s. The woman plopped down next to me and her husband sat across the aisle. I smelled something foul and rotten, and thought maybe it was the bus, but it was them. The smell of stale cigarette smoke, smoke that was coming out of their pores after a good 45 year smoking habit. When the woman asked if she could sit there, her teeth were brown and grey. Everything about them was grey. They were nice enough, and you can't exactly tell someone to move because they smell so bad, so I tried to stare out the window and angle the fan at them, to blow away the smell. Every time they chuckled at the stupid movie, I had to breathe through my mouth. I tried to chew some really strong gum and thought about offering them some. I was angry. Why was I the one chewing gum? Why are some people so naieve - clueless that they STINK??!!!
heh.. hegh hegh.. achachack ack. hech hech.. that's the sound of the smokers cough I heard all the way to David.
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When we disembarked, I was happy to be rid of them, and laughed that they had both lit up a cigarette before we could even get our bags out of the lower compartment. When one of them dies, is the other one going to stop smoking, I wondered? I took a taxi to a hostel I read about, and had booked a private room. When I arrived, who pulls up at the same time. Mr and Mrs Smoky!
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I just resigned myself to the fact that I would have to see them again and again... and went to buy some groceries for dinner. David is a pretty crappy city so there was really no place to hang out at night besides the hostel. So I grabbed an atlas and sat out on the porch with the Smokeskis, the funny hostel owner Greg, his cute Lenny Kravitz lookalike employee Benny, and a random French Canadian. Greg and Benny took turns playing the guitar, The smokeskis smoked, and we all talked about travelling. Greg used to live in chinatown, NYC and we talked about my favorite dumpling shop. I learned one of life's great mysteries - how they make soup dumplings! (they freeze the soup first, then put in the dumplings and steam). The smokeskis were on a long, extended trip through central america, which I thought was cool for people their age. I asked them if they met over a love of cigarettes, and they looked at me funny and said they met because the Mrs was Mr's dispatcher at an old job. We discussed smoking laws, their love of smoking and how they differ in Central America vs North America (CA is cracking down, which is nice!) The Smokeskis even buy special cigarettes by the carton from the Native Americans back home, because they are cheap. I even suspect they moved from Oregon to Nevada for the more liberal smoking laws. Greg and Benny took me across the street to the uber authentic ceviche restaurant, which served three dishes: ceviche, fried fish and some other kind of fish. I had some ceviche and Greg and Benny laughed with the regulars (all older men) and told dirty jokes. It was the type of place that I would have been really intimidated to go on my own, but in their company it was OK. I went back to the hostel, bid the Smokeskis goodnight, and went to sleep to dogs barking.
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The next morning (my designated "banking" day) I went into David to try every cash machine in town (still did not work!) and try to cash my traveller's checks (no bank in town took them). This is the first country I've ever been to where neither worked - sometimes my ATM gives me trouble but I can always get cash from my Am Ex checks. This is just one of those things you have to deal with when travelling - every country has a quirk, but it was still frustrating, and I was beginning to feel like Panama did not want me to take out any money! I called Am Ex in a panic, and they agreed to western union me the money. Whew! The only western Union place in David was offline (of course) so I just went to the lost and found hostel way out in the jungle as planned.
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Andrew, the owner, picked me up and brought me wayyy out into the jungle, where we had to hike up a steep muddy hill. A huge "backpackers resort" was up there, with a huge uptdoor sitting area, a kitchen (you have to make your own dinner), some cabins and a dorm. I had the dorm with Steve the kiwi and Andrew the Aussie. Really, really nice guys. It rained the entire time, but I was happy for the peace, the hammock, the sounds of the tropical birds, the kinkajous that came to eat bananas (they are so cute, look them up!), the hummingbirds, the sound of rain falling on the roof at night. I made some spaghetti with red peppers and chicken. Three dutch people were also at the lodge - three flight attendants, two guys and a girl. They were really funny, kind of demanding and a little flamboyant. I was amazed, though, when they whipped up an impressive dinner of fondue in about 15 minutes flat. They brought in their own cheese and bread. It was amazing! They didn't share (boo!) but I took a photo. I didn't get to do the night hike due to the rain, but I went to bed early and slept better than I have the whole trip.
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More coming tomorrow, and I'm sorry but the internet cafe doesn't read my camera memory card.

El Valle - I´ve got some decisions to make

2008-11-25T11:25:00.001-08:00

I woke up in Santa Clara and had breakfast with the crazy family, then hopped on a few salsa busses to El Valle. El Valle is a volcano crater, a small, sleepy little misty town up in the mountains. Supposedly it´s what Boquete was like 10, 20 years ago. The bus stopped to drop me off, and I said oh, I need to go to the CENTER of town, thinking we were on the edge. They said, this is the center of town.. haha. It´s small. It´s absolutely beautiful and I just walked around town, had lunch at a place that had a bowl of Halls cough drops instead of candy, saw the hot springs, went to a bizarre little zoo and laid in a hammock on the roof. There are only faint sounds of roosters, faded salsa music, and a few cars. That´s it.
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This town doesn´t even have a coffee shop but it has a zoo out on the edge of town. I went there around sunset, when it was dark and misty. They had a crocodile, tropical birds, an ostrich, a few raccoons, pigeons and turtles. I was the ONLY person at the zoo (which was in the woods) so it was really spooky.

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For dinner I had about three choices, since the town gets really dark at sunset and I don´t have a car. I could go to the lunch place, where all the gringos were sitting, or I could go to the Panamanian place near my hotel. I decided to go to the cute little Panamanian place, and what a good decision that was. I asked the waitress, an abuela type, what the especiale was, and she brought me this chicken stew with fried plantians which was fantastic, smoky, just delicious. I could rhapsodise about it forever. And it was only $3.50! For dinner. With this whole ATM card not working thing, I´m really trying to see how much money I can save. Today my lunch of chicken neck soup with bizarre squashes in it and rice was $2, then I treated myself to a 25 cent banana cupcake with merange on top. I didn´t eat the neck, but I didn´t even know what was in the soup until it came to my table. I just went to the place next to the laundromat because it looked cheap and local. And that was the only thing on the menu.

