Adventure Travel in Central America

Super Chivos 3 – Cremas 2

April 28, 2009 By Danny

The last time I was here in Guatemala I managed to make it to two soccer games. The first was against a team unknown to me. I went, I watched, I went home. The second game I went to was against Municipal, one of two teams from Guatemala City (think Yankees). To be honest, I don’t remember much of this game, but what I do remember is this:

Bottle rockets being shot from the bleachers at the field
All trash (100%, no lie) was thrown on the field…generally for no rhyme or reason.
There were not enough seats so we sat on the stadium wall, so if we had leaned back we would have fallen out of the stadium and onto the concrete outside.
We went to the game to learn all kinds of new and fun words that they don’t teach you in Spanish class.
The other team’s mascot was burned in effigy.

This time the game was a bit different but still just as incredible. We were set to play Los Comunicaciones (Crema) which are also from Guatemala City. I’m not sure what the stakes were last time but this time they were quite high. With the season winding down both teams needed a win to remain in the top 6 (playoff bound), with the defending champions – Crema – looking for payback from their previous meeting. Here is how the game compared to last time around:

Bottle rockets being shot from the bleachers at the field.
All trash (100%) was thrown on the field. However, with no alcoholic drinks allowed in the stadium and the soda served in plastic bags with a straw, this did not amount to much. To make up for the lack off trash, fans used toilet paper (which is generally in short supply here) instead. Added bonus was that the bottle rockets were also used to ignite the toilet paper.
The wall where we’d sat previously was now covered with advertisements, how American.
We went to the game to learn all kinds of new and fun words that they don’t teach you in Spanish class.
The other teams mascot was not burned in effigy; instead I saw a Super Chivos fan with a ram’s head (a chivo) hanging from his neck. Yes, this was an actual ram’s head.
Before the game began, two unmanned hot air balloons were launched into the air. The first kept going up, up, up and away…who knows where it came down. The second got a nasty gust of wind when it was only 50 meters off the field and caught fire. Naturally it began to rain fireballs but luckily no one was standing below and the toilet paper was at the other end of the field.

The game was extremely close the entire night. Crema scored first followed immediately by Xelaju. The score stayed at 1-1 until sometime through the second half when we scored again, mere minutes later our goalie failed to chase down the ball, leaving the goal untended for an easy pot-shot by Crema with 15 minutes or so left to play. Finally, with the time on the clock reading 40 minutes Xelaju was awarded a penalty kick. We scored, everyone cheered, and we were showered in “illegal” beer by the people behind.

Next thing I knew, I thought I was back in America watching the NFL as the official ordered a redo because the player kicking the ball crossed the line too soon. Throughout the night I had been getting tutored in vocabulary by a nice lady who was only too happy to oblige. The words that were coming out of peoples mouths at this point were so incredibly numerous that we simply could not keep up with our translations. After a few moments, we kicked again, scored again, and Jill and I were showered in beer again. A few minutes later, proudly wearing my new Super Chivos jersey to go with the hat I have back in the States, we walked out champions.

It’s like Deja-vu. Bienvenido a Guatemala.

April 22, 2009 By Danny

It was with a heavy heart that we said good-bye to San Cristobal and boarded the 7am bus for the border. Arriving at the border and handing over our Mexican tourist cards it was all to easy to leave the country, hop a cab through no man’s land, and cross into our next country: Guatemala.

Once in Guatemala it was only a few minutes before our passports were stamped and we had changed our few remaining Pesos into Quetzales. As we walked up the street with other backpackers from our bus, we were instantly accosted by a drunk, quite surprising for 11am, Guatemalteco. He thought we would appreciate hearing how good his English was and how he planned to go and live in Atlanta…then he asked for money to help send him there.

As the four of us walked up the street, trying to find the bus station that would hopefully take us out of no man’s land, we were still followed by our new Guatemalteco friend who was really too drunk for any of us to understand in English or Spanish. It wasn’t long before we were stopped dead in our tracks by another gringo and his wife. Turns out although Mexico has buses running on the Saturday before Easter, Guatemala does not. A quick inspection of the bus office confirmed that indeed no public transportation was leaving the border that day. We felt quite defeated as this was NOT the kind of place we wanted to be for more than two minutes, let alone two days. Luckily an entrepreneurial Guatemalteco offered to drive us to Xela for a fee, and soon the six of us and our bags were lashed, stuffed and crammed into the SUV.

Arriving in Xela, was a bit of deja-vu for me. I studied here 6 years ago when I was on study abroad and somehow I managed to navigate Jill and I to the school, several of my old haunts, and even 90% of the way to our host family’s house. Thats right, same school, same host family only six years later. Meeting up with the family, it was clear the boys (12, 16, and 19) had grown quite a bit and that none of them knew who to expect (the photos I sent to the school weren’t passed to the family), Nevertheless we quickly settled down and acquainted ourselves and I quickly recalled all the reasons I wanted to come back to Xela to study Spanish again.

