Carlos said not to go out at night in Guatemala City or oueeeheaah!!!

Who is Carlos, you might wonder? While in Seattle prior to leaving for this trip, Carlos was the "night watchman" at the hotel where I was working, responsible for cleaning, repairing, and, well... I guess "watching" things at the hotel during the night (perhaps good eyesight is requisite for the position?). Carlos is El Salvadorean, and before I left Seattle he explained to me that he used to work for the government in El Salvador prior to emigrating. "What did you do?" I asked. He was part of the "security forces," he elaborated, and as part of the security forces he used to go into factories and take the names of people with "bad ideas." He went on to explain that these "bad ideas" were anything that was moderately leftist or union-sympathizing, and that he never found out where the people went if they were arrested. This type of work sounds awful, of course -- and I am sure that Carlos would agree -- but my understanding is that he picked what he considered to be the least worst of the options before him in El Salvador at that time. Later, Carlos would leave El Salvador and go to Seattle, where often the most pressing issue is which color of Chuck Taylors to buy, or how to redeem my REI dividend.

The above title, then, is the advice that Carlos gave to my friend Matt before he left to meet me in Guatemala. Matt and I would try to avoid Guatemala City if possible; we were not looking for the "Oueeeheaah!!!" in Guatemala, whatever that meant.

After Matt's arrival, we headed directly to Antigua, a UNESCO world heritage site and a city comfortably nestled within an insulated tourist shell. I mean this last part at face value, neither as criticism or as praise. I do not have a knee-jerk reaction against things touristy -- I do, once in a while, if I consider an area to be grossly over-developed or developed without any sensible planning. And really, as someone who has been traveling around for a while, finding myself suddenly surrounded by consumer goods, excellent internet access, and international cuisine can be a welcome relief from the beans, rice, and plantains of daily life in Central America. Also, in a country like Guatemala, heavily-touristed areas are typically safer. Even some of the bakeries in Antigua had armed guards (really).

But I should mention that there is one item which is always available while traveling the world, no matter how far off the beaten track you fancy going: it is Coca-Cola classic. It does not matter where you are on this beautiful, planet Earth, Coca-Cola reps have been there long before you, scouring the area for something to paint red. This is an amazing operation. Who is in charge of painting "Coca-Cola classic" signs on the sides of farm-houses in rural Guatemala, and how much do they pay the farmer for this? Who created the "Coca-Cola" flowerbeds outside the airports in southeast Asia? And who is responsible for the "Coca-Cola bus station" in San Jose, Costa Rica? Or the absolutely gigantic, neon-light Coca-cola bottle in Bucharest that slowly "pours" over the side of an office-building? Or the neon Coca-Cola bottle in Cairo, with the "bubbles" slowly illuminating? Coca-Cola is not a soft-drink company, but rather a marketing company that happens to have a product that you should consider drinking. I bet if you try, you can even remember the jingle.

Back to Antigua: it is touristy in a good way and an excellent city to visit. It is considered to be the best-preserved colonial city in Central America, and the cobble-stone streets certainly keep things moving slowly. Matt and I had plenty of fun simply walking and getting ourselves mildly lost in the city (which is very, very easy in a city that is nearly without street signs). There are many ruins throughout Antigua, many of which are simply gated off and unmarked, and many of them come up unexpectedly. We found a music shop with a selection of guitars, and in an unexpected act of kindness, Matt later snuck off and brought back a travel-sized guitar for me that I had been eyeing. This is one thing I had been severely missing while traveling, and have since barely put the thing down. So thank you again, Matt!

One of our nights in Antigua, we decided to check out an "Open mic" night at the No Se Cafe. We should have taken a tuk-tuk, we later realized, but instead walked, got lost, walked, asked directions, got lost. Eventually we did find the place, only to discover that there was no open-mic night underway, and that Matt had carried his left-handed guitar for nothing. We had a few drinks, then casually asked the bartender why the open-mic night had been discontinued. He looked at Matt's guitar, made the mental connection, rapidly set up an impromptu "stage", cut the background music, and Matt was front and center. It was on.

Let us be clear, here: there were probably a dozen people at this bar besides Matt and me (and yes, that is correct English) -- this was not the Fillmore East. Matt played eight songs or so, a mix of covers and some of his own songs. I had not brough my guitar, but found a right-handed guitar on the wall that was, unbelievably, in tune (communal guitars are never, ever in tune). I contributed roughly the same number of songs as Matt, sticking mostly to covers.

