Sunday, July 1, 2007

''¡Estamos ratones flotando en mierda!''

Quote of the week. The translation is: "We are rats floating in shit!" Context: Chris and I were waiting in Livingston, Guatemala for our boat to leave and the man behind us apparantly was getting impatient and screamed this genious phrase to the boat driver. Guatemalans are not afraid to express their frusteration.
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So here's the bad news: I haven't found a computer in three weeks that will upload my photos. You'll all just have to be patient and wait.

Here's the good news: Chris and I just left Copan, Honduras, home of a world-famous archeological site that contains amazingly beautiful Maya ruins, inscrptions, and hieroglyphs. It totally won over Tikal, which was amazing, too, but I think I'm the kind of girl who prefers artsy incriptions. The presentation of the park is also much nicer in Copan, it's father from Disneyland than Tikal. The town of Copan Ruinas, just 1 km from the actual ruins, also just happened to be our favorite Central American town so far: great food, friendly people, gorgeous setting in a valley surrounded by mountains. I did, however, have my first experience of wanting to never ever be associated with backpackers. We went to a very popular backpacker bar run by pretentious Belgians who played videos of Madonna concerts all night long in their very posh establishment. They personally told us (with their noses lifted high) that their bar gave backpackers the opportunity to mix with real, local culture. Are you kidding me? The whole time the video was playing the only locals who were in the place (who just so happened to be the servers) grimaced as they watched Madonna sing from a cross posed as Christ. This is an extremely religious culture we're talking about. I wanted to hide under the table with embarassment.

Honduras is very beautiful. One challenge has been learning the new vocabulary words. Words like "jam" and "backpack" are entirely different here than they were in Guatemala. We actually had to revert back to gestures, how emasculating. Anyways, the food is cheaper, and another difference is the transportation is a little more expensive but the bus drivers actually help the passengers courteously. Tomorrow we are headed to Utila, one of the Bay Islands, reknowned for having the cheapest high-quality scuba diving in the world. We're really excited to try scuba, but we've been hearing and reading that the islands are very expensive and very out of control with their party scene. If it does turn out to be too much like Las Vegas on the beach, we may curtail our stay. But we definitely plan to stay through Chris' birthday which is on the 4th.

Hopefully none of you have felt like rats floating in shit lately...

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