Around one I stashed my computer in my room, frustrated with a bunch of open source code that didn’t work as documented tweaking configurations, trying different version. Enough!

For my final adventure in Guatemala I elected to climb Volcan Pacaya. Across from the town square in Antigua lie many tour operators and all had a morning tour and a sunset tour that departed at two p.m. A ticket was readily secured for $10 USD, most of the tours are priced in U.S. Dollars, different tour operators give different exchange rates. This operator was charging eight Quetzales to the dollar. I paid my eighty and went next door to grab a sandwich. A turkey salad sandwich should not be a very complicated thing to put together, take an ice cream scoop, place a large plop between a couple of piece of bread, and some lettuce and serve. It took me nearly half an hour. When I emerged the van was in the street and the tour operator urged me to quickly board.

In the back of was a tall square jawed rugged looking guy with a three day growth of hair on his face. He had the appearance of special forces. Beside him was a young blonde woman, his daughter? In the middle row a Finnish girl and an American male in his late thirties kept up a continuous stream of patter. This girl liked to travel but spent no more than three days in a country. We picked up pair of gay women one Mexican and one Argentine, The Mexican had a mullet in dreadlocks, this was not my fantasy pair. We drove for about an hour and a half.

The van pulled into a lot and the door was blocked by eager boys ages six to ten anxious to rent out their horses for the trek. Nobody opted for the horses. The initial assent was fairly steep and the boys crowded us with their horses, perhaps hoping that it would be more comfortable to ride one than be brushed up against one continuously. After about three hundred meters the trail became significantly less steep. The soil was all black crushed volcanic rock. All along the trail were flowers and shrubs surrounded by weed free volcanic rock. The whole trek had the look of a garden. The Finn and the Gringo forged ahead with me on their heels and the rest of the troop sauntered behind me. After about forty five minutes the trail bifurcated, I took the one labeled “Camino Principale”, what else. Fifteen minutes later I heard “Jaime, necissito caminando abaho!” “Por Que?” “La necesidad de otro camino.” I had taken the wrong trail. Rather than descend to the fork we crossed the face of the volcano easily walking between the widely spaced vegetation with only occasional moments of exertion when the soil gave way beneath the foot as when climbs a dune.

We reached the rest of the party, I passed them and headed up, pausing at the next split in the trail until I was given directions. Soon we were in the clouds, the mist swirling and blowing, visibility was in the tens of meters. So much for the sunset view. As we neared the summit the guide threw down some sticks he had picked up along the trail and within 30 seconds they had burst into flames. Vents spewed forth steam which commingled with the cool mist in a most surreal landscape. After fifteen minutes we found an opening in the rock, ten feet below the magma glowed red, molten rock near two thousand degrees. I appraised the span of rock near a foot thick and stepped out onto it to take a picture to be quickly chastised by the guide.

The Finnish girl’s attention span had been exceeded. After a two and a half hour journey she wanted to spend no more than ten minutes at the summit. We walked into a cave, experiencing the heat took some shitty photos and started our descent. Descending in flip flops the Mexican woman asked if anybody had a spare pair of shoes. I turned my pockets inside out and shrugged. The others laughed but she did not find it amusing. She traded one flip flop for one of her partners shoes. We descended in the dark, stumbling and sliding.

Finally we reached our starting point, grabbed some beverages and waited for the van. I assumed shotgun and we headed out. Not far down the road the driver met a friend and pulled over and chatted with the guy through the window. After ten minutes I told the guy to telephone his friend; he bade him goodbye and we started off again. Next the driver pulled out his phone and started reading an incredibly long message while driving down the pot holed dirt road at about three miles an hour. After ten minutes of this I asked him to read his message later and to just drive. Just over an hour later we were dropped off at the town square in Antigua. All these tour companies pick you up at your hotel but just drop you off in the middle of town. No big deal, my hotel was only seven blocks away.

A large portable light had been set up illuminating a hundred meters of cobblestone road that had been covered in pine needles. People crowded at either end looking at nothing. Around the corner colorful sand art had been created using stencils. Shortly there after the sound of fireworks filled the air. For seven minutes the firecrackers popped and worked their way down the street toward us. People in costumes bedecked with firecrackers danced down the street in a series of explosions. Nuns and monks, incense, gun powder, but no parade. Strange little event.

The day trip around the lake was over. The weather was not conducive to photography. It was a boat ride from one city to another on the shores of the lake, each city much like the other. My travelling companions made up for it. An attractive forty year old intellectual property attorney who worked just hard enough to make enough money for another protracted trip and a German American woman, a professor of applied linguistics in Arizona made for great conversation.

The guide book said that Chichicastenango was world famous and the largest Mayan market in the world. Oh, hell, why not make a day trip of it. The market is only open on Thursday and Sunday. Saturday I booked transportation from Panajachel to Chichi, the fare was $8 USD but at the charged exchange rate of 8.6 Quetzales to the dollar (I was buying dollars so this was a bad rate) it worked out to Q43. Why do I go into these prices all the time you ask? Well, people that travel want to know. Some people travel for a month on less than $600. I couldn’t do it but, it is done.