Fortunately for us, three of the individuals at this bar happened to be a very drunk, mother-daughter-son trio from New Jersey or somewhere. The mother was/is a hippie, much to the chagrin of her two children, and she absolutely loved us. She really could not get enough. She ended up paying for nearly all of our bar tab, and every few songs would grab us both by the shoulders and explain how what we were doing was "wonderful." "There just is not enough beauty in the world," she implored, "you both are wonderful." This may sound a bit over the top, but it does feel good to make someone feel that way. Her children were not pleased by her behavior, and from the back of the room were constant admonitions from her daughter to, "Shut up, bitch!", or "Sit down, bitch!" But she never really did shut up, nor did she ever really sit down. She danced a little and sang with us soon as she knew the melody, and continually asked if either of us knew any Janis Joplin or Joni Mitchell or Tracy Chapman. She had the right idea and a good attitude. I finished with La Bamba, the only song in my repertoire that could transcend the Guatemalan/Gringo divide at the bar, and then spent most of the rest of the evening talking to a Cuban piano-player who at one point played with the Buena Vista Social Club. Or maybe he played at the Buena Vista Social Club in Havana. I was never clear on this point. But he had this hair-cut -- I will call it a "trim, firmly-sculpted, white afro" -- which I hope to emulate when I am his age.

From Antigua Matt and I spent a full day of traveling to reach Semuc Champey, Antigua. This trip took an unexpectedly long time -- the teacher's union shut down the entire national highway grid for several hours to protest school privatization reforms -- and at the end of the journey we found ourselves unexpectedly far down a dirt/gravel road on the way to our hotel. The last 25 minutes of the trip were in the back of a pick-up truck, and we arrived after dark, exhausted. Unfortunately (fortunately?) for us, we were informed that there was a large group of young Guatemalan girls staying in the bungalows, and that there was to be a "dance party" later that evening. We had time to take a dip in the river, eat dinner, meet up with three Canadian guys we had met on the bus, and then spent the rest of the evening attempting to learn Guatemalan dances from surprisingly confident 16 year-old Guatemalan girls. (They were there as part of an educational trip to study Guatemalan tourism.) If I were to give us a grade on our dancing that evening, I would give us the same B- that students in high school receive for having a "good attitude," or "strong work ethic." We had no idea what we were doing, but the girls were really nice and tried not to laugh too openly. After a while we turned the tables on them, though, and the five of us proceeded to blow them away with some throwbacks to the 80s. Matt did the "Running Man," and I pulled an M.C. Hammer move I learned in grade-school, as well as something I would call "The Knee-Swapper." I'm sure it has a real name, I just don't know it. The end of the night saw one of the Canadians actively pursuing a 16 year-old Guatemalan girl, who declined his advances. The Canadian then had the gall to voice his disappointment to us, as if we would sympathize or commiserate with him, claiming that the girls had just "teased" him or something. I tried to argue that dancing simply for the sake of dancing can make for a good night, but he was not listening. He decided to leave. Then, as if a highly disapproving and vindictive God had been watching the entire scene, the pedo-Canadian proceeded to fall flat on his face while trying to take a shortcut up a dirt embankment. He actually made a flopping noise. Matt and I deciding to call it an evening.

Semuc Champey is visited for its cascading series of mountain springwater pools. Describing it is difficult, but I will try: it is a national park built around a river. The river completely disappears into a cave, only to reappear out of this underground cave network some 300m "downstream." As a result, there is a section of limestone rock that sits above the river for about 300m, with the water rushing somewhere underneath. It is this 300m of limestone rock that has proceeded to form a cascading series of pools of the clearest, blue-green water I have ever seen. I repeat: it is not river-water that fills these pools, but spring water from the hills. It is stunning to look at -- it looks as if it were sculpted -- and it is even more incredible to swim through, eyes wide open. The only thing I can compare it to -- and this is a pretty lame comparison -- are the parts in The Legend of Zelda for Nintendo 64 where Link is swimming.

Unfortunately, our last night in Semuc Champey saw Matt an I catch a nasty form of food poisoning that sent us to bed with our bodies rejecting food and incipient fevers. Even more unfortunately, we had already purchased tickets for the 5am bus the following morning. Yikes. The first, three-hour leg of this bus-ride was one of the hottest, most-crowded, uncomfortable bus-rides I have taken on this trip. I despise Guatemalan pop music as a result of this bus-ride, which is really too bad. They could not have possibly fit more people into this bus. At one point we pulled over so that one of the workers could check a tire, and it proceeded to blow up in his face while he was examining it. This certainly shouldn't have come as a surprise, as the previous hour had been spent piling more and more people on the roof of the bus, way beyond capacity, and with our bus-driver rallying it around the corners. Anyway, the worker collapsed in momentary shock, his entire face covered in dust, and though this is a very easy way to become blind, everyone laughed at the episode.

