Libby_or_Bust

India is a lot of things — like home — to a lot of people, so though I have a strong urge, I’m not going to wax too philosophical about it. What I want to do is talk about how silly it is.

I don’t use “silly” derogatorily, simply to mean that sights or interactions or situations in which I find myself are odd in an amusing way from my American perspective.

Example 1: Today I got off the bus in Hyderabad, a big city in the center of the country, after spending all night en route from Mysore. I collected my bag from under the bus and the attendant said “20 Rupees!” I said “Why?” He smiled mischeviously and did the Indian bobblehead. I did not pay him.  Sometimes people really try to rip you off and succeed, but other times I think they just like the attempt. It’s like playing a game.

Example 2: At a Catholic church in Madurai, there were copious Christmas decorations and the requisite nativity scene. In front of the manger with a small baby Jesus was a short table and a larger basket with a baby doll-sized baby Jesus in it wearing a bright green onesie that read “Being this Cute is Hard Work!”

Example 3: English may be an “official” language of India, but of that you will never convince me. The words may be there, but the content is frequently lost in translation. I started writing them down — Infant Jesus Auto Works, Hotel Hot Chicken –  but then there were too many and I stopped. That’s not even bringing in the interpersonal miscommunication, like when a guy sitting next to me at a roadside fried rice stall motioned to my plate and said “Rice beautiful? Yes?”

Example 4: On New Year’s Day walking around Ooty, the Romanian guy I was traveling with and I got stopped by what seemed like every passerby to shake our hands and cry “Happy New Year!” They would see us coming and it was like they couldn’t wait to get to us, their hands out in anticipation before we even got close. “Hello Madam! Sir! Happy New Year! Coming from?” 

Go to Batopilas!!! If you`re budget, stay at Hotel Batopilas ($80 pesos per person) with the lovely Doña Tina, eat at Velia`s (also known as Doña Mica`s, the one on the left-hand side of the second plaza with a yellow gate) for dinner and Quinto Patio (down the callejòn towards the river across from the church) for antojitos and snacks. Take guide Arturo Águilar ($50 pesos per person plus tip, wear shoes and bring a flashlight) to the San Miguel mine at night to see the bats and the un-exploited silver veins in the rocks. Go to the little free museum in Batopilas. Go to Satevó to the cathedral. Enjoy the 5-plus hour trip down, stopping to take pictures, drink a beer and eat a burrito at a roadside stand. It´s shorter coming back up, leaving at 5am, but you get to catch the sunrise over the mountains as you wind towards Creel again. I was only there two nights, but I loved Batopilas and would recommend it highly to anyone going through the Barranca de Cobre. I will be back!