I went back to my hotel and tried to get a room for another night, but they were full. I was the only guest the night before. I walked the main street and found room at Volcanes where after a brief negotiation I got my room for Q200 about one third of the asking price.

At seven the alarm on my new cell phone woke me up. I packed my bags and headed down to a small restaurant. Shortly after arriving the woman from the tour company came up and told me that rather than meet me at the hotel as promised I should wait for the bus at the office in fifteen minutes. The hotel is but 50 meters from the office I didn’t understand why she would track me down through town rather than just stick with the plan. I rushed the cook, rushed through breakfast. Eggs were Q26, coffee was Q5. 26 + 5 = 31 plus 10% = 34. I handed the guy a fifty. He pulled out a pad and wrote slowly twoooo, siiiiix, zeeeero, zeero. Fiiive, zeeero, zeeero.
Zeero plus zeero is zeero. Zeero plus zeero is zeero. Five plus six is eleven. Write down the one, carry the one. Two plus one is three. Write down the three. Circle the three add it to thirty one. Two minutes later he concluded that my bill was Q34. He dispatched the water to run down the street to make change for my bill. Nobody has any money. Ten minutes later I gave up, grabbed my bags and went out into the street. The waiter showed up and handed me my change.

At eight o’clock exactly I showed up a the tour company. Ok, where is the van? It is coming soon. Vans came and went. More vans came and went. I walked up to a van and handed the driver my ticket. He shook his head. Wrong company. I went back to the travel agency, where is this van you were in such a hurry to get me into? Another phone call, a long talk on a radio. Ten more minutes. Finally the guy who had rejected me called out to me… “Jaime?”, I handed him the same ticket he had rejected earlier and boarded the van.

An hour later we were in Chichi. The usual dance trying to get off the bus, the doors blocked by people hawking hotels. I just needed a secure place for my bags. I asked the driver, he waved somebody over who walked me a few blocks down the street. We walked past some steel doors into the alcove of a large apartment building and the man ran off to get a woman. She unlocked a door and I placed my bags in the room and paid her the requested Q20. I took careful note of the location and asked the man what I asked for to find this place again. Hotel San Thomas, kitty corner was a place everybody knew.

The market was filled with the same fabrics, bags, masks, trinkets, miscellaneous crap for sale everywhere. I wanted to see what the Mayans were buying, not look at a bunch of souvenirs. Finally I walked down an aisle and found the real market. Mayans were coming at me in all directions; there was no where to walk, everybody just shoved their way through. The top of most of the heads only came to my sternum. Strange soups, chicken feet, the real deal. Finally I ended up at the base of the steps of the church. My fanny pack was unzipped, both compartments fully exposed. Passport, pens, flashlight, prescription sunglasses, spare batteries… I didn’t notice anything missing. A woman was cooking blue tortillas. I asked what they were made of and was told “maiz negro” black corn. Huhh, she put her hand into a bowl taking out a chunk of dough and started to pat it flat, I started to dance to her clapping, she laughed, a dutch girl behind me laughed; I took her hand and we danced, more people joined in. The Guatemalan tortilla pat dance.

By noon I was done, but the next ride out of town was at two. I found the Hotel San Thomas and waved to the professor who was sipping some coffee but she ignored me. After walking the length of the courtyard past the macaws and parrots I turned around and started to head out. The professor waved at me, I sat down and we chatted. Finally it was time to go. I headed back to get my bags. Ok, here is the door, now where is the lady with the key? A quick “Necissito mi equipaje” and the the woman appeared on the balcony three stores up. She spoke to a little guy who was walking in off the street. The guy opened the door. Now the room contained eight back packs. Help yourself. I took the two that were mine wondering how many had come and gone before me and opted to only take there bags.

Two hours later I was back in Antigua. I returned to Mediterreano where I was warmly greeted by the two girls who run the front desk. A guy sitting at a table facebooking (is that a verb) looked over at me as they pecked me on the cheek and said “I didn’t get that service.” I told him I had been here before. He said he had too, but nobody was kissing him. Oh, well.

It turned out that a plastic bag with four spare camera batteries were no longer in my fanny pack. At least I had the one in the camera and the charger was still in my backpack. There was some good stuff in the fanny pack I don’t think the batteries are going to do anybody any good.

No tour agency in Antigua seemed to want to give me what I wanted in a tour to Panajachel on the shores of Lake Atitlan. Prices were all over the place but an overnight trip could not be arranged. I found one day trips for $60-$75 and transportation round trip for $25. Finally I walked into an agency and bought a one way ticket transportation only ticket. Now I could stay as long as I saw fit.

Returning to Mediterraneo, I worked on my computer but was continually distracted by the young ladies who worked in reception and were apparently bored out of their young heads, finding talking to the gringo more interesting than watching TV. So much for getting any work done, but it could be worse. Before retiring I set an alarm on my iTouch and asked the guard to wake me at six; my pickup time was 6:45.

The sun shone weakly through the window dawn had broken. What time was it? Six fifteen, what the hell? I forewent a shower in the suicide stall little lamenting the tingling as I completed the circuit from the electrified shower head to the grounded cold water pipe across my body and through heart.