Danny’s Top 10

1. It’s one of the cheapest places in the world to learn Spanish.

2. Where else can I purchase baked goods from an Mennonite who speaks both Spanish and Pennsylvania Dutch?

3. All Futbol games include homemade fireworks…launched from the bleachers.

4. Everything is cheap, except the national cerveza which costs as much as Budweiser.

5. The national food is pollo frito (fried chicken).

6. My teacher has a book with every curse word, dirty thought, and linguistic expression of frustration you could ever think of in both English and Spanish

7. The water heater is built into the shower head, with the wires sticking out to prove it. Added bonus, if you touch the faucet while standing under the water you can feel the electricity pass through you- who needs coffee. Only bummer is that because of the water your hair can’t stand up…

8. If there is cereal for breakfast instead of eggs and beans, that only means the eggs and beans are coming for dinner.

9. The bed is the same as it was six years ago….same springs still bite me in the night.

10. Last time I had no stomach problems so I really just needed to return so I could say I pooped in a cup* too!

*Jills says this needs to be explained. Stomach ‘challenges‘ are quite common here and the general pattern is to go to the lab, poop in the cup, take the results to the pharmacist, pay for the medicine they give you, and wait three days…if it doesn’t work try another plant and pray.

La Paz Part I

March 20, 2009 By Jillian

We came to Baja California for the gray whales and expected to leave for mainland Mexico almost immediately. Unfortunately for our budget we couldn’t help but stay in Baja California Sur just a bit longer.

The drive to La Paz from Guerrero Negro was about 10 hours and again we took a night bus (saving time and money!). Pulling into town earlier than expected we didn’t want to call our host in La Paz at 7am so we killed some time tossing a Frisbee at the malecon (boardwalk)on the beach before finding food. Around 8am the streets started to open up and we ate our first street food breakfast, some sort of shredded beef stew with tortillas which was DELICIOUS. There is nothing quite like hot and spicy mexican food in the morning! Laura, our couchsurfing host and an amateur photographer picked us up at the bus station and plied us with another delicious breakfast of eggs and tortilla. She introduced us to La Paz with a walking and photo tour of the city before setting us free to explore on our own. Walking the malecon, we found a number of shops, overpriced restaurants and several adventure outfitters. With a healthy tourist population from all over the world, La Paz is filled with different activities, people and things to do.

On our way back to Laura we found ourselves in the middle of a political rally. Coming from DC, we know a political rally when we see one. Since my Spanish is very limited, Danny got the scoop on the situation and we found that it was a sort of State of the Union for Baja California Sur. We hung around for a while taking the scene in, but ultimately my slim grasp of the language got the best of me and we wandered away. A lovely sunset over the bay and we were home to our first shower since leaving the USA!

Laura recommended several places outside the city to visit, but virtually non were accessible by bus. Such is the story of the entire Baja Peninsula; most of the cool stuff is not accessible by bus. Sighing to defeat we planned to leave La Paz on Tuesday, however luck was on our side. On our gray whale tour we meet a lovely Canadian couple, Margaret and David, who were heading to a relatives vacation home in La Paz. They offered to let us crash with them in La Paz and luckily we were able to meet up. Besides being incredibly generous and warm people, Margaret and David were adventurous. Seemingly without limit, the four of us headed to the playas (beaches) north of La Paz on Monday and Cabo Pulmo on Tuesday, an amazing national marine park about two hours south of La Paz. Lulled into watching the desert scenery go by, we suddenly found ourselves at the point where the sidewalk ends. A bumpy gravel road (perhaps that is an understatement – we were so concerned about the undercarriage of the car that we checked it when we got out!) lead to a small cluster of homes and tiki huts (population 58) where a coral reef hugged the shoreline. This was Cabo Pulmo. We dropped out bags, grabbed our snorkels and hit the water to find….. disappointment. I don’t know if we were in the wrong spot or if it was just a bad day, but Cabo Pulmo was not the blooming coral reef I was expecting. Don’t get me wrong, the sea was a gorgeous shade of blue and green, and the beach was incredible and not very crowded, but the marine life hardly compared to what we had expected from a national marine park. We ended the day with a hot shower and a delicious meal.

