Being a norteamericano backpacking tourist in Central America is hard work! I'll bet you didn't know there are a lot of chores involved. On top of being around and getting around in security and safety, you have to research hotels and restuarants,consult guidebooks and maps, look for bus stations and buses to get to the stations, get laundry done every few days, and you have to do all this while trying to stay on budget. Plus you have to get all these things done in a language which is not your own.
It may seems strange, but quite often I wake up in a mild panic because I have such a lengthy to do list, and today was one of those days.
1. Find a cheaper hotel room, check.
2. Get cash at ATM, check.
3. Take laundry to service shop, check.
4. Log on to hopefully high speed internet, check.
5. Update blog, check.
6. Check email, check.
7. Buy memory card for camera, check.
8. Arrange transport to Chichicastenango and back, check.
9. Go to supermarket, check.
10. Pick up laundry before the woman closes shop, check.
You get the picture.
I love getting all that stuff done by noon, so I can go out and do my 'real mission' which is the reconaissance of photo ops, then later walkby picture taking.
Check back again soon for a more detailed post about my photo mission in Central America. Until then, I'm going to enjoy this ultra cool city enjoying its very fine weekend.
Showing posts with label backpacker. Show all posts
Showing posts with label backpacker. Show all posts
Saturday, July 10, 2010
Thursday, July 1, 2010
The Road to Marcala, Honduras and Beyond
If I had known that the 25 mile trip to Marcala from Perquin was mostly dirt road I might have thought twice about attempting it. I knew beforhand that I was facing a three hour ride but what I didn't know was that three hours was the minimum I could expect.
With too late a start on Tuesday--about 3 p.m.--it took about an hour to reach the remote Honduran frontier post where the immigration office wasn't even open but a friendly Honduran policeman waved me through with a bus full of locals headed to the high and muddy villages on the opposite side.
During the notorious "football war" of 1969, El Salvador's stronger army seized this territory from the Hondurans. With the end of the civil war in 1992, the Hondurans took El Salvador to the World Court which ruled in favor of Honduras. El Salvador accepted this verdict but under protest, and therefore it doesn't maintain an immigration checkpoint here.
The people who live in this tiny slice of territory--mostly of the indigenous Lenca tribe--are technically Salvadoran who happen to live in Honduras. This political grey area also happens to be one of the most remote and impoverished of both countries.
By 4.30 I was dropped off with some locals as far as the bus could go on these steep muddy roads near the village of Sabanetas. From there, I was told, I could try to hitchhike the last treacherous 12 miles to Marcala. Or I could walk. There were no more buses that day.
Fortunately there was one "hostal " in a tiny settlement called Los Cipreses where I was able to get a bunk in a cabin with no electric but with outhouse amenities. All the other cabins were occupied by Honduran NGO workers.
The helpful people of the hostal hooked me up with the one gringo living in the area, a young Peace Corps volunteer by the name of "Frank." He is about nine months through his two year stint here, and as his Spanish is excellent he is a wealth of knowledge about the area. We chatted for about two hours.
It soon became clear that it is the rare tourist who passes through this stunningly beautiful region. (Frank said I was only the third stranded backpacker in Los Cipreses during his tenure thus far.) I spent a chilly, rainy night in my candlelit cabin.
The next morning, Wednesday, found me hiking with my gear up and down the kilometer or so to the Honduran army post where I was able to squeeze onto a micro for the 90 minute journey to Marcala, a town of about 11,000--by far the largest settlement around.
There is a surprisingly large number of foreigners here, but not of the tourist variety--yet it's not so surprising once the brain truly registers the immense scope of the poverty of the locals. The westerners one meets are very busy as aid workers for government and NGO alike (when I checked into my hotel I was asked "Who do you work for?").
Marcala has almost no paved streets at all which tells us, at the very least, that there are more pressing priorities on the very limited resources that are available.
