Eat Your Bananas
As the daughter of divorced parents who lived five hours apart from each other during my high school years, I like to think of myself as an experienced bus rider. I was, however, unprepared for the glory of first class Mexican buses. Two nights ago we took a 12 hour overnight bus from Tulum to Palenque. I was asleep for about 10 hours of the ride. But Megan tells me that they played three movies in a row (the one I caught was a wildlife special about octopi and birds that could swim). I hear that the other movies were: Shoulin Soccer (in which a soccer team flies and performs martial arts to win the game), Open Range (in which Kevin Costner gets Annette Benning to marry him after killing everyone in the town), and A Lot Like Love (in which Ashton Kutcher breaks up Amanda Peet´s wedding and they live happily ever after). All I saw were the octopi. Anyway. I slept like a baby, it was fabulous.
In fact, we both slept so well that the day following our overnight bus ride was FILLED with activity and not filled with naps (as I had anticipated). We visited the Palenque ruins which are AMAZING, but we forgot our camera, oops. We took a looong collectivo ride to the Misol-Ha and Agua Azul waterfalls, and we slept in a cabana in the jungle. Not bad.
Our last stop, Agua Azul, was on some kind of indigenous Mayan reservation and consisted of a long string of waterfalls flanked by stands with thatched roofs where people sold food and gifts. There were also an abundance of 7-10 year old girls selling various food items. One particularly adept salesgirl sat down next to us with her basket of bananas and spoke to us in Spanish. I kept shaking my head and saying ¨no, gracias,¨which is my technique almost every time anyone tries to speak to me in Spanish. She continued to talk, started making cupping motions with her hands and kept saying the word ¨banana¨ among many others. After she left Megan began to laugh while I asked, ¨What? What?¨ Apparently the girl had been explaining to us that her bananas (were we to buy and eat them) would make our chests larger. Thus the cupping motions. So, there you go. Eat your bananas.
We´re taking a bus in an hour to San Cristobal de las Casas where we´ll be for the next couple of days before heading into Guatemala. As we travel south, everthing is getting cheaper and cheaper. Yesterday we ate five empanadas for $1 total. Not bad, I suppose, not bad.
-Sarah (with translation by Megan)
Tags: Agua Azul, Central America, Mexico, Misol-Ha, Palenque, Ruins, Transportation, Travel
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Bags I the first response! I’m the king, I’m the king!!! WOOO HOOOO!!!!!
Ok, calming down.
Once in elementary school we had a teacher who told us that if you ate enough carrots you would turn bright orange, and Ted Wills went home and ate like three bags of carrots and didn’t turn any oranger than he already was (he was one of those really orange redheads). But go ahead and try the bananas! The bigger the better the tighter the sweater!
kisses and hugs
Oh Bethany, its nice to have you back on response line. I have to tell you though, your elementary teacher was right on. Megan started turning orange in high school and I made an appt. with a hemotologist right before I read the same article as your old teacher. Yep. She was eating too many carrots. A baggie a day. So, given her history and physiology, I say “sweetheart, forego the banannas, be careful of carrots and look for…avacado’s?”
love your stories. love you.
bananas womens chests bigger, eh? and to think of all the peanut butter and banana castles made at camp — what have we done???
Well, my dears. We did not eat the bananas, so I guess we´ll never know. Sorry to say. As for carrots I plan on doing an experiment with Megan and make her eat TWO baggies a day and see if she turns orange again. That would be rad. Perhaps even radder than Bethany´s computer bag… although it sounds like that would be a difficult feat to accomplish.
And Tom, I wouldn´t worry. I think that perhaps penut butter has the opposite effect.
-Sarah
Hmmm. Well, now that I think about it, Megan and Ted Wills share a certain calm, quietly ironic stance. Perhaps that sort of je ne sais quois goes well with slowly and quietly turning orange. Very seasonally appropriate, I might add. Were you to set about turning orange now, that is. But perhaps they don’t grow carrots down there in the sunlit lands. Carrots seem peculiar to cold, miserable climates. Is Bethany avoiding preparing for class?
I eat a lot of carrots and though I’m not orange (still white as an egg), I hear I look like a bunny. But that might also be related to the absurdly large white sneakers I wear, a la Bugs.
Miss you guys so much! Here’s what you’ve missed here:
-2 apple pies
-a new obsession with “Lost”
-Chicago banned trans-fats
-lots of slimy pre-election ads
-unexpectedly warm SF weather
-lots of communication conducted in English
Glad you’re having such a great time! Keep posting…
Cheers,
Becca
Chiquitas! Bananas! So great to get your posts! Ewwwwww to bethany for the redwood thing. Wish i were the becca in san francisco for apple pie and warm weather. I also wished i were in Tulsa for the yummy food listed a few weeks ago. wish i were on the trail with the two buxom orange banditas from vancouver. i’m off to georgia for some kayaking, leaving tomorrow. Probably eat a lot of PB and J smushed into the boat’s hatch. I’ve always preferred jam to bananas in my sandwich… which may explain two things.
LOVE! becca
P.S. — for a great picture of an apple pie made by BETHANY and KATE see their blog at http://syllabub.blogspot.com/
Chicago banned trans-fats??? Wow. I wonder if McDonalds in Hyde Park knows…. given the slimy political machine here, no wonder that makes news in SF, but not in the windy city…. Maybe that means I can ease up on bananas and go back to those filets O fish…..? All depends on where I want the inches, I guess. ON the Ueber-slime of political ads, may I rant? I don’t know whether to puke or be happy that the ONLY thing that the right wingers can seem to find to say (over and over and over) about a couple of real contenders here in IL (TAmmy Duckworth in particular) is that they are pro immigration….. And I don’t think they’re talkin’ Canadians. So do watch out girls for those money-grubbing, citizenship-snatching, illegal-wannabes! I hear they’re all like that down there.
Bethany,
I do hope that you will continue avoiding preparing for class, as your comments are always spot on. Megan does have a certain calm, quietly ironic stance, one that would be enhanced were she to actually turn orange.
Becca,
Oh, I miss you. And I wish I could see you in your absurdly white sneakers. And I am insanely happy to hear that you have developed an obsession for Lost. Just before we left for our travels, we discovered that you can watch episodes for free a day after they air at abc.com. We were delighted and planned to continue watching while travelling. So today, happy as clams, we snuggled up to watch an internet episode only to find that they only show them to you when you´re in the U.S. There´s a little window that pops up that tells you that your foreign and therefore not allowed. Dispicable!
Mom,
I want you to come and kayak with me off the coast of some blissful beach paradise. But if not, I´ll simply make myself PB&J sandwiches and sway side to side as if on the ocean. It will be just as fun.
Lool & Ceej,
You should write your republican candidates letters of appreciation for their championing of Native American rights. It´s high time some American politicians took a stand against unwanted immigrants.
-Sarah
[…] Remember when we took a night bus from Tulum to Palenque, in Mexico? I do. It was glorious. Movies, fully reclining seats, and a solid 8 hours without a stop. We were so chipper the next day that we toured Palenque and two different waterfalls. Those were the days. […]