DIA SESENTA SEIS:
Sabado 23 April 2005 - San Jorge
Antigua Guatemala - Saturday night.
We're up early to move the cars to the street from the lot so mechanical endeavours can proceed. We all drag our moldy butts next door to Fernando's Kaffe for fine cheap desayunos and caffiene kickstarts. Then the shopping expedition begins. It's slightly too early for NimPot, and no horses are exercising, so on to the zocalo and the artesan's mercado, where certain purchases are made. Nothing for me yet.
Back to the zocalo and Cafe Condesa's verdent cloister for exuberant soup-salad-sandwich lunches, then slowly out to El Fuente's upholstered courtyard where Maureen and Melanie go huipile-crazy, beset by a flock of vendors. Jim and I await in comfortable chairs in a far corner as the fury unfolds.
We stagger back to the posada for a rest, then down past the Spanish Embassy for a no-name eatery's acceptable if unexciting menu al dia. Last night's fine dinner today attacked Maureen's up-to-now resistant guts. Ouch. And she broke her fine camera yesterday. Good thing we have the ratty old backup.
CARS: Then, adventures in parking. The lot owner refunded our outstanding money and kicked us out, no reason given. His brother led us on bicycle to his own lot a few long blocks away. After much maneuvering, physical and verbal, all ended well. And our bad tire will be fixed on Monday, just in time to drive to Copan.
That's right, we'll be driving. I bought a detailed map of Honduras. We'll all convoy to Copan and see the site/sights, then Jim and Meli will retrace their steps, and Maureen and I will proceed. Shuttles would just be too crowded, uncomfortable, constrained.
CITY: Antigua is packed tonight. At the municipal palace, a stage is set up and LOUD music emits. Ex-Convento La Merced's plaza is filled with luminarias [candle-lit paper lanterns on the ground]. Some say there's a festival, others than everyone come here for the weekend. In the early evening, more loud rain. Most of today spread under an overcast, except for a heated midday burnoff.
Back at the posada we chatted with fellow travelers, a trio of church-connected US women. Irma; Mary (Mrs Frank) Curley of Savannah, Georgia; and younger Margaret, who has been living in and roaming around Guatemala and southern Mexico for some time. She says the best sources of local info are Peace Corps folks. Mary says we should visit South Africa, and to look her up in Savannah. Irma can't wait to see what's left of tonight's festival. They leave, return, smoke and yack late. Next door. Good night.
DIA SESENTA SIETE:
Domingo 24 April 2005 - San Fidel de Sigmaringa
Antigua Guatemala - finally, quiet Sunday night.
Fernando's prices have risen slightly over two years but US$2.00 will still buy (if the help adds things up right) a great tasty basic breakfast (eggs, beans, plantains and tortillas) and a cup of the world's best coffee. Sitting here, we plotted tomorrow's journey. Guate (Guatemala City) is still the tricky part. Fernando gave us some directional hints.
We got a late start today -- we're all tired. After desayuno, a slow stroll to the great dark warm cavernous NimPot (more huipiles are acquired) and the book museum. Old real books and a reproduction of the first press in the Americas -- Jim the ex-printer is fascinated. A search of new print shops for a good map of Guate but there just ain't none nowhere.
Maureen and Melanie avoided the book-and-map quest, sat at Cafe Condesa with juices on this hot day. No lunch there, on Sunday they only serve buffet brunch and we're not that hungry, so an overpriced repast at the House of Bagels and a slow stomp back to the posada.
MILAGRO! There's a guitar in the posada's lobby, and an EtherNet cable! I played the former for an hour whilst awaiting access to the latter, then joyfully and freely surfed the Web for a couple hours. YahooGroups was constipated, it took awhile to accept and mail the journal updates. But I'm happy.
When all the others were well rested, we slid around a couple corners to Cafe Rocio, scene of our very first independent Antigua meal two years ago, for excellent fresh reasonable Thai and Guatemalan dinners. It's now our suppertime favorite but we're leaving tomorrow. Ratz.
Rocio's desserts are inadequate; Jim & Meli returned to the posada, Ric & Maureen hoofed over to Cafe Condesa Express for take-out Tres Leches cake, munched in the darker now-quiet zocalo. Another couple of Rocio diners did the same, but they're mobbed by vendors. Antigua is putting itself to a cool sleep after a hot busy weekend. I need a bit myself.
