Susie's Travel Tales

Oh Eight Was Great

2009-01-01T20:59:00.025-06:00

Susiestraveltales has been silent since the end of May, but not for lack of travel tales. I’ve had some fine adventures this year while, in between, continuing to find my roots in Austin. I’m not feeling terribly verbose right now, so I’m just going to let the pictures do the talking for now! Happy New Year, hope it’s a great one ahead for us all!

Special thanks to Steve Tamarkin, Dave Epperson, Jason Stawiski, Kent Christian, Nate Miller, Tanya Rinderknecht, Lisa Molinaro, and Ana Maria Medina for photo contributions!

Race Day

2008-05-28T09:48:00.012-05:00

I've been fully enjoying my post-triathlon week of inactivity and margaritas, but am finally mustering up the energy to post a few pix from the race last Sunday. But first I want to send a huge THANK YOU for the generosity of all the folks who supported me and helped me raise $2,825 for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society and made this all possible. Our entire training team raised over $100,000 for LLS, amazing.

So without boring you with all the details, it went something like this: move your arms alternately in a circular motion through water...repeat for one mile; move your legs in a circular motion while perched atop a two-wheeled apparatus...repeat for 25 miles; put one foot in front of the other as fast as you can...repeat for 6 miles; raise hands in triumph as you cross the finish line...collapse. Very exciting, really.

It actually was quite fun, especially with 3,000 other folks along for the same ride. I had a stellar cheering squad camped out at the corner of Congress and 3rd St. who would cheer with abandon whenever I passed...my mom, sister, brother-in-law, and friends Mindi and Tashan, old DC friends from high school with whom I've reconnected since moving to Austin. Was happy with my time, 3:07, and will definitely be tackling more in the future.

Triathlon high: Running my fastest mile on the last mile of the race.

Triathlon low: Being perfectly situated to intercept the snot rocket of the man running in front of me on said last mile.

A flock of triathletes poised to swim down Town Lake

Biking through downtown

I promise I was not that cheerful during the whole race

The Gaskins ladies, post-race

Some of my most excellent teammates

T minus one week

2008-05-19T00:04:00.006-05:00

T minus one week until the big triathlon event this Sunday! With just a week left, here starts my favorite part of training called “tapering”. It’s the part where it's actually sanctioned not to train so much so your bod can recover for the big day. Now I can feel good instead of guilty when I bail on a scheduled run to grab a beer instead. My mom comes into town in a few days to visit me and my sis and root me on Sunday.

Here is a shot of me and a few of my TNT teammates this weekend at a teammate’s fundraiser downtown…a rare moment in which we have seen each other not in exercise getups and sweating like pigs. The dapper young man with the outstanding handlebar moustache is one of our team’s Honored Heroes. Tom, a Hodgkin’s Lymphoma Survivor, had his last treatment of chemo almost exactly a year ago today. And did I mention he’s competing in the triathlon next week? And another member of our team who was declared cancer-free a couple years ago is about to tackle an Ironman...how's that for some inspiration?!

Life in Austin rolls along. Just had a visit from Nate, who some of you will remember as my better half from my trip-leading days in Central America as we traipsed around the subcontinent with our family of students in tow. He was in town to help teach a course on human consciousness and other such zen-master topics for a week. I got to check it out for a couple of days and learned lots…not the least of which is that I’m very far from zen-master status. Still working on that one.

A recent discovery (and now daily guilty pleasure) we made while he was here is the snow cone stand just around the corner from my apartment. As you can see, it’s a trailer set up in an abandoned parking lot sandwiched between two office buildings. But don’t let the ghetto-ness of it fool you, you’ve never tasted a finer snow cone in your life. And excuse me, is that a snow cone wearing sunglasses on the roof…what’s not to love?

And in spite of my love-affair with Austin, I leave in a couple of weeks for another summer of trip leading with Backroads in Yellowstone and the Tetons. Excited to be back in Jackson Hole, see some friends and not be a rookie at the job this year!

Rookies

2008-04-29T22:48:00.024-05:00

Swim

Bike

Run

An amusing memory from my college friend Katherine, a seasoned triathlete: "I remember running with you once our senior year. It was a very short run, if I remember correctly, and there may have been some swearing involved.”

No, endurance sports have never been my bag. But thanks to great coaching and encouragement from my Team in Training (TNT) folks, I got to put three months of training to the test this past weekend. My friend Ana-Maria and I headed for the coast to hit a sprint triathlon in Corpus Christi to warm us up for the real deal at the end of this month. We checked into the hotel, carbed up on some pasta, woke up Sunday at the ungodly hour of 5am, chowed down some Power Bars (anyone else find these disgusting?) and headed to the race site like nervous little schoolgirls on their first day at school. It was a sea of spandex and swim caps. We assumed we'd be in good company as rookies competing in some small-time race in a po-dunk town, but we were wrong. In the crowd of 150, racers with Ironmans under their belts were aplenty, the rookies were few.

Not to be intimidated by these Goliaths, we donned our sexy wetsuits and orange swim caps, took a prelim dip in the ocean, and were off on a 1000 meter swim, 18 mile bike, and 3 mile run, a bit more than half of what we'll do at the end of this month. And are you ready for this? I placed 1st in my age group! A-hem...nevermind that I was the only one IN my age group (which I will remain vague about, except that it now proudly boasts a “3” as of earlier this month), that's neither here nor there.

Fundraising Update
As you know, I'm fundraising for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society and would love your support! I've commited to raising 2,600 smackers and I just hit the $1,000 mark...only $1,600 to go! Please consider donating today, every bit counts! http://www.active.com/donate/tntctx/susiegaskins

Some pre-race pix of me and Ana-Maria

Heading West

2008-04-29T09:27:00.006-05:00

In other news…just before Thanksgiving I packed my car with most of my worldly possessions and headed West like every good hippie should do at some point. My destination: Austin, Texas. My mission: to secure a permanent address for more than two months. Austin has been lingering on my radar for years as a place to settle down. It seemed we might get along well from what I've heard about the place and from many visits here to see my sister over the past 10 years. My sister and her husband were super-kind to let me crash with them for a bit before I settled into my little one-bedroom apartment close to the action of downtown just after New Years. I'm now the proud owner of exciting household items such as house plants, a welcome mat, a coffee maker and real grown-up furniture. My favorite purchase is a big red sofa, which incidentally conveniently folds out into a bed...so if you ever find yourself in the area…

I've loved being a nomad for the past six years, but having a place to call home and put down some roots feels heavenly right now. Although truth be told, I've still ended up darting about the country between Austin, Arizona, and DC quite a bit over the past several months. Nonetheless, my clothes are very appreciative of a closet to live in instead of a backpack, and my books are happy to be on a shelf instead of in a box. Baby steps.

I've been working remotely for Backroads (awesome travel company out of San Francisco that I've been working for) in marketing communications. I'll put my trip leader hat back on in June as I head back out to Jackson Hole and Yellowstone to lead trips for them.

Speaking of trip leading, I had a successful first trip of my own to Guatemala in September, an experimental little maiden voyage with a small group of family and friends, we had a blast! I've definitely neglected that endeavor for the moment and hope to pick it back up once life slows a bit.

Come see me in Austin!

View of downtown Austin from my apt. complex.

Swim, bike, run for a cure...

