we decided to stay up all night in order to make it on to the 6:15 am bus to La Fortuna. Hot springs and an active volcano await, but for now I am trying not to fall asleep.
It is amazing how gross one can feel after a long bus ride. It's not like the bus was dirty or anything, but I still feel grimy at the end of it.
TicaBus, the bus company we have been using to travel around Central America, is an excellent company. The seats are comfortable, they show recent, if somewhat cheesy, movies, and they are very well-organized. It is shocking how much inter-country flights cost in Central America. A one-way ticket from San Jose to Guatemala City can cost $400 if you buy it at the wrong time. That's insane, considering the small distance covered by the flight. There are also no inter-country freeways, so buses take forever to get from one point to another.
Thursday, August 31, 2006
tikal
I wake up at 3:30am to hike through the pitch-black jungle. all i can see is the person directly in front of me. i stunble over rocks and roots and slide around in mud. all i hear around me is the sound of insects, some fluttering by, some buzzing, and occasionally a gross crunching noise, which i suppose is one of the three inch long grubs with black heads that are all over the jungle floor. i live in fear of running into a spider web, as the spiders here are two to two and a half inches in diameter and are all sorts of bright orange and red colors. they look positively menacing.
As we progress further into the jungle, terrifying growling screaming noises start coming from the treetops. Howler monkeys. These things sound like a monster out of a horror movie--the screams they make in no way resemble what i previously thought monkeys would sound like.
our hike takes us to the base of Temple IV at Tikal, where I climb 230 feet to the top and sit silently, waiting for the dawn. all around me circles the chirping of insects and howling of monkeys. I can see nothing.
as the sky begins to lighten, the noise in the jungle gets louder, and all kinds of birds start chirping at once. i can barely make out the shifting veil of fog that surrounded the trees below. Temple IV is so tall that its top, where I am sitting, is above the canopy level of the jungle.
i watch as the sky lightens even more and the trees all around me start becoming visible. the mist shifting through the trees is breathtaking. what other place could have served as the scene of the rebel base camp in star wars?
i am suddenly aware of how very, very far i am from home.
As we progress further into the jungle, terrifying growling screaming noises start coming from the treetops. Howler monkeys. These things sound like a monster out of a horror movie--the screams they make in no way resemble what i previously thought monkeys would sound like.
our hike takes us to the base of Temple IV at Tikal, where I climb 230 feet to the top and sit silently, waiting for the dawn. all around me circles the chirping of insects and howling of monkeys. I can see nothing.
as the sky begins to lighten, the noise in the jungle gets louder, and all kinds of birds start chirping at once. i can barely make out the shifting veil of fog that surrounded the trees below. Temple IV is so tall that its top, where I am sitting, is above the canopy level of the jungle.
i watch as the sky lightens even more and the trees all around me start becoming visible. the mist shifting through the trees is breathtaking. what other place could have served as the scene of the rebel base camp in star wars?
i am suddenly aware of how very, very far i am from home.
Wednesday, August 23, 2006
antigua dreamin
arrived this morning and already in love with the place. cobblestone streets, little cupolas with fountains, candlelight, vines climbing up crumbling walls, brightly painted houses with the most amazing huge wooden doors. a massive volcano as the backdrop.
the hotel i am staying at, meson panza verde, seems like it came straight out of some wonderful honeymoon commercial. absolutely gorgeous. our room opens up into a courtyard with stones set into the moss and a beautiful fountain with vines climbing up it, that is lit with candles at night. we have our own private butterfly and flower filled garden. our room has its own cute little fireplace that looks like an oven. the hotel is full of little nooks and crannies, and semi'secret winding staircases which lead up to an art gallery upstairs where you can swing in a hammock, and then take a small staircase up to the roof where there is a rose garden and an awesome view of the volcano beyond and city below. one of the best restaurants in the city is at this hotel. we have reservations next to the reflecting pool in one hour. i can´t believe this place has no corkage fee. accordingly, we have stocked up on chilean wine.
gonna wander around central park and peek into an old church now.
ciao!
the hotel i am staying at, meson panza verde, seems like it came straight out of some wonderful honeymoon commercial. absolutely gorgeous. our room opens up into a courtyard with stones set into the moss and a beautiful fountain with vines climbing up it, that is lit with candles at night. we have our own private butterfly and flower filled garden. our room has its own cute little fireplace that looks like an oven. the hotel is full of little nooks and crannies, and semi'secret winding staircases which lead up to an art gallery upstairs where you can swing in a hammock, and then take a small staircase up to the roof where there is a rose garden and an awesome view of the volcano beyond and city below. one of the best restaurants in the city is at this hotel. we have reservations next to the reflecting pool in one hour. i can´t believe this place has no corkage fee. accordingly, we have stocked up on chilean wine.
gonna wander around central park and peek into an old church now.
ciao!