I packed in fifteen minutes, dressed and went out front to wait for the van, which showed promptly at 6:45. The van stopped at another hotel, the driver got out, leaving the door open and rang a bell at another hotel. A minute later the horn was activated and the driver returned to the car, shut the door, turned off the alarm and left. When the transport company said to be ready they weren’t kidding. We stopped at another hotel and picked up five women and headed off. After a quick stop at a convenience store and two hours of not very pleasant scenery we arrived at the town of Panajachel.

I was not even out of the van when the assault began, “Barco? Barco? Launcha? Launcha?” No, I don’t need a boat, I need to get rid of these two back packs. Twenty feet away another man solicited me offering to help me found a hotel. I took him up on his offer and we walked less than 100 meters to Kakchiquel where I secured a room for Q200 (about $25 USD) on the second floor overlooking the pool.

Leaving my bags behind, I immediately strolled the 200 meters to the lake, continually assaulted by offers of boat rides. Aldous Huxley famously wrote of it: “Lake Como, it seems to me, touches on the limit of permissibly picturesque, but Atitlán is Como with additional embellishments of several immense volcanoes. It really is too much of a good thing.” wikipedia. Accross the deep blue waters rose a pair of volcanoes.

Walking back through the town the cobblestone and brick streets were lined by stalls of undifferentiable product mixes, bags, pouches, cell phone cases, notebook covers of Guatemalan fabrics secured by cheap zippers that would fail within a day. I had long ago concluded that all of these product were produced in the same plant in China. Within the courtyards of the finer hotels on the outskirts of town I found some very pleasant but small gardens.

Eventually I strolled back to a travel agency and arranged for a boat trip for tomorrow. It departs at 8:30 and returns at 4:30, stopping at every town on the lake for $15. They charged me Q129, giving me an awful exchange rate, making me pay 8.6 Quetzals for every dollar. I took a room at Kakchiquel, staying in a very nice hotel and it is still cheaper than the lowest one day tour I could find in Antigua. I have found that tours are generally ways to suck money out of the unknowing and that little value is added and flexibility is reduced. I killed the morning strolling, taking shitty pictures, soon having seen everything there was to see in the little town.

In the evening I pursued that which drives men, no reason to put that nice room to waste.

Links

http://iguide.travel/Panajachel

Monday October,11

I am not going to drag this out. An eight hour ride in a van with a French woman, a Belgian woman, two American women and a Dutch guy. The Dutch guy most certainly has never had to work at getting laid. Being 6’2″ blonde, blue eyed, strapped and pleasant, he has women throwing themselves at him.

We pulled into Antigua at four in the afternoon. I walked a block asked a girl girl where she was staying and if she liked it and she directed me to a hostel a block or so away. Nobody else was in the place. It was quiet, clean with a great location. Private dorm with private bath was Q60/day about $7.50 USD. How can one go wrong? The WIFI is the fastest I have used in two months and stays up.

I went out to dinner and had an overpriced shitty Cobb salad, I’ll have to writing a blasting article on TripAdvisor and then stopped at a pharmacy on the way back to buy an iced lemon. When I got back I realized that I had taken a book I was reading from the restaurant and did not make it home. I knew I would never find the pharmacy again there are far too many and once again I was paying no attention.

As Antigua is a good sized town, I looked up contacts in Couchsurfing.org and set up a meet for the next day and proceeded to use the wonderful download speed to do some computer updates and get some files I had been unable to get for a week. While that was going on I caught up with friends and family, started a bunch of music torrents and went to read a different book.

Tuesday October,12

My complimentary breakfast was worth everything I paid for it. The coffee machine was broken and the food was 1 fried egg and 2 pieces of bread. With my usual rigor of a highly planned day I took off in a random direction with my compact camera strapped to my belt. First stop was Convento de Santa Clara Stopped by a church.

I met my CouchSurfing contact at a cafe off of the main square. Very interesting guy, a clinical psychologist and marriage counselor, born in France, raised in Africa left his practice in California and has started a world journey with his wife and two kids. I am sure we will be in touch, comparing notes. He is blogging. We walked across town and he showed me where the gringos live, a very pleasant gated community on the edge of town.

Wednesday, October 13

Walked up the hill to Aldea El Halto.

Thursday, October 14

Sat around. Bought a ticket to lake Atitlan, flirted with the girls.

Yesterday I walked to Semuc Champey with my compact Canon and GPS. I strolled through Lanquin and hit the 9km mark. After a mile and a half of uphill climbing and an ascent of between 900 and 1000 feet (my GPS switched off a couple of times and failed to record part of the trek) I reached the 7km marker. The balance of the trek to Semuc was primarily downhill. The guys at a lodge were kind enough to refill my one liter water bottle on my return trip. By the time I got back to El Retiro I had logged over 15 miles and over 3,000 feet of ascent but still, I felt unjustifiably tired. Many of the people at El Retiro, guests and staffed commented on my walk as though it were an accomplishment a couple of the employees kind of smirked and said I looked very tired while walking back.