2008-04-23T10:02:00.001-05:00

Many of you don’t know this yet, but I have officially made the move to Austin, Texas and have been busy settling into the Live Music Capital of the World, a move that’s been lingering in my background plans for years. A “life” update is long overdue, which is coming, but first...a huge part of my life for the past two months has been training for the Capital of Texas Triathlon, taking place here in Austin on May 25th. This Olympic distance triathlon has me training about 5 days a week to prepare for a 1.5k swim (about 1 mile), 40k bike (about 25 miles), and 10k run (about 6 miles). This is the first endeavor of its kind for me...perhaps I should have started with a 5k fun-run, you say? Nah.

I’m training and fundraising through a wonderful program, the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society’s Team in Training, whose mission is to cure leukemia, lymphoma, Hodgkin’s disease and myeloma– and improve the quality of life of patients and their families. I have committed to raising 2,600 smackers and need your support in reaching that goal! While a portion of donations goes toward research for new life-saving cancer treatments, what I find even more appealing are programs that help cancer patients with the financial burden of cancer treatments. Chemotherapy is expensive. Traveling to and from treatment centers is costly. Not being able to go to work b/c you or your loved one is battling cancer presents a significant financial strain. Much of the money we raise goes to support programs that help ease these financial burdens for patients and their families.

Almost all of our lives have been touched by someone close to us who has battled this indiscriminate disease. Two close friends of mine from college, Anna and Patrick, survived bouts with cancer in their early 20s. Their stories are inspiring and hope-giving. And I also think about my close friend, Katherine, who lost her wonderful mom Ruth, a mother of four, to this devastating disease four years ago. Cancer does not discern between young or old, male or female, rich or poor, but strikes blindly. Defeating it is a cause that we can all unify behind.

To keep up with my progress and contribute to help keep me motivated as I rise for swim training at the ungodly hour of 6am, cycle those hills, and put more miles on my running shoes, please visit my website at www.active.com/donate/tntctx/susiegaskins. All contributions are tax 100% deductible. Whatever you can give counts!

Stay tuned for sexy photos of Susie in a wetsuit...

Another Summer Come and Gone

2007-08-26T17:21:00.005-05:00

My 9-year-old niece Callie recently reprimanded me for my blog being way out of date, so I’d better get to it.

My summer as an active travel trip guide for Backroads in Yellowstone/Tetons has come to an end. This adventure started out in the beginning of June with three weeks of intensive training in Salt Lake City in the ninja art of preparing elaborate meals for 25 out of the back of a trailer in the wilderness, driving a sexy 15-passenger van with trailer attached, and racking a bike on top of it in under 60 seconds. I spent training with a group of 27 other freshmen, extraordinary folks (below, with the backdrop of the Tetons) who were then scattered over the globe to places like Ireland, Hawaii, Portugal, Switzerland, Croatia, and the Czech Republic.

Humble and sophisticated self-named TBTGE (The Best Training Group Ever)

Backroads does high-end one week trips all over the world, and the Tetons and Yellowstone in Wyoming were to become my home for the summer. Welcome to my office:

Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone

Lower Canyon Falls

Geothermal hot springs

And of course Old Faithful. After all these years there's still a man behind the curtain pushing the button every 90 minutes or so.

Don't mind me...

Buffalo: Truly amazing creatures with a fascinating history. Used to be 30 to 60 million of them roaming our continent just 150 years ago and we managed to almost wipe them out. Yellowstone spearheaded our first endangered species success story, protecting the 25 buffalo that existed in the park at the turn of the century and increasing their numbers to currently around 5,000.

An animal jam on the road

Yellowstone sunsets

Half of the trips I helped lead were family inn trips, half were family camping. The term “camping” must be qualified however, as purists may scoff. For the guests, a Backroads Deluxe Camping trip means being attended by a team of 4 Backroads leaders, three elaborate hot meals a day, wine and appetizers before dinner (albeit out of plastic cups), hot showers, a camp assistant to set up your tent and roll out your sleeping bag and extra-thick sleeping pads, and guided hikes, bikes, and kayaking trips through the parks. For me and my leader team it meant playing chef, bike mechanic, knowledgeable local expert, and entertainer of kids all at once. It meant 18 hour work days, cooking three meals a day out of the back of a trailer, and what’s popularly known among us as “permadirt”, the result of camping for a week with one shower, making for a layer of grime on your hands and feet that only starts to dissipate after your third post-trip shower. A camping high: I’m pretty mean with a dutch oven now...coffee cake, lasagna, chocolate mousse, roasted veggies. A camping low: The nasty black eye I got a few weeks ago from my face being crunched between the van and the van door due to an unfortunately-timed gust of wind. I told the guests that my co-leader Joel took some action b/c I wasn't pulling my weight around camp.

And then there were the inn trips...spas, long dinners with guests at nice restaurants, bison steaks, 600 thread-count bed sheets, hot showers every day. Nice.

The guests: Pretty much across the board wonderful and interesting folks. Somehow I've developed this assumption that I don't like kids/am not very good with them, yet interactions with the kiddos ended up being one of my favorite things. I met a 10-year-old who has a better vocab than I do (using "vile" and "parody" in everyday conversation), a 14-year-old pilot, and a kid with a photographic memory (kind of scary when you're only mostly sure about some of the details you're spouting off).

On the job with guests.

One of my most excellent leader teams: Joel, me, and Tanya

When not on trips I lived at the leader house in Jackson Hole, an old dilapidated ranch house with bunk beds jammed in every corner to accommodate the 20 leaders rotating in and out, and a septic and hot water tank designed for one. Its saving grace was that it was set on the banks of the Snake River, very convenient for frequent tubing excursions. Also went home twice, once for a wedding, once for the funeral of a dear family friend. Also had the opportunity to go out to Portland to see my brother John, dear friends Adriana and Monique, and travel bud Kieran.

Amazing Adriana, daughter of my close friend Monique, my former roommate and boss from when I taught in Guatemala in 2003. This girl melts my heart.

Some of my favorite moments this summer:

-Inner tubing down the Snake River with a group of my colleagues, putting in right from the backyard of our house, drinking PBR out of Twizzler straws. The 3 bald eagles that followed us much of the way down the river was icing on the cake.

-Leading a group of left-leaning Bay Area adults on a bicycle ride through the Tetons on a less-traveled dirt road and being left in the dust by VP Cheney’s entourage of 5 black Escalades (in town for a little R&R) and their subsequent heckling comments.

-Cooking a stellar meal for 27 people on my first camping trip.

-Singing and playing guitar around the campfire for guests.

-Getting paid to drive a company vehicle on my own from Berkeley, CA to Salt Lake City, on the way spending a day perched on a rock overlooking Lake Tahoe on a perfect day, and then watching a huge wind and lightening storm whip across the Nevada desert as I drove straight into it.

In reality it’s been a summer of both highs and lows, feeling the weight of needing to make some major life decisions, asking big questions about future and where I want to be, a clear sense of exhaustion setting in from a lifestyle of constant mobility, never sleeping in the same bed for more than a few nights at a time, living out of a backpack, feeling the urge to slow down just when everything seems to be speeding up. A lot of you may be saying "yeah right, Susie", but Susie may find herself with a permanent address sooner than later.

I’m blowing through DC right now for just a couple days and then am off again to Guatemala for several weeks! I’m taking a small group of friends and family down for a week, a trip that’s been in the works for several months, I'm very psyched for it. I’m doing it under the auspices of my own company to see how I like doing this sort of thing on my own, with a long-term vision of perhaps doing service trips for families with adopted Guatemalan children or with high school groups in the future, a possibility that could actually co-exist with this whole settling down idea. Lots of decisions to make, priorities to determine...watch this space.

