We live in a valley of ten volcanoes. Quetzaltenango is Mayan for “under 10 gods”. The city is hilly but charming. 

Our classmates at school have really been the only people we’ve met thus far and they were all going on what the tour agency described as “an easy 5-hour walk through the mountains” that would end at natural hot springs. Given that I’m still acclimatizing (getting used to having less oxygen due to altitude) and that I didn’t get through a single day last week without a nap and going to bed at 9pm, I thought an easy 5 hour walk was about the max that I could handle. So we said yes.

The view after 15 minutes of hiking at about 7am.

I wanted to die after the first 15 minutes. We started our 45 degree angle uphill climb – if I had only known what was to come, I would have been more grateful that it was at least paved – and I felt like I was the only one who was totally winded. But then, I saw that others were too. So this must be the hard part I thought.

Our whole group – all students from our Spanish school.

The views were absolutely breathtaking from the beginning. We were walking through mountain villages that farm cabbage, radishes, onions, cilantro, potatoes, carrots, corn (LOTS of corn!), and flowers to sell in the street markets. The mountain air was clear and the smell of fresh onions and herbs wafted through the air. I wish I could bottle this smell and take it home. Everything is farmed by hand at 45 degree angles and entire families are out together working in the fields. Amazing.

You can see Calalillies growing on the side of the road!!!!!!!! One callalily stem costs like $20 in the states so it was incredible to see them growing around like dandelions. There were tons of other beautiful wildflowers and lots of children asking us to take their photos! People were staring at us – this big group of gringos with backpacks…. But everyone was very nice. Lots of waves and hellos. The kids were totally fascinated by us and giggled at Miguel’s hair (cornrows are a rarity in Guate).

Chewing on some sugar cane.

After about an hour and a half of walking uphill, we started climbing up (rather, crawling up because the angle was so steep) jutting mountain rocks for another 45 minutes, until we reached the top of this mountain…and oh, if I weren’t light-headed and aching and the last to reach the top, I might say the views were almost worth it all….

But they weren’t. It was 9am and I was totally beat. I was told the rest was downhill so I felt comforted. Little did I know a steep downhill on jutting rocks for hours is harder than an uphill. 

So after about oh, say, 1:30 – and after the guides had been telling us it was just 15 more minutes like since noon – I was feeling, um, like I was going to kill someone. Total exhaustion. Don’t think I’ve ever done anything this hard, physically. My body feels like it simply can not go on. And we still had a half an hour uphill.

Our final arrival at the hot springs.

After the final climb, we arrived at the hot springs around 2:30. Our 5 hour easy walk had turned into an 8 hour hike from hell. I started crying when I got there. I just could not believe how hard that hike was! There were so many times I just wanted to sit down; I felt like I couldn’t go on. It makes me feel so much empathy for immigrants who have to walk to other countries for their safety or livelihoods, like in Sudan or El Salvador. I felt guilt for the time I kicked my horse in Costa Rica when it was going so slow uphill in the rainforest. A lot of these mountain farmers walk up and down these mountains every day carrying baskets of produce on their heads or backs just to make a few dollars in the markets of Xela…it really put things into perspective.

There was a pool filled with natural water hot from geothermic activity in the valley of these mountains with banana trees and flowers all over…. Once I finally got in, it was amazing. We stayed there for about an hour and a half and had something to eat before we headed back.

Like heaven after the 8 hour hike from hell….

The girls got to ride direct in a car (although there were 9 of us in a 5-seater, it was a welcome relief to the alternative – a bus where we wouldn’t get a seat. They threw the boys in the back of a pick up and transferred them to a bus! We were thinking machismo culture is good for something!

But of course, we only have one key to our apt and Mig had it and I didn’t even think about it. So I arrived before him and sat in the doorway stoop like a drunk bum with my head in my lap until he walked up the street and opened the door to 3 flights of stairs….but THEN, THEN, I was able to lay down, to stop my body. I slept from 6:30pm to 10:30am, getting up an hour for dinner and again for breakfast.

Suffice to say THAT will never happen again. It was incredible and I wouldn’t mind doing a few hours of a hike like that, but I have learned the limits of my body. Miguel had a blast and can’t wait for his next hike. He wasn’t even sore the next day. C’est la vie!