Monday, August 21, 2006
granada, granada
arived 2 days ago via bus, and almost checked into a beautiful hotel called El Club. Luckily they were full that night, because although beautiful, we were soon to find out that for the next 2 days, El Club would transform at night into..well..a club, complete with 6 foot speakers and thumping house music. Eardrum splitting beats in a tranquil garden setting...not our idea of a romantic retreat. we ended up getting a room at this adorable little spanish style house with an open air garden.
We had no idea that, by some stroke of incredible luck, we had arrived on one of the biggest party days of the year in Granada-- the Hipica festival! The first night we were there, we found our way to central park, where there were vendors and a free rock concert from a local band from Managua. The entire town seemed to be out grooving to the rock concert (which was a Nicaraguan Rock the Vote for the upcoming Nov 5th Presidential election). Even old ladies and small children were out dancing!
The people here are so, so friendly. They sit around in rocking chairs outside their front doors, and smile and say ¨buenas!¨whenever we walk by. The same old shirtless man across the street tips his hat at me every time we pass by. Everyone stares at us, probably because we are the only asian people in town. Several kids have come up to us to pinch us and touch us, as if to see if we´re real.
Imagine my glee at actually finding a restaurant named Macondo, with a passage from One Hundred Years of Solitude printed on the front of the menu! After my own heart, these people.
Sunday, the day of the Hipica parade, was insane. more later as teh internet cafe is closing.
We had no idea that, by some stroke of incredible luck, we had arrived on one of the biggest party days of the year in Granada-- the Hipica festival! The first night we were there, we found our way to central park, where there were vendors and a free rock concert from a local band from Managua. The entire town seemed to be out grooving to the rock concert (which was a Nicaraguan Rock the Vote for the upcoming Nov 5th Presidential election). Even old ladies and small children were out dancing!
The people here are so, so friendly. They sit around in rocking chairs outside their front doors, and smile and say ¨buenas!¨whenever we walk by. The same old shirtless man across the street tips his hat at me every time we pass by. Everyone stares at us, probably because we are the only asian people in town. Several kids have come up to us to pinch us and touch us, as if to see if we´re real.
Imagine my glee at actually finding a restaurant named Macondo, with a passage from One Hundred Years of Solitude printed on the front of the menu! After my own heart, these people.
Sunday, the day of the Hipica parade, was insane. more later as teh internet cafe is closing.
Friday, August 18, 2006
buenos!
that's hi in costa rican.
T and i just wandered down a coblestoned street to a small, adorably decorated retaurant with local artwork on the walls and a cool carribean band with a guy playing a gut-bucket and another one singing bob marley covers.
I ordered the queso fundido, not knowing anything about it except that somewhere in my mind i remembered it was supposed to be good--and discovered that queso fundido is FONDUE!!! thank you god. there is nothing like fondue and a glass of good red wine on a summer evening with a light drizzle outside and live music inside. everyone in the restaurant seemed to be old friends except for us.
a puttpeteer/ventriloquist came out to tell a heart -warming story about how the soul of a poet resides in his heart, the sould of a writer resides in his imagination, but the soul of a dancer resides in her entire body, and lights up the starless night with its beauty.
i'm understanding more spanish than i thought i would!
T and i just wandered down a coblestoned street to a small, adorably decorated retaurant with local artwork on the walls and a cool carribean band with a guy playing a gut-bucket and another one singing bob marley covers.
I ordered the queso fundido, not knowing anything about it except that somewhere in my mind i remembered it was supposed to be good--and discovered that queso fundido is FONDUE!!! thank you god. there is nothing like fondue and a glass of good red wine on a summer evening with a light drizzle outside and live music inside. everyone in the restaurant seemed to be old friends except for us.
a puttpeteer/ventriloquist came out to tell a heart -warming story about how the soul of a poet resides in his heart, the sould of a writer resides in his imagination, but the soul of a dancer resides in her entire body, and lights up the starless night with its beauty.
i'm understanding more spanish than i thought i would!
Thursday, August 03, 2006
the joy of doing nothing
i woke up at 8:30 this morning, made scranbled eggs, bacon and waffles for my bf before he went to work. then sat around reading until noon, ate leftover thai green curry and thai chicken wings with a mango lassi for lunch, read for a few more hours, fell asleep hugging the cat until 6pm. cooked a dinner of mahi-mahi and giant sea scallops in a cuban mojito simmer sauce. washed it down with a stella artois. ice cream sandwich for dessert.
doing nothing is great!!
doing nothing is great!!
Wednesday, August 02, 2006
Tuesday, August 01, 2006
summer reading list, part 1
today i'm meeting up with j to go to the warhol exhibit at the san diego museum of art. then we'll wander around hillcrest, have some yummy food and browse around some independent bookstores.
i went to borders and picked up the following books to consume during the next week or so:
The Devil Wears Prada by Lauren Weisberger
I'm starting out with this one because after the bar, my brain recoils from anything requiring more than minimal processing ability. So far, it's entertaining, funny and sometimes even witty, and requires no mental capacity whatsoever--everything a summer beach read should be.