This morning I arranged to take a tour back to Semuc to go see the caves. After I hopped into the back of the pickup truck with the rest of the tour group I was told by the driver that I needed to pay. I informed him that I had booked through El Retiro, where I was putting it on my tab as I was out of cash (I am going to pay my tab with a credit card as there is no ATM in this town). That didn’t work for him so I got out of the truck and walked the several hundred yards back to El Retiro. The WIFI was still down but the computers were up. One had a defective keyboard, so it was available. I spend my time typing the ‘a’ character as ALT-097 and managed to get on and kill a little time. The DJ who wants to swap music with me told me that he could have gotten me on the tour if he had known. I would have thought that El Retiro would have taken care of it. None the less I guess I am done here, I have seen plenty of caves. I leave tomorrow at 8:00 AM for Antigua if things go according to plan. A lovely day to hang around and do not a lot.

My dorm mates turned on the lights and talked loudly while preparing for the day’s trip. These two were of a group that had a sense of entitlement, tend to travel in large packs and take over a place with little regard for others. A rooster crowed, it was six in the morning and I had no great desire to start my day’s activity so soon. Fifteen minutes later I was left alone and rolled over to catch a couple more hours of sleep. When I awoke I found that the bathroom had no water but was told at the reception area that the bathrooms behind reception were in working order. After a nice warm shower I went down for breakfast of a passable omelette and a couple of cups of coffee. My companions from the previous night were all preparing for a day’s trip to Semuc Champey. “Aren’t you come with?” I was asked. My inquiry about the time of departure of the next bus was met with a response of “Todo dia” all day, which I interpreted to mean buses left throughout the day.

As people had checked out it was now possible to obtain private accommodations and I secured a cabin between the reception area and the restaurant which is down the hill. My cash had been going surprisingly quickly and there is no ATM although there is a bank. Never get caught short of cash when going to out of the way places. Usually web sites and the lonely planet will warn you when a popular destination doesn’t have an ATM. I should have known better, even towns with an ATM have cash shortages, broken ATMs or network connection problems which preclude ATM withdrawals. Fortunately this hostel, El Retiro accepted visa with a 10% surcharge, actually using an old mechanical card imprinter. With the morning light and the music off I could see and hear that the restaurant was on the banks of the river. I opened my packs and spread out my gear on one bed, pulled out my charger for my iTouch and my camera and started charging. Too bad I didn’t have a cube tap as I had another camera, flashlight batteries and a computer to charge. I returned to the restaurant had another cup of coffee with the Dutchmen, the two Austrians, the Italian and the Spaniard. Upon my return I discovered that I had left my key in the room. The key was affixed to a 3/4″ piece of wood six inches square and the door was self latching. Two hours later the only person with an extra key returned and grabbed a lanyard from a pole to which was affixed a ring with three or four dozen keys. I’ll never know why somebody else couldn’t have admitted me to my room.

There was no other bus going to Semuc for the rest of the day. Soon I grew restless and asked how far it was to Semuc and was told that it was 11 miles. That being a good three hour hike I went to my room and grabbed my water bottle holster and headed out to the town of Lanquin. There is not much to see or do in Lanquin, it is a small Mayan town in the mountains with a few stores that sell miscellany, which here means chips, gum, cigarettes and beverages. Nearing the end of town I spotted a sign, “Semuc Champey 10 km” with an arrow. Only six miles? I hiked up hill passed lush verdant tropical forest and quickly found myself at the 9 km marker. The road went up. Around every bend it ascended further. As I had left around eleven by the time I arrived there would be very limited time to see the park. Around the bend behind came a chivas, a pickup truck adopted for carrying passengers. This one however, instead of being covered and with benches merely provided grab bars for standing passengers. Three mayan women and two European youths stood on the bed. “Semuc?” I asked? “Si.” I hopped in the back. We lurched forward and within a couple of hundred yards I saw a sign “Semuc Champey 7 km.”; I had not covered much ground. It took half an hour to cover the little more than four miles in the truck. I didn’t arrive at the park until a quarter to two. The driver charged me Q20 for the ride, a bargain.

I walked along the river which quickly became turbulent at the base of some small falls. The water flowed over the top of a limestone ledge. The bulk of the water flowed through a large opening loaf shaped opening in the wall. Further upstream the water collected in small pools shimmering in brilliant aquamarine glory to trickle down over a small ledge into another pool. The torrents of water flowed twenty feet below, through the rock, in a natural aqueduct. A trail, usually with rock steps, lead up the side of the mountain to a mirador, a man made lookout point, usually a tower like a fire observation tower. At times wooden stairs were provided when the going got too step or the face was sheer rock. About half way to the top I realized I had left my Machu Picchu water bottle holster down by the river, necessitating a trip down to retrieve it and a second ascent. In pairs and foursomes my lodge mates descended as I climbed; all others had taken the tour and hiked the circuit clockwise while I proceeded against them; I did not encounter anybody from any other lodge.

After descending I walked to the entrance and asked the guard where the bridge was, “¿Donde este puente natural?” I gathered that it was five minutes down a secondary trail, but when I went off to look for it but realized that I was truly clueless. After bumping into the two English lads with whom I had shared a ride I asked if they knew where the bridge was, they had heard of no such thing. I convinced one of the guards to show me the way. He raced down the trails to the waterfall and stated that the falls fell off the top of the bridge. Oh, I was expecting a 300 meter archway. It extends along the length of the river and the pools are above it while the water flows below.

