Various Photos

OK, I wrote some blogs but had trouble posting them. I have them in a journal and will do so when the internet is more reliable and cheaper. As of now I am in Utila diving and have some pictures I would like to share of an octopus I found at my dive shop. be well and check back often, as I will put more stuff up.

James stops drinking... the tranny hooker story.

the following is not incredibly work friendly but it´s also only about tranny hookers at the end. i think typing tranny hookers is fun and although tranny hookers don´t play a huge role in this story, i thought tranny hookers needed to be in the title. the girl above is NOT a tranny hooker. she is some girl in nicaragua who was representing the sandinista government at a rally i went to last night, my friend was on stage and got the pics for me. pretty amazing night. almost met the president but got to see him up close. that will be the next post. it was amazing. Before I went on a rant last post I was talking about the dirtbag bomb that went off at Tranquilo Backpackers... so let´s continue from there. Basically, I walked in, open minded but not feeling a huge desire to socialize too much with these people. I got my room (everything in Costa Rica is a lot more expensive than the rest of CA) and decided to stick with plan A. Plan A had been hatched days before when I found out I would arrive in San Jose late at night and therefor be unable to leave San Jose immediately (highly recommended). Plan A involved casinos and me, this is really all you need to know. Problem with this night was that I didn´t have a plan for losing my money. I was in high spirits since I finally had arrived and was ready to begin my trip. This created a false sense of ¨i can´t possibly lose all this money¨... this turned out to be very untrue. I brought an undisclosed amount of USD´s to the Horseshoe Casino a few blocks from my hostel. Took a cab due to the cash I was carrying and realize that i live in the tranny red light district of San Jose. At first glance they look like women, until you look again or hear them cat call you... then you realize that although they have clearly had some top surgery, they are not women. The cab driver makes some jokes about them then asks if I want one, I respectfully decline and ask if a lot of gringos ¨frequent¨the ladyboys. He says yup. I head to the casino thinking nothing of it. I walk in and realize it´s all Americans. They were incredibly obnoxious and since I usually enjoy being the only incredibly obnoxious American in a given place at a given time, I got a bad vibe but continued anyway. The positive to all these obnoxious Americans was a very live craps game. I rolled the dice, did ok, and started to really put down the free drinks. This is where the problems began. I leave the craps table for some game I don´t even know but am convinced by some other gringos (from some eurocountry) that it´s a lucrative game (they never are). Lose a little no big deal. Sit down at a rummy 21 table. Learn how to play that. Pretty much blackjack with more ways to lose. At this rummy table is the only Costa Ricans in the place along with an expat American from Texas who redefines obnoxious. He is a regular here and if there is anyone to blame for what happens next (beside the obvious: me) it would be him. He says, wanna do a shot? I say, !!! they give shots here (not standard casino practice as far as I know) he says yeah, 2 shots of jager. I dont need to tell the rest but basically I lost all the cash I had on me. Decide since i have no money on my person I can walk back. This is not the best idea but I was drunk and not thinking so clearly. Got approached by about 6 tranny hookers, told them how pretty they were but no thanks, this is definitely the best way to handle tranny hookers. You compliment them but clearly show no interest and they leave you alone and dont beat you up (I dont know if tranny hookers beat people up but some of them were way more jacked that I could ever be) So I returned back to the hostel, got the rest of my cash from my safe, talked with some people about why I was leaving again so soon. They say, bad idea, you are just going to lose it. I say yeah prolly but I could also win it all back (drunk logic). Now, as I have cash on me I take a taxi back. Takes even less time to blow through this cash. Not going into details about how much I went through because it´s disgusting and stupid and the details dont matter. The good byproduct of this is, I am spending off the money I would have used on booze (would have been the biggest expense on the trip) to feed street kids. This is really good and I have meet some really great kids because of it. I will write a post about that sometime in the future. So I walk back to my hostel, it´s about 230 am. I realize that I hate the hostel, it smells like mold (forgot to mention that before) in my dorm and I am done with it. Go online and find out a bus leaves to Nicaragua at 3am. I hurry, get my stuff, tell the girl at the desk I am going to try to catch a bus but might return, she give me back my deposit in dollars and rips me off for half my deposit (5$) I dont realize this till the next day. I take a quick taxi to the bus station. The bus was full but I buy a ticket for hte next afternoon. Return back to the hostel completely defeated and ready to crash. Girl lets me in but when I try to go to my dorm bed. She asks what I am doing because I am no longer a guest .... I do the scooby doo ¨HUHHHH!!?!?!?¨ I politely tell her I told her that I may return, she says she took me out of the system and I would need to pay again. I say its the principle of the matter. At this point she thinks since she already took my deposit and I didn´t notice, she can milk antoher 14$ outta me. Knowing I have no other option at 4am. I dont remember what I said but it was basically polite and rude at the same time. I then proved my thick-headedness (to her surprise)by walking out with all my stuff into the tranny hooker infested night. I walk down the street a short distance to another hostel I saw. I open the gate and am given a free peep show of a tranny hooker... how to put this.... orally satisfying a gringo customer. They pretend like they were doing anything but lets face it, they were caught pants down. I avert my eyes say sorry and run to the door looking directly forward. THe new hostel people are really nice and put me in a really clean dorm room with one other person who is not there. I figure this person is out at the bar for a late night and think nothing of it. I head to the bathroom, drink a gallon of tap water (they said it was safe, I was too drunk and thirsty to care ) and head to bed. As I am standing by the door putting my toothbrush away, the door opens and there is gringo john stareing at me. He says nothing, but his jaw literally falls open at the prospect of seeing the guy who just interrupted his tranny bj as his new roommate. I felt really bad for him because I got the feeling he was smashed, in another country and didn´t think he´d ever have to acknowledge this embarrassing event again (which i guess he didnt´but seeing me 10 mins later must not have been the ideal situation for him). He did an about face and walked away. It was really awkward and I dont know how many seconds this took to transpire but the grin was bubbling to the surface on my smug drunk face. He turned and I laughed to myself, hit the lights, climbed up into the bunk and pretended I didn´t hear him when he came back into the room a few minutes later. I fell asleep wondering about how I get myself into these situations and realize that had I just went to bed or payed the extra money at the other hostel, I wouldn´t have had this experience. Definitely bring them upon myself, but I still haven't decided if this is a good thing or not.... hasta la proxima

