prokop
prokop suchanek Joined: July 7th 2007
Logged in: June 11th 2010
Logged in: June 11th 2010
Following the axiom of Hans Christian Andersen - "To travel is to live"; this is my blog about the reflection and understanding travel seems to induce. My goal is to set foot on all continents, make new friends and document the progress.
So far, the strategy is to visit and live among real people, and try to stop being so much a tourist- one of the tools to achieve that is to use couchsurfing.org as much as possible.
The next Travelblog trip is going to be about my anthropological fieldwork in Venezuela, from February to medio-May 2010. I am staying in the north-eastern area with the main base in the subandine city of Santiago de los Caballeros de Mérida (or just Mérida).
It is my goal to investigate the role of cooperatives in social mobility of women, and the ways power is exercised under the ideal of egalitarianism. Since this blog is from me as an private individual for my friends and family, it will mostly deal with the daily life and joys/frustrations of being in South America.
I hope you will enjoy my writing, and subscribe to the blog.
Mérida
Until return from Fieldwork
Travel Blog Posts
Grafiti #1
So week 2 + and a bit. I'm beginning to get settled in, but progress is much slower than anticipated. A large part of that is due to the fact that I'm stuck with a Spanish schedule that runs from 8-10 and again at 14-16 this week. This is not exactly optimal considering that the electricity is off between 18-20. In effect: my life is in blocks. The school is okay, and I get the luxury of solo tutoring, which is having a good effect on my spoken Spanish and understanding of culture, but leaves me tired and worn out in the evenings. As an student of Spanish I have progressed, but as a practitioner of Anthropology I have regressed. I am currently engaging in meeting locals and what in my discipline is called locating gatekeepers, ... read more
Prokop Beer
The beginning of my trip started early, down to the airport and on the plane. Some 12 hours, and two delicious Air France meals later, I found myself in Caracas Airport. The heat was staggering, compared to the freezer I crawled out of. The couchsurf circus started immediately after, where my connection guy was busy doing electric wiring for his parents. After tons of unsuccessful calls and texts from my own phone, I tried to get in touch with the guy through local phones and succeeded at last to get a travel description of Kafkaesque dimensions and contacts to some friends of his. Being at that point stressed out and unable to properly understand his English, i called it quits and send an emergency request to Cristina, the web-savvy couchsurfer hostess. Thanks to the help of ... read more
Hurricane Survivor
Ola friends, sit back and listen to our tale of The Last Days in Mexico .. MOSQUITOS! MOSQUITOS! MOSQUITOS EVERYWHERE !!!! That out of the way, Playa is truly a great place. Not quite a paradise, as a paradise is reserved for those very special places, but a tropical tourists dream. The roads go on right into the sea, whitesand beaches, almost clear water, coral reefs and whatnot. Our hotel was a bit pricey, but the pool was propper nice, big and deep at the right places, and the restaurant served reasonable food, most of the time. The beach was as we wanted it to be in Tulum, warm, sunny and not super-crowded. The room cme with a remote controlled fan, which in itself was pure luxury after the cabaña adventure. The city is ofcourse pure ... read more
Prokop - Cabaña
So friends, the journey across Yucutan has taken us to Tulum, what seemed to be a tropical paradise, azur ocean and beach ad libitum. As soon as we arrived, we went to the beach area and booked a cabaña. Now, a cabaña is basically a wooden hut, with a fletched roof - ours was with a private bathroom in the cabaña. In there a small smelly bed, with a protective mosquito net cover. Overlooking the beach, here we stayed at our primitive ocean fantasy resort. The trouble was, the beaches were very dirty, as the hurricane tore them up and filled them with seaweed, trash and other filth. The mosquitos were abundant and hungry, electricity from 7pm-11pm only and forget about the aircon. On the plus side, we had a very rich animal life just outside ... read more
Mie @ Zocalo Hostel
