Alia wrote the following story to her family and friends in early 2011, right after arriving from our backpacking journey all across Mexico and Central America.
Hello to all of you in the first world,
I have finally joined you in modern civilization, having
just reached Spain. There will be no more cold showers and bucket
toilets for me. I say,
"Adios," to beans, rice, and fried chicken for dinner. My clothes will no longer be washed in a sink
and dried on the bedpost.
I have indeed entered the land of milk and honey.
Now, if I have made a mistake, and you are not in the first
world, you have my best wishes. If you
are not in the first world, I guess you must be in the third world, because I
really have no idea where the second world might be.
If you happen to know where the second world is, please
don't keep this information to yourself.
I have been scratching my head over the issue for quite some time.
But, I digress...
In these last months I have explored eight countries, and
the beauties that reside within them. I
saw bustling cities, ancient ruins, and quaint colonial towns. My lunch was taken under waterfalls, and my
supper accompanied by the music of crashing waves. The landscapes were diverse, as well as the
people.
I began my journey in Mexico, and if I was left with any
impression of the country, it would be: Mexico is huge. Of the three months I spent in Latin America, two of those months were devoted to Mexico.
Mexico
is culturally diverse, and every region has its own style. The traditional clothing varies greatly. In northern and central states, you may see
women in beautiful, flowing dresses, going to celebrate with customary
dances. On the Yucatan Peninsula
you will see tiny Mayan women in beautifully embroidered shirts, while the
Mayans in the south wear woolen skirts and simple shirts. There is also a multitude of different foods.
In Puebla you can go and fill your belly with
maggot tacos, or have an amazing chicken sandwich called a cemita. All over the country, the people love mole, a
rich sauce made of chocolate. The people
are very proud of their culture, and often do their best to ensure you enjoy it
as well.
There is a dichotomy to their pride though. While they are proud of their culture, many
are also ashamed of the color of their skin.
Quite a few Mexicans I met would speak very negatively about anyone with
darker skin than them. There were even
more people who would see me – a blonde and blue-eyed girl – and say to my
husband, “Ah, you’re improving the race.”
It was depressing to hear them speak about themselves as if the color of
their skin made them inferior.
Despite the inferiority complex present in Mexico, the people are very
generous. Throughout our whole journey
in Latin America, we used a website called
CouchSurfing, and this was particularly useful in Mexico. This website allows you to contact people to
stay with, and creates really great opportunities for travelers. You not only get to stay somewhere for free,
you get to meet locals, have dinner with them, or even go out for a walk. We met many amazing people along the way, as
well as making life-long friends.
We stayed with many people in Mexico, much more than in any other
country. The first month of our trip, we
only stayed in one hostel for one night.
The people we stayed with were so eager to show us a good time, they
often went well beyond what they needed to do.
They took us on hikes, fed us regional delicacies, and spent long
evenings talking with us.
One man even took us out for a night of partying, which
turned out to be less than pleasurable. We
thought it might be an interesting change from what we were doing normally, and
accompanied our host to Cholula,
a little town in Puebla. Cholula
is famous in Mexico
for being a party town: with a huge area solely devoted to clubs. We did not go out until around midnight, when my husband and I were already
tired, and did not leave the clubs till four in the morning.
Our host was already acting a fool, totally drunk and
belligerent. We managed to get some
minimal sleep at his friend’s house, but finally got up around nine in the
morning. There, in the living room, was
our drunken host. He was even more
hammered, and it was impossible to understand him. He kept getting more beer, and his friends
did nothing to stop him. They just sat
back and watched as he continued to embarrass himself.
The rest of the day was spent trying to convince him to take
us to his parents – as he had told us he would.
It was a long and frustrating day, and by the time it was over, I had
lost all respect for this man. We were
regretful of our decision to join him, and glad when he passed out. I will forever be afraid of Cholula.
Every time I hear the name, I shudder.
We spent some lovely days with other hosts too. We stayed with two lovely families later
on. One of these families had a little
four year old boy, who was a pleasure to hang around with. He was very interested in tae kwon do, and
terrorized their little Chihuahua
with his kicks. We also stayed with a
very successful electronic engineer and his grandmother. She was a little senile, and this made things
interesting. She was very concerned
about when we were leaving, and was constantly asking when we were going. When we did finally leave, she was incredibly
pleased. Good experiences with our hosts
far outnumbered the bad.
