Back in the US!

Whoops, sorry for the delay here. For those of you wondering why it's been a while since my last post, that's 'cause I'm done with my trip! (well, done with round 1). I actually flew home a week ago, but hadn't blogged about it because it was a secret - my sister and I had arranged a mother's/father's day surprise for my parents which involved me coming home a week early to participate. (The event was a big success, especially because when I jumped out of a large shipping box my mom did not have a heart attack).

I'll now be back in the US for the summer, working in Washington DC, and planning the next part of my trip. Round II will involve hitting up Australia, New Zealand, and Southeast Asia. Any suggestions? Please send my way.

I can't wait for my trip, but I must say, it's great being back in the US. I've really enjoyed being back with family and friends (can't wait to see the rest of you when I get doen to DC), was very happy to be reunited with my iPhone, and I definitely will not be missing this sign:

caves and tubing and bridge jumping, oh my!

My latest wanderings through Guatemala took me to Lanquin, an area famous for its caves and waterfall. I arrived at my hostel after a 7 1/2 hour shuttle ride from Flores, the place where I'd been to see the ruins of Tikal. Luckily for me, I arrived just in time for a bat cave tour. The tour itself was pretty neat - lots of cool and interesting formations to check out. However, the highlight by far was when it started to get dark. We stood at the entrance of the cave as thousands upon thousands of bats flew out. Pretty amazing once you convinced yourself that the bats had no interest in hitting you and were quite adept at dodging you.

The next day I went on a full day caving / tubing / waterfall tour, something which fellow backpackers all through Guatemala had enthusiastically recommended. Our day started with a cave tour. However, this one was totally different from yesterdays - there were no bats in this one, and instead of it being lit up by electric lights, all the light was supplied by the candles we were given. I had never done a cave tour quite like this, so it was really fun. At points we climbed up ladders with our candles in hand, and at others it was so deep we had to swim! My sandals made it very difficult to swim, so I managed to stay afloat and propel myself just with my left hand, while keeping my candle aloft with my right. Very cool.

We got out of the cave just as it started to pour, but we refused to let this stop us, and went tubing in the rain! We then went to Semuc Champey, a famous series of pools and waterfalls. They were pretty and all, but by this point all the rain was getting to me, so I spent much of the time swimming back and forth to avoid getting too cold.

As we were heading home, we stopped at a bridge on the way, and they asked if anyone wanted to jump. Guess who did!?!

Definitely a great day - even though the weather didn't exactly cooperate, we still managed to have a blast! Pics below, enjoy:

Bats!!

They´re comin right for us!!

chilling in the rain post-tubing

swimming through the cave

the procession of candles

bombs away!!

semuc champey waterfalls

Tikal - awesome ruins in the jungle

yesterday morning I got into Flores, Guatemala at 5:30 AM after having ridden the night bus from Antigua. Not one to waste time, a mere half hour later I hopped onto a shuttle which would take me to the ruins of Tikal. Long story short (for those of you who don't want to follow the link), Tikal is this huge Mayan ruin. It is especially praised in the guidebook as a must-see among the many ruins in Guatemala because it is in the middle of the jungle, so offers a great deal of wildlife as well as some incredible ruins.

And the guidebooks were right. In addition to some truly incredible ruins, we also saw a Coati, several toucans, and even a python! (Or some other sort of large snake - I'm not really sure). Ok, enough blabbing - on to the pics!

holy crap! A pyramid!!

temple 2: one of the 2 temples in the great plaza

a look at temple 5 through the jungle foliage

ruins poking out above the jungle canopy

big scary snake! Luckily it was just hanging out, and just chilled while we shot photo after photo

a bunch of ruins in the great plaza. Temple 1 is to the left, and temple 5 is off in the distance

cool carving

chilling on temple 5 with the other ruins behind me

another day, another volcano

Fun facts of the day:

• I am getting tired of visiting old churches, cathedrals, and plazas
• I am not getting tired of climbing volcanoes
• there are lots of volcanoes in Guatemala

I think you know where I'm going with this. Needless to say, on Tuesday when I arrived at San Pedro (a town on lake atitlan), and saw volcán san pedro looming over me, daring me to climb it, I immediately accepted the challenge and signed up for a hike. At 5:40am (the early bird hikes the volcano without passing out from heat stroke), and at noon I returned triumphant, with another volcano hike under my belt. Highlights of the trip included

• watching the sun rise over lake atitlan
• not getting robbed at the summit. Apparently it happens occasionally, something my guide failed to mention to me until we were at the top
• the amazing views of lake atitlan from the volcano (see pics)
• helping my guide improve his english. He was especially interested in pick-up lines to use on pretty girls on the street. (I suggested saying "hey baby, where have you been all my life"). Good times

Did I mention that lake Atitlan is ringed by volcanoes? This probably won't be my last volcano post. . .

as everyone knows, the early-bird gets the sunrise photos - much better than worms, in my opinon

at the halfway point or so, with a great view of lake atitlan

me at the summit, with two other volcanoes waiting to be climbed in the background

volcano swing! Wheeee!

