Much time has passed since my last post, due to lack of interest and time. Still, I would like to write a post just giving a quick summary of what I’ve done the past few weeks.

Since about three weeks back I am essentially travelling on my own, since Jennifer who I was travelling with for about a month went back to Mexico to travel around with her boyfriend for around four weeks.  I knew he was coming to visit, but not how long, but nevertheless we parted ways after Lago Atitlan.  There were no hard feelings or anything so we might meet up for some more travel later on, although our itineraries are quite different as of now.

I went straight to Antigua, a small charming colonial city that used to be the capital of Guatemala a long time back. Some guidebook said that it is “what a Guatemalan city would be like if the Scandinavians came in and took over for a few centuries”, and I guess I can agree that it is indeed a very clean and peaceful place to be, perhaps too much at times.  It is also a really popular destination for studying Spanish, so there are constantly alot of gringos everywhere, for good and bad.

When you are travelling on your own, not with anyone else, you will have to get used to con-men constantly trying to set you up in every way possible. As soon as I arrived in Antigua, the tuc-tuc driver (yes, they are called tuc-tucs here as well) told me the hostel I was going to didn’t exist, but a friend of his might know. So he takes me away and meet his friend who says “that hostel closed a year ago, but I got a much better one here!”. I just waved him away as I knew the scam; it is one of the oldest tricks in the book. Man kan inte skojja en skojjare, as we say in Sweden. Of course the hostel existed;  I just found another Tuc-tuc driver to take me there instead. The first one charged me double for “being a troublemaker”. Cunt.

But in general, I certainly enjoy the total freedom of choice that solo travel offers. I can go where I want, when I want to and decide how long I want to stay. I also find it much easier to meet people when I’m on my own; you are really forced to take social initiatives all the time, cause if you don’t, you’ll be terrible lonely and that nobody wishes for, I think.

During my whole stay in Antigua, I stayed at a hostel called the Black Cat.  It was the perfect setting for someone who is travelling on his own; clean, fresh dorms and a built-in-bar/restaurant for socializing. I had shitloads of fun there and met tons of cool people. Best hostel ever. Was going to stay for about 3, but ended up staying for over 11 days,  partying hard every single night and after this shambling after various females (as always). During my close to two weeks time in Antigua, I did in total 2 activities apart from this. That’s enough,  right?

Early morning view from outside the Black Cat; the volcano is called Volcano de Agua and it is over 3700 metres high (tall?)

The twin volcanoes of Fuego and Acatenango, the left one is active and spits out smoke, lava and big boulders on a regular basis

First, I climbed the active volcano of Pacaya. It is a bit of a hike, but it is absolutely worth it in the end. You get up to where the actual lava is flowing, an obviously extremely dangerous activity that would never ever be allowed in a developed country. You are basically standing on rocks where you can see the lava flowing about 40 cm by the narrow openings under your feet. If you dare, you can also get close enough to the actual lava river to touch it with a wooden stick and even taking some up on the stick

I was fumbling as always, taking up some lava on my stick, turned around and almost put it in the face of the girl standing next to me. I wonder if she would have gotten mad at me. Unfortunately, I didn’t get any pictures since my camera ran out of batteries. Some folks I met up there has promised to send me some photos of me though, will upload them later. You’ll have to do with pictures from some other folks for now.

I was there! I promise! I will show you proof when I have it!

The second activity I did was to visit a devil worshipping cult in a remote village some hour from Antigua. They worship a man called Sán Simon, who is depicted sitting on a chair in 19th century clothes and a ciggarrette in his mouth. Looks like someone off a movie from 1910 or something. Allegedly, he is some sort of mixture of Judas and the cruel Spanish conquistador Pedro de Alvarado.

We got to the church and immediately got a bad vibe off the place. All over were they burning cigars on the ground, while being ridiculously drunk (at 1 pm during daytime), and some were smoking these enormous cigars with the hot end inside their mouth. A man who is obviously pissed out of his mind walks up to us and tells us we have to pay to take photos, we decline this and thus I havent got many pictures off this place. By entering the church, we see that everywhere there are idols and pictures depicting this Sán Simon guy. There is also a live-size Judas sitting inside a glass booth. An old woman soon approaches us to ask “If we want to get our souls cleansed”

Hell yeah! We  respond with a YES and soon I find myself standing infront of the drunk guy, by the altar, shirtless, being spanked all over the body with holy herbs drenched in firewater (hembrant). At the same time the guy is saying prayers. He continues the cleansing by pouring off the same firewater all over my body and ends with his Grand finale; taking a big gulp of this alcohol in his mouth and then spraying it in my face. Then I had to walk down backwards from the altar; my soul had been cleansed and I will now absolutely, surely, go to hell. Fantastique!

He continued by repeating the procedure on my friend Shaun, going all out crazy with the herb-spanking; we think this was because his nipple piercings made them upset. Anyways, afterwards they (ofcourse) tell us we have to pay about 100 skr (10 euros) per person, which we were not informed of earlier. The ambience was abit scary, so it was not really the time to start bargaining. We paid and left the damn place as soon as we could.  So basically, I paid 100 crowns to get spit in the face. Fantastique!