Swimming with Jaws

2007-06-09T13:33:00.001-05:00

Roatan, Bay Islands, Honduras

Sunset on Roatan from just outside our hotel

A hard day at work

Our last stop on the trip was a week of scuba diving in the Bay Islands of Honduras. All week the big plan was for the crowning glory of the trip to be a group shark dive after everyone got scuba certified. Get a load of this, they actually take you down 50 feet with a bucket full of bloody fish, the sharks catch a whiff from some amazingly far-off distance, come swarming around in droves, the bucket is released into the water and you watch the show as they go ape. No cages, no glass wall, just you and a swarm of 4- 6 foot sharks from straight out of Jaws, you could reach out and touch them if you wanted. Unbelievable.

Jaws in the flesh

And the anti-climactic conclusion to this exciting tale (for me, at least) is that while Nate, Armen, and Johnny were down in the depths experiencing said adventure watching the sharks thrash about, Susie was thrashing about in bed with strep throat and a 103 degree temperature, barely able roll over, much less frolic with sharks. Curses! All was not lost, however, as I did get to chalk another one up in my cache of Central American experiences...I finally got to experience the magical shot in the ass, seemingly the cure-all for any ailment down here, one I have heretofore avoided due to my usually stellar immune system. But I was feeling like a million bucks 24 hours later, so what can I say, it works.

The crew at sunset

Jess and me geared up for snorkeling...sexy!

As this chapter comes to a end, some new ones start. I'm back in the States, I got to sing in the wedding of two very special ladies these past two weekends; my sister Jen in Austin, and one of my college roommates Tracy in North Carolina. Right now I'm in Salt Lake City and heading to Yellowstone tomorrow for training for a sweet new gig leading biking and hiking trips for the summer with this great company, Backroads (www.backroads.com).

And in the midst of that, I'll be hosting my first trip on my own to Guatemala in September with a small group of family and friends to see how I like doing this thing on my own...

All exciting stuff, but it's been a pretty non-stop fast pace and and the idea of sleeping in my own bed and being in a familiar place with friends and fam for a bit sounds really good right now...

Hope all is well with all of you out there!

With my sister, the beautiful bride in Austin

And a couple of very handsome men at the Texas hoe-down (my dad and brother, Will)

(Most of) my best girls from college at Tracy's wedding

LEAPNow Trip Slideshow

2007-06-03T16:34:00.000-05:00

LEAPNow Central America - Spring 2007

starring Armen Haftvani, Amanda Thorne, Jessica Lehrman, Johnny Bowman, Nate Marcus, & Susie Gaskins

Digging Ditches

2007-05-17T14:25:00.000-05:00

We spent two weeks in the small, dusty town of Cofradia, Honduras working at this wonderful bilingual school called BECA that provides affordable bilingual education. The words "affordable bilingual education" are rarely found together in the same sentence. Being bilingual is one of the most viable ways to a better future for most of today's Central American kids, but usually it is reserved for society's elite. The school was started several years ago through a partnership of some community members and an American woman. Every year, a new team of volunteer English teachers come down and teach for a year and live in the community getting paid zilch, pretty phenomenal people. We passed through here on our last trip, so it was cool to get to catch up with the folks we'd spent time with in November.

With some of the volunteer English teachers

Our days were spent helping out in classrooms and digging a 10-foot sewage hole for the new bathrooms for the kindergartners. Glamorous, right? Local ranch hands would mossy on by and were quite amused at the site of gringos in their country with shovels in hand performing hard labor under the blazing sun. The irony was not lost on them, either.

My new nickname is "Susie Snacks" (as I'm always snacking) and my students have almost convinced me to open up my own line of snack food by the same name. A business idea to ponder.

We took a weekend trip to this spectacular 150 foot waterfalls, actually hiked down INTO them (deafening and borderline painful with the power of the water coming down) and got to hang inside them for a bit. Never seen anything like it.

Another highlight of this portion of the trip is being 45 minutes away from San Pedro Sula, Honduras, the site of a most excellent mega-mall that we affectionately call "America". Shiney marble floors, vaulted ceilings, a massive food court with every fast food option imagineable, the works. Malls, which I usually loath, never looked so good after two months of blissful hippie simplicity and non-materialism. It's nice to be a good old consumer every once in awhile :).

Hitching a ride to the airport in Don Max's rad truck.

One of the more hilarious signs I've come across in Central America (and there have been many). "We sell firewood, popsicles, sugar water, and rabbits."

Nicaragua

2007-05-05T14:09:00.001-05:00

Border crossing from Costa Rica to Nicaragua

We had a week of free travel where the students decide when and where we go, and they chose to spend the week chillaxing in Nicaragua. Easily overlooked, Nicaragua for me comes in a close second to Guatemala in its natural and man-made beauty, and historical and political interest quotient, was glad to get to head back. We headed first to Leon where the big item on the agenda was volcano boarding (literally surfing down a volcano through volcanic ash like you were snowboarding), only it didn't happen as the only tour was booked for the next two days and we had to be on our way. Bummer.

On to Granada, the oldest city in Central America...it's easy to see the vestiges of Spanish colonialism here.

Drinks the park

Gorgeous central park fountain by night

We stopped in at one of my favorite spots The Monkey Hut for a night, a beautiful spot on azure blue crater lake Apoyo.

Lago Apoyo from the Monkey Hut

Armen makes a friend

Rats, Sharks, and Sea Turtles

2007-05-05T09:41:00.001-05:00

Last week was spent kicking it on a turtle preserve on a remote beach on Costa Rica's Caribbean coast. Our days were passed lazing in hammocks with the occassional beach soccer game with the locals and our nights were spent taking 3-hour shifts patroling the beach for massive endangered leatherback turtles coming ashore to lay their eggs before heading back into the depths. Lots of downtime...I came armed with an iPod chock-full of the mighty triumvirate of Lost, The Office, and Family Guy, my guilty pleasures, to help pass the quiet nights sans electriciy. God bless the video iPod.

Jessica living The Life

So the turtles...these amazing creatures can live upwards of 150 years and average 4 to 5 feet and lay 60 t0 120 eggs the size of golf balls. They face a bit of a battle against nature as well as humans...poaching became a big issue in years past (and still present). Turtle eggs fetch a pretty penny here as they're believed to have natural aphrodisiac effects, about $40 for a batch from one turtle, which is a good night's salary for these local folks. And if the poachers don't get them first, their nests oftentimes don't even survive in the wild from being washed away by the tide or eaten by natural predators. And even if the babies do get to the point of hatching and making it out to sea, about 1 in 1,000 make it to adulthood; the sharks are big fans of these cute little guys. So Costa Rica has recently become quite pro-active in protecting them and helping them bolster their ranks, which means snatching the eggs from the mama after they're laid and relocating them to a hatchery where they can be monitored and protected until they hatch.

On turtle patrol with Johnny and Jessica at some ungodly hour of the night

Although we enjoyed oceanfront digs, swimming was not much part of our daily activity due to the very shark-infested waters we shared our beach with. There were several reports of sightings alarmingly close to shore while we were there, which quickly cured me of my need to take a refreshing dip. And a word about the oceanfront digs -- really a crude shack we shared with ROUSs (Rodents Of Unusual Size for the Princess Bride ignorant) that came to visit every night. I like to think I have a high threshold for such things, but I did almost lose it the other night when I left for my three-hour turtle patrol in the middle of the night and came back to fresh rat poop on my BED. Not cool.

