Dispatch Number 52 -The System

Before I left on this journey into The Americas people were all to happy to tell me how how corrupt and violent Central America would be when I got there. American tales and American fears projected onto anyone who would listen to help them validate their fears and confirm how smart they were not to travel to these savage uncivilized places.

Even my dentist was concerned that I would not be able to get my teeth cleaned, as if there would be a total absence of the dental profession where I was going. I listened and frowned then had my teeth cleaned in Mexico and Panama. Camus said it best in The Stranger, One always has exaggerated ideas about what ones doesn't know.

Then a year into the journey it happened. A bribing situation arose when a Nicaraguan traffic cop told me to pull over at a check point. It was a good time to speak very little Spanish. He began by expressing pleasure that I was wearing my seat belt then promptly found problems with my out of date car papers and lack of an emergency triangle. I lied and said I had flares, but that didn't help since I did not know the word for flare nor could I produce one. Then came the explanation:

I will hold your licence while you go to the bank to pay the fine, then you can return for your licence. Or you can pay here.
Here?
Yes, here.
How much is the fine?
$20 dollars.
Twenty, that's a lot.
Then how much?
Aha, I thought what a fair system they have here in Nicaragua the amount of the fine is up to me, I counter with, $5 dollars
$10?
No.
$5 dollars.
OK.


That was my first bribe and the experience was well worth the five dollars and time spent haggling. I suppose that will make some people happy back home, a vindication of sorts. I was prepared to go through the legal process of receiving the multa, ticket and visiting the bank to settle it.

While traveling I have observed a dichotomy between the Law Abiding foreign traveler who criticizes the corrupt nature of Latin American institutions (an ingrained part of the culture), then the same person is more than happy to "pay" a bribe when they get themselves into a sticky situation. Can't have it both ways I say.

Contrary to all the fear mongering I heard prior to leaving the U.S. I have found all interactions with federal and municipal authorities in Central America to be professional and prompt. Thus far, my experiences have been the furthest thing from uncivilized. In general, the people of Central America are friendly, open and helpful to the stranger. Had I listened to the exaggerated ideas people had about places they knew nothing about I might not have been able to tell you otherwise.


David
Casco Viejo, Panama

Dispatch Number 51 -Jeff

Jeff was a gregarious story teller that could get anybody talking even the shy ones. Gabby and free spirited. Jeff was a travel know-it-all dispensing an endless stream of advice to unsuspecting travelers who recently arrived. He'd lure them in with where are you going?, then launch breathlessly into five minutes of advice about how to get somewhere and where to stay. As for our time together in Guatemala and Honduras we laughed a great deal, enjoyed mild adventure (the coup d’état had just happened in Honduras) and witnessed two dead men on the roads we traveled. I silently wondered if it was an omen since the sightings were at point blank range and came in the span of days.

He loved the sound of his own voice and I told him so, he smiled like I was in on some secret of his. Once he pointed out after lunch with new friends that I was obsessed with washing my hands before and after I took meals. True to being an American I took it personally and felt compelled to defend it with some blubbering about keeping sanitary, I think I even evoked the swine flu to shield my sudden feeling of exposure. I learned after a few weeks with Jeff that he saw everything. Everything. To me it became one of his most heartening qualities.

Jeff had a peculiar quirk for a shoestring traveler accustomed to doing things the least expensive way, he would compulsively window shop and catalog the prices in his head. Once the data was collected he would take perverse pleasure in confronting a store owner with the price discrepancy and make an issue of it.

When we went our separate ways I did not want to part from his company. He was adventurous, even minded, open to suggestion, mixed quickly with new people and would act without hesitation. He was an avid student of Spanish and spoke it whenever the chance presented itself.
I miss the Australian. In his company I felt stronger. I have a rule that I do not write about the people I get to know and travel with, however, in this case Jeff suggested I write something and I took up his offer. I hope we meet up again.

David
Casco Viejo, Panama

Dispatch Number 50 -Drinking With Russians

We took the truck as far as it could go, the end of the road where the Mosquito Coast begins. From here on the remote wilds are only accessible by boat in the deepest reaches of Honduras along the Caribbean coast. We were in a damp, musty, mosquito ridden dump of a hotel drinking on the patio saying our goodbyes. My friends were getting on a boat in the morning and I was turning back. The booze everyone packed for the journey was consumed that night.


I listened as attentively as my numbed head would allow to the Russian's explanation of the proper way to drink. I have always been curious about Russia and her culture and the beautiful couple from St. Petersburg presented a rare chance to learn more. They explained the proper method to drink so one could avoid a hangover. By consuming liquor and beer in a particular order one could dodge the morning bullet; due to my fueled state at the time I will pass over the details since I cannot recall them clearly. To drink any other way was to invite a hangover and the most damning of class remarks, it was, to drink like a whore.


Olga was beautiful and I could not resist what I said next. I noticed that we were drinking in precisely the way they said not to, we were heading for a hangover. Far from caring at that stage about manners I told Olga we were drinking like whores. Lovely Olga replied with a frown.

David
Casco Viejo, Panama

Dispatch Number 49 -Over The Rainbow

This group has bled my interest dry. They were a lethal mix of personality: all-knowing and incurious. A collection of amateur artists, freaks, dopers, dreamy revolutionaries, drunk spiritualists, malcontents, gypsies, and hangers-on who presented themselves as fashionably reincarnated hippies with blind ties to that fabled past. One thing was obvious -they all needed to feel loved, to feel important and to impress others that they were special and unique when they were full of stale dead and unoriginal opinions.

My friend Stephanie and I tried to make it to the Rainbow Gathering, a month long festival near La Paz in Baja California, Mexico. These Rainbow Gatherings are the current form of the hippie commune lifestyle where most everything is permitted and money is not used in daily affairs, the intent is to get people back to their roots of community and away from capitalism. However, the charms and delights of the Baja peninsula kept us from making it to the gathering in the desert. Reflecting back I am glad we never arrived.

My chance to meet some Rainbow people came a short time later when I invited a group of them to ride with me from Baja to mainland Mexico. I was curious about them and heard positive things they propounded like consciousness towards mother earth and her people. I traveled with them for over a week and said my goodbyes as quickly as possible when we arrived in Sayulita a pacific coast fishing village turned tourist haven. There was an informal Rainbow Gathering at this beach town where I met more of the Tribe. Successfully catering to the tourist the beach front was filled with lounge chairs and umbrellas for rent occupied by people feeling comfortably rich among the colorfully poor. After several months of back-roading it in dusty Baja California accustomed to finding my own way I did not care for the ready made feel of Sayulita.

I shared late night beach fires with the Rainbow people curious to understand their outlook and enjoy their company, however, my curiosity was thwarted because of their copious consumption of alcohol and drugs. I discovered the modern hippie was deaf the way most drunks are and little different than the heavy drinkers at my old neighborhood bar that was full of artificially happy people with unhappy depressed lives that eventually let their anger fly after a few. Like bars, the cultural component that held these Rainbow people together were drugs and alcohol -finding them, talking about them, and taking them. They never complained about the price of beer or a bag of weed, but they would complain about the $4.50 camp fee while they ate your food.

Many had swollen faces and limbs from a steady diet of pills, pot, hash and alcohol; malnutrition and poor self-care were obvious. They looked as unhealthy as the resident drunk on his semi-permanent stool nursing a warm beer clutching a pack of cigarettes. With drugs there is a difference between self-expansion and self-deception.

Their behavioral promiscuity at the fire pit was shocking. With all the unity and consciousness messages the Rainbow Movement promoted I was unable to find it here. The unity was through drugs and getting smashed together. Common ground or intelligent debate was absent, and consciousness was curiously absent at the fire pit. The pit always felt like it was delicately perched between peace and war, a violent undercurrent was always underfoot. Over and over I would be told or hear others say, everything is O.K. and peace. Little of it could be found at night. They were angry. The mother earth chatter I heard during the day held no water at this hour.

Actions and words knew no relationship. They talked about revolution like bystanders hoping someone else would do it. One could see they were scared to death of the world and chose to cloak themselves in the safety of the tribe. I am down with their anti-establishment views and anti-corporate sentiments, but I am not crazy about them. They have a herd instinct and I noticed they talked about what they were told to yap about -repeated ideas. Over the years I have learned to cherish original thinkers.