We started to gather in the parking lot. Two Kia double cab pickups came to collect the tour members. I managed to secure a ride with one of them, the English lads on the other. We had twenty people in the pickup, fourteen in the bed, one on the roof and five inside. The truck lurched, stopped abruptly, smoked the clutch on some hills but eventually delivered us back to the lodge for a fare of Q15 apiece.

Dinner was served at 7:30 a ample spread of Mexican food, starting with fresh crisp lettuce, shredded carrots and cucumbers I mad a small salad, no dressing was available, next on the buffet some sort of Lasagna that the DJ referred to as Quesadilla, which elicited a chuckle I tried to stifle; the Europeans and Israelis had no clue. The DJ spent half an hour loading his thumb drive with his selection of music and jammed it into the large speaker in the corner in front of which I was seated and cranked out the music at high volume. By this time all of the other seats were taken. The talk turned to drinking games and I retired to my room to read.

Waking up, I rolled over to see that the network status bar on my computer had a big “X” on it. Once again the WIFI network at Delphin was down; when I checked in it had great promise. There were visible networks, “TURBONETT” and “HOTEL DE DELPHIN”. Strange, the networks at Gil’s and at Happy Fish are also called “TURBONETT” but they are different networks. It took a few minutes but the receptionist finally located the pass phrase for the network, but it didn’t work. After about five minutes I tried the phrase on the “TURBONETT” connection and established a 54 MB WIFI connection to a router that evidently had a 500 kb internet connection. My computer hovered on the the edge of connectivity if when it had a signal at all the indicator only displayed a single bar. It would run fast for a while then drop the connection. My file download was not restartable. With an estimated download time of two and a half hours this was my first chance to get the file down in a day.

After brushing my teeth I used the toilet. The huge toilet paper dispenser was empty despite the fact that I had not used it. Three towels hung on a bar. More the hotel’s problem than mine. No water came out of the tap despite the fact that it had rained the entire previous evening. Half an hour later the water came sputtering out of of the tap. I quickly shut off the tap and stripped for a shower. Although there were hot and cold water handles neither provided heated water; between the two of them there was barely enough water to rinse the shampoo out of my hair.

My destination for the day was, Lanquin, a small town to the west that is highly regarded as the most beautiful place in Guatemala. Now the question remained, how does one get there? Fortunately, I inquired at Happy Fish rather than just assuming that the buses left from Punto TODO and I was informed that I needed to return to Fronteras, more frequently referred to as Rio Dulce by the locals. I booked a tour for Q125. Although I had seen a sign for transportation to Rio Dulce for Q90 somewhere I could not recall who offered it. The tour left on the same boat I had taken the day before to Sieta Alteres y Playa Blanca at 9:30. Returning to my room I packed up, then I went next door for a wonderful omelette and a couple of cups of fantastic coffee, returned to my room, grabbed my packs and walked down to the dock.

Shortly before 9:30 a man hopped aboard the boat and took off downstream, my destination was upstream. I kept my eye on the boat, hoping that he had just gone off to pick up another passenger and that I was at the correct dock. Fifteen minutes later the captain and a passenger boarded the boat and came back upstream and started to pass the city dock. Hoping that he had a passenger manifest that indicated I was to be picked up but lacking a great deal of confidence I blew my whistle and waved at him. He acknowledged and pulled alongside the dock a few minutes later. My packs were wrapped in a tarp with the two suitcases that were present. The American that had already boarded clutched a high end aluminum brief case; strange travel gear to be sure. We picked up an English couple and an Englishman from the same hotel. It turned out they were not traveling together and did not know each other.

A mandatory stop in the tour is Aguas Caliente (hot water). I offered my flashlight stating that the one’s provided were pretty dim. The American said that no flashlight was necessary and the Brit’s returned my flashlight. They swam in the river in water the temperature of a hot tub where the hot springs drained into the river through a small hole in the rock. When they returned we took off and I showed them the pictures of the turtle eggs, crayfish and spiders I had seen in the caves a couple of days prior. None of the four of them knew there were caves at the site despite the fact that there was a large sign, in English, at the end of the dock, directly in front of our boat prominently inviting tourists on the cave tour.

We cruised up the gorge, through the TODO, the American asked how much longer. He was in distress, suffering from food poisoning. I told him we only had about twenty minutes left. The American was staying at Backpackers, a hostel underneath the bridge. When it became evident that the captain intended to sail to Castille San Felipe an old fort I called out, “Necessito alto pora Americano. American necessito Backpacker immediato.” I have no idea if immediato is a word in Spanish but it is a tricked I picked up from someone in Panama, it would certainly stand a better chance of being understood than “immediately”. After dropping off the gringo I had the captain take me across the river to the Fronteras side.
The hawker who set me up with Tortugal told me that the bus to Lanquin left from the dock at 1:30 and that there was an Internet cafe at Bruno’s at the end of the Bridge. My Spanish is almost useful even if severely limited. Bruno’s was an unappealling place, the rooms were attached grotty cells encircling a gravel and dirt parking lot underneath a noisy bridge. The internet fee was Q15/hr; the connection was pretty fast, T1 speed (144 Mb/sec) and the computers were relatively fast, but the screens were 600 x 800 and the keyboards were sticky; It took me six attempts to log into Facebook, the ultimate time killer before my password was acccepted. I started my download again, the estimated time to completion was one hour and forty five minutes; I had two hours to kill. When it was time to go the estimated download time was another twenty minutes.