 

Well, we’re finally here! After a 7-week hiatus in the US, we’ve arrived in Queztaltenango (Xela for short) in Guatemala.

Xela (Shay-la) is the second largest city in Guatemala and at 1 1/2 miles above sea level, it’s a beautiful mountain town. We choose to move over to Guatemala, instead of going back to Costa Rica, for a variety of reasons: cost of living and Spanish schools, cultural exposure, volunteer opportunities, country dynamics, less tourism, etc.

Xela is a perfect blend of past and present, with winding cobblestone streets and lots of outdoor markets. There’s not a lot of touristy stuff here, so the foreigners living here are long-term volunteers or Spanish learners – a very cool group of people so far. There’s a beautiful, huge, old cathedral in the center of town. At the same time, it has a ton of modern stuff – movie theaters, wi-fi coffee shops, bookstores, salsa clubs, gyms. Almost no one speaks English, so I’m confident my Spanish is going to get better faster. 

It’s always disorienting to settle into a new place. The elevation we’re at has proved to cause some shortness of breath and fatigue (we’re operating with 40% less oxygen than you get at sea level), but your body adjusts. It’s mid-60 during the day but drops into the 50’s at night — and no, they don’t have heaters here so we’re cold pretty much all the time. It rains every single day. We’re adjusting to life without drinkable water (we boil sink water to use for drinking water), without heaters, without cars, and without as much oxygen as we’re used to having.  

But life here proves to be amazing every day. Mayan ways are still the norm here – over 50% of the population are indigenous Mayans – the women still wear traditional clothes and carry baskets of food on their heads. The customs of the culture is extremely conservative. NO ONE wears tank tops or short skirts. Relations between men and women are very formal. The Mayans believe that if a man touches a woman’s hand, she will become pregnant immediately…suffice to say there’s not as much hand shaking here as in the US! Women who live with men before they’re married are considered prostitutes, so – ahem – Miguel and I are “married” for all intensive purposes down here….

The people are incredibly friendly, saying hello as you pass by and helping in any way. The streets are filled with activity, colors, songs and community activities. Church services are blared from speakers during the day and Spanish music is blared from the clubs or radios all night. It’s a city in constant, life-affirming movement. We had our first salsa lesson Monday in a cramped studio with peeling red and pink paint, a cement floor, a very LOUD boom box, and some awesome dancers. It was a blast! 

There was a festival this weekend for the patron saint of Xela, the Virgen del Rosario – and people were out by the thousands for the street fair. Cannons and fireworks have been going off around the city both in celebration and also to “announce” mass. We saw a Guatemalan feminist group play some great music on Saturday night, which was really cool. I went to mass in the cathedral on Sunday which would have broken every single component of US fire code. It’s a city where you can see a movie and then drink wine in a dimly lit cafe all night but wake up to the sound of a crowing rooster and a woman washing clothes by hand in the small square of grass near the house next door……..

Everything from handmade clothes to rent to food is incredibly cheap from my perspective. You can get 12 plantains for $2, a cucumber for $.10, a bottle of good wine for $3. However, the global food crisis, and the current financial crisis is hitting very hard here. My teacher told me that two years ago, meat was very expensive but beans and rice and veggies were very cheap. Now, she says the vegetables and beans cost the same as the meat! Families can not feed themselves. Most people make 20 Queztales a day (which is a little less than $3 a day) but a pound of beans is 15 Queztales, so you can see the problem…. Guatemala’s economy is tied very closely to the US. They are not receiving as much money sent back from family members in the states. Imports and exports are down. I hope to be learning more about all of this while we’re here. It’s a wake up call for us.

I’m currently taking 4 hours of private Spanish lessons a day and Miguel is taking one hour. The Spanish school is a blast and very personal. All the teachers are incredibly friendly and always joking. Everyone at the school takes 1-1 classes. Class starts like 20 minutes late every day – which I love. We do fun stuff too – if you want to go somewhere for class, you can just tell your teacher. Yesterday, all of us went to the bakery together where I bought the yummiest bread I’ve ever eaten and then stopped by the family’s house where one of the students is staying and saw the house and talked to the mother for a bit. Today, my teacher took me through the market. Tomorrow, Miguel, our teacher and I are going to cook rellenitos,a type of food with beans and plantain. It’s really fun!