Their life experiences seemed limited to psychedelic drug journeys mixed with lots of talk and little participation in life. The Rainbow Tribe was jammed with phonies, many of them unfeeling and false people. I think of the suit and tie lifestyle, the corporate lackeys pulling the 8-5 grind and the Rainbow Tribe people are against this and I am down with this too. From where I stand neither the lifestyles of the hippies or the 8-5ers looks appealing. I used to think the hippie was more alive than the stockbroker, now I am not so sure.

Maybe I am getting old. I left them in their tourist town excited about my next stop to meet up with new friend Carlos, a Mexican who owned a coffee plantation with 35,000 of the world's most beautiful plant (yes, I love coffee that much). Carlos invited me to learn how to harvest the red bean on the steep mountain slopes that lie northwest of Guadalajara. I spent several days with Carlos and his mother, Guadalupe who treated me as a son. They helped replenish my heart that had become so depleted while in the company of the Rainbow people.

In life I discovered that one group leaves you depressed and another group of people can bring you back. I love humanity and the magical ways in which it works. I accept the Rainbow people, I just do not want to be one of them.

David
Casco Viejo, Panama

Dispatch Number 48 -Errant Thoughts VI

Greeks, Germans and Afghanistan
The German is good company, his Greek wife is a terror. A woman of anger, agitation and pettiness. A female powder keg in a petite body. She trembles with frustration when she talks about the weather. We meet them on the magical Osa Peninsula in Costa Rica, a stunning coastal rain forest full of rare birds and mammals.

Her husband supports Americas attempted conquest of Afghanistan by working for the German government teaching Afghans how to be police. He thinks it is about human rights and the rights of women. A casual look at military bases in Afghanistan, the big ones, and their proximity to the soon to be built oil pipeline tells you it is about oil company rights. Afghanistan has defied foreign conquest for all 2,500 years of its recorded history. America wants to succeed where Alexander the Great, and numerous others, ultimately and ingloriously failed.

Coffee
I collect coffee from the region like I once collected red wine. I have seven or more different bags of coffee from countries throughout Central America. A traveler acquires interesting habits and comforts along the way.

On War
"...priests provide religious justification for wars of conquest..."
-Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs and Steel

Statistics
On walking.
"93% of all trips outside the home for any distance or purpose Americans get in their car. On average the total walking of the average American these days adds up to 1.4 miles per week. Barely 350 yards per day. Walking of all types- car to office, office to car, around the supermarket and malls. If you are hiking for twenty minutes you would cover the same distance an average American does in a week."
-Bill Bryson, A Walk in the Woods

Under a Shade Tree on a Hot Highway
A review of the mileage log revealed the following:

I have traveled an average of 25 miles per day in the last 14 months since crossing into Mexico in October 2008. That adds up to 10,500 miles driven covering six countries in Central America. Draw your own opinions about me, but I did meet a French couple doing the same journey and it took them twice as long to get this far. Their Spanish is much better than mine.

In 2007, I drove the United States in a Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution IX. It took nine months and 20,000 miles to get home.

Bad Honesty
Relatively speaking the brunette backpacker is attractive, but the poor thing has been cursed with awful legs. Awful. A twenty something from the waist up and a sixty-something from the waist down. Observation is brutal for everyone, including me. Those legs are nasty and belong on a retired motor home Mama.

Dostoevsky
"He sat down at a sticky little table in a dark and dirty corner."
-Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment

Coffee II
It was the best to go coffee I had ever had. Black water from a Styrofoam cup in a cramped seat of a small and fast river boat. The seduction of morning mist over glassy water, the sun weak, and a densely dark jungle with birds in dawn symphony. Coffee, me and no conversation -just the sound of water rushing by and the drone of the outboard motor.

Happy or Harmony?
It is not about being Happy. It is about being in Harmony with the self and the world that self lives in. This may not in turn bring about happiness or sadness. It is a question of contentment.

David
Casco Viejo, Panama

Dispatch Number 47 -Children

In Central America children are put to work at the earliest age possible. In the cities kids peddle trays of candy or shine shoes as young as five or six years old. In the countryside they help with carrying wood bundles or babies on their backs. These little children perform these tasks with all the seriousness of adults at an age when the most a child in North America would be made to do is put his toys away. For the children of Central America there is no prolonged period of learning or easing into responsibility like it is in America.


In the mountain regions of Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua the children carry their heavy loads up 60% slopes not for yards, but for miles. Hiking on these same mountains I grow winded carrying nothing except water. In the countryside a remarkable amount of time is spent gathering wood for cooking. This precious fuel is never used to warm a house, even those in the Guatemala highlands at elevations over 3,000 meters (10,000 feet).


Life in these poor indigenous villages and settlements is striped down to bare essentials where gas stoves, concrete floors, electric fans, electricity and running water are considered luxuries, most go without. In Nicaragua 80% of the population lives on less than $2 a day, (the indigenous population lives on less than $1 a day) it is the second poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. The poor Nicaraguan wants my relative wealth and I want his slower and simpler life. As always human nature presents itself -we want what we don't have. As a traveller I spend more than $4 per gallon for gasoline, $2-4 per meal and $5-8 for a place to sleep. What travelers like myself spend in a single day the average person in Nicaragua could live on for 12 days or more.


Even though I do not feel like it the Nicaraguans and Guatemalans view me as a very rich man. While traveling these countries I am a petite bourgeois for I have the freedom to travel about in a private car and can take my meals in just about any restaurant and sleep in nice hotels. In my actual case, I travel third-class eating $3 meals instead of $12 ones, sleeping in $6 places instead of $30 ones.


Everything is relative, but can be shocking when you take a closer and more thoughtful look at the income differences between yourself and the countries visited. It influences my behavior as a visitor and keeps me humble and respectful. A travel philosophy I have adopted is to spend my money in small locally owned businesses and eat in family-run restaurants.


When I drive about the countryside I offer rides to locals who pile in with baskets of tomatoes & peppers for market, some with babies, other times at the end of a very hot day it is the campasinos, (country folk and farm hands) who hop in with their three foot machetes and reused radiator jugs for drinking water. Exchanges are fun and I ask about their crops and things like that. I am open to it all and largely avoid the yuppie backpacker tourist path- a class of traveller who is hopelessly caught in the guidebook syndrome. I avoid the cities and take the dirt roads over the back country where the cows are and I need to ask for directions at every road split; real cowboys and the penetrating stares you get when driving through small settlements. Dust swirls around the cabin of the truck because my windows are always open.


A friend of mine who I have not talked to in a long time was fond of saying, The beach is out, the city is in. Today, the city is out and the country is in. As a traveller I have discovered that I am not fond of big cities anymore. I am a rural tourist.


David
Casco Viejo, Panama City, Panama

Dispatch Number 46 -Locals

Keep on Truckin'
I met Costa Rican truck driver, Mr. Perez, a driver for hire, who hauls cargo in other peoples trucks while at the border crossing between Nicaragua and Costa Rica. We were standing in the hot sun processing our vehicle documents. I learned from my conversation with him that he drives loads all over Central America for $65 per run, driving up to 12 hours per day. Perez's favorite truck: Freightliner.

Spacemen
I came to watch a gaseous volcano kick out newly minted rocks by the hour and instead met Freddy a Costa Rican wood craft artist and UFO fanatic. We were standing at the base of the very active Arenal Volcano. When we first met I thought he had alive eyes, after he grew comfortable he asked if I believed in those silver discs that fill the skies his eyes grew to the size of small plates. Before I realized what my answer would trigger he had me watching a DVD filled with amateur clips on his portable player.

Do you want to watch? he asked.
Sure, I said sensing the trap, I have to leave soon, so only a few minutes (I detest getting trapped in these kind of webs whether it is UFOs, Bibles or the worst of the lot looking at some one's personal picture collection usually delivered by the 100's.)

We view the clips...more than once.
Now, was I convinced? he wanted to know.
No. Not a believer., I replied.