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My room comes with a TV so last night I watched the news. Uh oh. I knew there was some flooding in Boquete and Bocas del toro, where I´ve been planning to go (pretty much my whole reason for coming here) and it´s BAD. Roads washed away, thousands lost their homes and businesses. Other travellers are getting e-mails saying their reservations have been cancelled. This situation is all too familiar, since I was in Thailand during the tsunami.. That´s how I discovered Laos, which was great. I´m going to David tomorrow, then to the lost and found hostel, check it out lostandfoundlodge.com. Cool, isn´t it? One very smart thing I did was bring my cellphone, which actually works here. I called them and they are open and will pick me up from David and the guy said we can talk about beaches when I get there. Luckily I have two weeks, so I still have some time. Though not much. These are my choices:

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1. Go to the San Blas. I researched this a ton before I came here. Pros: nice beaches. Cons: the cheaper places have toilets that empty into the ocean, it´s sorta expensive (have to fly there), two people have told me they were bored there after 2 days. I´ve been calling and some of the places are booked up. And I can´t afford $150 a night or anything like that.

2. Go to Costa Rica. Pros: possible nice beaches in the Corcovado-Osa penninsula area. Plus I love taking busses. Really, I do. Cons: I have no guidebook, I have already been to Costa Rica, I wanted to go to PANAMA. Costa Rican food is also kind of..meh.

3. Find another beach in Panama. But it can´t be deserted, I am travelling solo and for safetý´s sake I need other gringos around. When I get to David, I´m going to poll people at the hostel.

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David itself isn´t supposed to be anything to write home about, but I can go to a real bank to cash my travellers checks and go to that cool eco lodge from there.

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Maybe I won´t even see many beaches. I really came here to see Panama. And that´s what Í´ve been doing. I didnt´want this trip to be stressful (see Asia 04-05), so I´m going to try not to stress. The whole ATM not working thing isn´t helping.. but I´ll get through it! At least I´m not home in the cold. Panama or Costa Rica? What a problem to have. boo hoo poor me, right? I mean, I hiked to some beautiful waterfalls this morning. Life is good in El Valle (when it´s not pouring rain like it is now..). I totally dig this little town.
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Coworkers, if you are reading, comment and sign your name. Guess where I´m going for dinner tonight? Yeah that´s right, the chicken stew place!

Santa Clara: Beaten senseless by Salsa music

2008-11-24T11:08:00.001-08:00

I woke up bright and early in Casco Viejo to rain tapping on the roof. I had originally planned to explore Casco Viejo today, but since I saw most of it the night before, I got itchy to move on to a beach. In the lobby I mulled over my options and worried about some logistics when Eli gave me a fist bump and said ¨be a traveller!¨. I caught a taxi driven by a woman. She was as nice as could be, and at one point asked me how old I was. Well actually I turned 38 yesterday. Turns out that is her exact birthday as well, year and all! I thought that was an auspicious and promising sign to my day. I went to the main bus terminal which was attached to a shopping mall. I tried 4 different ATM machines with no success, then saw that the internet was closed as well. The ATM problem worries me, but this happened in Brazil as well. I have got to get a damn debit card and not rely on my normal ATM. Have I not learned my lesson before? I have travellers checks and my credit card and enough to get me through a week of normal spending. I may have to charge all of my hotels and hostels, and pay myself back later to get though two weeks. I will make it happen regardless. Mai pen rai. whatever.

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I sat in the bus terminal to eat my Mc Donalds desayuno deluxe, and noticed that everyone´s favorite place at the bus terminal is a chicken chain called ¨pio pio¨, with a baby chick as the logo. They must have named it that because baby chicks sort of make that noise, don´t they? pio! pio pio! haha.. love it.

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Once again I found myself to be the only gringo on the bus. It was nice and airconditioned, and we listened to salsa. Think about how loud you might listen to music in a car, then turn it up about 5 notches. That´s how loud music is on the busses. I do like salsa though, so I enjoyed the ride though lush scenery, and in two hours I was in Santa Clara.

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I got off and walked the 2KM to the beach, to my planned hotel, cabañas veraneras. Sweat poured out of my face and my backpack is a little heavy. Though I´ve noticed the whole marathon thing this year has made the backpack easier to carry and walk around with. I´ve always been able to manage it, but I can tell a difference from last year. Which is nice. After walking down the road in 95 degree temperatures, I checked into a cute treehouse looking room overlooking a restarant at the beach. The beach was lovely, and I was the only gringo there that I could see. Hundreds and thousands of Panamanians were hanging at the beach and had pointed their car sound systems at the water, fighting with the speakers coming out of every restaurant on the small stretch of beach. The day started fairly quietly, but by 4PM the salsa was deafening. Even I was annoyed and couldn´t hide from the music. I read my Barack Obama book on the beach (dreams of my father - which is very good) and tried to not let the rhythm get me, but as Gloria Estefan warns us, the rhythm is gonna get you. The eight count beat and swelling horn sections and backup singers held me hostage until about 6PM, when miraculously everyone went packed up and home. EVERYONE, and the beach was beautiful and peaceful, where I enjoyed the sunset (above).

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I had a fabulous dinner of cevice and an Atlas beer (which I have decided is my favorite), and listened to salsa music at a softer volume, which is still louder than what you might consider normal in a restaurant. Between the bus and the day at the beach, I had listened to salsa for over 12 hours straight. What I´ve concluded is where other Central American places such as Guatemala and Costa Rica play salsa SOME of the time, Panama must play salsa ALL of the time. And that´s OK. I could not, for example go to a place that played heavy metal ALL of the time, country or emo rock ALL of the time. So whatever those countries are, I need to find them and probably avoid them. The salsa though, it´s OK. Though we are only on day 3.