The landscapes of Mexico are as diverse as its people. In the northern and central regions, you can
walk amongst giant cacti, and pick their ripe, red fruit. There are beautiful coasts, with amazing
swimming in the Caribbean, and good surfing in
the Pacific. But, swimming in the
Pacific is violent. You must be careful
when swimming in the Pacific, because you’ll get picked up by a wave, and
smashed against the beach before you even put your foot in the water. There are also plentiful pine and broadleaf
forests to hike in. In the high
mountains of Oaxaca,
you can hike through the cloud forest, where there are abundant epiphytes, and
plentiful mosquitoes. Also, in the forests
along the Guatemalan border, you can see howler monkeys, and even more easily,
hear them. This region is also vital
habitat for the scarlet macaw, which you will occasionally see gliding high above
the canopy.
There are many colonial towns such as Guanajuato. This town is nestled in a giant bowl;
completely surrounded by mountains. To
enter the town, you must go through one of the many tunnels built under the
surrounding mountains. Arriving there is
quite surreal, and the beauty of the town makes the experience even more
magical.
There are even more ancient ruins than colonial towns, and
if you spend enough time in Mexico,
and go to quite a few of them, you will surely be ruined. The most interesting ruin in Mexico
is in the south-east, and is very difficult to get to unless you have a
car. It is called Calakmul, and when you
climb to the top of its many pyramids, you see nothing but forest for miles
around.
We were dropped off at the exit to Calakmul by a Mexicano
named Jaime. Jaime is a truck driver, as
well as the coolest guy in southern Mexico. Jaime gave us a ride in his semi for over 200 kilometers;
about a three hour drive. He treated us
to coffee, and even let us sleep in his truck’s extra bed. Jaime was one of the best rides we have ever
gotten, and he will always be in our minds.
Calakmul was the last thing I saw in Mexico before entering Belize. I had no idea what kind of culture shift was
ahead of me when I crossed that border, but it didn’t take long for me to
figure it out.
Just a few miles from Mexico, Latinos were no longer the
prominent ethnicity. Now there were tons
of Chinese immigrants; Hindi’s were taking their children to the park; Garifuna
could be heard on every corner; and there were actually white people. Belize was clearly a very different
world.
Practically all the grocery stores and restaurants are owned
by the Chinese, and despite the fact that it is the national language; most of
them don’t speak, or speak very little English.
The Chinese have quite a bit of power in the sense that they are the
business owners, but they are also treated very poorly by the other
ethnicities. I heard both the Latinos
and Garifuna come to the windows of these stores, and demand very rudely
whatever good they wanted. “Hey China,”
they would scream at the little women behind the bars of the window. It was pretty obvious the Chinese kept to
themselves, and who could blame them.
Immensely different from Mexico, was the abundance of
Garifuna. The Garifuna are the
descendents of African slaves that were abandoned by the British and French on
these little Caribbean islands. They had no food or water, and were dying
rapidly when the French finally gave them some boats. The slaves flooded the coasts of Honduras
and Belize
around the 19 of November, a day they still celebrate. They were all from many different African
tribes, and spoke many languages, but eventually began to speak their own. They have a very uniquely Carribean accent,
and to illustrate what this is like, imagine Miss Cleo, the famous TV fortune
teller.
The food in Belize
is rather limited, especially if you like to travel cheap. Unless you go and buy an expensive meal, you
will most likely eat: (1) Chinese food; or (2) fried chicken. If you don’t like these, well, you can always
go get a burger off the street, which I wouldn’t recommend for obvious
reasons.
The beaches in Belize are beautiful. One little island, Caye Caulker, just off the
coast from Belize City,
has great people, good seafood, and great swimming holes. The island used to be six miles long until a
hurricane cut it in half. At the point
where it was severed is a deep canal with great swimming. This canal also has lots of fish that will
tickle your feet as they eat the dead skin, or in my case, bite your butt.
By far the best part about Belize is the hitchhiking. Spending one week there, traveling the whole
length of the country, and going through almost every major city, we only
stepped on a bus twice. We even got a
ride from the Patron Saint of Hitchhiking, who took us almost three quarters
the length of the country.
The coastal downpour drove us out of Belize, and into north-eastern Guatemala. Now I was really in the land of the Mayans,
and I soon found out I really didn’t like it.
Guatemala
is rather spoiled. Along with Costa Rica,
Guatemala
is the favorite child of the tourists in Central America. It gets more attention than the other
children, it knows it, and takes advantage of that attention. The Guatemalan government has a very strange
policy of ripping-off tourists. Other
countries may charge a tourist a little more than the nationals to get into
ruins or national parks, but in Guatemala,
they charge you orders of magnitude more.
It is not just the government that will rip you off though. In any money transaction, they will do their
best to suck you dry. We had arguments
with multiple bus drivers who tried to charge us many times more than the
normal fare. We would hear Mayan
merchants tell other Mayans the price of a good, and then be told something
much higher. We even had to accept we
would pay dozens of Quetzales more than the locals to take a water taxi around Lake Atitlan.
