We´ve Now Started The Shopping Leg of Our Voyage

We arrived in Oaxaca, Mexico yesterday at 1 pm after a truly epic 25 hour stretch by bus from Guatemala City to here. It involved 4 transfers, arrivals in destinations made strange by night time arrivals, and lots of bags of chips and bottles of sprite, which have become staple bus snacks to keep the motion sickness at bay. The trip was well worth it though. WE had avoided Oaxaca on our way down due to the reports of extreme unrest coming through nearly all media channels. We found, as we contemplated coming here no the way back up, that we couldn´t even find current reports of any kind. Taking this as a good sign, we decided to come.

Sitting in the zocalo, you would hardly know that just a month ago Oaxaca was the seat of Mexico´s most serious rebellion since the Zapatista uprising in 1994. The tourists are back (though not in the numbers that, apparently, are typical for this time of year. Discounts are common.) the zocalo is streaming with music and people and lights, and the hot cocoa is flowing as freely as ever. All that we´ve seen are some areas of grafitti (mostly condemning Ulises Ruiz, Oaxaca´s governor), federal police blockades at the entrance points to el centro, and fire scars still marking the un-used supreme court of the state building. Other than that, nothing. Its a far cry from Mexico city´s central square, which always seems to be teeming with protesters of one sort or another.


Oaxaca is a truly beautiful city and, overall, its great to be back in mexico after cetnral america. I was stunned speechless yesterday when we found the taxi drivers outside the bus station actually lining up in order. the car at the front of the line would get the passengers and the rest would move up a slot to fill the space. Not a single taxi driver accosted us, tried to grab an arm or bag, nothing. Weird. This is a town of old and beautiful churches, excellent food, and tourists. Interstingly enough, we were surprised to find that the great bulk of the tourists here, at least right now, are mexican. Lots of extranjero families, too, from all over the world. This seems to be the place to travel if you have a hoard of kids with you. Anyhow, from the roof top of our hostel we can see at least 7 gorgeous churches rising from the cement and tin.





But, sight-seeing is not why we are here. Shopping is! We explored Oaxaca´s vast central market today. It is a wonderfully confusing place, full of every imaginable sight and smell. Now that our time is running short and we are nearing the end of having to haul our bags around we can afford to stuff them full of weighty items. That is what Oaxaca is for! Well, that and eating. And drinking hot cocoa...



We wish everyone a happy new year!

Ian

Time to be moving on

so even though we are comfortably placed in a tropical paradaise, we decided this morning that its time to be moving on. A wind storm over the past two days means that the water is too choppy and murky for comfortabl snorkeling and, even though you can dive on the other side of the island, we haven´t been in the water in all of that time. As a local said when asked yesterday what you do here if you can´t get in the water...``drink``. So we are leaving. Plus we have that looming flight out of mexico city on the 10th and we are still pretty damn south. We have a lot of bus time ahead of us.

We debated long and hard about staying through new years and both taking dive classes. Christine for her open water and me an advanced open water course. Given the expense, though, and the pressure that would put on us to get to mexico quick, plus the weather, we opted out. The reef here is addicting, though, and you always want more, new places, and deeper dives to check out new areas. This was my first experience with an honest to goodness coral reef, and i am already scheming for more time. I don´t know where, but i want to learn this system. It is fascinating to compare it to our more northern coastal systems. The coral reefs are definitely easier to experience, with their warm and clear water, and the diversity is through the roof. It was a blessing to be able to visit, even if it was only for a few times.

Here are a few pictures of the island and some scenes from above the water.





The place we´ve been staying is very nice and, at my mothers request, i made a little video of our cabin in paradise. One of the advantages is that they offered free internbet on an island notorious for its expensive computer time. This has led to two major accomplishments. First, I used my down time to submit my applications to graduate school. done and finished. Second, we were able to research and buy tickets to Bangkok, Thailand. Leg three of Hitched and Away commences on January 18th with a flight out of L.A.

ian

Is it Really Christmas?