I`ve been traveling on my own for almost a month now and until yesterday hadn`t met another single American woman traveler. She`s 52 and reminds me of Fran Drescher, only louder. So why is it that we (American women) don`t travel alone? If you`re not a drug dealer, Mexico is extremely safe and inviting (and if you are it`s just inviting) and I love it here. The people are very friendly and helpful, sometimes even going out of their way to give directions or recommendations. Culturally, obviously, it`s different than the US, and the men are more forward and assuming. Only once, when a fruit seller propositioned me almost immediately after I asked how much the bananas cost (“No one will know — what happens in Mexico stays in Mexico“), did I feel uncomfortable to the point of having to leave the situation. Mostly, whenever people find out that I´m traveling alone, they are always surprised. ¨Alone?¨ they say, in a mix of confusion and disbelief. ¨For how long?¨ And when I tell them, they always have the same look, this raised-eyebrows, well-how-about-that look. But that`s not just the Mexicans, it`s everybody I meet practically. The difference I notice between Mexican and North American reactions to my traveling is that Mexicans seem really concerned about my boyfriend (I wear a wedding ring and carry a family photo that includes Alan). They all want to know if he`s jealous, and one taxi driver even went so far as to ask if he hit me (I would assume to keep me in line, because when I told him if my boyfriend hit me I would leave, he called me “brava“ which means “mean“).
But all of those reactions only make me more proud that I´m traveling alone, becasue I feel like I`m showing people it can be done and it`s okay. Sometimes I get lonely and it`s definitely cheaper to travel with someone else, but I really enjoy being on my own. In general, I am pretty free to do what I want. My only constant struggle is with fear, because bad things can (and do) happen. What I deal with daily is negotiating within the space of where my fear of what could happen and something actually happening overplap. I don`t want my fear to control me and limit me so much that I miss out on the real excitement of traveling in an unknown place, but at the same time I don`t want to be hurt or robbed. So what do I do? I trust myself and make choices: Do I hike alone? No. Do I walk alone after dark if it`s a well-lit and pedestrian area? Yes.
So traveling alone as a woman does have its disadvantages and can be limiting, but it can also open doors to unexpected rooms of life. For example, if I were accompanied, I would never have had my El Fuerte post office experience. Honestly, all I expected was to pack up some gifts to send back home, but it ended up taking quite a bit of time and help, during which I was chatted up by an ex-employee who had left to work in the US but whose wife had left him so he came back home and now just hangs around his old job at the post office, assaulting gueros (light-skinned people) with broken English. To make a long story short(er), as everything was finally packed up and paid for it was siesta time and the employees invited me to the back room of the post office to eat ceviche with them. I was unable to refuse. Fresh ceviche with pico de gallo, avocado and Doritos with cold Coke to wash it down in the back of the post office? It was perfect. During the meal, all the employees (and the cook and a couple of other people who didn`t seem to work at the PO but were there for the food) presented me with a book about El Fuerte, signed by all of them and with good wishes for the remainder of my trip. As I was finishing my second helping, a mail carrier showed up who was headed toward Los Mochis, the town I was planning on taking a bus to later that afternoon. Luis, the ex-employee, offered me a ride with said mail carrier and then drove me in the mail truck to pick up my backpack. I said goodbye to my PO friends and rode the hour-and-a-half to Los Mochis, chatting the whole time (the highlight of the conversation being when he asked me if American women wore bras, because he had heard that they didn`t). He dropped me off right behind the bus to Topolobampo (I was headed for the ferry to the Baja Peninsula that night) and even though I tried to pay him he refused. The timing was perfect, and the bus to Topo left just a few minutes later, getting me to the ferry terminal in plenty of time for the overnight journey.
It`s situations like that that make the being-limited parts of traveling alone, though still sub-optimal and frustrating, a little easier to handle.

Rey, Rosalva and I finally made it to South Padre Island a few days before I left. We´d had quite a few false starts in going because it had been so windy, but two Fridays ago we drove the 26 miles and spent the afternoon on the island. That will probably be the first and last time I ever go there, which is not to say I had a bad time — quite the contrary — but that an afternoon in the low season is all you need. We parked at a public access and took a little walk down the beach. I love the ocean. It was Torch Lake cold though, so all I did was say hello with my toes. Rey and Rosalva set up a game on the sand in view of the car and after I was done looking at shells (that is, done for the moment. Looking at shells and other miscellaneous sea debris could pass a lifetime) I joined them. The game is tossing pennies (we had to switch to quarters after a while because the wind handicap was too strong) from one line in the sand to another line in the sand about 8 feet away. We played for at least two hours, and though you would think it might get boring, just tossing change around the beach, it was engrossing for the whole time. Little did I know what a great trash talker Rey is! It was hilarious. All in Spanish of course, but before a toss he´d say things like, “If you beat this throw, then you´re good at this game´´ and if he won he´d be like, “I beat you!´´ But it was all in good fun because if he lost he wouldn´t be mad or anything, just laugh and congratulate me or Rosalva or say he couldn´t believe we´d beaten him.

The sun began to set and the wind picked up, so I left the game to get a few souvenirs from the sea. It was getting dark and I´d worn my perscription sunglasses, so it was getting really dark for me, though I was still able to find some neat shells. One thing in particular caught my eye, a bumpy, odd-colored shell with a jagged edge. As I bent down to pick it up for a closer look, I realized it was a half-eaten pickle. Dill. Haha, just kidding, it tasted like saltwater. I mean, I _bet_ it tasted like saltwater…

We left the beach to the setting sun. After eating a big, American meal (hamburgers, of course) at Blackbeard´s and stopping at a cavernous souvenir shop on the way out (One tequila, two tequila, three tequila, do people seriously buy this sh*t?), we headed home.