From the hurricane .. on to Mérida. After not having electricity and propper food for two days, we decided to take it real easy and relax. This was to be our last propper city stop, before a week long tour of the Carribean beaches of Mexico. Merida hostel turned out to be an allright place, but with a LOT of mosquitos. Merida is actually a pretty big place (size of Copenhagen), laid out in a grid, so all streets are numbered (e.g.: we lived on the corner of street 60 and street 59). The streets are narrow and charming, although it seems to be a mekka of shopping and dining, so if you happen to talk to a mexican, he will show you a great place to buy ___ in a few minutes. Next day we ... read more
Hurricane Dean
Ola amigos .. So, we thought all was safe and well in Chetumal, but it sure wasn´t. People sleeping in the bus station, franticly trying to get out of there, everybody getting ready for the hurricane that was heading exactly this way. We arrived at our hostel at 04:30, and were met by people still up, unable to sleep. Two ( very nervous) americans, a (confused) german, a (happy) canadian and an (pleasant) englishman, the hostess, Lilia (very friendly), Kevin the (crazy and horny) dog and us two danish (looking for trouble). Especially the americans couldn´t understand why we came to the hurricane center, though we tried to explain. After some initial talk, we decided to go for a last swim in the Atlantic ocean, which was calm although one could barely see the hurricane in ... read more
Scorpion
Welcome to the jungle ... mexican style at least. It is safe to say that this portion of our trip is the one which got the most mixed reviews from the two of us. I think its fair to say that Mie is not a jungle person. On the bus, we chatted up an australian girl - Coleen. When we arrived, we got into a taxi and off we were to El Panchán - a jungle surrounded site, where many different hostels have their base. After some initial confusion, too pricy or booked hostels, we ended up at a place called El Jaguar. We got a brick double, while Coleen got a wooden cabaña - which we later found tp be the home for many of Palenques scorpions. The kitchen was staffed with an american couple, ... read more
Dormitorio
12/8 - 16/8 San Cristóbal So friends.. On the bus again.. this time we were doing the nightbus, which went okay, except Mies feet swole up for two or three days (mie: which could KILL me). As expected, San Cristóbal is nice and cool .. the high mountain air and the evening rain chills the place down. That means t-shirt during the day, something waterproof in the evenings and two thick blankets at night, a weather that suited us fine after the Escondido sun. S.C is great. Women in traditional dresses all over, carrying their young in slings - the people here are low and compact. The center portion of the city is all shops, cafes and street vendors, little cute girls trying to hustle us for pesos and tourists of all shades. As always, it ... read more
Flora & Fauna
9/8 - 11/8 Puerto Escondido, Oaxaca -- Hola Amigos .. We left Oaxaca City after hanging out with some excellent people, Dan & Pete from England and Julia & Alex, Stefan & Anne both couples from Germany. It really started to feel like a relaxed travelling experience from here. The bus to Puerto was a killer, bad and loud spanish movies (The talking dog movie again!) - 11 hours of sitting down. The first impression you get of Puerto is the incredible humidity, which hits you like a wall of hot, moist air. Welcome to the Pacific coast. With Stefan and Anne, we went to our home away from home - Tower Bridge Hostel. The owner wasn´t home, so we were left with waiting in the sofas with two complaining girls from Slovenia, who were leaving ... read more
Mezkalito
Oaxaca 7/8 - 9/8 Early in the morning, we cleared Mexico City.. The experience of that super-huge city was in many ways unsatifactory - the city is noisy, hectic and in my opinion lacked charm. If we have had a month there, we might have gotten a more fullfilling impression. The ammount of cultural sights is staggering. We decided to skip Puebla and go straight down, so we took the primera bus to Oaxaca.. and what a change. Oaxaca is a relaxed colonial town south of M.C, charming and welcomming. Our hostel was excellent, clean with a great private double right besides the bar area. We started to see a pattern here, meeting a lot of the guys from the Moneda in Mexico City. It seems that most of the people travelling from M.C to Cancun ... read more
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