DIA SESENTA OCHO:
Lunes 25 April 2005 - San Marcos
Copan Ruinas, Honduras - Monday morning.
It hardly seems like the old Antigua now -- no every-early-morning explosions, dogs, church-bell sonatas, passing bus/truck fleets. Just a highland town waking up.
We rescued our cars from the lot, got our right-front tire fixed (Q10 = US$1.20), ran into Guate on clean patched highway, the roadsides NOT strewn with trash as before. Fewer people walking the shoulders. We passed a police checkpoint -- testing bus drivers for alcohol. Passengers must hope he doesn't flunk, or they're stranded. And then into Guate!
GUATE: What a mess. We tried to follow directions, ended up wandering around dead-end streets in Mixto on market day. Then we got on the right highway but in the wrong direction. We looped cloverleafs and spun into the right orientation, then were stopped by city cops driving a beat-to-shit official pickup. They looked over our papers. The young guy said he wants to go to California next year, wants to work for us. WORK FOR US!! Sorry, we're retired. Jubilado! Jubilado!
Meli had told us of a friend riding a bus that was stopped and robbed by Zapatistas. The zaps went down the aisle, demanding money from each passenger. They got to her friend, who smiled, said "No, thank you," and went back to her knitting. So Meli said the Guate cops told them their Texas drivers' licences were invalid in Guatemala. And Meli said, "No, they're fine," and grabbed their papers and went back to her reading. Nice quiet insolence.
So we had a nice friendly chat and a safe escape. (Where we were pulled over, we blocked a chicken eatery's driveway. The rent-a-cop scowled and told us to leave, but he's outranked by Guate's Finest, right?) Then we missed the peripheral road turnoff and were stuck on grotty city streets, threading the dangerous Zona Una -- slow jammed traffic, fast dogs, staggering toxic drunks, a dissheveled whirl. Nobody even looked at us.
ESCAPE: Leaving Antigua puts us into a new phase of this journey. Everything is different now. Beyond Guate, everything is new. More nations await us.
Northeast out of Guate on the highway that runs downhill all the way to the Caribbean coast, one long strip city over and down canyons, forever on dusty dry ridges past an infinite number of very very slow trucks. It's no wonder that tour shuttle vans leave Antigua at 4AM and still take six hours to travel 200 miles.
Beyond Guate's edge, it's like driving a great Cucamonga of gritty near-desert, an Inland Empire of drought and heat and musty thick air and columnar cacti and blossoming bouganvillea and jacarunda and mesquite-looking thorn trees (all muted by dust) where buzzards cluster in roadside trees, awaiting the next spinouts.
Many road cuts have suffered rockslides. The medium and big and huge rocks aren't hauled away, they're just painted white. Some road cuts reveal multicolored layers of volcanic ash and pumice. Some curves conceal odd debris, metallic and stone and vegetable and animal.
NOONISH: Around El Progreso (Guastatoya) we stop at a gas station comedor for a tray-table assortment of fast lunch, superb flavors and textures, much better (and cheaper) than USA bus-stop slop or fast-food slag. This is one of the best meals we've had. Gringos put up with lots of crap, foodwise. I blame advertising.
The low point of our day (elevation-wise) is the junction at prosperous-looking Rio Hondo -- wasn't there a bad western flic of that name? Then away from the melon-patches and palms and citrus and hotels, uphill along greener jungle valleys, towards the border uplands, gnarly volcanic knobs reminescent of our last border crossing at La Mesilla (but cleaner than Mexico). Over bridges where naked boys swim in deep creeks and Brahmin cattle ignore us.
Then we're at the Honduras border, much better orgainzed and smoother than La Mesilla, with the Guatemalan and Honduran customs and immigration offices interleaved. Usurious money-changers (I was only nicked for two bucks), helpful bureaucrats, one Guatemalan at the rope-pulled crossing gate, a couple Honduran soldiers with Kalishnikovs a little ways in from the frontier. Only took us 1/2 hour to clear the border, another 1/2 hour for J&M.
