Stu.
"I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel's sake. The great affair is to move. " ~Robert Louis Stevenson
Well Robert obviously hasn´t spent too much time on chicken buses or in minibuses full of Isreali´s with bad singing voices. - (Don´t take this wrong, I like everyone, despite where they are from, colour, beliefs, taste in music- thats quite hard- , it´s just that a lot of Isreali´s keep living up to the negative stereotype that has been cast of them, it´s uncanny!! I´ve met dozens of Isreali people. A couple of them were nice. It´s almost like a challenge now to find pleasant ones!)
There are very few people that you will find in Central America that will say they enjoyed the journey.
The journey isn´t fun, it´s hot and cramped and noisey and your stuck with people who you may dislike for any reason, mainly though because they keep elbowing you in what is clearly your part of the seat, and singing to their MP3 player. Badly. Look out the window, thats an ok way to pass the time, the views are nice at worst, spectacular usually, grasp that silver lining coz it´s the only one. And your bum hurts. And it´s damn hot. And you sweat. A lot.
So yeah I like to arrive, I like to leave when I´ve had enough of a place or seen what it has to offer and I like to arrive. the bit in the middle pretty much sucks.
If at some point in the future they invent a teleporter then sign me up now, thats the way to do it, check I´m the only one in the thing first though. "Be afraid, be very afraid" Brundlefly -that´d be shit. If you don´t know what I´m talkin about right now you should probably go do something else, we have nothing in common. (only joking, but really go watch some classic horror films)
What I´m getting at is that travelling has a lot of, well, travelling involved. So we got a minibus to San Pedro de Lago Atitlan.
Life on the Lake. Love it.
A very chilled out place ( thats becoming quite a theme - it helps that we are avoiding cities). There are a few little towns dotted around a huge lake, we chose San Pedro, it sounded good in "The Book" - Thats a reference to the Lonely Planets "Central America on a Shoestring", without which we would probably be stuck in Mexico still.
I´d like to say that we travelled around on our own 2 feet, trailblazing, finding new ways to travel, discovering unknown hostels in the middle of nowhere where the beer is cheap and the folk are friendly ( actually thats pretty much everywhere anyway). The truth is we just read the book. We choose our destinations when we get a recommendation from someone about somewhere thats nice but then it´s the Book that tells us how to get there, gives us a selection of places to stay, has maps of where we are. It could only be better if a Lonely Planet employee met us off the bus and carried or bags for us!
I try to hide the Book sometimes, not letting people see that without it I´d be lost, I try to look like, "Yeah, I know where I´m going and I know how to get there"
Theres a danger you see, in my eyes, probably in other peoples too, that despite my best efforts I´ll become the unthinkable, not a traveller but a TOURIST!!! hahaha -- computer laughing is so fake.
Maybe thats just me.
Yeah, life on the Lake, we found a very cool bar called the Budda Bar - because they have a huge Pizza oven on the roof shaped like Budda and the Pizza goes in his belly to cook.
I played a lot of pool, actually we had a knockout competition which I lost in the final to a local guy. He probably needed the 5 pound prize money more than me anyway.
Drugs.
ClassA´s B´s and C´s, and probably some I´ve never even heard of. E´s, coke, MDMA, mushrooms, weed. They´re rife around the lake! I have tattoos I know and I´m backpackin around but this surely doesn´t instantly catagorise me as someone who will accept drugs from everyone I meet. It got ridiculous how many times in a day I´d get offered drugs on the street. The very first shop we went into, we were asked if we wanted to but a tshirt?, no, a Hammock? no. Some weed? The shopkeeper then proceeded to show me the bag of pot he had in his pocket to prove there were "no seeds, look, no seeds"
This continued pretty much constantly for the 3 or 4 days we were here.
"you want to rent a kayak?, No, You want some pot?"
In the bar, sitting around the pool table with some locals and other travellers
"Hi, I´m Frank" a local guy says as he comes over to the pool table, we shake hands. "you smoke weed? I got good weed man, if you need weed you come to me and I´ll sort it out"
Now to some this might all sound like San Pedro is a town of depravity and drug abuse but you couldn´t be further from the truth, yes there are drugs readily available for those who choose to partake but the guys selling it were actually very pleasant. The man in the shop asked me how I was doing every time I walked past (although he called me Steve). Frank was a familiar and friendly face in the bar. These are just locals who realise there is a hell of a lot more money to be made selling weed and mushrooms to Westerners than there is trying to sell them hammocks and bracelets.
Who are we to judge?
We did rent a Kayak while we were here, spent a very nice hour rowing around the lake.
We took the boat to a couple of other towns around the lake, not much to report, we chose the best town. There was a bit of rain when we were over at another town that continued as we were on the boat back too.
The street flooded, we had to sit in the boat for 15 minutes because the steps at the dock had turned into a river!