So this is god... ¡HAIL SAN SIMON!

Antigua was probably the most fun part of my trip so far, but even good things have to end at some point. It was with more than a little anxiety that I left the safe haven of Antigua, going away for new adventures in the national park of Semuc Champey.  I travelled there with two folks from the hostel, one American girl named Sara and then a Quebec (CANADIAN) guy named Hugo. Upon arriving, I met two Australian guys I had been hanging out with in Quetzaltenango.  We all got along very good and had a few days of relaxment and being drunk at night. Lanquin, which is the name of the village near the national park we were visiting, is indeed a picturesque place: It looks like something out of the Lord of The Rings, with a beautiful, lush jungle setting combined with grass-clad mountains covered in mist.

Semuc Champey is also quite nice, it is very hard to describe but it is like a river that has beautiful water pools and waterfalls with turquoise water. There is also some cliff you can jump from into the water, like 8-10 metres high. We were gonna do it but then I had a bizarre accident where I managed to cut up my left hand quite bad; almost down to the bone. It was bleeding like hell and didn’t heal up for a whole 2 weeks afterwards. Luckily, it didn’t get infected or anything; I just missed out on some cliff jumping. Bummer… that night we had an awesome fish dinner for about 2.5 euros, 25 skr, that beat most of what I’ve ever eaten.

View from the hostel, El Retiro Lodge. It was quite a cool place. Going tubing on that river, however, was not.

From this picture and down; national park of Semuc Champey

After this, I decided I wanted to go to Caye Caulker, Belize, for Christmas. I did this after hearing a horrible song on the radio in an internet cafe, just repeating the line “Let’s have a Christmas, a Christmas, in the Caribbean”.  That inspired me to go a Caribbean isle of some sort for Christmas. I wanted to go a hot, sweaty place with a high crime rate, good food and no Spanish used. Caye Caulker was the ideal choice for this. The 4 above-mentioned folks I was travelling with made up plans to all meet there on the 23rd/24th. As it was already the 21st, I had some hurry to get there in time, so I made my exit from Lanquin at once the next morning.

It was an excruciating journey. First, I had to stand up, half bent, for close to two hours in a Minivan containing 22 Guatemalan peasants (there were 8 seats). Everyone was staring at me, and I asked myself why. After a while I got to sit down and a man kindly explained that the people in the bus thought I was a part of the Guatemalan national team in football, since I was carrying a Puma tracktop with a Guatemala logo on it, being blonde which nobody is in Guatemala, etcetera. I’ve never been mistaked for a soccer star, so that was quite nice actually.

I changed buses and got on the bus for Rio Dulce, northeast in Guatemala, in order to get to Livingston which has a border to Belize. It was dark outside already and we were riding through the country side when all of a sudden something crashes into us quite forcefully. I look back and see that a truck has crashed into the back of the bus and is quite demolished. The driver side is unhurt though, miraculously the driver walks out as though nothing had happened. There was also another car behind it and the person in that car was unhurt as well. It was of course a bit scary, but by now nothing surprises me in Guatemala, you have to be ready that weird stuff happens all the time

After the crash, I was forced to take a minivan to the closest town, as it was dark and not safe to travel on main roads anymore. A guy called Edwin who was from the nearest village helped me out alot by finding a hotel, somewhere to eat etcetera. It is so nice when strangers help you out without wanting anything back, this happens all of the time in Guatemala and it is one of the reasons I have grown to like it so much. Apparently he was some sort of village hero, being the only one to go into university education in the capital. There were even some pictures of him in the local schools yearbook. Anyways, I had the first night of sleep without other people in the room for like 16 days and it felt… quite weird.

The next day I was set to go to Livingston, set by the Caribbean cost, since I was told I could take a boat to Belize from there. We went by boat from Rio Dulce, over the Lago Izabal and through the river, and that was quite some ride. Very beautiful scenery, indeed.

Lago de Izabal

Livingston is quite a popular destination, being that is slighty more Caribbean than the rest of the country, a large part of the population being part of the ethnic group Garifuna who are black descendants of slaves that came to the Caribbean coast of Guatemala/Belize/Nicaragua at some point in history. It is supposed to be a cool place but since I was on a tight schedule I did not really have time to stick around. At the hostel I met a guy named Rob from Wales, a very cool person indeed. We bought some fireworks at the market and shot them off, and so I had revived an interest long gone – blowing shit up!

The next day we went to Belize, but no more space to write about that shit here. I just uploaded some more photos from Guatemala on Facebook, check them out!

Cya

Hey there, just a quick post to let y’all know I’m still alive and all that. Been in Guatemala now for like 2 weeks and it’s an extremely interesting country. I’ll start off by putting down what I know about the country so far. Guatemala has a reputation that is extremely bad even for Central America - but I’ll start off with the bad stuff about it, skip through it if you’ve got bad nerves or whatever. Then I’ll tell you all the good things about the country!

Being number 6 in the world (including war zones) on the toplist of countries by intentional murder rate, sporting 47 murders per 100 000 people (Sweden has 0.89 murders/100 000) it is obviously not the safest place in the world. In fact, violence has escalated steadily in all Central America the past 5 years and it is now generally percieved as being the most dangerous region on earth, surpassing Africa. Honduras and El Salvador currently topping the murder statistics of the world with 58  and 48 murders/100 000 people respectively.

