To the land of Coca Cola

Ahhh.....Columbia... sun... sand.... Colonial architecture and Coca Cola, lots of Coca Cola to drink here....... One might say that it's snowing in Colombia. There is a loose analogy here for certain, and one in which we would not participate, but in reality, it is a fact that Columbia provides 80% of the world's Cocaine. An impressive fact considering the size of the country. We have been here for several weeks now, and haven't seen any evidence of this trade, but aparently it goes on, and in a big way. When we were in Nicaragua, there was an ad campaign running for Columbian Tourism that said, "the only risk you have in coming to Columbia is wanting to stay." We thought is was catchy, and maybe it struck a cord with us and that's why we came, who knows. Compared to other Central American countries however, there are fewer tourists and maybe it's because of the stigma that Columbia has. Apparently Farc does still exist, but they have been relinquished to the rural areas, mostly in the jungle between Colombia and Panama, an area infamously known as

Our Trip Back to Costa Rica For a Spell

We haven't been around computers in a long while so here's an update from mid-October.

While we were in Boquete, Panama we learned that Michelle's brother and sister-in-law were heading to Costa Rica for a 10th anniversary celebration. It turns out that they were going to be only a few hours from us so we decided to crash the party. First, however, several factors came together at once to make Mark decide to cut his hair.

1. Michelle's brother Kevin asked Mark if he was going to be joining Al Qaeda;
2. Mark kept noticing 1-3 year old little girls with the same hairstyle as himself: Namely, a pony-tail directly on top of the head;
3. Finally, Mark was fed up with his longish hair and wanted to look more presentable when meeting people for the first time.

It was a great experiment.

After the haircut we headed back to Costa Rica where

Boquete, Panama

We headed inland to Boquete, Panama mid-November and landed at the Pension Marilos after a full day of travel. We ended up taking the one room they had left which was a single with a shared bathroom, thinking we would move the next day when a double opened up. Well, we found the twin bed cozy and we loved the room and the price ($6/night), so we ended up moving in and staying for a month. It's like home. There is a female parrot named Ricki who has fallen in love with Mark and has sworn off Michelle as her mortal enemy. It's pretty funny watching Ricki alternate between making sweet love purring noises to Mark, and chasing after Michelle to bite her toes--cackling like the Wicked Witch of the West when Michelle dances out of reach.

As soon as we arrived we met a gal named Lorie from Oregon who had the same problem with Ricki dating back years to when she and her husband and son stayed at the pension while they built their home in Boquete. Ricki fell for the husband and son and to this day remains an enemy of Lorie, even though she hasn't been back to Boquete for years! Lorie invited us up to their lovely home on a small coffee plantation in the hills above Boquete.

We´ve made a lot of great friends here because the word has gotten out about

Adios Bocas del Drago

We said goodbye to Bocas del Drago and headed to Boquete, Panama. Boquete is a tad bit higher in elevation so we are looking forward to busting out our fleece jackets again.



Our time on the island was well spent. We reviewed all of the verb tenses and practiced Spanish as much as possible on our little beach.

We also tried to pick up a few chords on la guitarra.

Mark jammed with Enrique one of our last evenings while I hung out with Itzel.

See you in Boquete!

Bocas Del Toro

We're in Panama right now......living in the region of Bocas Del Toro on Isla Colòn (Columbus Island). The official name of the beach where we currently live is Bocas Del Drago, but most people associate this region in general with the "Del Toro" part of the name above. It's kind of confusing with all these different Bocas names, but so it goes. This island is part of a string of beautiful islands on the Caribbean side of Panama, directly off the coast. From most of the islands, you can see the mainland of Panama. Where we are living, in Bocas Del Drago, the ocean is literally only 22 "Michelle sized steps" away from our front door (that's our unit of measurement here). Neither of us can ever remember a time when we have stayed this close to the ocean and it's pretty nice. Every night we fall asleep to the sounds of the ocean....we have 4 large windows that we leave open to let the breeze in (they have screens). There are mosquitos here, so a bed net is imperative at night, but the days are so

Viva Nicaragua!

The last 3 weeks have been well spent travelling and spending time with each other in different places. Michelle and I are slacking a little on our Spanish skills and have already begun losing much of what we learned in Xela! We'll get back on the ball here in a few days.