Tranny Hookers Coming...

I swear. I have been uber busy with various philanthropic endeavors and have had limited access to my files although I do have access to the internet. This will be sussed out tomorrow with a grand post on tranny hookers and how I lost a brickload of money (lost not being the operative word here). I know some of you actually are looking foward to the amusing yet depressing story I will soon pen.. so to keep you satiated. I include a picture I took from my chicken bus today (notice the decrepit state of the surely once grand building). Plus another of a dog in the street. Because why not.

Central America 6-30-08 ´to 7-27-08.

I arrived in San Jose, Costa Rica a couple of days ago amidst positive circumstances. My layover in Atlanta was to be 7 hours (the price to pay for cheap tickets) but the fine folks at DELTA overbooked the flight from Newark to ATL and asked if anyone could afford to arrive in ATL a little later. Being the experienced traveler Ive become, I knew free $ when I hear it. They offered me a 200$ DELTA voucher and a 7$ food voucher to arrive in ATL an hour or so later. This served to break up my hellish layover so I took it more for the 7$ than the ticket voucher. I spent the layover in ATL trying to get 100´s for the 20´s the ATM gave me in about 50 airport businesses. Starbucks proved most helpful while TGIFriday´s were d-bags. I ended up protesting Fridays on this account and landed in teh bar of a seafood chain that made delicious (if not expensive) bloody marys. I wouldn´t have had so much food and drink had I not had the false sense of entitlement that the 7$ food voucher gave me, ended up being an expensive layover. The flight itself was uneventful save for a decidedly bitchy stewardess who proved to be the only capable person at perpetually incompetent clusterF%$k that is DELTA. I arrived in San Jose and got bent over for a 22$ cab ride to my hostel. Not only that but my driver (despite his lucrative racket) couldn´t even find the hostel and I was relegated to what he knew, mainly a sh!thole with the unfortunate misnomer of ¨Tranquilo Backpackers Hostel.¨ For those of you too dimwitted to figure it out, tranquilo = tranquil IE: calm, peaceful, what have you. It was heralded in my travel guide as a laid back place with a cool vibe. Great! What this translates to in my world is this... I enter the gate and get the impression that fraudulent-dirty-hippy-white-dreadlocked bomb exploded in this place. it was chock full of human d-bags posed as worldly travelers. I was dressed half well for 1 reason. When I travel to Latin Countries, I try to appear respectable. This is because it seems insulting for someone who can afford to not work and gallivant across the globe to appear as they don´t respect the places where they´re traveling to enough to make any effort not to look dirty. Anyone who knows me knows I´m all about ¨doing you¨ which is to say ¨be yourself and don't cater to the whims or expectations of others.¨ This does not fully apply in poor countries. If you want to look homeless in NYC, be my guest, I will more than likely make a snide remark to myself or who I´m with but that's the extent of my concern for you or your dress. To understand what I´m saying it´s required you understand a basic truth in Latin America. A majority of people in these countries are what we would call ¨working poor¨... there is a small middle class, a huge impoverished class and a tiny upper class (with nearly all the wealth). Even for the working poor, there is a very evident pride among the people. Even after working crazy hours to barely put the rice and beans on teh table, they get get out the irons and the bleach and put on clothes that give them some semblance or self worth in a society that has largely turned its back on them. I am not being presumptuous in this observation. I take advantage of my white privilege to make a sincere effort to speak with people from all walks of life on my trips and have heard varying degrees of what I just stated. I just learned from a taxista in Nicaragua that they call backpackers ¨Johnnies¨because we walk everywhere (Johnnie Walker). These conversations over the years have led me to my current line of thinking. If you dress like these fake dirty hippies, you end up resembling the masses of the tragic children that beg in the streets for food or money to buy something to take the pain away. I think this is an insult to these kids who did nothing but be born into abject poverty. Ok enough ranting. Transvestite hooker story is on the way... check back manana.