The Mortocycle Diaries by Che Guevara
I had no idea until yesterday that this book was actually written Che Guevara. I always thought it was some sort of historical fiction. He's an awesome writer, too. Can't wait to start on this one.
The Know-It-All by A.J. Jacobs
"One Man's Humble Quest to become the Smartest Person in the World."
Hilarious nonfiction. A.J. Jacobs, an NPR contributor, chronicles his quest to read the Encyclopedia Britannica from A to Z. I've always wanted to do that! But I guess I'll just settle with reading this book.
Sidenote: The back cover says something about how astounding reading the whole Encyclopedia Brittanica is, because it's 33,000 pages long. I stopped and thought that I've read more than 33,000 pages these past 3 years in law school, and how much more enlightened (and less in debt!) I'd be if I had just spent the 3 years reading the encyclopedia instead of law textbooks. Okay I'm depressed now.
Blindness by Jose Saramago
Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. Oh, the allegorical loveliness of it all!
Blurb from Amazon: In an unnamed city in an unnamed country, a man sitting in his car waiting for a traffic light to change is suddenly struck blind. But instead of being plunged into darkness, this man sees everything white, as if he "were caught in a mist or had fallen into a milky sea." A Good Samaritan offers to drive him home (and later steals his car); his wife takes him by taxi to a nearby eye clinic where they are ushered past other patients into the doctor's office. Within a day the man's wife, the taxi driver, the doctor and his patients, and the car thief have all succumbed to blindness. As the epidemic spreads, the government panics and begins quarantining victims in an abandoned mental asylum--guarded by soldiers with orders to shoot anyone who tries to escape.
In this community of blind people there is still one set of functioning eyes: the doctor's wife has affected blindness in order to accompany her husband to the asylum. As the number of victims grows and the asylum becomes overcrowded, systems begin to break down: toilets back up, food deliveries become sporadic; there is no medical treatment for the sick and no proper way to bury the dead. Inevitably, social conventions begin to crumble as well, with one group of blind inmates taking control of the dwindling food supply and using it to exploit the others. Through it all, the doctor's wife does her best to protect her little band of blind charges, eventually leading them out of the hospital and back into the horribly changed landscape of the city."
Fascinating, no? I heard of this from a Law and Literature class I took a few years back.
i went to borders and picked up the following books to consume during the next week or so:
The Devil Wears Prada by Lauren Weisberger
I'm starting out with this one because after the bar, my brain recoils from anything requiring more than minimal processing ability. So far, it's entertaining, funny and sometimes even witty, and requires no mental capacity whatsoever--everything a summer beach read should be.
The Mortocycle Diaries by Che Guevara
I had no idea until yesterday that this book was actually written Che Guevara. I always thought it was some sort of historical fiction. He's an awesome writer, too. Can't wait to start on this one.
The Know-It-All by A.J. Jacobs
"One Man's Humble Quest to become the Smartest Person in the World."
Hilarious nonfiction. A.J. Jacobs, an NPR contributor, chronicles his quest to read the Encyclopedia Britannica from A to Z. I've always wanted to do that! But I guess I'll just settle with reading this book.
Sidenote: The back cover says something about how astounding reading the whole Encyclopedia Brittanica is, because it's 33,000 pages long. I stopped and thought that I've read more than 33,000 pages these past 3 years in law school, and how much more enlightened (and less in debt!) I'd be if I had just spent the 3 years reading the encyclopedia instead of law textbooks. Okay I'm depressed now.
Blindness by Jose Saramago
Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. Oh, the allegorical loveliness of it all!
Blurb from Amazon: In an unnamed city in an unnamed country, a man sitting in his car waiting for a traffic light to change is suddenly struck blind. But instead of being plunged into darkness, this man sees everything white, as if he "were caught in a mist or had fallen into a milky sea." A Good Samaritan offers to drive him home (and later steals his car); his wife takes him by taxi to a nearby eye clinic where they are ushered past other patients into the doctor's office. Within a day the man's wife, the taxi driver, the doctor and his patients, and the car thief have all succumbed to blindness. As the epidemic spreads, the government panics and begins quarantining victims in an abandoned mental asylum--guarded by soldiers with orders to shoot anyone who tries to escape.
In this community of blind people there is still one set of functioning eyes: the doctor's wife has affected blindness in order to accompany her husband to the asylum. As the number of victims grows and the asylum becomes overcrowded, systems begin to break down: toilets back up, food deliveries become sporadic; there is no medical treatment for the sick and no proper way to bury the dead. Inevitably, social conventions begin to crumble as well, with one group of blind inmates taking control of the dwindling food supply and using it to exploit the others. Through it all, the doctor's wife does her best to protect her little band of blind charges, eventually leading them out of the hospital and back into the horribly changed landscape of the city."
Fascinating, no? I heard of this from a Law and Literature class I took a few years back.
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