We Wish everyone a very merry christmas. For us, it has to be one of the strangest christmas´ ever. We came to Roatan Island, Honduras, for the reefs. These islands are a continuation of the reef system that makes Belize so famous, but are significantly cheaper. We also managed to connect with Chrissy and Kevin, good friends from Port Townsend, Washington, and are sharing a place, cooking our own food, etc. Thus far it has been a wonderful time - snorkeling every day in the most outrageous reef systems. Today, because it is the special day, we´ve arranaged to do some diving!







We miss you all, especially on this special day, and hope everyone has a wonderful holiday!

ian

Christmas with Friends AND Our first robbery

So we are now in La Ceiba Honduras, preparing to head out to the Bay Islands to spend christmas amongst the color and brightly colored fishes. Last night we met good friends from home here - chrissy and kevin (who, by the way, are keeping an excellent blog about their post-wedding travels as well at www.blogspot.chrissyandkevin.com). We are very lucky to have connected with them and are looking forward to them helping us pass christmas with a bit more cherr than we otherwise might have. This is, after all, the first christmas that I will have passed without my family (sniff, sniff).

On to other exciting news. We made the two day trip from Rivas, Nicaragua to here in record time - just two days. The trip was punctuated by our first taxi scam and robbery in managua. We got into a taxi to make the short trip from one bust station to another and, as we travelled, the agreed upon price was slowly inflated. By the time we reached the station the price had gone from 1.50 each to $40 each that the driver was demanding. Additionally, the three other passengeres in the taxi were all shouting for us to pay the $40. After all, they lied, they had had to pay that amount as well (as they passed around fistfuls of cordobas to each other and the driver). They said ¨Gas is expensive in Nicaraugua, you know¨. As this incresingly heated conversation was happening the driver was moving farther and farther away from the bus station, so we finally negotiated a payment of $15 to get out of the taxi and her our luggage. A bit more debate followed, but he let us out and we made it to our bus with enough time to make our conneciton, healthy, and only a bit poorer than when we started. all told, it could have been much worse, and there will probably be more like it in the future.

Ï´ve posted a few photos to accompany christine´s blog, from monteverde.

Also, since we were travelling and in costa rica, where internet is ungodly expensive, i have been unable to call my sister, who celebrated her birthday on december 20th. So, again, i am hoping that all of you can joing me in sending her a late birthday wish to rachel_jo@hotmail.com. And, to accompany the video that was sent to her daughter Tian, she also gets a special video from some of our friends in Nicaragua. Because she is a language nerd, she gets the advanced version...

And finally, during our last week in school we met a family that lives in poulsbo, washington, just an hour from port angeles. theyh are taking a year to live in costa rica with their two kids, and i thought some of you might be interested in their blog. Find it here...http://web.mac.com/sarahberry/iWeb/TylersCostaRicaBlog/Bienvenidos.html

A very happy holiday wish to everyone!

ian

Monteverde Cloud Forest

After many hours of bus riding, we arrived back this evening in Nicaragua from a week in Costa Rica. We spent the last several days in the cloud forest of Monteverde. In choosing our places of travel in Costa Rica I found myself torn between seeking new ground or returning to the familiar from my time here 8 years ago. In the end, I allowed myself to succumb to the natural human tendency, creatures of habit that we are, and returned to the comforts of the familiar. I had spent several months living in Monteverde and it was difficult to avoid that curiousity of what memories are there awaiting retrieval if only one goes to collect them. So I went to pick up my ghosts.

Monteverde is an enchantly beautiful place. I fell in love here and upon returning I know exactly why. Ian and hiked into Aleman Shelter in the Cloud forest reserve to spend the night. A 3 hour hike through dense forest, cascade of green, ferns the size of trees, plant life so condensed that one could peel layer after layer only to find more life.... Rich smell of churned mud and humus, blankets of bromelids,epiphytes, moss and lichen, water coursing through every nook and vien- small droplets dancing down granite rock, mist hanging in pockets on the hillsides, soft mud that sponges under foot..... Here is an Eden, a world that feels so serene. A place where all life has uniquely adapted to existing in such an environment. One can only maintain a great sense of awe at the sheer cleverness of it all.