It was sweltering hot and thank God that coconuts abounded in this virgin tropical paradise, we kept ourselves cool gorging on cocolocos, or rather straight up coconut milk drunk straight out of the coconut with a straw. The group got really good at cracking open coconuts with a machete by the end of the week.

Cocoloco party

Hiking in to the beachfront camp

We've lost one of our ranks, Amanda, who decided to take the independent travel route and split off from the group to do her own thing for a few weeks. We were sad to see her go!

Ommmmm...

2007-04-12T03:04:00.005-05:00

So this past week was spent on gorgeous Lake Atitlan, the part of the trip where we practice yoga every morning and meditate in the lotus position, looking out our third eye and chanting "ommmm" for hours on end in a huge wooden temple shaped like a pyramid, complete with incense, candles, and a guru with long black hair wearing flowly white robes. It's another world. Not your everyday experience and not for everyone, but it's one of my favorite parts of the trip. Balancing chakras, reading auras, lucid dreams, holistic medicine, and astral travel are all normal breakfast conversation around these parts. Welcome to San Marcos and The Piramides Meditation Centre. You have to see this place to believe it. In the past 20 years, this tiny little indigenous lakeside town as become a veritable hippie Mecca. People from all over the world have settled here to soak in the energy of this place and do spiritual exploration. They actually claim that San Marcos holds a unique energy and vibration due to energy meridians crossing at this very spot on the planet or something or other.

Who knows? But I do feel something special when I'm here. San Marcos is one of my favorite spots on earth. I started coming here on weekends every chance I could when I was a teacher in Antigua in 2003, usually by myself with nothing but a book and a single change of cloths, and with no other agenda than to soak in the energy of this place, read, eat great vegetarian food, and not talk to a soul, surrendering to my closet hermit inclinations.

Particularly interesting is that San Marcos is a random hippie Mecca against the backdrop of a intensely evangelical indigenous village. The two very distinct communities co-exist quite peacefully for the most part. However, the numerous churches around here have taken to broadcasting their daily services over loud-speakers that canvas the entire valley with competing congregations of a capella singers with excruciatingly poor pitch, piercing the otherwise exceedingly peaceful atmosphere several times a day. I guess a place can't be perfect.

I got to see my friend Nicola from England who was part of the fantastic group of people Nate and I met here on our first trip and have stayed in touch with since then. Nicola loves San Marcos so much she stuck around and now calls it home.

The Lovely Nicola

We absorbed a couple other members into our group this week, Nate's friend Tom and my old friend Neil who came to check out what all the fuss was about the Pyramids as well. Great having them along.

I ended up doing another show at this great venue in town, Blind Lemon's, a repeat gig from when we passed through here last October, lights, sound system and all, which is a rare thing around these parts. We packed the place out again and it goes down as another great memory. The owner of Blind Lemon's, Carlos Funk (whose "real" name is Charlie Smith or something mundane like that) pulled out his bass and accompanied me for a bit, very fun.

Doing my thing with Carlos

We even had a surprise guest appearance from Pieter and Chris at the show (courtesy of Nicola), our good buds from the last time we were here...in the form of a blown-up color photo taken at the last show.

Actual publicity for the show, funny.

The boys of the San Marcos dock, loading the lancha

A local fisherman on Lake Atitlan.

Now we've bid Guatemala farewell and just landed in Costa Rica. We head out tomorrow for a week working with endangered leatherback turtles, helping protect their eggs as they come up out of the ocean onto the beach to lay their eggs. Sounds pretty romantic, but in reality it means a lot of downtime in a really isolated place during the day and four hour shifts patrolling the beach back and forth, back and forth in the in middle of the night. Eh, not my most favorite part of the trip, but here we go. Then off to Nicaragua for a week of free travel!

Lahar

2007-04-11T18:39:00.002-05:00

lahar (lä'här') n.

A wet mass of volcanic fragments flowing rapidly downhill. Lahars usually contain ash, breccia, and boulders mixed with rainwater or with river or lake water displaced by the lava flow associated with the volcano.
An avalanche of volcanic water and mud down the slopes of a volcano.
A destructive mudflow on the slopes of a volcano usually brought on by massive amounts of rain.

I would like to amend the statement proffered in my last blog, that in Guatemala when you see an erupting volcano, you go towards it instead of away from it and no one will try and stop you. I have officially experienced an exception to that rule.

A couple days ago our crew embarked on a popular two-day trek to one of Guatemala’s most active volcanoes, Santiaguito. As the volcano is far too active to summit, we camp at the base, the culmination being waking up in the middle of the night after the clouds have cleared to watch the fireworks show above as Santiaguito erupts every 20-30 minutes. If only we'd made it to base camp.

At the beginning of the seven-hour hike to our camp, we crossed over a frighteningly deep gorge that our guide Deek told us was formed 20 years ago by a massive lahar that ripped through the valley (see definition above). To give you an idea of its power, the lahar’s warpath tore straight through a church that still stands, now in two parts, on either bank of the gorge. (see photo below)

A few hours hiking through the grasslands, then uphill into thick, thick jungle towards Santiaguito. The skies began to open up after stopping for lunch. More thick jungle, more rain, more uphill. Finally only an hour to go, the skies were dumping buckets, we were exhausted and very ready to arrive at base camp and change into dry clothes. Still under cover of jungle, we couldn’t yet see the volcano, but started hearing short explosions every few minutes, informed by our guide Deek that it was the volcano doing its thing.

The rain continued beating down on us, and the uphill path we were scaling started looking more like a small waterfall at times. (And this is where I have to admit, I did kind of imagine I was Kate out of a scene from Lost, desperately tramping through the jungle in search of a secret hatch or running from the bad guys. Alas, Matthew Fox was nowhere to be found.) As we got closer to our destination at the base of the volcano, the intermittent bursts from the volcano changed to steady rumbling and eventually I could feel the ground vibrating beneath me. The bursts from the volcano seemed normal enough, but was this normal?

We finally approached a clearing at the ledge of the 50-foot gorge that separated us from Guatemala's most active volcano in the not-too-far-off distance, our first peek at Santiaguito. Deek was at the front of the group surveying the scene as we one-by-one gathered at the ledge before making the final 30-minute hike up the edge of the gorge to base camp. As I approached the clearing, I peered across the gorge and could see several small landslides tumbling down the steep terrain just across from us. Hmmmm. Suddenly, a usually extremely calm and collected Deek turns around and yells over the increasing rumbling and pouring ran, “Go back, go back! Go, go!” gesturing frantically with his arms and making for the trail we had just climbed up. I think the unnerving rumbling of the ground underfoot was enough to know something was not right, but especially considering Deek's usually collected manner and the new tone of urgency in his voice, none of us asked questions before turning on our heels and booking it straight down the mountain, 35 lb. backpacks and all, running on pure adrenaline.

Suddenly it didn't matter that we were exhausted and soaked to the skin. Rain was beating down harder than ever and the small trickle of water we had contended with on the way up just five minutes earlier was now a raging river that we had to basically wade through on our way down. It was a miracle there were no injuries.

