mheltne.blogspot.com

søndag 24. februar 2013

Welcome to the jungle!

A couple of hours after I got to Flores I lay in the hammock, chilling and doing nothing. I was quite tired, so my plan was just to chill for a couple of days, then spend a day at Tikal, this huge Maya city nearby before heading west to Mexico. Suddenly this dutch couple whom I've never spoken to before came and asked if I wanted to do this three day jungle tour. This was as far from what I had planned as possible, but after thinking long and hard, I thought "why not?" and said yes. Now, a few days later, I'm very glad that I did. The trip was amazing!

The trip started at 6:am, and after a breakfast at a local comedor, we began to walk. It was seven of us in total, Gus and Susanna from Holland, Eirin from Canada, Deborah from Switzerland, two local guides and myself. The trip started at a leisurely pace with us walking down this dirt road through the outskirts in the jungle. While we walked, we chatted, and the guides taught us about various plants and their medical abilities. One of them had roots which worked as pain-killers, and when we chewed them, we could actually feel our mouths go numb. It it worked way more quickly than ibuprofen and other stuff...

After a few hours of walking we came to a small campsite where we would spend the night. At dusk, the guide took us to this grotto, and when we sat there, thousands and thousands of bats left the caves and flew out over ourheads. It was quite a sight.

Next morning we got up at 4:30, yes I actually got up voluntary at 4:30 , and hiked for 30 minutes to the ruins of El Zotz, a small city. There, from the top of a 35m high temple we watched the sunrise and had fresh fruit. Twas quite an amazing view. And as we sat there we could hear the jungle waking up, especially the howler monkeys. These monkeys are quite small, but they make a lot of noise. Apparently, their screams were used as the base for the dinosaur-roares in Jurassic park, that's how loud and powerful they are. I'm pretty sure they are used as the dragon sounds in Skyrim as well, and as I sat there with skyrim songs playing on my iPod , I couldn't help feel like I was in the game - which is totally awesome. And that was my nerdy moment of the day.

Anyways, after sunrise our guide dressed up in this costume made of leaves and performed a dance o f his ancestors, the Mayans. Very interesting. Later we explored the ruins before returning to the campsite for lunch. During the walk that day, we came into the real jungle, and I have to tell you, if the jungle was a person, it would be a two-sided one. Granted, there are all kinds of medical plants and trees that can give you water and stuff, but at the Same time, it's dangerous as hell.

Unlike the Norwegian forests that I'm used to, the jungle basically wants to kill you. When we walked, we had to watch our feets constantly in order to avoid tripping and stepping on snakes and other animals, and when we looked up, we would find small vines (or gigant logs ) few inches from our face. The wines were often covered in small, but very painful thornes. Even many of the trees had spikes. In addittion to the evil plants, there are all kinds of animals. We had to dispose of a couple of snakes and scorpions laying in our path (which is why the guide always walked first), and there were of course an abundance of mosquitoes, ants, ticks, flies and spiders. I quickly learned another lesson; Norwegian bug-spray sucks. Seriously, even though I covered my body in thick layers of spray four times a day, I still got bitten all the time. Not cool. In addition, this huge ant crawled inside shorts and bit my inner thigh while we were playing cards. The pain was surprisingly strong, and I could hardly walk for an hour. Damned ants, what did I ever do to them? And last but not least, there's the climate. The jungle is so dense, hot and humid, so we basically bathed in sweat after five minutes. Yummy.

Day three we came into thicker jungle. We tried to keep stuff from hitting our faces, but after five minutes we just gave up and let plants, spiderwebs and other stuff slap us in our faces more or less non-stop for five hours.. Nevertheless it was great fun, and I liked that it was a bit challenging. After five hours of briskly walk, we came to Tikal. I have never been so glad to see other tourists in mywhole life. To quote Eirin "look, clean people!" Needless to say, they weren't too happy to see us, us seven dirty, sweaty and smelling people. We couldn't had cared less though, and we just sat there, enjoying our cold sodas.

After lunch we had this sunset tour, and that was awesome. Tikal was one of the last big Maya cities, and it is believed that more than 100, 000 people lived in the city centre, with many more living in the surrounding villages. There's many big temples there, and a lot of stuff to see. The sunset itself were also amazing.

So, to sum it up; even though it was tiresome and I've never been as sweaty, dirty and mosquito-bitten my whole life, the trip was amazing. It was fun walking in the jungle with a local guide who told us stories from his grandparents and Mayan folklore, and we saw some amazing things. The people were really nice as well, s so it was absolutely worth it. And for those who wondered, we walked around 60kms in total, which is not that bad in two and a half days.