Guatemala – where I’m at right now – is by travelers considered the most dangerous place to travel in Central America as it has some problems with gangs targeting tourists, as opposed to the other countries where virtually all crime is aimed towards gang members etcetera. Still crime against tourists is very rare if taking normal developing countries precautions, I am yet to hear about any travellers who’ve had any problems whatsoever, you hear about robberies etc on the internet now and then though.

The country is by far the most flipped out place I’ve ever visited (I haven’t been around too much though) but still I’ve never felt insecure anywhere. Cops are everywhere, wearing HUGE military assault rifles looking like something out of Counterstrike or whatever, and by daytime it is apparently not very dangerous anywhere but in isolated spots and the capital. I read that Guatemala has the highest concentration of helicopters in the world, figure what kind of guys own these, it ain’t nice guys…

Allegedly, the police and government is corrupt up to the very top and a local told me “You wanna join an organized crime ring? Become a police officer!”. It baffles me how a country can still work on a basic level when not even the military or police is unbiased. The cops deal with petty crime (drug dealers, pickpockets, robbers, etc) as Mussolini did in good ole’ fascist Italy – basically killing everyone on the spot.

Wanted-poster for a local ganglord accused of kidnapping and murdering a police officer. I doubt they're looking for him very actively, though...

It’s not that hard to see where the problems lie, though – Guatemala is not just one of the poorest countries in Latin America but it has also had a long civil war lasting like 50 years and ending just 10 years ago. As usual in Central America, most of with was the fault of CIA (USA) who’ve played Risk in the region for a century, in Guate orchestrating a Coupe’d'Etat in 1954. The United Fruit Company (Chiquita) also played a big role in provoking the war, which killed 200 000 people and generally fucked the country up.

Since the justice system does not work at all, some towns have taken a slightly more pragmatic approach to justice – if someone is percieved to have commited a criminal act, the whole village gathers as a mob and lynchings take place – basically a group of 40 people or more ripping the person/s to pieces or setting them on fire as a way of creating justice when the police cannot. It happens every other week in the highlands, apparently. I think we had the lynching in Sweden in the 1500s or so – tells you abit about what level this place is on now.

The little village of Panajachel, where we passed through and got a boat to another place, I read in the national newspaper, had a lynching of a guy suspected to having stolen approximately 5500 skr from the market and three women were suspected of being his accomplices, barely escaping being burned alive as the police arrived and split the crowd. Really scary since we passed there just the day before, and it seemed like the friendliest place ever, people smiling and helping you as always in Guatemala. The most bizarre thing was that I went there the next day to take out cash and they had a fucking festival there with dancing and all sorts of happy stuff. Like 24 hours afterwards. Sick shit.

As you can see, you can go on forever about the the problems of the country, but I won’t since it isn’t really that interesting. As opposed to all the things I presented above, it is also by far the most friendly country I have ever visited. Sure, people say the locals in Thailand etc. are nice, of course they are since they make money off you, but here I feel it is really honest.
Guatemalans as a people are quite reserved, in the remote highlands even shy, and you seldom hear anyone shouting or showing much feelings at all in public. They sort of remind me of Scandinavian people in a weird way. I guess they are like this after all the pain they’ve went through throughout the years, keeping them modest and appreciating the small things in life.

When they hear you can talk Spanish, and you actively take contact with them, a completely different side turns up. They open themselves, telling you everything you want to know about the country etc – as they are very proud of their country they will gladly tell you what is nice to see and where is nice to go in the area you are currently at. There are smiles everywhere and you can really feel like people go out of their way to help you find the bus, a good place to eat or whatever. For free.

I find it insane that this place is supposed to have any violence at all, since everyone seems so nice all the time. Sure, now and then you’ll bump into guys with thousand yard stares (and usually they will try to sell you drugs) but not really that many more than I’d see a normal day in Stockholm. Anyways, bad things do happen, so you have to stay cautious and you cannot behave like you would in Europe, constantly checking out the security situation in the area where you’re at.

We were lazy enough to get a shuttle all the way from San Cristobal de las Casas to Quetzaltenango, Guatemala. It was pretty cheap though – I think we paid like 20 us dollars (130 skr more or less) and it was a 5 and a half hour ride there, so it was worth it for sure.

Guate border crossing.

The border crossing went really quickly, even though I had expected it was gonna be a mess, after all the shit I heard about border crossings and Guatemala in general before going. We didn’t even have to bribe the customs officer which is quite rare, apparently. Well anyway instantly you could see we were in chaos country. The shuttle minibus stopped at a gas station for refills and the toilet guard was wearing a Quake-style shotgun. For guarding the toilets… from what? Can’t do else but love it.