We continued to hear the menacing rumbling for a good half hour as we distanced ourselves from whatever it was were were running from. We finally stopped and found out that there had been a live lahar approaching fast just around the bend in the gorge, apparently the first time in 10 years of doing these treks that a group has come upon one. Deek had seen it coming around the corner, a dark, angry cloud of mud, rocks, and water sweeping through the gorge. One of the other guides Landon had stayed behind for a few minutes out of a morbid curiosity and reported back seeing landslides from across the gorge and watched as a bizarre mixture of mud, water, ash, steam and rocks filled the 50 foot gorge in a matter of minutes, splashing up over the sides where we had just been. He said the power was unbelievable and that the ground underneath him was shaking so hard he doubted the ledge we had just been standing on moments before was still standing.

The even more frightening thing was that we were an hour behind schedule given a glitch when we stopped for lunch. We should have been at base camp by that time, with an almost non-existent escape route. Still kinda gives me the heebie-jeebies to think about.

The rest of the story is not quite as exciting, we finally reached a good distance, night was falling, and we somehow found a decent place to set up camp in the middle of a mountain covered with thick jungle where there really shouldn't be much clear, flat ground. But there it was, and there we stayed for the night. No volcanic fireworks show from this camp, but I think we'd just had plenty of excitement to make up for it and didn't mind a bit.

I like to think a little life-threatening experience every once in awhile builds character. At least that's my best attempt to frame this into a "teachable moment" for the kids. Right.

Some less-eventful parts of the trek...

And on a completely different note, photos from Semana Santa...

Liquid Hot Magma and Mayan Shaman

2007-04-07T19:15:00.000-05:00

We attempted to summit Volcan Pacaya last week, but the volcano had other plans. The usually mildly active volcano has been making up for lost time over the past few months and we had a pretty gnarly up-close-and-personal encounter with the angry beast.

This being Guatemala, when you hear about an erupting volcano, you go towards it instead of away from it, and no one will try to stop you. The landscape surrounding the cone of the volcano, which you can usually climb to the top of and look over into the crater, was completely changed from when I was last here two years ago. We got as close as we could to the top, but encountered a few live rivers of lava meandering down the cone that put a stop to our progress. I got about 10 meters from one of the rivers before having to turn back for fear that the soles of my shoes would melt right off my feet. Check out the video, kind of trippy. (Kids, do not try this at home...oh go ahead, just make sure your parents aren't looking.)

A sadistic highlight would have to be when Johnny was hot-shoting it and getting a little too close to the approaching river of lava, not noticing the glowing lava just underneath some of the recently cooled stuff, tripped, and literally burned his foot on molten hot lava. Hurt like hell, but for crying out loud, how many people can claim they burned themselves on liquid hot magma? Johnny agrees, it was well worth the pain for story rights.

We passed through my old home turf of Antigua for a few days last week, which is always fun. Semana Santa (Holy Week/Easter) is upon us and we were lucky to be in one of the world's biggest hot spots for part of the holiday.

You can find these alfombras (carpets) all over the streets of Antigua during Semana Santa. They're hand-made of all-natural materials, are veritable works of art, and only exist for a few hours before being trampled by the Semana Santa processions as they go by.

My Mayan scholar friend Ed arranged for us to have a private ceremony with a Mayan shaman while we were there. We burned incense and candles and sent prayers to Maximon, a Mayan saint who is memorialized as a wooden box draped in a robe and wearing a Stetson hat. He particularly enjoys his rum and cigarettes, you therefore pay homage to him by gifting aforementioned products...a highly suspect practice designed to feed someone else's bad habits, you might be thinking? Hey, you gotta have an open mind... :)

One of the highlights of being back in Antigua was getting to visit my friends, The Dubons. Some of you may remember hearing about this extraordinary family from when I worked as a computer teacher in Antigua in 2003 and got to work with their kids and became close with the whole family. They're part of an experimental project by an NGO, a very at-risk family that was pulled out of one of the poorest areas in Guatemala City called the dump (literally a dump where people live and make their livelihood off of forging through the trash for items of value). They are getting a leg up to attempt to start a new life, they live in a decent place, the kids are getting a good education, the single mother of five, Miriam, now has a sustainable career as a nurse. All of the kids now speak pretty good English and have a chance at sustaining a decent quality of life on their own in the future. Yonatan (my favorite :), who I met when he was just a boy of 13 is now a man of 17, is as tall as me, and has a deep voice and a girlfriend, so strange for me. He's working as a waiter at one of the best hotels in Guatemala City, which is a big deal. He actually waited on the King and Queen of Spain who were in town last week, so he's officially met more famous people than I have.

Erik's abrazo de oso (bear hug)

We're now in Xela doing another couple of weeks of Spanish school. The whole town has virtually shut down for Semana Santa and the streets are alive with Catholic tradition...incense, bobbling Jesus statues on procession floats followed by somber band music that sometimes makes me want to slit my wrists. Look for pix next time.

Jessica put my hair in pigtails yesterday. Perhaps "nubs" would be a more accurate term. It's my latest attempt to stave off the mullet that is quickly becoming my hairdo. I did just get mistaken for being one of the high school students by someone, that was great fun.

Armen, Johnny, Jessica, and Amanda's future album cover

Mayan Warriors, Beach Bums, and Outhouses

2007-03-23T09:50:00.000-05:00

Another update from the wilds of Guatemala...Last weekend we hit up the majestic Mayan ruins of Tikal. We watched Mel Gibson's Apocalypto the night before just for kicks, hoping to get some good historical context. All we got were a lot of severed heads plummeting down the pyramids. We all rallied for the Tikal sunrise tour, which required waking at 2:30am, but was well worth it to experience the sounds of the jungle as it was waking up. You’ve got to check out the sounds of Tikal in the morning, the howler monkies are having a ball getting out of bed.

We've left San Andres after two weeks of Spanish school (and another vain attempt to master the subjunctive) and a great experience with the community. I was sad to leave my host family, their six rabbits who roamed the house at will, and especially my mama Isabelle who took to calling me “Susita”. The simple life agrees with me, and this was the perfect place to just sink into it, as life here was pretty basic, day-to-day, and uncomplicated. Nobody here had very much and there was certainly a collective struggle to make ends meet, yet somehow that didn't correlate with the quality of life (at least as I would define it). A nice reminder for me that happiness has very little to do with "stuff".

Doña Isabelle and the conejitos

Check out the great views...

Fellow traveler and student Gerry pulled out the poi at our farewell bonfire.

Determined to be beach bums for a spell, we hit Livingston for the weekend, Guatemala’s tiny sliver of Caribbean beachfront. We settled into my friend Rusty's new hostel, a good friend I met years ago in Argentina. Livingston is home to the Garifuna, a completely distinct and fascinating Central American subculture with their own language, customs, etc. They’re descendants of a community of shipwrecked slaves and there’s been very little mixing with the natives. Hence, they’ve preserved their distinctly West African features as well as a lot of the customs/dance/music and I swear I could have been in West Africa at times.

We adopted into our group a couple of fellow travelers, Kieran and Mike, and had a pretty near perfect day at the beach playing volleyball and being lazy, a personal favorite past-time. Also went on a river walk where the original Tarzan movie was filmed.

The bustling streets of downtown Poptun

The past four days we’ve been kicking it in the small rural town of Poptun living with families and volunteering at the local school. Living with a family in this sort of community means all bets are off when it comes to amenities and privacy. My house consisted of a kitchen area, outdoor shower and outhouse (not for the faint of heart...or stomach), and a large living area divided in half by a makeshift wall. My room was a curtained-off corner of the main living area, Nate slept on the hammock in the living area, and the parents and four kids cozied up on the three beds in the walled-off area. How’s that for a reality check when I used to complain about having to share a bedroom with my sister? But my family was so unbelievably amazing and welcoming, it was hard to mind the close quarters.