Tonight I arrived back from this high and this fabulous place of introspection to the internet headlines- N. Korea determined to remain a nuclear super power, another day´s count to the death toll in Iraq, human targets in middle eastern war,chemical plant explosion.

While out at the shelter nestled on the porch, in the last rim of dusk against the caucophony of crickets, passing birds, and the pulsing river, I finally finished reading John´s Steinbecks Novel "Travels with Charley". A book I have picked up and put down many times over the last several months of travel with each chapter saved for just the right moment of my travel and seemingly relevant to my thought and place. One phrase in his final chapters hangs with me tonight about the cleverness of species. We live in a world where an inordinate amount of cleverness exists, be it in an insects ability to look and feel, down to it´s very texture, like that of a leaf or in the human mind capable of insurpassible intelligence and creativy. And yet, in the words of Stienbeck, "...we are a species clever enough to to split the atom but not clever enough to live in peace with itself."

43 years after this thought was put to paper we have not become any more clever. Tonight I am struck by human stupidity in the face of the offered gift of natural beauty, ingenuity, and serenity. Will our cleverness ever supercede our need for destruction in the name of progress?

..... oh the inspiring thoughts of travel.

Costa Rica, No Spanish Necessary

After studying spanish for a month we decided to come south to Costa Rica for just a few days for two things - a bit of surfing for me, and we also wanted to come to Mnoteverde, where Christine lived for a few months in 1998.

So we get on the bus, leaving San Juan, and head to the border. We cross the border and catch a bus to Liberia. The trip is going smooth. no problems. we have lunch in liberia, the standard gallo pinto with some other stuff, before catching the bus t tamarindo. About 2 hours into the bus ride Christine turns to me and says, with the vomit almost visible through her eyes, "We get off at the next stop". By this time it was dark, and we were in the middle of nowhere, but vomit is vomit, and we got off.

we found ourselves at a roadside gas station at 8 pm when the revenge hit (see the photo). Christine barfed first, over the cement fence at the back of the gas station. We rested there for a few hours before catching a taxi the rest of the way to tamarindo. I started barfing when we arrived. We continued in this vein for the rest of the night, barfing (and other methods of expulsing), until the morning. Thus was our introduction to Costa Rica.

Tamarindo is an odd place. No spanish necessary, lots of comfort foods available, and ridiculously expensive. You can even find a hotel there that charges more than $100 a night! Yet the dusty streets and insistent taxi drivers let you know at every step that you are still in Central America. I was there to surf so, despite the illness, I did. We also ate comfort foods, and stayed away from gallo pinto - which we haven't eaten since (though I am feeling almost ready for it again - you can hardly eat here w/o having smoe gallo pinto). By the end of our first full day in Tamarindo I was feeling about 90%. Christine took a bit longer, but was playing soccer on the beach by day 3. I surfed a ton, hours each day, which was great. Christine did some stuff too, but i don't think she had as much fun as i did.

We are now in Monteverde, and have planned a weekend in the cloud forest. On Monday we head back to Nicarague adn start back north...

ian

GRADUATION

so now we are fluent, and we have the diplomas to show for it. NO, in reality, as you might imagine, we are still stuttering along. BUt, i do think that we are stuttering along quite a bit better than we did when we arrived. the school experience here was very satisfying. we had wonderful teachers, an incredible family to live with, and a beautiful place to be. We got to play soccer on the beach, snorkel with the fishes, surf warm waves, play with monkeys, eat odd foods, take part in foreign customs, and drink some rum. Leaving is sad, but it has to happen some time.