Now I've spent couple of days chilling in Flores, and tomorrow or the day after, I'm heading to Mexico.

So long!

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tirsdag 19. februar 2013

Backpacking, wohoo!

So, I've finally started on the main part of my trip; the backpacking. I've been moving around for about a week now, and so far, it's been awesome.

As mentioned, I took the shuttle from Antigua at 4am, so I was very tired when I got to Copan eight hours or so later. When I got there I met up with Dan, one of my friends from San Pedro. I spent a couple of days in town checking out the local Maya ruins and walking in this banana plantation. It was a nice place, but it was obvious that I wasn't in Guatemala anymore. Whereas all of the guatemalans I've met have been very friendly, the people in copan seemed less so. The locals sat at every corner dressed in their jeans, cowboy hats and cowboy boots staring g at you while fiddling their big machetes. They weren't hostile, but I've never felt less welcome in my entire life. Thus it was not with a heavy heart I left Copan.

Next stop was Rio Dulce back in Guatemala. I didn't want to pay a lot of money for a private shuttle, so I decided to go local style. It was a bit frustrating when all of the four people I talked with told me that I had go take different routes. After a while I got sick of it all, so I just took a bus to the border and improvised Three buses, four hours and five dollars later I was in Rio Dulce, not far from the Caribbean coast. The journey went fine, and for a couple of hours I even got to sit next to the driver. This turned out to be a mixed blessing though. When you ride shotgun, you have the best seat in the vehicle, but that also meant that I had front row seat to when our small bus overtook a large bus in a steep, upwards curve with a large 18-wheeler bearing down on us from the other direction. It wouldn't have helped much with airbag and a seatbelt if we had crashed, and that's probably the reason why we didn't have any in the first place.

The name "Rio Dulce" actually means "sweet river", and sweet it was. My hostel was right by the river, so every morning I had breakfast at the riverside. That wasn't too bad. However,the localization was the main reason why I stayed there. The dorms were kind of crappy, and the beds were hard, but I guess you get what you pay for, and for 30Quetzales , 3.5usd pr night, I guess I can't complain. But the hard beds only made it better when we made it to Finca Paraiso, a place on the river with hot waterfalls. It was epic laying on hot rocks with hot water cascading down on your back. The sad thing is that my backpack got in a small pond, so my kindle is now dead. R.I. P.

After a couple of days in Rio Dulce I took the bus to Semuc Champey with Lydia and James, this British couple I met at the Finca. For those of you who don't know, Semuc Champey is this beautiful natural park in the middle of nowhere. After an extremely bumpy ride we arrived at our hostel, beaten and sore after spending g 30mins holding on for or lives in the back of a pickup.

The main attraction in Semuc Champey is a series of pools and pond in the river. The water is crystal clear, and the place itself is amazing. In adittion, there's a big cave nearby. I went on this candle light tour which was pretty cool. We swam around in the cave, climbed up waterfalls, traversed deep pits and stuff. The bottom was riddled with razor sharp stones though, so I lleft with cuts and bruises on my feet and knees. Still worth it.

Now I've made my way up to Flores, a small village on this island in the middle of a lake. The main attraction in the area is the ancient Maya city of Tikal, one of the largest ever built. So tomorrow I will embark on a three day hike through the jungless, and on Friday, we will end up n Tikal. To say it like the cool people would; this shit gon' be live, yo!

So long!

As always, the pictures are a bit mixed and clumped together, but from the upper left, they are as following;

1: the stairway at Copan. The longest inscription in central america with more than 2000 signs.

2: The Makaw (aka parrot) the national bird of Honduras
3The hostel in Rio Dulce
4:Pitstop on our way to Semuc Champey
5:Caveswimming
6&7: The pools at Semuc
8: The river
9: Chillin' in Copan
10: A four faced Mayan god. Creepy bastard.

lørdag 9. februar 2013

Adios Antigua!

This is my last day here in Antigua and it´s kinda sad really. Its a nice place, and hopefully I´ll be able to come back, one day.

When I first got to Antigua and the school, I was surprised to see how many people who attended, and how many young people there were. Turns out that all the young ones were in the same group, a group of US college students on a trip with they teacher. They were really nice, so it kinda sucked that they left two days later... After that there really havent been that many people under 50yrs there. There has been some, of course, but not that many. Not that I mind talking to adults, but its just so different with people more or less your own age. You just dont hang out with a 65 year old married couple on a saturday night...

