Quest to See the World

Well here I am in good old Antigua, Guatemala for my last night. Since i last wrote i have had an amazing time. El Salvador is pretty close to a tie with Nicaragua for my favorite country, but i just didn´t have enough time there. I was in 3 countries in one day, found myself on a bus of people headed for illegal entry into the U.S. (I recommended that they don´t go through texas because of the crazy redneck head hunters there), hung out with a group of 4 Salvadoran teachers for a few hours at Laguna de Alegría in a fresh mountain town in El Salvador, ate the best tamal of my life, almost ended up arriving in the worst capital city in Central America at night, but instead ended up staying overnight with some random family in the chilly hills of La Palma, El Salvador, got caught in a border town (which is usually not a nice thing) and caught a 2:30am bus out of there, switching buses at 5:30am in the dirty capital of Guatemala, shopped, and just got another pedicure so that i´ll be nice and fresh for Destiny´s (my cousin) wedding on Saturday.

It´s been a great trip, but i could really go longer. There´s just so much to see and so many people to meet. When i get back i´ll elaborate on my last week of travel and upload my 2.5 gigs of photos that i´ve been guarding with my life. well, i have one more night to enjoy, so…hasta la vista.  

 

The boat ride from San Carlos to Ometepe island was surprisingly pleasant. When I headed down to the boat I could see Malcolm on the top setting up his hammock. I got up there, pulled out my hammock (i bought it in san carlos for $3.50-nylon) and my rope and cut the rope in half with my handy swiss army knife so. I started to hang it up and and nice Nicaraguan man came and gave me a hand. I thought that i was doing a good job, but the help is always appreciated. There were about 10 hammocks strung up on the top deck all together. the boat pulled away a few minutes later and i snapped a couple of pics of the town from the water, ate my $.75 plate of food (rice, beans, fried plantain, yuca and cabbage salad), and then took my place on my hammock. It was really comfortable. Malcolm lent me his Nicaragua book to check out, so that´s how i spent most of my evening-lying on the hammock on the top deck of the boat reading with the wind blowing through my hair. it was awesome! We pulled into San Miguelito to pick up some more passengers around dusk and then continued on our way. It was really interesting to watch the passengers getting on and off, the people loading more bushels by carrying them on their heads down the unstable ramp, and the vendors walking around loudly announcing which goods they have to offer. I´m really glad that i brought my mp3 player with a voice recorder because now i can make my own report for NPR with the sound bytes.

My friend Dale sent me a travel essentials care package before i left and one of the items included was a [read on]

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