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Suddenly the salsa was interrupted by the unmistakable sounds of KC and the sunshine band. It was enough to cause me to put my book down and look around in shock. I knew there was another table of loud american tourists, and now they were drunkenly dancing. A pot bellied man in his early 70s, his young panamanian girlfriend, and the man´s daughter. I introduced myself to them (when you are the only people in a restaurant and someone causes a scene, that´s what you do I suppose) and they invited me over to their table. ¨Hey, Chicago - GIT OVER HERE!!!¨The daughter (in her 40s) was visiting her dad (who had retired in Panama) and brought along her young boyfriend, 30 at most. They were quite a family. Loud and brash, and kinda trashy and a lot of fun. The staff of the restaurant played the KC and the sunshine CD that they had brought in to be played. Which mortified me on some level, but was hillarious at the same time. The daughter and boyfriend were into NASCAR and the father proudly told me he wasn´t divorced yet to his former wife. His Panamanian girlfriend was very sweet and friendly. We sat for a few hours and for once it was nice to not be the most obnoxious person at the table for once. I got birthday drinks again. (why not?) The father was giving me deja vu for some reason, I couldn´t figure it out... did I know him? How could I know him? Then I realized it was becuase he sounded EXACTLY like Dr Phil. I excused myself to go to the bathroom and Dr Phil said ¨YOU GOTTA GO NUMBER ONE OR NUMBER TWO?¨ haha.. I told them number one, but everyone who knows me knows that poop stories are the way to my heart, and when I come back, I´ve got a good one for you. Boyfriend pointed to the daugher and yelled after me ¨She LOVES POOP STORIES!!¨

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I returned to the table and told them my famous story about the comcast guy and what he did to my bathroom, which pleased them. They were confused about how I got there, how I found this place and I explained the whole backpacking thing to them, and how we all read the same guidebook, stay in the same places, blah blah.. They admired it and kind of shook their heads, but Dr Phil lectured me about safety, which I thought was nice in a fatherly way. I went to bed at around 11 and slept well to the sound of the Pacific ocean.

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Some random observations about panama, other than the mandatory salsa at all times law:

*people here drive new, clean cars. Waaay newer and cleaner than the other CA countries. And they favor Toyota over all others

*Ocean Pacific is alive and well. I saw an Op billboard and people wearing new Op clothing.

*I always, always see foreign lookalikes to people I know from home. At Santa Clara beach was the Panamanian Dan Hansen and a Panamanian Logan Rosenthal! AKAP, you´ll have to tell him!

above: my lunch of chimichurri steak and the sunset at Santa Clara

Panama City: Langosta, not Langostina!

2008-11-24T10:25:00.000-08:00

My grand plan for Panama City was to stay in two contrasting neighborhoods, the more historical one coming in, and the flashy bank district with all its glitz and glamour on the way home. Lonely Planet had talked up the Casco Viejo neighborhood as ¨less seedy than 5 years ago¨ and one of Panama City´s most up and coming hip and trendy places. Where you might see abandoned buildings, then you would find youself in a hip, candle lit retaurant.

After a quick and painless trip down to Panama and no stay this time in a crappy Dallas holiday inn, the humidity was completely overwhelming. I am not complaining.... But wow was it hot, even at 9PM. I used a trick I had read about to get a cheaper taxi into town, (it´s a good one! Go to the arrivals area and get a taxi dropping someone off. They are more willing to cut you a deal than the guys getting all the people coming off the plane into the country for the first time. I paid $10 less than the book said it would cost!) This is what I was thinking as we drove through Panama City:

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wow, this is nice! beautiful high rises, what a skyline... Love that salsa music in the taxi. da..dadada...da. da! Ba ba baba!! Hey.. I´m in PANAMA now! kickass! oooh, fancy hotels and casinos... Ok where are we going now?

CLICK!!! my driver locks the doors

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holy crap are those prostitutes? What the? Oh man... wow. Bad slum. very bad slum. Damn you Lonely Planet! I might have my driver turn this car around and take me back to the Sheraton I saw a ways back...Is he taking me here to kill me or is this how Casco Viejo is going to be?

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He called my hotel for directions, (not his murder accomplice as I was thinking) then we finally found the Hospedaje Casco Viejo. The neighborhood was better than before, we were just separated from Panama City by a horrific slum. Still, I was pretty shellshocked when I walked in but relieved to see some backpackers in the lobby. Before I even checked into my room (which was huge, had a balcony and a great fan), they asked me if I wanted to go out for a beer. Um, YES.

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I joined Miranda (teacher from N Cali) Eli (cute little culinary student from Savannah) and an older dude, I forgot his name, but he was close friends with Abby Hoffman in the 60s and went to the Chicago 7 trial. He wrote a book about the 60s as well and I have to look for it. Miranda had also been in Thailand during the tsunami, and had been to Antigua over Christmas. So the three of us had lots to talk about. Everyone had some travel stories, and What´s his name had good stories about Chicago in 1971 during the Chicago 7 trial. I couldn´t have asked for a better crew for my first night in Panama. A free spirit, a culinary student and a genuine, authentic hippie.

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Casco Viejo was charming at night, though a little sketch and I was relived to have company. Miranda and I had just arrived, and Eli had been here for a few nights. He took us to a jazz bar, then to a cool outdoor restaurant with some live music. I accidentally ordered prawn soup instead of lobster, but it was still fanstastic. It had a huge, whole prawn floating in the top. I love it when I get to make eye contact with my food. I suddenly remembered again that it was my birthday and they all gave me hugs and bought me a beer.

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We wandered around a little bit more, and heard a live band coming from a stone wall. It was this place I had read about, La Casona. Kind of a run down, though atmospheric public space that sometimes has performances, music jams, theme nights, etc. Literally just an ancient stone wall with a roof overhead, with lots of candles. It looked like a place we might have an underground dinner party in Chicago. The only other gringo in there, a girl from New york who made it clear that she was ¨with the band¨, so nicely gave us a few beers from a plastic bag. The band consisted of three boozed up college kids, and they took turns pretending to be Axl rose. We heard ¨don´t cry¨, and ¨knock knock knockin on heaven´s door! .. ay...AY AYAYAY!!!!¨ Along with some of their own Panamanian ballads that everyone but us knew. Miranda and I were laughing at one of their friends, a kid who wasn´t in the band but stood ALMOST on the stage and sang along to every song. He had a very impressive beer belly - he looked pregnant. And the tight white soccer shirt wasn´t helping his look. We thought about funny songs we've heard that we could request ¨hey, do you know gasolina? Do you know papichula?¨

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We capped off the night on the roof of the hostel with a couple more balboas (one of panama´s beers) and I finally went to bed around 230A.

