Horse with no name/Dog with short legs

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Christmas Eve 2007

On Christmas Eve, D. and I found ourselves on the shores of the volcanic cater Lake Atitlan, on a balcony from which we had a perfect view of the three surounding volcanoes (regrettably, inactive), at my friend Adrianna´s family´s lakehouse. We had Christmas Eve dinner with her and her family and their friends, an international crew of Guatemalans, El Salvadorians, a Swede (not counting D., who in actual fact, is NOT a Swede, contrary to rumours at Pyramid Lake, Jasper - which is also where Adri and I met, where we formed the Coalition of the Epitome of Good Against Evil), and Italians. We ate turkey, ham, lasagna, rice and cake (or at least made a valiant attempt), courtesy of Adrianna´s lovely mother. We stayed up until midnight, and watched fireworks go off in the villages surrounding the lake under the shadow of the volcanoes, and were regaled with impersonations of the indomitable Russell Peters.

You´re going to hit that boat!!

Later, we were to have further (mis)adventures in the form of a boat ride accross the lake to an indigeneous village, where we all watched in slow motion as the only two boats within miles (ours, and another one), collided with each other, everyone assuming one of them was going to turn and so not saying anything until the last minute...the nose of our boat rose out of the water upon impact, and sailed gracefully into the cabin of the other boat, where the two passengers were forced to retreat to the other side, the only consequence of which was their becomming extremely belligerent, and a shattering of the wood holding up the boat´s cabin, a piece of which landed in our boat and which D. brilliantly suggested i keep as a souvenier. In our boat, the fragile foreigners (gringos) among us were highly agitated, a small child struggled to refrain from crying for the rest of the trip and rapidly donned a life jacket, while Adri was shown pictures of one of the agitated gringa´s children, and D. realized that another of them was clutching his leg in a death grip, and the three of us were trying really hard not to laugh.

At any rate, we landed relatively safe and sound at the indigeneous village of Santiago, which my enlightened sister wrote an essay on and informed me was a community of "rich indigeneous" - which wasn´t entirely obvious except in retrospective consideration of the preponderance of silly-looking gringos with khakis (many of the fancy zip-off variety), zoom lenses, wide-brimmed hats, hiking boots, and a cushioning of the ghosts of McDonald´s meals past underneath it all. My favourite was a woman in a red plaid skirt, a white embroidered traditional shirt, a bright plastic flowered hat, and Christmas socks pulled up all the way from her hiking shoes. We visited a church to see famous carvings of wooden saints, and a memorial dedicated to the 15 people who were killed here during the civil war. Baby Jesus was in the nativity scene wearing a brand-name toque. Canadians everywhere should rejoice at this Christmas miracle.

Hippies, Hippies, Everywhere

We currently reside in the colorful hippie town of Panajachel, a few hours north of Guatemala City, where white people wear saris, and 10 different layers of clothing in 20 different colours. There are many equally colorful indigeneous people here, in beautiful embroidered, sequined, and sparkly traditional clothes. They wind their hair up in woven strips of colorful fabric, one of which ended up in my hair courtesy of an enthusiastic saleswoman and thus had to be bought...I missed the picture op due to lack of a camera, but I may be able to put it back in and wear it around town when I get back to Canada, it looks much better in person anyway. The indigeneous people sell beautiful handicrafts like shirts, pants, carvings, jewelery, and wooden chickens with bobbing heads (ah...if only i had more room in my backpack...I could´ve put one of those in with the wooden armadillo I would´ve bought in Palenque...). We do relatively little here; wander, eat, find happy hours (and the best margaritas)... We are looking to volunteer at a horse/ostrich ranch for the next month, where we will look after said animals, do organic farming, and general farm work out in the country near Pana.

Farewell to Puerto...haaaaaamicaaaaas aaaaaaamigoooooo? Dolphinas? Tortugas? Sportfishing? Mujeres? Horse with No Name and Dog with Short Legs

When you last heard from us, we were lounging around in Puerto Escondido The P.Dido, where the waves can reach 5 metres but only reached maybe 10 feet while we were there, where we could only swim up to our ankles as the waves could put us up to our necks a second later, and where I got stung by a jellyfish for the first and second time (its actually not that bad, though the first time it stung like a !"#"# for the first 20 minutes; D. picked one up - he´s an expert, being an East Coaster and having had jellyfish fights, and says they can´t sting your hands, and they are like a transparent brown polka-dotted glob of gelaton - very hard to be mad at). While there, D. and I developed a new sport - very originally called "floating", which involved finding a drop-off (very) near the shore and a side-moving undertow and...well, you get the picture. It was like a lazy river ride without the raft. We also went snorkeling; we saw a few tropical fish, and D. saw an eel eating a dead one, and I brushed a jellyfish away from my face with my hand - nothing like touching a gross gelatinous blob underwater that was unidentified until its stinging began to be felt.

We said "no, gracias" to all the vendors except for a boat tour guide, who took us on a three hour tour (just like Gilligan´s!) to see dolphins and sea turtles. Now this was pretty amazing. The boat went right into a school (?...herd?...flock?...gaggle?) of dolphins, and they were jumping out of the water and snorting out air and swimming right by the boat. I jumped in to try and swim with them, but they were FAST!! Every so often one would jump straight into the air and do a flip and crash back down. I´ve never seen a mammal look like it was having so much fun (aside from humans at happy hour). We saw many sea turtles as well, just their shells sticking from the water as they floated gently along, with the occasional bird perched on their backs. Our guide pulled one into the boat and I got to pet it!!! I PETTED A SEA TURTLE!!! I also have a picture of me with my arm around it, like it is some sort of celebrity (better, in my opinion). Turtles look old and wise, they are kind of rubbery, but not slimy, and their skin is like you´d expect to see on dinosaurs. We also saw two of them "doing the deed"...a small one sitting on a big one´s (the female´s?) back, a process which looks like sitting and floating and which takes two hours.

We were regaled during our many nights in puerto by Mr. "would you like to make a donation to street musicians such as myself?" who played America´s "Horse with...No Name!" for us on a regular basis at all the restaurants. We were hoping to see him again before we left and request...you know...what´s that song? About the horse?...I can´t remember his name...

Naturally the song became "I squatted...in de desert...on de dog with...short legs!" in honour of the fat weiner dog´s acrobatic attempts to run as fast as it could through the sand. The conclusion of all this is that my tan is Impressive (confirmed by Adri, whose expert opinion I value in all things, especially concerning the analysis of Elliot´s dreams), and that we are staying in Pana for a while to whoop it up for New Years and then probably heading off to the horse-ostrich ranch for some good ol´fashioned s*** shovelling and ostrich riding (apparently the worst part is that they have a smelly goo under their armpits which are unfortunately necessary accoutrements to staying on).

One further note - I would like to say thank you to everyone who responded to the blog (nobody else has to read this, don´t worry) and I´ll try and write you all back when I get the chance but for now let me just say...Gramma, you were right, I like Central America better, Matt, I would like to publish your Beach Rant, it seems destined for "instant classic" status, Genvieve, you are amazing and congradulations!!, and to Steve, about time you wrote me back, I will make sure I get up close and personal with some lava, and to my wonderful family and my friends especially Christine, who deserves all the best in the New Year!! Thank you Family for everything, it will be thanks to you that I get to do a zipline tour to the rainforest...or camp with penguins...or climb a volcano...or...

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