Guatemala I - the end of an era

After completing our business in the Dominican Republic, Igal and I made our way to Antigua in Guatemala where Guy was waiting for us. We ran into him accidentally and he invited us to a soccer match between the teachers in his Spanish school and the students. At the very last moment Igal decided not to join but Guy and I went along for the ride.
The playing field was dusty and everyone kept slipping and falling. After a couple of minutes of playing Guy hurt himself and took a ride back to the school to take care of himself. By the end of the game most of the gringos were hurt and aching - myself included (someone kicked me in the ribs while I was down on the ground fumbling for the ball).


I took a couple of days to recuperate and Guy and Igal used the time to climb up the Pacaya volcano. More about this in a future post - I'm going to climb it in the coming days so I'll have some first hand experience and photos.
After several days in Antigua we went to the Atitlan lake which is supposed to be "the most beautiful lake in the world". It's nice :) I'm not sure it's "the best" or "most" of anything though.


Igal was starting to see the end of his trip with us so when we reached Xela we decided to rent a car for the final week. After visiting some of the small Maya villages around town we went to a deserted village. A huge mud slide had created a canyon where the church used to stand. The walls of the church can still be seen hanging on for dear life on the sides of the canyon. We crossed the canyon on a rickety bridge and then made our way further into the forest. This is where things really got strange. There was a terrible mechanic noise coming from deep within the jungle. We felt a little like the people on "Lost". We later found out that the noise is made by thousands of Cicada-like insects.


By then we had become familiar with our rented car. It was a piece of shit. Among its quirks was its lovely alarm which demanded attention every once in a while. There was a strategically located little button which you had to push or else the doors would automatically be locked with the keys inside.


We continued driving through many little villages along the way where the Maya still lead their lives undisturbed - thriving markets, religious ceremonies, and the ever colorful Mayan clothing reign supreme here.


We then decided to go to Todos Santos which is a small Indian village tucked far away in the mountains. The road was long and winding and when we finally made it there night had already fallen. We spent a miserable night there - my back was acting up and Guy's stomach decided to teach him a lesson - and so we decided to leave the following morning. Igal was still OK at that point so he drove us out of there in our little ambulance. We reached a not-so-lovely town called Huehuetenango. By the time we got there Igal's stomach decided to show solidarity and went on strike and so we checked into a hotel (a.k.a "the geriatric ward").

Surprisingly I have no pictures of this experience.

After we regained our strength we went back on the road and drove to Chichicastenango which is famous for its huge and colorful market.


After a few more days on the road we went back to Antigua and today we said goodbye to Igal. As he drove away in his shuttle to the airport we realized just how much (or how little) time had passed and just how many experiences we've been through in this time.

So long Igal, and thanks for all the fish...

Axis strikes back

While we were in El Salvador we got a call from a company called AxisMobile. You may have heard of it. They asked whether we minded terribly going to a couple of meetings in the Domninican Republic, seeing as we were already in the area. We decided to go for it - after all, what could be bad about visiting another country?
On the flight to Santo Domingo I met a nice Mexican couple. They inquired whether I was there for "the baseball", to which I replied "what baseball?". They explained that there's an annual Carribean baseball tournament which was just about to begin. That was the first sign that this wasn't going to be just another business trip.
Our first order of business was to get some decent clothing for the meetings.
Once we got that out of the way we introduced ourselves to the lovely beds these five-star hotels have. After a month on the road this was a welcome change.
In the evening we went out to the colonial center of the capital Santo Domingo. We met some crazy french people, Igal had some trouble with one of the mirrors there, and all in all we had a great time there.


We met a lovely girl in the business lounge which was quite pleased to meet some non-business-men. She told us that at the end of the month there's this carnaval in the north of the Dominican Republic and that it's a shame we won't be able to visit it. The following day, as we were about to leave, she told us that the carnaval was going to start that very day.
We set out on our way to La Vega - the carnaval capital. As soon as we got there we went to the carnaval which resembles the carnaval in Brazil. The people there dress as demons and walk around in groups.


They do however have a very special thing going on there. The demons carry with them Vejigas, which are these leather balloons stuffed with something very hard. They then go about hitting people in the ass with these vejigas. That's why you see people hiding their asses in every possible way - huddling together back to back, sitting down, standing next to walls and trees - anything goes.
I can only say this - when they do get you it hurts like hell :)


From there it was a short trip to Santiago where the baseball tournament takes place. We went to the game between Mexico and Venezuela.


That was all the time we had for travelling so we then headed back to Santo Domingo to attend the meetings. It was bit strange - being a mochiler in a business meeting. Quite an experience.