Sorry I suck at updates.

I promise to be better with these posts now that work is over and I am in Central America. The picture (mi hermano, mi mama y yo) is from my cousin´s wedding my last night in the states. I am posting it here mostly because I want to show some friends the bowtie look for consideration for my best friends wedding (isn´ñt that a movie?) but mainly because my brother´s hair looks like he got into a fight with a carwash. My last trip was the school trip... long story short, it was too hectic to post, and apparently it wasn´t even as hectic as the other educational trips they have been on. I hestitated to post information on that trip due to the fact that there are privacy issues with the students and even though I wouldn´t have used names, it still is a slippery slope. I just wanted to throw up a quick post to let you all know the blog will be back with posts every few days (more or less) depending on what trouble I get into. Thus far, 2 days in, after a fight with a dishonest hostal employee and several fruitless taxi trips to random places at 3am in San Jose, I arrived at a new hostal to experience an embarrassing (for once not my embarrassment) run in with a transvestite Costa Rican hooker and her gringo-john. Pretty much has been the norm for my trips. Im going to do a full post later today or early tomorrow. Keep coming back and I promise the stories will be worth it :) the hooker story is worth the trip back alone.

A field trip on steroids.

Sorry to my not-so-loyal readers.. I have not updated recently because my computer died and I have only a cell phone to go on the internet with. I am breaking this habit because I am about to embark on an entirely new type of trip.... a field trip to Mexico with 20-something students from my school. I work at a school in inner-city Brooklyn and although many of the students are of afro-caribbean decsent... not many of them have traveled out of the country or out of their neighborhoods. I applied to be one of the teachers on the trip and was accepted. These kids have worked hard all year fundraising and it should be amazing. We meet at the school this coming morning at 4am to head to the airport on a "cheesebus" (a regular schoolbus, which the kids are embarrased to ride), I could have done one of my normal trips with my time off this Spring Break, but I decided this will be much more of an experience watching most of these students experience the wonders of travel for the first time. I will update as often as I can. Be well and get ready for some surely amazing posts...
James

Mexico and Back to Guatemala

Ok everyone, there is so much that has happened in since my last email that I really don´t know where to begin. The experience in Guatemala was amazing, life affirming and other things I cannot adequately express in words. Truly, it restored a bit of my faith in humanity and will turn out to be the cornerstone of this journey(seems so long ago when it really has been only a couple of months). Have to give a big what-up to all the volunteers in Xela, I miss you all immensely and will remember each one of you for your kindness, warm spirits and well lets face it, many powerless nights with a little too much Quetzalteca (the local drink of choice for people who can´t squeeze two nickels together)… speaking of which, someone give me Frenchy´s email please.

OK, enough sentimental wanderings of the mind, I wrote in haste last time and forgot to mention a big part of my trip, In late august I headed up through Belize (15 bucks to exit… sigh since I was only passing through and didn't even get to do anything but sit on a bus for a day) to Mexico to meet Maria in Cancun (cheapest flight to Central America by far). When I got to Mexico I stayed in Tulum (Yucatan beach town not too touristy compared to others and full of damn cool people) for a few days. Jacob, if you get this could you please send me some emails that I forgot to get from the crew at the weary traveler, thanks. Ok I digress, the night before I went to pick Maria up in Cancun all of us at the hostel went to a really nice party at a beach restaurant club, we spent the night jumping into the ocean and then into the pools from the second floor where I splashed some people (only one got unreasonably upset) and ended up making friends with an Ex-pat from AZ named Matt who happens to run this place… www.amansala.com hearing of my financial situation and the impending arrival of my girlfriend he offered me a room there at whatever I could pay, needless to stay it was paradise for the next 2 days when Maria got there. Amazing snorkeling, beaches and people coming lighting incense and candles in our private cabin. Maria and I then traveled through the Yucatan up to Isla Holbox, where we had planned on swimming with whale sharks… the day we got there it was too late to go out and sometime between that time and the next morning the whale sharks had moved on from the island to return next year… crap timing (migratory animals should accommodate to tourists a little more don't you agree?) we spent 2 days there and went to Isla Mujeres for the remaining time of Maria´s visit. The island was really nice but a little touristy for our tastes there was however one advantage, topless beaches with people who you would actually want to see topless, I have never seen that before and would suggest any perverts reading this to make a B-line for the Yucatan. One other thing about the island, too many mopeds… the whole damn island was full of them and they make things quite dangerous when coupled with unmarked speed bumps on dead end roads. Ok, one more thing, sharks in little pens in the ocean where you pay to take photos swimming with them…while there (we were on a snorkeling tour and couldn't avoid it) I get hit on by the most gaudy and drunk older woman possibly from Texas (staying in Cancun)who said… more than once, how absolutely adorable I was then reassuring me that I was too young for her... all with Maria standing directly behind her, it was charming really and one of the many reasons your avg. American tourist has a pretty negative reputation around the Yucatan (not even counting Cancun).