Yet the town boasts a couple cyber shops and even a tiny cafe with an espresso machine which is where I met Rachel, a Wellesly College senior who is on a ten week internship doing research for a Yale-sponsored entity called Innovations for Poverty Action. She enthusiastically described her project studying the underground micro-finance economy of Honduras--basically she's researching loansharks and their customers--and comparing that data with the economy of legitimate micro-finance. With the knowledge gained by her excellent Spanish she was able to fill me in on the latest political situation including details of the coup in 2009 and events since then.
Transport from here to my next destination La Esperanza is also difficult and sporadic. If I cannot catch the 11.00 micro today I'll probably have to hitch a ride on a pickup, a common practice here. Usually the driver will charge the going rate, a dollar or so, same as the buses.
But there's certainly no turning back for me now. Thankfully, Marcala has an ATM so I was able to get stocked with lempiras, the local currency, enough to get me Gracias or hopefully Santa Rosa de Copan. It's only after that that I can hope for better, paved roads
With too late a start on Tuesday--about 3 p.m.--it took about an hour to reach the remote Honduran frontier post where the immigration office wasn't even open but a friendly Honduran policeman waved me through with a bus full of locals headed to the high and muddy villages on the opposite side.
During the notorious "football war" of 1969, El Salvador's stronger army seized this territory from the Hondurans. With the end of the civil war in 1992, the Hondurans took El Salvador to the World Court which ruled in favor of Honduras. El Salvador accepted this verdict but under protest, and therefore it doesn't maintain an immigration checkpoint here.
The people who live in this tiny slice of territory--mostly of the indigenous Lenca tribe--are technically Salvadoran who happen to live in Honduras. This political grey area also happens to be one of the most remote and impoverished of both countries.
By 4.30 I was dropped off with some locals as far as the bus could go on these steep muddy roads near the village of Sabanetas. From there, I was told, I could try to hitchhike the last treacherous 12 miles to Marcala. Or I could walk. There were no more buses that day.
Fortunately there was one "hostal " in a tiny settlement called Los Cipreses where I was able to get a bunk in a cabin with no electric but with outhouse amenities. All the other cabins were occupied by Honduran NGO workers.
The helpful people of the hostal hooked me up with the one gringo living in the area, a young Peace Corps volunteer by the name of "Frank." He is about nine months through his two year stint here, and as his Spanish is excellent he is a wealth of knowledge about the area. We chatted for about two hours.
It soon became clear that it is the rare tourist who passes through this stunningly beautiful region. (Frank said I was only the third stranded backpacker in Los Cipreses during his tenure thus far.) I spent a chilly, rainy night in my candlelit cabin.
The next morning, Wednesday, found me hiking with my gear up and down the kilometer or so to the Honduran army post where I was able to squeeze onto a micro for the 90 minute journey to Marcala, a town of about 11,000--by far the largest settlement around.
There is a surprisingly large number of foreigners here, but not of the tourist variety--yet it's not so surprising once the brain truly registers the immense scope of the poverty of the locals. The westerners one meets are very busy as aid workers for government and NGO alike (when I checked into my hotel I was asked "Who do you work for?").
Marcala has almost no paved streets at all which tells us, at the very least, that there are more pressing priorities on the very limited resources that are available.
Yet the town boasts a couple cyber shops and even a tiny cafe with an espresso machine which is where I met Rachel, a Wellesly College senior who is on a ten week internship doing research for a Yale-sponsored entity called Innovations for Poverty Action. She enthusiastically described her project studying the underground micro-finance economy of Honduras--basically she's researching loansharks and their customers--and comparing that data with the economy of legitimate micro-finance. With the knowledge gained by her excellent Spanish she was able to fill me in on the latest political situation including details of the coup in 2009 and events since then.
Transport from here to my next destination La Esperanza is also difficult and sporadic. If I cannot catch the 11.00 micro today I'll probably have to hitch a ride on a pickup, a common practice here. Usually the driver will charge the going rate, a dollar or so, same as the buses.
