So let's retrace the travels of my last few weeks, since so much has happened. I left Lake Atitlan two weeks ago and made a beeline to Mexico to meet up with the parents. It took a little doing to get to the place I was to meet them, but I found it. I had to bury my pack in the woods, sneak into the cruise ship port, then get kicked out and sneak back in again. I spent the night in a cabana on the beach in the town nearby, and as there are no boats on Fridays had the entire beach to myself the next morning. Not too shabby.
Mexico is really quite lovely. Not that so many of the places I visited were really anywhere near Mexico, except on the map, but after being in Guatemala for three months it was a nice change to visit a place with wide sidewalks and supermarkets and nice cars. Please don't base your impression of the whole place on markets in border towns and cruise ship stopovers. The people are very nice, the standard of living is quite high, and most importantly--they have great donuts.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and make a bold statement: It is nearly impossible to be a vegetarian traveler in certain parts of Mexico. One would think that with the usual staples of beans and tortillas it wouldn't be too hard. But it is.
At the private island cruise ship port where I met the family it was completely impossible. There were only two restaurants, the "Casa de Carne" and the world famous "Jimmy Buffet's 'Would You Like Some Meat with That?'" I couldn't even resort to my usual 'OK, I'll just have some fish today' exception. This was all Grade-A, farm-raised, corn-fed, hand-killed all-American MEAT, imported from Brazil. My lucky day.
But the cruise ship port is a made-up place: five years ago it didn't exist and it has no connection to any of the world around it, and is certainly not really in Mexico. The ATMs dispense and restaurants accept American dollars. Maybe things would be better other places.
So I journeyed to Playa del Carmen, mainly just because I liked the name but also because I knew it to be a big spring break destination. This was beneficial in two ways: I never made it to spring break when I was in school--any of the six years I was there for it--and I thought that if they are trying to cater to the needs of financially powerful college students, many of whom will certainly be vegetarian, I should be able to eat something other than peanut butter for a few days.
Not so. The first comedor I ate in brought three bottles of salsa to the table with my dinner: salsa de tomate, salsa de jalapeņo, and salsa de beef. But at least at the hostel I had a big kitchen and a grocery nearby, so I could cook for myself. And a hot shower. I didn't know such things existed south of 22 1/2.
Spring break is fun! I didn't actually participate but I had a great time watching from the corner, a skill I am quite practiced at. MTV seemed to think I was having such a good time that they interviewed me for a few minutes. If there's one thing I learned from my previous TV appearance, it's that timing is everything, and Lady Luck was certainly on my side that night. Just as I was making my on camera comment about the endless hilarity that results when you mix freshmen with large amounts of cheap Mexican beer (made in Texas by the Gambrinus company, naturally), a few drunken girls chose to fall down the steps right behind me. Couldn't have worked better.
I rode the ferry across to Cozumel my last day with the sole purpose of buying a Hard Rock Café pin. If you've never been to Cozumel, let me tell you what: don't go. It's really pretty pointless. Find a Wal-Mart with a cruise ship parked out front and you'll get the same experience. Probably get about the same ratio of English to Spanish speakers too. I don't think I spoke Spanish all day, except when I was haggling for a Cuban cigar. All those lessons saved me $16 off what the pushy English speakers in front of me paid.
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| The hot waterfall near Rio Dulce |
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| Castillo San Filipe, where I went on my solo day |
But as much fun as it can be spending five times my normal Guatemalan daily budget and watching drunken freshmen do what drunken freshmen do, it was getting pretty boring down there. So I was pretty happy when my friend e-mailed me and said that she was feeling a bit lonely, and that maybe we could meet up. Four days and two countries later, I was back in Guatemala having dinner on the Rio Dulce with her. What a wonderful life.
We had a great time together, like always. We sat up most of the night talking and catching up on everything that had happened in the two weeks since we last saw each other. We went to a hot spring waterfall the next day. There are cave-like formations that have formed on a cliff where this incredibly hot spring joins a cold creek to form a temperate swimming hole. It was a nice afternoon.
She had arrived in Rio Dulce two days ahead of me, and already had plans of her own for the next afternoon. And it was pretty clear she kind of had her own thing going on there. We spent a bit of the day after together. I told her that now I was the one feeling lonely and a bit like I was getting in her way. She insisted that I wasn't and was doing a great job making me believe it, but I thought it would be best to leave the next day. We did drinks that night and talked until late when I walked her home. The next day I wished her well, told her that I'm truly happy that she looks so happy, and boarded the next lancha back into my own world.