Also, many Mayans we interacted with were very rude, and
even insulting. We would try to bargain
with them, and they would curse at us in their own language. Many times we were told we were sick people,
because we tried to walk away without buying something.
The way we were often treated left a very bad taste in our
mouths. We were very displeased with the
pattern that emerged so quickly, and lasted until the very end of our time there. Many times, it was obvious the people thought
we were stupid. It also seemed they
thought we owed them something. Our time
in Guatemala
was like going to somebody’s house, complimenting them for how beautiful it is,
and then being told you would have to buy it.
But, enough of the negative…
The country is beautiful; there is a reason why so many
people go there. There are gorgeous
mountains; beautiful rivers and lakes; and massive volcanoes. North of the capitol, there is a national
park called Semuc Champey. In this
place, a river disappears belowground, and reemerges a few hundred meters
away. Where the river is belowground,
there is a series of crystal clear pools.
You can jump down from pool to pool, dive down in the deep sections, and
relax in the shallows. If you stand
still enough, little fish will come and clean your feet. But, sometimes too big a fish, or too eager a
fish comes, and bites a little too hard.
Also beautiful is Lake
Atitlan. With three dormant volcanoes and many cute
little towns surrounding the lake, it’s easy to spend many days here, and not
even realize it. You can go on hikes up
the volcanoes, walk the roads around the lakes, and visit towns where they make
many handicrafts.
In Atitlan, we stayed with
one man who was very nice, but the experience soon turned sour. We arrived at his place, he gave us a key,
and told us he was going out to party for the weekend. We were there for five days, and he never
came home. His dogs and cat were
freaking out; they had not been fed for many days. I searched for food, finally finding it. They were very thankful.
The day before we left, we came back from a walk to find a
padlock on the outer door. Most houses
have walls around their yards, and usually broken glass on the top to prevent
people from climbing over the top.
Luckily, this particular wall had no glass, so we climbed over in a
flash. We were frustrated and confused
by the situation. First, our host does
not come back, leaving his pets in frenzy.
Then, a lock is put on the door, keeping us from easily retrieving our
belongings.
The next morning, we threw our backpacks over the wall, and
left in a hurry. I had dumped the last
of the dog and cat food into their bowls, and wished them the best. We were very unhappy with the situation, and
it was only going to get worse. We spent
the night two hours away, in Antigua, and
while on a walk around town, I was shocked when I looked into a
restaurant. There was our host, smiling
and laughing as he ate dinner with some friends. He clearly was not going home any time soon.
Before we entered Guatemala, we had made jokes about
what would happen when we left the country.
Mala, in Spanish, means ‘bad,’ and we expected the next countries to be
worse, or ‘peor’, because they would have fewer infrastructures. But, it turned out that Guate-mala is
Guata-peor.
If Guate-mala is
Guate-peor, then El Salvador is mucho mejor.
El Salvador
was, by far, my favorite country in Central America. There are fewer tourists, the people are
incredibly generous, and the food is ridiculously cheap. We saw barely any foreigners while we were in
the country, and those we did see, were residents. Also, the price of food was especially
impressive. Many times, we had an
enormous lunch for only 99 cents.
El
Salvador is incredibly different from Guatemala
culturally. When you cross the border,
all of a sudden, there are no Mayans. In
Guatemala
the Mayan population is dominant, and the traditional dress is abundant, but in
El Salvador
all the Mayans were wiped out. During a
period of revolutionary uprising in the thirties, the government of El Salvador
began to massacre all of the indigenous people.
In hopes of regaining their rights, the Mayans stood up to the
administration. But, to stop this
revolt, the government began a long regime of exterminating the Mayans. As a result, there is basically no indigenous
culture in El Salvador,
which is quite a tragedy to its citizens.
In El
Salvador, there was also the best music we
had heard, and would hear, on a bus. We
spent two hours listening to the great rock and pop of the 80’s, including a
hefty dosage of “Men at Work.”
We were running out of time, having only a couple weeks to
reach Panama City,
so we rushed off to Honduras. We spent very little time, and didn’t do much
in Honduras. The weather on the coast was awful. It rained non-stop while we were there, and
it rained hard.
The only thing we did while we were in the country, was to
visit a parrot sanctuary. Parque de Aves
is located in Copan,
a very touristy town. This park is a
retirement and rehabilitation center for parrots formerly owned by people. Some of them have been given away after their
owners became too old to care for them, and others were rescued from poor
treatment. The birds have a very good
life at the park.
