Guatemala: Home to violence, danger, and really really nice locals.

Guatemala is dangerous. My travel guide told me so. The internet told me so. Heck, CNN told me so. So when I decided to go to Champerico this weekend with a friend from school and his mom, and our teachers told us to be careful, I was slightly worried. They gave us the warnings. Stash your money in multiple places so that if you get robbed you don't lose everything. Leave your passport in Xela. Don't bring credit or debit cards, just cash. Carefully choose your hotel, make sure you see the room before you pay, and watch your belongings because they can get stolen from your room. Don't wander away from the center of town, and stay together. And whatever you do, don't forget that Champerico is really, really, really frickin' dangerous. Muy peligroso.

Entrance to Champerico

Dangerous looking hooks

This pier was actually a little dangerous, but only because the supports were rusting away

We decided to go despite the wonderful reviews. Champerico has a beach, I wanted to get back on a surfboard, and Noah wanted to surf. It just so happens that Noah is a really good surfer. I knew this before I saw him surf, when he told me that he has ridden both Mavericks and Pipeline. Pretty cool.

To get to Champerico, we had to take a chicken bus. These are all over Guatemala, and are pretty much a major transportation method across the country. For 20 quetzales (or under $3), I took a four hour bus ride. Dear Montreal transit system, please take note of this fact. On the bus, instead of having to worry about my money, belongings, and life, as I had been warned, I instead met Luis. Luis is a Guatemalan who lives in Xela and struck up a conversation with me, in Spanish of course. For about an hour, we spoke about our past travels, education, architecture, and food. Before he left the bus, he invited me over to his house for dinner with him and his wife when I returned to Xela, and left me his phone number. But first, he told me how to transfer buses to Champerico, and how to get to the beach once we were there. Of course, this was after he apologized for having lost touch with a friend in Champerico that surfs, who he otherwise would have called ahead to inform of our arrival. This would not happen in Montreal, but it does here...

We arrived in Champerico and as Noah got his board ready, I immediately began looking for a place to rent a board of my own. I was quickly told that there are no surf shops in Champerico. The internet lied to me apparently. Fail. However, the first guy with a surfboard that I asked immediately offered to lend me a board the next morning. One of his boards. A brand new one. I thanked him but had to decline, as I told him that I wasn't a very good surfer. No worries, he had an old clunked he would lend me. He gave me his name, told me he would be on the beach in the morning, and said that worst case I could just ask a local where he lived. He was the only guy named Mokako in town. So far, everything I had been told about our trip to Champerico was a lie. There was still plenty of time to get in trouble though...

Please note that this is Noah, and definitely NOT me

That night we ate amazing seafood, costing about $10 for a beer and a pound of calamari. Perfection. In the morning, I woke up early and went for a swim while Noah surfed. He is indeed, pretty good. Mokako wasn't out, but I figured I would catch him in the afternoon. Noah lent me his board and I tried to paddle out, but got pounded and quickly remembered how hard surfing is on the arms. I now plan on trying to get into better shape before I make it to my next beacjh destination. Unfortunately, for the rest of the weekend the surf got so big that not only did Noah not surf, the locals didn't either. It was just closeouts, and 6-foot high whitewash.

On Saturday evening, we chatted with a local surfer for awhile after he came out of the water. When we told him we were going to take off for a walk on the beach, he warned us about where we could and couldn't walk safely. Once again, really nice locals trump everything we had heard about the dangerous town of Champerico. After another splendid seafood dinner (octopus this time, with 2 beers, for just over $10) we crashed out to the pounding bass coming from a wedding afterparty that raged into the wee hours of the morning.

Young children on horses may or may not be the most dangerous part of Champerico

Sunday morning the waves were still too big to go out, being simply unsurfable, so Noah and I headed to the pier to watch the sets come in. There I met an older man who waved me over and asked if I spoke Spanish. Almost 45 minutes later, we had finished a conversation where he told me about where he lives, what he does, where he studied in the past, and how its cool to see foreigners (see "white people") that actually come here to learn the language instead of just be ignorant and squeeze by without it. Although I couldn't pick up everything he said, I held my own, and just like I had on the chicken bus, I now had a new friend.

