Surprises, Scooter rentals, and Sold out bus tickets...



I know I know I know!!! I need to post on this thing more often! I apologize from the bottom of my heart...but as Audrey and I touched on earlier today and sympathized together about...I mean life is just hard when you're too busy having fun and exploring cities and talking to random people and reading great books to find time to write about it....Ok well that just sounds ridiculous and selfish, so I'll work on it:) but in the meantime know that a lack of posting probably means we're having quite a time!

Well, as I was writing that last post, I was actually ON my way HOME! Kind of crazy, and it was super top secret (I couldn't even tell his roommates!- sorry guys!) but I decided to fly home and surprise John for his birthday!

 I was home for a totally of 5 days...which was most definitely not enough (as I realized as I was leaving that I just craved more time with everyone I did get to see and wished that I got to see a lot more special people, but the primary reason of me going home was a huge success!!! One, John was SO surprised (and he apparently is imPOSSIBLE to surprise).

And two, it was SO good to see him and just BE with him for that many days:) (esp after that ridiculous mere 24 hours we got to see each other for after I was gone for three weeks before we departed for these adventures). Everything felt so luxurious...everything about being home...AND getting to see John so much and just relax and know for several days we weren't gonna have to say goodbye tomorrow:)

 It was an amazing few days. It made me realize several things- once again how much I appreciate and love that guy, how amazing his family is and how much I enjoy them, how amazing his grandma is, how much I love running with the only person I will ever run with- my dad,



how much I love DC, how fortunate I am to have the family and friends I do, and how excited I am to have that to look forward to coming back to:) Only to name a FEW and most important of the realizations.

Then, I flew back and met Audrey in our next country...and this is SUPER lame, I think, but I am going to have you read Audrey's version of this part of the story...because she is an AMAZING writer...RIDICULOUSLY hilarious...and described this whole section of the trip (including one of my favorite days so far- the scooter day) way better than I ever would!

 

So...please read that! You will not be sorry. I promise. Her blog is whenindoubttravel.blogspot.com if you're not already reading it!

After all of THAT:)...we finally headed to the long awaited NICARAGUA!

We have continually heard incredible things about this country...from friends who honeymooned here to people we've met along the way...so we were PUMPED hanse going and so far it has definitely lived up!

Getting here included some crazy travel days consisting of changing plans quite frequently due to various reasons. As the blog title implies...we love to and have most definitely been traveling by word of mouth, which of course means we are also last minute planners (which has worked out amazingly....most of the time..so far). So, we left the Bay Island of Roatan off the coast of Honduras via the hour long ferry

(during which Audrey, as per usual, basically didn't exist...she gets severely seasick- good thing we end up taking boats and ferries to places about once every other week:) sorry Aud!- so she plays a mental game of focusing and pretending like she's not on a boat). After we got off the ferry and picked up our luggage we began wondering...ok, so now how do we get from here to Nicaragua? :) SO conveniently there was a random computer from the early 90s in the ferry station...so after about an hour of doing some research on buses and such...we walked out to catch the very last taxi as we were the only ones still left from our ferry. We told the taxi driver exactly where we needed to go, our whole great idea for how we were going to get to Nicaragua, and he basically just shook his head, told us it was a terrible plan, and gave us our new plan. (whiiiich...we had actually considered as one option but had just decided for whatever reason to go with the other). Long story short...we took a really expensive, comfortable, safe bus to a town 3 hours away, slept there for about 4 hours (in the matrimonial suite might I add:)...we looked at the list of the rooms and the prices, that was the cheapest one-for good reason- for two people to share, so CLEARLY we looked up at the man and tried to say with straight faces that we would like that room. He didn't think it was quite as funny as we did. We got up at 3:45am to catch our 5am direct bus to Nicaragua! Buuuut...it was sold out. So at 4:30 we made 4 other friends who were also trying to get to Nicaragua and had just discovered the bus was full as well. After many different great and not so great ideas between the 6 of us, lots of different advice from random security guards and such in the huge bus terminal, taking turns running all over while the other watched our bags, and discovering many bus ticket offices that were closed...we finally found a safe bus, whose ticket office was open at that hour, that left at 5:45 (it was now 5:35) and would take us to ANOTHER city by 10:30am where we could wait and catch another safe bus at 2pm from there to our final destination! It was a long day...but we made it to Nicaragua:) (!!!!!!!)......

Which I will post ALL about in just a few days....

But...we're doing amazing. Loving every day. Learning things. Enjoying the adventure of it all. And laughing a...TON. :) but of course still just missing the people back home and normal, comfortable, everyday life sometimes. Remember how the grass is greener on the other side? I'm still working on the balance of healthily thinking about and missing people and life back home, but not being ridiculous and wishing these amazing months away! Its amazing to realize the extremity of our natural inclinations that we, SADLY, really do always wish we were somewhere else and living a different phase of life...apparently EVEN when you're on your dream adventure! Even while we are, at the same time, totally enjoying everyday fully and LOVING the experiences and places. Very interesting...

