Guatemala

Wow, Guatemala is amazing. The trip there from El Salvador was not though, took 10 plus hours and by the time we arrived in Antigua we were hot, sweaty and tired. The next day was spent wandering around the town, taking the obligatory pictures of architecture and scenery and getting the lay of the land. Antigua definitely lives up to its reputation as a Gringo town and with the party scene, proximity to the capital, and tons of language schools, English seems about as commonly overheard on the streets as Spanish. One thing, in my defense, that seems a bit different about Guatemala is that people get even more so pissy than in other country's if you try and take their picture without permission. Permission inevitably costs money. Guess I´ll just have to try and be more sneaky.

An enjoyable side-effect of all the tourism is the profusion of delicious food that does not include as a main portion either rice or beans. Forgot what that was like I think. So, can easily go out and get a great falafel sandwich or some Thai inspired curry dishes. Lovely. I met up again with the girl, Ashley, whom I´d been traveling with in Nicaragua and El Salvador. Her equally cool friend, Jessica, is living in an amazing apartment in Antigua and was kind enough to let Ashley and I stay there a few nights with her and her Australian boyfriend Jaime. She also cooked me an awesome dinner with wine included. There´s a lot going on in Antigua, plenty of bars (an Irish one even!) and nightlife. Had a couple good nights out on the town and I generally enjoyed myself hanging out with a good group of cool people. So sad, Ashley had to leave, said our goodbyes and planned a last day trip to the nearby Volcano of Pacaya for some lava watching.

Lava is easily in the top three for cool things I´ve seen this trip. The movies don´t do it justice. The closest you can get is about a walking stick distance away, which is good because human nature demands we try and poke things like that with a stick. Even from that distance the heat is intense and the wind can blow the full force of it at you, seeming to suck the oxygen from your lungs and singe your leg hair. We went on the sunset tour and watching the lava just kept getting better. It was a bit scary up their though, the wind was pretty intense and the thought of being blown into the lava, though unlikely, was at the back of my mind as a horrific way to go. Marshmallows were roasted and pictures snapped and as it got darker our increasingly anxious guides began to herd us out of there and lead the pretty steep and dangerous descent down slippery volcanic shale with lots of big, extremely sharp volcanic rocks on all sides.

It´s been fun and gratifying that, as my Spanish improves, I feel at times like a bit more of an insider. For instance, while our big lava tour group struggled up the mountain, stopping often to let the slower among us catch up, I got to listen in as the guides proceeded to laugh and tell jokes about fat and slow gringos and speculate on which one of the people at the back would be first to give up and hire a horse from one of the nearby locals who followed the group up the mountain waiting for just that scenario. I´m also generally able to understand and chat with them, so often get the benefit of them pointing out cool local plants, like one that doubles as a sweat rag or T.P. The local kids who meet the buses selling walking sticks are funny too, with their dire warnings of how necessary it is to have a stick and the catastrophic results of not buying one. I didn´t, but wish I had for the way down alone. Those rocks are sharp and every time you had to catch yourself with a hand led to at least minor cuts or scratches. Surprisingly, the entire trip was casualty free, god knows such a hike in the U.S. would involve watching the lava from a half mile away behind glass screens and only after signing away your right to lawsuits. It´s kind of nice not to have the sterilizing influences that the constant threat of lawsuit leads to in the States.

After that perfect last day in Antigua, it was time to head for a more peaceful setting. We, Chris, Mike, Nicole, a group of Aussies, and I headed out to Lake Atitlan in the west. Guatemala just keeps getting better. The lake is dramatic and breathtaking. This is the kind of place I can readily understand wanting to come live, or retire at. Ringed with volcanoes, crystal clear and clean, the place was sacred to the Maya and is now worshiped with similar fervor by hippies, modern pagans, Transcendental Meditators, and various other incarnations of that general movement of New Ageism. I´m sure the locals are rather fond of it also, many are descended from the Maya and still speak indigenous languages. Guatemala has 22 official languages. Mayan is a very pretty and interesting language to listen to, but dammit I´ve been learning Spanish this whole time and now I can´t understand people again! Love the colorful local clothes, though I must say they look better on the locals than they do on ageing hippies.