Some Exotics in Israel

Our life here in Israel may look pale and routine comparing to Ofer's life right now, but sometimes interesting things happen here too. Even some exotic birds visit us from time to time, and it turns out that you don't have to go to SA or Australia to do birdwatching - sometimes all you need to do is to look out of the window:

A whole flock of those green parrots come every day around 2 o'clock to pick on some berries just below our kitchen window.
This reminded me of another picture I took 6 years ago:

Same berries, another bird. This is a dyed pigeon, who must have escaped some circus or wedding or whatever. Didn't have a blog back then to post this picture, so doing it now.

Shotguns and Machetes

Upon my arrival to El Salvador I found two very interesting things. The first was that in the city people roam the streets with shotguns. The second was that in the country side people roam the fields with machetes. Despite of how this may sound the locals really are lovely people and I enjoyed my time in El Salvador.
The morning after my arrival we rented a crappy car and got with it a lousy map and thus we set out to find a place called Suchitoto. With the help of the map and some friendly locals we quickly found ourselves 30 kilometers in the wrong direction. With the help of another map and some friendlier locals we soon fixed this and were back on our way to Suchitoto.
Suchitoto turned out to be a nice, small little town, with cobbled streets and no tourists. It does however have some very interesting sign posts.


The lack of tourists was compensated for by locals on trucks. On the roof of trucks. In the back of trucks. Holding on to the sides of trucks. Many locals on many trucks.


After visiting Suchitoto and the surrounding area we made our way to Santa Anna. Driving into the lively market was probably not the best of ideas but everyone seemed to be quite forgiving. Walking into the market the following morning was a lot more fun. We went deep into the market and by the looks and laughs we got we could only assume that almost no tourists (if any) venture this far.


Our next stop was to be Lago de Coatepeque which turned out to be one of those amazing lakes you see on National Geographic and indeed it rewarded us with stunning views.


While in the area we also wanted to hike to the top of Cerro Verde but we decided to skip this when we saw that the clouds had gathered around the mountain and visibility was.... low.


The road then led us to a place called Sonsonate just in time for some more fiestas. Just our luck. We partied with the people in the main plaza to the music of some local band and then went through the market and the fair.


From Sonsonate we made our way back to the capital - San Salvador. From there Guy made his way to Guatemala while Igal and myself went to the Dominican Republic. How and why this happened will be a part of my next update.

Goa Nights

Crossing the border to Nicaragua made us shift into Latin-America mode. The Nicaraguan border crossing was hectic – there are no signs and you don't really know what it is you're supposed to do. The "officials" don't look very official, there are no clear paths, and the entire procedure is very hazy. Eventually though, we made it across and hopped on a taxi to the town of Rivas, a place which most tourists skip. We decided to stop there, have some lunch, and think about our next step.
While we were having our lunch we noticed a sign in the street announcing the "8th street fiesta" for that same day. The waiter explained that Rivas has a local celebration of Miami's Calle 8 Festival and said that it should be fun so we decided to stay for the night. The fiestas were indeed amusing, although on a much smaller scale than the fiestas we joined the previous night (in Costa Rica's Palmares). People were dancing in the streets and it was a very interesting experience. Unlike Costa Rica's parties, this one had an undertone of danger so we decided not to stay too late and leave before people got too drunk.


The following day we took a ride to the neighbouring town of San Jorge and boarded a ferry to the island of Ometepe in the great lake of Nicaragua. The ferry ride was a bit bumpy as the lake is very large and has a nasty demeanor. We sat on the front deck and were slightly splattered by the crashing waves. We didn't mind it too much especially when we saw this guy whose job it is to jump off the ferry with a cable which is later tied to others which help the ferry dock.


The island is made up of two huge volcanic craters with little towns dotting the shoreline and the piece of land which connects the two craters.


We found the people on the island to be very welcoming and the life there to be slow and simple.


After a couple of days of exploring Isla de Ometepe we decided to make our way back. We decided to take the night ferry to the colonial city of Granada. Big mistake. The last publicly available transport to the ferry dock leaves at 21:00. The ferry "leaves" at 00:00. Which actually means that it leaves at 02:00. So that gave us a nice, solid, 5 hour wait for the ferry to leave.


That was the good part of the trip. Once we boarded the ferry we discovered that all of the benches inside had been claimed by people who boarded the ferry in some previous, mystery port. We decided to sleep on the deck but after we got wet for the first time we chose to try our luck inside again. We decided to sleep on the floor under the benches. This was ok except for being occasionally stepped on, being tossed around by the waves, or waking up to find an ugly German guy using your leg as a headrest.
After several miserable hours we finally stepped on the blessed shores of Granada. After checking into our hostel we wandered about the city and its intriguing market.



Later that night we ran across some Israelis we had met in Costa Rica and realized that we were actually in "Nicaragoa" as the guy called it (and he wasn't joking, he really thought that was the country's name).
I stayed in Granada for a couple of days because I didn't feel all too well and after that made a quick exit from Nicaragua - a short ride to the capital Managua and from there to the capital of El Salvador - San Salvador.

Stay tuned for stories from El Salvador.