A new way of travelling

---

Well ladies and gentlemen, it has been an exciting week! After meeting my old family in San Juan del Obispo things have been well. It was nice to see them after 10 years of absence, they are doing well. One of the sons is completeing his final year in architecture at University and going out to do his practicum, the other is just beginning university. The family is well, and still speaks no english... Kindof funny to me, but it was nice speaking spanish with them and they were quite impressed that my speaking abilities had increased significantly, even though it is a mutt mix of castilano from whereever in the world I have ever been. Antigua has not changed a whole lot, still lots of tourists, still little boys who want to shine your shoes... the usual. One of the great activities that I was involved in was climbing Volcan Pacaya. Now this was a cheap tour out of Antigua, 10 dollars to make it happen. They take you to the volcano and then give you a guide and you climb for 2 hours up the volcano. Now, safety regualtions in Guatemala are a little more lax than in Canada, but I still marvel... when we got to the cinder line (where the trees stop and the black lava rock begins) we could see the lava running, or rather rolling down the side of the volcano. Now this is usually the point where you{d expect the guide to say something like "that looks unsafe, we{d better go back". Not in Guatemala. So we scrambled up the cone to where we could clearly see, even feel the heat of the red hot rocks breaking off the volcano and rolling down. It would have been great to have marshmallows to roast over the lava rocks, but I didn{t carry that with me. The guides were so Guatemalteco they even went and lit cigarettes from the lava. Crazy. Worth 10 bones fo sho.
Antigua was nice but it came time to roll so I decided to go to San Marcos de Atitlan, a little quiet village on the side of a crazy crater lake. I stayed in a hotel called hotel Unicornio, and I highly reccomend it to anybody. 40 Quetzals (8 CAD) per night in dorm including a pancake breakfast (you get the batter and cook it to preferance) and the people were so nice. There the manger, Shad, had an in with a farm in the mountains and they had a hive of wild stingless bees (apis melipona) that they wanted to split. That seemed like a good idea to me and somewhere my expertise in gettin{ er done would come in handy. So on sunday after a little hemming and hawing we prepared to split the hive. The farm, called El Combalache, is a volunteer run organization that teaches english and art skills to kids, and its manager named Charlie is a really nice and helpful dude (volunteering anybody?). Charlie and Shad prepared a box for the hive and I helped as I could, and when the time came to split the hive I was the machete master. Now, just so that you get an idea of the situation here is the sitrep. Apis Melipona, stingless bees, live in a nest made of mud that was brought to El Combalache almost 6 years ago. The nest was 1.5 times as big as a basketball and was attached to a stick about 1 meter long. There was one entry point about as big as a golf ball, and you could see the bees guarding it. The plan was to cut the nest in half and take one half to El Unicornio and leave the other half in one of the boxes that Charlie made, a nice little box with a glass top for observation. I was in charge of the splitting (hacking) . Since the nest was made of mud and on a wooden stick nobody really knew what the story was gonna be once we started cutting, like were ther more sticks in there, would the bees get crazy, would my bagman, Shad, be able to keep his cool till the half of the hive was sealed in the corn bag we had. Shad and I wore sweaters and covered our heads with mosquito netting so the bees wouldn{t try to get into our faces, and we got to it. The bees were not so keen on my machete work, and there were some hidden sticks that made the cutting a little more difficult, but we kept our collective cool and managed to hack a chunk off and throw it into the bag and seal it up. The bees covered my arms, but for me it was all fine, they bit a little, but it was light and pretty funny actually. As soon as the split was complete Shad and I walked the other half to the unicornio, passing all the old school mayas on the path. I think they were impressed by our little project. I checked the next day and both halves of the split were doing well, so now its just the wait to see if there will be any honey production, though they say the honey these bees make is purely medicinal, which in my experience means horrible tasting.
San Marcos is a quiet little village, and it doesn{t have a lot of streets, there are mostly caminos, paths like twisting rabbit trails, to anywhere you want to go. One of my favorite places to go was los Roques, a point with 2 nice places to jump from, a 9 meter and a 5 meter. Everyday that would be the place to go and take a plunge into the fresh water of Lago Atitlan. It was very serene. San Marcos is a "spiritual center" which really mans different things to everybody. If you want to take a yoga course or spend several weeks in meditation there are lots of options. Me I just wanted to chill in a nice place that didn{t have music all night and had a great view of the lake and was beautiful. San Marcos had all that. However the town is not without peril. Somebody snagged my camera out of my bag while I was walking in the caminos. Damn! Maldita ladrones! So I lost a week of photos and my camera. Fine. Now I travel lighter and instead of squinting through a lens I shall see everything with two whole eyes. I think maybe its better this way, or at least I will stay positive, and watch harder.
Time, however, is on the fly, and I, O, I am gonna fly too. Tomorrow its to Honduras and the Carribean coast, and I shall take an advanced open water course for scuba diving and hopefully, maybe, dive with the whale sharks....
Oh, and a quick list of highlights from the past weeks.
I climbed up the mountain to a waterfall and with a palm leaf caught water and drank from the leaf like a natural cup. the water slid so perfectly off the surface that it left not a drop.
I wandered through the market and saw men and women dressed in traditional clothing brighter than peacocks.
I ran down the volcano scree, jumping and flying, I almost forgot that I was attached to the ground.
I walked down cobblestone streets of a city destroyed 9 times, and silently hoped that there would be no earthquake.
I saw a house burn down where there were no firemen, and turned away, for the powerlines were falling on the little caminos, and I couldn{t bear to hear the cries of the family as their house went up in flames.
I made an impression on all that I met, my new way of travelling.

---