sugarcanes

so i left guatemala and said goodbye to two (count em, TWO) sets of beautiful friends (did i honestly just say sets of friends?) and headed out to el salvador, the darkest, grimmest place in central america, driven by a nihilistic lack of regard for my own life and puapusas.

my first ride gave me a hat that says REDNECK VS COONASS 1989 SHOOTOUT.

my second is two brothers named jose and they invite me over to their ranch, if you could call a shack with a bunch of turkeys and cows a ranch and one jose asked me what i wanted, what was the point of travelling, one day i wake up in el salvador, one day i wake up in nicaragua, one day i wake up in colombia, why? what was i looking for? i tell him i have no idea and he says, well, come with me and maybe you will find something you like.

we go to this big field of exhausted sugar canes and set the fucker on fire.

i go back to his place and his shirtless dad is yelling raspy spanish at me and i have no idea what he is saying but he sure is friendly and awesome. later that night i get a taste of a real tropical rainstorm in this tiny shed...

in the morning the brothers jose hook me up with one of their trucks (besides professional field burners, they also own a trucking company!) and it takes me about a hundred kilometers in the most blinged out truck i have ever seen. on the side of it there is a huge picture of jesus hovering over a truck. that says everything.

i make it to honduras. the first honduran i meet is this asshole border guard who wont let me pass without three american dollars. i tell him in no uncertain words to fuck his mom, which might actually be uncertain because i only know how to curse in mexican, and find some money.

the second honduran i meet is a cop. i tell him my story and he tells me that not only can i hitch beside him, he will make the next driver going to nicaragua take me.

he pulls over mario, who is going to costa rica! alright!



driving through nicaragua i got a huge boner for all the red and black everywhere, which i know isnt anarchist in this country but come on, the fsln is pretty cool, right? well. even in socialist nicaragua they still have massive chains everywhere and beer commercials targetting nicaraguans featuring only white people. also nicaraguans hate white people more than anyone else i have met.



anyways. panama next. costa rica is beautiful and all my rides speak english. but it is expensive and all my rides speak english.


oh, and heres an irony for you: after all of el salvador, i never got an authentic salvadorean pupusa. the banks didnt work and i had only 25 cents (they use american currency, who knows why).

machetes

in oaxaca city ben and i are drinking in a bar. some dutch chica comes up to us and chats us up, and at some point she tells us she´s protestant. ben, always classy, starts telling her about his time on a creationist farm and how they were all completely fucking nuts, and i start going on about genetics and the impossibility of creationism, which leads into a conversation on freedom, brainwashing, and for the next twenty minutes we just (not so subtly) bash religion. the girl leaves and ben looks at me: ¨she saw us through the window and said ´look at those two fucking cool dudes´¨. she comes back with two beers for us. suave.

after a long ride in the back of a tomato truck i look at my arms. well holy fuck, i´m tanned! i´ve never seen my skin such a beautiful shade, i think in shock. i later learn i am just really sunburnt and dirty.

later ben and i fall asleep on a beautiful beach somewhere on the coast of oaxaca. we haven´t seen any cops for miles which is pretty strange for police state mexico so we don´t really worry. half way through the night we hear vicious dog barking. i grab my machete and rise halfway. i look over and ben is in the exact same position, machete ready. the dog comes close but turns away. we almost get to use our machetes on the first day we got them. we look at eachother, high five, and fall back asleep.

puppyz

markus, conseula, ben and i hitched out to oaxaca. we made it to puebla, where we got totally stuck in the worst place. men selling the cutest puppy dogs out of bags. one in each hand, waving them about, with extra dogs carelessly placed in a denim sack around their waist, with surplus dogs in bags hanging on trees.

i wanted to buy a couple and go home.

for hours we were stuck. no one wanted a bunch of smelly punks, not even in the back of their truck. conseula gets pissed off and demands we catch a bus...fuck. the ultimate defeat. to her, the fun and adventure is all gone, leaving a dirty sundreached husk of boredom....well isn´t that hitchhiking right fucking there? someone forgot to tell her i guess :(

then again, i can´t say i enjoyed hanging out with the puppy men.

the way to oaxaca is a windy path between beautiful mountains. kilometers of mountains covered in cactus, no life but the bugs and the plants...there´s something fantastic about that. these mountains will never be conquered. man can´t turn these mountains into anything. these cactuses will continue as they always did long after man destroys himself and the rest of the world...if that isn´t beautiful, what is? (in this, am i forced to admit the beauty of the cockroach?)

in oaxaca we find our contact´s place. ricardo flores magnon is riding a bike on the front. looks good. we are greeted by two dudes who are totally warm and open. awesome! then this other dude, some anarchist (??) named chuchu comes out and says NO THEY CANT STAY and kicks us out.

markus and consuela freak out and hightail it to the bus station to go to the coast. i guess i´ll see ´em in london. whatever!


later ben and i go down the coast. the road splits off into two and we ask five locals where to go. three say we want the left one, so we go. whoops. never trust a local to give you directions. we keep going and get this one ride that takes us onthe most amazing scenic ride through this beautiful rainforest and end up stranded in a small village of san gabriel, the most amazing place i´ve ever been. talk about paradise. small colourful village in the middle of the rainforest, strangly with a huge pa blaring some recording (¿) of some woman saying something, which is either a prayer or an advertisment, during all waking hours... the language down here is so hilarious yet so beautiful, so much easier to understand than most mexicans. i would live here.

we find a storage area for the local church and sleep in it. the roosters don´t shut up all night. the jungle is really really loud.

anyways. all day i´ve been listening to this song on repeat. it´s really good. maybe i will catch up more another day.

what to post?

what can i say? sure, i have some stories but honestly, what more do i need to say than i am in guatemala with a machete? shouldn´t that say everything?

teotihuacan

in the absence of any crazy stories, i show you a picture of some pyramids i went to. this one celebrates some lunar deity.


teotihuacan is black metal as fuck