GIVE ME FREEDOM! GIVE ME FIRE!

Happy birthday Tim.. as your gift, I take full responsibility.

Dancing Dave by Maria

I don't blog anymore..

but Maria does! and does it well.. here is the link http://calibellezza.blogspot.com/

Since I got back from Peace Corps in August, I lived in San Diego working at a small branch of the local Boys and Girls Club while looking for work in DC, San Diego or SF/Sacramento. I ended up getting an offer from the Fish & Wildlife service as a Management Assistant for the division of Visitor Services and Communications of the National Wildlife Refuge System. Just like peace corps, tons of acronyms. FWS, MA, VSC, NWRS. It's all pretty exciting. I lived in East Falls Church in Arlington, just a metro stop away from work (in Ballston) for a few months until Maria got here and now we live in Capitol Hill. Nice location in DC. I'll try to get more details and pictures from the past year on here and then this will be my last blog. After that, see Maria's.

All Over

I got back to San Diego yesterday, so the trip has ended for both of us. David is already in DC finding a job, but he has plenty more adjustments to make than I did since he was gone for more than 2 years. All I have to do is get ready to take warm showers again!

I couldn't sleep on the plane flights, so I put a list together of my favorite parts of the trip ... David you can update it if you disagree with anything.

David's responses are below each of Greg's.

Best overall food: Guatemala. Mostly because of Rosa's cooking, but even the rest stops and restaurants we went to were good, especially in Lake Atitlan.

Rosa's cooking was delicious, but I'll go with the best street food because homecooked panamanian food was also delicious. So... street tacos in mexico. By the way, the hottest salsa Chipotle has to offer would be a mild down south.

Best individual food: Guineo Chino. One of the families in Loma Bonita gave this to me. It was a super sweet banana desert. I'm not sure why "chino" is in the name, but it was so good. I ate a lot of banana products on the trip, but this was the only place where I could find this desert!

I guess I already answered that one. I've got to point out though that Nicaragua has the best 'on-the-bus' food sales. Panama just sold doritos, banana chips and drinks. Nicaragua buses sold plates of yucca, chicharron (delicious fried pork skin), Quesillo which was a rolled tortilla with a stick of cheese cream and onions mmm and more.

Craziest thing to eat: Pig brain and coagulated pig blood in Guatemala. Served as appetizers, but neither were good. Also, we ate armadillo, also in Guatemala; that crazy place!

Agree with Greg.. except I liked the brain, the congealed blood was a little weird. The Iguana I had a few near years ago tops it all though, and was very good.

Worst individual food: Ceviche. I don't know why I ordered it because I don't like sea food, but it was octopus in lime juice. Plus, I spilled it on a Panamanian woman while throwing it away, so that was almost dicey.

The white chalky flaky cheese that latinos love so much.

Best money: Costa Rica Colone. It had sharks on one of its bills, so it automatically wins.

Panama. No losses on conversion and a much smaller ATM fee ;).

Nicest people: Nicaragua. The poorest country, but everyone was willing to help and was excited to talk to us. Mercedes and her husband were great hosts in Leon. The people in Loma Bonita were also extremely nice to me, even though my Spanish then was far worse than it is now.

Loma Boniteños, of course.

Best music: Panama. The country that brought us El Choque and it loves Reggaeton.

No question Panama. Most of the buses in the other countries didn't even play much music. Unfortunate especially b/c I lost my ipod on.. day 3?

Best set of ruins: Teotihuacan. Tikal was amazing since it was deep in the jungle, but these ruins were so massive and I could not get over the view of the walkway they called "Avenida de la muerte".

I liked Tikal the best. They were so tall, it was really cool to see the tips above the jungle (even though the Mayans had cleared out the forest). The entire area is flat, but when walking around it looks as if there were hills all around. They are all ruins that have been grown over! They say only 10-15% of the site has been uncovered.

Best sporting event: Futbol. Went to three games but soccer was the best. The fans were so into it that it made what is usually a boring sport exciting and seem pretty action-packed. I'm going to go to a game in America now, but I highly doubt it will compare to this.

I only went to the beisbol game, and enjoyed it but I'm sure futbol was a good time. What was the 3rd game? bullfighting? I'd prefer to just hang out in the ring and get chased up a fence by the bull (guararé guararé guararé) instead of watching someone kill it

Best nightlife: Honduras. We met some really fun people in San Pedro Sula who took us out unti like 6 a.m., Bajamar was a fun place the first time and Utila felt like college.

Agreed. Mexico city is probably a cool place, too bad we picked an area called Zona Rosa.

Best big city: Mexico City. Had no idea a place so nice existed in Mexico. Their country unfairly gets a bad rap.

Penonomé!

Best beer: Salva Vida in Honduras. Outside of the great name, meaning "lifesaver", it tasted exactly like Bass. Wasn't too light and wasn't too dark. The "Mixto" beer that the Samoyas gave us in Guatemala City gets an honorable mention.

Moza from Guatemala.. the only dark beer I found in the last 2.5 years. It was what they mixed with the lighter beer Gallo to make Mixto.

Worst beer: Everything in Nicaragua. They all tasted like nothing.

Yea I'll agree.

Best hotel: Mango Inn on Utila. Only place with hot water and the pool was great to cool off after walking about in ridiculous humidity.

Rosa's house. Or the cabins at semuc-champey. In the middle of the jungle right on the river.