A Community of Travelers
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| Young boys selling native flowers to the lanchas on the ride to Livingston |
But the truth is that you're never really alone out here. Backpackers are a different breed from other travelers. We are an incredibly tight community bonded by common experience and challenges, at the same time completely impossible to understand and much more normal than you'd think. We all know each other, if not by name and nationality then by our similar stories and common goals. We gather together for birthdays and holidays and arrivals and departures. We make plans to meet each other after someone moves on. We take up, break up and make up. We fight viciously, we laugh obnoxiously, we disappoint and impress ourselves and each other, and we keep each other grounded.
And we all have issues. None of us leave home perfectly content with our lives. Some people are just bored or have reached a natural turning point in their lives. Others are looking for a new life or adventure. For me it was all of those things, plus a lot of things I'm just now beginning to figure out. But here we're always surrounded by people just like ourselves. Being a part of that community is at least half the experience of traveling.
Some of you at home that I've chosen to share my recent issues with have asked me "Why don't you just come home?" There have been times I've asked myself the same question. You have made tantalizing offers. The return ticket in my notebook dated for Wednesday and the fact that I'm not that far from the airport right now make the thought all the more powerful.
Have you seen Almost Famous? In case you haven't, let me package it up into a cashew shell for you. Naīve boy joins rock band's tour to get an interview to write an article. Meets exciting new people. Sees a lifestyle he's only read about. Falls in love with a girl, saves her sanity and her life and helps her see herself for the person she really can be, but never gets her. Never gets the interview he went looking for either, but finishes the article anyway. Along the way he learns a lot about the nature of people, and even more about himself. There's a scene where our hero tells the Oscar-nominated leading lady that he needs to go home. She makes a Scooby-Doo sort of wave in front of his face and says "Don't you see? You are home."
Although I had a good life in Washington it could not go on any longer as it had. I had a good job, or at least one that I enjoyed and that paid me enough money to live a good life, and I liked the people I worked with. I had a great circle of friends. I lived in a nice house and loved my roommates and owned the first car I ever really liked. But I had no reason to stay and was frustrated by the lack of success in finding any reason to stick around. I liked living there, but I wasn't really that happy. I don't think I ever felt like I really fit in there. I felt like I was on the outside looking in at the great life others had and I wanted but couldn't quite have. I spent a lot of time by myself, and spent even more time wondering what else could be out there.
I can't go back to that life now. Here we are all face the same challenges, battle the same issues, worry about money and have to decide where we are headed from day to day. We all look out for each other. I have a community here. Here I fit in, and here [imaginary Scooby-Doo wave] I am home.
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| Making dinner in Livingston |
I've seen life as it can and should be now--fun, free, every day a new challenge. I haven't gotten the interview but I think I helped the girl, and just like the movie I lost her to a better world in the end. I haven't finished the article yet, but I've gathered enough information to begin to reconcile those things--both good and bad--about the nature of people that I couldn't understand before.
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| The bridge at Rio Dulce (also, the back of the girl that would be my roommate for the next few days) |
Besides, I came here to learn Spanish, and it's still not that great. I can't leave until it's great.
One final addition: The day this chapter went to press was an interesting day for me. Rio Dulce is home to the longest bridge in Central America. I don't know how long, I'd suspect around about a kilometre, but I do know that it's about 35 metres from deck to water. My friend and I had joked one night about using our super-human abilities to leap from the bridge and doing the lumberjack run on one of those fluorescent balls hanging on the power lines next to the bridge before slicing gracefully into the waves in the water far below. I told her that if the bridge was that high to let tall boats pass beneath, then surely the water was deep enough that the boats wouldn't run aground. If it were deep enough for that, surely we wouldn't hit bottom. Perhaps extremities would be wrenched from our bodies by the impact, but our armless corpses probably wouldn't hit bottom.
Well, I don't know where she went, but I did it. The fall from the bridge is pretty impressive, watching the water race up at you and screaming all the way. But then the bungee cord begins to slow your descent, the fall arrests just inches above the water, you spring back up--not all the way, but nearly so it seemed--and it all begins again. Pretty neat.
Bungee jumping was never on my list of 101 things to do before I die (maybe next week I'll share that list with you), but it was a nice appendix. And that being said, I don't think I'll be doing it again anytime soon...
Until the next time, loyal fans and world travelers-
-Tim(!)