Rolling into Antigua always feels like coming home of sorts. I've come and gone from this place so many times, but the excitement I feel when I experience the jolt of the cobblestone streets beneath the bus wheels and the lights of Central Park has never diminished. I met a great couple from New Zealand, Shane and Sarah, on the seven hour bus ride from Copan, Honduras...they're at the tail-end of a one-year honeymoon around the world. We scope out some digs and, as it's late in the evening, the only viable option ends up being the very place in Antigua I swore I would never return...the memory of being awoken suddenly by the sensation of six little cockroach legs scurrying across my bare shoulder in the middle of the night when I was staying there two years ago is still vivid. C'est la vie.

We located my dear old friend Rusty and his girlfriend Christy and headed to my old haunt Cafe No Se. I wasn't there long before the owner John thrusts a guitar in my hands and it was just like old times. We also had a visit from Eminem's protege, a white kid from Denmark who rocked the original rhymes like I couldn't believe. As I stood in the crowded little space, a cerveza in hand, good old friends to my left, some new ones to my right, the thump of the standup bass backing up Nick's wicked-clever rhymes, I had to smile...it's always good to be back here, at least for a little while.

The good times in Antigua continue...front-row seats to a concert featuring a Buena Vista Social Club original from Havana, Cuba. The dancing was fierce, the music exquisite.

Also attended The Burning of the Devil (La Quema del Diablo) with Shane and Sarah...the annual burning of a plastic devil every December 7th. Not quite clear on its origins, something about burning away your sins before Christmas or something, felt a bit like Guy Faulks day in England. Eh, great fun nonetheless. Do note the Esso (Exxon) station just a few feet away in the background, and another one just to the left that you can't see in the photo. I love that they choose to hold this ceremony which involves massive amounts of gasoline and a bonfire precisely in the one area in town hemmed in by gas stations. I love Guatemala.

I hear Christmas caroles in the air and Christmas lights everywhere and I swear they're playing a practical joke as I stroll around town in a tanktop and flip-flops. And the money seems to be flowing through my fingers like water these days. It's the first time in several months that I've actually been financing myself...gone are the days of writing everything off on the LEAPNow bill!

Antigua By Night

And then there were two...

I did the 3 hour slog by bus to San Pedro Sula and rendezvoused with Liesl at the hotel, who had flown ahead with the rest of the group. She's my lone last crewmember who is sticking around to study Spanish in Copan for a couple more weeks. Our first act was to find an agreeable spot for dinner and to take back our God-given right to a beer whenever we please. (Um, did I ever mention that these past three months have been completely alcohol-free?) We then met up with some of the volunteer teachers from BECA where we had volunteered several weeks before who happened to be in town. The Bohemian wine bar turned into a poetry reading as the night wore on...Latin Lovers waxing eloquent about unrequited love and Latina vixens...good times. Round midnight Liesl and I headed back to our hotel, encountering on the way a 10-piece mariachi band in the street serenading a newly engaged young lady named Jeni on the otherwise deserted streets.

There it is ladies and gentlemen...Susie and Liesl's first beer in three months...a monumental occasion.

14 empty beer bottles honoring our missing comrades. It was hard putting them all down, but somebody had to do it. It was for the kids. (And if anyone actually believes for a second that I can put away that much booze, you don't know me very well. I'm as light-weight as they come.)

We blew out of San Pedro as soon as we could the next morning and headed to Copan, where I will leave Liesl to study Spanish and I will head to Antigua. We roll into Copan and not 10 minutes after arriving are shown into a dorm room and happen upon Joel the Aussie who we'd hung out with quite a bit the past week on the other side of the country in Utila. (I know I should be used to it by now, but it never ceases to surprise me what a small world Central America quickly becomes.) Joel was attempting a nap at 5pm in the evening, I think he'd previously had a rough night, but we managed to convince him to abandon that plan to go drink beer in the park instead, a very classy backpacker thing to do. Still giddy as a schoolgirl to be able to crack open a brewski whenever I want, tee-hee. :)

We had dinner with my old friend Carlos Castejon who I met back in 2003 when I used to live in Antigua. He runs a great tourist gig to his family's finca outside of Copan (if anyone is ever passing through, you must check it out! www.fincaelcisne.com).

I bid Lovely Liesl goodbye the next morning...onward to Antigua...

