The part where I move from being afraid of travel to being addicted to it.

---

Being alone can be quite romantic, like Jacques Cousteau underneath the Atlantic.

This was the first leg of my trip that I undertook totally alone, without Jonathon's connections to
friends and friends of friends. I have found that it's incredibly easy for me to make friends along
the way. I've gone through a couple of serious trials these past weeks and have found that even
when confronting rather scary predicaments far from everything I know, I'm not alone, and people
can be kind, warm and generous wherever I am. It's an incredible realization, because my confidence
in both myself and the abundant gifts of the world at large has been boosted tenfold.

Along this route, faces I thought I'd never seen again repeatedly pop up several stops down the line, whether or not they had originally claimed the intent to travel in the same direction as me. I keep making last minute decisions about what direction to step in next, finding later that my travel buddies had done just the same a day before or after, and I find myself standing in a square somewhere, or floating down a river in an inner tube, and there's Marion! and there's Lauren! I make friends who I travel with for several days and then depart again, off on my individual course.

My path is becoming increasingly dictated by coincidence, by chance, by several impossible actions coming together at once, converging on me in absolute unavoidability. People, places, opportunities, and energy all at once. Details can't do it justice right now, but every time one of these convergences happens, it's enough to get my heart going like I'm running a sprint, and when I share my experiences or information with people around me, they can hardly believe me, that I must be exaggerating. I wonder where all of this can go from here.

In San Cristobal,

I was welcomed into warm and well-lit houses where I shared homemade meals over stories of travel and politics and music and love. In the city, I encountered an abundance of european anarchists and followers of the cultish iconic EZLN movement (unfortunately, as pointed out by my friend from S!Paz Human Rights Group, all of the sexiness of the EZLN, much like the symbolism of Che, is detracting from the human rights violations that are currently underestimated in Guerrero and many other areas. Apparently, Guerrero is far more scary than cool at this point.) I also found a thriving cultural epicenter, full of pride and understanding, with creative and intelligent organizations dotting the streets. I took a collectivo out to San Juan Chamula alone and walked around in the warm refreshing sunshine, down rows and rows of vibrant fruits and vegetables, secondhand clothing and carts of flashlights and batteries. I took deep breaths as we clammered around the countryside curves in a converted volkswagon van- me, the boisterous driver, his simpsons stickers and dangling virgin mary figuring, ten local village women in their striking attire and bundled babies wrapped around their chests, a couple chickens, men in clean-pressed shirts and shined cowboy boots and one stinky drunk guy to my right asking me over and over and over "You like MY country? You like MY country?" I went to a couchsurfing potluck with tons of interesting folks full of intriguing stories and ten pounds of shrimp. I took off to Las Grutas, my first "real" cave experience with a new French friend (Us at the end of the path in the caves: Kaitlin: "Wow, that's amazing, I want to climb over the gate onto thos dark rocks....but I'm worried about being arrested." Olivier: "You won't be arrested, that doesn't matter....but you will get dirty. Don't do it.") We went to the dormant volcano at the Reserva Ecologica Huitepac, broke off the path, climbed to the ridge, sat on a log and had a far-too-long discussion on cultural differences between our nations. I learned macrome from a sweet Canadian girl in my hostel, who also gave me beads, stones and material to make jewelry. I waited and waited until the right sign or feeling came along to tell me which direction to head into Guatemala, and one morning I woke up to meet two Austrian girls on their way out to Palenque, just when I felt it was time to go, and so we all left together. San Cristobal is an amazing, beautiful place, with a multitude of exciting work opportunities and cheap apartments.