Our Poptun family

And the food. Oh, the food. The families we lived with took turns hosting us for all our meals for a day and pulled out all the stops. Seriously some of the best Guatemalan food I have ever tasted, they treated us like kings. As you can see from the photo, we’re too busy stuffing our faces to smile for the camera.

Johnny teaching English

We were there volunteering at the local elementary school, which was a community-based initiative started and run and largely financed by the community, as there are not sufficient public schools in the area. Organization for volunteering is not usually stellar for these sorts of things and we’ve found you usually have to make it up as you go along. Our students were amazing, jumping right in with English lessons, some Red Light, Green Light action, and in the absence of a proper playground, Armen served as a human jungle-gym
for most of recess.

Armen the human jungle-gym

Jessica

2007-03-15T18:13:00.000-05:00

Yes, there’s been a huge gap in the blog, I just can’t seem to find much unique and interesting to write about from the ‘burbs of Washington DC. Nevertheless, it was a great two months of seeing my wonderful family and friends, and the good folks at Weichert Realtors even give me my desk back for a spell so that I could do my damage at attempting to eek my way over the poverty line and into a respectable tax bracket.

But I made another quick escape and here I am again in Guatemala with a new crop of students for three months traipsing through Guatemala, Costa Rica, and Honduras with LEAPNow. I got my incredible co-leader Nate back and instead of the traveling caravan of 14 like last time, this time we are an intimate family of 6, which creates a very different dynamic…so far a great one. I must confess that at times it feels strange and as though I’m being unfaithful to my first stellar crew of students from last semester, but they have since gone on to other things like working with whales in the Canary Islands, working as a dive master in Australia, a few are traveling together in South America, and several are hitting the books at university. I do miss them and remember them often, but my four new students are rock stars in their own right. Armen, standup comedian from LA; snowboard instructor Amanda from Minnesota; Johnny from LA, future Harvard grad whose parents created the Fresh Prince of Bel-air; and artist Jessica from Colorado who used to have her own talk show on NPR. I think it’s safe to say that my students are way smarter and way cooler than I ever was at 18…or perhaps ever will be.

We’ve just wrapped up a four-day orientation at Finca Ixobel in the jungle Peten region of Guatemala. The landscape here is exactly as you would imagine out of tropical storybook fantasies…lush green splendor everywhere. In between orientation sessions about healthy group dynamics and how to avoid spending the majority of the trip on the toilet, we went caving/swimming through an underground river cave (not a life jacket or hard hat to be found as we traversed some pretty dangerous ground…safety precautions don’t so much exist here), went into town and saw a funky local parade and bought ingredients from the market to whip up our own guacamole, and had a movie night watching Borat, a very culturally relevant and enriching film.

Now we’re in the middle of two weeks of Spanish school in a small, tranquilo village on the banks of Lago Peten. I live in what can accurately be described as a large shack with running water…sometimes. My family has a dog named “Espot” (Spanish for “Spot”) and there are the cutest little rabbits that live on the back patio. I inquired in hushed tones (so that the rabbits wouldn’t hear) if the rabbits were pets or for eating, as the later is usually the case with other housebound wildlife like chickens and pigs. Happily, I will not be enjoying rabbit stew for dinner anytime soon. The same cannot be said for the pig with whom Amanda has been sharing a courtyard at her homestay. She woke up this morning to find it hung neatly (as neat as a carcass can be) on hooks around the house in preparation to go to market, having somehow blissfully slept through the massacre that had just ensued outside her bedroom door. She promptly informed her homestay family that she was a vegetarian (not true).

Nate chilaxing on the boat to San Andres

Armen doing a swan dive...

So apparently George W. and Lady Laura were in Guatemala a few days ago. Had no idea until my homestay family told me, to give you an idea of how isolated I am from current events. We watched the highlights on TV that night, the triumphant entry, Bush kissing Mayan babies, carrying boxes of produce in a factory, the Bushes and the Guatemalan President and his wife walking together in awkward silence as neither speaks the others’ language. The people here like to joke that after his visit, all of Guatemala’s problems will be solved.

We just went to a Guatemalan zoo where a lizard fell on me from a tree and attempted to dive down the front of my shirt and a baby leopard projectile peed on me from inside his cage. Bad karma?

On a happier note, I’ve got a decent base tan going on and I couldn’t tell you what day it is to save my life.

2006-12-08T11:45:00.000-06:00

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

2006-12-08T10:31:00.000-06:00

And then there were two...

2006-12-07T16:08:00.000-06:00

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

2006-12-06T15:48:00.000-06:00

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

2006-11-15T14:04:00.000-06:00

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

2006-11-06T15:44:00.001-06:00

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

2006-10-31T14:50:00.000-06:00

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

A Snapshot of a Guatemalan Bus Ride

2006-10-23T14:11:00.000-05:00

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...

2006-09-29T16:26:00.000-05:00

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

Bugs

2005-08-05T14:26:00.002-05:00

August 5, 2005

hello out there! i think my last sign of life for many of you was around christmas-time after my travel adventures in cuba and europe. since then, i have been busy making the most of my alter-ego, corporate susie, to replenish funds and weigh my long-term plans, as one must do from time to time. my options remained limitless...get a job and settle back into dc, move to austin or portland where the vibe is more my speed, travel to mexico and look for a job with an ngo, keep riding the momentum of this travel wave and head on to southeast asia? if you haven’t noticed, i’ve been skillfully avoiding staying put and all the trappings that come with it and more than ever am aware of the diversity of choices available to me having no binding financial ties or commitments at the moment. and i am aware of the strange dichotomy and even hypocrisy that lurks behind it all, too...eschewing the “american dream” (owning a home and an SUV in exchange for a job that owns me, etc.) while taking advantage of the enormous financial benefits of its economy (and my dad’s very flexible terms of employment) to do what i have done over the past few years. the thought crosses my mind to feel guilty. but then five seconds later i’m completely over it :).

there is something appealing about the rawness and simplicity of life on the road that i can’t seem to shake and i couldn’t resist using the return ticket to guatemala that i accidentally had dangling in front of me since a round-trip ticket was less expensive than a one-way when I came home last year (supposedly for good). so after another several months of working, i headed off again at the end of may with plans to visit friends in antigua and then head north and travel the length of mexico and maybe find a job. i once again found myself in the all too familiar position of having backpack and guitar in hand and several months of freedom and the open road lying before me. i’m beginning to think my family is getting tired of this routine, as they have taken to just kicking me out of the moving vehicle onto the airport curb when they drop me off these days. it’s been interesting to feel this metamorphosis happen in me, where i actually somehow feel more at home living out of a backpack. i can’t decide if i quite like being so comfortable with impermanency, but i’ve loved the lessons i’ve learned in adaptation and bare necessity.

back in antigua, guatemala for a couple of weeks...this place seems to have crept into my blood and i keep finding my way back. highlights include...seeing several dear friends, making some new ones, motor biking up a live volcano and not being able to go quite all the way up to the crater like you usually can because of the molten lava spewing out of it, playing a few gigs at an old favorite spot of mine, waking up to a cockroach almost the size of my hand crawling across my bare back (unfortunately for him, i was much bigger and have cat-like reflexes. a fierce battled ensued, i won.), and experiencing guatemalan dentistry up close and personal when i got two cavities filled. you see, given my below the poverty-line economic status for the past several years i have had to resort to guatemalan-style healthcare. if anyone feels compelled to set up a susie healthcare fund, feel free. but somehow i don’t think you guys are feeling too sorry for me. and besides, guatemalan dentistry is not so bad as you might think.