The Long Way Home

A week of scuba diving in Utila off the costa of Honduras has come and gone and all of a sudden our last night was upon us. We splurged on hotel rooms with cable TV and ridiculously amazing hot showers (first in several weeks) for our last night together in La Ceiba. Also splurged on a nice dinner and shared absolutely hilarious and clever 20-years-from-now prophecies that we had done for each other with equally clever gag-gifts. We wrapped up the evening crammed into one of the hotel rooms and Pat and I did our last sing along..."Closer to Fine" and "Rock Me Baby Like a Wagon Wheel" were of course on the repertoire, bringing the trip full circle from our first night at Earthlodge overlooking Antigua and her volcanos, lazing in hammocks and passing around the guitar.

With Alison at the farewell fest

The next day we arrived at the airport in plenty of time to make their 3pm flight (I was staying behind) only to find that the plane was actually leaving at 1:30 and was in the process of final boarding. Fantastic. So no time for long goodbyes, and just like that, I bid a tearful farewell to this truly exceptional group of people who had been my family for the past three months...Alison, Cakki, Nick, Ada, Liesl, Mariana, Flora, Devin, Peter, Jessie, Hope, and Patrick, and my fearless co-leader Nate. I hugged and waved goodbye, they hurried through the security line and suddenly they were gone.

I sat down on an airport bench and absorbed the strange silence, let a surge of melancholy wash over me, and wondered what the heck to do with myself now. There were no per diems to hand out, no doctors visits with students to determine what in the heck that strange rash is about, no group dinner to attend, no budget close-out to do, no endangered turtles to save. What now?

Nate, my fearless co-leader.

Alone again, I stoically strapped on my pack, headed out of the airport, and hiked out to the dusty highway to catch a cab to the bus station. I quickly hailed a cab and hopped in. And in an act that seemed nothing short of perfectly choreographed, I roll down my window, look to my right and the prop plane carrying my crew rises up next to me out of nowhere in stride with my taxi for a moment before shooting ahead into the clouds. They were a fantastic group of people and it was a phenomenal experience and I have no doubt I'll see many of them again.

So I decided months ago not to fly home with the rest of the group to take advantage of more time in my favorite part of the globe while I was here anyway. My loose plan is to take the long way home through Mexico, stopping in Antigua and Lake Atitlan to visit friends and recharge. So the show goes on...

Cereal Feast

When you're away from home and familiar things for so long, you get excited about the most seemingly simple things...for example cold milk over a bowl of your favorite cereal. Yesterday the group got to talking and then salivating about our favorite sugar cereals. Golden Grahams, Fruit Loops, Frosted Flakes, Lucky Charms and Coco Crispies made the Top 5, in no particular order. Rice and beans for breakfast everyday are great and everything...but after two months, some cold milk over those melt-in-your-mouth Lucky Charms marshmellows sure would hit the spot. So today, our cook having fallen ill with Dengue Fever and no one to make lunch, and having discovered that the tiny grocery store just up the street carries all manner of things American (gotta love Costa Rica), we decided to give into our urges and held a raging cereal feast for lunch. Lucky Charms never tasted so good.

Incidentally, from our cereal discussion followed many entertaining stories of childhood sugar cereal rivalries with siblings, of which I definitely had plenty to contribute. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that my family wasn't the only one to have to strictly ration sugar cereal in order that it not be plundered by voracious brothers in one sitting.


I digress...so we're in Costa Rica (and the internet is now four times more expensive, so this will be a quickie). We're living in a tin shack on the beach and taking three hour shifts patroling the beach at night in search of endangered leatherback turtles coming ashore to lay their eggs on the beach. The project keeps an eye on the eggs to make sure they have the appropriate conditions to hatch and to protect them from poachers who can score a pretty penny for the illegal eggs. It's a pretty amazing site to see, we got lucky and saw one our first night out. 4 1/2 feet long by 3 feet wide, laying about 100 eggs twice the size of chicken eggs...never seen anything like it.

Cigars, Cockroaches, and Capture the Flag

Mariana and her Cofradia kids

We have bid Guatemala farewell and now find ourselves in Cofradia, Honduras for a couple of weeks working at a really wonderful bilingual school here. I was asked to stand in as a music teacher for the Jr. High girls one day last week, we learned a little Bob Dylan and could sing Amazing Grace in two-part harmony by the end of class, not bad. This Thursday I am booked to teach YMCA with body movements and all to the 5th graders. Aren't I quite the exporter of American pop-culture?

(By the way, I'll put in a little plug here for the school. If anyone knows of anyone looking for a wonderful volunteer experience down here as a teacher, go to www.becaschools.org for more info on the application process. It's a well-established non-profit organization and the recruiting process is pretty rigorous, the new school year starts next September. It's extremely well-organized and supported by the community and they're always looking for good volunteers.)

