Copan Ruinas

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

A Snapshot of a Guatemalan Bus Ride

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

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

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

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

In the Beginning...

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

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

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

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

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



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

With the folks from our Spanish school

LEAPNow posterchildren

Partying at the orphanage

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

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

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

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

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

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

Learning about the coffee-making process

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

At play in the waterfalls

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

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

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

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

To the beach in the back of a water truck

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


Hard at play. Todos Santos, Guatemala

Bugs

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!

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...

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...

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!

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