I returned to the dock, bought a club soda and sat down to finish off For Whom the Bell Tolls. One thirty came and went. I approached a couple of people on the dock. “Que hora pora bus haste Lanquin.” “Uno media.” “¿Hoy?” “Si”. Ok, bananas country, it’s just running late. Around two o’clock a woman deigned to occupy the Tourist information booth having left her game of cards and told me that would just be a few minutes more. Finally the hawker returned, I asked him what the hell was going on and he made a phone call. Turns out there weren’t enough people in Lanquin to justify a trip to Fronteras so they just didn’t come. He assured me that there would be a bus tomorrow, there were a lot of people coming tomorrow. He asked me if I needed a room to which I replied I had decided on Backpackers. This evoked a very negative response, being under the bridge it is very loud. In answer to his question, yes I like Tortugal very much but I just wanted to try something else out. He recommended a place with the improbable name of Kangaroo. The boat would be coming in ten minutes. Twice in a row I needed to catch a boat and one was scheduled to come within minutes.

A small panga pulled up, the hawker indicated this was my boat and I, the only passenger was whisked up the river, past Tortugal and almost to San Felipe. We turned into a narrow affluent and wound our way past the verdant lush jungle dotted with the weekend retreats of the rich of Guatemala their small wooden houses merely accessories to the large yachts. In short order we pulled up to the dock in fron of a cozy wooden retreat. I was shown the various rooms and again chose the dorm as it was the nicest room in the place and I was the only customer. Faithful readers know that I have a need to walk and there is not much room to walk at Kangaroos. Three women and Domingo, my boat cabin lived at Kangaroo. The receptionist, a pretty Guatemalan and the only English speaking person in the place is the niece of the owner a 52 year old Australian. The music could easily have been from the favorites list on my Ipod, Neil Young, Bob Dylan, Police,
I booked a two hour tour with Domingo for Q50. We slowly made our way down the river to the Rio Dulce and accross to San Felipe. A very pleasant guard took my Q20 entrance fee and handed me an entrance ticket printed on a sheet of A1 sized paper both sides of which were covered with the history of the fort in Spanish. After I was done viewing the small fort I walked up the drive constructed from rocks embedded in concrete in two parallel tracks a cars width apart, past the path to the dock and down into the jungle. Domingo reached me breathlessly and notified me that I had missed the turn off. I told him that I need to walk. “Yo necissito caminar vente kilometers pora dia.” I informed him. Yes, you heard me twenty kilometers a day. I was walking through a large, sparsely populated cemetary, the graves in above ground concrete tombs; strange as I would have thought this soil readily dug and dry. I walked toward the end of the park, Domingo took a sudden interest in a tree, apparently because it was stationary. I picked him up on my return and asked him if I could buy him a water. He indicated that he preferred beer which did not suprise me.

We set off in the boat and soon found ourselves at a very small island, maybe it was just a cluster of mangrove, I never looked down nor did Domingo ever stop. The trees were teeming with birds TODO and TODO. I hope that sometime somebody will explain to me why these boat operators insist on only slowing down. My compact cannon has a 14 power optical zoom so I used it in shutter priority, setting my shutter speed to 1/2000″. Unfortunately the camera is not smart enough to drop down the speed if the aperature is insufficient to adequately expose the picture so I have to do some fiddling. It beats trying to take pictures of birds with a 70 mm lens on my SLR however.

Domingo pulled up to a river front bar and I bought him one Gallo after another. Four beers later he was a happy man and indicated that I needed to zip my lip when we returned to Kangaroo. “No problema”. Upon my return I culled pictures from the day’s shooting, never culling enough I left a bunch of crap out there. It is hard to call what I am doing these days photography. I am just taking pictures to give my friends a feel for a place, I haven’t taken a photograph with artistic merit in months. The girls were interested in my cropping and culling but were facinated by my travel pictures, Costa Rica, Panama, Columbia, Peru, Bolivia; they had never left this city.

For dinner I had Chicken Mole, authentic Mexican food. I was invited to go to Backpackers to go dancing at nine o’clock with the three women. Why the hell not?

Six o’clock found me awake in my room at Gil’s Hotel. The hot shower wasn’t. The internet was still flaky. I walked down to a restaurant and had a small breakfast and couple of cups of coffee and returned to my room, packed my gear, went downstairs and asked them to lock it up while I went out on a tour. The people are so nice at Gil’s that it bothers me to write a review for TripAdvisor with my issues regarding the shower and the internet but I have to write what I would like to know were I to choose the place.