Our apartment is actually rented through the Spanish school. We live on the 4th floor of the Spanish school and with half of our walls being glass windows, our view is incredible! It’s absolutely gigantic and we have 2 bedrooms, one of which we converted into an office for Mig. We have a microwave and TV too (a big luxury) so we hosted a presidential debate party last night for our new friends at the school. About 10 people came, which is pretty much the whole school, and we crammed into our living room, played debate bingo and ate beans, guacamole, tortillas, and oreos.

I can hardly believe my good luck.

-Sara

Here’s a video from our last week in Costa Rica, but I just got around to uploading it now…

This was by far the best thing we did in Costa Rica!!! We went to an eco-lodge called Selva Bananito (which is an environmentally friendly tourism business) for an all-day horsebackriding adventure through the rainforest. This lodge is doing reforestation, which means they are setting aside a portion of their farm to plant native trees in hopes to reverse the damage that illegal (and legal) logging has done to erode the rainforest.

Deforestation is a major problem in central/south america (and actually a huge problem in North America, in the south, although we don’t hear about it as much). I didn’t realize this, but clear-cutting just a small portion of forests puts out more CO2 into the atmosphere than all the cars in the world. All the legislation Congress can pass about carbon emission caps on cars is just a fraction of the solution to climate change – initiating reforestation and stopping clearcutting is the larger percentage of the problem.

Forests are CO2 sinks (they absorb CO2 – which is the stuff that depletes the ozone) in addition to outputting lots of oxygen, they hold drinking water supplies for millions of people in their root systems, they prevent soil erosion, and they keep bio-diversity in tact.

Why do people cut down forests? 

1) for valuable and rare wood. Lots of illegal cutting and trading of endangered species of trees happens in developing countries who are desperate for money. So something you can do is make sure you aren’t purchasing products made from wood that is on the endangered species list.

2) for more cattle-grazing land. Raising cattle is a prosperous business and cattle need a lot of land. You could feed many more people on earth by growing wheat or corn in large field than by raising cattle – but the demand for meat is up. Something you can do is lower your meat consumption. Cut meat out of one or two meals a week.

3) for consumer products. Another problem is companies introducing non-native tree species into a country to grow for mass production. For instance, in Chile, paper companies have planted thousands of pine trees (not native to Chile) which has thrown off their bio-systems, caused soil erosion, and endangered wildlife, not to mention the pollution these companies output into Chilean soil and water. Our consumption is unsustainable. The majority of forests are cut down so that WE can have STUFF – paper, furniture, fences, ect. Something you can do is try to use less STUFF in general. Switch to cloth napkins or cloth dishtowels instead of paper. Check out books from the library instead of buying everything new.

Alright so that’s my soapbox. Costa Rica really changed my outlook on the environment. Seeing the beauty of the rainforest firsthand and of land that is undeveloped (hard to come by in the US) has really lit a fire in me on the urgency of it all.

Well, here I am. It’s our last full day in Costa Rica. Appropriately, it’s storming – thundering and lightening. I’m going to take a picture from my computer of what I’m looking at right now…..

We’re at a hostel in San Jose. It’s 7am and I’m drinking coffee and watching backpackers from around the world sleepily make breakfast: corn flakes, coffee, and bread and butter. 

I hear French, German, Dutch, and English around me. Some of us here are just beginning a journey, some of us are ending one.

I’m going to attempt to spend my day visiting the United Nations University of Peace, which is a 40 minute bus ride outside the city. I’m looking into the sustainable development masters program there….I’ll write more on that later.

It’s hard to put it into words what we’ve learned from our time in CR. I’ve relaxed (somewhat) for probably the first time in 10 years. It was a really good chance for us to talk about our future together. We gleaned some insight into a different part of the world and that always changes the way you think. There will be images permanently burned into my imagination: a mother with 4 children and a dalmation on the beach, the views at Arenal Lake, a man pushing a red fruit cart up a steep hill, breakdancing on the street in San Jose, families flying kites in the park, sunsets from a rock jutting into the ocean, Gabrielle’s laughter in Spanish class, children making up little skits, a street vendor who’s wife died 2 years ago, empanadas and churros through glass windows, cards on the porch with Dana, the screeching howls of monkeys above us, beautiful dreads, bikes on dirt roads, rain, rain, rain, starfish in crystal clear ocean water, a border crossing on foot, cumbia all night long on an outdoor patio, coconut palms, horses walking in the street, people’s faces – floating in and out of our lives seemlessly. And all of these things have changed us in indescribable ways….