Our little crew has been absolutely amazing, helping out as classroom assistants, painting, gardening, and basically getting their hands and everything else imaginable very dirty without complaint. As we hear horror stories from our friends leading other trips around the globe, Nate and I have never ceased to be amazed at the maturity and general awesomeness of our group of students. LeapNow runs a pretty tight ship, especially when it comes to drugs, alcohol and general trip participation and students are sent home on the regular for breaking the rules. We were warned to expect having to handle pretty intense discipline issues as part and parcel of the job. The discipline part of this job was the one I feared most and I have yet to have had to crack the whip. We keep waiting with swords drawn and have found nothing but this lingering calm and harmony (aside from a few minor cracks here and there). Are we in La-La land?

One of the bigger tasks has been keeping on top of health issues, however. Stomach bugs have been plentiful and at one point 6 of 14 had fallen ill at the same time. There have been many a visit to sketchy clinics in one-horse towns and a magical injection in the buttocks seems to follow as the cure for most anything in these parts. But they always seem to do the trick, so I can only go so far in my jest. I myself have until now been completely exempt of any health issues (and therefore buttock injections) by some small miracle.

Pat on his sickbed

On that note, I had a most unique experience this week. I got closer to Nico than I ever hoped I would (no offense, Nico). We had to take him to the emergency room for sudden illness and the magical shot was of course prescribed. We were leaving town the next day, so all of a sudden I found myself taking a crash-course in buttock injections by the doctor, who treated it as the most normal thing in the world that I would take over in his stead. But the role of trip-leader is indeed a loosely defined one and I picked up the torch and did what must be done. I did it for the kids. Sorry for the PG-13 photo, but it's priceless, had to post it.

Part of the objective of LeapNow as a program is that our students learn how to become independent travelers. As such, we've been assigning different tasks to the students throughout the trip, such as figuring out transportation from Point A to Point B, making hotel reservations, deciding where to go for the weekend and all the details therein. A convenient residual is that it makes our jobs a heck of a lot easier! For example, we headed out to the beach this weekend and the students took care of each and every detail without a hitch, from figuring out where to go, to where to stay, to navigating the three bus transfers and 4 1/2 hours of transit time, and keeping it all within a pre-established budget. I just sat back and enjoyed the ride.

We landed in a little Garifuna town on the coast called Triunfo, which is populated by a group of people of African decent that came here hundreds of years ago and have stayed gathered around the costal areas all up and down Central America. Very little racial mixing has occured between the Latinos and Garifuna and I might as well have been in Africa by the looks of the people and my surroundings. The contrast was extreme and facsinating. There was essentially nothing to do in Triunfo except lay on the beach and hang out with each other and the Garifuna kids who decided to befriend us, which is exactly what we were looking for. At night our new friends came by and put on quite a drum and dance show, again, straight out of the Africa tradition...I forgot I was in Central America for a moment. We also played a wicked game of capture the flag on the beach by the light of a full moon, I lost a hundred Limpira ($5) in a poker game with Alison, Devon, and Nick and we were also entertained by Peter as he attempted to blow up the very large cockroach he had captured in a plastic bag with a string of Black Cat firecrackers he just happened to have on hand. It was pure carnage.

Making friends on the beach

The Garifuna Hoe-down

Peter playing poker with the boys...

Liesl the Mermaid

On Friday we hit the "vacation" portion of our trip: Two weeks on the beach in Costa Rica searching for endangered giant seaturtles and free-traveling, then a week in the Bay Islands back in Honduras scuba diving. Yes, my job is rough.

We hit up the amazing Mayan ruins in Copan on our way here, here are a few photos.

Copan Ruinas

Some pix from the Mayan Ruins of Copan in Honduras...

A Snapshot of a Guatemalan Bus Ride

In a small regional bus the size of a mini-van, we are 23 people packed like sardines for the two hour ride to the next town, traversing rickety roads and some of the most beautiful hill country I've ever seen. We are driving parallel to a mountain range that is pocked as far as the eye can see with hundreds of tiny hills rising up like moguls on a ski slope. I've never seen another landscape like it.

I am the only gingo aboard in a sea of indigenous people and feel a little bit as a guest that is doing her best to fit in at a party where it's obvious to everyone that I don't belong. The welcome is warm anyway. I am suddenly very aware of the iPod attached to my ears and that it represents several months salary for most of these people. I wonder if they have ever seen one before. Probably not.

Personal space is non-existent and the smells are a little funky. The man over there is standing upright in the doorwell and trying to catch some zzz's, the woman to my right is breast-feeding her two-year-old, using my sleeping bag as a pillow, while the man to my left is dozing off, head bobbing precariously in my direction and getting dangerously close to drooling on my shoulder.

