BootsnAll Travel Network
Add this blog to: MyYahoo, Google, Bloglines, RSS


Munich and Beyond

May 31st, 2008

Clearly we didn’t get around to writing at all during our trip to Europe as we found ourselves too distracted (read: german beer and french wine). In a nutshell though, crossing european borders is fun and easy. To sum up:

Munich – Lots of beer and wursts

Salzburg – More bikes, lighter beer

Black Forest – Yay for cuckoo clocks

Alsace – Just as cute as on our honeymoon

German Wine Route – Not enough wine, they speak too much german

Frankfurt – The key to their stable economy might be the wine garden outside their stock market

Geneva – In the running for most expensive in the world

Gaillard – Home to two good friends and…

Posted in Germany | No Comments »

Tags:

Family Get-Together

May 5th, 2008

In a new twist, we are embarking on a two-week family trip – just like in high school but with the destination of Germany and everyone’s married and over 21.

We hope to make a couple posts during this trip. We promise not to whine too much about the meals costing more than $2, and we’re definitely excited to be traveling to a country where a hot shower and flushing toilets are the norm.

Now, if only we knew any German…

Posted in Germany | 1 Comment »

Tags:

For those who we haven’t stumbled into…

April 12th, 2008

We’re back in the States on route to Pittsburgh via JFK, Austin, Boston, and Troy. Congratulations to R & C on a beautiful wedding. We mostly missed the pillows and the showers.

Posted in CentralAmerica | 2 Comments »

Tags:

Big Rocks

April 12th, 2008

View of Tikal Jungle Cara at Temple 2 - Tikal

There are three ways to sleep at Tikal, a national park almost as well known for its wildlife as its grand Mayan ruins: in a hotel room, in a tent, or in a hammock. We felt a hammock would be the most ‘authentic’ and we were right. We saw many pictures at Tikal’s museums of former archeologists and workers strung up in hammocks for the night (we suspect they didn’t have mosquito coils though). We ignored that we had never hung a hammock or spent the night in one before.

Two things to note about your first night in a hammock:
1) If it cools down at night, no matter how warm you were in the day, you will be cold. Dress appropriately.
2) Every crunch of leaf, squeak of bat, and croak of frog feels unbearably close.

Dreams not withstanding, we tossed and turned and otherwise survived the night, awaking in the dim light of early morning to enter the park before all but the most fanatical. The great pyramids were devoid of people but harbored plenty of noise courtesy of the howler monkeys and the toucans, parrots, and others whose names are lost upon us. In Maya times, only priests and kings would have felt the joy at being atop the temples, but they would have been gazing at a bustling city of people and temples for miles around instead of jungle.

While lying in our hammocks the night before, we did not feel the need to climb a temple to see the amazing starscape above us. In fact, we didn’t even want to leave our hammocks.

Posted in CentralAmerica, Guatemala | No Comments »

Tags: ,

Chicken Bus

April 2nd, 2008

Supposedly the old retired American school buses that they use for public transportation are known as ‘chicken buses’ because of the large amount of live poultry that are carried by its passengers (not very common anymore). We posit that it has more to do with the way they pass other vehicles though. The source of endless discomfort, these vehicles nevertheless have faithfully borne us in between almost all of our destinations. In Nicaragua we were always busy admiring their swank interiors and in Guatemala it is the glitzy sheet metal they put on the outside. No matter where we were though, there were always great stickered slogans about. Here are our favorites, with some loose translations.

‘No pida velocidad, pida seguridad’ (don’t pray for speed, pray for safety)
We’ve never seen anyone ask these gods of Guatemala for anything but a traveller told us he asked if the brakes were good once. His response: ‘Brakes are for cowards. Get on the bus.’

‘Niños de 7 años pagan su pasaje’ (kids over 7 have to pay)
The unspoken rule here is that kids under 7 sit on their parents even if you have a single mom with three or more children. She may also take advantage of this free time to breastfeed.

‘si dios conmigo quien contra mi’ (if god is with me, none are against me)
There are any number of god/jesus slogans. We like this one best.

‘no tirar basura’ (do not throw trash)
This, as far as we can tell, is a practical joke. If we are being generous we would say that the literacy rate is low.

‘no respondemos por su objetos’ (we are not responsible for your things)
We are also not responsible for objects we tie (or don’t tie) to the roof of our bus, or objects someone else takes, or objects that may fall on your head from the rack.

Posted in CentralAmerica, Guatemala | 1 Comment »

Tags: ,

Xela

March 31st, 2008

Every day in Xela we wake up a little later and drank a little more coffee. We were just going with the flow.

Xela is like quicksand and people tend to stay there for months. We claim we were stuck there for a week because the buses shut down for most of Semana Santa. It wasn’t the delicious coffee and it certainly wasn’t the laid-back wine bars, we swear. The quicksand produces an interesting effect where long-term tourists interact with locals in a surprisingly positive fashion, spanish flourishes, and the Guatemalan university students mix with the language school students. Anyhow, we enjoyed it.

We left Xela more than a week ago though and have not had time to miss it. We’re a bit behind in updating but we hope to catch up before we leave on Thursday…

Posted in CentralAmerica, Guatemala | No Comments »

Tags: ,

Semana Santa

March 23rd, 2008

Good Friday Night ParadeMary on Easter SundayGood Friday Parade

We let Fat Tuesday come and go without realizing it had passed. The day after Adam was wondering why everyone had dirty foreheads and Cara drew upon her vast array of Catholic knowledge to conclude it was Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent. Subsequent Fridays were marked by slow somber nighttime processions carrying a float of Jesus and praying at impromptu altars throughout the streets. With the Friday before Holy Week, there came a dramatic increase in the fervor steadily rising until Good Friday.