In November..

2008-09-05T11:06:00.001-07:00

I'm going somewhere on my birthday for two weeks. Here are two hints!

My Guatemala/Nicaragua photos are on Flickr now

2008-01-15T15:34:00.000-08:00

Comments welcome!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/schirmy/

Oh, and check out the Casa Iguana's website! This was on Little Corn island, Nicaragua. What a great place this was. So hard to get to, so worth it:

http://www.casaiguana.net/

Here's a couple of youtube videos I never got around to putting on here.

taxi ride in San Pedro (the driver was an 11 year old boy)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqKJra3tWOI

and a view from the main square in Antigua, where all the locals hang out.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTN6BKbwd10

Can I stay?

2008-01-12T14:26:00.000-08:00

I don´t know what´s wrong with me. I was all set to go see a band at cafe no se (cafe "I don´t know", don´t you love the name?) last night, and at a time I´m too embarrased to say, I laid down and got too comfortable. It´s easy to do, with my new room. It has, what, 15, 20 ft ceilings? It used to be a 15th century convent and a monastary and has high wood beam ceilings and tile floors. It´s right on the big famous yellow arch that I love so much. I stayed in a room with a straw floor a few weeks ago, so I notice things like flooring now. I watched TV for the first time in a while, to ease myself back into civilization. Tonight, I swear, I´m going out. Even though I have an 8AM flight tomorrow.

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Apparently I´m also making the transition from backpacker Sara back to my regular Chicago self. I chose this hotel because of the amazing history and ambiance. I may like to slum it, but I also like to splurge once in awhile. So yesterday they tried to put me in one of the modern rooms, hidden in back, NEXT to the hotel, in some sort of b.s. annex. Way back in the bushes. Said nothing else was available. I was like, the only reason I made a reservation here was to stay in one of the monastary rooms, like you showed me, and if you don´t have one I can just move to another hotel. For my last two nights, you sure you don´t have anything?? But I was as polite as possible about it. I got switched back. I felt like a bit of a brat, but I deserve only the finest for my last two nights!! Single people will not get the shaft! And you know what, I love my room. All $75 per night of it, which is actually sort of a bargain. The breakfast is not as good as the BK numero tres, but oh well... I got my dream room and that´s all that matters. Ech, sometimes I hate this side of myself but I would have been really sad and angry with myself for settling.

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Today my plan was to go white water rafting. But I guess it´s not the season for that. So I went to the coffee museum, which was actually pretty interesting. I missed the english tour by about 15 minutes, and felt a little pouty when my only choice was the spanish tour. I told the guide that I didn´t speak spanish very well and he agreed to not talk too fast. And hey, guess what - I understood about 60, 70% of what he was saying! Well, I was helped by the super obvious visual aids in the museum but I understood much more that I thought I would. And even asked two questions. And when I saw the big, LOUD annoying Americans in the gift shop, I was secretly glad that I was part of the cooler, spanish group. Even if I was kind of a poser.

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I hate this part of every trip, I get really sad to leave. Africa and Asia were a little tiring, so I had home to look forward to, to rest at least. But as you can see here, I did a lot of sleeping and hammock-laying. And have no jet lag to face, not even one hour. So really, the only thing I´m looking forward to is seeing my friends and coworkers again, and to see if my landlord really did knock out and re-do my shower like he promised. Regular Sara hopes he did, but backpacker Sara is more like, eh, at least I have a shower.. and you´ll be lucky if I even use it. Bottom line is that this was a VERY enjoyable trip, and I want to continue my spanish in Chicago, I´m going to look into spanish circle or latin school again. I don´t want the momentum to go to waste. And for goddsake, get this girl some salsa lessons.

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For a little closure, here are my Bests of:

Breakfast - the BK numero tres!!
Dinner - the kingfish at Casa Iguana, tied with the Enchiladas verdes at Frida´s in Antigua.
Beer - Toña, Nicaragua
Beer label - Gallo, Guatemala
live music - Riki´s, Antigua, Cafe Nuit, Granada
cheapest room - EVER - the psychedelic hotel San Francisco, San Pedro, $3.50
Favorite room - Casa Iguana, casita number 4
Boat ride - Big corn island to little corn island. Like a $4 white water rafting trip
Bagged snack - those freeze dried taco things, Guatemala

Important things learned in Guatemala and Nicaragua:

It´s easier to travel around here than Europe.
Reggaeton is everywhere
I sorta like reggaeton!
What Central American guys lack in height, they more than make up in dancing skills
People in Guatemala speak slower than Nicas, Guatemala is the perfect place to learn spanish
Refried beans are damn good for breakfast
Bedbugs here aren´t messing around
If your feet are dirty, you are probably having a good time.
Hygeine is overrated
Other travellers in Central America are super friendly
Chickens come in all sorts of cute logos here (Gallo, pollo estrella)
Nicaraguan hot dogs are nothing to be feared
I could retire or work in Antigua one day, It feels very homey
People who admit to going to 300 plus Widespread panic shows are usually pretty strange
Wearing one sweater for 3 weeks is perfectly acceptable
It´s surprisingly easy to get used to seeing men with rifles
It´s not easy to get used to seeing children working and class differences here
Latin culture brings a little warmth and color into my life

El fin

and thanks for reading! If you were reading and not commenting, let me know..

above: the arco, a coffee plant, our coffee tour guide, some textiles made by children in the main square - about the tumultuous times in the 80s - (if you can read it, it´s sad about pregnant women hit by bullets in 1982 and 1985), another chicken bus, the room next to mine (my headboard isn´t that good, but I did have towel swans!)