HONDURAS: Another week, another country. We roll on the clean, modern (recently paved) highway to the town of Copan Ruinas where we find clean quiet cheap (US$14/night) rooms at the Hotel Calle Real. We lay in hammocks on the thatch-roof penthouse, listening to geckos and crickets and toads and screeching cicadas, blown by gentle breezes.
Power is on intermittantly. We necessarily have a small candlelight dinner at the hotel, then retire to our room to nibble some scraps left over from Arizona and Chiapas: nuts, molten chocolate, cookies. We toss out the stuff that didn't make it. Ewww... But no power means no fan, so we read and write and sweat in the near darkness -- real third-world travel, eh? Finally at 9:30 the town power comes back on, and we ventilate. Whew.
DIA SESENTA NUEVE:
Martes 26 April 2005 - San Anacleto y Marcelino
Copan Ruinas, Honduras - Tuesday morning, early.
Electricity stayed on all night, so we heard the soft tick-whir of the overhead fan at full speed. The retarded drip of the toilet tank slowly refilling after a flush. A few nearby roosters that can't wait until dawn. A couple of distant dogs, a couple of distant motors. These are the morning sounds. Only a few bugs scurry on the tile floors, easy to squash enough that they crawl around leaving gory trails. Ewww...
I'm tired. I feel like I was strapped to Micky Gilley's mechanical bull and left on HIGH for a few hours. We'll see if I have strength for today's tour of the ruinas.
SOCIO-ECONOMICS: Honduras hasn't had a civil war in the last 150 years or so, unlike its neighbors, who thus see Hordurans as lackadasical morons, whilst Hondurans see their neighbors as over-wrought violent hotheads. According to the guidebooks, anyway. Go-with-the-flow is supposedly the national characteristic. Take it easy, hombre.
The national currency is the Lempira, named after a heroic Lenca indian leader who was slaughtered long ago. The exchange rate is about L19 per US dollar, so we do a rough calculation of 20:1. The Honduran border official charged us L660 for automobile entry papers, but the receipt is for L404. Does that mean the propina (tip) was 40%? Hmmm...
COPAN SITE: Our abrupt youngish cig-puffing hotel cook (but she's not the chef, he comes in later) whips up breakfast for us, and we all roll down the steep cobbled road past adobe and concrete houses to the well-guarded ATM across from the square, to enhance our lempira supplies. Poke around an overpriced souvenir shop a little, then slip out past the edge of town to the expensive and disappointing Copan Ruinas archaeological site.
We fended off an onslaught of would-be guides, paid our stiff admission fees and bought useless guidebooks, and walked a klick through thinned jungle to the ruins (Principal Group), which consist of a number of moderate pyramids and temples. Scattered about are various stelae (carved dolmens) and altars and statues, some original (under shelters), many replicas. Most originals have been moved to the fabulous Sculpture Museum, which unfortunately was not built as carefully as the ancient Mayans fabricated their structures. Copan is renowned for the sculptures and stelae. The museum is a major reason for coming here, and it's closed for repairs, seemingly forever. Ratz.
So we wandered around the Great Plaza and the Acropolis for a couple hours until we were felled by the heat. We admired the superb Heiroglyphic Stairway (what we could see of it). We skipped the expensive short tunnel tours. We were too sun-struck to attempt the Sepulturas site, included in the admission. Basta ya. This climate drove us from the Yucatan. We can't wait to head uphill for awhile.
AFTERNOON: We drove back to town for a tasty lunch at the well-regarded Llama del Bosque. The food would have been reasonable except for the appended tax and propina of 22%. Yow.
The thermometer read 95°f. The official guidebook recommended the El Jaral shopping mall and water park a few miles uphill. A pleasant drive through clean lush farm country and steep hills, brilliant flowering trees, horses strolling by the roadside.
Visitors to El Jaral are to check their firearms at the gate. The complex's cinema may be air-conditioned, but the rest wasn't In fact, most shops were closed -- no chance for more goodies, handcrafts from the local indigenous, etc. (The La Pintada specialty being small brightly-painted dolls made of dried corn husks.) We could and did buy ice cream and cold water; we skipped on the pizza; and we headed out to a little shaded promenade overlooking the unfinished agua parque and the cow museum.