Love and miss and am still praying for you all! (esPECIALLY on those long bus rides:)...which are apparently about to get MUCH longer when we get to South America!) And keep sending me updates whenever you get a chance!:) 

Finally to El Salvador!...

Well, we've kind of been jumping all over the place since I last blogged...so I'm just gonna give the gist of what's been going on, and some of the good stories:)

The summary of what we've been up to: (you can scroll down if you just want to read stories!:)
Well, I don't think I've talked about Xela at all! Except for that side note story of our day trip to a nearby town where my purse got cut. Xela was a really cool city!

Much bigger than I expected it to be! It's kind of in the middle of nowhere in the highlands and is not talked about a TON, so I didn't expect much. But it had great architecture, was really big (the biggest city we've been in besides when we passes through to capital- Guate city), was surrounded by mountains and several awesome volcanoes, was definitely more of a local city (with MOSTLY Guatemalans) but had a really fun, quirky, artsy young crowd made up of locals AND non-Guatemaltecos who had just happened to visit there and got stuck. It was definitely a different crowd of 'tourists' though, because everyone there had either been living there for quite awhile, or were really serious about learning the language...so it felt a little different.

 

There was VERY little English anywhere...and when there was it seemed really weird. We took a week of language school there (were there about 10 or 11 days) and did the home stay thing again, but this time Audrey and I stayed in different houses which we chose in hopes that it would make us speak English much less. It worked....somewhat. :) The week consisted of the same language school deal, one on one sessions each day from 8-1pm, then headed home for lunch with out families, then back to the school for a different activity with the head lady of the language school each day. One day we went to that San Cristobal festival- picture...lots of REALLY old, small, rusty roller coaster rides/ferris wheels/bumper cars (!!), tons of food vendors, carnival games like trying to shoot things over, except really funny versions of them...including a man in a really terrifying mask standing behind a piece of plywood with only his face showing, and people throwing bags of water at him as hard as they can trying to hit him in the face...music, QUITE a crowd, a pretty white church which was the center of it all and people just flooding in to pray and take communion (as the music was blaring in the background:) and finally...some amazing traditional dancing where the guys dress up in super expensive, colorful, apparently really heavy costumes and do an interesting dance 'in sync.'

Other days we went out to the natural saunas where they made sauna rooms just from the heat from the volcano! Don't completely understand that, but it definitely worked. It was SO hot we were lit ally covered in sweat about 1 second after we went in, and couldn't even keep the door shut! Kinda cool.

We did a day hike up a mountain to get to see another active volcano which we got to see erupt q few times. As we did the hike we also got to plant some trees along the way!

 

The lady who runs the school and her husband have been doing this for 21 years...the language school AND planting trees. They said the average human requires the use of 22 trees for their oxygen requirement A DAY. My  favorite activity was the last day when we went out on a bike ride with the two of them and the other girl in the school. We got to ride out in the country,

 

IN the middle of Guatemala, on bikes (I realized how much I miss my bike!),

looking out at the volcano the whole time, and it was just beautiful with crop fields, random houses, soccer fields, rural people.

We would just kind of stop long the way, the couple would teach us some random things about what we were seeing, then we would keep on.  It was great, and peaceful.

After Xela, we headed to Lake Atitlan which is HUGE

 

and one of the most beautiful lakes in central America, BUT it is the wet season so it's pretty hard to actually see much of it...which we were completely aware of...but figured it was still worth a shot:) We stayed there about 4 days, explored three of the different towns there, enjoyed it..pretty much just relaxed, walked around,

kayaked on the lake,

even stayed in a HOTEL one night (we had our OWN room, we each had our own bed, a TV!, our own bathroom, and even real towels!) And it cost 100 quetzals for BOTH of us (meaning we each paid about $6). That was kind of fun:) One night we took a lancha (little boat) to one of the lakeside towns where one of the girls we met in Antigua has been living and working for like 4 weeks and got to see her and have dinner with her!

From there we went to a really famous market for the day called Chichicastenango, which unfortunately was not amazing! But we enjoyed just walking around and taking it all in. The stuff was just pretty much all the same, as per usual, so we hunkered down and ate some ice cream and waited for our shuttle that was going to leave in 5 HOURS! haha. We're pretty good at entertaining ourselves- either walking through supermarkets and looking at the crazy pairings they put together, interesting products, and seeing what is really expensive and what is really cheap OR just people watching.

From there we went to Antigua for the night where we would catch our bus to EL SALVADOR!!!!