In my reckless thinking I thought I could convince him that they do not exist explaining that they were anything but UFOs, as I proudly pointed out the technical problems with lens reflection in most of the amateur clips. Either my Spanish was too vague or he chose not to take my points into consideration. I suspected the latter as the two of us became Missionaries in our own right. As often as ever people dislike being caught between their self-delusion and hard practicality.

While traveling I learned that language can keep doors shut or open them beyond one's wildest expectations.

Coming Home
While Azulita, my 1986 Toyota Land Cruiser was in the shop for repairs I met Costa Rican, Enrique who recently resettled in his home country after twenty-plus years in New Jersey raising a family and running a small business.

Why did you return? I asked
To be closer to the greater family. We paid for many visits for relatives to see our home in New Jersey, we can't invite them all to visit that way. We are all close together now.
What do you miss most about life in the United States?
In the States it is easy to get stuff. Like at Napa Auto Parts you can get this distributor rotor in every shop, right now, I can't locate one in Costa Rica.
So, you miss the shopping convenience?
Yeah, in Costa Rica, if you go to one place a tire costs $40, then down the street they charge $32 for the same tire. In the States the prices are pretty much the same. It's a lot of work to buy stuff.

David
Casco Viejo, Panama City, Panama

Dispatch Number 45 -Errant Thoughts V

Travel Burnout
After eight months on the road I am tired of making decisions. Where to eat , what to eat, where to walk, trying it all in Spanish -fatigue sets in. I want someone else to make choices.

Ironically, visiting the Catholic church on the town square becomes my decision free refuge.

Nomad Life
Thoughts on the nomadic lifestyle I lead while traveling the Western Hemisphere. The wanderer. The drifter. The vagabond. The nomad. The adventurer. The romantic. The stranger. The rootless. The uncommitted. The curious.


Dream
The nomad. Leading the nomadic life. The dream. Not a dream of attainment, but the dream of being and doing who you are now. Live this life for there is nothing to suspend and wait for later. It is a dream of living life now and not suppressing the way one really wants to live. A dream in that sense. Not the dream of finding perfect love or visiting some overwrought ideal of a deserted island with palms, birds and blue water. A different meaning to the word dream altogether.


Had
Trying to capture what we once had.


Cities
Cities are so distracting in their pleasures and disorienting in their removal from nature. Distractions aplenty with shopping, restaurants, music and drink. Disorienting because electricity deeply alters the sleep/rest cycles. One looses a sense of time in cities because there is no horizon and the sun is blocked from clear view. It is easier to know the time out in the open country without a clock than in a city.


God's effect through something called Religion
Wailing woman making the rounds to each deity in this church, wailing the whole way. Long drawn out wails that fill the chamber mixed with the taxi horns outside on the busy street. It is real to her.
-Catholic Church, Nebaj, Guatemala


Camus
"One always has exaggerated ideas about what one doesn't know."
-Albert Camus, The Stranger

Cell Phone
"To communicate with God, it is not necessary to use a cell phone"
- Notice inside a Catholic church aimed at the chatty ones -Esteli, Nicaragua


Exports
The United States is the number one export partner for each and every Central American country including Mexico, from North to South:

82% of Mexico's exports go to the U.S.
42% for Guatemala
60% for Honduras
32% for Nicaragua
26% for Costa Rica
36% for Panama

The pattern of politics following business emerges.


On the Other Side
The open market lives! An ancient way of life and commerce continues in these modern times. People from the countryside come to buy and sell.

Towns with No Cars
It is not a dirt road town, there are no cars. In the village Rio San Juan de Nicaragua they have narrow raised sidewalks running in neat lines making up quadrants. You can only get here by boat.

Kamp
This camp is on a large farm, Finca administered by Alvaro a warm helpful Costa Rican who tends to the chickens and pigs, milks the cows, rides a horse to herd the cattle. He is followed everywhere by a trio of very attendant dogs. If they are not out on the finca working with him then they are traumatizing the horse in the pasteur. The horse while under pursuit tries to stop, hold ground and eat grass out of sheer will, but the dogs set him to running again. Depending on where you stand on the property it smells of wet dog fur or the munkiness of rat and bat droppings.

Made (by hand)
One of the joys of traveling Latin America is that most things are made by hand, often in small artisan shops such as the shoe and saddle maker, wrought iron workshops, foods like cheese, yogurt and fresh breads made ocally and in small batches. Things crafted in the pre-industrial way. The roads are often built by hand and in houses the craftsmanship shows itself in the tables and chairs, window frames and heavy wood doors.

Quotes
'Faith is believing in something you know isn't true.'
-Unknown

'The fear of appearances is the first symptom of impotence.'
-Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment

Hotel Estrella
A cute tiny greenish-black turtle crosses the room straight for me. The hotel pet. I think how cute it is coming just like a dog to visit me. It comes straight for my big toe and bites it. Hard. As I jerk back in recoil my friend says they're the territorial type. No wonder the things are almost exstinct.

David
Casco Viejo, Panama City, Panama

Dispatch Number 44 -Human Nature

Human Nature. We want what we don't have. The poor Nicaraguan wants my wealth (relative to him), he experiences me as a rich tourist. I want his simple life, a slower more human pace (relative to me), one closer to the soil, closer to my food.


I want what I don't have in my own culture. Life in these poor indigenous villages and settlements is striped down to bare essentials where gas stoves, concrete floors, electric fans, electricity and running water are considered luxuries. Most go without these extras. In Nicaragua 80% of the population lives on less than $2 a day, (the indigenous population lives on less than $1 a day); it is the second poorest country in the Western Hemisphere.


The poor Nicaraguan wants my relative wealth and I want his slower and simpler life -we want what we don't have. As a traveller I spend more than $4 per gallon for gasoline, $2-4 per meal and $5-8 for a place to sleep. What travelers like myself spend in a single day the average person in Nicaragua could live on the same money for nearly 12 days.



David

Casco Viejo, Panama City, Panama

Dispatch Number 43 -Two Boys

My cultural experience with two Nicaraguan boys that were seven or eight years old began with a "Hi" in the parking lot where I was staying. When I returned to get something from the truck they gathered up their nerve and asked for money -the handout. Begging.

Give us money., their hands held out
Why?, I asked.

This question stumped them into silence. I seldom give money to beggars, it weakens a person and produces dependent behavior. I look for other ways.

So I took the chance and asked, Do you know how to wash a car?
Yes, came their prompt reply.
How much?
After they whispered in consultation for a moment the older one said, 20 Cordobas, the equivelent of USD$1.00.
OK. I said.

They lacked the basic equipment and borrowed a bucket, soap and a scrub brush from the woman who ran the reception where I was staying. She cautioned me that they would need direction on how to do it. I waited until they got started so I could influence their work without telling them what to do. Empowerment and confidence is EVERYTHING to a child.

After they had been at it a while I joined them and to my pleasure the smallest one was standing on the roof of the truck scrubbing away. I worked with them, guiding the work while they had the satisfaction of doing it themselves. They were hard workers and highly motivated. It felt good to adapt to the begging by not dismissing them outright and looking for a way to show them one perspective of the relationship between money and work. I believe that by offering them work it made them stronger, rather than a handout that takes a piece of their self-respect with it.

It is the role of the community to teach the children basic conduct and skills. My travel philosophy is to interact with the people, learn their culture, eat local food, acquire the language and watch everything my eyes can absorb. So with the two boys it was a moment to participate in community.

Before I paid them I explained that I had shown them how to wash a car and that now they knew all they needed to do it on their own next time and emphasized that they were smart kids. I paid them in front of the reception lady to make the community experience complete.

You can talk about it or do it.

