walking on hot coals

walking on hot coals
Current mood: tired
Category: Travel and Places

the dogs still run in mexico, and sleep on top of mountains

I left San Pedro de languna together with David, my spanish friend. We took a shuttle bus out of there heading Antigua. My friend Patrick I met in mexico city had told me to go to the Black cat hostel(because the food was so good...)

la laguna :D

David- :D

On the bus we met 2 more spanish guys, so it soon turned into a spanish castelan speaking party... much harder to understand than south american spanish and sometimes a little fruity, lispy sound. Anyhow, cool dudes.
I hung out with them and David for a few days in antigua, made some more friends and climbed a volcano together with david.
that was freaking awesome, I got to be as close as 2 meters from the burning lava, and form now and then huge chunks of burning coal dropped down the mountain and you had to be seriously careful not to be in their paths... wicked!

David lighted a joint up there, as if he probably did this everytime he went some place special. The sun was setting and the sky was amazing. As we walked back with the group to hike back to the bus (it had been an hour an a half hike up the mountain), we saw the red hot lava on the mountainside!
Two lesbian girls that were in our group shocked our mexican guides as they kissed up that mountain, they're not used to this out here yet. We overlooked Guatemala citynight lights from that mountain. As we got down from the mountain there was a maria de guadelupe procession going on, catholicism sure is colourful out here!

I left Antigua one morning, together with a bunch of Israeli kids I had met. Nice people but when they start speaking hebrew, they're a pretty closed group.
We took a chicken bus to Guatemala city, I had a nice chat on the bus with a local Guatemalan girl that studied philosphy in Guatemala city. She had a kid already and showed me some pictures. She was nice and told us where to get off and she got us a cab. The cab took us to a cheap shuttle place that took us to Coban. We arrived around % and took another shuttle to the small town of lanquin. We got us a bed at the hostel/cabana place.
The town was very small but it had the Semuc champey and bat caves nearby so that was a reason for there to be a hostel.

Apparently Israeli people like guatemala and even in a small city like lanquin you could thell their influence. The small restaurant served typical Jewish food and there were tiendas and hotels called shalom and the such.
My jewish friends explained to me that after their army service (which starts at 18, for both boys and girls), they usually travell a while, and that guatemala is a favourite destination.
I hung out a while at that hostel and I visited Semuc Champey and went for a swimming cave excursion, where we had to swim holding a candle in one hand!! Pretty hard not to get your candle extinguished, and if you did it was hard getting it going again. It was pretty cool and scary though! Me and 2 others kind of wandered off too far as the group was retreating already, we didn't know it was the end of the tour and we weren's supposed to go further... and we only had 2 more candles going among the four of us, scary! so slightly nervous we swam back hoping not to kill our flames. We got back though...

After Lanquin I went to flores and got myself a bed at the los amigos hostel, a nice place run by 2 dutch guys and their wives.. I think. nice people

I went for a sunrise tour to tikal the other morning and had to get up at 3 to take the bus and get to tikal early enough. We climbed temple four that overlooked the jungle surrounding tikal and watched the sunrise.
even though it was misty and cloudy it was still an awesome experience. Everybody in the gorup was quiet and we heard the sounds of the jungle. Holler monkeys, toucans. Visiting tikal was Awesome and we saw a bunch of wildlife. It's still pretty wild out here!

I'll leave it with this for now, I'm feeling tired and slightly uninspired to go into much detail. I haven's had too much sleep lately.
I'll catch up with all of you later... excuse me for not writing better or more.

much love

steven

another borderline

Current mood: full
Category: Writing and Poetry

hi ya'll,

after i pulled out of puerto escondido, mostly because i couldn't stand the heat anymore. I went to San cristobal, and made a little stop in Pochutla (nothing really interesting there). I took the night bus to San cristobal and had a good sleep.. When I arrived in san cristobal in the morning, it was cool and the air felt fresh. The air was cloudy and I could almost sense a bit of winter. I kind of liked the town...
After 5 minutes of walking around i got approached by a young lad promoting a youth hostel, 40 pesos a night, i thought that was alright and went along. Upon arriving at the hostel I was greated by a bunch of very friendly mexican kids, that soonbecame good friends and wanted me to play guitar for them. I hung out with Serge, Cuahtemoc and Manuel and this really nice girl whose name i forgot... ok my bad, but after a while it's hard to remember every name.
It was my birthday the next day and we went out like crazy at a bunch of cool bars in san cristobal. The guy that had brough me to the hostel earlier turned out to be kind of pushy though, he wanted me to come along to a bunch of place where i was ofcourse supposed to buy him beers and food and stuff. My other mexican friends warned me about him, and before the night was through he was on his way and left me alone. I met him a couple of times later on, i'm sure he's alright, just a bit of a hustler..