To the right is a photo of Chris and I pretending to use the "laundromat" in the town of Livingston on the Caribbean. This seemed like a great idea to us because it keeps people from laundering their clothes in freshwater streams, etc. Livingston was a really neat area and I wish we had more pictures to show for it.

We spent very little time in Honduras due to constraints with Cristóbal's return ticket (sorry Chris!). Instead, we made our way directly to Nicaragua and began our journey in the historic city of León. We learned much about

Hola Honduras!

We made it to Honduras via the coastal route. It's been a grand adventure and this post will not do it justice but I'll post our general whereabouts and where we've been. From Xela, we took a bus at 4:00 in the morning bound for the SE corner of Guatemala, where the land is jungle and the air is humid. We stayed 2 nights in the town of Rio Dulce and spent one of those nights with some new friends in a private house on the river. The house was owned by a very accomodating family from L.A. who we met at the local waterfall/hot spring.....Thanks again! Next we took a river boat down the Rio Dulce to the Carribean town of Livingston (a spectacular 1.5 hour ride). There the Garifuna people and culture (Google it) warmly greeted us into their world. It was quite the experience and such a change from the rest of Guatemala.....we loved it! We visited another crazy waterfall called the Seven Altars which we reached after an afternoon hike along the beach. The standard cliff jumping occurred at each of the pools and Chris and I found

Adios Xela

We will be leaving Xela at 4:00 in the morning so hopefully our blogs will become frequent and exciting once again. Cristóbal joined us in Guatemala on the 10th and Mark will blog about their journey to Xela soon I´m sure. They have some great photos.



Meanwhile, goodbye to our teachers and new friends. Cristóbal took two days of intensive one-on-one Spanish classes with Oscar and learned an amazing amount. In fact, he says

Bienvenidos a Christopher!

Christopher arrived about a week and a half ago and during this time he has adapted incredibly fast (he hops on and off Chicken Buses like a pro) and has experienced so much including collaborating with me on this blog.

I picked Chris up on Friday the 10th, and we stayed in a compound of houses heavily guarded by guys with automatic rifles, etc. Guatemala City isn't known to be the safest place in the world so I opted for safety over being sorry.

In the morning we took a shuttle to Antigua which is a beautiful city but very different from the rest of the country. Antigua is dreamy and fairytale like. I wanted to start Chris' trip here because it is a good "soft landing" for Guatemala. In the shuttle, the driver spoke almost perfect English, and I told Chris this would be the last person he would meet in Guatemala who would speak English. Chris just now reminded me that

We´re still in Xela

We are still enjoying life in Xela. Normally, this is the daily schedule:

7-7:15 am: We get up and get ready.
7:30 am: Breakfast--fruit, coffee, and sometimes bread.
8:00 am to 1:00 pm: Mark walks Michelle to her Spanish school Eureka and then heads to the library or other fine place to study until lunch.
1:30ish pm: Lunch. We also use this time to catch up with each other.
2:00 to 6:00 pm: Mark heads to private tutoring while Michelle studies.
6:00 to 7:00 pm: Errands.
7:00 pm: Dinner and catch up.
8:00 to 11:00 pm: Study some more.

This pretty much sums up the daily grind for the past six weeks or so. Between school and studying we spend

Photos

I thought I´d supplement Mark´s amazing blog entries with some more photos. Here they are. We have all but stopped taking pictures because we are attending school and studying every day like mad... and... dare I say it... learning Spanish, finalmente!

Feliz Cumpleanos, Marcos! Some more photos of our

Life in Xela

It's good to know that Burger King is alive and well here in Guatemala. It's just what the people need to eat. That, Coca Cola and Lays Potato chips. Truth be told, Lays makes a chip that has less fat than the locally made chips, a tick in their favor.... But Burger King? McDonalds is here also. They have a great marketing campaign.....buy a hamburger and some french fries, and get 30 min of free internet. For this area, it's a brilliant idea, I can't say the same for what they're serving though.