Yes, El Mooooooseo de la Vacas, the Moooooooseum of Cows, a small well-indended quasi-attraction, featured various miscellaneous antiques hung on walls surrounding a few glass cases filled with fanciful chihuahua-sized cows. The ballerina cow, sphinx cow, astronaut cow, purple cow, chicken-headed cow, holy cow, gunslinger cow, and many many more. Free admission, and worth every lempira. We didn't dare to look at the souvenirs.
WHAT'S NEXT? Returning, Maureen collapsed in the hotel while Jim and Meli and I walked a block downhill to a recommended sculptor's shop. Lito Lara carves (from stone) fine replicas of ancient Mayan works. We each bought something. Then J&M went into town for a painful hot iNet session, updating their blog [LosDosGringos] and I crashed in the upstairs breeze-blown hammock listening to Spanish language turoting.
When we awoke we went back to the house-studio, listened as Lito explained his art, and bought more. We're now the proud owners of two magnificient little stelae, total cost L200 (US$10.60). Great stuff, much better than the cast plaster crap and laser-cut phoniness in all the tourist traps.
Evening, the cook and her chef whopped us up some fine cheap typico chicken dinners (no food tax here at the hotel) and we all hammered out our plans. Jim and Meli head back tomorrow, leaving early to get past Guate before the afternoon traffic jams, hoping to overnight in Antigua before returning to San Cristobal de las Casas. Maureen wants to escape this hot place too, but I'm still tired -- we'll see.
The next stops on our route are Santa Rosa de Copan, and Gracias, and La Esperanza, all supposedly cool quiet Spanish mountain towns, none very far away. We hope to find someplace nice to lay around awhile and stop spending money. Traveling with J&M has been enjoyable but a bit rushed and expensive. Now is the time to kick back, act Honduran.
DIA SETENTA:
Miercoles 27 April 2005 - Santa Zita
Nuevo Ocotepeque, Honduras - crappy night.
MORNING: We say g'bye to J&M, look at overpriced souvenirs in hot (95°f at 10AM) sticky murky Copan Ruinas, then head uphill towards what we hope to be relief. At La Esperanza de Copan the CHECK ENGINE light went off for the first time in 6000 miles. At La Entrada de Copan a man walked across the highway leading a small monkey on a string. We scoot past vile rockfalls on the otherwise clean clear road.
We run along lush tropical valleys filled with fields of corn and sugar cane, banana and palm trees and coffee. Buzzards circle over an Evangelical academy. At Santa Rosa de Copan (SRC): worse air, and our Campero Chicken experiment (we flunked -- one probably must be born to the stuff to like it). SRC now is just another busy industrial town, not the soft sanctuary described in the guidebooks.
AFTERNOON: Then out the excellent highway to Gracias Lempira -- worse air, and the quiet quaint cobblestone town is being torn up and rebuilt. It'll maybe be nice during the rainy season next year, maybe. We got past Gracias and the road turned to crud. We faced the prospect of 30 miles of dirt and smog getting to La Esperanza Lempira ("best climate in Honduras" say the guides) and then the same to return. We gave up.
The air is just bloody terrible. One or more forest fires, maybe? But we just can't see trying to go on across Honduras to Nicaragua, not now. So we head west and north towards the Honduras-Guatemala-Salvador corner, way up in the highlands, hoping the air will be better, hoping that we might be able to see the north end of Salvador, its lakes and mountains etc.
Here, the scenery is gorgeous, the mountains and valleys are spectacular, what we can see of them, which ain't much. This part of the trip is just a waste.
EVENING: We take a wrong turn at Cucuyagua and travel a few miles to a lovely dead-end town (Corquin?) with streets cobbled big and nice friendly folk who direct us to the other fork of the road. Then over a HIGH pass between Sierra de Merendon and Cerro Sumpul, and down into grubby Neuvo Ocotepeque (New Octopussy) and the Hotel Maya Chortis, probably the best grubby hostelry here. Old Octopussy was washed away in a flood some time ago but it grew back like a giant mutant toadstool. The Maya Chortis has an armed guard at the parking lot gate, little room security, but we're away from the damn noisy bus stop. The food is *eh* but the breakfast is free. Dust lies everywhere; Maureen is allergic to the sheets. Damn we're tired.
| 
