Blogs from Central America Caribbean - page 2172

¡Hola! Give Grams a big ól hug for me, k? I bet she has some wild stories from Shanghai. Also, please say hello to Wanda for me too. :) My weekend was fun! We didn´t leave on Friday, instead, we left Saturday morning. Friday night Hidetake Aoki and I went to Teatro Nacional to see the Costaricense Sinfónica Nacional. They played Chopin (my favorite!!!) and Stravinsky, and they had a splendid guest pianisto. It only cost us 4 dollars each to see it, and we had really good seats! Before the show we sat around in the café and drank wine and talked politics in Español. It was quite interesting :) Saturday morning we all met up at 7:15am to catch el autobus público to Volcan Arenal. What a journey. It was crowded and took 5 ... read more

Hello! I finally found the Internet, although it is painfully s l o o o o w w w w w. Today I had my first day of classes. Including me, there are a total of 4 students from the U.S. One of them is Chris, my housemate at Marias, and the other two are very nice guys from Southwest Texas, just like me. Their names are Scott and Paul, and today they saved me after class! They stopped by and asked me to eat with them. They shared a little about their experiences here, and have offered to keep me company. Paul leaves Friday, as does Chris whom I still haven´t met, Scott leaves next week, and then...all by myself :( The director here won´t give me a straight answer as to whether other students ... read more

Monday was a national holiday (El Salvador's Independence Day) and my office was closed; we decided to participate in a trip organized by some friends to the old Spanish colonial-era town of Suchitoto, which was a (the?) Pipil tribal capital during the Mayan Empire. Suchitoto in Nahuat means "Place of Birds and Flowers". (I would guess that Suchitoto is a Spanish bastardization of a name that was originally something more like "Xochitotl".) We headed east on the Pan-American Highway to San Martin, then north on a secondary road to Suchitoto; took us awhile to get there because every little town was holding an Independence Day parade, so we had to bushwhack our way around each village on muddy side roads.Suchitoto is very charming and quaint and tranquil, and is one of El Salvador's few remaining colonial-era ... read more

Well, we just finished seeing Tikal and it was really fantastic. We started by getting hooked up with a fantastic guide who spoke beautiful English and was very unhurried from the outset (a significant difference from the rushed guide at Copan). He gained aour confidence right away by saying that he would not only give us a tour of Tikal but also of the natural wonders, including the wildlife, that can be found in the park. And he delivered! We started by going to the northern complex, but stopped along the way to track down some howler monkeys, which we had heard in several places in Guatemala, but never seen. Here though, we followed the "howling" (more like a grunting noise) and did catch a glimpse of one, which was very nice. The tour guide's impression ... read more

So today was actually my third day on this very pleasant island north of the Honduran coast. The sole reason Jesse and I came here was to learn how to dive, Utila (and Roaton, the biggest of the Bay Islands) being world-renowned for being the cheapest and one of the most beautiful places in the world to dive. But before we get to that, just another word on manners. So far our time in Honduras has been marked by a significant increase in the rudeness factor. Although one has to expect some level of irritation from time to time when dealing with people as a tourist (just as in any business encounter anywhere in the world under any auspice) we have found a significantly higher "rudeness factor" here in Honduras. The fact is I have been ... read more