Old roommates (and boss) Monique and Adriana (my girl!) were visiting at the same time, I hadn't seen them in 1 1/2 years.

my wonderfully adventurous girlfriends from home, anna and sara (and later anna's hubby tom) met up with me for the next three weeks of my trip. we rented a car and drove up north to the jungle area of guatemala and caught a bus across belize to the mayan riviera of mexico, an area most popularized by this armpit of mega-hotels, packaged vacations, and burnt-to-a-crisp more-than-slightly-overweight americans known as cancun. we skipped out on cancun and hit up tulum instead, which has remained relatively unscathed but the development frenzy just to its north. a hedonist’s paradise, words cannot describe…but turquoise waters, sparsely populated white sand beaches, palm-trees rustling in a cool ocean breeze, and hammocks and cheap, rustic cabanas right on the beach might be a good start.

one other "small" lingering detail...you all know all about how i’ve been bitten by the travel bug. well, when i was last home this spring, i got bitten by another bug, one with a very, very strong bite…that's right, the love bug. and this one may be a permanent infection. if there was anything that would compel me to choose it over the adventure of the open road right now, it must be pretty special. so i ended up cutting my trip several months short to come back to dc to see gboyega before he left for several months in nigeria to see family and friends he hasn’t seen for years. several months ago, africa wasn’t even on my travel radar. yet somehow instead of eating enchiladas and listening to mariachi music in Mexico right now, i’m in germany (visiting my brother and his family) en route to nigeria tomorrow. funny how things can change in the blink of an eye. the journey is just beginning...

hope all is well with you and yours.

Who's the random hippie?

Viva Cuba!

2004-12-28T14:51:00.000-06:00

hello everyone!! hope this finds all of you well and enjoying the holidays. it's been awhile and i'm seizing the holidays as a good excuse to get in touch with an update, another installment from the travelogues of susie g.

it's been over two years and i'm still battling a very serious illness. the travel bug. after a four month hiatus in d.c. to work and replenish my travel funds and see friends and family, i found my way to cuba earlier this month...that little landmass off the coast of florida that has been the subject of so much controversy. revolutions, communism, fidel castro, trade embargos, cuban missle crisis, bay of pigs invasion, guantanemo bay, elian gonzales...all random historical landmarks floating around in my head with no real context to piece them together. what's the big deal with this tiny little island anyway? so i went to see what the fuss was all about, not quite knowing what i would find or how a single female traveler would fare.

well, i'm here to tell the tale and in a nutshell, cuba is one of the most fascinating, confusing, and safe places i've ever been to. while i can't even begin to uncover the many, many layers that make cuba cuba after a ten day visit, i tried my best to get a (perhaps superficial) feel for the place...a very poor country in a difficult political situation, with a very rich culture, fascinating history, gorgeous beaches, beautiful and educated people, and incredible music...

stepping into cuba is like stepping into a 50-year time warp...horse-drawn carriages are still a common mode of public transportation and many of the cars (the very few that exist) are meticulously restored dodges and buicks from the 50s. there's not a
golden arches or walmart to be found, and instead of coca-cola ads plastered everywhere like every other latin american country i've been
to, the 45-year old revolution, fidel castro, and che guevara are celebrated from every possible billboard and building wall. internet and cellphones are hard to come by, as is anything else remotely "modern". the average monthly salary is about what you spent on dinner last night: $13.

on the other hand, they are light-years ahead in some respects. cuba boasts some of the most impressive literacy rates, education, and health care systems, accessible to everyone free of cost. the arts are venerated and alive. it's an incredibly diverse society with a healthy mix of skin colors and heritages (and somehow they all happened to get the goodlooking gene!)...european, hispanic, african...yet there appears to be absolutely no racial divide...it was the most racially integrated place i've ever seen.

Cuban school children

and the bewildering things continue...

oppression, fear, and secret police are a daily reality, yet the streets are exploding with music and dance and laughter.

the people are dirt poor, yet educated and healthy. it is one of the
safest places i've ever been to and there was hardly a single beggar
to be seen on the streets. it is perhaps safer to walk around havana
at night than my hometown of washington d.c.

Old-school fire trucks still in good working order

you could cut cuban/u.s. tensions with a knife, yet every cuban i
met was nothing but kind and generous to this americana (at least
after the disagreeable experience at customs, where i was randomly
plucked out of line and detained, questioned, and searched for almost
an hour...do i fit the counter-revolutionary profile or something?
what gives?) they love old american cars and baseball almost as much as we do and the u.s.
dollar is unofficially their primary currency.

opinions about fidel run the gamut...some think he's a legitimate
hero, mounting a valiant struggle against "the empire" (aka the united
states), while one cuban i met likened what he's done to cuba to
owell's "1984" totalitarian state. take your pick.

and then there are the little things, like why is the 24-hour burger
joint closed at 7pm on a tuesday night?

however you cut it, cuba is a beautiful country with many
wonderful and sad layers... a proud, vibrant, educated people in a
very complicated and frustrating situation that i can't even begin to
understand after just ten days. you could contemplate forever what
impact the interplay of communism, capitalism, revolutionary ideals
gone bad, and the u.s. trade embargo have on the whole situation,
what's going to happen when fidel dies, etc...but how about i leave
all that to the politicians and the historians.

The Che Guevara monument in Santa Clara

as luck would have it, it worked out to meet up with two of my good girlfriends who i taught with in antigua, tia and jackie. they were traveling with a band of other girlfriends and welcomed me right into their crew for a few days in varadero and havana, it was an absolute blast.

Good times with the girls in Varadero

At La Bodeguita del Medio, Hemingway's old haunt

Dinner with my friend Jonathan's parents. He's a friend from Cuba who defected and now lives in Antigua and hasn't seen his family in over 5 years. I smuggled some gifts and money over to them from him. Shhhhh, don't tell Bush, he might not like that...

Havana Streets

and now i somehow find myself in another very different world, in germany with my family visiting my brother and his family for the
holidays. we've been busy touring a few medieval german towns and
their famous christmas markets...huge outdoor festivals where people gorge themselves on bratwurst and fight off the cold with a few too many glasses of hot spiced red wine. we ventured to the austrian alps over christmas and i tried on my snowboard for the first time in a few years, something for which my body still hates me. and we were incredibly relieved to hear from my sister jen and her boyfriend, who are in thailand for the holidays and had a near miss with the tragic
tsunami over that way. so in the end, it was a very merry christmas
for the gaskins.

i'll return to the states in february to do some more time
as "corporate susie" (as some friends refer to my alter-persona back
in the states that funds my wanderlust). hope to see some of you then,
or before then for a few of you in europe.

always love to hear news from you guys...hope this finds each of you
well and enjoying a wonderful holiday!

more photos: http://www.ofoto.com/I.jsp?c=62x8zgbr.5j6jrkqb&x=1&y=-7fzzzk

Argentina and Beyond...