Maria and I parted ways at the airport and I headed back to Tulum for a few days, spent a day wandering the caves very close to the ancient ruins on the Caribbean of which Tulum gets its name. I headed from Tulum back towards Guatemala but wanted to avoid the heavy Belize fees (as it already costs 20$ to leave Mexico) so I headed through Palenque first which is a jungle town in southern Mexico to the capital of Chiapas, San Cristobal De Las Casas. It was a really cool city that reminded me a lot of Xela. I met a lot of cool people at my hostel and we spent a few days seeing the surrounding area and the city. There is even a church north of San Cristobal where Mayan and Christian influences have mixed and took on a lovely part of good ole American corporations… soft drinks, pepsi and coke are used in ceremonies where belching is coveted and the shamans/priests are sponsored by one of the two companies… I shit you not, I wish I could have taken pictures but as it was a place of worship I didn't (not to mention the guy who took my money explicitly warned me against it). The church was really interesting, Catholic style church, large, floor covered in pine needles and tons of musical boxes with moving figures like you find during the holidays in American department stores(I think I saw one of those talking fish from the TV commercial but I cant be sure)… surreal doesn't begin to describe the scene after you add that backdrop to the parishioners with their burping and soft drinks etc.

After San Cristobal I headed back to Guatemala for the week of Independence. I missed the final soccer game and the big party at night because I got stuck in HueHuetenango and missed the back to Xela by less than a minute, I saw it as our bus pulled in from the border. When I got to Xela I met all the new people that arrived around my circles and reunited with the ones that were still around. I don't recall exactly how long it was till the floods came but it wasn't long after this, which I have already emailed about…

OK I was planning on covering the rest of Central America in this email but I already have taken up way too much of your time, I will email again with the next installment for those of you who have any sort of interest, for the rest of you sorry. Peace, James

big trouble in little Guatemala

this was originally sent 11/19/05. the picture is of some Mayan Indians standing where their houses used to be on the slopes of Volcan Santa Maria. The smiles on their faces need to be addressed. These people had very little, they lost their HOMES. gone, no insurance nor money/supplies to rebuild yet they smile and laugh when 2 crazed gringos come on a motorcycle to take pictures and be amazed at their misfortune.

This contagious and genuine happiness is present everywhere I have traveled in Latin America. I dont know what it is but there is a different attitude there. On more than one occasion people have said to me that their lives may be poor but they do not need money for happiness. now everyone has heard that saying a million times but its usually people who are financially stable saying it. Of course, the upper class in LA trump most Americans in the materialism and vanity categories but what can you do? Of course its not all flowers and sunshine, there are little kids huffing glue and drinking rubbing alcohol all over, and i am sure the depression that accompanies extreme poverty affects many... yet still something is different. Life is consumed as i feel it should be with a strong focus on family and passion... anyway enough bs, here is the old email.

Hello friends and family, sorry about no emails as of late but things here have been crazy to put it lightly. Guatemala was hit by a hurricane last week. Rains continued for almost a week nonstop and created massive flooding and landslides which have crippled life as it was known here. Roads out or
in are sparse if any, and the majority of people in heavily affected areas are stuck. Xela, the city I am in, was only hit very hard in the low areas. 6 teachers at my old spanish school lost their houses in zona 2. As soon as volunteers could get near zona 2 and out to the surrounding towns, they did. I tried to get a couple of pictures but things were sensitive and there was lots of work to be done. During the hurricane, I went down with a friend of mine to the higher parts of zone 2 and took some video and pictures which i cannot get online due to the size, after that, days later, when the rain slowed we headed to zone 2 and other parts near zone 5 to do whatever we could, this involved a lot of moving ruined things, bricks, beds clothes, dead pets and anything else you can think of out. I am kind of overwhelmed at how to write about this but i feel like i need to,


The worst thing I witnessed in real time was helping this old lady with her stuck front door and as she walked in watching her face as she saw her "house" and stuff for the first time. She started crying and I was able to, with the help of another volunteer, remove her 2 dogs from a tree in her backyard, they were starting to smell and were definitely a health hazard, not to mention that it was very sad seeing them both upside down in a tree, we put them in garbage bags and just walked them to the street, hopefully she thinks they just escaped...

Sorry about the somber email, but Its amazing, if not just a little disheartening, the lack of media coverage this got in the states, personally i am glad though because if not, (those of you who know my mom know this is possible) my mother might have chartered a helicopter and a megaphone and flown over xela screaming my full name(ok maybe a slight exaggeration, but she would have been extremely worried is the point.)
I am trying to upload some pictures but its slow going due to the insanely slow internet post storm. www.trekshare.com/members/veritas

Everyone be safe, I will email again shortly with my plans and what i have been up to for the past 2 months. Much love,
james

chicken bus add-ons

this picture was from a chicken bus so packed that the money collector had to climb along the outside of the bus while moving to collect fares from the window. It was exhilarating.

Ok, these emails are rough to read. I am going to promise once I start writing current blogs, I will make an effort to make them palatable because it pains me to read these old emails. Anyway, here is another.