But there's certainly no turning back for me now. Thankfully, Marcala has an ATM so I was able to get stocked with lempiras, the local currency, enough to get me Gracias or hopefully Santa Rosa de Copan. It's only after that that I can hope for better, paved roads
Monday, June 28, 2010
Why Not Travel With Fiddle in Central America?
Now that I've arrived in a place that's crying out for some good oldtime fiddle music, it seems the ideal time to address the issue of travel with musical instruments, or in my case, why I haven't traveled with my violin on these recent trips to Central America.
Since we were kids in a growing "Suzuki violin family" I had always traveled with my instrument, whether to Disney World or on other family road trips, but especially to Grandma and Grandpa's. Our parents felt it was important for us to play impromptu concerts for our relatives and friends, but we also had a fairly strict rule in our family: we had to practice every day, even on family vacations, as Shinich Suzuki always urged Suzuki families to do.
As a young adult my fiddle became both my "passport and bank account" as I used my musical skills to earn money for travel, eventually becoming a globetrotting busker in 1980s Western Europe and 1990s Southeast and Northeast Asia.
My instrument and the music I played weren't only a means of earning a living, but also served as a great way to meet people of all stripes--especially other musicans and other buskers who traveled along the same routes that I did. This was a great advantage to me in my globetrotting as well as in life in general. My fiddle has taken me inside many situations which never could have happened without the very fact that I was a working musician, and mostly outside my home element in the United States.
These are some of the reasons I have always traveled with my instrument. But now that I've become a teacher, it's been possible for me to join a world of the ordinary tourist. I think of it as a type of "accidental tourism," to qoute from the novel and movie of that title, because in doing so I felt way outside of my usual element.
When I first started traveling in Latin America in the late 1990s and early 2000s with a couple trips to Mexico, I continued to take my instrument along even if I didn't use it very much. Colonial cities such as Guanajuato or San Luis Potosi were made for the itinerant musician, but I didn't do any busking there, preferring instead to hear Mexican groups in the streets and plazas of those cities.
When I returned to Thailand for visits in 2005 and 2006 I continued to bring the instrument because many of my friends there are musicians and it was always possible to sit in and jam with them while they worked. And on my 2007 visit part of my purpose there was to record some 22 fiddle tunes which I did with a couple collaborators on guitar.
So why not travel with the instrument now? Really it comes down to a couple logistical issues, starting with post-9/11 hassles and airline baggage restrictions. For a time in the mid-2000s musicians all over America were complaining that the airlines were, in some cases, forcing them to check their instruments in the cargo hold. Though that era seems thankfully to have passed, more recently the airlines have become very strict about the size and number of carry on bags they allow, and they charge about $25 for each bag over that they require you to check in.
Secondly, my first two trips to Central America in 2008 and 2009 were only two weeks in length. Because of some uncertainty regarding the difficulties of bus travel in the region, and since I anticipated that I wouldn't use my instrument very much--if at all-- I decided then to leave the violin home and travel only with a small backpack and a day bag. This turned out to be the most convenient way to get around, but especially on the airlines and on some of the notorious "chicken" buses (they just keep packing them in like Colonel Sanders) in Guatemala, Nicaragua, and neighboring countries. I have to admit that questions of security also weighed heavily in my mind: would I lose my instrument to forgetfulness (a life-long nightmare of mine)? Even worse, would I lose it to theft? It didn't seem to be worth the risk for trips of such short duration. Yet I also must admit that I felt very strange traveling without my fiddle on those two occasions.
What about this trip now, which is seven weeks long? Well, I'm still dealing with the issues outlined above, but a major difference now is I'm taking a lot more time with this journey, so now the question has reasserted itself. And with my arrival in Perquin, it seems a shame that I won't be able to get to know the villagers and their children by offering up some fine impromptu fiddle music for their entertainment and enjoyment. Music has always been a cross cultural way to break the ice and form some connection with strangers. And that I'm not doing so on this trip is indeed a bit disconcerting for me.