Given that both of us were ill, our initial aspirations to make it all the way to our next stop, Lago Atitlan, were thwarted. So we plopped down in Guatemala City and checked into the Holiday Inn. It is absolutely amazing what one night in a good hotel can do for your health. We slept and slept that night, had bottled water delivered as room service, and were generally recovered by the next morning for...

one of the weirdest places I have ever visited. San Pedro is a small town situated on Lago Atitlan, a lake Matt called "the Guatemalan Tahoe." I have never visited Tahoe, but I would call the town, itself, a "Guatemalan Vang Vieng," which is a reference to Laos. It is situated beautifully, but San Pedro is filled hippies, druggies, thieves, a very crazy woman, and all sorts of other characters. All over the place were Mayan women trying to sell us bread, of all things. Matt and I initially considered leaving immediately after arriving, but I think it was a morbid curiosity and a little bit of exhaustion that kept us there. There were some redeeming qualities to the place: two of our evenings were spent soaking in solar-heated hot tubs; we frequented an outstanding Israeli restaurant; and on our last night we discovered an entirely new section of the town, hidden away from the shore. But that was about all that is redeeming about the place. Looking back on San Pedro, I think for young drug-users it is a sort of mecca, the pay-off, the apotheosis after months of long, hard travel. For Matt and I, the surrealness of the place had lost its novelty and we were happy to leave.

On to San Salvador we went, and we were pleasantly surprised. There are areas of San Salvador -- lots of areas, in fact -- where it is not possible to distinguish whether or not you are in the United States or El Salvador. American chains and strip-malls dominate, roads are wide, and the U.S. dollar actually is the El Salvadoran currency. While Matt and I were not necessarily looking for the American in Central America, it is not such a bad city: San Salvador is sub-divided into manageable areas that make it interesting to explore. A question we heard quite a few times was, "What are you doing here?" This is compared to most other places I have visited, where the question is more like, "How long are you here for?" or "Where are you going next?" No, here the question is "What are you doing here?" Most people seem to be surprised that Matt and I had ventured to El Salvador, wondering what sort of allure San Salvador could possibly hold for us. We certainly did not see many other tourists, but we didn't mind.

Our one full day exploring the city began in at a "Mister Donut" chain, where, curiously, they did not have any doughnuts. (I was hungry and annoyed, and very, very close to giving the employees a pedantic speech about the importance of a good supply-chain.) We then toured "the biggest mall in Central America," and then went to el Centro, where we stumbled upon the largest open-air market that I have seen on this trip. It is an incredible market, and Matt walked away with an outstanding library of 70s, 80s, and 90s music video DVDs. At one point someone reached into my bag to see what they could find, but fortunately I was carrying nothing but books. Nice try, sucker! We ended up at a used clothing store -- an El Salvadoran Goodwill -- where, I think, most people wondered what on earth we were doing there. Just shopping, guys! Just shopping! This place was cheap.

The last full day before Matt was to leave for Seattle, he checked us into the Hilton Princess, quite possibly the nicest hotel in all of El Salvador. "You may be traveling," he explained, "but I am on vacation. We're going to do this right." In all this time traveling, not once have I been served cold orange juice in a chilled glass while checking into a dirty youth hostel. Not once. But they gave me orange juice on a silver platter at the Hilton, and the hotel was exquisite. It was so exquisite, in fact, that we had a difficult time leaving it. We soaked in the sauna and hot tub during the afternoon, drank Bloody Marys at the bar, took a nap, went to a Japanese restaurant for a tremendous meal of sushi, then spent the evening in. I went back to the sauna the following morning after Matt had to leave to catch his plane. Check-out time was 1pm, and I checked out at 1pm.

Now Matt has left, and I am still in San Salvador. I am in a (relatively) nice area, at a cozy hostel right across from a French bakery. Last night I saw Spiderman 3, where Tobey goes totally hipster-nasty and where, for two mesmerizing and action-packed hours, I had a sense of contact with the United States again. (There is even a well-positioned, dramatically lit American flag in one of the action sequences.) It was fleeting, but I felt it, especially during the brief, but hilarious characterization of the French. Anyway, it will not be long before I am off traveling once more, traveling once more. And so on.