2004-04-30T15:38:00.000-05:00

hello everyone! i figured after a few months, it was high time for an update. i've almost been avoiding it because there's almost TOO
much to tell! my mind and my eyes have soaked up so many amazing things and amazing people, almost to the point of saturation, i can hardly hope to convey it all in a simple email. but i shall try...

before skipping ahead to my coffee trials in chile, i left you in costa rica, where i spent a good bit of time on the beach, as every
good tourist should do, even tried out surfing. my last few days i made a last-minute decision and hopped on a bus to nicaragua where the prices were cut in half and i was reminded that, ah yes, i am in the middle of the developing world. poverty is visible everywhere and i'm riding on charming, rikity old chicken buses again (aka old american school buses that my parents probably rode to school), and the catcalls become familiar again (they're actually making rapid progress on this particular front...instead of actually whistling they now have mechanized whistling sounds installed in their vehicles at the push of a button). it's an interesting contrast crossing from the relatively developed world of costa rica into nicaragua.

i spent a few days in granada, a colonial town that looks more like new orleans than central america, and isla ometepe, a very poor, beautiful, virtually untouched island in the middle of lake nicaragua where the primary mode of transportation is still the horse, and the people are absolutely beautiful and open in spite of their incredibly impoverished situation. their isolation on an island has rendered them relatively untouched by the violence in nicaragua, especially during the 80's, and made for an interesting contrast from mainland nicaragua.

crossing from central america into buenos aires was even more of a
stark contrast. i might as well have arrived in europe--paris, madrid, rome, take your pick--the thought actually occured to me...did i get on the right plane? cafès everywhere, old european architecture. even the coffee spanked of europe, a proper expresso served up in those cute tiny little cups on a saucer, a little layer of foam at the top, served with a cookie on the side, cloth napkins, tablecloths, waiters in smart uniforms. you can sit in a cafè for hours sipping on a $1 cup of aforementioned coffee and not get dirty looks from the waitress trying to turn your table over. you can get a steak as big as your arm for the price of a mcdonald's extra value meal and the wine is incredible and costs the same (sometimes less) as water. i tried out my two left feet at tango dancing and fell in love with it. it's an intoxicating dance, still a true art form here.

i went to an argentinian soccer (futbol)
game...they take their soccer so seriously there that my seat in the
fan section was borderline dangerous. my friend vivi and i were a rare sight as women braving this notorious section. she was at a game last year where they had to call in the riot police and they fired smoke bombs into the rambunctious crowd to clear everyone out. this game was a bit more tame, although the sight of the fans above us relieving themselves onto the opposing team's fans below was a first for me. gracias a dios, i was sheltered by the overhang. (although at one point a highly suspect substance dripped on my head from above. don't want to think about it, don't want to think about it.) apparently there was a sighting of diego maradona on the field at one point, a worldwide soccer legend. not so exciting for me since i wouldn't have known who he was if he came up and starting chatting with me on the street, but apparently it was a big deal. bodily fluids and rioting aside, it was a blast.

and the people...this is always the thing that ultimately makes or
breaks a place, isn't it? travelers and argentinians alike, they were amazing. from the argentinian husband and wife i met at a tango show who invited me and a friend over for dinner to meet their kids who are my age and musicians as well, to the great travelers i met in my hostel, to the kind waiter in the cafe on the corner, my experience was unbelieveably positive. i'd actually heard rumors about the "snobbishness" of argentinians, and reports of it being a dangerous country given the financial crisis it was hit with three years ago and are still pulling out of, but in my experience nothing could be further from the truth.

after almost three weeks, i finally pryed myself away from buenos
aires for mendoza, argentina's wine country, where i tried out
paragliding for the first time and spent an amazing few days in a cabin in the mountains with some friends. then a brief stint in chile, then back to the south of argentina. i'm in bolivia now after wrestling with the flu for the past couple weeks (not fun), and am headed for peru soon for a few weeks. i know your eyes must be glazing over right about now so i'll save all that for later, i'm not going to try to tackle too much in one email, even though i could easily go on and on.

if you're interested in checking out more photos. http://www.ofoto.com/I.jsp?c=62x8zgbr.24t8ne8f&x=1&y=-z1tdn6

valparaiso, chile

Email to the fam...

2004-03-22T20:24:00.000-06:00

Email to the fam...

hey fam! i've promised mom and dad that i would keep in touch with
them every few days as i'm all alone out here in this big bad world,
so i thought i'd add you guys so i can keep you updated at the same
time.

so firstly and most importantly, i'm still alive, proven by the fact
that you're receiving this email. the past four days i spent in a
little surf town called mal pais. i lucked out and stumbled upon this
great little house renting out rooms. most everybody there were
surfers staying for a month or two and everyone kind of operated like
a family, hanging out together, making meals together, etc, and i was
welcomed right in. i had to sleep in a hammock for the first couple
days until a bed opened up, which was kind of fun and rustic...but
also pretty darn uncomfortable, i'm not gonna lie. i tried out surfing
for a couple days which was super-fun and i actually got up a few
times. and...mom and dad, are you sitting down for this... i got my
schnozz pierced last night...ouch! but it was worth the pain, i love
it! i figured, i had to wait until i was 12 to get my ears pierced, at
24 i should be allowed another piercing with your blessing, right?
so, i think i can say i've officially lived the live of a surfer for a
few days...did nothing but surf, lay in a hammock, eat, read, and
pierce holes in my body. super-fun but four days was enough.
don't know how these guys do it everyday for months!

i'm in a town called liberia en route to granada, nicaragua, a cool
little colonial town near the border. i made a really last-minute
decision literally as i was stepping on the bus to make the trek up
to nicaragua. wasn't part of the original plan, but i've been hearing
good things, hope it's worth it. meeting up with some friends in san
jose for her birthday on friday, then i fly down to buenos aires.

more later, internet cafe's closing, love you guys!

-susie

Pura Vida!

2004-03-12T11:39:00.000-06:00

greetings from costa rica! i've been long out of touch with many of
you and thought it was high time to let you guys know what i've been
up to and where in the world i am, albeit in a dreadfully impersonal
mass email.

i'm currently in a town at the base of arenal volcano, one of the
world's most active and spectacular. it spews lava almost continually,
making for quite a fireworks show at night. that's the fun part of the
story. the not-so-fun part is that it's been cloudy and raining
nonstop ever since i arrived yesterday. but it's been great imagining
what's going on in the distance behind the dreary wall of gray and
wet. right. so today, instead of trekking through the rainforest
towards said volcano, i have time to touch base with all of you.

i've been back in antigua for the past two months, brushing up on my
spanish, planning my backpacking trip, and wrapping things up and
saying goodbye to the wonderful little town that was my home for the
past year. now i'm officially "on the road" for the next four months.
first stop...costa rica, the "gem" of central america (or something
like that), where toilet paper and soap in the bathroom are givens
instead of a pleasant surprise. it's readily apparent that costa rica
is quite a bit ahead of its neighbors as far as education (96% literacy
rate), conservation, and development, somehow managing to escape
the war-torn history this region is infamous for.

my first stop in cr...i hopped of the plane and boarded a bus straight for
sarapiqui to meet up with one of my best girls from university,
anna. we were incredibly lucky to have our inter-continental paths cross
as she and her mom and sister are living it up a this posh yoga retreat
this week. thusly, i got to live it up non-backpacker style with them for
a couple days, complete with sweet digs and zip-lining through the
rainforest.

aside from a bit too much rain and 80s music, costa rica agrees with
me quite well. i'll be here two more weeks and then fly down to south
america for three months to explore argentina, chile, bolivia, and
peru. after much debate, i decided to travel with my guitar, so i'll maybe
run into some opportunities to make a few bucks on the road, if not at
least a few free drinks and dinners.

i'll keep in touch with my adventures, wish me luck. hope you all are
doing well and i'd love to here from you all whenever...sometimes
emails make good company on the road.

pura vida!

susie