This question certainly will pop up again whenever I decided to take more than a week or two in a given region. I would like to find a way to travel again with a backpack, a day bag, and an instrument, but for the moment I'm glad I don't have to worry about an expensive violin, and how I'm going to transport it safely on the next crowded, rattletrap of a bus I board.
Since we were kids in a growing "Suzuki violin family" I had always traveled with my instrument, whether to Disney World or on other family road trips, but especially to Grandma and Grandpa's. Our parents felt it was important for us to play impromptu concerts for our relatives and friends, but we also had a fairly strict rule in our family: we had to practice every day, even on family vacations, as Shinich Suzuki always urged Suzuki families to do.
As a young adult my fiddle became both my "passport and bank account" as I used my musical skills to earn money for travel, eventually becoming a globetrotting busker in 1980s Western Europe and 1990s Southeast and Northeast Asia.
My instrument and the music I played weren't only a means of earning a living, but also served as a great way to meet people of all stripes--especially other musicans and other buskers who traveled along the same routes that I did. This was a great advantage to me in my globetrotting as well as in life in general. My fiddle has taken me inside many situations which never could have happened without the very fact that I was a working musician, and mostly outside my home element in the United States.
These are some of the reasons I have always traveled with my instrument. But now that I've become a teacher, it's been possible for me to join a world of the ordinary tourist. I think of it as a type of "accidental tourism," to qoute from the novel and movie of that title, because in doing so I felt way outside of my usual element.
When I first started traveling in Latin America in the late 1990s and early 2000s with a couple trips to Mexico, I continued to take my instrument along even if I didn't use it very much. Colonial cities such as Guanajuato or San Luis Potosi were made for the itinerant musician, but I didn't do any busking there, preferring instead to hear Mexican groups in the streets and plazas of those cities.
When I returned to Thailand for visits in 2005 and 2006 I continued to bring the instrument because many of my friends there are musicians and it was always possible to sit in and jam with them while they worked. And on my 2007 visit part of my purpose there was to record some 22 fiddle tunes which I did with a couple collaborators on guitar.
So why not travel with the instrument now? Really it comes down to a couple logistical issues, starting with post-9/11 hassles and airline baggage restrictions. For a time in the mid-2000s musicians all over America were complaining that the airlines were, in some cases, forcing them to check their instruments in the cargo hold. Though that era seems thankfully to have passed, more recently the airlines have become very strict about the size and number of carry on bags they allow, and they charge about $25 for each bag over that they require you to check in.
Secondly, my first two trips to Central America in 2008 and 2009 were only two weeks in length. Because of some uncertainty regarding the difficulties of bus travel in the region, and since I anticipated that I wouldn't use my instrument very much--if at all-- I decided then to leave the violin home and travel only with a small backpack and a day bag. This turned out to be the most convenient way to get around, but especially on the airlines and on some of the notorious "chicken" buses (they just keep packing them in like Colonel Sanders) in Guatemala, Nicaragua, and neighboring countries. I have to admit that questions of security also weighed heavily in my mind: would I lose my instrument to forgetfulness (a life-long nightmare of mine)? Even worse, would I lose it to theft? It didn't seem to be worth the risk for trips of such short duration. Yet I also must admit that I felt very strange traveling without my fiddle on those two occasions.
What about this trip now, which is seven weeks long? Well, I'm still dealing with the issues outlined above, but a major difference now is I'm taking a lot more time with this journey, so now the question has reasserted itself. And with my arrival in Perquin, it seems a shame that I won't be able to get to know the villagers and their children by offering up some fine impromptu fiddle music for their entertainment and enjoyment. Music has always been a cross cultural way to break the ice and form some connection with strangers. And that I'm not doing so on this trip is indeed a bit disconcerting for me.
This question certainly will pop up again whenever I decided to take more than a week or two in a given region. I would like to find a way to travel again with a backpack, a day bag, and an instrument, but for the moment I'm glad I don't have to worry about an expensive violin, and how I'm going to transport it safely on the next crowded, rattletrap of a bus I board.
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