Adrian vs the volcano V: lava poking time!

Ever since my first Central American volcano visit when w went to Mt Arenal in Costa Rica and were told that if you looked just right squinted a bit, and used your imagination you could see lava on the volcano at night, only to be thwarted by a constant cloud cover, I was sustained by the promise of a fellow traveler that when I got to Guatemala I would be able to poke the lava with a stick.

After 3 months and hundreds of miles traveled, that dream finally came true when I did a hike up volcan pacaya, a volcano near Antigua, Guatemala. Our trip got off to a bit of a rough start: our ride was 20 min late (making us worry tnat it wasn't coming), and then when it did come we saw that our "tour bus" was actually a Hyundai Accent where we had to cram in 4 passengers. The car itself was basically held together with electrical tape, and we had to stop several times to poke at the wheels or wipe off the engine.

Needless to say, we were quite happy to arrive in one piece at the mountain. There we were immediately mobbed by kids trying to sell us walking/lava poking sticks. I procured my stick, and we were off! No sooner had we started hiking then it began to pour. On the bright side, I was finally able to use the poncho I had been schlepping around through all of the sunny weather this past 3 months.

Luckily the rain stopped after about 20 minutes, and then when we were abo0ut 15 minutes from our destination, the clouds rolled away, granting us a great view of the volcano (we didn't go all the way to the top - way too dangerous). Now we started walking over a lava field, and could occasioonally glimpse a red glow in fissuers below us. Suddenly we came to what we'd been looking for: a huge pool of lava - you could see it slowly flowing out and down the hill.

So, as you have hopefully guessed, I was not content to meerely ooh and ahh at the lava. After all, I'd paid 6 Quetzales (75 cents) for my lava-poking stick and I planned to use it! I tentatively made my way close enough, shielding my face from the heat, and poked away. It was everything I'd hoped it would be - a pyromaniac's dream.

Satisfied, we hiked back down, bundled back into our luxurious sardine-can-with-wheels, returned to Antigua, and started scheming about our next volcano hike (it's addicting!). Pics below:

hiking into the fog

volcán pacaya

cool lava cave

Lava! Coooooool!

me with lava

lava close-up

it's lava poking time!

whirlwind final day in mexico

As you know (if you've been keeping up with my blog), a week and a half ago I flew to Mexico for a wedding (congrats again Rogelio and Raquel), and then traveled Mexico for a week with coworker / new travel-buddy-for-life Iana. Since we had only a week, and Mexico is rather large, we kept up a blistering pace to pack in as much as possible.

While I think we managed to cram in a heck of a lot over those weeks, I am especially proud of our final 24 hours in Mexico. On Saturday morning we had the following constraints: we were a 4 hour bus ride from Mexico City, and had to be there at 6AM on the next day for my 8:00 flight. The standard/sensible/boring solution would have been to have a chill morning in San Miguel de Allende, catch a late afternoon bus to Mexico city, spend the night in a hostel there, and then cab to the airport. As you have probably deduced, we basically did the exact opposite, and crammed as much as we could into our final day:


Part I: souvenir shopping Extravaganza: Since this was our final stop, we could buy bulky things and not have to schlep them from town to town. Unfortunately, when you combine this fact with the fact that San Miguel de Allende is known for its shops full of well-made goods, you get a bit of trouble. It is safe to say that Iana and I got a bit carried away. The picture to the left is me with the hand-made wool rug I bought. (No comments from the peanut gallery about my rug/blanket negotiating skills). I also grabbed two day-of-the-dead skeleton statues, and Iana picked up a triple-painting. We had so much stuff that I had to buy a large bag so Iana could tote everything home!

me, my rug, and the rug vendor. Her whole family works on the rugs - her grandmother makes the wool thread and dyes it, her husband weaves it, etc (she had pics). Pretty cool.

Part II: Botanical Gardens: Exhausted from all that commercialism, Iana and I decided to get back to nature, and hiked around a botanical garden which was basically a whole ton of cacti rescued from around town and re-planted.