There are various little villages and towns dotting the shores of the lake and we took a boat across to the popular town of San Marcos. Really cool and laid back atmosphere in this town, but it apparently has quite the reputation as a backpacker party and recreation town. Consequently I couldn´t help but wonder what the locals think of a tourist industry that leads to so many inexplicably giggling, stumbling, incoherent, or dazed people wandering around their town high on acid, mushrooms, ¨space¨cookies or any of the other various drugs that seemed to be on constant offer. I suppose there are worse things to build tourism on...I of course was quite content with the wonderful natural high of traveling in such a stunning environment.

Had a fun night in San Pedro partying and the next day ferried over to some nearby cliffs for some swimming and jumping. Really is a beautiful setting, and happily spent the day playing in the water and hanging out. We returned to San Pedro in the evening and made arrangements to hot tub at a little compound, seemingly deep in the jungle, with multiple stone pools that are apparently solar heated somehow. Pretty good way to end the day, soaking in some hot pools, drinking a beer, and occasionally taking a quick dip in the cold one.

Liked the town of San Marcos, from which you walk to the area for cliff jumping, so much that we decided to move their for a few nights. Was a nice change of pace, instead of young backpackers wandering around high there were older people wandering around contemplating their inner zen, aligning chakras and polishing their auras. It´s interesting how similar the dazed and slightly lost expressions of the two groups can be... Really is like paradise here, excepting the periodic earthquakes, mudslides and devastating hurricanes. Can think of worse places to grow up or retire at though. I like too the small town feel, the town drunk (whose day job seems to be flute salesman extrordanaire) feels like an old friend after a day, and there´s only him instead of the multiple ones in the bigger cities. He got in some good dancing with the girls we were with and seemed to be enjoying himself immensely until he dropped his bottle, which is apparently the signal for the bar staff to forcibly eject him. Things you don´t see in Seattle: two dogs stuck together in the street, ass to ass, and unable to separate despite their best efforts...The local reaction to our reaction, especially the giggling and squealing of the girls with us, was extreme merriment and general catcalling. No picture, sorry.

Did some more cliff-jumping (we even went up there at midnight) and the ever important general relaxing that the atmosphere of San Marcos promoted. As an added bonus, who else but a French girl decided the swimming hole was top optional. It was funny, of the middle-aged couples that came to the cliff and hemmed and hawed about whether they were brave enough to jump or if those days were over, it was the women who seemed to muster the courage while their husbands bowed out with some excuse or another. Really a cool little town, with shaded and narrow winding paths that cut through the jungle and connected the various houses, hostels and retreats.

Batteries are all recharged and I´m ready to see more of Guatemala, though it was kind of sad to leave such a beautiful place. The big group we were in is broken up now too, which has its upsides, as 9 people makes getting accomadations, splitting food tabs, and generally making any decision extremely difficult. Back in Antigua for the night and leaving for Semuc Champey tomorrow morning. It´s supposed to be great, with swimming, innertubing down the river and cave exploration galore. Can´t wait. Talk to everyone soon enough, miss you all! Azi

El Salvador

Hi everybody, been a hectic couple of weeks here, but all is well now. Traveled from Granada up to Leon in the NW of Nicaragua.


A fairly pleasant little town, but made less so by a nasty new infection. Developed a huge pus filled lesion on my elbow (no pictures in case anyone is eating while reading this). Spent the following day sleeping for 15 hours with an intense fever. It´s a bit disconcerting to be shivering cold when you know it´s ungodly hot outside. Went to a pharmacist but as I later learned my condition was misdiagnosed and the infection eventually started to spread to my face. Not cool.

In between bouts of self-pity and borderline depression at my deteriorating medical condition I did get out a little bit. The town of Leon was celebrating the anniversary of the Sandinista Revolution that defeated the Somoza government forces in their corner of Nicaragua. Was a big demonstration and celebration with lots of ex-guerrillas in attendance, martial music, and what I´m sure must have been rousing speeches. The culmination was a march up to an old hillside fort and a strange re-enactment type thing where all the townspeople charged the fort yelling. Very interesting.