David
Casco Viejo, Panama City, Panama

Dispatch Number 42 -A Lifetime

It takes a lifetime for
a man to find himself
a lifetime of music, love, food, travel
a lifetime to begin to know himself

It takes a lifetime to drive every car
to listen to all the music
to learn to love, whether with one or many
it takes a lifetime

to meet all the people
to travel and see the people
to read books you think are the ones for you

we spend half our lifetimes trying to learn how to live
and the other half learning what a joke the first half is when lived that way
it takes a lifetime
for a man to find himself

a lifetime of great coffees and wines
if you are in the wrong town it takes a lifetime to find a good meal
it takes a lifetime to make all those plans and goals
and a lifetime to watch most of them float by like leaves on a slow moving river
it takes a lifetime

we may have a lifetime, but this is the only moment we really possess
no future, no past
it takes a lifetime
for a man to find himself

it takes a lifetime to understand surrender
it takes 1/2 a lifetime to understand what truth can do for you
it takes a lifetime for a man to find himself

a lifetime to learn not to hold your mistakes against yourself
and a lifetime not to hold them against others
it takes a lifetime to see a reflection of yourself
and a lifetime to be comfortable with what you see

it takes a lifetime to see how fast we learn and a lifetime
to see how slow we can learn
it takes a lifetime to establish a routine
and a lifetime to realize we are at our most vibrant when that routine is broken

It takes a lifetime for a man to find himself

David

Uvita, Costa Rica

Dispatch Number 41 -6 More Years

It takes 6 years to

forget about something bad that has happened to you
learn how to fish and still catch nothing
understand you were never guaranteed to live the last 6 years
learn you can't drink like you used to

It takes 6 years

change a habit
think you have turned a corner, only to discover it was a circle
become a doctor
stop attracting the same lovers

It takes 6 years

notice your vision grow weaker
recognize a pattern
understand what really pleases you
let the pain go

It takes 6 years

realize you have ignored the signs over and over
save enough money to buy a house
learn to live without a 'to-do list'
know what you want in another person
order something new at a Chinese restaurant

It takes 6 years

accept that 1-ply toilet tissue has no place in your life
walk on the other side of the street
realize the difference between drinking buddies and friends
find new love
realize family is important to you

It takes 6 years

forget
finally do something you wanted to do
understand you cannot control things outside yourself
forgive

It takes 6 years

realize your favorite bar actually smells of urine and disappointment
learn how to say 'no'
understand money makes people cautious
realize a chiropractor has something to offer
learn one of your parents doesn't really accept you

It takes 6 years

realize the only people who know about mercy are the ones who need it
walk across a bridge
realize you are disappointed
branch out and find a new author

It takes just 6 years

realize most of your friends don't give a shit
understand something is an illusion
recognize you continue to live in an illusion
let go of something

It takes 6 more years

David

Uvita, Costa Rica

Dispatch Number 40 -6 Years

6 Years

It takes 6 years to
know for certain you have turned a corner
watch leaves turn to flame just 6 times
realize you are with the wrong person
see how little your life has evolved

It takes 6 years

experience so much pain and suffering that you finally change something
get a university degree
watch a girl become a woman
notice a new car turn old
watch a boy become a man
notice you climb mountains slower

It takes 6 years

watch a dog live half its life
acknowledge you are lonely
learn to eat well
realize you are a calmer person
forget the dreams you once had

It takes 6 years

notice your vision grow weaker
know you are not leading the life you want to
find a perfect couch
save money you will never spend
know it is time to move out
realize all this today is your life

It takes 6 years

cross a river
watch a friend go under
realize you won't take it anymore
tell a parent something difficult
realize a routine does not always serve you well

It takes 6 years

realize you will be with her for the rest of your life
know who your friends really are
let your frustrations and anger become sickness
realize you were hurt
understand you cannot be with her for the rest of your life

It takes 6 years

know a charade isn't one anymore
understand santa clause isn't
wake up 2,190 times and have changed nothing

It takes 6 years

David

Uvita, Costa Rica

Dispatch Number 39 -26 Seconds

It takes 26-seconds
to cross a street
to let a phone ring 4 times
to count to 40
to run from a fight


It takes 26-seconds
to stare at a wall without thinking of someone
to stop listening to someone else
to know you'll marry her
to learn how white your teeth could be


It takes 26-seconds
to stare at someone without words before you get uncomfortable
to speak before being asked
to decide whether you like a new town or not


It takes 26-seconds

David
Uvita, Costa Rica

Dispatch Number 38 -Errant Thoughts IV

America's Gift
American cultural influence is expressed throughout these parts of Latin America with the word, Hollister painted boldly on t-shirts.


Pleasure
It is hard to put into context, but the Guatemalan is seldom alone, in public they are in groups or shop in pairs. In their homes whole families will cram into one or two beds depending on the size of the family. In my days in Guatemala I could not find what I would call private time. The closest was when someone was watching tv ignoring all else around them -an invisible room. They do not have their own beds let alone individual bedrooms.

So all this brought on a thought: If you are Guatemalan where do you masturbate?

Sitting in Church
The walls of this church are plain and drab, candles burn and bring solemn light to darkened corners. I think of the Spanish Conquistadors with their troops of Catholic priests. The Conquistadors saw the land for material riches, principally gold; the padres saw the lands of Latin America as a place ripe for the harvest of souls.

Time
Where were you ten years ago?
Today: September 2009 in Monteverde, Costa Rica
Back 10: September 1999 -San Francisco, California

Dogs, Cats, Chickens, Ducks and Rabbits
The more a man comes unraveled he brings animals closer to himself. The last refuge of relationship provided to a man with few to no recognizable friends.
-Observation of Don an American hostel owner high in the mountains of Guatemala.

Western Hemisphere
It is easy to say Latin Americans feel inferior materially and technologically to North America, however, it is important to recognize that they may be culturally and spiritually superior to life in North America.


Search
The painful search for self. It is a place you never really arrive at, you only become more familiar with yourself. The great release is to let go of this ridiculous concept of being perfect and solving the riddles of life or searching for meaning around every corner.


People & Books
The travel family disbands. I retreat to my happy world of books and writing. A return to my cat-like solitary ways. A world filled with books, maps, journals, Dispatches and laying on my back to stare at the ceiling. Travel Families are small groups of new friends met while traveling that bond and choose to travel together with me and Azulita for days, weeks or months.

How I Get Around
Gas and go varies from country to country. To fill Azulita's tank, 23 gallons costs:
$52 in Mexico
$80 in Guatemala and Honduras
$102 in Nicaragua
$90 in Costa Rica


Modernization
In the ever-going era of development and modernization in Latin America those of us who appreciate the old ways understand the importance of dirt roads. For we realize those colorful overland routes of dirt roads are fading fast. The dirt roads traveled today will be paved tomorrow.


Fly Food
Rice is not food to a fly.

tv
Stop watching tv and begin to see and feel again. Participate in life, not merely watch it. When was the last conversation you had where a tv program was not used as a way to start a conversation?

David
Monteverde, Costa Rica

Dispatch Number 37 -Mozzies

Upon encountering the superior mosquito I had not fully taken into account what I was up against. In Western Honduras in the port town of Trujillo a special breed roams, very special. As a seasoned backpacker who spent a lot of time in the wilderness suffering with pesky insects I thought I knew the ways to deal with them.

To my shock the mosquitoes of Trujillo can fly in wind and make a landing to drain your blood. Remarkably they can do it in a rain storm too and they can penetrate a t-shirt. They fly at dusk, in total darkness and, perhaps the most unsettling, fly and attack in direct sunlight. I thought you could always escape a mozzie (Australian for mosquito) in direct sun light, but not these.

I am forced to seek refuge in the sticky hot dorm room where they still harass. They have defied all I have come to learn about biting insects and I find it a shocking misuse of nature. When the Spanish conquistador, Hernan Cortez set out to conquer Mexico almost 500 years ago they complained of mosquitoes so bad that they abandoned a camp because of them and I thought while reading that passage, how bad could it be? Now I have an idea.

David
San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua

Dispatch Number 36 -Alejandro

Alejandro was an interesting dichotomy of bravado and insecurities. Those insecurities and fears were projected onto Jeff and myself. I wrote it off as nervous energy which Alex had a lot of. He was a bounty of dichotomies telling Jeff and I to be more aware and less touristic looking then himself running in the streets in his pajamas to see what the Honduran government meant by curfew while leaving the hotel room door wide open with no one to tend to our things.

In the morning I gathered my things and announced that I was keeping my belongings in my truck since I did not trust the hotel clientele or Alex based on his behavior the night before. The journalism student from Mexico City silently nodded in reply.