Iana, that's not the way you're supposed to enjoy nature! (disclaimer: no cacti were harmed in the filming of this stunt)

Part III: Ole! Our next stop was the bull fight. This is actually what set our plan to cram as much as possible into the day as possible, as it would force us to miss the early afternoon flight. Bull fighting here is quite the spectacle - tons of people crowd in (many of whom have BYOB / BYOW) to cheer, heckle, and in general have a good time. I found the fight to be. . . interesting. Killing an animal for sport isn't really my cup of tea, but I think it was well worth attending to observe an important part of Mexican / Spanish culture. Side note: even though the ticket is twice as much, you might want to pay extra for the "shade side" - that being said, I did come out with quite the tan!

the bull charges

Part IV: Outdoor Cafe / backgammon: After the bull fight we headed out to the outdoor cafe we'd found the night before. There we enjoyed the great weather (I love eating outdoors!), had dinner/drinks, enjoyed the live music they had, and engaged in an epic Backgammon marathon. (Iana won 4-3, but it was close! One game ended with Iana moving out the last of her pieces while I had one left!).

enjoying backgammon at the outdoor cafe

Part V: surprise concert: As we were walking back from the cafe, we happened on a symphony orchestra performing a free outdoor concert right in front of the main cathedral. The music was great (movie theme music - when we walked up it was the Indiana Jones theme), and the setting was absolutely amazing. Unfortunately, we arrived at the last song, although they were convinced to get an encore, so we got to hear two songs. I wish we'd known about it in advance so we could have been there for the whole thing!

The outdoor concert in front of the cathedral

Part VI: time to go home: By now it was about 11pm - time to pack it in! We returned to the hostel and packed up all our stuff. I significantly lightened my load by giving Iana several things to take back - thanks again Iana, I really appreciate it! And thanks to Trinh for doing the same in Mexico City! We slept as much as we could on the midnight bus to Mexico city (arrived at 4), cabbed to the airport, successfully passed the anti-swine-flu gauntlet (heat sensors), cried a little when one of my souvenirs was confiscated by security (Apparently there are no rocks allowed, even when they're crystals), and then spent the next few hours sacked out on the chairs waiting for our flights.

catching a few zzzzs in the airport - the one thing this adventure was short on was sleeping time. (who needs sleep anyways!?!)

We ended up pretty tired (man did I sleep well the next night), but it was well worth it - a great way to end the mexico trip!

Adrian vs the Volcano IV: Volcán Paracutín

NB: "Adrian vs the volano" is somewhat of a recurring theme of my journey: see also round I: volcán barú night hike, round II: volcán maderas mud hike, and round III: volcano boarding



It's been a while since my last volcano hike, so when Iana mentioned a potential day-hike of a nearby volcano I quickly agreed. Volcán Paracutín is a very interesting volcano, as it is only twice as old as I am. I actually remembered reading a book about it when I was younger - basically a farmer was plowing his field in 1943 when his plow disappeared into a hole in the ground. Soon ash / lava started spitting out, and over the course of a 9 year eruption, volcán paracutín was formed, demolishing two nearby towns. As I learned on my hike, miraculously none of the 5000 inhabitants were killed by the eruption because it was gradual enough that they had plenty of warning to escape.

After receiving some ridiculous misinformation from someone at the tourism office no less (he told us to go to the wrong town and that our 7 hour hike would take 2 hours), we figured out the correct plan and made our way to the appropriate bus stop. There we used our Sherlock-Holmes-like powers of deduction to detect a fellow tourist (Danielle) based on the following (extremely subtle) clues
   1) she was the only other gringo at the bus stop
   2) she seemed just as confused as we were about which bus to take
   3) she was holding a "Lonely Planet: Mexico" guide
brilliant deduction, eh?

It turns out that Danielle was also trying to hike the mountain, so she joined us for the trip. We ended up taking a taxi there because it was so cheap: the three of us paid a total of 80 pesos ($6) for the 40 minute ride - you could barely get 10 blocks for that in DC! While in the taxid, our driver tried extremely hard to convince us to rent horses for the trek ("no, I think we just want to walk - I don't like horses." "Ok, but my friend will give you a really good deal - only 1000 pesos instead of 1300." etc etc).

Finally we convinced him we didn't want to rent horses, although he did get us to rent a guide. (A good thing, too - the paths weren't marked well at all, so we would have had a much harder time without a guide. Quick aside: our cab driver told us we could get a kid to guide us for much less than an adult, but that the adult would be better because he could tell us more of the history of the volcano etc. Our guide didn't talk much, and we had a bit of trouble communicating much with him, even in Spanish. When we finished the hike we ended up taking the same taxi back, and I asked the driver why our guide wasn't very communicative, and he told us that the guy was mentally handicapped. It kind of nullified his argument that an older guide would be more helpful / communicative, but for the sake of not risking being kicked out of the cab, I decided not to call him out on it.