Oh, funny hostel roommate story from Leon. This older British guy was staying in our room and got completely smashed one night. So, he stumbles into the room, and ends up stripping buck naked before climbing into bed. At some point he then begins thrashing around and moaning at full volume. It´s hard to describe, but it was incredibly loud, and seemed to alternate between horrific nightmare noises and disgustingly orgasmic sounding noises. It was so loud someone from another room came by to see what in god´s name was happening. To top it all off the moaning was punctuated by regular intervals by him farting. And his feet stank. The entire room was laughing uncontrollably for a couple minutes. Needless to say, not the best roommate all in all. The malaria prevention pills I´ve been taking have messed up dreams as a reputed possible side effect and I have noticed they´ve been especially bizzare and vivid, but no moaning to speak of luckily.

I also decided I had to try and enjoy the one of a kind experience of sledding down the slope of a volcano. Yes, that´s right, the wonderful new sport of ¨volcano boarding.¨ Climbed the slopes of an imposing black volcano carrying a makeshift toboggan type contraption.




Was actually pretty daunting up at the top due to massive, gale force winds that buffeted the board in my hands and seemed on the verge of blowing me off the rim of the volcano. The tour company helpfully provided a giant hazmat suit thing to lessen abrasions from when you, I assumed, go flying off the sled and tumble down the mountain through sharp volcanic rock. Oh, and goggles.




After some sightseeing from the crater rim we were given some fairly cursory instructions, ¨try not to fall, use your feet to brake,¨ and sent on our way in pairs. Fairly exhilarating ride, and you can get going fast as all hell. There´s a spot where you seem to just drop off and I even caught a little air. Thank god for the goggles, I had pieces of volcanic rock between my teeth and was picking them out of my hair for 2 days afterwards. Eventually hit a bad bump and took a little spill but the suit did it´s job well. They also have a guy with a radar gun who clocks you at the fast part. I hit 46 kilometers an hour, which is a bit less than 30 miles an hour. Good fun, and helped distract me from my infection for awhile.




Met a cool girl, Ashley from California, in Leon, and must have triggered some feminine sympathy instinct in her, as I moped around depressed in a hammock reading to distract myself, because we struck up a friendship and made plans to travel to El Salvador together. Spent the night in Managua, the capital of Nicaragua, and bought tickets to El Salvador for the next morning. Ashley had previously traveled in C. America and speaks almost fluent Spanish. She knew a local from Managua, an amazingly cool and nice guy who took us around the town, found a hospital for me to go to and then sat in the consulting room with me and the doctor and translated. Doctor told me I had a staph infection, it wasn´t the antibiotic resistant kind, and that no I wasn´t going to die or be permanently disfigured for life. Proscribed the correct antibiotics and topical cream and sent me on my way feeling way better than I had in a week. Price of walk-in doctor visit on a Sunday at the hospital and prescriptions: 40$. Peace of mind: Priceless.

Trip to San Salvador, the capital of El Salvador, through still troubled Honduras was fairly smooth and uneventful. The bus driver played us a pirated copy of ¨Twilight.¨There was one interesting travel roadbump though. The bus was full of a huge group of Evangelical Christians on their way to save the children of El Salvador, and one of the flock violated the strict ¨liquids only¨ rule for the on-board toilet, leading to an angry bus driver and a slight delay at the border as the issue was somehow resolved. Luckily I slept through the immediate olfactory offense, which I was assured was horrific. Shit happens, eh?

San Salvador was actually really nice and modern compared to all the other capital cities I´d been in. Takes some getting used to the huge amount of well-armed private security guards in evidence everywhere. Come home to the hostel at night and there´s a guy with a submachine gun who answers the door. Used to seeing guys with shotguns at banks now, but El Salvador takes it to a new level. Despite, or maybe because of, that I felt safe in San Salvador, which was not the case in Managua. I´m pissed I didn´t get a picture of this, but there´s an interesting ad campaign they have in San Salvador. Did a double-tale first time I saw Osama Bin Ladin staring at me from the large standing advertisement things that line the medians in the city. It´s an ad for the ¨lo-jack¨device which is put in cars and used to locate them if they´re stolen. The ad copy translated to, ¨If they´d been using this device, they´d have found him by now.¨ Tasteless, no?