Western Guatemala, which is where we entered the country, is a very mountainous and vastly remote region. This is also the poorest part of Guatemala, I reckon. Quetzaltenango, or Xela (che-la) as the locals call it, is situated at an altitude of 2330 metres above ground level and the climate is quite like San Cris, reminding of a spring day back home. It’s the second biggest city in Guatemala and a popular place to study Spanish as it is the cheapest place on the planet to do so. You’ll pay like 500 skr (50 euros) a week for private lessons 4 hours a day, and staying with a local family getting 3 meals a day. It is also a popular place to do voluntary work. It is considered a very safe place for Guatemala too.

We stayed in the Black Cat Hostel which was an excellent place sporting cheap dorm beds as well as an excellent (free!) breakfast. A good place to meet other travelers, too. We shared the room with a Dutch guy in his 30ies working with nature conservation who was a really cool guy. The first night we had a cool night out, me him and the girl who worked at the hostel. Chill night with some beers and good conversation.

The next day we went to the Georginas Fuentes, which are natural hot springs located far up in the mountains. It was really cool as I haven’t seen any of those before, except for in Iceland like 10 years ago. The water was so warm, you could barely stay in, and it was so nice for treating my chronical hangover.

Then after that I stayed one night longer and hung out alot with some really cool Israeli and Australian guys, we had two fun nights out, involving seeing club owners pay off the police to be able to stay open until after 01 (the latest time a club can close in Guatemala)

After this, we moved on to the quiet hippiebackpacker town of San Pedro de la Laguna, situated by the Lago Atitlan, a lake by some considered to be one of the most beautiful in the world. It is really big and surrounded by high mountains and several big ass volcanoes. As usual my camera sucks so didn’t get alot of good pictures off it, though. We generally just chilled out, wasn’t too much do around there, since tourism went down 50% the past months since the lake has been poisoned by sewage and is no longer bathable. It was sorta like a ghost town, actually. We stayed at a hotel called San Antonio for once which was a nice change, hot water showers and private bathrooms. Still paid like 35 skr per night.

The main street in San Pedro. Filled with people, as always.

On a hangover day we decided to do a hike up something called the Nariz del Indio, the highest spot around the lake (I think?). It was both a mistake and not. Firstly, I greatly exaggurated my physical form and it was like the worst climb ever, almost vertical and 800 metres up plus quite hot as we were to lazy to get up in time. The guide was a local and he asked us all sorts of funny questions; like if we were Catholics or Evangelists (nothing else existed to him) which to my great amusement Jennifer answered that she was Evangelist.  Anyways, when we did get up, the views were stunning and got some really cool photos off it. Met some cool people too, like a Dutch girl who did her exchange year there, trieing to do art therapy with stubborn rural Guatemalans, which didn’t seem to go that well. Or the Guatemalan drunkard I drank beer with one night, who answered the question about the security in the village with; “Don’t worry – if someone does something to you, just scream, and the Village will come for you”. Basically meaning that if anyone touches a tourist in that village, there will be a public beatdown or worse. Scary.

I knew this was a bad idea... the highest place is where we went up.

On top of the world, baby!

Anyways, after San Pedro la Laguna, we split up as Jennifer is going back to Mexico to travel with her boyfriend for about a month, so I’m going solo style as of some days back. We’ll probably meet up again on the road later on but I’m really liking the total freedom of solo travel so far. Been in Antigua now since Wednesday, really eating into my budget as well as my liver, unfortunately. Been super fun but will write about it later.

Cheers!

We left there quite some days ago but since I didn’t really elaborate our experiences in San Cristobal de las Casas I’ll do it now. Apologies if I’m repeating myself but I don’t really remember what I wrote in my last post. 

Anyways, San Cristobal was a really interesting place and we ended up staying for quite some time. It is located far up in the mountains (2100 m), really remote place, and has like 100 000 inhabitants. This is where the leftist Zapatista revolution started about 15 years ago, when masked men conquered the city with horses and hunting rifles. What they tried to achieve was more rights for the indigenous Maya people, who were constantly (and still is) fucked by the Mexican government and the rich white land-owners. 

In  short words, the Mexican government went crazy (of course) and sent lots of troops and bombed the city with attack aircraft etcetera. The Zapatistas retreated to the mountains and there were fighting ending in some ugly massacres by the Mexican military on the Zapatistas.As far as I understand, the government never really regained control of the region, and as of today the Zapatistas are still more or less ruling in the villages around San Cristobal as well as in the city itself, ignored by the government. Needless to say, leftist people across the world was (and still is) very impressed by this actually successful revolution, and thus the city is filled with communist, anarchists, and in general hippies visiting the village, from all corners of earth. Read more about it here, it is deeply fascinating http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zapatista_Army_of_National_Liberation

 

 

San Cristobal is generally considered to be one of the most beautiful towns in Mexico, according to our guidebooks.

 

San Cristobal by night

 

 We felt a bit out of context but we still had a great time. Met some Swedish folks who were there volunteering for the Zapatistas; I bet they were pretty far out on the farthest left wing possible but really didn’t see any reason to ask. People can be nice even though they have opinions that strongly disagrees with your own.  

Anyways, about San Cristòbal; first of all, it’s pretty damn cold since it is located so high up in the mountains. We went from 30 degrees and humidity like hell in Palenque to around 19-20 degrees and very fresh air. And at night it gets pretty darn cold. So it was really different in that aspect. It was also pretty much cheaper than Palenque  and the Yucatan, and there were more different kinds of food to eat. We ate well off Mexican, Lebanese, Indian food even though it was “expensive” (about 4 euros/plate). 