An immutable law: There is always room for more. Just when you think there is no possible way to fit another living thing inside the bus, another family materializes from the hills out of nowhere and we stop and let them on. A woman boards carrying some sort of package wrapped in traditional cloth with the four corners pulled together at the top. She holds the bunched corners at the top with one hand and swings it around precariously as she navigates the crush of people. I realize it's a baby inside. She somehow manages to settle in and find a space where I could have sworn one didn't exist a moment before, all without rousing the baby...thus maintaining the perfect record of my never ever having heard a child cry on a bus here, no matter the conditions or how long the bus ride. I've never been able to figure that one out. Perhaps they just understand...this is how it works here, no use in fussing about it.

In the Beginning...

On September 15th, I boarded a plane from San Francisco to Guatemala with twelve 18-year-olds I had never met before and another 20-something counterpart who is apparently as insane as I am. Our mission: traveling together through the wilds of Guatemala, Honduras, and Costa Rica for the next three months.

I've been gainfully employed by an incredible organization outside of San Francisco called LeapNow, whose thing for the past 12 years has been getting students away from the comforts of home and out of the classrooms they've been in for over half their lives to experience life through the eyes of the developing world. And along the way, the idea is that the outer journey will be a tool to help these teenagers make that oftentimes murky and tumultous inner journey from adolescence into the exciting world of independent, responsible adulthood. (As I'm still experiencing major difficulties with that myself, I'm sure many of you are scratching your head in wonder at how in the world I'm qualified to assist in such a process. I am too, but don't tell my employers that.) My co-leader, Nate, likes to call it the A.D.D. program, as over the next few months we'll be doing everything from studying Spanish to working with endangered turtles to volunteering in orphanages to scuba diving to studying at a yoga/meditation retreat center where we will attempt to discover the meaning of life and reach nirvana. I could go on and on about the program and it's hard to put proper words to the entire scope of LeapNow, but it's a phenomenal organization and I'm a lucky girl to have scored such a sweet gig.

So, from the bustling burbs of DC, back to Central America I go again. Two weeks of training in the ninja arts of conflict resolution and relationship building in California, armed with a med kit and $30,000 in travelers checks, they annointed me a trip leader and we were off. We are now three weeks into the adventure and my co-leader Nate and I and our students have been having a blast and getting on fabulously, a small miracle when you consider the insanity of throwing 12 different teenage personalities together at random and asking them to travel together for three months in such intense conditions. We have definitely been blessed with a solid group of students.

The crew in Chimaltenango about to embark on our first chickenbus adventure

It would be easy to maintain a fairly "gringofied" experience here...quaint colonial towns, private shuttle buses, nice restaurants, etc. But one of the things I love about LeapNow is their commitment to having the students experience "real Guatemala", which means chicken buses (where you will quite likely be sharing a bench with a Guatemalan family of six...and their family of chickens...look closely at photo, no lie) and the back of pickup trucks for transportation, a meager food allowance, living with families that perhaps serve rice and beans for breakfast, rice and beans for lunch, and rice and beans for dinner, and staying in towns that might not be the most attractive places you've ever seen. Sounds like fun, you might be saying to yourself with a hint of sarcasm. But actually, somehow it is tons of fun. It's here in the dust of the dirty streets and exhaust fumes belching forth from the chicken buses where you discover the layers beneath Guatemala...layers that can be difficult, uncomfortable, beautiful, stimulating and amazing life teachers. There is something so life-giving about learning to live simply and you can't be here and live with these people and live out of a backpack for three months and not be challenged by that.



So our first stop on the trip landed us in a mountain town called Huehuetenango (good luck pronouncing that one) for two weeks, studying Spanish, volunteering in a wonderful local orphanage, and living with Guatemalan families. At first glance, Huehue seems only noteable for the dirty streets, dilapidated buildings, and the abundance of stray dogs. The "friendly" Guatemalan men are always eager to practice their English with the ladies as we pass by ("Hey-low bay-bee! I lof u!") Not a seemingly very exciting place to be at first. But after a couple of weeks there, I was really proud of my students being able to see below the surface to the people, the history, the way of life, and most said they actually would have stayed a bit longer if they could have.

With the folks from our Spanish school

LEAPNow posterchildren

Partying at the orphanage

Do you think I would get in trouble if I smuggled her back with me in my backpack?

