osterbrink.org

what a shitty day…

// February 23rd, 2005 // 4 Comments » // Guatemala

well this sucked… i somehow got on the wrong bus this morning… i was supposed to go to costa rica but ended up in nicaraugua ( i really should look that word up) so here i sit in the shitty capital of Nicaraugua… what hell hole, and dangerous city too… I showed my ticket to three different people this morning and they all let me go… it’s my fault as well, but i did all i could… I knew the bus was heading here, i just thought it kept going… it’s not really out of the way, it is basically just me spending an extra night here instead of in costa rica… it’s cheaper here so it’s not all that bad… it would have been nice to have a full day of rest before my mom comes… oh well… i was quite upset and did the best to yell at the bus company in spanish… tried to get a free ticket to costa rica and tried to get my money back as well… nothing… i stormed out of the office and next door for my ticket… only $10 so it’s not that big of a deal… but i paid $70 to get from guatemala to here… had i not fucked up that $70 would have gotten me to costa rica… otherwise had i known i was coming here it would have been $55… oh well… no big deal… i would have had to get on the bus at 3 am this morning instead of 5 am… and would have not gotten to costa rica until 11pm… thats a long fucking bus ride… i almost prefer it this way, had the money not been so big of difference… oh well, i’ll live. costa rica tomorrow… i can’t wait… i miss it… i haven’t been to the ocean for soooo long!

A photo i took today.

// February 21st, 2005 // 3 Comments » // Guatemala

Today i went to an orchid garden… to my delight i realized that the plate that attaches my camera to my tripod vanished yesterday as well… along with the lens cover for another of my lens… i thought i had gone a while without losing anything… now i lost a bunch of camera stuff… still nothing too major, but it made makes my tripod useless until i can find some sort of replacement for it… which makes taking pictures in dark areas, like say, an orchid garden, pretty damn tough. I tried anyways.. I took a bunch of photos, though they can only be open in photoshop so i can´t look at them here. I have a real bad feeling i´m going to get back home and realize that all my photos are out of focus or something else is wrong with them… it´s a very realistic chance… i didn´t get to use the camera too much before i left and it´s way more involved than my last one… we´ll see.

Most of the orchids were´nt in bloom though i still managed to get about 140-200 photos roughly… hopefully if one or two turn out good, it will be worth the $3 i paid to get there, in and back… I had to hitch hike back…

i couldn´t get the photo to upload in time, you´ll just have to wait… it´s not that great anyways

today

// February 20th, 2005 // No Comments » // Guatemala

Well here is where i went today… it was one of the most beautiful places i have ever been! Kind of like Triangle Lake but much bigger and different.

Click the image for a full size one… it´s the smalles possible my camera can take so the quality is not all there… but it was a lot smaller to upload.

The place is called Semuc Champey. It was kind of a bitch to get to, though not really… kind of off the gringo trail which is nice. I was worried i had cut myself short on time by getting my bus ticket back to Costa Rica for a day early, but it all worked out… I wanted to make sure i had enough time to get back down to costa in case the bus breaks down or something… So i got to Coban yesterday, and this morning i caught a little taxi to Lanquin… i didn´t think i´d get out of there today yet, but i was able to catch a micro bus to Semuc… the guy tried to charge me 50Quetzals ($6) but i yelled at him and got it to $2 which is what it was supposed to be…

when i got to Semuc, i paid and went in… there was a trail that was under construction and the sign said enter at my own risk… Which made me laugh, because i´m sure that if that sign wasn´t there and i got hurt, i´m sure they would be at fault… right… this whole trip is ¨at your own risk¨ anyway.. it was a bitch to climb… i definately pushed it in flip flops… but the view from the top was well worth it… the trail took about 30 mins or so… almost like climbing a ladder… i was tired… but the photo is from the top of the trail… If you look at the large version, you can see people at the bottom to get a scale. this is from a big river… and actually, most of the river dips down underground just before these pools… it was quite amazing.

The funny thing about it is i had no idea really what i was going to see… i knew it was pools, but i kind of thought there was a city i was heading too… it was a very nice surprise… only like 10-15 people there give or take…

I had also figured i would have to stay in a nearby hotel but i was able to catch a bus all the way back to coban… it was miserable… the last two hours was in a microbus… basically a bit longer than a minivan… built for maybe 12 adults tops… well we had 22 adults, about 4kids, a couple screaming babies and a guy or two on the roof… it was shitty. they kept adding more people to… i though the van would explode… oh well, it was better than getting up at 4-5 am tomorrow to try to make all my connections, now i just have a 4-5 hour ride down to guatemala city.. wait, i take that all back… i get to hang out here tomorrow i think! a day of rest. That´s why i hurried back. There is an orchid garden here with some rare orchids… so i´m going to take a bunch of photos and perhaps leave in the after noon for guatamala city or catch an early bus tomorrow…