There’s tons of stuff to do around San Cristòbal de las Casas. The first day we went to the Sumidero Canyon; one of the most stunning places I ever visited. It looks sorta like Grand Canyon but with a deep river running between ravine walls stretching between 800-1000 meters of altitude. 

 

  

When the Spanish arrived in the 1500s, the local Maya population would jump off these cliff, commiting suicide rather than succumb to the Spaniards. It takes some balls to jump off a 1000 meter ravine, I'm telling you...

 

 We met some really cool Australian girls in the tourist group who basically was on the same itinerary as us, but - as usual - forgot to exchange e-mailadresses. Bummer. I guess we’ll meet again, though. 

We stayed at a hostel called Los Camellos or something. It was OK but quite empty, which sucks since you don’t meet alot of people then. The only really bad thing about San Cristobal is that there are many hostels but relatively few travellers, which means that all hostels will have like 3 people instead of a few having all of them. Also this day I went to look up a local market, I’m really a sucker for Mayan handcraft (pretty surprising, eh?) so I bought too much shit as usual. Got a really good bargain, a guy wanted to sell me 3 beautiful cats in some expensive sort of stone for 1500 pesos, but I got it down to 300 pesos after some serious haggling. I’m really starting to get the hang of  it by now! 

The next day we visited the nearby Maya villages of Zinalcantan and San Juan Chamula where the population still lives pretty much like they did 300 years ago. May perhaps sound a bit boring, but this actually proved to be the most bizarre thing we did so far on this trip. I’ll tell you why in a moment. 

First we went to Zinalcantan; it was a bit strange because all the women wore exactly the same clothes in the same colors; it looked like a cult meeting or something like that. Then they let us visit a local family, proved to be a tourist trap really, they just wanted us to buy their local handcraft. It was cool to meet some real Mayans though. 

Trying out the local homebrewn shit

Our guide and some locals

Then we went to the village of San Juan Chamula, one of the most talked-about villages in the entire of Mexico. Here, the people are extremely closed and almost hostile to everything that is not about their own village. San Juan Chamula does not allow any outside military or police force; as the only autonomous region in Mexico they have their own police force. It is not allowed to move to there, and anyone who doesn’t follow the local religion (a bizarre mixture of  Catholicism and Paganism, will tell more about it later) will be expulsed from the village. Polygamy (having more than one wife) is widely accepted, and marriages are usually arranged so that you can buy a wife for a horse or whatever. 

You can visit them, but you may absolutely not take any photos of the local people without asking, since they believe it steals their souls. Those who don’t care regret it, allegedly. Taking pictures without asking will lead to you and your camera literally getting stomped out the village. Followlingly, we used caution when there. People were actually nicer than we thought even though a hello or good afternoon often leads to a shy shrug rather than an answer. 

The locals wear black or white sheep skins; the local cops use the white ones, making them look like a mixture of Jean Paul Barda and something off the Flintstones tv-show. Absurd, to say the least. 

 

 

Some local women; they told us explicitly that we could take pictures of them. One of them had some sort of mental retardation; apparently, inbreeding (inavel) is prevalent as a big percent of the population had some sort of handicap. This is what happens if you marry with your cousins and stuff.

And then came the thing that kind of topped the whole experience very well; they let us into their church to see how the mixture of  Catholicism and Maya traditions interact in practice. The church looked like a normal church – but it had no furniture in it. Instead, it was filled with thousands of candles, and the people said prayers on the ground of the church. So far, so good – but then you see that they have brought live chickens into the church – which they sacrifice by cutting their head off! Inside the church! They also drink homebrewn spirits mixed with Coca Cola in order to come into contact with their twin spirits in the mountains. 

It is all very serious, as they are praying for their loved ones, but it is very hard not to start laughing due to the total absurdity of the ceremony. They also take the live chickens and put them on the face and clothes of the children in order to protect them. I guess our respect for their beliefs payed off, because sooner than later I was invited to join them in the ceremony. I tasted some of the spirit they drank, and it was a huge glass of  something that made a resemblance of vodka, and actually left me a bit drunk. Unfortunately, it was absolutely forbidden to take pictures inside the church, so got no solid pictures off it. 

Jennifer in front of the church

 

 We kept on watching the ceremony in silence for a while and then we left, having experienced one of the strangest things I ever endured.We had a few days more in San Cristobal, but didnt really happen anything worth mentioning. Now, since a few days back, we have entered Guatemala, which is like a completely different world. More on that in a few days – now Im off. 

Cuidaos, 

Rasmus 

When doing long-term travelling, it would be naïve to think that everything will just  run by smoothly all of the time. Inevitably, you will run into troubles while on the move. Our first week and a half or so went by really smoothly, but the past days both me and my travel partner have been up to our necks  in troubles and problems. I lost my favourite Adidas tracktop, various expensive chargers and adaptors has broken, Jennifers camera broke, we were ripped of by scrupulous vendors and tour guides, etc.