In country for less than a day, he was showing signs that concerned me. Concern I did not want in a country that had a curfew with early indications of Marshall law. The police had the right to enforce the curfew and detain people (opposition) for 24 hours. Detentions are nasty affairs in Latin America and many mysteriously die while being held. The tools of suppression. We had to be cool and stay together, yet Alex who demanded this togetherness would routinely break it by walking the streets alone in the night. It was clear Alex wanted to be part of a riot and one to report. He suffered from the need to prove himself.

Alex at a tender 21 years possessed no ears and was full of self-righteousness. I could identify with him for I had similar traits when I was in my early 20s. Alex was prone to harsh criticism of both Jeff and myself for all sorts of stuff.

Alex left us after a couple days in a rush to get to the capital Tegucigalpa to meet with the international reporter from the newspaper he apprenticed at. It was a very nice opportunity for him to be assigned to shadow this reporter and be at the heart of the protests and unrest. This news came as a relief to Jeff and myself since our experience with Alex was tiresome.

At 21 years I could understand his arrogance, condescension and contradictions. However, after several days of Alex ping ponging every which way with spastic energy it drained me. Alex was high maintenance and took substantial energy to be with. It was a constant struggle when I was not in search of one. It would be hard to imagine Alex not "wearing" on anyone he spent time with.

I am glad I met Alex months earlier when I was in Mexico because he is the reason I chose to enter Honduras at this politically delicate and historical time. It was his bravado that helped me find mine. After nearly a month in Honduras observing the coup, talking with people and gathering their opinions and seeing for myself how effective the national media was at managing propaganda, that I was very pleased with my choice to visit Honduras. We still talk and I believe he has a brilliant, but deeply biased mind. It is possible time will temper him the way I believe it tempered me.

David
Altagracia, Isla de Ometepe, Nicaragua

Dispatch Number 35 -The Cost of Rum

I was finishing up my conversation with the liquor store owner about the high cost of rum in Nicaragua and how it was less expensive in neighboring Honduras. He insisted it was impossible and that his prices were right. The rum in question was Flor de Caña, Nicaragua's national pride and perhaps the best rum in Latin America. As the conversation drew down and I set off without my rum two men walked in who were immediately engaged by the prickly liquor store owner in the cost of rum discussion. Upon hearing this I turned around and walked back into the store to join the conversation and made friends with them.

After the subject of rum was exhausted I moved to my current favored topic, the Honduran coup d'état that happened in late June 2009. Merdardo, one of the guys who walked in, a Nicaraguan, had lived in the Honduran capital, Tegucigalpa for 25 years and strongly supported the new government. A government, by the way, that no country in the entire world has yet to recognize. Neither do I.

Merardo had a natural expression of fury in his face that came out in his eyes and cheeks even though he was pleasant to be with. I asked him several questions that I have discovered all Hondurans who support the new government had trouble defending let alone answering. Merdardo was no exception and it only hardened my opinion of the illegitimate government. My prickly questions helped his frustration set in and drank the rest of his beer with a fury that matched his face. His friend Pablo watched him with curiosity. People dislike being caught between their self-delusion and hard practicality.

Pablo and Merdardo were expressive and passionate. I noticed that my reaction to this kind of culture makes me feel good for they are not fearful like Americans of sharing their opinions with each other. The average person in Honduras and Nicaragua jumps in with heat and passion on all sorts of subjects that you rarely find in American culture where the people tend to be passive, ill-informed (everybody is a victim of this criticism), and a fearful society where the people have a stronger need to to be liked and feel part of the crowd than to risk it by expressing an opinion.

When I asked for their names at the end of our conversation Merdardo promptly handed me his business card. I stuttered, this had not happened to me in all my travels in Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras -the business card. Merdardo was a Herbalife man and his card proved what he sold: nutrition and weight loss. On the card were two mug shots, a before and after of Merdardo himself. In one shot his face was fattened like a sumo wrestler's and the other more representative of him today, that is, 42 pounds lighter. Naturally, this was the result of a Herbalife regimen which he now sells and builds his coveted multi-level marketing team with.

In the morning Pablo and Merdardo were making donuts by hand for their small business Super Donuts, which made a go of it by distributing them to shops and theaters around town. They made them completely by hand without tools of any kind to shape or cut the donuts, then placed them in a large pot of oil that held less than 12 at a time. I ate them right after the cooker still hot, smothered in sugar and cinnamon. I was in donut delight.

It was a colorful evening that had me take to Nicaragua and the people, immediately finding their culture open and expressive as well as inviting to the stranger. My first night in Nicaragua was showing promising signs of the visit ahead.

David
Altagracia, Isla de Oemetepe, Nicaragua

Dispatch Number 34 -Smoke and Drink

Drinking and smoking are what the owners of this hostel on the ocean do around here. The hangout is the bar and is where they spend most their time and burn an endless chain of cigarettes. The hiss of beers being opened starts just before noon. I concluded that a bar in bug infested tropics that confine you to a large screened room is a bad thing. The insects bar you from outside activity so you spend it indoors with drink, smoke and boring traveler tales.


All I saw them do was drink, we'll make an alcoholic out of you, David came the shot across the bow one evening when I surprised them by ordering one. Drinkers hate it when you don't drink with them. Misery loves company is what these experiences have shown me and I have trouble joining them.

When you do not drink, or do not drink very much it reminds them of their consumption. It unnerves them to see a person content without drink, one who is comfortable without needing to be plastered. You are an outsider and the relationship does not last long. They grow uncomfortable of you.

Like most bars this one too smelled of urine and disappointment not to mention mosquitoes that could fly 24/7 in any weather including direct sunlight. I obviously had something to prove, I stayed there nearly a week.

David
Isla de Ometepe, Nicaragua

Dispatch Number 33 -Bar

After a day on the dusty roads in Western Honduras I wanted a beer. When traveling alone I am apprehensive entering bars. I had spotted a place that looked open and well lit, safe and had a good view of the park. Sunday afternoon as good as any to savor a few beers in hot weather while taking in the Honduran life. Always one to be cool when I walk into the wrong bar I sat down acted as if everything was normal and ordered a beer.

Sitting at tables crowded around the entrance were a group of men dressed as women. They were tall, cute, fashionably dressed and thin. I relaxed a little and was glad that they felt free to pretend, although I avoided their stares. Unsettled at the surprise expecting a normal bar I fiddled with my beer while the women looked me over something hard. I demurred with a restrained smile. I felt like hunted prey as the tigresses looked me over with long stares and sexy allure. Ahh, how a woman feels when the eyes of sex hungry men descend upon her!

Here in the remote department of Olancho in western Honduras is the heart of cowboy country full of ranch hands that ride horses more than cars, herd cattle and carry pistols. It is known as the Wild West of Honduras and regarded with a certain weariness by the rest of Honduras. Catacamas is at the end of the paved road deep in Olancho in the land of the working man. Marlboro Man kind of land, although Olancho has a great deal more edge than the American west it is similar to what Texas represents to the American. So with transvestites a table away the irony never seemed so complete.

The sun smiles upon us all without difference -it is ones disposition in life that makes it different.

David
Moyogalpa, Isla de Ometepe, Nicaragua

Dispatch Number 32 -Joe

Joe was a recently retired American I met in the sleepy beach town in Tela, Honduras on the Caribbean coast. Balmy and breezy. He built a house and rejoined the Honduran relatives he spent a lifetime away from as a defense contractor for the US government working all around the world. He was unafraid at 62 to make change when many of us grow hardened and deeply rutted, he was also acquiring the language.

I really admired him and learning his story gave my day a big lift. He made me feel hope and pleasure at the human condition when so many are afraid to start anew. Not Joe. It started with him saying, Are you guys Americans? and finished with Its nice to hear an American accent.

David
Leon, Nicaragua

Dispatch Number 31 -Advances in Guatamala

They are not likely to be considered advances where you are from but the point is that all improvement is relative, and relative only to that country with its own culture, government and related structural challenges. Guatemala is a delicate democracy and the changes noted here are very real advances in Guatemala.