This week there´s been a lot of stuff going on though. On monday a bunch of new people started, and amongst them were this American family with a couple of sons in their twenties, as well as a couple of girls from England and Oregon. Thus we had our own little gang, the five of us. We´ve been walking around town, sightseeing and just chilling. But now everybody (including me) is leaving so no more. I usually hate saying goodbye to people, but during this first month I´ve gotten quite a bit of practice. Well, as we say in Norway (I can´t remember the English saying) "aldri saa galt at det ikke er godt for noe"

During my time here I´ve gotten quite a lot of questions, so I´d thought Id share a couple of the most common ones here;

1 - the whole safety-situation. Many people are conserned with my safety (which I am very gratefull for), because they have heard so many bad things about Guatemala. Guatemala have a lot more crime than Norway, but its not that bad, especially not here in Antigua. This town is dependent on tourism, so the city has taken its precautions. There city is crawling with tourist police as well as normal (armed) police. Not crawling in a bad way, but they have a solid presence, day and night. In addittion there´s a lot of banks and jewellery stores here, and all of them have their own armed guards. The house I live in is protected by a 5cm thick steel reinforced wooden gate locked by locks, two metal bars, a chain and a wooden beam. Better safe than sorry. It´s still possible to get into trouble, but as long as you dont walk home alone at night whilst being super drunk you should be fine. The risk of being swindeled or mugged is always present though.

2: Food. Traditional Guatemalan food is kind of like traditional farmers-food all over the world. There are a lot of stews and soups with vegetables and some meat. Every meal is served with rice and tortillas to make it more filling. The food is spicy, but very, very good. My host mom here, Margarita, is a good cook, and she varies a bit by making international dishes as well. Breakfast is often egg and beans or crepes and fruit salad (they have delicious fruit here), so its a big step forward from the sandwiches back home. Except for the frijoles, the black beans. Im not too fond of them, really.

I could have written much more, but then nobody would want to read the whole thing, so Ill continue with the FAQs later.

To wrap up; Im now done in Antigua, and it has been awesome! I´m still not fluent in Spanish, but I´m much better than before. Same goes for the salsa, wuhuu.

I leave for Copan, Honduras tomorrow morning, and the plan is to stay there for a couple of days before heading for Flores in northern Guatemala.

I have a lot of pictures, but the internet connection here is sooooooooooooooo slow, and I dont have time to upload atm. They will come later.

Adios!

torsdag 7. februar 2013

San Pedro

Another blogpost uploaded a bit late, but hey, better late than never :)

Last weekend I got on a bus to San Pedro, a small town by nearby Lake Atitlan. I got one half of a double room for only 40Q per night, 10USD for the entire weekend. Not too bad.

San Pedro is popular with people wanting to learn spanish, so Friday night I bumped into a group of people from one of these schools. They were really nice, so I spent the rest of the night and weekend with them.

On Saturday, we took this launcha (a small ferry) to San Marcos, another village by the lake. The day was spent swimming, sunbathing - basically having fun. Later we went to this local playground and tried to find our Zen (inner peace). This might sound totally random, but San Marcos is overrun by people attending meditation schools and people trying to find themselves, so we just thought we´d join in. Our quest were interrupted by some local kids though, so we went from meditation to a waterfight. Fun, but very tiring, because the kids HAD to go piggy-back on us. At least we got our daily exercise.

I had to go back to Antigua on Sunday, and that was a bit sad. San Pedro was a nice place, and if you´re ever in the area, you should stop by! (Unless you have something against hippies or Israelis - for some reason the place is full of them. In that case, go to San Marcos instead) The lake didn´t want me to leave as planned though - our minibus had to wait for a couple of hours due to construction work. Kind of lame, but at least I got to eat an icecream and enjoy the view. Back in Antigua I just had dinner with a couple of people I met on the bus ride home, before I went to bed.

Monday another week began, and there has has always been stuff going on. More on that later.

Ciao!

Happy-time

Kees and Josh

Finding our zen in San Marcos

"Creepy Uncle" Dan. One US Dan = Five Guatemalan kids

Im not very good with names, so I give you (from left to right); Australia, California, Israel and Norway

onsdag 30. januar 2013

Zapotes, english lessons and vulcanoes

ey hey everybody! I've been a bit sick these last few days, so I haven't been able to update my blog - untill now that is.

I'm still going to school every day, but I've discovered that I'm not as proficient in Spanish as I thought I was when I wrote my previous post. It's true that I understand more or less everything my teachers say, but they speak really slowly and with simple language. The locals are a bit harder to understand, unfortunately. But I'm making progress, so I'm guessing that I'll know sufficient to travel in a couple of weeks. The same thing goes for my salsa, by the way. I know a couple of spins and stuff, so I hope that I'll be able to dance without making a complete fool of myself in a week or two. Yay!

