Backpacking

Today we visited the Copan Mayan Ruins. it was really cool, you got to see some of the original colours, colours like red, green, and pink. It was really amazing to see the artwork and sculptures preserved so well. it was different then Tikal in the way that it showed more of the culture then just the grandeurness of the Temples in pyramids. The same goes for Lamanai in Belize, you the towers werent as impressive as either of the other two places but the boat ride through the jungles was amazing in itself, to see all the wildlife and people on the river was worth the money alone, even if we didnt see the ruins.

The rest of the day was spent mostly on shopping for souvenirs. In the first big place we went to i asked the guy if there was a smaller version of the chess set that he sold. The shop keeper said that there isnt a smaller version of that because it was hand carved. i was a bit dissipointed but we continued on to a larger market like place that sold other souvenirs but to my surprise they sold much of the exact same stuff that he had and they had many of the exact chess set that the other guy sold. what a coincidence that all of the other people have the same chess set and they were all hand carved, they must have good quality control, lol. we didnt end up buying anything in the end. we desided that we had too far to go, and we would have to carry everything we buy for the rest of the trip; which was not only a big burden to carry by itselft, but we run the risk of breaking while we are in the other 6 countries. in short: good ruins, good food, lots of catching up for blogs and family members.

Ok, so the first one that comes to mind is the amount of Marijuana in Belize... where it is supposed to be illegal, but I honeslty thought the guide book must have been wrong or out of date because of it's prevalence. Once, while walking back to our guesthouse, we were offered an entire handful.. no joke people.. an entire handful of weed...! Every coner you are asked if you wanted some.. or any locals you talk to in Belize. Another eye opener for us was when we were walking back to our guesthouse in Belize City from the bus station along with two other travellers, one from New Zealand, the other from Croatia, and we all saw an ice cream parlor. After a long hot day of seeing ruins and on a small river boat, we all thought it best that we treat our selves with a bowl of ice cream. We approached the ice cream parlor with thoughts of suger, but to one side stood a guard with a shotgun leveled at our chests... hmmm, now one mught think this is a tad overkill... and to anyone who agrees with this estimation I wholeheartedly agree! This is place where children come to have a cold treat in the sometimes unbearable and opressive heat. The children hear must be some kind of super crook, because otherwise I can't possibly fathom why a shotgun toteing guard would be posted at a freaking ICE CREAM PARLOR! I covered the most interesting part of our journey from Santa Elena to Guatemala City in my reflections entry, but in San Pedro there were some more subtle memeories that surely were missing from any blogs. The best story comes from a Hippy by the name of John, who I don't think ever stopped smoking up. There were times whe I would wake up to the smell of Marijuana...and we had to be up, eating and ready to go to spanish lessons for 9:00, which meant all this was happening around 7:30 - 8:00. One night while we were cleaning up after ourselves, John came back to the Hippy compound most certainly with a deap down case of the munchies. He had a large can of refried bean paste... and that was it. Who would have know that so much enjoyment could have percipitated form one can of beans. He was eating the beans right out of the can with a spoon and he said to us, "Looks like cat food...(takes a spoonfull and sniffs)... smells like cat food... (eats the spoonful)... tastes like cat food. But its BEANS!" Ever since we have been quoting him and have a good laugh over his antics. On one of the buses to the El Salvadorian I (and I want no one to think that I'm vain, I'm only telling this story because I found it to be quite rediculous) was..shall we say flirted with. The bus was absolutely jamed full of people.. easitly three and sometimes four to a single school buss seat. (You thought your 45 minute bus ride with maybe two to a seat was busy, try all seats with at least three, some with four and the entire isle full of peopel standing.) As we boarded the bus we were all ready to stand and give the available seats to the old ladies and kids, because we are all upstanding gentlemen. I was looking at the people around me and my eyes fell upon a girl that was about our age, who then proceeded to wink at me with a rather large grin on her face.. and patted the small space she had made for me to sit. (I say small because her mother was a rather large lady, and with two other people it made for very tight spaces) I sat down with her eyes continuing to watch me and thought, oh good.. I can barely say hello, let alone have a conversation. It was very awkward, because I wanted to say hello and talk but I knew if I started saying anything she would talk too fast for me to understand and then I would look really stupid. Not to mention everytime I tried to look out the window she thought I was looking it at her and smiled. I'm sure she thought I was a mute until she asked where we were going... whcih I understood! Horay for spanish lessons. I looked up the word for hot, because it was rediculous in the bus with well over 80 people on it an the temperature outside climbing to well over 30, and used the wrong one, because they have so many different words for hot in spanish and we got laughed at. As the bus ride continued it because less and less ful and I was able to escape the continuous gaze and find my own seat. We got our first real experience being a minority after we attempted to cross the Guatemalan-Slavadorian boarder, where we had been told there would be a ATM, but there wasn't. We had to turn back and head for the nearest town with an ATM. We only had enough money because I still randomly had 2 USD left over from Belize. I switched over the cash into Quetzales, and paid for our bus ride to the closest town, with 5 Quetzales to spare. Just to give you some sense of that 7-8 is one USD. It was a little close for comfort, but we made it to this crazy town called Chiquimulilla. (Yeah go ahead.. try saying that!) We were tired from a long day of travel, hungry, and all around in less than perfect moods sinc we were stuck in this very crappy town, in a scary hotel. Walking through the streets of the town we were stared at as if we were aliens, silence flowed in our wake, as people turned their undivided attention to our presence. Then some rowdy teenagers threw (I'm only making assumptions here, since my spanish is terrible) some insults at us from their car, which I'm sure would have been hurtful and demeaning if I knew what they were saying. The next morning was very busy around the banks (don't ask me why) and we had to walk through the crowd of people, who parted for us as if we were the Royal Family. You gain an appriciation for how minorities back home must feel, although I like to think that Canadians are a little more tactful. And with that I'll end the first of the Memories Blogs, there are more on the way for sure.