Hello everyone, i hope the mass emailing isn´t annoying, if they are please let me know and i will not bother you with them again. Ok so far as my trip, things are amazing as is becoming the usual(moving back to the states is going to be hard, i am lucky i have some good reasons to do it because without some people back home, i could see myself here for awhile. I do have a couple of additions to add to my previous emails, mainly some missed requisites for being a chicken bus and a picture of a bathroom overhead light being powered by the shower heads i so fondly spoke of. that will be on my website.

The 2 main things i think i forgot on my chicken bus email were these... 1. the stickers on the mirror must be of some old American cartoon like captain caveman or woody woodpecker and 2, there must be music BLASTING through the bus (if it has working speakers). ok and i want to reiterate that what you think is crowded is damn near empty, i haven't been able to get an exact headcount yet, but on a bus i was on today back from this amazing lake called lake Atitlan (surrounded by mountains and 3 large volcanos) there were at least 7 adults per row and aisle and that is not including children.. i know it sounds impossible, but i managed to get enough room to take a picture when about 15 people got off the bus and i will put that on the website too... hope you are all doing well, james

crime in guatemala

Well, this all happened in the summer of 05 but I said I would write about it even though it isn't fresh in my memory. basically, the crime in Guatemala's second largest city (Quetzaltenango) had become so bad that the citizens formed these vigilante groups to combat gangs and assorted gang-related crimes. The police in Guatemala and much of Latin America are so corrupt or inept or both that they do very little to fight crime. Actually the stories I heard were of gringos getting robbed by police in the name of justice "give us all your money and we wont have to bring you in for this false charge we are about to bring on you" or something equally as exciting.

A brief history lesson: El Salvador had a nasty civil war. They sent many orphaned kids to the US for a better life. Orphaned kids got a real LA street gang education and started getting into trouble. The US said "f this" and sent them back to El Salvador. In El Salvador, these kids who saw how gangs operated in LA brought that education back home, adding to it a ruthlessness that was not seen in LA. MS 13 and these other hardcore gang-bangers start chopping people up with machetes while leaving their body part to mark their territory. general terror reigns down on El Salvador. This problem moves to Guatmala and to other countries. Repeat.

Basically, the vigilantes are locals tired of this crap so the guys (and some girls) get together at night with weapons and whistles and patrol the streets. Throughout many a central american city I fell asleep to the semi-comforting sound of whistles blasting through the thick night air. the problem with vigilante justice is its not regulated. Add in the fact that many of these vigilantes seemed to be doing it because it was an ego trip (or as some told me, to get away from their wives) and you have a recipe for trouble. Finally you must take into account a mob mentality. The tuesday before we arrived in Xela the vigilantes had killed a teenager who they accused of being a gang member because he had tattoos. So, on one of the earlier nights there, my brother and I went and found a group of vigilantes after some scare in teh streets and took pictures with them. They were incredibly friendly and enjoyed posing for the cameras with us, some have masks, others big sticks or knives. I will post again soon,

James

killer showers and vigilantes

as promised, updates every couple days! . the showers in latin america amazed me for a few months. i will write more on the vigilantes later and include a picture later tonight or tomorrow, i have no time now... here is an email from the beginning of my trip. 07/25/05

last night we met a group of about 100 heavily masked and armed vigilantes (as you will see in teh pics) after they broke up a fight, tonight the power went out in the whole city and we sat and watched it from our roof... that was fun.

ok since i am trying to keep these emails educational i thought i would share with the gringos on my list some shower info. in guatemala, hot water is provided by .. get this... a little device called a fumadora (or something very close to that ) which is a 110 volt device that plugs into the outlet right near the shower... can you guess where it attaches? if you guessed to the showerhead, you are correct. couple this marvel of technology with the fact that the tile floor of the shower dosnt drain water too well and you have a recipe for disaster, open electric device plus a large puddle with one tall wet gringo who nearly touches the contraption whenever he moves while showering...oh yeah a couple more things, the water has 2 speeds and 2 temps, dribbling out or niagra falls and freezing or scalding... you can only combine them in the following arrangments 1.dribbling while scalding and 2.niagra falls while freezing. couple these things with the fact that you cant let the water get in your mouth because of ameobas and you can see what kind of fun we are talking about here. Despite these difficuluties, i still manage to shower everyday and am enjoying each day more and more, its an adventure at every turn and just when you think you have it figured out, the power goes out.

Peace and love, James

a primer to the chicken bus

this email was originally sent out on 07/15/05 you can see how my writing has really not changed much except for maybe new vocab and sometimes now i use correct grammar and punctuation due to the whole career thing. peas.

Well, I arrived in Guatemala on tues and it has been non-stop craziness since... havn´t been to class yet (skipped the first day to hike a volcano at night) though which isn´t much different from college. We went from Guat city to Quetzaltenango (Xela) via a ¨chicken¨ bus as they are called here... let me explain what i see as the requisites for being classified as a chicken bus.