I showed up at Happy Fish a restaurant and tour company at 9:00 hoping that they would have put together people for a Sieta Alteres y Playa Blanca tour. An Israeli couple on their honeymoon and I made up the tour group. We took off a few minutes past the scheduled departure time and in 15 minutes we arrived at Sieta Alteres, paid our Q15 entrance fee and proceeded down the path.. The walk up the river and back took just about an hour easy walking, no bugs, temperature in the high seventies; it was very pleasant. Back at the palapa I looked at a turtle conservation poster and a bunch of shells of turtles that had been captured and eaten. One or the other guy. The owner was a Garifuna who inherited the land from his Grandfather. He spoke English, but many of the blacks in Livingstone do not, a rarity in the Caribbean, speaking Garifuna only or Garifuna and Spanish.

The blacks in Livingston are the only blacks in Guatemala. They pride themselves on their culture.

We got back in the boat and proceeded to Playa Blanca, a 200 meter stretch of white sand that extends about 50 meters from the shore. At the edge of the sand is a long garbage pile of plastic bottles. No food was available and the only beverages listed were water and beer. Fortunately for me the water was carbonated, my favorite drink. I started with a cold green coconut, which wasn’t listed as being available. It was deftly opened and pierced and I drank the contents through a straw. Later I had it halved and ate the meat. The water was warm and none too clear, shallow for as far I could bother to walk. One exceptionally worn hammock provided the only “activity”. Eight men sat around and talked. I engaged one of them in conversation and found that they do in fact fish in the morning and sit around the rest of the day and shoot the shit.

At two thirty Barack, the Israeli guy on the tour asked if I had had enough. I was ready to go. We returned to town and I had a wonderful Garifuno traditional soup of crab, shrimp and plantain in coconut milk at Lucky Fish. I wandered through the town and found another hotel, Posada El Dolfin, walked back to Gil’s grabbed my bags and returned in the rain to kill some time on the internet and try to download something my son sent me ten days ago.

Tales of yesterday.

Voices in the lobby bounced off the concrete walls and through my louvered windows. I tossed and cursed them to myself. Getting up I looked at my itouch, 11:19? What the hell? It was a long night but I never sleep this late. Damn… the bus left at 10. Another day to kill. As it was Sunday and the slow season most of the restaurants were closed. I walked to the restaurant next door to Casablanca and had breakfast and several cups of coffee. As I exited the restaurant a man from the bus company, with whom I had dealt last night approached me and told me I had to change my ticket. I had been informed that I should be at the bus station at 9:30 to change my ticket from Flores to Guatemala with my new intended route Flores to Rio Dulce; why had the bus company dispatched somebody from Santa Ana to Flores to take care of this at the hotel? I asked the guy how he knew where I was staying, he told me he asked the bus company, they knew what hotel I had booked through. Why did he ask? Why was he not told? This was very strange. He pulled out a receipt pad and gave me a ticket to Rio Dulce and I gave him my ticket to Guatemala. He was ready to head out and I told him I expected some money back. Now he feigned that he couldn’t understand my Spanish. When I told him to just give me my ticket back and that I would take care of it at the office he suddenly understood me again and offered questioningly Q100, of my original Q150 fare. Ok, game’s up. I don’t know how much he is pocketing but I now have a ticket in hand and I am only out $7 USD.

“¿Que hora bus?”, What hour is the bus I asked.
“Nuevo media. Debes estar en el hotel en 20 minutos.” Nine thirty. You have to be at the hotel in 20 minutes.
What the hell?

I rushed to my room and packed. I don’t like packing this quickly as I am prone to leaving things. In a few minutes my packs were stuffed with everything I could see and I headed out the door with some misgivings, with an ill-defined feeling that something was just not right. The hotel with the bus stop was but a hundred meters down the road. I went through my mental check list and asked the gringo that had shown up at the bus stop to watch my bags and ran back to the hotel and grabbed my toilet kit from the bathroom. As I was running back at least four people told me the bus was coming. Everybody knows everybody’s business in these small towns. The bus passed me, I arrived at the bus stop, the bus drove past as I knew it would and went to the end of the street, turned around and headed back.

The conductor opened the storage compartment, I threw in my backpack and boarded the bus with my day pack. A few minutes later we were in Santa Ana at the bus terminal and the bus started to fill up. I headed out for a coffee but there was none for sale in the terminal. Across the street was a 24 hour restaurant at which I ordered a couple of cups to go. In Guatemala it is not uncommon for coffee to be brewed one cup at a time which makes for excellent coffee but not the speediest of service. My coffee arrived many minutes later in plastic cups beverage cups which were almost too hot to handle. I scurried back to the bus stop and looked around the lot. All of the buses were dilapidated; where was my new Mercedes bus? Damn it! Not with my luggage. My consternation was evident and a man in the lot came over “¿Donde este bus hasta Rio Dulce?” The man wanted to sell me a ticket. I just needed the damn bus. Finally I ran around the corner of the terminal and in one of two slots was my bus, exactly where I had left it; I am so bad I can leave my truck in a Home Depot parking lot and spend more time looking for it than I did buying things. I never shopped at Home Depot; I knew where everything was.