"I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel's sake. The great affair is to move. " ~Robert Louis Stevenson
Well Robert obviously hasn´t spent too much time on chicken buses or in minibuses full of Isreali´s with bad singing voices. - (Don´t take this wrong, I like everyone, despite where they are from, colour, beliefs, taste in music- thats quite hard- , it´s just that a lot of Isreali´s keep living up to the negative stereotype that has been cast of them, it´s uncanny!! I´ve met dozens of Isreali people. A couple of them were nice. It´s almost like a challenge now to find pleasant ones!)
There are very few people that you will find in Central America that will say they enjoyed the journey.
The journey isn´t fun, it´s hot and cramped and noisey and your stuck with people who you may dislike for any reason, mainly though because they keep elbowing you in what is clearly your part of the seat, and singing to their MP3 player. Badly. Look out the window, thats an ok way to pass the time, the views are nice at worst, spectacular usually, grasp that silver lining coz it´s the only one. And your bum hurts. And it´s damn hot. And you sweat. A lot.
So yeah I like to arrive, I like to leave when I´ve had enough of a place or seen what it has to offer and I like to arrive. the bit in the middle pretty much sucks.
If at some point in the future they invent a teleporter then sign me up now, thats the way to do it, check I´m the only one in the thing first though. "Be afraid, be very afraid" Brundlefly -that´d be shit. If you don´t know what I´m talkin about right now you should probably go do something else, we have nothing in common. (only joking, but really go watch some classic horror films)
What I´m getting at is that travelling has a lot of, well, travelling involved. So we got a minibus to San Pedro de Lago Atitlan.
Life on the Lake. Love it.
A very chilled out place ( thats becoming quite a theme - it helps that we are avoiding cities). There are a few little towns dotted around a huge lake, we chose San Pedro, it sounded good in "The Book" - Thats a reference to the Lonely Planets "Central America on a Shoestring", without which we would probably be stuck in Mexico still.
I´d like to say that we travelled around on our own 2 feet, trailblazing, finding new ways to travel, discovering unknown hostels in the middle of nowhere where the beer is cheap and the folk are friendly ( actually thats pretty much everywhere anyway). The truth is we just read the book. We choose our destinations when we get a recommendation from someone about somewhere thats nice but then it´s the Book that tells us how to get there, gives us a selection of places to stay, has maps of where we are. It could only be better if a Lonely Planet employee met us off the bus and carried or bags for us!
I try to hide the Book sometimes, not letting people see that without it I´d be lost, I try to look like, "Yeah, I know where I´m going and I know how to get there"
Theres a danger you see, in my eyes, probably in other peoples too, that despite my best efforts I´ll become the unthinkable, not a traveller but a TOURIST!!! hahaha -- computer laughing is so fake.
Maybe thats just me.
Yeah, life on the Lake, we found a very cool bar called the Budda Bar - because they have a huge Pizza oven on the roof shaped like Budda and the Pizza goes in his belly to cook.
I played a lot of pool, actually we had a knockout competition which I lost in the final to a local guy. He probably needed the 5 pound prize money more than me anyway.
Drugs.
ClassA´s B´s and C´s, and probably some I´ve never even heard of. E´s, coke, MDMA, mushrooms, weed. They´re rife around the lake! I have tattoos I know and I´m backpackin around but this surely doesn´t instantly catagorise me as someone who will accept drugs from everyone I meet. It got ridiculous how many times in a day I´d get offered drugs on the street. The very first shop we went into, we were asked if we wanted to but a tshirt?, no, a Hammock? no. Some weed? The shopkeeper then proceeded to show me the bag of pot he had in his pocket to prove there were "no seeds, look, no seeds"
This continued pretty much constantly for the 3 or 4 days we were here.
"you want to rent a kayak?, No, You want some pot?"
In the bar, sitting around the pool table with some locals and other travellers
"Hi, I´m Frank" a local guy says as he comes over to the pool table, we shake hands. "you smoke weed? I got good weed man, if you need weed you come to me and I´ll sort it out"
Now to some this might all sound like San Pedro is a town of depravity and drug abuse but you couldn´t be further from the truth, yes there are drugs readily available for those who choose to partake but the guys selling it were actually very pleasant. The man in the shop asked me how I was doing every time I walked past (although he called me Steve). Frank was a familiar and friendly face in the bar. These are just locals who realise there is a hell of a lot more money to be made selling weed and mushrooms to Westerners than there is trying to sell them hammocks and bracelets.
Who are we to judge?
We did rent a Kayak while we were here, spent a very nice hour rowing around the lake.
We took the boat to a couple of other towns around the lake, not much to report, we chose the best town. There was a bit of rain when we were over at another town that continued as we were on the boat back too.
The street flooded, we had to sit in the boat for 15 minutes because the steps at the dock had turned into a river!
1 comment:
You look like your into all that dude, no doubt in my mind, no doubt in the mind of a South American Narcotics pedellar...
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