Tomorrow, we fly to the US for 7 weeks.  And Costa Rica, which feels so large and so immediate right now, will begin feel far away again….

We’ll be in Magnetic Springs OH from Aug 10-17.

Miggy is going to Florida from Aug 17-24.

Sam and Chris’s wedding is Sept 27.

Unfortunately, we’re not going to make it to DC this time. The rest of the time is for — WEDDING PLANNING!!!!!! As you can imagine, it’s a little hard to plan a wedding from Central America. We hope to have everything done by the time we leave on Sept 30. 

See you in the States!!!!!!!

- Sara

 

I’m really going to miss my morning coffee, nature and writing on my computer at 6am…. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It’s still gorgeous even when it rains.

 

 

 

 

ps – Miggy just woke up – he wants to say hi too!

My busy corporate bee – he’s always working! (and always has that cute smile on his face. That’s why I loooooooove him!!!)

Everyone who travels for an extended period of time walks away with something they will never take for granted again. Be it bagels and cream cheese or toilet seats, there is a moment when you realize the true worth of the things you’ve always had.

For me, it’s paved roads. Beautiful, glorious paved roads. Who thought of pouring concrete into a ditch in the ground so wheels could roll over it easier? I’d like to shake that person’s hand.

What a great idea! Paved roads don’t get muddy and sloppy in the rain. The water glosses over them and the concrete stays hard instead of turning into a sloppy, mushy mess. Wow!

Hills + Dirt roads + Rainy season = no fun
Nalisio is trying to conquer the muddy mountain, but he can’t. Muddy roads devour all who try to cross them….

Paved roads aren’t bumpy. Instead of killing your shocks, brakes, and bikes like dirt roads, paved roads only get potholes sometimes. But mostly, they are waaaaaay drivable. Really. People don’t realize how extremely wonderful it is, even on the most potholed of paved roads. I’ll never complain about construction work on the highways again.

This road is BumPy!

Paved roads are not dusty. You can walk on one, and when a large bus passes by, no dust gets in your face! Brilliant!

You can ride bikes really fast on paved roads. A 5 minute bike ride on a paved road translates into a 20 minute bike ride on a dirt road. On paved roads, you aren’t afraid that you’re going to hit a bump and the chain doesn’t fall off every 5 minutes because of how bumpy the road is.

I wonder what this sloth thinks about these pot holes? I bet he doesn’t mind being slowed down by them. But I do. 

You can get places faster and with more comfort on a paved road. In the USA, it takes an hour to drive 60 miles. In Costa Rica, it takes an hour and a half or two. It’s quieter riding on a paved road and the bus rides aren’t jaw-dropping, spine-tingling, or bone-jarring. This means people get less headaches on paved roads. Very cool!

Aren’t paved roads great!? Wow!

Dana exhibits biking on a dirt (mud) road.

Dirt roads are nice for horses, but not as nice for people.

My girlfriend Dana came down to visit us for these past 3 weeks. It was awesome having her. The thing I’ve missed the most down here is having good friends and family around. Miguel magically fit his work into all the gaps, like he always does. He’s amazing. 

On July 15, my 3-month tourist visa was expired and in order to renew it, I had to leave the country for 72 hours. So the three of us headed for Panama.

Our friend, Josh, whom we met in school in San Jose, was also going to Panama. He came into Puerto Viejo to meet up with us, ended up getting dengue fever, but he still wanted to go to Panama. The whole trip he was….well, sick. Sick in the bathroom, on the beach, in the boat. It wasn’t pretty. But he really hung in there all week. 

The border is just an hour bus ride from where we were in CR. We got off the bus, walked up a hill and there it was: Panama.

It looked just like Costa Rica. Go figure.

We got our passports stamped, payed $5 and walked across a long, rickety wooden bridge that had gaps the size of New Jersey. It was raining, so the wood on the bridge was wet and slippery and Dana and I are afraid of heights. I really thought we were going to fall through into the river; we were stepping so carefully! Meanwhile, elderly woman carrying huge bags of rice and children skipping over the bridge to school were passing us.