Kind of huge...we had become kind of attached to Guatemala, but were VERY excited and looking forward to being in and seeing another country! It felt like quite a step in the trip. AND I was super excited that it was particularly El Salvador, because (as you who live there know) an overwhelming amount of the Latinoamericans in DC (in the Columbia Heights/Mt. Pleasant neighborhoods, the patients at my hospital, the students at John's school, etc) are from El Salvador! So that was really fun to get to be there and see it.
OK...some stories!
Well, the whole catching buses to new places is pretty hilarious. (the public buses, the infamous chicken buses which are old school buses from the US that are painted crazy colors, given names such as 'Esmerelda,' and are equipped with sound systems to blare either the newest greatest reggae-tone jams or Michael Jackson's greatest hits...they're basically 'pimped out' and cost like 30 cents for a 3 hour bus ride. I wish we could videotape the whole thing sometime. (not gonna happen...I would never get to watch the video or show it because my camera would probably be gone if I showed it in public during that process...we're pretty helpless). SO, we always have our huge backpacks on our backs (which have somehow been growing), our smaller backpacks on our front (yes, this is commonly referred to as 'the turtle mode'), some days we'll also have our purses draped over us somewhere if we couldn't fit everything in our other bags, then we have ONE more bag we take turns carrying that is our food bag...with our snacks of course (peanut butter, crackers, the good stuff, etc.). So we go to wherever we've heard is the 'bus terminal' for the chicken buses, once we get there everyone just starts yelling things (mostly different destinations) at us, we yell back whatever destination we actually want, they point to a bus and we jump on that one...as fast as we can. HOPEfully there is a seat for us (or at least for our bags), we strategize where to put the bags to keep them safe but also so that we're in a position to get them up and on our backs as fast as possible as the buses hardly even stop to let people on and off! Once we're on and situated, we ask a nice person 1. How much the fare actually is so we can just hand the guy the right amount of money when we comes by instead of having to ask and him telling us some crazy amount, and 2. If they know how far it is to our destination and if we need to transfer, and hope that based on all of our questions and frazzled state this nice person will just tell us when we need to jump off:) There's a lot of trust going on here! And people have seriously been SO nice and helpful so far, they're amazing! EVEN as we're being so obnoxious with our big bags and all.
So this one day going to Xela on the chicken bus, we caught it REALLY early in the morning so we were actually the first ones on the bus (which was really cool at first because we got first choice of seats! and could situate ourselves and our stuff and all just as we wanted, but then the bus got PACKED as always). We were each in our own seats, straddling our big backpacks which were jammed down between the seats on the floor, hugging our other stuff in our laps, we each had another person on the seat next to us on the aisle, and then the aisle was, of course, packed with people standing. Well, I had asked a lady really early on the usual questions, 'this is going to Xela/Quetzaltenango, right?' 'yes, eventually.' 'so we need to transfer?' 'yes.' 'do you know about how long until we get to this stop where we need to transfer and what is the town called where we need to transfer?' 'about 45 minutes and it's Chimaltenango.' Ok, great...all set. So...we're riding along and have clearly lost sight of each other as the bus is in it's usual state of being 'slightly' over capacity, we get to a larger looking little town so I decide maybe I should ask the girl next to me, 'is this Chimaltenango? Where you transfer to get to Xela?' Girl: 'mmm....no....' mumble mumble mumble something I can't understand. Next thing I know I feel someone tapping me on the shoulder, it's a very calm older man asking if I need to go to Xela. Why yes, kind sir, that's exactly where I need to go. Older man calmly says, 'oh, well this is where you need to get off and transfer. You need to get off and then catch the other bus right over there.' Well see this would be great if we weren't in a PACKED out bus, halfway back, with several pieces of luggage..one being a HUGE backpack. BAH! WHAAAAT?! I had thought through that we were gonna need about 10 minutes for the process of maneuvering our way off that chicken bus. So, I looked over and finally found Audrey through the 7 people in between us, yell to her that THIS is where we need to get off. We both looked around at all the people around us, began our looks of apology and started apologizing aloud...then went for it. By the end of this horrendous process the young girl next to me was acting like MY mom, the older lady next to audrey was acting like hers, and we had everyone around us in on the action. It took several people to get our packs from being lodged down in between the seats, then getting them up on our backs, while someone held our food bag and then piled it on (as we don't ever during the process hand over or set down our little bags with important stuff in it), and everyone just kind of pushed our huge selves through as they were making the driver aware we needed to get off over the incredible music blaring. PHEW! Good thing there was quite a bit of traffic at that intersection. I never thought we were going to get off at that stop. Once we were off, we still had no idea where we were supposed to be, we looked back up at the bus and the older man who had helped us originally was shaking his head and smirking and pointed across the street in the direction we needed to head. We waved thanks, all had a good little laugh, and headed for the bus direct to Xela. Of course one again just asking several people, 'is this where you wait for the bus to Xela?' 'is THIS the bus to Xela?' Again, people have been SO nice and helpful and many times have gone even above and beyond. That's been cool. One man helping us out one time even said, 'it just brings me joy to help you out...I want to give a good impression of my country.' :) cool. You sure did. And that was actually in El Salvador! In case I needed another reason to like it:)
Ok, I'll write more later...but that should be enough to read for now. :) missing you all!