In Palenque,

I had adventures. The place is strange, an isolated tourist trap that is far too expensive and full of ongos. One early morning, my friend and I walked into the jungle and walked along a dry river bed, breaking through the brush and sneaking into the Palenque ruins. The only sound around was the raking of leaves and the chorus of howler monkeys surrounding the park. We hid in the ruins and watched tropical birds with binoculars until the tourists entered the park and walked close enough that we could emerge, cameras out, fitting right in. On a separate day, I took collectivos to Misol-Ha, making the mistakes of walking through the jungle alone, with the sound of machetes all around, to get to the waterfall. Nobody was around, it was stunning. I tried to hitchhike to the next spot on my list, Agua Azul, but found out that it waws an hour farther than I had calculated. I convinced a tour bus driver, while his tour was at the waterfall, to let me on for 70 pesos (on a tour that costs 300 per person roundtrip). We had 4 hours at Agua Azul, stuck in the area to buy as much useless crap as possible and pay double the normal price to use the bathroom. I stayed away from my pushy, camera-happy tourmates, prefering instead to talk to a banana-selling 8 year old about his best friend and play hacky-sack with ten of the kids selling ice cream and mangos. Speaking spanish with kids and running around was the best part of the trip, well-worth the 70 pesos.

In Flores,

after my long trip across Chiapas, a tenty-minute river ride to Guatemala, and a dusty, bumpy bus ride, I found out there were problems with my card. I spent two days in the most expensive Guatemalan city with no money. It was amazing, strangers helped me more than I would have ever guessed, without asking a thing in return. I spent most of my time with a Swiss girl who speaks only French and Spanish, and improved my skills tremendously in a couple of days. I found the trick for me is to stop thinking in English, just to find the rhythm of Spanish and move with it. I took me first tut-tut ride, along cobblestone and dirt. I made my first successful macrome bracelet, got up, walked down the street, encountered a table of macrome jewelry, with a ring in the middle, that matched my new bracelet exactly....same braid, same color, same piece of torqouise in the middle....and knew that I'd found a friend in Carlos the jeweler. Together we visited Guitar Lake and the ARCAs animal reserve, where I saw caged baby spider monkeys with hands too small to fit around my thumb. At the ruins in Tikal, I wondered alone in the early morning rain, viewed from jungle from the towering Templo IV. I almost got pooed on by howler monkeys and I meditated in the ruins far off from the trails, the ones that have yet to be restored. It felt like I had the area all to myself, seeing people only every forty-five minutes or so, until I emerged from the jungle around noon, to find funny funny tourists flashing big cameras everywhere, traveling in right groups like their lives were in danger. Then I left and went to Lanquin.

In Lanquin,

I sauna-ed in a wood-burning stove room, breaking up the heat with dips in the river, climbed and swam through caves carrying candlelight, used intertubes for transportation downstream, climbed to stunning lookouts, ate cacao beans straight from the pod, swam in the cleanest clearest water I've ever experienced, spoke a lot more Spanish and initiated a debate over Backstreet Boys vs. N'SYNC between folks from New Zealand, Scottland, England, Germany, French Canada and of course, California, right alongside the river, around a campfire at 3 in the morning near the jungle in Eastern Guatemala.....like an international conference on Boy Bands.

In Antigua,

I've found Guatemala's Eurocenter. This is the traveler's paradise, a place in which you can stop in a freshen up, but if you stay too long, you're stuck!! In the international in-between. Here I've bought new clothes (glory!), Eduardo Galeano's "The Open Veins of Latin America," waxed my legs and received a pedicure (HA!!), eaten falafel twice, hungout with girly-girls (by the way, there are many many many women at or over 6 feet tall here, I'm not so unique! All the tall European women of the world have gathered here. Just imagine me traveling to dance clubs in a pack of Dutch girls, it's comical really) and become quite lazy. Otherwise, I spent a wonderful morning exploring Finca Los Nietos, a unique (for here) organic small-scale coffee finca supplying Antigua, and another afternoon wondering the dirt paths of a local village just to take a chicken bus somewhere.

I'm incredibly eager to get to Xela. I was told about directed study programs, where I can tell them I am interested in meeting coffee and cacao finca owners, and they will teach me the vocabulary necessary to asking pertinent questions and understanding the answers. I have a 7 a.m. departure for Lago Atitlan in the morning. Excitement!

Nos Vemos!

---