I have no idea when i´ll be online next, i guess not for two or three days. thank god.

oh joy…

// February 19th, 2005 // No Comments » // Guatemala

Ok, so me and paul split off. It´s kinda nice to have quiet for a bit. I left Antigua yesterday at like 11am or so. i got a bus to Biotopia (sp¿) del Quetzal… which is a reserve up in a cloud forrest… just a bit south of Coban. I can´t believe how beautiful this part of the country is… the clouds litterally sit about 100 feet over head, if you´re not actually in them. all the surrounding hills are cloud shrouded… lot´s of rolling hills mountains… its just great. Unfortunately though, i see most of the country by bus so i can´t take many pictures… it´s ok, that´s probably why god (casey) gave us brains…

So i took the bus which was about a 4 hour ride… i got off at what was supposed to be a cheap hotel… $3/4 a night but when i went to talk to the lady there, she told me the place was no longer a hotel… which was just great… this is no city just a highway going through the mountains… so i stumbled through some spanish with her and found out the next closest hotel was 15 min walk back UPHILL where i just came from… joy.

I said bye and started walking… it was starting to get dark, no time to waste… on the way, i met a gringo (turns out to be canadian though) and he told me there was a hotel just 3 mins up the road … not sure why the other lady didn´t tell me that… so i went to the restaurant this guy told me about and luckily i got there in time… they were closing up and leaving…

They took my back to the room… it was actually very nice. 3 beds, 2 singles and a double bed… even nice pillows. .. private bathroom, hot water (via a Costa Rica Suicide shower head)… not bad for $4.50. it´s amazing the quality range in hotels down here… they all run between $2-10 but some rooms are very very nice, and others are complete shit. anyways… as i walked into the ¨hotel area¨ there were these two huge german shepards barking up a storm and not being very nice… they stayed on a path and didnt come over to the actual hotel area though there was nothing preventing them from doing so… more on them later.

So i got comfortable… it got dark and started rainging… i retired to my room to finish reading Battle Field Earth… it´s a huge book (1200 pages) and i almost hvae it finished… well right around the time i get comfortable the dogs start barking… i hear someone start yelling, though nothing i can understand… it scared me a bit… it lasted probably 3 mins or so… there was no way i was going to go investigate and get my self bit to hell by those dogs… eventually it stopped anyways.

So today i got up and there was a man just outside my door, dead from dog bites…. just kidding. i got up and went to the reserve… i walked around for about 4 hours or so… it´s something else to walk through a jungle by yourself… would have been much nicer without the damn road so close… i didnt see much wildlife at all… birds, ants, the largest beetle i ever see´d… no monkeys, nothing remarkably cool… just a neat hike, a nice waterfall or two and thats about it… some time to think.

I did manage to lose a lens cover and a 55mm circular polarizer filter for my camera though… i back tracked about 20 mins and then decided to just say screw it, there was no way i´d find it on the jungle floor anyways… so that was that.

I left the park, packed my stuff and went to catch a bus… i had to just sit on the side of the road for about 30 mins… eventually one came along and i flagged it down… it was a damn nice one too, airconditioned and not packed… i did have to sit on a stool for the first 10 mins until someone exited the bus… it was about 1 hour drive… inanely beautiful country…

Anyways… i got to coban, and got off the bus too early… had to take a cab into the actual town part $1. got a hotel for $4 and came down to check my internet…. well i ran into the kid i saw on the side of the road yesterday… he wasn´t able to catch a bus that night so he was going to just stay at the hotel… well he walked in the wrong gate and the german shepards attacked him…he fought them off and didn´t actually get bit… but that´s who i heard yelling…. silly. he´s ok though not even a bite…

so thats my story… i´m heading out tomorrow to go to some caves (not sure if i´ll actually go to the caves or not… theres some really pretty natural pools and other stuff around it… i have to get back down to guatamala city in a few days so i have to be careful how far off the beaten track i get… the place i´m going to has no buses… only trucks that carry people there… it should be fun!

volcanos

// February 18th, 2005 // 1 Comment » // Guatemala

Well, casey you had told me to try to get a picture of a smoking volcano… and i think you´ll be quite pleased… we finally hiked that volcano… they of course made us pay 50% more because we missed the correct time to go… they will get you everyway they can down here… so we got up at 530 am and took a bus for about 1.5 hours over some shitty roads… the first part of the climb was real simple… laughably simple. we were with maybe 20 other people or so… we got to the part right before the summit and the top was all clouded in, we couldn´t even see the top… we were disappointed… but, we climbed anyways… the top part was real hard to climb… it was all tiny volcanic rock and sharp… it was like climbing a big sand dune which sucks as well… plus i had on sandals… well what one would get if shoes and sandals were to have offspring. i had to stop and empty them out every so many feet… also to catch my breath…