Meals with a Guatemalan homestay are always hit or miss (e.g. the chicken gizzard stirfy I was served the other night...emmmm), therefore my guilty pleasure in Huehue was a few cherished trips to Pollo Campero, a fast food fried chicken restaurant you can find in every noteable Guatemalan town and is the pride and joy of every Guatemalan, as it should be. It puts KFC to shame. To gauge a trip to Pollo Campero on the fine-dining-experience-o-meter for the average Guatemalan, think dinner at Pollo Campero = Morton's Steakhouse. And it's the only multi-national Guatemalan company that I'm aware of, recently opening its doors in Northern Virginia in Herndon and Arlington, as a matter of fact. Keep your eyes peeled for the sign and promise me you'll stop in if you happen upon one. There will likely be a long line of illegal Guatemalan immigrants out the door waiting expectantly for a little taste of home, but it's worth the wait.

The scars from the civil war that took place in this region of Guatemala from the 60s through the 80s are much more evident and deep here than in most places I've spent time. During that period a quarter million indigenous people were killed by government army troops, a peaceful majority caught between a right-wing regime and a left-wing guerilla force. My Spanish teacher Erwin, a 60-year-old retired teacher, lived through this period and we had some fascinating political conversations during our 4 hours a day of 1-on-1 time.

Opportunities for advancement here if you're outside of the old boys club who almost exclusively hold the wealth and power is almost non-existent. Most everyone would give their right arm to get to the United States to be able to earn el dollar and the biggest industry in Huehue is the coyote business (people who help smuggle people into the US). Here being "mojado" (which translates into the derogatory "wetback" of American slang) is a badge of honor and most everybody has a brother or cousin in "El Norte" already. Indeed, most all of the modernizations one sees in Huehue is due to dollars being sent back here from relatives and pumping it back into the economy. It gives a lot more color to the immigration debate going on in the U.S. right now. It makes me thankful for almost endless opportunities I have always known being from the U.S. and at the same time frustrated knowing the history that U.S. government intervention has had in this country (and all of Central America) that has ot always been the most positive, to put it lightly. Considering the very politically diverse community that is probably reading this, I will be diplomatic and leave it at that :).

Right now we are working on a cooperative coffee finca called Nueva Alianza that has a really amazing story behind it. Until two years ago, this finca (farm) was a very conventional place, owned by a large land-owner and worked by generation after generation of the same indigenous families for extremely low wages and little-to-no opportunity for advancement and investment in the business, the typical lot of most poor Guatemalans. Several years ago the business started to go downhill, the workers were not paid for over a year, and the padrino (owner) finally declared bankruptcy and tried to surreptitiously pass the title on to another big landowner. Thanks to the strong leadership of a few of the workers, they organized themselves into an alliance of 40 families and through a long and arduous legal battle and some aid from Guatemalan and foreign NGOs, managed to collectively gain the title to the land and are now working the land as cooperative owners instead of menial laborers.

I've been on other more conventional fincas before and you can feel it in the air and see it on the faces of the workers that this place is different. This place is theirs. A lot changes when you reap the benefits of your own hard work, ingenuity, and resourcefulness. And resourceful, they have been. In the two years since legally gaining control of the finca, they've developed several other profitable small businesses, including a water purification plant, a small dairy farm, and macademia nut production. Energy for the entire finca is run off of a bio-diesel generator run off of recycled vegetable oil purchased second-hand from restuarants, and they are working on a hydro-electric plant. It's a fascinating hybrid of communism and capitalism at work here, as everyone earns the same wage no matter their position (and the proudly displayed Che Guevara banner is hard to miss), yet their success is fueled by private ownership and small business.

Learning about the coffee-making process

We spent the past couple mornings picking coffee, which puts quite a new perspective on ordering a cup of coffee at Starbucks. The process from start to finish is an extremely complex and fragile one to get those little coffee beans from a rural Guatemalan hillside and readied to perfection for the espresso machine at your local Starbucks. It's extremely difficult for these guys to make a profit on their coffee at this level, the market for raw coffee has fallen dramatically and the profits are usually reaped by the middle-man at the exportation level. Therefore, the greatest hope for these fincas is to gain fair-trade certification, cut out the middle-man, and start doing business directly with the retailer abroad for a fair wage. It's a really inspiring place, and it's so refreshing to see a story of success and progress instead of the oftentimes relentless stories of oppression and despair that are much more readily found here.

At play in the waterfalls

Coffee Finca High: Picking oranges for breakfast from the tree just outside our rooms.

Coffee Finca Low: Discovering mid-bite at breakfast two days later that all aforementioned oranges were teeming with tiny, almost-invisible maggots.

And on that appetizing note, I'll sign off for now. Stay tuned for future installments of The Real World: Central America. Would love to hear from you all anytime! susie@thegaskins.com

And check out the blog that the students are keeping at leapnow.blogspot.com.

To the beach in the back of a water truck

A man from Todos Santos, one of the only places where men still wear traditional dress.


Hard at play. Todos Santos, Guatemala