Checked out the city a bit and went out for drinks with a couple guys Ashley knew from Guatemala that were traveling there on business. Went and saw the church where Archbishop Romero was assassinated. Kind of creepy and morbid but very cool. They have his bloodstained robes on display. As was explained by an adorably tiny nun who knew him, he had been speaking out against the atrocities committed by the then government and his death made him a martyr for the resistance and kind of the face of the revolution. Also checked out the University, they´re still very into Communist imagery and slogans, took an interesting pic of a banner they had up addressing the Honduras situation.






Sweet relief, antibiotics and cream worked like a charm and killed the infection. Elbow´s going to have a nasty scar, but my face is fine and you can´t even tell now. We celebrated by going to El Zonte, a beach on El Salvador´s Southern Coast. Very small and remote little village, comprised of lots of shacks. Amazingly good and cheap food to be found though. Can eat like a king for less than 3 dollars down here. Chicken burrito and 3 pupusas for 3 dollars. Pupusas are kind of the national dish, beans and cheese packed in the center of dough and grilled up, they´re awesome and filling, covered in a cabbage salad thingie and slathered with salsa. Tried my hand at surfing again, swam, enjoyed the black sand beach and generally took it easy and relaxed. Was a nice hostel too.




Saw the strangest thing one day from a local boy that lived nearby to the hostel and liked to ride his bicycle naked around the area. A puppy he was playing with ran off, the boy gave chase, captured the puppy and returned to his previous spot. He then suddenly pulled his shirt up, squatted on the side of the road where he was standing and started pooping while vigorously petting the puppy. It was a bit shocking I must say, but who am I to judge I suppose. Anyways, it´s cool, the locals go out with boogie boards and spearguns and you can see them coming to shore with these huge fishes hung from a rope on their back, which they then proceed to clean in the river.




Pretty scary event happened while we were at the beach. This particular day their was an amazingly strong cross-current at the beach where we were swimming. Had been perfectly fine the previous days. I noticed it and went quickly back to shallower water, but could still barely walk sideways down the beach against the current even when I was waist deep. Turned around and noticed that Ashley was past where she could touch and rapidly floating and being pushed by waves and the current towards a huge rock that was one border of the swimming area. Watched in horror as she was swept into the rock, tried to climb up it, slipped and fell a ways down and then finally, agonizingly made it to relative safety up on the rock. Really scary and shitty feeling standing there watching, knowing there´s not a damn thing you can do to help. So, she was stranded on this rock basically, no way to walk back to safety. Luckily there were two locals around and they attempted an amazing and daring rescue. One guy took his surfboard between the rocks, climbed up next to Ashley, threw and then threw his surfboard out to his buddy treading water a ways out. After awhile he convinced Ashley that she had to jump off the rock, back out into the water when he told her, overriding her objection that she´d prefer to be stranded for two hours until low tide by mentioning that the wrong wave could sweep her off the rock still. They jumped holding hands between waves and he managed to swim out and under huge waves with Ashley clinging to his back, over to where his buddy was waiting with the surfboard and safety.

Really was an amazing rescue and she´s very lucky not to have died or gotten worse than the few scrapes and bruises she did. Her rescuers even then bought HER a beer to help with her nerves. They came by the hostel later and were treated to rounds though. She was basically unharmed but very shaken up and I can´t blame her. Scary.


After a few great days on the beach, split up with Ashley (gonna meet up in Antigua) and am now travelling with a fellow Washingtonian girl, and a Californian and Israeli guy. All very cool, of course. We headed to the city of Santa Ana, and as our first hostel choice was full, ended up in the ghetto. It´s never a good sign when the place your staying offers rooms by the hour and there´s no seat on the toilet. The guy driving by who very seriously warned us to ¨be careful!¨wasn´t very encouraging either. Went and checked out the town a little, there was a nice festival and a church of course, had some dinner and called it a night.