It was all very anti-climatic. Crossing the Panama/Costa Rica border on foot made me realize how totally insane our Mexico border situation is. To think of putting a wall between two countries!!! Physically, it just doesn’t make sense.

So the whole process looked like this: we took a taxi into town, took a bus to the border, cross into Panama on foot. Once in Panama, we take the scariest van ride of my life (60 miles an hour around mountain curves) to a port city and hop on a 45-minute water taxi to Bocas del Toro, islands off the Caribbean coast of Panama. Once in Bocas, we walked around until we found a place to stay. That whole process took us 3 1/2 hours. Amazingly easy.

Costa Rica is incredibly beautiful, but these islands in Panama take the cake for the most gorgeous place I’ve ever seen. Like any other beautiful place in the world, overdevelopment is rampant and I expect the whole place will look like Fort Lauderdale in 10 years and totally suck. But as of now, it’s still got a lot of local flair and the beaches are pristine, the water crystal clear. Boats are the primary way to get around and most of the families still travel in dug-out wooden canoes.

I can now say I’ve officially made up for all of those times I went on service trips during Spring Break instead of Cancun or Ocean City like everyone else in college. There was a party every night, we were jumping into the back of pick up trucks, swimming in the rain with starfish, Miggy was rocking his fro, and there were people from all over the world chilling on sunny beaches. I felt like MTV was going to show with a boat full of equipment and start filming at any minute….

The video is a compilation of the entire week, a little out of order…..

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When we got back to Costa Rica, it started torrential rains for 5 days straight (I think because of Dolly?) and we were stuck in the house. So we played a lot of cards. And took pictures of ourselves.

 

 

 

 

 

More to come on Dana’s visit!

Ciao for now – S

I would be remiss if I didn’t add a post about football – the sport of choice in Latin America…..

Well, we’re finally here — Puerto Viejo! It’s the south Caribbean side of the country. This is where I had wanted to begin our adventure, but it didn’t work out for various reasons…I’ve been so excited to come here!

You can see we’re very close to the Panama border now – just 40 minutes away. So we’re going to take a trip there next week actually, because I need to renew my tourist visa! 

Back in the day, when the railroads were being built (so I’m thinking 1800-1900’s), many Jamaicans came over here to work, which makes sense – Jamaica is the closest country to CR on the Caribe side. So did a lot of Chinese, which makes no sense. But that’s what south caribbean Costa Rica is today: Chinese and Jamaican. But way more Jamaican. It’s a different Costa Rica over here. It’s also breathtakingly beautiful, like the rest of the country…..

The Jamaicans really held onto their own culture. The food is Caribbean style; they have Caribe patis, not Spanish empanadas. Many people in the town speak the broken English of Jamaica AND Spanish, and it’s mixed throughout conversations. They play reggae everywhere, not as much salsa or Spanish music. The people are darker, the town is much poorer – and consequently, the government does not take care of this side of the country like the rest. 

All along the Caribbean coast, the schools don’t have arts programs, and many don’t have English teachers because the gov’t won’t fund them. This is not true of the rest of the country. And not learning English in this country condemns you to a life of crappy jobs, like being a janitor or selling fruit on the street.

I spent my first week here taking one-on-one Spanish classes with a really amazing woman. She taught me a lot about the town, the politics going on here, the problems with tourism, and linked me up with to start volunteering in the town at these theater workshops, which are intended to help counter the problem of no arts programs in the school. There is a volunteer from Scotland, Morbin, a 21 year old theater major, who has come to run them. She spent the past year working in an orphanage in Peru and now she’s in CR for 2 months to run theater workshops in this poor, little, fishing town. And holy cow, does she do a good job.

The classes are held in town at a children’s center called Pro Nino. When I say “town”, I mean a cluster of about 30 stores, restaurants, grocery stores and hotels all aimed at English-speaking tourists and mostly owned by Europeans and Americans. When I say “childrens center”, I mean a one-room ruckety wood building across from the town’s center, which is – of course – the soccer field. This town is tiny and poor….