1. it must be a very old surplus us school bus
2. it must be painted crazy colors/have scary sayings/bloody murals of christ/bulletholes/or fake chrome or other shiney things
3. must have a guy who hangs out holding on with one hand either the window or the door, he must scream at anyone on the road and solicit them to get on the bus... even if there are already 60 people in the seats and the aisles, which segues nicely to 4...
4. bus must be crowded and by crowded dont think of your western, 5 people in a car crowded, thats empty by these standards you must have people and/or animals until you cannot move an inch with any part of your body. aisle, laps and over the shifter up front are all completely valid and promoted seats.
.5. the final and most important requisite is the driver. imagine the worst road you have ever been on, imagine it now with a school bus with bad breaks, no muffler , no suspension going in the wrong lane on a hairpin turn doing 3 times the posted speed limit. that is you avg chicken bus ride between cities. the driver must possess a reckless disregard for anythign in his path, including but not limited to

*any people or animals in or near the road (because near the road is perfectly fine as long as its not off a cliff)

* other vehicles, including large mack trucks carrying highly explosive propane.

ok so thats the chicken bus in a nutshell. on tuesday a chicken bus killed 20 people as it went off the road further west of my city. oh yeah one other thing, when in need (which is surprisingly often) a 2 lane highway can accommodate 3 large vehicles passing at high speeds (often clipping mirrors) when none of them will yield to other.

One other thing, on our 4 hour trip to Xela, we were stopped twice by policia who lead the males off the bus at gunpoint, and guns here arnt little toys, they are large shotguns and submachine guns wielded by kids who look about 15, i hope their teens arnt as angst filled as ours because people would get shot often if we gave american 15 year olds guns. on a lighter and serious note, it is amazing here, to those of you who have never been to central america , if you come i dont think you will regret it, the people are amazing, the food is very good and the overall vibe is just more relaxed and laid back....except on the chicken buses.

old emails = new blogs = frequent updates

Ok, so i am going to start putting my old mass emails as blogs here. basically for those who dont know, I graduated in may 05 and didn't want to start working right away (as i just did 2 years of full time work plus almost full time grad work) so i decided I wanted to learn spanish and travel latin america. the following blogs chronicle my thoughts (few) and adventures (many) while there. i hope you enjoy. disregard spelling, punctuation and other things most english teachers would kill me over.

if you want to see pictures from this trip (i stopped putting them up halfway into the trip, which really sucks because i lost some of the best ones due to numerous things beyond my control) i have a site at

pictures


James

Final Days in Colombia

Sorry about the lack of updates of late, I got swept up in Colombia and as my time there drew nearer and nearer to a close, I couldn't justify spending more than 5 minutes in an Internet cafe. So let me wrap up the last few days with a short anecdotal list of some things I saw.

* While getting ready to go diving, the boat pulls up to the dock and this little rat-like dog tried to make the leap to the dock from the boat only to make it halfway, paw around frantically and then fall about 3 feet into the water. The look on its face was one of pure terror as there was no way to get to solid ground without assistance. I laughed and plucked it out of the water. Surprisingly enough, it didn't show its appreciation by paying me any attention for the remainder of the day.

* While diving at a wreck about 90 feet down, in bad visibility, I cut my hand pretty good on the barnacles and rusted hull of the ship. This was fun and kept up my tradition of getting cuts on every trip I have been on (subsequently, that same night, I stepped on a shard broken glass bottle and it cut my foot (which has happened to me before in Nicaragua). Luckily, I am aware of my penchants for broken glass and carry around about 50 band-aids.

* Another fun diving incident was a leaky regulator which ate up my air at a quicker rate than normal. That was on my last dive and I got to hold a puffed up puffer fish so I was in good spirits regardless.

* Many nights were spent with my dive master Leandro as we made full use of the height of my condo by hurling baseball sized chunks of ice towards the ocean. I hit water on a couple of occasions (all under questionable sobriety).

* Going out in Colombia is fun. The one thing that is not cool is the inability of going to the bathroom and not see some European snorting up half a pound of yayo. I say European because the only Americans I met were ones who taught at an English school and lived in my building. Colombia's reputation is both a blessing and a curse. Other than that, the only people I saw going crazy were a few European and Australian tourists who came to Colombia for a very obvious reason... I steered clear from these people and all was well. I was approached by a drug dealer of clear influence and when I rejected his offer he was very surprised, he then tried giving me coke, then was amazed I turned that down. I told him, that's not why I'm here to which he said how honest I was and he loved me for respecting his country. He then called over a bodyguard who gave me information on getting in touch with him if I wanted to come on his yacht the next day and sail around these islands in Cartagena. I declined because my good fortune had already found the apartment and although I clearly have no problems with accepting niceties from people of questionable moral standings, I didn't want to leave the cushy situation I found myself in.

Leaving Colombia was hard. I took in my last sunset knowing one day I'll return. I was even told by these teachers that their school was looking for American teachers to come teach rich kids down there; they said their quality of life was amazing... I took down their email just in case.