• Ballot boxes were made available for first time in small towns in the rural areas. Prior to 2006, a person who wanted to participate had to take a bus to a large city to cast a vote. Often this meant a full day of travel and a day without pay.
  
• In the countryside where there were no schools 15-20 years ago there are now.
• Public health clinics now appear in small communities and their services are free.
  
• Dirt roads once subject to seasonal travel are being paved making them passable year round. New dirt roads are being cut for first time linking remote hamlets that previously were reached only by foot.
  
• Although political murder remains a savage way of maintaining political and business power it happens less often. Considered an equivalent of murder but categorized differently, disappearances still continue but on a much smaller scale. In a psychological sense they are very effective.
  
• Criminal murder is on the rise and the daily papers are full of covered bodies with bored investigators standing around. This is not an advance, however, to omit the trend would be unfair.

David
Leon, Nicaragua

Dispatch Number 30 -A Russian Saying

The only difference between a regular car and a four wheel drive is that in a four wheel drive you get further down the road before getting stuck.
-A Russian saying.


The drive was supposed to take an hour or two to reach the summit on a little used dirt road that wound its way to the top of a mountain that loomed over the Caribbean coastal town of Trujillo in Honduras. We made it less that 10 minutes before Azulita my Toyota Land Cruiser, the one I am supposed to drive to the bottom of the world in, was pitched perilously with the right rear wheel hanging over a storm washout that dropped 2.5 meters into a hole large enough to swallow the truck.

I stood with my travel friends the The Russians, Olga and Dmitriy and New Zealander Michaela staring at the predicament the truck was in. Normally a chatty group, our silence made the pulse quicken. The women looked at each other and their faces said it all. Dmitriy and I studied the scene looking for a way out.

This is bad, were my first words. I have gotten the truck stuck many times in recent past and the escape was always clear. Once Azulita was stuck in sand up to the axles on a beach, another time in the headwaters of a creek with water coming in through the doors. I remember the exhaust pipe burbling under water.

The red brown soil was softened from a full night of rain and gave way under the weight of the truck as I tried to pass a narrow land bridge leaving her resting on the rear axle. It was bad. To attempt to drive it out without help was not possible, any movement would send the truck into the hole backwards. The pull out was difficult, if not done right Azulita would get pitched into the hole with big rocks waiting at the bottom.

We buttressed the earth at the front wheels with a wall of soccer ball sized rocks and built a bridge out of an old solid wood door for the rear wheel to hop onto once the pull was under way. If the guy hesitated on the pull I was doomed. The truck popped out after sinking further into the hole when the hanging wheel found the bridge and came out. We all sighed in relief and began jumping up and down hugging each other.

Back in town we drank victory beers together and I quietly considered the Russian saying.

David
Esteli, Nicaragua

Dispatch Number 29 -Material World

As the driving journey into The Americas becomes an odyssey I evolve and learn a little more about myself; the path of self-discovery, a destination we never really arrive at. Travel brings constant stimulation, everything is new. Guatemala did not come as a series of distractions such as visiting one national wonder after another or drinking myself to bed every night with fellow travelers; it was unrushed time in villages and towns with Mayan and Ladino families (a Maya-Spanish mix).

A unique perspective of daily life was mine. On the tourist trail local people have adapted their lives to serve the traveller. Places where they have learned the automatic smile and how to be photogenic. After a constant stream of oddly dressed wealthy strangers invading their land and their homes they seem oddly subdued and sullen from the experience.

The beaten track is filled with anti-corporate backpackers who demand McDonald's predictability in their hostels and special buses. Whereas, communities off the beaten path where I have chosen to travel offer few services to support the traveler making the experience different, one filled with genuine smiles and questions and people who do not see you solely as a business opportunity. A place to experience their culture and their hospitality.

It was in these places that I saw their poverty, took meals with them and interacted with their children. Their simple homes had very little in them by way of material wealth, an environment reduced to basic needs of a wood stove, a hand grinder to make corn meal, a rickety bench and table and simple platform beds. I had to confront my desire to help them and ultimately chose to just observe their lives.

If I am open and aware self-knowledge is mine. I try. I try to surrender and only observe conditions and try not to move to a place of mentally fixing what I see with my western inbred concepts of order, law, security, insurance, newness, neatness and the need for all things to be excessively sanitary.

In much of Guatemala existence is reduced to bare essential life. Poor families who cobble it together a day or a crop at a time. All of it makes me reflect on the material world I was nursed on with its excess and wastefulness. What I hold in common with fellow Americans is something called the American way of life, an economic system involving the constant purchase of consumer goods on credit to maintain a high standard of living. I try to reconcile myself with my country, the United States the most powerful material culture the world has ever known.

My relatively lengthy stays in Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua have reinforced that material prosperity is less important than beauty and friendship, and that as North Americans we may have lost our way. In America we lead lonely, separated and atomistic lives and appear to possess very little spiritual values. Life in North America is easy but empty.

David
Matagalpa, Nicaragua

Dispatch Number 28 -My Corner

Everyone told me to be careful at my corner where two streets intersected at 6th and 6th. Hotel Marina was a clean shit hole with a second floor view of giant pot holes that were mysteriously filled during the night with concrete rubble, it also had street food vendors, an endless stream of taxis, children, beggars and a colorful selection of corner prostitutes.

My openness to see and live in the seedy underbelly of society lent itself well to this corner. The entrance to the Marina had Oscar an armed guard who wore a neat paramilitary uniform and totted a big shotgun held at the ready. In light of the dinginess of the place I found it clean enough, safe enough and seedy enough to be happy with the room. So did my travel mates Alex a Mexican journalism student and Jeff a gregarious Australian.

Jeff especially took to the place the way I did. It was one of those bonding moments and I was glad we were traveling together. We were in San Pedro Sula a rough city in Honduras during the unsettled aftermath of a coupd'état that went down just two weeks before. The country was full of protests, crackdowns and curfews. I felt I was traveling with the right men.

I chatted with the prostitutes who hinted at special pleasures and when I showed little interest they asked me to buy them plates of food from the stand I spent the better part of an evening hanging out at. Life lived out in the open.

In dangerous cities like this one when the children are taken home and are no longer playing on the sidewalks it is a very good sign to get off the streets too. Soon the streets were left to roaming trucks full of police to enforce the nation wide curfew from 11pm to 5am. It was a colorful first night in Honduras.

David
Matagalpa, Nicaragua

Dispatch Number 27 -Oscar

In the gun totting Olancho Department known as the Wild West of Honduras I met Oscar a Costa Rican small arms dealer who looked like he made his real money peddling high quality leather gun holsters. We were staying at a Hospedaje, Latin America's version of a flop house with clean simple rooms with shared baths and showers. A basic room is $2.50 a night. I spent $5 so I could have the luxury of a fan and a window.

His girlfriend, Dixie was a robust woman who was open and flirtatious asking if I wanted to meet her sister, cousin or a friend of hers. It is a Honduran trait to match make and is an experience this traveller encounters when stopping to talk with people. She asked for my cell number and I explained that I did not own a cell phone. I think she may have taken my reply as a blow off -I mean who doesn't own a cell phone these days?

Late the next night Oscar came by and we talked about nothing then said goodnight. He returned a moment later and gave me a memento to remember him by, it was a baby sandal made of tan leather, he suggested I hang it from the mirror of my truck. A minute later he vanished like a shadow with a rucksack full of possessions and a nylon potato sack filled with the rest of it. The traveling salesman.

I looked at the baby shoe and decided not to hang it. I have read too much true crime and drew up a sinister relationship immediately of a infant kidnapper and how I wouldn't fare well in superstitious Latin America if they took a misunderstanding to it.

No matter how determined you are you are shaped by your environment.

David
Danli, Honduras

Dispatch Number 26 -Roadways

Seeing a dead man in the flesh after meeting a violent end sets a man to thinking. About all sorts of stuff.

On the road 5 miles out of town on the Caribbean coast of Honduras lay the body of a dead man, the odometer read 195 miles. This highway was the best I had driven in nearly a year of travel through Mexico and Central America, it was wide, smooth and safe. In the opposite lane were a pair of powdery fresh, deeply dark skid marks with a 65+ year old man laying face down with his hands pulled up to his chest. Blood ran from his head down the slope towards my lane. It was wet and visibly moving. After slowly passing the scene we grew silent. There were just a couple people standing around and an old woman stood over him in curious posture.