The next day we were all sore from bending over to pick up our change in the beach game, but we all agreed it had been a great afternoon.

So my trip solo has finally begun. After three-and-a-half weeks with Rey and Rosalva, I was ready to go, though it was a sad departure. Rosalva really feels like an aunt to me, and she is the first friend I´ve ever had that´s of a different culture and language. I am very lucky to have her in my life and I was taken very good care of while in Brownsville. That being said, I will never, ever live in southern Texas. There seems to be an endemic species of plant called the Tattered Plastic Bag Tree and all the water you see is brown. Northern Michigan has it beat hands down. Environmentally speaking — not to mention friends and family — I can´t wait to come home.

On Friday morning I paid $237.50 pesos (just move the decimal to the left a space to get dollars) said a tearful goodbye to Rey and Rosalva and rode 5 hours west through aforementioned wasteland. Thankfully there were 3 (!) in-bus movies, all totally random and played at incredibly high volume. As we rolled into Monterrey that movie about luck with Lindsay Lohan came to an end. Before it were Eragon and Flight of Fury with Steven Segal, all movies I would never seek out; however, when presented with the option of trash-filled desert or bad acting dubbed into Spanish, I choose the latter.

Upon arrival, I took the advice of my trusted Lonely Planet guidebook and headed for Villas Parque Fundidora, a dormitory that seemed too good to be true at $7.50 a night including breakfast. After an incredibly sweaty hunt for VPF, I finally arrived, only to find out that it had closed. Two years ago. Right. Back to the metro to go back to the bus station to the cheap and seedy area of town where the inexpensive motels are. After more struggle and inability to locate other hotels from the LP, I decided on one that didn´t rent rooms by the hour (that I know of) and was the best deal I could find at $25 a night. There is a bathroom in the room, which is nice, but it is so small that I have to sit on the toilet sideways with my legs under the sink. Another interesting tidbit about the toilet is that it doesn´t have a seat. Where did it go? If you know, please call Hotel Nuevo Leon, Monterrey. I´m sure theý´re searching everywhere for it. I mean, it couldn´t have just gotten up and walked away! Or could it…? The area around this hotel also leaves much to be desired, though conveniently located right across the street are a few taco stands and a strip club. Thank goodness! And to think I was going to have to walk a few blocks to go to the strip club!

Monterrey itself, though incredibly expensive and with its share of contamination, has some neat things to offer. Down near the Zona Rosa is really pedestrian-friendly and has lots of museums and a shopping area that´s way too expensive for me but is good for people watching. I would recommend the Mexican history museum especially because it´s interactive, extensive, has nice bathrooms and is free on Tuesdays. Near this museum is the Paseo Santa Lucia, a man-made river with walkways on either side and lots of outdoor art and green space and seating. I´m not really describing it very well, but when I was here before with Rosalva´s family we took the boat ride and tour and it was worth the $40 pesos Rey paid for me to go on it. The government in Monterrey paid big bucks to transform it from an ironworks garbage dump into a nice city park, and they did a commendable job. Another place to go is the Cerveceria Cuauhtemoc, the first national brewery in Mexico and producer of Carta Blanca, Tecate and Dos Equis, among others (six months ago it began brewing Coors Light). The tour was free and though it was short, quite educational. Make sure if you want to do this that you wear long pants, closed-toed shoes and a shirt with sleeves. I was sent back to my hotel to change (darned assless chaps! Just when you think you´re dressed for the occasion…) in order to take the tour. The best part was the free beer of your choice — that is, what the company brews — at the end in the beer garden.  