A typical holy week procession includes hundreds of costumed people, 2 floats trailed by bands, and a string of Angels for at least 4 hours. In the streets, there are elaborate carpets of sawdust, flowers and pine needles. We watched 12 processions this week including 7 on Good Friday.  Before Jesus died on the cross on Good Friday, the processions are regally purple. Men (up to 70 at a time) carry a float of Jesus bearing the cross, followed by a sad float of Mary born by women.

Promptly at 4pm, the parades switch gears. The bands begin playing funeral music. Everyone wears black, and Jesus rests in a glass coffin – or in one bizarre case, on a bed of purple bricks. A weeping Mary follows with her attendant veiled weeping women. The unofficial last element of the parade is the ice cream carts ringing their bells to entice the thousands of onlookers.

The onlookers divide their time between lining the parade route and reveling at the nearby carnival. Kids ride a hand-pushed pirate ship. Adults shop for pirated biblical DVD’s and everyone devours nachos, hot dogs, churros, pizzas, and tacos until after midnight.

After this spectacle Easter Sunday is a letdown with only one colorful celebratory parade and no chocolate bunnies. And our kitty did not come back to life. 🙁

Posted in CentralAmerica, Guatemala | No Comments »

Tags: ,

Market Days

March 19th, 2008

Calm Veggie Aisle in Antigua Flowers at Church in Chichicastanengo End of Day in Momostenango 

Even the sleepiest town in Guatemala explodes with life on market day. Busloads of Mayans bring their wares and shopping bags to haggle, eat, and socialize.

Descending from the stuffed bus there is a parade of baskets leading to the heart of the market. The markets all begin calmly enough at the outskirts with ladies sitting on the ground alongside their pile of onions or blackberries, used clothes or weaving, laid out on a cloth. One more block and this disarray gains some structure. Wooden poles hold up canvas to block the sun for tables brimming with vegetables, huipiles, and cellphone accessories. On man sells handmade leather sandals, next to hand-me-downs from America. Plastic jugs from China compete with glazed pottery. Live chickens and turkeys hang by their feet waiting to be inspected and crammed into bags on their way to the dinner table. Selling at least eight varieties of mango, one woman slices a sample from her vast array to tempt a potential buyer, and we smell the ripeness. A moment later, the stench of dried fish invades our nostrils, even as our eyes adjust to the sunlight filtered through blue tarp tinting huge chunks of hanging meat and turning our stomachs.

Of course, we are not here to shop for chicken heads or calla lilies. We’re here to absorb the spectacle of this weekly ritual. The thousands of Mayan women that crowd the streets constantly catch our eye. With brightly colored, intricately woven shirts, scarves, headbands, belts, and skirts, which identify them to their village. Even without the added stress of haggling for a bag of plantains for dinner, we exhaustedly slump into our bus seats for the ride back.

Posted in CentralAmerica, Guatemala | No Comments »

Tags: ,

Cliques

March 13th, 2008

Adam at Volcan Pacaya Wine at Panza Verde

During 2 1/2 months of low-budget travelling in Central America, we rarely get the opportunity to mingle with the one-week vacationers we used to be. Antigua has plenty of opportunity. We signed ourselves up for a bona fide tour to climb an active volcano and watch lava flow for a rock-bottom price. At 6am, a shuttle bus picked us up and proceeded to stop by some very nice hotels to acquire the rest of our group. In the next few hours, lava aside, we were just as shocked to learn they spent $200 per night on a hotel room as they would be to learn we spent $5. They moan about thin walls, and we can only grin with commiseration. They look forward to a lunch of Spanish tapas or sushi. While we know the expat chefs can faithfully recreate these specialties, we drool over mounds of guacamole and our new favorite, pepian de pollo at the market.

That night, we hob-knob with the Antiguan expat elite at another gallery opening drinking Chilean wine in the corner before returning to our hotel to feast on tomato and avocado sandwiches and chat with fellow travellers from Japan, France, Spain and Canada who haven´t moved all day. Tomorrow, we move on to a more far-flung destination where there will be neither tapas nor gallery openings. If there are tourists, our discussions will return to the size of our packs, the best place for a beer, and which country next with some old-fashioned bragging thrown in. We´ll still be looking back fondly on our own short vacations and try to make our long vacation a series of great short ones.

Posted in CentralAmerica, Guatemala | 2 Comments »

Tags: ,

Pase Adelante

March 11th, 2008

The border on foot Iglesia de La Merced

Our first impressions of Guatemala were the dry volcanic landscape and the snail passing our bus uphill. Almost immediately we were confronted by the bright colorful dress of Mayan women. Unlike El Salvador who decimated their indigenous population, the Maya constitute over 50% of the Guatemalan people. However, they don’t live in the many gated and razor-wired communities we passed by.

Now, we are in the tourist epicenter of Antigua. Every storefront and restaurant we pass is met with ¨pase adelante¨which roughly translates to ¨spend your money here, gringo.¨ The coffee sucks. The food is expensive, and the churches are glorious. There are shuttle buses to Panama, Costa Rica, and Mexico, but we think we’ll give Guatemala a few weeks.

Posted in CentralAmerica, Guatemala | No Comments »

Tags: ,
« Previous Page — « Previous Entries
Next Entries » — Next Page »