Half the people here, especially the rural dwellers, seem to have half their teeth (if that makes sense). This in part thanks to the corporations that push the suger, Coca Cola mainly, but there are others just as

Across the Border and into Guatemala

Moving along in the story.........in the last post, Michelle and I were leaving Tiscao hoping to make it to a hotel on the outskirts of the park before dark (a nice cliff hanger... glad you liked it Candeye!). The short story is that no we did not make it before dark, but it did all work out. We caught the last collectivo of the day, and by the time we got out of the park it was getting pretty dark and it was difficult to see places as we flew by on the highway. Sure enough, the driver stopped at the turnoff to the ruins, which meant that we had missed the hotel I was hoping to find. We paid the driver and cut the umbilical cord that connected us to the outside world and turned to face our predicament. We were on a single lane road with no shoulder, it was dark and we were in the middle of nowhere with basically farmland all around us except for the tienda at the corner and a restaurant that looked closed. Barely being able to see where we were walking at this point, we quickly got off the road and asked at the restaurant, and also at the tienda at the corner, if there was a place for us to stay the night. There was some dialoge about an owner of cabanas who was there in the daytime but not there now, and they tried to call him, but he wasn't home, etc. etc.... Additionally, no one seemed to be familiar with the place I was looking for called Doña Maria Cabanas. It was really strange for us because in Mexico everyone seems to know where to find whatever you need, almost to the point of amazement, but in this situation the name did not ring a bell with anyone. At this point I was getting a little stressed, I have to admit, and that only made

3 Days in Lagos de Montebello

So, where to begin.......so much has happened since the last post but I'll do my best to give some justice to the last 2 weeks, most likely posting the info in increments starting with the oldest.

After leaving San Cristobal, we caught a collectivo bound for the town of Comitan. The drive was beautiful, and we were able to see the terrain change as we descended in rolling waves of terraced landscapes, as we went from the highlands of San Cristobal to the lowlands of extreme southern Mexico which stretch to the border with Guatemala (where the mountains very abruptly begin again). In Comitan, we roamed the streets in search of another collectivo bound for Lagos De Montebello, and as every experience in Mexico has taught us, it's easy to get just about anywhere via public transport. Sure enough, we found another shuttle, and were off within the half hour to the lakes. Our challenge in the second part of our journey was to figure out where to get dropped off, because supposedly the (many) lakes were kilometers apart, and there was conflicting info in the guide book as to what area would work best in terms of a base camp for us. Reinforcing this challenge was the fact that most people do this excursion as a day trip through local tour companies because of the difficulty in getting between all the lakes. We asked around before leaving Comitan, and went with our best guess as far as where to get out of the van....you know, there's the whole language barrier thing. Just as the sun was setting (we barely made it before dark), we arrived at a small village named Tsiscao where a joven (teenager) offered to take us to some cabanas that he knew of and we proceeded on a 20 min walk with our loaded packs to the location which ended up being right on the banks of one of the largest of the lakes in the area. Food was a little hard to come by as we quickly discovered and we ended up eating a meal provided by our cabana host comprised of eggs, beans and tortillas, which sounds good, but

Adios San Cristobal

We are leaving our beautiful casa in San Cristobal at this very moment to head to beautiful Lagos de Montebello and then to Quezaltenango (aka Xela, as the indigenous people call it), Guatemala. We will arrive in Xela by Thursday and will enroll in one-on-one intensive Spanish language school for five hours per day beginning in exactly one week. We also hope to live with a Guatemalan family in order to fully immerse ourselves in the language. We are planning to be there for about a month so make your travel plans now to come and see us.

Love,

Mark & Michelle

If You Build It, They Will Come.

I know...I have to stop referencing movies. It's almost like I'm obsessed. Maybe it's because of our inability to see a good flick where we are living. The release of Wolverine has been postponed due to the Swine Flu, and the only other movies playing here are Mall Cop and Fast and Furious which has been dubbed over in Spanish.....painful.

Anyway, there is some relevance to my title. About a week and on half ago, San Cristobal was practically a ghost town. Our theory was that the tourists who come through here are typically on trips where they are just passing through for a day or two on a total trip of 2 to 3 weeks for example. Due to the Swine Flu, our suspicion was that those trips ended (some abruptly), and the new wave of tourists did not continue to come. As a result, the streets around town were very quiet at night, and many businesses were closed. Michelle and I started trying to look for tourists, and it was rare to find one. On the RARE occation that we would see one, we would point and say, "look a tourist", as if we are not one of them, and then we would laugh, realizing how ridiculous it was to say that.