Where are we at with our language skills? Its hard to assess BUT we can now speak fairly reliable about things that happened in the past, which we couldn´t before. We can also speak somewhat reliably about things that MIGHT happen in the future, whereas before we could only talk about things that WOULD happen in the future. We definitely know more verbs, though by no means all of them, and i still haven´t worked out all of the different ways that they use the verbs ´´sacar´´, ´´salir´´ and ´´ir´´ here, but we are working on it. We also have significantly improved our vocabulary and I can now say things like, ´´Wow, you are quite the ladies man´´ and ´´If I am going to get out of prison I will need some connections´´ in spanish, which is very satisfying. Comprehension is, sadly, still lagging and we are both frequently left with that special thing known as ¨gringo face´´ after someone says something. You know the face, sort of a dazed look, with mouth sort of just parted so.... I get it more. christine is definitley better at comprehension than I am. I believe that we also are that type of person right now that, while engaged in conversation with someone, thinks they know what the other person is talking about and so replies in kind. It sometimes turns out, though, that the person was talking about something entirely different than we thought, and so our reply makes absolutely no sense in the context of the conversation. The native speaker is then left with ´´talking-to-a-gringo-face´´.

That being said, it is no small victory that we are having conversations with people in the first place. We´ve actually had some very satisfying discussion with various people over the last two weeks or so, especially regarding things like american and nica politics, CAFTA, various living conditions in our respective lives, education and the like. These types of experiences add immesaurably to the value of being here.

So, as promised in the last blog, i´ve included a video of us singing during purrisima. it was quite fun and VERY interesting. we went to three houses with the fam and, at each, sung a series of songs (Well, we sort of half-sung and hummed some)to the altar of the virgin erected in the house. the family would then give us all sorts of treats. After getting home with our laden purissima bags we dumped all of the loot on the table (see photo above) and started gorging. we didn´t stop until we had upset stomachs. All in the name of the Virgin. Love it. Here is teh video

A little note. My wonderful niece Tian is having her birthday on dec 13. if a remember correctly she will the very old and wise age of 6. I am missing the party but here asked some of our family kids and their cousins to sing her one. Here it is. If you can, send her a special brithday message through her ma at rachel_jo@hotmail.com.


ian

They Know How To Party Here

I am not quite sure what its all about, but we´ve found ourselves in the midst of the week know as La Purissima. Some of you out there are probably all up on this. All I know is that every night, and at times during the day (like today) there are great throngs of people walking through the streets carrying large statues of some lady and playing all manner of instruments. As has become my patter I took a nice video that you now have the opportunity to view. Anyhow, you get to follow them, and when you get to their neighborhood you get to go to a house, sing a song, and they give you candy and stuff. This goes on for the whole week, with each neighborhood hosting at different times. And then, we keep hearing that tommorrow night, Thursday, is the real party. We shall see and you can bet we will keep you updated.

We are down to our final two days of school and are getting ready to finish and leave. its a bit sad, but at the same time I think I need some time just to experiment and try some different things out. Essentially, my brain is nearly full. A month, though, seemed to be the perfect amount of time and I have only just, in the last day or so, found myself feeling like I couldn´t take any more during class. Of course, before I started I had visions of 100% fluency after a month of immersion courses but, sadly, that hasn´t happened. We are still stuttering along, though I do think we are stuttering a bit better than we were before.

Our plan from here is to go with our family for the weekend to visit the grandparents and, when we return on Sunday head south into Costa Rica. we anticipate a week there before heading back north into nicaragua for a few days, and then onto Honduras. We haven´t done all of our research, but we think we might spend a week or so in the bay islands of honduras, and I am even contemplating enrolling in a master divers course. Supposedly, its one of the cheapest places to get diver certifications in the world. From there we would head north back to mexico and reach central mexico a few days into january.

Today we went with our family to visit the other granparents, who live about 20 km out of san juan del sur on a farm. Its the place where the senora of our house grew up, and is a beautiful plot of land with a sprawling but rustic house, a bunch of chickens, cows, some pigs and every imaginable type of fruit. They also grow platinos and wheat, as well as who knows what all. Their were a few highlights from the journey, but both christine and i went riding on their horse. Nearly everyone around here is very comfortable around horses, so they find our inexperience quite amusing. Fortunately, the gave us one of the most docile animals on the planet (either that or they fed the poor thing some very strong downers before we got on) and the ride went uneventfully. We also went walking around the farm, collecting fruit for the trip home and learning about their life on the farm. On the way home, our bus broke down and we had to hoof it back into town. Such is life, at times, in the C.A.

We hope everyone is well and miss you all!

ian