The first part of last week was pretty much business as usual. There was the weekly lunch and a visit to a local macadamia nut farm. The farm was founded by a Swedish guy, so it was actually called "Valhalla", the old Norse word for heaven. We didn't get to see too much of the plantation itself, but we got a free facial massage with macadamia nut oil. Not too bad.

On Friday I had to have a presentation about the Zapote, a local fruit. I had never heard of it before, but I had ample time to prepare myself, so the presentation went fine, even though it was in Spanish. What didnt go quite as smoothly was something that happened later that afternoon.

As I might have said earlier, the school got this program for local kids. The lady in charge of the program asked me if I'd care to help out on the fridays, and I thought "why not". What I didn't know was that I was going to be in charge of the whole thing. Needless to say, I got a bit surprised when all the kids asked me " what are we going to do, what are we going to do?" After a few moments of utter confusion, we decided to play soccer in the park. So far so good, right? Well, when we were done, they wanted to learn some English. Therefore I had to improvise an English lesson - in Spanish. The first fifteen minutes or so went fine, but I only know so many animals and furniture in spanish, so after fifteen minutes, the kids grew a bit restless. Right after that, the teacher left, so we just ended up playing hangman. Probably not the most pedagogic class seen by this world, but I think I did well, considering the cirumstances. Gold star for me!

On Sunday Terry and I went on a trip to Pacaya, one of the nearby vulcanoes. The first thing we learned was that some of the local travel agencies lie - a lot. We were told that the price we paid included all costs, a private shuttle, a bottle of water and security. "private shuttle" meant a minibus ride to the bus that took us up to the vulcano. The bus was one of the local chicken buses, old school buses from the US, and they are not too comfortable really. The price we paid included the guide, but not the entrance fee to the natural park. And the water we didnt get, but we could buy it for more or less twice the price as in Antigua. The security was non existent as well, but we didnt need it. Despite this, the trip was very nice. There were approximately 30 other people in our group, and we spent probably 90 minutes or so walking upwards. We couldnt get to the crater itself, but a ledge a bit below. The view was amazing, AND we got to roast marshmallows on the hot rocks. That was kinda cool. Another cool thing was that there were som other norwegians on the tour as well, three guys from Bergen and two girls from Trondheim. There also was this swedish guy who lives in Oslo, so we had a little Scandinavian club going on. What was not so cool was that the trail was so incredibly dusty, so when we got back I brought with me half of the vulcano in my shoes, in my hair, and in my lungs. Walking that trail everyday is probably worse than smoking a 20-pack a day. Anyways, the trip was good, and I'm now able to say that I've been on a live volcano. Yes, you may touch my hand.

Monday afternoon the school went to a local jade factory and museum. They had a lot of cool stuff, and we learnt a lot, for example why a tiny jade necklace could be worth US$ 9.3million. I also discovered that I'm born in the sign of Aq'ab'al. That means that my guardian spirit, according to mayan mythology, is a bat. The bat signifies darkness and the night, but also sunrise and sunset. Since my guardian is the bat, my house will forever be a safe place to spend the night ( Girls - pay attention). We bats are also strong and noble, merciless with our enemies and suitable occupations for us are physio therapists, economists and leaders. As I'm going to study economics and leadership, this seems to fit as well. What I didnt like is that those born in that sign are more likely than others to be robbed and assaulted, and that we must watch our health closely. Especially the health thing worries me a bit, since I've gotten a bit sick (again). Last time I got this I was sick for almost five months, but I hope that won't be the case this time... For some odd reason the mayans also thought the bat was the guardian for couples in love, and some other stuff with love. I actually think the mayans did a good job with this one, the batman-description isn't too far off. However,I feel like my spirit got some catching up to do on the love-part - but Im sure he'll get around to that as soon as he's finished messing with my health.

Anyways, that's all for now. See you soon!

-Magnus

Terry enjoying a macadamia oil- face massage

Hangman - Guatemalan style

Lupe

On our way to Pacaya

Roasting marshmallows on hot rocks

Marshmallows are awesome!

mandag 21. januar 2013

It's photo-time!

Here are a bunch of photos, as promised. they are a bit out of order, though. I tried to take some fancy photos, but as you can see, I'm not a professional photographer (yet) My camera isn't that high class either, but at least you're able to see the motives. Another thing, I love toreceive comments, but it would be nice if you could, log in or sign them. If not, I'll have no idea who wrote what :) -Magnus

The courtyard of "La Capuchina", a big convent ruined in 1773

The inside of La Capuchina s main room

Yours truly in front of the rear of La capuchina

Coffee beans being dried at La Azotea, a nearby coffee farm

The different phases of coffee production. The berries are in the middle, beans with shells are up, without shells to the right, roasted to the left and grounders down.