After being a few days in Mérida, we decided it was a pretty humdrum, dull town so we decided to move on to Palenque. The last night we were really felt like having a blast,  so we decided to see what the city had to offer on a Tuesday evening. Not much, it turned out, not surprising to some perhaps, but keep in mind this city has like 900 000 inhabitants. We ended up at a Mexican standup club, didn’t really get much of the humour but it was still OK. Most interesting though was they had a guy in the mens room whose only job was to “help” people by pushing the soap button, turning on the water tap for you and giving you paper napkins afterwards. I’d love to see the reactions it would get if this was offered as a job  at some restaurant in Scandinavia.

Early the next morning it was time for a 9 hour bus journey to Palenque in the south. I felt weird when I woke up and just as we were getting on the bus, all hell broke lose. Without getting into more intricate details, I had gotten food poisoned off last nights food – and really bad, too. When you get food poisoned in Mexico, it is usually called “Montezuma’s Revenge”, a reference to the Aztec king who was killed when the Spanish conquistadors took  Mexico. Luckily, the bus had a toilet, in which I spent most of these 9 hours. It was one of the worst things I ever endured, period. I guess you learn something off that too – unsure what, though.

Eventually, we found our way to Palenque. Palenque is a small town located in Mexicos southmost province Chiapas, which is also the poorest state in Mexico.  Many say it bears more resemblance to Central America than Mexico, and the change could be felt very quickly. Every half an hour or so of the Chiapas part of our bus ride, military armed with machineguns and big ass shotguns would get on the bus and search for illegal migrant, drugs and weapons.  Overall, it gave me a pretty rough impression, as opposed to the Yucatan province which felt like Spain, basically.

Palenque was built solely to aid tourist wanting to visit the nearby ruins, which are supposed to be one of the most impressive of all Maya ruins. It is located in the deep jungle and howler monkeys, birds and stunning views contribute to that impression. I really can’t say I’m a big fan of ruins, but this place was really cool.

According to our guide, the structure to the right was initially thought to be just a temple, but in the 1960ies someone found a hidden entrance in a wall that led to a secret tomb. When opening it, the first explorer was injured due to poisonous gases that spread out, as the Maya 1500 years earlier had painted the insides of the tomb with colors that gave away poison gas, ensuring that the one who dared to open the tomb would be doomed. Really cool story.

The temple. In the middle part, the mayans would pray and medidate, and the tower was used as an observatory. Amazing this still stands, it was built in the year 600 A.D.

A 1400 year old toilet. Palenque had a working sewage system.

OK, enough ruins now for a while.  I’m getting tired of myself. Well, what more about Palenque – we managed to get there just in time for the monsoon rain. When it rains in the jungle, it rains. We basically just stayed in all the time, reading books and stuff. Was pretty nice too, though – finally got into that On the Road book by Jack Kerouac.It is indeed an amazing piece of art, especially if you are travelling. It is a novel but everything happened for real, the author just changed the names of the people in it so he couldn’t be sued or anything. Basically it is about a guy who lives in NYC in the late 1940ies, breaks up with his wife and hits the road. He travels all over America with his friends, from coast to coast, and later also into Mexico etc. Drinking tons of beer and taking some drugs. He has virtually no money and the people he travel with are very odd, on the verge of total insanity. Strange stuff happens all the time and I really recommend the book to anyone.

At our hostel  in Palenque I hung out some with a guy who called himself Magic. He was from England and said he had been travelling for 5 years now, uncertain how he financed this. He was basically a magician  and illusionist and he would go around, saying weird stuff and pulling off all these card and fire tricks and shit. Later he turned out to be one of those “believers” in the Illuminati/Bilderberg whatever conspiracy theory, launching all these insane theories about 9/11, the moon landings, Jay-Z trying to conquer the world  because he said in a song he is like J-Hova and that he is a part of  a cult trying to take over the world, Lil’Wayne being secretly gay and also trying to take over the world because he said something about that in a song, etcetera etc. I wasn’t surprised when he also said he believed the world would come to an end in 2012 , when the Mayan calendar ends.  Poor fella.

Two days ago, we set off from Palenque to San Cristòbal De Las Casas. Some might recognize the name, in 1994 the Zapatista rebels made revolution and took control of this city to protect the rights of the indigenous population in the area. They got really famous since they always wore masks and it was like a real David vs Goliath thing against the Mexican state. The state tried to take the city back by using bomb planes and massacring dozens of Zapatista rebels. Nevertheless, they failed and today the Zapatistas are still very influential/ruling in the region, and is basically ignored by the Mexican state, letting them run their own little autonomous state.

When travelling here in the mountains, after turning a corner with the Shuttle Van that the road was closed off, and there were people in the middle of the road, at least one masked, and lots of posters with red stars, Che Guevara and that kind of stuff. We were stopped and the following conversation with our driver went through, in Spanish of course:

(Zapatistas) – This road is closed off.

(Driver) – *Mumbling, grunting*

(Driver) – “How much do I have to pay?”

(Zapatistas) – *Unintelligble answer*

Driver pays a sum off money, we are let through.