Much love,
James

How do I get in these situations? Santa Marta Edition

This post is not very amusing. Two of the three girls I met in Cartagena were "massuses." I was unaware of this but it is very common here for women to dabble, and I use the word lightly, in prostitution. Many of the girls in Cartagena see a gringo and want to give you a "massage." Its sad because you see a lot of young girls with older gross men. I didnt notice this much in my other travels because I stayed away from places with money, in Colombia there is more money and therefore there is more of these seedy practices.... which brings me to my apartment situation. So, as I said before, I have this amazing apt at my disposal. The one girl that I rode with to Santa Marta (very touristy), is kinda like a madam to the other girls. She has apartments with her french husband (he is in his 40`s, her in her 20´s). My apt is owned by this Italian guy who is never there so they told em to stay there as long as I want. When I found out about their "business" I didn´t know how to feel, nor do I now, but like many things here, it is not for me to judge, the culture and peoples situations are very different than in the US. This situation is sad but its reality here. I have been diving daily with this great guy from Brazil. We are throwing a party in my honor (because I am so super) on sat at the apt. I even got a DJ from Philly to agree to dj for me, he has all his stuff here. It should be a great time, I don´t know how I get into these situations but this is where I am now. I will update you all again soon. Peace

A bad time for jokes part 2

Ok so, as the three of us are on our way to the casino, it´s around 12am, in other words, its early for a night on the town... and we come to a police road block/checkpoint (they could have been army, they were dressed like the army but I do not remember, this detail is unimportant). Now, I know I have nothing on me, except cash (if you are naive about travel in Latin America... cops take cash off ¨extraneros¨because really what can you do about it) and a bottle of beer from the bar. I hide the beer under the seat even though it is legal to have an open container as long as you are not driving. I proceed to step out of the car along with the taxi driver and the two Aussies. The cops begin to search all of us. My cop was the leader and seemed particularly unhappy. This is probably due to the fact the poor guy has to work nights... I know all about night jobs, they generally suck if you have to do anything besides sleep through them. Anyway, as he was patting me down (quiet thoroughly I might add) I decided in my ¨enlightened¨ state, to have a little fun to try to make this guy laugh... At this point in the story I need to issue a warning to the nun that reads this (and anyone else who has any respect for me). Sister Tess, you know I love you and I also know that for some reason completely unbeknownst to me, you think highly of me... please for the sake of my standing in your eyes (and possibly gods although I am on shaky ground with him as is) , skip this next part. So the not so friendly frowning Colombian cop (double points for double alliteration) asks me if I have any guns on me. I crack a smile, point to my jeans and say ¨just this one!¨ Then I let out a little laugh to make sure he knew I was joking. Well, he got the joke, but apparently didn´t think it was as funny as I did, so much for my icebreakering (new word alert) ability. He pretended I didn´t say anything (surely he thought it was funny, dick jokes are a form of bonding that cross cultural barriers) and then stuck his finger in my watch pocket to check for drugs again. I think he just had to keep up his tough cop persona, surely we would have laughed about it and thrown a few back at the club if he were off duty. Anyway, then he kinda pushed me back towards the taxi and we left. Won 20´000 pesos at blackjack, got upset at the pitboss for not letting a double down on 11 go through which I would have won another 20´000 on, made a scene and cashed out. I was wide awake, the Aussies were not, this is due to my superior staying power when on vacation. I don't want to miss anything so I force myself to stay up and do fun things. I cab it to the club with them and they walk home. I enter the club and strike up a convo with a couple of Italian guys there, we make dick jokes, drink more, everything is merry. I meet these 3 girls, they seem nice enough and when I tell them I am leaving for Santa Marta (a touristy place 4 hours from Cartagena) they tell me to go with them because they live and work there. I say sure, I have no friends there, now I have 3. I leave the club, go back to my dorm and listen to this psycho Norwegian tell the worlds longest story about almost getting hacked to death in China. By the time he shuts up (honestly it was a good story but it was very late and I wanted sleep) it was 5am. So the next morning, I meet the girls at the bus stop. Turns out the ¨they¨ turned into one. This was weird but whatever. The trip to Santa Marta had some interesting conversation to say the least. Let me put it this way, I now have a very expensive 2 bd, 2 bath condo at my disposal. A giant man made waterfall is just an elevator away with multiple pools, hot tubs and saunas whenever I want. The master bedroom has amazing views of both the Caribbean and the Sierra Nevadas... I´ll explain tomorrow. Jamesobar.

A bad time for jokes.

I´ve always had questionable timing, especially in tense situations...I think it stems from a lack of proper fear when it should be debilitating me or something. This is not to sound tough or anything, I think it´s a chemical inbalance, probably due to my parents drug use in the 60´s, 70´s and likely most of the 80´s. Anyway, I say all this because on my last night in Cartagena, a funny thing happened, sortof. So the Chiva stops towards the end at this seaside ¨discoteca.¨ The gimmick is that no one except people from the chiva are at said discoteca. This poses a slight problem because I somehow picked the geriatric chiva. THe median age must have been 60. Now, 60 year old Colombians are way more exciting that 60 old Americans but they are still 60. So i decide to walk along the completely dark and almost empty beach to a parked taxi with 5 tattooed Colombians drinking ¨Something Special¨ brand Scotch. I strike up a conversation in the most amiable way I know how and become the immediate life of their little beach-side bash. I announce that the seaside discoteca sucks and I want to know where people under 60 go on a sunday night. They tell me a club, I say good I am going to find a taxi. They say, here´s a taxi, lets go. So I grab the Aussies and we head to the club. Turns out the Aussies want a casino, having no fear of South American casinos, I say sure. and we change course for the casino. NOw , I know most of you reading this think getting in the car with the questionably shady (and possibly drunk) taxista is the part that I say something really stupid... you are right. But you are going to have to wait till tomorrow to find out why because my time is up at the Internet cafe. de Colombia, Jamescobar