In silence I thought, I hope he did everything he wanted to do today.

By odometer reading 205 my travel partner and I were talking again. This time about traffic laws in our respective countries -was it legal to drive barefoot in Australia or the United States?

Life is delicate and often inane.

David
Danli, Honduras

Dispatch Number 25 -Weddings

I have attended many weddings in my life, even witnessed my own and over time understood I do not like them. When traveling in Mexico an invitation to attend one came my way while I was studying Spanish not far from Mexico City. Taxco where I was living is a colonial gem of a city with whitewashed buildings and cobblestone streets set on a very steep mountainside. The centerpiece, as in most towns in Mexico, was the beautiful Santa Prisca Catholic church that has been the religious anchor in this silver town of 90,000 people for over 250 years.

The wedding ceremony for Gabriel's daughter was held in the incredibly ornate Santa Prisca with gold leaf baroque figurines covering all walls from floor to ceiling. The setting was impressive to say the least. It is a lovely ornate church. I had never attended a Mexican wedding let alone one in a church I admired -with excitement I accepted the invitation.

I attended the ceremony and reception. I had visited and spent time sitting in Santa Prisca on a previous occasion and felt ready to visit it again to witness a wedding ceremony. As anticipated the ceremony in the church was a pleasure, after it was over we set off for the reception across the hilly town in white Volkswagen Beetle taxis. The reception was full of cultural surprises that delighted. In the end, however, for me it was still a wedding -between conversations I wrote this:

Weddings are boring. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Boring. Drudgery at its finest, they can be such dull affairs. People trapped in pointless conversation while others sit still in silence looking dead bored. Trapped here. Weddings -is there a good one? Painful social experience. Painful. They are necessary and one of those things man does and does and does. Like a bad invention or poor product the wedding is never improved upon or revised. An antiquated ritual.

Man effectively manages to improve his highly touted technologies with great rapidity in things like cars and computers, but the wedding party remains unchanged, outdated and horribly dull. I am held hostage at this event for appearances and the prospect of a warm meal. The things we endure for friends and a free meal.

Yes, I know it is the people that make the party and I must take my share of the responsibility for the dullness that ensued. Perhaps my mood was effected by a mild hangover, dehydration and that I was very hungry at the time.

A week later I was in the same grand setting of Santa Prisca in the early evening to listen to a classic guitarist perform. Maestro Atsumas Nakabayashi, a master of the instrument filled the hall with beautiful sounds that gently filled the gold chamber. I thought, David, you can live anywhere in this world -anywhere. There is culture everywhere. The church was impressive on its own, to have attended a solo concert and a wedding in it was memorable.

David
Danli, Honduras

Dispatch Number 24 -Nineteen Times

Jesus is everywhere and no more so than in Latin America. When in Mexico I was surprised at the use of near life size dolls in the catholic churches placed above the pulpit for all to focus on, usually of Jesus nailed to something and bleeding steadily. They are dolls of realism, detailed faces of pain with copious amounts of blood in case you did not know the suffering story we are told of the catholic martyr. Unaccustomed to seeing such gore in their churches an Americans first response is to offer first aid upon seeing Jesus in countries like Mexico and Guatemala.

In Guatemala, they like their Jesus prostrate and bleeding too, but the Guatemalan catholic church takes dolls to a new level with them dressed in various forms of ceremonial dress and colorful regalia -these dolls adorn both sides of the main building residing in alcoves and large recessed glass cases, each with a steel coin box for donations. Unprovable, but this traveler suspects church collections are the second oldest profession.

Churches are an interesting place to observe the people of a community and a probe of its relative and historical wealth. For most part it is a religious center and for a few including myself, a non believer, a place of respite from the noise of the city, the rain, the heat and the shoeshine boys. The church is a place where the air is tranquil -in these things I believe. On watching the class that pray, the ones who rely on prayer, I cannot help but notice that as a people they tend to pray for things they don't have: health, money and good husbands.

From the bench I sit on I can see Jesus in various forms: stabbed to a tree trunk, nailed to a cross, another of him holding a tall staff looking set to lead a procession. Others are of him laying flat in death. There are many other representations of various saints. I do not use the word statue because statues are art forms that leave something to the imagination for they are incomplete in some way. Dolls are detailed objects intended to be life like.

Unlike the understated drab catholic churches in North America those in Latin America display an unusual level of violence demonstrated through realism of Jesus at his death repleat with scaped knees, running blood, big nails and brusing. In Mexico and Guatemala the relationship with death is different than from where I come from. They have a level of comfort that stands in contrast to how North Americans deal with death and suffering.

I donate money each time I visit a church for the pleasure of visiting them, sitting still and watching the people; this time to my pleasure I deposited my money beneath a black Jesus. At the church in Coban, Guatemala if you paid homage to every doll saint and Jesus you would do the sign of the cross 19 times.

Travel Update-
I am on the Caribbean coast of Honduras, slightly east of La Miskito of the same famed Mosquito Coast and where most of your bananas come from. I will attempt what looks and is being reported as a vicious overland journey from the Caribbean coast to a remote border crossing into Nicaragua close to the Pacific Ocean. All dirt, all slow. On these kinds of nasty roads it is surprising how superstitious the driver becomes with the vehicle -in this case I hope Azuita appreciates the oil change I gave her the other week. You can go anywhere, you can do anything, if you are not in a hurry.

David
Trujillo, Honduras

Dispatch Number 23 -Hippies

I bumped into the first hippies I had seen in a long time, the hand-to-mouth kind cobbling it together to keep on traveling one city at a time. It was a tall juggler and a very good looking couple who were making and selling those stereotypical bracelets that I have seen peddled everywhere by foreigners in Mexico and Guatemala. It is a dull repetitive affair of multicolor thread bracelets that many wear today -an art form with little distinction that the artisans create with pride. Copy art produced by many. For those hippies who love traveling on a shoe-string they manage to eke out a living in this sidewalk trade.

Their art does little for me, where they do garner my respect is that they do actually travel hand-in-mouth earning money on a daily basis so they can continue to travel. Whereas, I travel with a checkbook. It is different and I recognize it. What they do is gutsy for tomorrow is unknown.

In the more bohemian of towns in Latin America these kind of hippies gather in small groups often in stereotypical fashion with the juggler, the artisans, the drunks and dopers, fire dancers and hacky sack players. In the main park in Coban the juggler sits idle (this looks very painful to him) and the artisans keep making bracelets.

Often they blend into the sidewalk life wherever they habituate, except in Coban they hold court with 20-30 Guatemalans surrounding them to watch another bracelet being made one string at a time. The juggler has not started his show yet and sits on a park bench fidgeting nervously with a plastic ball that looks designed to keep him in top juggler shape. Feeling ignored and envious of the crowd that had gathered around the artisans he wants to rush into action -like a well trained dog waiting for a command. His pensive darting eyes scan the park waiting...picking his moment. The juggling sticks look like they may leap from his knapsack on their own.

Usually, these kind of traveling hippies blend into the cityscape along the sidewalks and under park trees, however, here they remain a curiosity to the Guatemalans who gather around to watch a thread being strung. As the crowd grew it took me back to my Japan days where some foreigners made a big deal out of being white and different in homogenized Japan and the intellectuals of the same group called them big fish in a small pond. The artisans played it good with 60 eyeballs watching every thread, they looked cool, but one could see they basked and glowed in the silent attention.

David
La Ceiba, Honduras

Dispatch Number 22 -La Coleta

I sit with a glass of tequila in the front row under cover of shade, late afternoon sun showers the grounds. It is small and intimate -from where I sit I am right in it, and could not be happier. Let's see how I hold up watching the act itself. There are two concentric circles of thick chalk matching the shape of the grounds. Hard packed sand has been groomed smooth and level. I am at Plaza de Toros, the "La Coleta" in San Cristobal de la Casas in the southern reaches of Mexico -the bull fights.