Then we visited some cool waterfalls,  or they could have been cooler if they water would be crystal clear blue as the guide said it would be, promising us that the past monsoon rain wouldn’t grumble the water.  We were generally ripped off by this guide tour, but I guess you have to live with that as a gringo here.

This place was called "Agua Azul" (Blue Water) but really turned out to be "Agua Marron" (Brown Water)

The waterfall above, the Misol-Ha, was pretty  cool though. You could swim there and everything. The weirdest thing happened as I got out of the water though, Mexican tourist started applauding at me and taking pictures of me and shit. Made me a bit uncomfortable =)

Still don’t know why they did it though. Really strange. And how I blushed =D

Anyways, we are now in San Cristóbal at about 2100 meters altitude. It is a really picturesque town and I bet we will stay here for some days more, since there’s loads of cool stuff to do around here. Also did some stuff here already like going out etc but don’t have time to write about it right now. After this we will go straight for Guatemala, really welcoming for my wallet since Mexico is EATING my budget up. I am a far over budget right now, wasted like double what I should. So will be nice to come to a cheaper place, which Guatemala is.

Mexico is a great country. Love it. Friendly people, cheap goods/beer/food, etcetera. But I don’t understand why they have to be so frickin loud all the time. EVERYWHERE they’re playing music, singing or screaming at each other. It is NEVER quiet. It is of course charming but when you’re tired and hungover and want to go have a quiet meal at a restaurant the last thing you want is that someone plays sentimental Mexican “Corazon” songs in 100db right into your ear.

As said above, Mexicans are really friendly though. I know this is said about the locals in any country that has developed tourism, of course they are friendly when you are constantly buying stuff off them. Albeit, here I feel it is really a sincere interest for foreigners, especially when you get away from the worst tourist spots. We’re constantly approached by people wanting to know our name (no-one Mexican succeeded in pronouncing my name in less than 10 tries, yet), where we are from and what we think about their country.

Got lots of activities done since my last post. We arrived at a quiet hostel outside Tulum on Thursday  evening. Since there were only dorm rooms, we settled ourselves in one bunk bed each in a room consisting of 4 beds. Had an excellent fish dinner at a restaurant in the village, serving fresh snapper fish straight out the sea. Food is cheap (about 1.5-4 euros per meal at a restaurant) and usually good but nothing to write home about. I often find that they’re not using enough spices, salt and pepper. But once you fix that it’s all good. Didn’t feel bad off food for a single time so-far. But, as someone here mentioned, saying you never get sick off food will unevitably lead to you getting sick. So, I’ll refrain from that.

After the meal we went back to the hostel, where a new guy entered our dormitory. Damien from England. We decided to team up to look at the sea-side ruins located just a stones throw from our hostel. So early the next morning we went there. Got some cool pictures and after that we had  a few good hours at the nearby Caribbean beach.

Beach in Tulum. My pictures taken in sunny weather gets so damn dark, what am I doing wrong?

When we got back a new girl moved into our dormitory. Her name was Stephanie, and she was from France but living in Mexico. At night, everyone at the hostel hooked up by drinking beer together at the kitchen. They were mostly Canadian and American and we had quite a good night out. We ended up at this random Mexican bar, where people looked to be less than pleased that some 10 drunk and loud Gringos entered their favourite place. I’m young and naive so I didn’t notice but apparently the Mexican girl I was talking to in the bar was…. not a girl. It was a shemale, according to the people I was there with. Really didn’t notice! Nothing happened though, really lucky. I think when you cannot differentiate between a man and a woman you’ve got a serious alcohol intoxication, so I quit drinking at this point. After this we just went back home to the hostel.

Next day I woke up with somewhat of a hangover, but after a great breakfast we headed out for some activities. Everyone we knew from the hostel went to a beach like 25 minutes away where it was said you could swim with turtles. Me, having not done many serious things the past week, joined gladly. Snorkling is damn fun, it turned out. First you had to swim out like a hundred metres and there were these fucking huge turtles, you know like the ones you see in National Geographic. Bigger than my dog and cat combined, and my cat is fucking huge. 50+ kgs of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

There was also a reef, more or less dead but still interesting. Saw some cool fishes there, especially a huge one  looking a bit like the Swedish gádda which later turned out to be a Barracuda, that can apparently be quite aggressive and bite your fingers off if you approach them. Good I didn’t take a closer look at this fella. Also saw a really big manta/stingray, the kind that killed Steve Irwin (hilarious way of dieing, by the way he was one of the first in the world to die off this harmless animal).

After this we went to check out the local Cenotes, which is like a big, underground cave filled with water. Diving (dangerous) and snorkeling in these cavesis like the main adventure attraction here in the Yucatan peninsula. We paid like 150 skr (15 euros) for a guided snorkel tour inside and it was really one of the coolest things I’ve done for a long time. It was pretty deep and you swam with a flashlight through these caves where the roof was barely high enough for the snorkel to not touch it. Once in a while we ended up in huge chambers holding bats and stuff. The Dos Ojos cenote, which we visited, is the biggest underground cave complexes in the world. So far, about 50 kilometres of caves have been discovered Wouldn’t want to get lost or run into a problem there, a bit scary it was indeed, nothing for the claustrophobic. Yet really cool, it looks like a moon landscape with stalagmites and stalactices hanging everywhere.