Bajaducation

March 18, 2009 By Danny

Two overnight bus rides with a stop for whales and we found ourselves in Baja California Sur about 22 hours from the US border. We’re in La Paz on the eastern coast of Baja. Being a seaside resort town, the sea and sand are wonderful here, as is the culture. The well known adage of ‘me casa es su casa’ is alive and well. Perhaps it is our time in Washington, DC that has jaded us as pedestrians in an automobile dominated world, but the calm with which drivers meet jaywalkers has not yet ceased to amaze us. The constant barrage of ‘buenos dias’ and ‘buenas tardes’ is still catching us off guard. To say the least, Baja California has been a fabulous way to begin our Mexi-cation. We’ve been learning to negotiate daily life, which has been made easier by many bajacaliforianos along the way. Some of this vocabulary you just don’t learn in school.

It will be no surprise to most of you that at this point we are probably more adept at the grocery store than anywhere else. Naturally we expected the peanut butter selection to be replaced with an impressive display of salsas. What I did not expect was needing to understand the difference: salsa casara and salsa chipotle and salsa taqueria and salsa, well you get the drift. Perhaps the most interesting thing at the mercado is the cheese selection. I’d thought I’d died and gone to France there were so many options, except they all had names like Chihuahua and Oaxaca instead of Cheddar, Brie or something French. Our forays into the mercado continue to surprise us. Yesterday at a large chain store, after a feeble attempt at locating the bakery, we crossed paths with a Manischewitz cart. Yes, a full kosher-for-passover display here in Mexico. Just goes to prove, wherever you go you really aren’t that far away from home.

Fortunately, our learning has extended beyond the mercado. Driving in Baja should be scary, dangerous and nerve wracking, but from what we can tell, its only slightly different than driving in D.C., or Chicago (giant potholes anyone?). Most of our travel has been at night via bus so we’ve managed to sleep through the obligatory military checkpoints, although waking up to see a soldier walk up and down the bus is something everyone should add to their bucket list. Now that we’ve been taken under the wing of those with a car (more on them when we write about our time here in La Paz) we’ve learned a few more things about driving in Baja: 1) cattle in the road always has the right of way, 2) a left blinker does not mean turning left but that it is safe to pass…whatever you do, do not turn on your left blinker and then turn left…this will create a major problem, 3) unpaved roads are dangerous in a small sedan, and 4) did we mention cattle always have the right of way?

We’re interested to see what happens when we head to the mainland on Thursday. Hopefully our bajaducation comes in handy.

Baja or Bust

March 14, 2009 By Jillian

Update: 3/16/09 border crossing pictures added, see more at our Recent Sightings page.

We made it safe and sound! Crossed the border yesterday uneventfully around 11am, which turned out to be 10am on the other side of the line, so we even gained an hour in our border crossing. Got our tourist cards (giving us up to 180 days in Mexico) and caught the first bus from Tijuana to Ensenada. Changed buses in Ensenada and pulled in to San Quintin around 5pm. Our goal was to see gray whales before Monday. Let´s just say, we were successful.

Turns out that the southbound bus `schedule´ in Baja California is awful and if we didn´t want to be stuck in San Quintin for 18 hours (no thanks!) we needed to get on an overnight bus. I know, right now everyone is gasping that we took an overnight bus in Mexico as the US media says things are on the brink of civil war. Nothing could be further from the truth, at least here in Baja. The buses were full, the streets are full of families and children and the people have been nothing but friendly. So friendly in fact that its almost scary coming from D.C. (insert DC joke here).

Anyway, we pulled into Guerreros Negros this morning at 6am, definitely in time for whale watching. If you aren´t familiar with the gray whale, its one of the largest mammals in the world and half of the world´s population migrates to Baja in late fall-early winter to mate and calve their young. We happen to hit it at the best part of the season, the calves have been born and the migration back to Canada and Alaska isn´t in full swing yet.

We drifted in our boat for close to 20 minutes before the whales were spotted. Each time a white cap crested in the horizon I gasped thinking it was a whale. Just as I was about to call the trip a bust, a huge burst of water exploded from in front of us. As we drifted closer, the entire boat listed to one side as all eight of us clamored to get a better view of the passing animal. To say these animals are huge is an understatement. To say they are friendly is the understatement of the century. These whales were like puppies. They came up to our boat, nudged the boat, rolled onto their backs for a tummy scratch, waved their fins, and even seemed to mug for the camera. We actually got to touch the whales, several times, as they swam next to our boat. By my count we saw one mother and calf and two other gray whales, two dolphins and a whole pile of sea lions. Although the rest were cute, the whales were the highlight of the trip. It was breath taking to see these magnificent creatures swimming along side us and heart stopping exciting when they came close enough to touch and the boatman said, “touch! touch!”. I don´t think I stopped gasping for air the entire time.

I realize this is only day two, but it was such an amazing experience it is hard to think what will top this!

Click either picture to go to our flickr page for more gray whale shots! We also have video that we´ll edit and upload in a few days!

Super Chivos 3 – Cremas 2

It’s like Deja-vu. Bienvenido a Guatemala.

La Paz Part I

Bajaducation

Baja or Bust

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