So this will be a summary post, as I am writing from the computer of a cousin of Rosalva. Rey and Rosalva have been treating me great, but I have virtually no control over what I do or when I do it outside of the house. It sounds as if I’ve been kept against my will, but that’s totally not the case, it’s just there are some cultural and generational differences that I’m not sure how to bridge or explain without being offensive or ungrateful. For example, the issue of the internet. R & R don’t have a computer and the idea of using the internet for communication is not a part of their world, so when I say I’d like to use the internet in Matamoros, they take me to the house of a family member and I use the internet there. Obviously it’s nice because I don’t get charged, but I also don’t feel the leisure of an internet cafe where I can spend hours reading and replying to the lovely messages sent by friends and family, and the forwards sent to me by my mom.
Anyway, I am safe and having a good time and totally immersed in Spanish and meeting lots of family members of R & R and eating like a queen of the carnivores. I have never traveled like this before, going from family to more family and then back to family, and it is just so different! My family is so tiny we almost have negative members, and it seems like every street in every town we go through in Texas and in Mexico holds some kind of relative of Rey or Rosalva. There are a few things I’ve noticed about big families, namely that when spending time all together the conversation is mainly about other people that are also related and there are continual questions like, “How are we related?” and, “Who’s that again?” Another issue with big families is that in them are a lot of distant relatives and once you are in their house and done with pleasantries and health issue updates, there are a lot of awkward silences. Like my mother, I’m of the persuasion to fill that awkward silence with my own voice to smooth things over, but I am unable to do that with the Spanish I know. So mostly I just stare at the other people and hope they won’t ask me a question or think I’m weird. With Rosalva’s family, I wish so badly that I was fluent in Spanish because I like her sisters and cousins so much and want them to like me. They are hilarious, especially when they’re all together, and they don’t even drink! I can capture most of what they’s saying, but can’t contribute the way I want to and end up with my linguistic shoelaces tied together trying to walk. Struggle. I give Rosalva so much credit for being my friend in Spanish because I wouldn’t be my own friend in Spanish and she’s so good to me. It’s nice.
So far we’ve visited family in Monterrey and Anahuac (where Rosalva is originally from) and are heading into the mountains this weekend to a ranch owned by Rey’s family (that is if he can remember how to get there). I’ll probably be out on my own middle of February, heading up to Chihuahua, over to the Baja, down to Guadalajara and Guanajuato, Mexico City, over to Oaxaca, continuing to Chiapas and a bit of the Yucatan.

So my trip to Mexico officially begins tomorrow, when Rey, Rosalva and I head to Monterrey.
I got to Brownsville safe and sound after over 12 hours of travel. At the end it felt like I could have walked here faster.
I don’t have any time to write because I’m using Rosalva’s aunt’s computer, but I just wanted to let everyone know that I really did leave and will be regaling you with my intestinal adventures very soon.
One last cosita: It was cold here today, in the high 50s. Brrrrrrrrrrrrr!

Only 5 days left until I come home. I can´t believe it´s been over 5 months here in Central America. This trip has been amazing. Though I am a person prone to absolutes, I honestly have never felt so independent and in charge of my own life. I came down here thinking I would find out what to do with my life, and ended up realizing that I was doing what I was doing with my life. Does that make sense?
I climbed the highest mountain in Costa Rica. It´s called Mount Chirripó, and it´s really freaking big, over 10,000 feet. And I climbed it, lost my voice and a toenail, and proved that I could.
I went to Panama, and now I´m in Nicaragua. By myself. Not scared. People ask if I`m travelling alone and I say yes. When you´re travelling solo, you´re more open to other people, so you´re never really alone unless you want to be, and even then it can be tough. In the last 5 months I´ve met countless people from all over the world, lots of them awesome, some of them real assholes. Some I´ll keep in contact with for a long time and others I won´t; they all have been important in my trip being what it is.
The food I´ve eaten and the places I´ve stayed! Any way you cook a plantain is good, from maduro to patacones, and there´ll always be a place in my heart for gallo pinto. Copos are shaved ice with powdered milk, sweetened condensed milk and flavoring. Nothing short of a gift from heaven on a hot day (which is every day). Sometimes your colón will get you a beautiful room with a balcony and clean communal kitchen, and other times all it gets you is a dirty room and someone else´s pubic hair on the sheets.
I´m also really tan. Bioluminescent plankton kicks ass. A Nica asked me yesterday what part of Spain I was from because of my accent. Last night I walked around the park in León sipping coke out of a plastic bag with to guys from Canada who had biked (as in motorcycle) down here from Whistler. Four days before that I was hanging out with a Tico sculptor whose work will be on display in Alajuela´s newly remodelled Juan Santamaría park. Two weeks before that I was on a zip line tour in Monteverde, spotting a pair of very resplendent Quetzals and then flying over the canopy in the pouring rain. A month-and-a-half before that I was in the San Blas Islands in Panama, eating fry bread and learning how to sew Molas with a group of indigenous women who kept trying to call me Carolina.
Now I´ve only got 5 days left. No sense in spending it in an internet cafe!