Entrance to the Dos Ojos Cenote:

What it looks like inside, not my picture

Me inside, the tour included underwater photographs

After the Cenote snorkelling, the guide gave us a free ride home in the back of his truck. Really nice experience. Got a really cool movie, gonna upload it when I’ve got time. After this we went out quite hard. We heard that the hotels by the beach have some kickass clubs, so we had  few beers and tried to get there by bike. We didn’t realize though that the beach was a loooong way and we biked on a road, in pitch black darkness, by the jungle for like 20 minutes. All of a sudden we look down by the beach and the darkness is lit up by a bar, all in the middle of nowhere. It looked like an oasis and was a somewhat surreal experience, playing really good dub reggae and being literally on the beach. Then we went to a club that was nearby where we met a few nice folks, but I really wasn’t that impressed.

What’s bad is that like everyone we met so far is either here for a short time, like 2 weeks, or they’re just ending their journey. And those who are not, with a few exceptions, weren’t that cool. You know that sometimes you meet a person you instantly click with very well, like a 1 in a 100 person. Needless to say, this kind of people aren’t that abundant and it can really suck bigtime when you have to part ways after just a few days, and forgetting to get any kind of contact information. Well, at least it shows you that there are some really kickass folks out there somewhere.

The next day we had some really kickass food and, together with our 2 dorm buddies, went to the little town of Valladolid, where our french friend had heard about a really good hostel. We immediately got a bad feeling about it when this owner was a 60+ guy living in a shack smelling like all sorts of bad things. He insisted that we pay in advance, something I’d never do but since it was just about 60kr/6euros each for the room we thought “oh fuck, both our guide books recommend it, probably is nice. 

It was the worst place I’ve ever seen. On the drieing line outside the room hung clothes who looked like they’ve been there since the mid-80ies. We opened the door and it smelled like noones been there for years. Cockroaches on the floor and fucking bedbugs jumping around the bed. We immediately left the place and headed for a normal hostel like 10 minutes away. Tried to get our money back but the motherfucker refused. Well, he’ll get a bad review, that’s for sure. And nothing to get angry for, really, it’s a part of travelling I guess. And after that, we had a great night out with our old dorm buddies, downing a few tequilas and some beers and having nice conversations. When you enter a restaurant as a gringo in rural Mexico, everyone thinks you are multi-millionare, so the people who work there treat you real good, give you free drinks etcetera. To make you stay longer. Utterly absurd feeling, to say the least
The reason why we went to Valladolid is that it is really close to the ruins of Chichen Itza, one of the seven wonders of the world. Early the next morning we settled out and since it was just a 25 minute ride it went really quick. In the seat in front of us was an old Mexican man who sang ballads as loud as he could for the entire busride. We are to this day not sure if he was drunk or if it was just something that is considered normal around here. Chichen Itza was cool, even if it was crowded with American charter tourists from Cancun. Allegedly, it was once one of the great cities of the Maya, and it was massive indeed. The castillo, the central building, was temple pyramid that must be like 35 metres high. Amazing that people could make stuff like this 1300 years ago.

In front of the Castillo in Chichen Itza. The Maya would pray up there.

The observatory. Here, the Mayas watched the stars and Venus in order to predict what would happen.

Chichen Itza is supposed to be one of the hottest places in Mexico, and hot as hell it was indeed. Gulped down water like a horse. There were tons of people selling stuff, I got a nice keyring in obsidian stone depicting the god of abundance. Also found this extremely cool big ass knife in obsidian and malakite that the Mayas allegedly used for sacrificing humans. Like a copy of that one I didn’t have any cash though, but today I’m gonna hunt all over town to find it. 

After this, we split up with our friends from the dorms in Tulum and Valladolid, exchanged facebooks and e-mails. We had some great time with these folks, who were there for completely different reasons than us. They were in their late 20ies/early 30ies and just gotten out of long relationships, and went for Mexico to get some time away. Anyways, parting ways is an unevitable part of travel.

Now we’re in the town of Mérida, capital of the Yucatan sporting about 800 000 people. You can see this is a more affluent place than where we’ve been so far, interesting enough you can see who is rich and who is poor in Mexico by their skin colour. The more indigenous facial traits they’ve got, and the darker, the more poor they are. Here in Mérida, there are lots of people who are as white as we are, looking more Spanish than Latin American. Interesting.

We’re staying for about 2 days before going south into the provinces of Chiapas and Tabasco. I think we’ve got around a week more in Mexico, starting to want to go to the cheaper countries as the big alcohol expense is starting to eat up my budget. Anyone who thinks I’m stupid to party here, the Yucatan peninsula is actually a really safe place for tourists, according to books and locals we’ve spoken to.. I wouldn’t do like this in like Guatemala. This town we’re in is crazy hot, humid and inland so probably will get a huge sunburn today. Traffic here is crazy, buses driving like 70km/h on narrow streets passing you by literally inches away from you. Gots to be careful. Need to buy some stuff, do laundry and hopefully find my offering knife today.
See you around,