Another one bites the dust. Lo siento Maradona...

From breakfast on the beach...

...to breakfast in my stomach.

We left Champerico around noon today, and two cramped bus rides later made it back to Xela, alive, healthy, and without any icidents. Sure, if we had wondered around the streets in the middle of the night looking for trouble, I have no doubt that we could have found it. If we had chosen the sketchiest hotel in town, or flashed our money as we walked down the street, we could have been robbed. And if I walked up to a guy with a face full of tattoos and started talking crap, there is a high probability that I would have been stabbed. But the same can be said for many areas of downtown Montreal. If you look for trouble, you're probably going to find it. And unlike Montreal, in Guatemala, if you're not looking for trouble, you'll probably just find really, really nice locals. Like the surfers who treated us with hospitality instead of localism, my new friend the fisherman, and Luis, who I plan on calling this week to make dinner plans with.

Despite the fact that newspaper headlines in Guatemala often involve headless bodies, cemetery shootings, and police corruption, maybe the so-called "developed world" has a thing or two to learn from "one of the most dangerous countries in the world"...

Pura Vida.

Beard Update - Weeks I & II

I have decided to grow a beard until I am somewhere sunny enough to get moderately tanned. Until then, Francisco has told me that a beard fends off people who kindly ask you for money at knife-point. Perfect.

Week I

Week II

This reminds me of that time that Troy goaded me for shaving a playoff beard because it got too itchy, and then this year did the same thing, only saying that it was because "we weren't playing well". We can blame another Cup-less year on Troy. Well done bro.

¡Buen Dia de Canada!

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Volcano Climbs & Equestrian Medivacs

Buenos!

The first stop on my Central American journey is Guatemala. I arrived in Guatemala City last Saturday, and was supposed to be picked up by the driver for the place I was staying at overnight. Of course I couldn't find him, and was quickly mobbed by a hoard of eager chauffeurs. I'm not sure whether it was my huge orange backpack, bright purple hoodie, or pasty white skin that gave it away, but I had 'gringo' written all over me. A man offered to call the place where I was staying, even after I didn't accept his offer at another hotel, and quickly put me in touch with the person I was supposed to meet. Next thing you know, I am being led past the crowd to a dark parking lot, and an unmarked vehicle is opened for me. As I jump in the back, it all hits me. This was a scam. The guy called his friend, who came over to pick me up. Classic gringo mistake. I was about to be driven to a back alley, robbed of all my belongings, and left for backpage news of the local newspaper... Turns out I was wrong, and when I saw my name on a sheet in the passenger seat, I was suddenly reassured. First lesson of the trip: not every tico is out to rob you.

After making it out of the ever so inviting Guatemala City, with its barbed wire, barracks-like metal gates, and shotgun-wielding tienda guards, I made it to Quetzaltenango (known as Xela, pronounced 'Shay-la') the next day. My host family is amazing, the school is great, and the town is full of interesting stuff, but more on all that later. Time to talk volcanos.

My house (in orange) in Xela

Guatemala has some volcanos. You may have heard. One erupted the other week, closing the airport for almost a week, and covering cities in ash. No big deal though, compared to Agatha that was a joke.

Yesterday I climbed a volcano. Santa Maria rises almost 4000 metres above sea level, and its peak is a dominant view from Xela. It isn't active anymore, but from the top you can see the active Santiaguito erupt every few hours in plumes of smoke. We started the climb at 5am, as it takes between 3-5 hours for a gringo to get to the summet (or 1.5 if you are a local Mayan woman wearing flips flops and carrying a baby on your back). In terms of difficulty, it was really steep, and the air is quite thin so it can be exhausting. Three of the girls turned back just after the halfway mark, and a bunch of us at the front had to stop regularly to wait for the rest of the group. It wasn't such a big deal though, because the view on the way up wasn't all that shabby.