I know this is a travelblog, but I wrote this poem and wanted to share it. If you don`t like it, just don`t tell me: I`m sensitive.

his face was earthy
bulbous, brown
a neat pile of onions
freshly harvested

Tortuguero is in the upper right-hand corner of Costa Rica, the closest big city to Nicaragua on the Carribbean side. It`s reachable only by boat, so it´s a bit of a ride to get there, but totally worth it. Elizabeth and I made it there last week, parking the car in Cariari and then taking a bus and boat to the coast. We stayed in the cheapest digs in town, a place called Cabinas Meriscar, for $5 a night. It wasn´t dirty, but it wasn`t clean either; it was to be expected. If you don`t have low standards — something I have come to cultivate in myself, as it aids immensely in one`s enjoyment of communal hostel areas — then you won`t want to stay there, but for any budget traveller, it´s worth it. The owner, and exuberant Nicaraguan named Tony, is half the fun of the place, attempting to learn every language his guests know. I helped him with the pronunciation of the phrase, ”Do you have a ticket for the boat to Limon or Cariari?” and he would pop up at random times and eject the comment at me. ”Doo jou haf aye tikeht te boht too Limon o Cariari!!?” as I was cutting up watermelon for breakfast, walking back to my room, washing my hands after using the bathroom. As they say in Spanish, tiene ganas de aprender.
Tortuguero village is situated in between the river and the ocean, on a thin strip of land. The weather is humid and hot, but if you stay by the ocean there`s always a breeze, and most days it rains for at least a little while. It smells like how mornings used to smell when I went to camp when I was a kid. Kind of wet and earthy, but fresh, and the sunny day ahead is like a promise to be kept. El parque nacional Tortuguero is to the south of the village, and you can hike a short, muddy loop trail into it or take a boat into the canals of the river. The first morning we were there, E stayed in bed and I went with a German woman named Verena on a canoe tour of the canals with a guide at 6am. Richard, our guide, was quiet in general, but had great eyes and could spot a green parrot sitting on a green-leafed branch from 20 meters away. Amazing. I have trouble spotting wildlife until I step on it– in which case I render it immobile and can get a closer look — so it was definitely worth the $10 for over three hours of animal spotting. We saw spider, howler and capuchin monkeys, river turtles, a caiman, lots of birds (my favorite being what the guide called ”virtual tiger ‘eron”). Richard`s English was pretty good, but he did say that snowy egrets like to nest in the vegetarians at the edge of the river.
Because I had taken the guided tour, I was able to rent a kayak and paddle through the canals the next day to try to spot my own jungle animals. Tooling around for about three hours I spotted a river otter, spider monkey, more birds, a river turtle and the neatest fish-like things, long and thin and neon yellow striped. I really enjoyed paddling and drifting and stifling my fears of being attacked by a giant crocodile that could so easily just tip over my flimsy vessel and stuff me under a log somewhere to soften. Was that too graphic? Blame Animal Planet.
Anyway, there`s not a ton to do in Tortuguero because it´s so small and the surf is too rough to swim, so I took a lot of walks on the beach. It`s nice and cloudy most of the time, so I could walk and not roast.
The last night we were there we had another wildlife encounter, this one of the serpent variety. Walking through town after dinner, we came upon a crowd of people staring at the awning of a diner. The diner, aptly named La Culebra, was sporting a meter-long boa constrictor, struggling with how to get down to the ground after falling from the tree above. The best part of the situation was how the locals all reacted to the snake: scared as hell. You would think that living so close to nature would make them less jumpy, but apparently not. A person leaning a bit too close would inevitably fall victim to the fake push or snake bite pinch from a friend, illiciting a loud reaction. It didn`t get old until the snake finally found a way out, onto the ground and then up the wall studs.