Nicaragua...making the CTA look good

2008-01-11T13:59:00.000-08:00

So I have the pleasure of riding the brown line every day in Chicago. We used to have this idiotic public campaign called "don't be Jack!" to enforce good manners on public transportation. Jack was stick figure who committed such faux pas such as not moving to the back and eating his snack. We stared at the signs on the way to work. Don't be Jack! Don't spill your snack! haha. Yeah, pretty stupid. But really, the folks in Nicaragua could use a dose of Jack. I really hope this was an isolated incident. I was riding the microbus this morning from Granada to the airport. Amour FM was playing, all was good, yet crowded. Then a guy got on, carrying a 4 year old girl, covered in hideous burns and bandages. Her face was completely covered in plastic. They were both very unconfortable. the man for carrying this big kid, and the girl for, well, being covered in burns. And get this. NOBODY GOT UP to give them a seat. So I got up and gave them my seat, being the good little CTA rider that I am. There were plenty of GUYS sitting nice and comfy nearby. Not that I expect any chivalry but you know....No, let the Gringa get up! You can't really stand on these busses without stooping, but there were no bumps and all was good. The father was grateful. We had only about 20 minutes to go. Then, towards the back, a woman got off. A seat, I thought. I'll just move back there. Well, think again Gringa. A big fat man spread out and took both seats as his own. You know those people who don't move over to the window to let someone have the aisle.. like that. A couple other gringos in the back looked at me like "yeah, we saw that too.. unbelieveable". Maybe the big, let's call him, Fat F$%^ did not see me. Oh, he did. So we get to the airport. We board flight 116. But wait, there's a little old woman, maybe 85, 90 years old in a wheelchair. Who keeps trying to get up to shuffle her way over. Does the staff of Copa airlines help her? nope! I was about to help her, but another lady got to her, thankfully. What was all that about? Please tell me it's not always that way.

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Our flight was interesting. Lots of turbulence. You know it's a bad flight when people are PRAYING and holding the seat in front of them! haha. I wasn't too worried though, only for a minute there.

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One more thing I forgot to tell you about Nicaragua. They shut off the water from about 11AM to 4PM. everywhere. Even in your hotel. Want to take a shower? have to wait. Want to go to the bathroom, FLUSH the toilet and wash your hands? hope you have some anti bacterial gel! Do you have horrific AB? Hope it's not between 11 and 4! I guess that's where the term "if it's yellow, let it mellow" comes into play. They used to schedule power outages in Granada too but they do water instead now. I did enjoy granada for my last night. The first time I was in Granada, I wasn't feeling well but last night I found the live salsa band at Cafe nuit. A 6 piece band, all wearing orange shirts. They were great. I was good and went to bed at a decent hour. Now that I'm back in Antigua, I might find some live music tonight too. I have good memories of being here with various people over the past couple weeks, but I have no issue in going to find music on my own as well. It's nice to be back in this town, I really enjoy it so much. On our shuttle from the airport, this dumb american guy was telling us how he caught hepatitis A, and almost died, because he was afraid to get a hepatitis shot. Then a funny honduran guy told me how HE got hepatitis from eating monkey meat. I could go into some more interesting details, but because I know Kathy reads this, I won't! They are gross!

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above, my new gorgeous hotel that's a former convent, the hotbed of little corn gossip, the Sweet Oasia, interesting spelling on Little corn and by popular request (well... maybe for Kellogg... me and mini Hulk

and a bonus video, taking off in Managua on the plane. Yeah, I know it's kinda lame. sorry.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zrMEVi39zY

Maize hoy, maize mañana

2008-01-10T12:58:00.000-08:00

Little corn island is a beautiful, peaceful island - filled with gossip, intrigue and scandal. OK, ok, maybe I exaggerate. Scandal - yes, they did have a problem with drug trafficking two years ago, when some of the shuttle boats were stopped and searched often. But that´s under control now. And gossip, well, I found that out for myself at the sweet Oasis snack bar.

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Whenever you go to a small place like this, after a few days you see the same people over and over and over... I was only on Little corn for 4 days and I had already met over half the tourists, knew who the empanada man was, how to find the bread lady, the coconut bread kids and the town drunk. My eco-lodgey place, the Casa iguana, did not serve lunch so I often went through the woods into town (a 10 minute walk to the other side of the island) for internet and something to eat. You have about three choices. The popular cuban place, the coconut bread kids and the Sweet Oasis, which looks like some ice cream stand from the 50s. I couldn´t stomach any more spicy seafood or rice n´ beans so I dared try a hot dog at the sweet oasis, which is on the main, well, sidewalk, and offers both dramatic telenovellas on the TV and great people watching. The hot dog was not that bad. I never thought that I´d eat a nicaraguan hot dog, willingly, but it had a pleasingly artificial meat taste. A torrid love affair was coming to an end on the TV and to my left was the 20 year old (well, I found out on the plane that she´s fresh out of high school) wide-eyed fraulein straddling the town rasta. I also had the misfortune of talking to Peter, a sun-baked ex pat from Hawaii and god knows where else. We talked about how he ended up on little corn, and how I was trying to learn spanish. "come on... all the spanish you need in Chicago is - MOW MY LAWN CHICO - hahahahaha, am I right?" Peter was an ass. I have a little theory about ex pats who have been living in the tropics too long. Not retirees, but those mysterious people who bounce from tropical place to place, in flip flops and a beer stained shirt. They are usually... como se dice, one beer short of a six pack. He told me a bunch of other half truths about himself, and about my hotel. At dinner, I told one of the owners, a nice girl from Maine, that I had met Peter and what he said to me. Lies, all of it. And we had a laugh about the starstruck young German girl in love with Rasta mon. So... yeah, I guess I contributed to the town gossip. What do you expect?

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The Iguana served some pretty good dinners in the three days I was there. Kingfish with bernaise sauce, pork loin and polenta, and a salad with dressing so good that one of my dinner buddies drank some of the dressing out of the bowl. This is where I got to know Susan and Sharon, thirtysomethings from Dallas, along with Emily (producer for HGTV) and Anna (works for Betsey Johnson) from San Francisco. We had our own little drunken hen party of sorts and discovered that we had been to a lot of the same places - US. Vietnam, Nicaragua, Africa. Why on earth don´t more American guys travel to these places? Guys, take note - you could get so much more play if you´d only stop going to "Las Vegas with your buddies" and take some chances. But I digress. Eveyone at the Iguana had a good time at dinner. There was this bizarre old, tiny hulk hogan like sailor guy who I took my picture with, and refer to as my future ex husband. During dinner a giant moth flew up to the rafters, we thought it was a bird. It´s body was as big as a birds´. Then a lizard caught it! Kelly and the Texans tried to teach me how to play Texas Hold em, but I got tired again and went to bed. I seriously don´t know why I can´t stay up past midnight in Nicaragua. Maybe it´s the sun.