Two days earlier I saw a poster promoting the Easter Sunday event and knew I would attend. The blood, the spectacle, the ritual. Now I sit in the ring. I see a white face or two but find myself surrounded by Mexicans and this pleases me, no distractions to listen to, no English speakers to openly howl in shock and disgust, at least those that bring their cultural bias to foreign lands. Judgement of a ritual not theirs. Mexicans are fun at public events like these, I thoroughly enjoyed the professional boxing title fight I attended in Baja California.

Here at the La Coleta there is a thick wood boundary that is the same color as San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge. Every bull that has entered the arena has scared the freshly painted wood with its horns, usually right after it is released into the arena, the sound is horrendous and is a show of ferocity. The bull fighters are more commonly referred to as Toreros than Matadores. Each Torero has a cuadrilla, "entourage" of six men that perform different tasks which I will spare you here (there is a concise write up on "wikipedia"). From my spot I watched a member of the entourage sharpen the sword used to deliver the final death blow to the bull known as "estocada", where the sword enters at the shoulder blades and through the aorta or heart.

It will be a duel between six bulls ranging from 460kg to 600kg (1,012 lbs- 1,320 lbs) and three Toreros. Sumidero at 485kg did not have much fight in him, where Monte Bello at 518kg was a clever and hearty fighter who died 15 feet from me. I could see the eyes of the Torero with all the expression and emotion. It was after this I knew I could sit and appreciate the ritual of bull fighting. I arrived without preconception. I did not bring my cultural bias with me -I accepted the ritual as it was and did not try to "figure" out the various aspects or apply my Western logic to it. I came to see-live-hear and feel Mexico.

An excellent fight brings the crowd to their feet waving thousands of white handkerchiefs as a sign of respect for a Torero's performance, it is also intended to influence the single judge presiding over the fight to wave his white handkerchief as well -it is the highest honor that can be given to the fighter. On this day the crowd is intense and the judge endures a great deal of jeering including some from the Torero himself who has an orchestral command of the crowd at that moment. The moment is fraught with tension until the judge makes his decision.

A single handkerchief earns one ear, which is sliced off the bull in the ring where it fell dead. For an excellent fight both ears come off indicated by two handkerchiefs. During the ovation the Torero is presented the still warm ear or ears, he then makes a show of the ears by presenting them to someone in the crowd. Having anything presented to you by the Torero is an honor, it is intentional and not haphazard.

During the ovation the matador walks the entire ring and the fans throw personal effects at his feet which he briefly holds or wears. People throw everything into the ring: hats, wine bags, seat cushions, shoes and all are thrown back to the owner by the Torero. If it is the Toreo's last fight he drinks from the wine bag filled with tequila or red wine. It is an intimate affair.

Bull fighting is an act of ballet between man and beast both will kill if given the opportunity, and one such opportunity came to a particularly clever bull. Much to my pleasure a bull drew blood and injury from both a bull fighter AND one of his assistants. The assistant was gored in the thigh when he was trying to place his pair of darts into the shoulders of the bull. The bull went on to deliver the exact same injury to the Torero. I watched several bulls die up to this point and it felt like justice, a balancing of sorts to keep the tormentors honest. The assistant managed to limp off under his own power, whereas the bull fighter had to be carried out by his cuadrilla like a man being carried off the battlefield.

Unsure who said it, probably Hemingway, that bull fighting was a place to study death and motion. It certainly was.

Dispatch Number 21 -Errant Thoughts III

Guatemala

How the Place felt on the First day

The police are few and the place takes on the air of self-rule. To live here you need to be aware of everything. At all times.

Money
Guatemalan money is so worn out, it is limp and lifeless in the hand. It feels damp easily. One does not like to touch it. Dirty worn paper.

Tough
I knew Ted was tough when I learned that he used newspaper at the toilet. He grew tougher in my eyes when I watched him blow his nose with newspaper as well. A single roll of toilet paper in Guatemala costs 12 cents. So it is not about the money.

Sleep

I sleep without charge if I promise to take my meals at the comedor. A comedor is an inexpensive family restaurant that usually offer one or two dishes; it is a pared down affair and the food is usually good. It is the only comedor in this village, I will sleep here. Out back.

I listen to the sounds of the family in the kitchen and late night conversation with their friends. I sit on the tailgate to write and capture the day. I will bed in my tent next to the chicken coop and smile myself to sleep. A splendid day.

Visiting the Same Place Twice
What once charmed now depresses.

On Not Being From There
What is normal for them is an adventure for me.

The British Traveler
Mexico is beautiful, are you planning to go there?
I can't go to Mexico.
Why?
Because my government says I can't travel there. Too dangerous, there are travel restrictions.
So you are not going because of that?
My insurance will not work in Mexico because of government warning about travel there.
So you won't visit Mexico because your insurance won't work there?
I won't visit Mexico.

Wow, I thought...I won't visit a place because I won't have insurance coverage. Industrialized nations and their peoples obsession with safety and predictability. A paralyzing dependence on insurance. It's nuts to me.

Misadventure
This is an interesting experience. I wanted some risky travel and here it is in my lap. The roads less taken and I am on them.

Conversation Stoppers...What?
"The first and only time I shot a gun was my first date with this girl." -Ted Joseph

Mighty Ants
Small ants are eating their way into my tent. A new set of tiny holes appeared every night for several days before I realized what was up. They eat holes in the floor pan of the tent, a rather tough fibrous form of plastic, but the holes are only large enough to get their own bodies through, on the return trip with food they cannot bring the coveted insect body parts with them.

Once I catch on my only defense is to hang the tent during the day from a tree, then lower it at night to sleep. It is starting to look like a duct tape quilt.

Shoeshine
Business is bad for the shoeshine boys. The sun is low and they walk town's main park seeking customers. Most are perpetually soiled characters that are 7 to 10 years old. When customers prove to be scarce a few of them begin to play, when only moments ago they were competitors scouring the park for a pair of shoes to polish up.

The purity of children. Instead of sizing up potential customers they build and fly paper airplanes, then their attention moves to faux kung-fu fighting. It is of high quality with kicks punches, spin kicks, hand chops and other moves I do not know the names of -just like the movies. They are good. It is entertaining to watch and especially when the the play action is filled with happy excited giggles.

Guests
I sit alone taking a meal at an inexpensive diner, comedor with so-so chicken. Lazy flies hover about and stake claims all over the table. Raids are launched against my plate of food, the coffee cup and the ever present stack of tortillas. I feel defenseless. The flies run free in this town. The fly strips are at capacity, where is the sheriff?

Differences
The difference between a man and a boy:

A man knows what he wants to do with himself when he is presented with unstructured time.

Time
Time alone in a foreign place has you contemplate yourself -your location in a time and place. I ponder the meaning of my solitude. Reaching no conclusions.

Amy Winehouse
My guide, Manuel and I are lost deep in the northern lowlands of the Guatemala jungle. We are happy, yet lost in this maze of dirt tracks leading in all directions. There are no road signs and few people are around. There are no buildings out here. Amy Winehouse blasts.

There is no line of sight in the jungle, no vantage point to be had. Only dense forest that you can barely see 20 yards in any direction, including up.

Sweet Old Lady
I take breakfast at the tortilla makers house, dirt floors with baby ducks and chickens running about the room. When my feet are still the chicks peck at my shoes. After this I will take a walk in the jungle and contemplate leaves and things like that. Her tortillas are excellent, made from scratch, the corn meal was made from whole corn kernels.

Gold and Silver

The people of Guatemala are born with natural beautiful teeth, they are square and proportionately broad, straight and true with an easy shade of white. However, where dental care and daily maintenance are concerned things fall off fast. The majority of men and women have tooth rot on their front grill. Depending on availability of money the damaged teeth are filled in like picture frames of gold.

Going Mobile
You have travelled too far.

Books Read in Past Two Months

The War of the Worlds, Midnight Express, Bourne Supremacy, No Country for Old Men, The Glass Key, The Discovery and Conquest of Mexico, Lives Per Gallon, Blink, The Maya, Civilization and Its Discontents, Rule of the Bone, Sweet Waist of America, The King of Torts. I think I am missing a couple.

David,
Coban, Guatemala