The hike itself was tough work. The mountain was pretty far away, and we had to pick our way over a lava field, which was very slow goinng as you had to carefully place each foot. Once we got to the volcano the going got even tougher, as the loose rocks and sand resulted in us slipping back a step for every 2 we took. We finally made it to the top, quickly enjoyed the view, then got the heck out of there, as we could see lightning in the distance, and didn't really feel like being the absolutely tallest point for miles and miles.

After the difficult time we had getting up, we were very pleasantly surprised by how easy it was to get down. Our guide took us to a very sandy trail (just by showing us this he was well worth the money), and we were basically able to jump/slide down the mountain. What took us 45 min or so to get up took about 8 to get down. We then hiked along for several miles until we got to the ruins of the San Juan church - basically the only thing left standing after the eruption. We then made it back to town, and Danielle made our day while letting us use her shower before zipping off to the bus stop to catch the night bus to Guanajuato. (Thanks again, Danielle!). I'm still not sick of volcanao climbing - can't wait until I get to Guatemala and climb a couple more!

pictures below, enjoy!

me and Iana with the volcano in the distance. We had to cross the huge lava field behind us just to get to it. And we'd had to hike quite a ways just to get here. Of the 7 hours we spent hiking, I think only about an hour was actually on the mountain!

fact: jumping down a mountain is much more fun than just hiking down

the trail I left as I tore down the sandy slope

at the base of the mountain after successfully summiting and descending

me at the ruins of the San Juan church. This was the only building left standing - pretty cool

The many benches of Mexico City

As I toured Mexico City, I noticed that there were a bunch of cool benches lining Reforma Avenue (one of Mexico City's main streets). A bunch of artists had designed the benches which were half bench, half sculpture. There were over 70 - here are my favorites.

click on the photo to view a larger size - I specifically re-sized the photo to be browser friendly so you won't just see one tiny corner of a huuuuuge photo.

More Mexico City pics!

well, as I culled through my Mexico City pictures, I came to the realization that there was no way I could fit 'em all into my first post. So, here are some more pics. Enjoy!

on my flight to Mexico, I seemed to be the only one concerned when the cabin filled with what was obviously poison gas. . .

mural for the "ninos heroes" (boy heroes) who died defending Chapultepec castle when the US invaded in the 1800s. . .

break-dancer in Mexico City (credit to Mahmoud for taking the pic with his SLR - don't think my camera is that good)

apparently here Burger King is classy enough to warrant valet parking (sweet!)

looking up at Chapultepec Castle

hmmmmm, this is an interesting transport choice. I think I'll just walk, thanks. . .

Statue of Pope John Paul. Look at the bottom right - it's made of millions of keys. Pretty cool.

look who just commandeered a taco stand!

each of these locks has a piece of paper or ribbon attached to it with one or more people's names on it. They are being placed before Saint Ramon Santo's altar to get the people named to stop talking about them behind their back. One person had a list of like 20 people - that's a lot of enemies!

two of the many cool sculptures in Mexico City

Exploring Mexico City

Although I was in Mexico City for a wedding, that was only one of the 4 days I was there. The rest of the time was spent wandering around, viewing all the sights with my other friends who had flown in.

Mexico city certainly has a lot to offer: we went to the Zocalo (Mexico City's big town square), went to the top of a cathedral, spent an hour on a tour of a castle with the world's most boring tour guide, saw the Diego Rivera murals in the Palacio Nacional (awesome), and hit up several museums.

They day after the wedding we went to the ruins of Teotihuacan, which were pretty amazing. My experience was marred by the fact that I bought a cool blanket for 270 pesos (~$20), and then 15 minutes later my friend Iana bought the same one, for only 150 pesos! ($12). For some reason everyone except me thought this was hi-larious. Luckily, Iana is going to be traveling Mexico with me for the next week, so I'll be sure to have her do the bargaining when I buy any souvenirs.

Pics below, enjoy!

touring Mexico city in style - on an open-top bus!

the obligatory Mariaci band. . .

"los voladores" perform their ancient ritual - although now they're more motivated by tips than cultural / religious reasons. . .

Trinh and Mahmoud have a moment while checking out photos - awwwwwwww

the angel of Independence - this monument was visible from our hotel. Cool!

one of the many colorful vendor carts in Chapultepec park

me at Teotihuacan

Iana and I pose with our identical rugs. Well, identical except for the price paid (I still claim that somehow mine is 120 pesos better)