Pro Nino is a wooden rectangle, with open windows which have heavy wooden shutters over them on the inside. Everyday, we open the shutters and hook them to the ceiling with chains so that fresh air can waft inside. The paint on the walls is pepto bismal pink, which is peeling and dirty and there wooden bookshelves line the walls with random second-hand English language books (probably the donation of a well-intending American church or school) that lay dusty and untouched. There are a few broomsticks and a torn up piece of what looks like packing foam, that the kids utilize in endless ways as props in their skits. There are wooden tables and some chairs that look like it’s about time to replace them, but I have a feeling they will be in this place for many many years to come. Surely, in the shape they are in, they would have been replaced years ago in the United States.

Everywhere wood, wood, wood…

One of the plentiful natural resources in Costa Rica is its wood. And it has beautiful types of woods and amazing craftsmanship. They have wood here that is green, yellow, pink, dark maroon – it’s incredible. However, the really pretty artisan wood pieces are only enjoyed OUT of the country – as souveneirs for tourists, because most locals would never be able to afford them. The locals use wood for practical stuff. Everywhere you go, everything you can think of is wood – the curtain rods, the napkin holders, the oxcarts, the fruit stands, the soccer goalposts, the shelving, the bed frames, the counters. It’s varnished, polished, natural, painted. I didn’t realize how much plastic, metal, leather, and soft cushy stuffing we use for our furniture in the States. Here, the furniture is wood. Just like the houses. If you have some more money, your house is a concrete square. And the standard of living is pretty high compared to most lower-income countries, BUT there’s still a lot of wooden shacks with tin roofs around in the country.

Wood: it’s one of the things that defines the way this country feels. It’s everywhere, it’s solid. It’s beautiful. It’s something I already know I will miss when we’re gone…..

But I digress. The children. They are amazing. Dynamic, creative, funny, shy one minutes and explosive the next. I’ve heard it said that children are the only language in the world we all understand, and I think that’s true.

Morbin creates 2-hour “lesson plans” every day and these kids come to life within the peeling pink walls of Pro Nino. She intermixes simple games like Duck, Duck Goose, counting games and things like Red Rover with mini acting scenes (like – get into groups of 3. One person is angry, one is sad and one is happy. Now, make up a story with these three people and act it out in front of the group.) She changes really quickly. The kids have a super low attention span and will literally wander in and out of the place during the workshops. The minute the energy level feels low, she switches into another game or acting sequence. We are LOUD!!!

We walk around, pretending to be old, young, adolescent, angry, sad, happy, dogs, cats, babies, fathers, mothers, teachers. The kids act out their dreams and their imaginations, their laughter trailing behind everything…..

The kids are youngish: 7-12 years old usually show up. Any older, and they are too cool. Any younger, and they don’t understand, although many young kids wander in and out during a session too – to watch, to hang out with their older siblings, to be held for a while. The kids are WILD. There is a much different sense of what’s socially acceptable. They never wear their shoes. They eat fruit during classes and throw seeds at each other in the nanoseconds of downtime.  They feel free to come late, or leave and come back. They hit each other regularly. They climb everything. They are much more spontaneous than our kids back home seem to be – they just let their emotions explode. They play rough, but no one really gets hurt. They are competitive and rough when they play!

In contrast, the adolescents in town are you know, adolescents….how quick they change! They are quiet, unassured, too cool for everything, obsessed with image, etc…..It’s hard to think these little ones I’ve been spending time with will end up like that!

Anyway, I’m supposed to be focusing on my Spanish during these classes. I understand about 75% of what’s going on (mostly because people are always acting it out while they’re talking). Miggy understands everything and is totally amazing with them and is probably the only man within a 100 mile radius that would spend his time volunteering with kids. It’s been a great way to get to know the culture here.

You can tell a lot about a place by the condition of their kids….

-S

I think Arenal Lake is the prettiest place we’ve visited in Costa Rica….and by far the most beautiful thing we did was horsebackriding in the mountains above the lake – in the rain. It was really amazing, raining off and on, at times hazy and at times clearing up. These photos were all taken by a professional photographer and they turned out beautiful! The rest of Miggy’s siblings had gone home, so it was just Arleen, Teddy, Miggy and I.

We had a great day – and (OF COURSE!) here’s our video! This small format really does not do it justice, so you’ll have to do some improvising while you watch this.

-S