View on the way up

On the way up we were regularly passed by a group of local women in traditional weaved clothing performing some kind of ritual all the way up. They would stop at various points to pray in some sort of (from what we understood) hybrid Christian-Mayan ritual. It was really quite neat. Our guide told us that at the top there was some sort of prayer ceremony held every weekend, which explained the number of locals making the trek.

At the top

We finally made it up in about 5 hours, with the last 15 minutes being the hardest on the lungs and legs. Unfortunately, the cloud cover had rolled in, and there wasn't much of a view, even though it felt like we were on top of the world. Sure enough, numerous prayer sessions were going on, and we were actually the only group of foreigns on the peak. We had a well deserved lunch, but as per normal, it soon started raining, and we had to once again gear up and head down the volcano. The rain made for a slippery descent, and more than one person from our group took a nasty spill or two. On the other hand, the locals bombed down the hill like there was no tomorrow, hopping around like mountain goats. It was actually unbelievable how gracefully they got down, while we were busy going step-by-step so as to avoid breaking ankles.

And the rain begins...

'Locals do it better'

Unfortunately, the mountain got the best of one of the guys in the group, and shortly after taking out his ankle he started cramping up. The guide told us to keep going, and he and a few others stayed back. Just before we got to the bottom of the volcano, we encountered a local man on a horse who asked us where on the mountain our friend was. Apparently, the easiest way to get someone off the volcano is by horse medivac. Interesting. While it will make a great story once he's feeling better, I can just imagine that the absurdity underlying an equestrian medivac wasn't much consolation at the time...

Part of the crew

After an early morning, I went home and crashed, waking up at 9pm before going back to bed two hours later. The rain is still coming down today, so the morning was spent watching the Round of 16 (GO DEUTSCHLAND!) and finding an internet place open on Sunday (not the easiest feat). The Mexico/Argentina game has just started, so I'm back off to home to watch it. Vamos Mexico! (until the quarterfinals that is... sorry Francisco).

Back at the bottom of the volcano

Gallo Pinto Con Huevos Fritos

Two years ago I fell in love with Costa Rica. After a month travelling the Nicoya Peninsula with the boys from Beach Travellers, I knew that it would only be a matter of time before I had to go back. From the sweet sounds of reggae on a warm summer night, to waking up at dawn for an early morning surf session, it was addicting. Countless daydreams later, it will soon be a daily reality once again, as I leave on Saturday for a 20-week trip across Central America and Mexico.

Jumping on travel-blog bandwagon, aptly named after one of my favorite tico breakfast staples, this space will allow me to keep everyone at home updated on my adventures. While very little is set in stone, my rough itinerary will be as follows, illustrated with my powerful Paint skills:

Arriving in Guatemala, I will spend two weeks in Quetzaltenango at La Democracia Spanish School, and then trek to the small Mayan town of Todos Santos for more schooling. Next will be Flores and Tikal, before leaving Guatemala to head into Belize for a few weeks. After a few days of R&R in Cancun, I plan to fly to Tepic on the Pacific Coast, hit Gudalajara, and then head down the coast to watch the surf at Puerto Escondido, home of the 'Mexican Pipeline'. Trading in surf for traditional culture, I'll head to Oaxaca, scouting things out for when I finish my trip there in November. Next on the list are the jungles of Chiapas, and hopefully a day or two spent in a Zapatista village (sorry Francisco...). From there on in I plan to spend most of my time on the beach, hitting Monterrico in Guatemala, a few spots in El Salvador, San Juan del Sur in Nicaragua, and a reunion with the Nicoya Peninsula in Costa Rica. Time permitting, I'll slip into Panama before flying back to Oaxaca at the end of October, where Day of the Dead festivities will cap off my adventures.

Stay tuned, and as always,

Pura Vida.