We fled from the rain of Honduras into Nicaragua. The colonial cities of Leon and Granada are beautiful. Granada
is especially nice, located right on Lake Nicaragua,
and just a short bus ride from some old volcanic craters. A good way to spend time around Granada is to take some
busses to the nearby villages and walk through the markets. There are many small towns filled with
locally made handicrafts, and you can find some pretty neat and unique
souvenirs.
Nicaragua
was good to us, except the border crossings.
When both entering and leaving the country, the border officers gave my
husband hell for the condition of his passport.
Having survived almost a decade of American visas, the passport does not
look too well, and the officers noticed this immediately. The first time, they threatened to not let
him enter, and they asked him for a different passport. The second time, they threatened to not let
him leave, and made us sit in an office for almost an hour while numerous
officers thumbed through the pages of his book.
We had never had any trouble in any other country. They did let us leave, but said they were not
sure if Costa Rica
would let us in.
We walked into Costa Rican border control, handed our
passports to the officer, he stamped them, and we walked out. He didn’t even ask us how long we planned to
stay, or where we were going. This
country really knows how to welcome tourists.
Costa
Rica, as I said earlier, is a little
spoiled. But, unlike Guatemala, the people do not expect
tourists to pay many times more than the locals. Costa Rica is expensive, but it is
expensive for everyone.
Costa Rica is one of the most
beautiful of the Central American countries.
Its rolling hills, cloud covered mountains, and fuming volcanoes are
candy for your eyes. In the north, there
is Lake Arenal, which has a looming active
volcano on its southern end. This
volcano was inactive for centuries until 1968 when it catastrophically
exploded. This unexpected eruption
covered several small towns in lava, and killed around 80 people. Today, you can watch the lava flows from a
safe distance, and many tourists come to see this.
Unfortunately, most of our time in Costa Rica
was spent in a room, because my husband contracted a bacterial infection in his
only functioning eye, leaving him completely blind. We spent a few days trying to reduce the
swelling, but soon had to move on towards the Panama border. We did manage to spend some time in
Monteverde and Manuel Antonio, but we didn’t get to do much considering my
husband’s state. This is a real shame,
since both of these National Parks are incredibly diverse and beautiful. Manuel Antonio is especially interesting,
with dense jungle coming down to beautiful white-sand beaches. You can swim in the surf while some monkeys
play in the nearby trees.
On the day before our flight to Madrid, we headed out of
Manuel Antonio towards Panama. We covered nearly half the length of Costa Rica
before reaching the border, and even though we had left at five in the morning,
we did not reach border control until three in the afternoon.
Panama border control was a fiasco,
and this was very unwelcome considering we were incredibly tired, and still had
eight hours of travel. In Panama,
they require you to show proof of exit – some plane, boat, or bus ticket – and
to have $500 each. We had neither of
these. We rushed over to an internet
café, and quickly printed off our flight itinerary. Then, we had to go to a cash machine. In no way were we going to withdraw $1000 at
that moment. There was neither a need,
nor the security to be caring that much cash.
We were just going to get a balance receipt.
The internet café was on the Panama
side, and the cash machine was back in Costa Rica, so we started back to were
we had come from. Naturally, we got
stopped by some other officer. We
explained, but he still had us wait in customs while he went to speak with his
superiors. He must have gotten the
point, because he ushered us out towards the ATM when he arrived back.
In the end, the officer behind the
desk let us through with pleasure. It
was obvious he was so fed up with seeing us he just wanted us out of his
hair. He barely even looked at the slip
from the cash machine, which was good, because it actually said some huge
amount in Colones, not dollars. If he
had done the math, he would have realized we didn’t have enough money.
It was a long 24 hours till our
flight. We spent eight hours on a bus,
arriving in Panama City
at two in the morning. Then we waited
until 5:30 to catch
another bus to the airport. In some dark
corners and on some relatively soft couches, we did manage to get some sleep,
but it was not very good. We were glad
to be on our way when we finally got on the plane. Unfortunately though, we first had to fly
back to Costa Rica,
and then to Colombia.
The flights were long, and we were
tired, but this did not deplete our excitement when arriving in Madrid. We were back in the first world, and we were
ecstatic.
Since our arrival, we have been the
laziest people imaginable. With my
husband’s healing eye, and my lack of knowledge of Madrid, we have spent most days lazing
around my sister-in-law’s. We have both
regained the pounds we lost while in Central America,
and are at risk of becoming overweight.
With all these delicacies available to us, we have become gluttons.
So, this is the end – for now – and
I bid you farewell till I again have some interesting stories. It may be a while before this happens, as we
are soaking up the luxury of doing nothing whatsoever. I wish you the best, and hope you enjoyed my
adventure in Central America. I can guarantee you there was far more to the
story. But, you have things to do, and
eight pages of single-space text is rather time consuming to read.
Thank you for your patience.
Alia D. Floren
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