Enjoy and laugh as we have,

Happy trails,

Ryan.

Miss you all.

Technically I'm no where near El Zonte... nor even in El Salvador... but that is besides the point. So, we left San Salvador in favour of the beach life, which suits the three of us quite well... there are no complaints about endless beaches, palms, and awesome point breaks. We headed to El Zonte ( pronounced sonte ) to learn us some surfing skills. We arrived to hear that the breaks were much to large for us to learn in, as was the next day, finally we got out for our first leasson. We all got up and were "surfing" in white water.. which is basically just the small broken waves close to shore. We were all stoked for our next lesson, so the next day we went out to practice what we had learned. We got out there and leigh discovered that he was missing a fin.. bummer, because they are expensive to replace. Craig and I stayed out for about an hour, and then headed in because the mid-day heat is terrible on white skin. At four that same day was to be our second lesson, but Alex.. the owner of the "resort" we were staying at and our surfing teacher, got a nasty ear infection and had to go to San Salvador to see a doctor. We didn't get our next lesson for another two days, which was simply learning how to turn and then practicing. That day we were to continue into real waves and try catching them, but Alex randomly went back to San Salvador. So, we did spend some solid hours getting the training, but we never got to try it on real waves... BUT, we have nicuragua, costa rica, panama, ecuador and peru.. which all have amazing breaks... I'm sure we'll spend some more time amongst the breaks again. Our time In El Zonte was awesome, we got a damn nice tan, learned some surfing basics.. got some seriously cool shells... got to see an amazing sunset out last night.. and spent countless hours in the surf, just swimming in the waves. I got some nice pictures of some locals surfing and of some beach art I sculpted outta the sand.

So, now we are on our way to Copain ruins in Honduras. We are spending the night here in Nueve Ocotopeque, and tomorrow heading for Copan, staying there two nights, seeing the ruins and some other attractions in the area. We then head out to the Bay Islands for three nights, do some more snorkelling... work a lñittle harder on our tans.. and maybe hike a trail or two. Next, we plan to head into the mountains to a small off the beaten track town for two nights, then hopfully onto Nicuragua the next day.

All is well with the three amigos,

we all miss home a little, but were having fun down here.

I miss you guys, were definatly going to have a huge "get together".. or "round" if you will when we get home,

happy trails,

Ryan.

P.S.: All you Hosers that are reading this and not leaving anything for us to read need to TAKE OFF EH! and to dang well write a comment... the parents are definatly winning in that respect... common show some love!

we got up for class like usual at 7:30 and left to get some supplies for some stir fry that we were going to make for lunch, after we came back to our hotel we had our breakfast of granola and yoghurt, eaten like a true hippy. the whole town is filled with hippies it blows my mind. but enough about the hippies. craig and ryan went kayaking while i stayed at the hotel and slept, i wasnt feeling the best, but now i feel much better after that naping. im glad to hear im in a temperated climate while it is -35celcius and snowing at home. Life in San Pedro has been super easy going, but soon i will be anxious for the adventurers life again.

So today is our fouth day in this uber laid back town, San Pedro la Laguna, and I am thoroughly enjoying myself! We got up this morning and had a much better breakfast than yesterday. Yesterday we froze the juice, yogurt and everything else for that matter... so we ended up with nada for breakfast. This morning on the other hand, we had yogurt and granola... at regular temperatures. We then headed out for our third session of Spanish lessons, which by the way are going pretty well. Esta muy bien! After our Spanish lesson we cooked a tasty, albeit unusual, stir fry with vegetables form the local market. Once we finished cleaning, I folded laundry with the plan to go kayaking for a couple of hours with the guys. By this time, Leigh wasn´t feeling great so he went to bed while craig and I headed out on the lake for some sweet kayaking. Since we are students at Orbita Spanish School we are supposed to get a discount on renting Kayaks, but when we showed our discount cards to the girl at the kayaks, she looked like she´d never seen them! We headed to our Spaish school to get Rene, the owner of the school to give us a hand. Finally after some heated spanish which Craig nor I understood, we paid the discounted price and got ourselves two Kayaks. We spent two hours on the water with nothign but our swim sorts on and a paddle in our hand. The water was pretty rough, so we had some good times surfing and then once we were tired we found some crazy huge reeds and laid out on our Kayaks to soak up some rays, and chat. I got some pretty good shots of the volcanoes surrounding the lake and one of craig paddling his swamped kayak.. which by the way he did twice! Once back on shore, we headed back to the Hippy compound and got Leigh, together we went to a local bakery, got some sweet itallian buns and continued on to the internet cafe I now find myself in. Tonight, were having cheap tacos and then heading back to the Hippy compund for una cerveza (a beer) and listen to craig play the guitar while we all sing Jack johnson, Sublime and Ben Harper.

Its going great, but I miss everyone too!

Happy trails,
Ryan.