Decided to get out of there the next day and made the great choice of travelling to the small mountain town of Juayua. It´s amazingly beautiful and great here. Super nice people, awesome vibe, and only a couple town drunks instead of an entire neighborhood full. Plus, the hostel we´re at has proper hot showers! It´s been over two months since I had a real hot shower, had forgotten how great it is. Also, got a haircut and my face was sufficiently healed enough to shave. Spent a couple days checking out the town, wandering nearby trails and hiked up to a lake for a swim. Good times.





Fields of delicious smelling coffee fields, separated by trees acting
as wind breaks

Today was a great day. Went on the ¨7 Waterfalls Tour.¨Our guide was funny and cool and full of local lore and knowledge and the tour was breathtaking. Got to the top of the first waterfall, our guides attached ropes and told us to use them to get down. Was kind of like rappelling, only you were just clinging to the rope for dear life and trying to find good footholds. Very scary actually, but cool as all hell.




Checked out a few more waterfalls, hiked through the jungle, got bitten by gigantic ants, and generally just had a great time. Ended up at the final waterfall, the guides made us a great lunch and we swam in the cool clean waters and I did some jumping off the final, huge waterfall. The guide also took us through these crazy small, dark and narrow tunnels in the mountain that connected some waterfalls. Only me and one other guy were brave enough to go. There was only a half foot of air between the water and the ceiling and it was pitch black and claustrophobic but fun.














All in all, staph infection excepted, things are going well and I´m having a great time. Can´t wait to check out Guatemala, which we are travelling to tomorrow. Love hearing from everyone, stay in touch! -Azi

Greeting From Granada

My last night in San Juan del Sur was spent at a fun live concert given from a stage set up on the beach. The following day a group of us with the same destination in mind set off for the island of Ometepe. The ferry ride across the lake brought into view the scenic island, dominated by it's twin volcanoes, one active the other dormant. We found a nice hostel located on a local farm, well removed from any population. A giant sow and her brood of piglets rooted around in the garden, birds and their songs were abundant, and no alarm clocks were necessary as the incredibly loud and annoyingly early hooting of howler monkeys greeted each day.

Pigs and piglets doing their thing

We decided to climb the somewhat less daunting inactive volcano, called Maderas, and spent a hot, sweaty and grueling day trudging ever upwards across slippery rocks and roots and through mud that left more than one person suddenly and unintentionally sitting on their ass. Their were some cool Pre-Colombian carvings to be seen and the pungent smell of nearby coffee bean plantations was amazingly aromatic. Reaching the top of the volcano was followed by a harrowing descent aided by ropes into the crater where we were rewarded with a refreshing swim in the lagoon, though it involved walking through thigh-deep mud to get out of shallower waters. All told the whole thing took 6 hours at a fairly brisk pace and I returned sweaty, tired, and with aching knees. Definitely glad I did it, but that being said I wont be climbing that particular volcano ever again. Was also relieved that the less ambitious among us prevailed and we hadn't chosen to do the other volcano which was reputed to take 10-12 hours and for the last 3 didn't even have the small comfort of canopy cover to keep the sun off.

The larger of the islands volcanoes

Ometepe had a very rustic and country kind of feeling due to its isolation and I definitely understood why so many travellers I'd met spoke of it in such glowing terms. It's too bad that the lake is as polluted as it is, though I've nevertheless swum in it. A further fear, at least of some, is the fact that Bull Sharks, the only kind of it's species that can survive in fresh water and very aggressive, swim up the River San Juan where the lake empties into the ocean and can be found in the lake.

The wheels on the chicken bus go ´round and ´round...

Having seen our fill of the island the group, consisting of me, a Californian, some Dutch, and an Australian took the boat back to the mainland and went our separate ways, though the Australian guy, Reece, and I continued on to Granada together.