The slump in Tourism has been hard on this area in many ways. Many people here, especially the indigenous, live hand to mouth. With no tourists to buy their trinkets and shirts, etc. (that were made via microcredit loans), they very possibly

Some Down Home Culture.

It's good to know that some things are translatable from one culture to the next. For example.... a midget in a mask kicking a large guy, also with a mask in the groin is just funny, no matter how you look at it. Apparently it's also funny in the Mexican culture. Enter the world of Nacho Libre, or Lucha Libre as they call it here. After receiving an invitation from some of our friends to attend this event, we couldn't pass up the opportunity. Especially after seeing the movie with Jack Black. We had to see if this thing was for real. On top of our curiosity, it's also really important for us to explore the culture of an area when we're travelling, and we only have so much time. We had to pick between several museums, or a walk through a protected ecopark, and, well.... we had to prioritize - Nacho Libre came first that day! By the way, the man in the suspenders on the outside of the ring had a stage name of EL GUAPO, or "handsome". I hope you enjoy the video.

In other news. Michelle has become a Market buying specialist. Market meaning the flavela type shacks that house tienda after tienda after tienda of different products, mostly food. If you saw Slumdog Millionaire you got a taste of what a flavela is, only here, people don't live there, it's just a market. She is so good at finding all the right herbs and vegetables, and even bought a cute little market basket for her trips there. She has also perfected a recipe that she picked up during our time on the farm in Zahala which is mashed up bananas with wheat flower rolled up into a ball with a little chunk of Oaxacan cheese inside. These are baked or (cooked on range top) to perfection and are soooooo delicious. (we've kind of dropped the Vegan thing here, but still no meat) Fun stuff. Thanks for visiting!
Ciao for now.

Our site visits from the US are in the shape of a heart

I think if we took a poll and had people guess who has the most patience between Mark and Michelle the consensus would be that MARK is the most patient of the two. That is why he has been in charge of the blogs--I'm not very 'into' computers at the moment. I think the last several years of school have cured me for a spell. But, Mark is studying en la casa right now so I'll share a couple of brief observations.

1. The visitors to our blog from the US make the shape of a little heart if you look at all the dots just right (especially on the flat map). I think that's pretty neat.

2. For the first time in my life I was able to smile and

Our New Home (for now)!

Let me just start by saying that we're safe and healthy. Neither one of us are currently carrying the Swine flu, although Michelle thinks (jokingly) that I may have been the first person to carry the disease! Many people were in San Cristobal on vacation from Mexico City during Semana Santa and I did get really sick around that time. Factoring in the incubation period, and my symptoms matching the description of the virus, Michelle may be right! In reality though, most flu symptoms match the description of this flu virus. For my flu, after 1 week of feeling like garbage, I finally went and saw a homeopatica doctor who was highly recommended by a local Real Estate Agent. This man fit the description of some sort of true medicine man. He was so calm and collected and, I guess you had to be there, but I thought he was such an interesting person that after the initial consultation, I asked for a picture with him. By the way, the two medicines that he gave me totally worked and NO ANTIBIOTICS! That's the best part. Thanks Doc!

So much has happened since our last post so I'll try to bring you up to speed. We decided to hold off on our journey to Guatemala right now, and instead rented an apartment in San Cristobal de Las Casas. We just love this town so much that we decided to stop fighting it and embrace our life here. Our new apartment is more like a little house, and it will be hard to describe how perfect it is for us, but I'll give you the details. Its a 2 story loft with a perfect living room for studying including rustic furniture, a fireplace, lots of windows that open, and a beatiful kitchen with tons of light and a fridge and stove! Michelle's excited because she can try some new recipes that she's discovered on the trip, and I get to make cowboy coffee in the morning! There are beautiful flowering vines all over the property including several right outside our windows. We even get a little view out of

More Tidbits

Last week was Semana Santa, holy week, and it is a big vacation time for all Mexicans. San Cristobal is a tourist town, and so many natives flocked here to celebrate the holidays. On Friday, Sat, and Sun, there were large events around town that were part of the festivities. Friday featured the Crucifiction of Christ and procession through town which I covered in the previous post. Saturday featured the a display of the "Judases", which were basically artist representations of people or events that have either done the world wrong, or specific segments of society wrong. Saturday night featured