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I tried to go snorkeling, but the dive boat left without me. So I hung out in some hammocks and alternated between that and swimming. Yeah, poor me. Yesterday morning, Emily, Anna and I took a two hour hike up to the light house-tower thing, and took some crazy detours through the woods to some other beaches on the island. They were funny, smart girls and I enjoyed hanging out with them. Only a little younger than me (but we all agree that none of us look older than 27), they have interesting jobs in another big city so we had plenty to talk about. I also thought it was funny that A & E identified my accent right away - as much as I try to hide it, I have the obnoxious midwestern Chicago accent. haha. We also ran into another pet monkey, I took a video for youtube. I´ll try to post some more videos later.

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Today I took a tiny plane back to Managua, with the fraulein and her mother. But she´s going back to little corn in a few weeks to get herself some more rasta! haha. I checked back into my favorite gay hotel (I wonder if they will say to me haaaaaaaaay novia!, OK maybe not...) and I´m going to try that live salsa band place later. I hope they have live music on a Thursday.

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above - the playa, climbing the lighthouse, a baby pineapple (how cute), another playa, my outdoor shower.

monkey video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaui_Aa-HqA

Afternoon delight

2008-01-07T10:05:00.000-08:00

No, I´m not talking about skyrockets in flight, or sticks and stones rubbing together makin´everything right, or everything being clearer in the light of day-ay. (thanks to that un-named, yet good friend who put that on my ipod!) But it really is a dee-lightful afternoon here on little corn. Not much to say, I went for a little swin last night, but we are on the windy, outward side of the island so it was a little wavy and un poco seaweedy. Had dinner with a crew of nice people, had some beef with carbernet demi-glace and cauliflower cous cous, went to bed kind of early and read the memory keeper´s daughter for 3 hours.. had the sea wind blow on me while I was sleeping. I hiked through the woods into town to buy some bottles of water and use the computer. I am still recovering from being jostled senseless from the boat ride, but my shoulder is recovering from my death grip on that piece of wood. The sea looks less angry right now but is it wrong that I secretly hope that I get another ride like that in 2 days? As long as I live, it was the most fun I´ve ever had for 4 dollars.

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I bought the most hillarious book in panajachel, when I was waiting for a bus at Lake Atitlan. I was poking around a used book store run by a lady with long, wiry grey hair (of course) and I saw it, and new it would be my "beach book". It was written in 1970 by the former stewardesses who wrote the book´(I´m embarrased to say I´ve read) called "coffee tea or me", a book about how pilots, stewardesses and passengers all got it on in the 1960s mod airline scene. Please don´t read it, it´s a horrible book. And this one looks like it might be just as bad, yet good. It´s called "coffee tea or me girls lay it on the line - a single gal´s guide to life in the swinging 70s". I would bet my life that it´s out of print. It seems to be some sort of lifestyle guide - how to seduce men, how to dress, how to throw parties, how to be groovy in every social situation. It´s very post summer of love, pre 3´s company. Published the year I was born. perfect. Even the font on the cover looks like a good time, and there are two little drawings, one of a man chasing a huge chested woman, and vice versa. After I finish reading about Paul and his sister with Down´s syndrome and their dysfunctional parents, I´m going to read about my whole new lifestyle out on green hammock.

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above: beach reading, kids selling coconut bread (it´s good), intersection on little corn, beach, my new house for 3 days

The strange world of the corn islands

2008-01-06T10:25:00.000-08:00

The corn islands are about 70 miles (I think?) off the east coast of Nicaragua. But how different. I flew in an 18 seat plane which was actually not bad at all, and I found big corn island to be one of the most bizarre places ever. Tin shacks and people speak a language all their own here. A mix of english, spanish and mumble jumble of all kinds of strange slangy sayings just from being so isolated from land. I found a hotel from LP, didn't like it, found another and just decided to stay for one night. The natives supposedly speak english, but I found that I understand them much better when we just use simple spanish. This guy above, a typical islander, sold me a coke and of course I could barely understand him! He was really charming and funny though. Another thing about this island. They Loooooove country music. yep! Everywhere you go, you hear some twangy heartbreaking song about losin' a woman or being kicked out one's house. There is also a lot of garbage laying around, which bothers me. Big corn could be so much better if people took pride in their surroundings. The roads (well, there are like 3) are also the most pothole-y roads ever, and it had just rained, so the island was a muddy mess. I laid in my hammock, had some caribbean curry lobster stew with rice, (it had corn in it so I can be satisfied to know that I had some corn on the corn islands) and chatted with some Americans and Dutch people in the restaurant, sat through a little power outage, then it was time for bed. Food is still not going down as smooth as I'd like, but I am getting much better.

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This morning I had breakfast while watching a sad monkey named Irma tied to a tree, then went down to the dock for the boat to Little corn. I've heard amazing things about Little corn and I was eager to get there. The boat was one of the most fun and terrifying experiences of my life!! There were maybe 20 of us crammed in there, in this wooden boat, going up swells that must have been 7 or 8 feet, maybe more. It was exactly like being on a roller coaster for a half hour. the boat would go up, everyone would scream, you'd be airborne for a second or two, and the bright blue sea was just at your side. I wanted to take photos so bad, but I could barely hold on. The whole time I was thinking, are you kidding me?? This was two hours ago and I am still recovering. I was laughing and squealing the entire time. I was holding on so tight there was no time to stop and be scared, we all really got our 4 dollars worth. The canadian guy next to me said that little corn is special because it's so hard to get to. I said, yeah, it probably weeds out the riff raff.