View of Granada


Hostel courtyard in Granada, kind of hard to tell but it was raining buckets

It's funny, we seem to have sent our entire fleet of sixties era school buses to Nicaragua where they've been repurposed as local public transportation. Many of them still have random U.S. school district names on the sides, though the front windshields are now usually adorned more colorfully with religious icons and requests for divine protection from the dangers of the road. Each bus is also at some point a local market and prior to departure a long line of locals hawking various products file through the bus yelling out whatever they're selling. As you wait to get to your next destination, not only can you buy food and snacks, but cure-all remedies, socks, underwear, jewelry, hair-gel, and any number of other unlikely seeming products for travelling by bus. Additionally, at some point their will inevitably be someone who gets on board and proceeds to regale the bus with some or another ending in a plea for money. Sometimes it is simple poverty, medical emergencies for children, financial support in one's continued struggle with the help of Jesus against drugs or church support programs. Surprisingly, often times the locals on the bus will donate and I usually take my cue from them and chip in, trusting they can discern genuine need from scam better than I. One time there was a blind guy with a harmonica who was telling an apparently amusing story with musical accompaniment and sound effects, which was actually pretty impressive despite me not understanding the story.

Cool stained glass window of a church in Granada

Granada is a very cool colonial town rich in character, with impressive churches and charmingly colorful buildings. You can eat a delicious dinner on the town's main drag where roaming bands of the Nicaraguan equivalent of mariachis will play for you and a troupe of breakdancers perform on the street. The breakdancers were extremely impressive, best I've ever seen, with one little kid who couldn't have been more than 7 doing impressive spins and vaulting off another members hands into a backflip high in the air. One of the members was obviously double-jointed and seemed to combine contortionism with his breakdancing. They really had a fine routine and a great sense of showmanship, with the incongruous backdrop of a "House of Pain" song playing in the background. There is also an unfortunate amount of straight up begging by the town's children, which is equal parts sad and annoying.

One of the many narrow and crowded lanes of the market


Ding-Dong! Time for church

After checking out the town, I spent a couple nights in a small, remote hostel on the shore of nearby Lake Apoya, located of course in a crater. Cleanest lake in Nicaragua and the hostel provided inner tubes to float and kayaks for exploring the lake. Extremely peaceful and relaxing change of pace from the more frenetic atmosphere of Granada. The lake also had a ton of volcanic rocks whose trapped air-bubbles cause them to float at the surface, very cool. Two relaxing days spent lazily swimming and kayaking and peaceful nights lying in a hammock drinking rum and cokes and listening to an aspiring song-writer\guitarist girl from Oregon with a beautiful voice play her original songs. As an additional treat, the power was out most of one night which lead to an impromptu concert alternating between the Oregon girl and the trio of Argentinians who ran the place playing a wide variety of musical instruments, such as a wind-flutea and some interestingly unique S. American percussion instrument. Was really good music all around and in the pitch darkness it was set to a backdrop of occasional lightning flashes and the sporadic twinkling of the numerous lightning bugs in the area.

Idyllic lakeside setting

Refreshed I returned to Granada and as the Australian departed, met a nice guy from California who agreed to accompany me to the nearby Masaya Volcano. Whoo, finally made it to an active volcano! Caught a ride on the road through the park to the crater rim where huge clouds of noxious and sulfurous smoke belched out. Definitely stung the eyes and throat. Very interesting history to the area, as a huge cross overlooks the volcano, a replica of one erected by a Spanish priest in an attempt to exorcise the demons of the volcano, which was thought by the Spanish to be the literal entrance to hell. The volcano had also been revered by indigenous tribes prior to the arrival of their Spanish conquerors and they used it in an ingenious ritual to appease angry gods by occasionally throwing in a virgin or two as a sop said gods. Charming, yes? We also did a tour through these awesome natural lava tunnels formed in a previous eruption. They were inky black and were equipped only with cheap miner's helmets and weak and dim flashlights. The eruption that formed the tunnels was relatively recent and you could see the slowly forming beginnings of stalactites. No dark scary cave is complete without bats, and their were plenty, especially in the hugely cavernous room which our guide told us was the room where the deliberations of the tribal elders took place ot select the unfortunate sacrifices.