Cartagena

So, i arrived in Cartagena on Saturday. Stayed in a pretty lame hostel, read a lot. Got reacquainted with being in Latin America. On Sunday night I took two of my roommates to go on a traditional Chiva. A Chiva is an open bus/truck with a live band. The music is the typical Caribbean coastal music called Vallenato. Its heavy with accordion and actually sounds pretty good. There is a person on the mic in the front of the bus telling jokes, explaining the historic sites and then cueing up the band, which sits in the middle of the chiva. So they have this dance contest where the girls and then en the guys from each row get up and shake their bonbons. Well, I just have to say I represented the US and NY pretty damn well. Oh, did I mention the bottles of rum they give while driving around... this country knows how to have fun that´´s for sure. So we stop on the walls of Old Cartagena. The whole old colonial city is surrounded by a gi-normous wall with canons. The chiva brought us to the top of one part of the wall where there were various people to try to extract your tourist pesos( due to Colombia´s reputation, most of the tourists in Colombia are from other Colombian cities). One of the highlights on this trip was this amazing Afro-Caribbean dance troupe. There wasnt much light so the pictures don´t do it justice. The other highlight/lowlight was this endangered sloth that some dude was carrying around to take pictures with. They are really weird looking but it was sad that people can just take these animals and try to make $ off of them. Then again, if a person is poor and trying to get money for their family, does the flash of a camera annoying an endangered species not justify the situation? That´s not for my gringo-ass to judge... needless to say, I respectfully declined to take a picture of or with the sloth, much to the chagrin of it´s ¨keeper¨ I want to include a picture and tell about the rest of the night. I will return later today with my camera to get some pics and videos. Be well ....

After much ado, I´ve arrived in Colombia

I would like to take this opportunity to publicly curse out the not so fine folks at American Airlines. My flight was supposed to leave from Laguardia to DC, then an overnight 9 hour layover in DC onto Miami, and finally a 2 hour wait to Barranquilla. Well, yesterday, the weather was amazing in NY (for a February afternoon), sunny, no wind and about 45 degrees. I get to the airport after leaving work early and paying nearly 40$ to a half-lost African cabbie, only to find that the flight has been cancelled due to conditions IE...weather. WEATHER. ÄA lady says inclement conditions¨ I say¨what inclement conditions?¨ Lady hands me a new itinerary flying from JFK at 1030PM. I tell this lady that I don´t care if they cancel my flight, but don´t flat out lie to my face. She says and I quote ¨it could be windy¨ I almost lost it but remained calm cool and collected and said something along the lines of ¨Say you underbooked, or no one paid enough for tickets, or your puppy died, but don´t tell me it´s the weather when it´s clearly not.¨ Not only do I have to travel to the other end of friggin Queens but it kills my plans in DC. Oh well, enough complaining. Long story short, drinking on a midnight-6am layover while fighting with an Ethiopian DC cabbie is NOT the best way to travel to what some say is the most dangerous country in the western hemisphere (that's BS i think). I arrived in Barranquilla today, the home of Shakira (more than one proud Colombian has said this to me today). If I see her I will make sure she breaks up with her royal Argentinian boyfriend and becomes my wifey. UPDATE. I left Barranquilla without even seeing the giant statue of her, so much for my marriage plans.
On my way from ¨New¨Cartegena to the colonial old town¨, I tried to snap a few pictures of the street scenes and my cabbie yelled at me to put the camera away because it will get stolen out of my hand while Im sitting in the cab. I felt he was exaggerating because Im Casperish but I went against my will and put the camera away for 2 minutes. Ill try to update again tomorrow,
Be well Kiddos

Goodbye mass emails.. hello blog?

I told myself I would never have a blog, here I am.
This is hard for me because I have bashed bloggers and blogging for years on account that the verb "blog" and any variation thereof sounds just redonkulous (much like the word redonkulous, which I have coined) Let me at least defend myself to say that the impetus for this blog is not to feed my already healthy ego, but to reduce the # of mass emails I send out when I travel. So I may very well be a hypocritical, egotistical sack o' hot nickels who has also talked shit and then joined (and consequently tried to get rid of) facebook, but I am just looking out for my friends' inboxes. If you want to peruse my rantings and follow my trips, this is the place to do it. I've been telling myself I wanted to write more for years, needless to say it hasn't worked out so hot. I doubt this is the solution but maybe I will stick with it.

The reason I am doing this now is that I just bought a ticket to Colombia. I leave tomorrow. I was going to send out a mass email, figured this is more fair. Wish me luck, maybe I will update this thing again.

Peace,
James ( i dont know if "bloggers" sign off at all or like this, but I do, cope.)