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Little corn is paradise. In a wet, rainforesty type of way. No cars, no garbage. I'm not sure how much swimming I will do today, there are little bursts of tropical rain but it's really beautiful. Little corn takes about an hour (I think) to walk around, and I am staying on the far side in a place called casa Iguana. It's run by some people from Chicago, who I have not yet met. I looked at a few different types of accomodation and unfortunately fell in LOVE with the most expensive type of bungalow. I wish she hadn't even shown it to me. I kept asking the girl who showed me around about spiders. So, you ever get tarantuals in these huts? Do people ever wake up with a tarantula on them? I'm from the city where there are no spiders. What about wolf spiders? Which huts have the least amount of tarantulas near them?? She confided that the two orange huts were the most spider infested, so I stayed clear of those. I have an outdoor shower and she made sure that I understood that there is ALWAYS a chance of seeing a tarantula in or near the huts, but that they sold alcohol as well so as to better deal with the spiders. The chef at the iguana went to the CIA, and people on big corn told me that "he knows his sauces". The girl who showed me around was happy to hear that I was such a foodie, because the chef is her husband. We all eat dinner together in the main hut like at the Iguana Perdida, so I will learn more about spiders and the people at the Iguana later.. Wow, two places with Iguana in the name. But this is no room of straw. It's way, way nicer!

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above, path to my hut, view from my porch, coca cola guy on big corn.

Beneath the surface

2008-01-04T15:14:00.000-08:00

I wish I felt a little better, because I am really beginning to like this place. I know that Granada is THE most touristy town in Nicaragua, but I can´t help but notice there is a wierd vibe bubbling beneath the surface here. I can´t put my finger on it, but it´s probably comparatitis from Guatemala. This is how I compare the two:

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Guatemala: calm, slower, people with peace on their faces, lingering on the streets, painted signs on the buildings, Mexican style, Mayans, big eyes, weavings, welcoming , more innocence in the children, modesty

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Nicaragua: fast, alive, people with slimmer, more cat-like faces and smaller eyes, (wierd I know but I´m not hallucinating), people with coarser hair, desperate little kids, reggaeton and loud horns blaring out of cars, a slight sense of despair, colorful buildings, more hoochie outfits (the muffin top is very "in" here), women tettering around in metallic shoes

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I hope that´s not judgemental, but those are some of the observations I have had the past two days. It´s really a shame I´m not feeling better, because I´d love to see some live music and have a few victoria beers, but it´s naps and fruit shakes for me today. I feel like I´m missing an opportunity to see the city better, but today I laid in my fantastic room for 6 hours in the aircon. I have to make myself well before the islands. I really haven´t been taking stellar care of myself, getting up at the crack of dawn, going here and there, not taking vitamins or thinking about nutrition.. This happened to me in Asia too, I had one day where I thought I had the flu, then I felt better.

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This morning I woke up early again to go ziplining. I did this with Kathy in Costa Rica and it´s so much fun. There were NO other gringos there, just me and like 6 Nica guys. They took great care of me, and actually I´m glad no other gringos came, because I could talk to them. One guy, Martin, always went before me and Manuel followed behind. I kept complaining about being tired and Manuel would give me shoulder and arm massages, haha. Anyone who knows me knows that I don´t turn down massages! So we´re on the top of a tree, great, can you move it a little to the left? Awesome. Usually I would feel a little strange being on the top of a tree with 2 Nicaraguan guys in the middle of nowhere, getting a massage but it was just another normal day.. This is funny. We drove to the woods on a road so bad that the driver used the shoulder instead of driving on the potholes. On the way there I rode with one guy from New York who was strangely travelling by himself. And I say strangely because american guys rarely travel by themselves! He agreed that girls are normally more adventurous. I met a few girls travelling solo (like Antonella) but every guy is usually in a couple. Why is that? Travelling solo is so much fun, I don´t get why they don´t do it. Australians and Canadians do, though. American guys - rarely.

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I was reading in Lonely planet that this is the second poorest country in the western Hemisphere, to Haiti. We did see a lot of african-looking tin shacks out in the woods but Granada is not that bad. And the history is so interesting. The whole sandinista-contra thing from the late 80s. I remember hearing about it when I was in high school. There is definitely some residual hurt from that era.

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Tomorrow, Corn! Corn! Not sure when you´ll hear from me again but I´ll try to write. I will be there for 5 nights I think.

WTF?!?

2008-01-04T09:13:00.001-08:00

This is my lower back.

the evening of no electricidad

2008-01-03T10:04:00.000-08:00

Last night, a strange thing happened in Antigua. The whole town had no electricity all evening. As soon as I realized it was getting dark and was not coming back on, I ran back to my hotel to grab a flashlight and who did I run into but Trisha and TJ from Lake Atitlan. We had arranged to meet for dinner but coincidentally, they picked my hotel! The hotel (the purple looking back shed, you saw the photo the other day) isn´t the fanciest place I´ve ever stayed, but I returned because I was so charmed by the family that runs it and the trees in the backyard. And isn´t the name great - the Jardin de Lolita? Lolita is a 70ish woman who speaks spanish too fast for me to understand her, but her sons always talked to me. The one son always looked like he was having the best, breeziest day ever - and it was contageous.

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Trisha and TJ had some funny stories for me at the Lake - they told me all about life in Tegucigulpa - how they had to bribe some police at night at the side of the road, and how their friend had to breathe into a police helmet to act as a breathalyzer (the cop then smelled the helmet, held his licence hostage, and told him to drive to the ATM to take out money!). We went to my old standard Frida´s in hope of dinner, but could only get beer and guacamole due to the power outage. The streets took on a really spooky feel with NO street lights and every place lit by candle light. We finally found one place to eat, in a fancy fancy hotel that had a generator. Our dinners were a little pricey but hey, that´s what emergency money is for. And we got the added bonus of some marimba players - 6 or 7 guys all play ONE giant xylophone-type thing. So we made the best of the wierd evening with good company and funny stories. As we were finishing, Elana and Gary came up to our table - from the volcano tour. Everyone circles back through Antigua. Elana told me that the famous TEXAN was spotted in Tikal. And she had to salsa dance with him the night before! He´s everywhere!