Three hours later I was in Rio Dulce. As usual the exit doors to the bus were blocked by taxi drivers soliciting rides and as usual I ignored anybody so obnoxious that they blocked my exit. The luggage space was packed with bags, I told the conductor that my bag was a red backpack. He grabbed anything that was red and showed it to me. No baggage tags, I could have taken anything I wanted. Mine of course was way in the back. I walked around the bus, opened the other door, grabbed my pack, shut the door and headed on my way. My way to where? I had no idea where I was going. I asked a Gringo where a good place to stay was and he directed me to a river front hotel near the bridge. A few hundred meters later I was at the bridge, took the path down under it and encountered an American couple and restated my question. Seconds later a man, watching me, showed up on a bicycle with a laminated brochure of what must surely be every accommodation in the city. I chose Tortugal, a marina and guest house. The man told me that the only way to get to Tortugal was by boat and showed me to the dock under the bridge. The next boat was coming in 15 minutes. Sure enough the Tortugal boat showed up and took me, as it’s only passenger to Tortugal a ride of about four minutes.

I stepped out of the boat onto the floating dock which must have dropped about six inches under my weight and I wasn’t even wearing my two packs which weigh in at about seventy pounds. The receptionist showed me the various accommodations and I chose the dormitory which was the second story of a palapa right on the water’s edge. The roof had four dormers, each with a bed; each bed having mosquito netting and a large locker for securing one’s gear. I wandered every bit of trail and boardwalk with my camera, grabbed a few shots, and decided that it was surely possible to walk to town. After a few minutes on a stone covered road I reached a gate and a two lane asphalt road. I took the road to town and wandered around for an hour. One street was nothing but markets, mostly fruits and vegetables with a few cell phone stores thrown in. Belize is the only country I have been to in Central America where there was not at least one cell phone store per block; I don’t know whether that is because the ridiculous tariffs in Belize or the fact that the locals have no money to buy one anyway; I suspect it is a combination of the two.

It didn’t take long to discover a tipico soda (typical food cafe) and I grabbed a carne de la plancha con arroz, usually translated meat of the plate with rice and walked back to the marina. I was greeted by the couple that I had met under the bridge previously. They were living at the marina on a 42′ cruiser. I was introduced to another ex-pat couple that was living on a sail boat at the marina. Graciously they invited me to happy hour on their boat at five.

After sunset I started working on editing my days pictures and realized that I was missing a bag of five thumb drives that I had been using, for the first time in months, the previous day; I had taken them out to install some software. I emptied my day pack. No, surely it was missing. Was it taken while I worked at the computer at the desk in the reception area at Casablanca? I had left it unattended several times, but no one had taken my notebook or external drive. Searching the web I found the phone number to the hotel. This was far more difficult than I would have expected. The phone at the Marina is available for public use at Q4 a minute, pretty outrageous markup over 1,000%. A man answered and said that I would have to talk with someone in the morning. I asked him to have them put them on the bus if they found them. He said he would and started to sign off. WTF? I hadn’t told him which bus.

Rather than wait, I’ll just give up. I hadn’t used these things but once in the last nine months anyway and there was nothing confidential that wasn’t encrypted. I am set to take the 9:30 boat to Lexington. Time to pack.

A little research on TripAdvisor.com convinced me that I was well advised to visit Rio Dulce before hitting Antigua. My bus ticket was for an express trip from Flores to Guatemala City. This is an eight hour ride, leaving at eight at night. This would put me in harms way, arriving at the dangerous capital at four in the morning burdened by seventy pounds of gear and four thousand dollars worth of highly marketable electronics.

The owner of Casablanca assured me that I could stop off in Rio Dulce and continue my trip. Around six o’clock a lovely European woman, about 5’9 and 130 pounds, packed into a tight fitting mini skirt managing to look very sexy without looking slutty asked me if I could change a Q100. I managed to come up with a fifty, a twenty, two tens, a five, three ones, a one coin and a half coin. I smiled and told her that there was an exchange fee and a service charge. She readily accepted being short changed and my offer for coffee. We chatted for an hour and a half; she invited me to stay; I told her I had to go. At 7:30 we walked to the bus stop a 100 meters down the street.

A man sat playing a musical instrument. A bamboo flute was stopped at the top with a 1/2″ PVC elbow which was fitted on the other end with a nipple to which was affixed a plastic mouth piece. “¿Come es el nombre de instrumento musica?” Not good Spanish, but enough to convey the concept. He replied, “This is called a saxaphone.” Oh, sure. At 8:00 sharp Central American time, (UTC – 6) 2:28 UTC, the bus showed. We said our goodbyes. It was very pleasant; I almost canceled my trip, I can skip a few things and still get to Uvita in time.

From my Facebook posting: Ahh welll. Nice try. I made it as far as Santa Elena, about 2 km from here. They said it is not possible to stop in Rio Dulce this is an express bus. It drives right through the d**n city. Well I guess that is why it is an express. So I leave tomorrow. Now where the hell did that hot European woman go with whom I was getting along spectacularly? My bus now leaves at 10:00 tomorrow morning. At least there is plenty of leg room.

I returned to Casablanca, was greeted like an old friend, my bags were put into my room. I set up my computer and resumed my picture uploads, posted this and set off to find the raven haired beauty. If there is no follow up tomorrow it was a good night. I only blog interesting failures.