we finally made it to the top and i could hear this sound that i can only explain by comparing it to the wave machine at noah´s ark… it was going woooosh wooooosh wooooosh… and then i realized it was eruptions… i didn´t really realize that the volcano would be shooting lava up… it was pretty crazy… we walked around the bend and there was this one little part that was shooting chunks of red hot lava up about 10 feet in the air… we were about 30 feet away or so. the day before, they said it was going crazy and i think the rocks were landing where we were standing… you could also see flowing lava off to the side as well… to top it off, the wind picked up a bit and blew the clouds off… so we could see three more volcanos off in the distance… the lower parts of them engulfed in clouds… so pretty. all in all i took about 300 photos filling two 512mb cards and having to empty one once and then filling it again… hopefully 3 or 4 of the photos turn out…. they will be very nice if they do… so that was my day yesterday… today i´m heading to the capital city to get a bus ticket back to costa rica… and then heading up north for about 3 days then the bus down to costa rica… going to be a long one tooo!!!

hope all is well!

Flying solo

// February 16th, 2005 // No Comments » // Guatemala

So paul has decided to ditch me for a girl again. He is going to be going up to San Christobal (spelling?) in a couple days to visit his ex girlfriend. I will be back to traveling solo, hopefully i can meet someone cool again… He wants to meet back up but i don’t think that’s going to happen… He ditched me for someone earlier in the trip and I don’t want to deal with it anymore… we’ll see though, I am not totally against meeting up again, i’m just not going to put forth an effort…

Last night we went out to Mono Loco (crazy monkey) for nachos… some damn fine nacho’s i may add… they will be greating my stomache again in a few hours. we ended up getting pretty drunk… 4 big 40oz styles of beer and a few normal bottles… it was fun… i haven’t been drunk down here for a month or so… well we stayed out until midnight or so then came home and went to bed… we were supposed to get up at 5am or so to climb an active volcano…. the alarm went off but we were still drunk so we said screw it.. there were also people leaving at 1pm… we were going to go then but they wanted an extra $3 so we decided to just wait until tomorrow to go… so we have to get up early tomorrow… its an hour and a half in a bus, then a two hour climb… a little bit at the crater for pictures and what not and then back here to Antigua… it will be after 2pm when we get back so we’ll more than likely stay the night again….

then the day after tomorrow we head to guatamala city… I’ll get my bus ticket to return to costa rica on the 25th to meet my mom and paul will head off to find his ex… i will then head 4 hours north of guatamala city, hoping to get out of thre the same day… and head up to a botanical/waterfall garden… i’ll check that place out and then either crash there for the night or head up to Coban, Guatamala…. from there there are supposedly some very cool places to swim and more waterfalls and whatnot. Lonely planet calls it the most beautiful place in guatamala… so we’ll see.

then i’ll head back down for my bus to costa rica… it’s about 60 hours worth of bussing to get down… it’s going to suck, especially alone.

Depart Guatemala at 1p.m., arrive in El Salvador
at approximately 5:00 p.m. (stay in El Salvador overnight)

Depart El Salvador at 5:00 a.m., arrive in Nicaragua at approximately 5:00 p.m. (stay in Nicaragua overnight)

Depart Nicaragua at 5:45, 6:00 a.m. and 12:00 noon, arrive in Costa Rica at approximately 4, 5 and 9 p.m.

I will pick my mom up from the airport and show her around costa rica for 10 days.. then i will be back in costa rica traveling alone.. just like the trip started.

I may head up to Nicauraugua (i hate that damn word) … theres an island there in the middle of a lake that is just two huge volcano’s… it’s supposedly pretty cheap and it looks beautiful from the road we saw it from… we’ll see!

Leaving the lake.

// February 15th, 2005 // 2 Comments » // Guatemala

First news on my friend Johnn¨:

Hello Ahren-

i am sorry to tell you that jonney’s mother passed away yesterday. he is doing okay, but
needs our support.

Always,
Chris and Neil

well, unless we miss the bus again…. we will be leaving atitlan today… what a crazy beautiful place… If any of you get down to central america, do not miss this place… it´s jaw dropping. I spent most of the last two days just sitting down by the lake looking across at the three huge volcanos on the other side… Last night i sat for two or three hours taking long exposure pictures… i hope they turn out well… i had the volcano framed in the bottom and then took about an hours worth of exposure so the stars are spinning around it… it looks good on the camera but who knows how it really looks.

Today we´re heading back to antigua for a day or two and perhaps climb a big volcano there… there´s one thats still active so we may climb one next to it so we can look down into it… we´ll see, it seems that its pretty recommended to do it with a guide and thats all the info we can get, no idea what city we need to start from or anything like that… we´re going to look into prices of guides and decide from there.

So, thats about it… hope all is well…