Best outdoors thing to do: Going through the caves, or "spelunking" in Semuc-Champay, Guatemala. Absolutely crazy and such a rush to cliff dive from deep inside a cave halfway filled with water. Worth missing a soccer game at a 100,000-person stadium in Mexico City.

yep Semuc Champey. You would have regretted leaving the tour early and missing that cave for a soccer game you probably wouldn't have made anyways.. glad you eventually made it to one though

Coolest animal: Seeing and hearing howler monkeys in Tikal. They were so loud, sounded like lions. Also, there was a glow-in-the-dark caterpillar in Loma Bonita and we saw an owl eye-spotted butterfly in Costa Rica.

Howler monkeys. Just went to the zoo in DC and heard one "howl" through the glass. So many people were impressed and video-ing its sad and depressing 'let me out of here' whimper, when he should have sounded like a lion screaming "THIS IS MY TREE"

Best economic decision: Paying 60 Lempira ($3.50) for street meat in Utila. We bought grilled chicken and a bean-filled tortilla. Not only was it the best food on the island (which is way too touristy), but it was by far the cheapest.

Folding my honduran customs paper so it fit into my passport. See below.

Worst economic decision: Paying 30 Pesos (just under $3) for pistachios at bullfighting in Mexico City. That was equal to what I paid in Mexico on a separate occasions for 3 tacos. I'd say paying a 3,200 Lempira fine in Honduras for my customs issue was much worse economically, but then again it wasn't really my "decision".

Only taking out 20 dollars worth of Lemps when the ATM fee totaled 7.50, oops.

Safest town: La Fortuna, Costa Rica. The little town near Volcano Arenal. It just seemed so comfortable to walk around the few blocks of the town. Like nothing bad could ever happen ... except the volcano exploding.

Leon? Felt safe pretty much everywhere

Most dangerous town: San Pedro Sula, Guatemala. Nothing happened to us, but when you see a security guard at a restaurant holding a file, that is all you need to know. Guy was also drinking a beer, so I dont know how much protection he would have provided.

Haha ya, based on what we read.. SPS would probably win this one. The guard definitely wouldn't protect us with his file ;). a rifle would be better

Craziest bus trip: They, really, all were, but from La Entrada to Copan Ruinas, Honduras. They fit more than 20 people in a shuttle that, truly, has space for 14. People were standing or sitting on one another. No way anyone would have survived had we crashed. Also it rained, so everything was wet and we had to make an emergency stop to prevent luggage from falling off the top of the van.

I wore those zip off quick dry pants on the way to Atitlan on a school bus. Every curve i went from the left side of the seat to the right.

Hardest cultural adjustment: Taking cold showers. Not even close.

Here, we'll go with an adjustment back to the states. 6 dollar beers! aah

One back, one still left

So, David has returned to the US after more than 2 years living in Panama and a great month traveling in Central America. I was supposed to join him today, BUT because of schedule changes with the Mexican Premier Futbol League and the extra time we spent in Guatemala, I had yet to go to the soccer game that I desired. So I got a new ticket for Monday to be able to go to a Cruz Azul game today. Plus, I found out that there is bullfighting on Sunday, so I get to do that as well as a bonus. Definitely pumped for that as I´ve never seen anything like it.

The soccer game was great. It was the first professional soccer game I´ve ever been to, let alone it being my first soccer game in another country. The fans there put those in the US to shame. They chant and cheer all game, bang drums, wave flags. Even through halftime they were making noise. Nothing like in America, when we cheer only when something happens. Best I could compare it to is a college basketball environment, but these fans were even louder in an outdoor stadium than those in gyms.

Mexico City impressed both of us. My only experience with Mexico was the Tijuana-Ensenada strip and Cancun, so I really didn´t know what to think. But this place is nothing like those towns. First it is huge (there are more people here than in Canada), it is really clean, there are huge statues and monuments everywhere and the public transportation is great. We also went to the ruins of Teotihuacan, which were probably the best set of ruins we saw. These pyramids were huge and nearly the whole city is in tact; or you can at least see traces of it. It is amazing what these ancient people were able to do.

I managed one day without depending on David as a translator, so we´ll see how it goes on Day 2. Hope he has a safe flight back.

Week in Guatemala

Well we enjoyed Guatemala so much (and staying with family friend Rosa and her family) that we stayed an extra few days. We're all set to fly to Mexico City in a few hours. We're going to miss most of that country, but still get to see the Aztec ruins and then tour the best parts of the city. We met a girl from Mexico at our last stop in Semuc-Champay and she gave us a heads up on the good stuff to do there.

We spent about 8 days in Guatemala and pretty much went all over the country. Started in Guatemala City to spend time with Rosa and her family. She was a foreign exchange student who stayed with our grandparents in 1969 and they have kept in touch since, so she was very welcoming and let us stay at her house at the edge of the city and treated us so nice. We are very grateful. After 3 days there (one longer than planned!) we went to Lake Atitlan for a day, then to Flores to see the ruins in Tikal. While there we heard about this place called Semuc-Champay, which has natural turquoise water pools on top of an underground river as well as caves filled with water, so we decided to check that out. The plan was to fly to Mexico City yesterday to see a Premier Division soccer game, but the bus got us to the airport just a bit too late, so we stayed another night in Guatemala City and went out on the town with Maria, Rosa's daughter. That was a good time.

We will be in Mexico City and then back in San Diego on Saturday night. Hopefully the airlines let us change the flight so we can catch a soccer game before we go! After all, that was one of my big goals for the trip.

Pictures from the trip

Costa Rica/Nicaragua

Honduras/Guatemala