Anyhow, i partied my way into my birthday together with a bunch of mexicans and a belgian dude from Gits I met at 'mama africa', a pretty cool bar in san cristobal, that sadly had to close. I got to go to the last party they held. the bar was ran by two awesome swedish girls that had built the place up form the ground, but now the owner of the building wanted them out, he'd seen the succes they had and probably wanted to get in on that... Asshole(cabron in spanish). Sad!
My birthday was pretty col, a nice fresh and sunny morning, I started out with having coffee and just hanging round san cristobal. Bought myself some new pants, all my others are getting kind of scruffy... I went for a nice vegetarian buffet and felt like an idiot to be treating myself so well. :D anyhow it has to be done sometimes.

I enjoyed the loneliness that night as I went to the supermarket by myself and bought some yoghurt.
That was an awesome sentence! Anyhow I was pretty beat form the night before and head to bed. Played some guitar and slept well. The next day I hung around san cristobal again trying to get my credit card to work again. It had been failing me for the last weeks and I was getting seriously worried. The day before I had bought some presents and a pants, and therefore I was starting to run low on cash. Luckily my dad helped me out and sent me some money with western union. I was hoping the next day being another month my card would work again... it didn't! so a bunch of skype phonecalls later and a lot of running around, ny dad phoned visa and got things straightened out.
There is something quite upsetting when shit like that don't work.

I had been stolen my small bag in mexico city, which sadly contained my travel book, with tons of email adresses recipes, clues and music to check out. And I was afraid I had put my visa number in there too... so somebody might have got all the money off and that was what i was afraid of... anyhow it wasn't so and i once again observed the paranoiac potential of my own mental constitution... and i know that it's better to take things easy, they will turn out... but i didn't back then.

anyhow, i went to see a movie about the zapatista movement in chiapas and i was seriously touched to see the imagery of the women trying to keep the mexican military out. It is a very sad history of how badly indigenous people have been treated in Chiapas and throughout mexico. i'm afraid the rest of America isn't much better... hmm
It is awesome though that this movement is still so very active and has managed to maintain a couple of autonomous counties in chiapas. it is a very admirable cause!! There was a zapatista gathering/party while i was in san cristobal, but sadly i didn't know of it untillit was over.
On saturday I went to a sweat lodge a little outside of town. The ritual was beautifully done, and being in that steaming dark hut, hearing all the chanting, is quite something special. For you that don't know what a sweat lodge is, it is a native american ceremony/purification ritual where you spend a few hours in a firmly enclosed hut, with rocks that have been heated in a fire and where they pour water on and put medicinal plants on. SO it's a bit like a sauna, only heavier, and with singing in the dark... pretty heavy really.

When I came out a few hours later, it was dark and the stars were pretty, we rinsed ourselves off and put fresh clothes on. And sat by the fire, where the leading person of the ceremony talked for a while in spanish... i didn't really understand much. For some reason some of my scepticism came up, I've been around the new age community before, and even though i like them a lot, i sometimes have cynical moods about them taking things so seriously. Or themselves... It is pretty funny though :D People are awesome, in all their different forms. but the trickster in me keeps me going the other way. Maybe it's good to give some compensatory leverage to all that selfconviced theorising... :D

Anyhow, I'm in guatemala now. In San pedro, a little town along the lake Atitlan. It is amazingly beautiful around here, mountains, lakes and volcanoes. The multicoloured evening skies with it's hues of pink and orange, blue and starlit evening clouds carrying mayan face imagery and eagleshapes. I had to take a lancha (or boat) to get to san pedro from panajachel one evening. It dawned on me that I was heading for home in a month, and somehow it seemed too short. And i though about cancelling my plane ticket and just going to see south america. There is a whole world down there I'm sure and this was just the tip of the iceberg. So much to see and experience...
I do long for home though and to see my brothers and family again, but there's a voice whispering in my other ear that i shouldn't bail out on this.
But i can always come back, although it is sometimes tricky not to get stuck again...

I'm staying at a nice little motel called casa Emannuel. the little boy whose the son of the owner is a real business man already. He's cute and slightly overweight. And he gets angry at the other guests if they walk across the floor he just mopped. :D I pay 20 quetzales a night, which is a little less than 2 euros. Food and drinks are extremely cheap out here, and yesterday I went out for breakfast, lunch and supper... I went a little overboard with the food i know, but i still didn't spend more on all of it than 5 euros or something. The beers and margaritas and rum at the bar were a little more expensive. I hung out with my spanish friend David and a very nice american gentleman in his forties that goes by the mane of Bill. We all stay at the same motel.
The first night I arrived I played them songs all night, it was a good vibe and even people passing by the motel came in to listen to me play. We had a bunch of beers...

Anyhow I'm gonna leave it with this for now and have me anothert nice coffee and do some reading in my book with the collection of CG Jungs works, I love that book. It helps me to keep sane, or become more sane... we'll see.
It's a nice day in guatemala and I hope to do some swimming this afternoon.

Much love you guys and girls all over the planes and planet.
Dream on

steven

ps: i quit drinking for a while and no more sleeping pills either! I wanna be fresh and clear in the head, and I enjoy taking it easy and reading. mexico was heavy on the liver... xx