Reclining near the entrance to my future home


The Spaniards made a point of literally ¨baptising¨all the volcanoes
they came across in the New World


Entrance to the bat cave/lava tunnel

We hitched a ride down to the park entrance with an amazingly nice Nicaraguan family who insisted on giving us a personal tour of the nearby natural history museum before we left. I judged them to be a relatively well-to-do middle-class family and they hailed from the capital, Managua. They plied us with drinks from their cooler and the son, a high-school age kid happily practiced his English with me, and I my Spanish with him. It was actually rather touching how he showed us around the museum giving us the Spanish names of all the local flora and fauna, pointing out interesting side-bars and giving personal anecdotes and then at the end, looking straight at as and saying with such pride, "So, what do you think of my country?" The trip to the see the volcano was worth it for this unexpected local encounter alone (plus his sister was the best looking Nicaraguan girl I've seen to date) and we ended up hanging out with the family for a couple hours and they went a half-hour out of their way in the opposite direction to drop us off at a nearby town and save us from having to transfer buses.

Smoking, sulfurous hole in the earth, aka volcano

Independence Day! Spent the morning touring nearby isletas with the Dutch girl, Marica, from Ometepe, who I had chanced to run into, two nice Israeli girls and some Israeli guys they'd met. It's hilarious to me that every single Israeli, and there's lots of them, comes up to me and asks if I'm Israeli. Must have happened like thirty times. Anyway, the islands were nice, though the water of the lake was especially brown from dirt runoff with all the rains. Saw some old historical mini-fort and a tiny island populated with monkeys, who in the local tradition were reduced to begging handouts.

Local commerce

That afternoon I found an American owned bar that was marking the occasion of our Independence with a traditional feast of BBQ ribs, burgers, brats, potato salad and corn on the cob. Sounded good, and the food did turn out to be excellent but the ambiance left something to be desired. The owner was an older Texas born expat and was extremely drunk already by the time I arrived. He was wearing a ratty American flag tank top that was much too small for his considerable girth and in consequence the front of the shirt rode up, exposing a freakishly hairy beer gut, the hair matted with sweat in a quite unsightly manner. His entire upper body was a dense forest of hair, covering shoulders, arms and back and it seemed to be desperately trying to escape from all sides of the flag shirt that held it in. Needless to say it was a sight that inspired in me a great upswelling of patriotic emotions and national pride. Completing this picturesque scene of American vitality was the horrible country music chosen for the occasion, the requisite group of overly drunken and loud countrymen and women heaving themselves up onto the bar to sway to the ¨music,¨ and just to cap it off a woman whose desire to have lips to put Angelina Jolie to shame was thwarted by a plastic surgeon who was either a drunk, an incompetent, or both. Ta Da! It seemed like something I´d have thought only the most mean-spirited, cruel and uninformed satirist could have dreamed up, but there I was to witness it in the flesh.

I extricated myself from this spectacle happy in the hope of atonement, as the Israeli girls I had met earlier had offered to cook me one of their national dishes for dinner (my counter-offer of lobster stuffed pork chops was politely refused). The meal was excellent, as was the company and the conversation. That evening however I was to inadvertently further celebrate America as I ended up at a club/bar whose Saturday showcase was that quintessentially American sport, I assume, of Jello wrestling. I´ll just say it was a fun night, as much for dancing and hanging out with the group of cool people I´d met in Granada up to that point as for the main event.

A moment of silence as we give thanks for electric washing machines

Spent a lazy Sunday reading, recovering and planning my next moves. I had planned to spend a week or so more in Nicaragua and then check out Honduras, but history may have intervened in those plans. A military coup, how typically and delightfully Central American I suppose. I initially thought I´d just be able to go into Honduras as planned only it´d be more exciting with the added spice of seeing history in the making. The developing news reports of continued instability were less responsible for my reconsidering than the first-hand accounts, of those tourists who had made it across the Southern border down to Granada, of roadblocks, buses turned back, military checkpoints that involved AK-47s pointed at one, curfews at night, and a general inability to get around, go out, or do much of anything. We´ll see what happens in a week I suppose. I´m currently in Leon, North of Granada, and have as my backup plan to take a boat around Honduras straight into El Salvador and then from there by bus to Guatemala.

Hope everyone had a great Fourth of July and is enjoying their summer tremendously. Drop me a line, I love hearing from the folks back home! -Azi