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I bid goodbye to my teacher friends and woke up less than 6 hours later for my 6:30 Am flight to Nicaragua. It´s an odd feeling, waking up at 3:30 AM and bolting out of bed thinking, must go to Nicaragua now. The plane was almost empty and when I was flying I had that "uh, what are you doing?" thought, then I arrived in the heat and humidity of Managua. Wow, is it hot here. Guatemala always had cool nights in the upper 50s and gentle breezes during the afternoon. This is maybe 85, 90 degrees, lots of heat! Well, that´s what I wanted, I suppose!

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I enjoyed my taxi driver, Henri, but the rest of Nicaragua does not seem to find me as charming as the people of Guatemala. Everything seems much faster, they talk faster, they get a little more impatient with me, but that´s OK. In Guatemala I felt like everyone was HAPPY and slower. Guatemala had a nice pace to it - this is more like arriving in NYC from Chicago, which is fine. I like seeing different types of people and lifestyles. Henri took me to the microbus, where after a near fistfight between microbus drivers for my business (really!) I rode with a bunch of young Nicas to the sounds of loud lite rock on the radio. The station ID was a breathy woman who would purr "aaammmoooourrrrr" between each song. Being in advertising, I notice things like station IDs and dial positions. Granada is also a beautiful colonial town like Antigua, with huge, cavernous bulidings painted different colors, some with lovely fountains and courtyards. I checked into a total dive called the bearded monkey, where I have my own room. and the slogan in the bathroom is "conserve water, if it´s yellow, let it mellow" - classy!

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I´m here two nights, then it´s the corn islands for 5 nights. Oh, and I spent over an hour in a bank today trying to cash traveller´s checks, where I also had to go through an X ray. The people in the bank did not find me charming at all. Oh well! I´m not sure what to do tonight - my hostel shows movies and has a happy hour. We´ll see.

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above - Granada, my new street, some lake in Honduras or El Salvador, mirimba players!

I´m enjoying the comments!

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here are the marimba players. If you don´t have sound, it might be useless. This is for you, super huevo and teabag!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njxZQwwCQxs

Ok, so Nicaragua it is...

2008-01-02T12:55:00.003-08:00

Tomorrow morning I´m flying to Managua, then going right over to Granada, which is a colonial village for a few days, then the corn islands. Sorry, the internet here is CRAP and I can barely write a post. I´ll try to upload some more photos later.. but I have a lot of errands to run in my last day here. I will give you an update from Nicaragua. Tonight I might have dinner with the American couple that I met at the Iguana, Trisha and TJ who teach in Tegucigulpa, Honduras. I really did meet a lot of nice people at the Iguana. But it´s time to move on! I´m a little wary of Nicaragua and it comparing to Guatemala, but I´m getting more confident with my spanish and it should be fine. I´m excited for a new country!!

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I keep meeting people here who are all hating on Costa Rica. I met the 6th of 7th person today who does not like it, and likes Guatemala better. I agree that the people here are much nicer and there´s more culture, but I liked Costa Rica for the beautiful nature. I guess coming from Chicago, you really appreciate a good palm tree. Each country has its own little personality. It will be hard to top Guatemala, but I´ll give Nicaragua a good, fair chance!

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above: my crazy room in San Pedro, the crowd at San Pedro, the Iguana, my room of straw, the boat over from San Pedro to Santa Cruz. lots of waves!

Does swimming in the lake count as a shower?

2008-01-01T14:50:00.000-08:00

well, of course it does! Unfortunately for you, I did nothing of interest today besides lay in a hammock. For New year's, basically we all had a nice dinner, there was some guitar playing, dancing, and one guy had his dreadlocks cut off for charity. Everyone who donated money got to cut off one dread. So of course I did. And I thought about keeping it as a souvenier - like here´s a dreadlock I cut off some guy´s head in Guatemala, but I was talking to another guy who USED to have dreadlocks, and he said that he never used to wash them. There were also fire dancers and a billion stars in the sky. There is this funny mother-daughter duo here from Montreal and they don´t speak a lot of english but they really entertain me. The mother was drinking a lot and the daughter informed me that she wants to go over to San Marco (a town even more hippie than San Pedro - I avoided it) to do mushrooms! And the daughter is like, my mom is SO much crazier than I am. The owner sang a song about Dutch girls and a song about the chicken busses. The local litle boys in town were peering into our party, then a few of the braver ones came in and I wish you could have seen the looks on their faces. They were maybe 8, 9 years old and they were completely enthralled yet terrified of our party. So I grabbed one of them to dance and his friend danced with another girl. I don´t know whether that made them total studs or the butt of jokes forever in the village of Santa Cruz, but it was really funny.
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Today I laid in the hammock and listened to my hangover cure-all, Cafe del mar number 5. It always works! I evesdropped on all the different accents and watched all the beautiful people from all over the world on the deck. I just took a swim in the lake with the Americans, the British couple and some other people. It was cold but now I feel great.
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There is this kid here that cracks me up. He works at a little portable water-potato chip-pop stand outside the Iguana. He is ALL business. He´s like a little mafia kid, and greases back his hair in a 1950s style. He acts like he´s been running that stand for 50 years.now. I really like the Guatemalan kids. They are always eager to talk (well, except for the dead serious kid at he pop stand) and they all have giant brown eyes. Did you ever see that movie a Bronx Tale? One of my favorites. anyhow, the pop stand kid reminds me of one of those little mobsters in training.
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I leave tomorrow to go back to Antigua. An hour ago, I was sure that I was going to Nica next but now I´m changing my mind again. It´s either the corn islands in Nicaragua which are MUCH harder to get to, it would certainly be an adventure, or I go to Roatan in Honduras, which is easier to get to but more touristy. What to do, what to do... what do you think? Nicaragua might mean spending a night in El Salvador, which could be bad yet interetsting and dodgy. There is no ATM on the corn islands and probably little or no internet so you might not hear from me much after tomorrow. Corn islands look like paradise and Roatan doesn´t look to shabby either. I´m not afraid, per se, just might be a little inconvenienced by the money situation, and might have to stay in a crap hotel one night on the way.
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Oh, and in my room of straw, I think there is some bug in there biting me. I have a lot of red scabs and bites. Just adding to my lovely appearance!