Book exchanges

Even though each hostel is different, some crowded and dirty, others clean and sparse, some elements run commonly through all of them. 

Most have kitchens, for example. Though, a “kitchen”, we’ve learned, can include everything from a stove, microwave, toaster and spices, to a large, gas burner out back near the utility sink.

Most also have book exchanges, a necessary service for anyone traveling more than a week or so. Aside from the actual books we find, the selection provides its own entertainment.

In one exchange in Antigua, Guatemala, options included Boiling a Frog, by Christopher Brooklyn, two dozen Baby Sitters Club books, Ronald Reagan’s, An American Life, Science and Health with Keys to the Scripture and a wide array of tantalizing romances by Nora Roberts and Danielle Stelle.

As the rain poured down outside, I sat on the floor, scanning through a hidden gem: Guiness Book of World Records.

“Fastest Crossing of the America’s by Motorcycle: Nick Alcock and Hugh Sinclair, (UK) rode a pair of Honda African Twin 742-cc motorcycles from Prudhoe Bay, AK to Ushuaia, Argentina, in 47 days and 12 hours from Aug. 29 to Oct. 15, 2001, a distance of around 15,000 miles (24,000 km). Alcock and Sinclair embarked on the challenge to raise funds for Action Aide.”

I can’t imagine covering the distance we have in 47 days, and we still have most of South America to travel.

Another book, nestled next to the 25 Greatest Achievements in Golf, promises to reveal “startling new evidence” on Big Foot’s existence.

I settled on a three-in-one mystery. I  figured it would provide thoughtless entertainment for an upcoming bus ride.

Our hostel in Panama City upgraded the average book exchange solving the problem of worn-out, cheaper paperbacks filling the shelves. One exchange is open to everyone, the other is locked, and books must be approved before swapped. Fortunately, they accepted The Pilot’s Wife, and I took Ken Follett’s bohemoth novel, Pillars of the Earth.

In some ways, book exchanges are a library for travelers and we’ve started choosing hostels in part by which ones offer the service. By the end of our six-month journey we both will have read dozens of books and purchased only two.

Never too old

This ran in January in the Casper Star-Tribune, but I can’t find the link. So, here it is…

Participants carrying their boards line the top of Cerro Negro volcano outside of Leon, Nicaragua.

 

We stand at the top of the most active volcano in Central America, arms resting on two-foot-wide boards, staring over the edge.

It slopes nicely at first, like many of the white, snowy hills my dad sent me down as a kid in Wyoming. Unfortunately, midway through the nearly 2,400-foot mountain, the nice slope drops off, and ground is lost until scores of yards later when it levels into a field of boulders that looks like a graveyard.

“You should pick up some speed at first, before you hit the ledge and really take off,” Danny, our 20-something British guide tells us.

I’d been here before, three years ago, and remember it as an exciting, yet relatively safe experience. After all, no one in our group went home bloody.

My husband, Josh, wanted to try this time, and I figured since my parents were visiting for two weeks it would be an adventuresome experience I knew my dad could come out of unscathed.

Only, as I look down the hill where, in 2001, a Frenchman briefly broke a world record riding a bike, things seem different. It appears steeper, and these boards are slimmer, more sophisticated.

Last time I boarded down Cerro Negro we used wider sleds, with exposed wood underneath and a foam pad to sit on.

Danny says the sport has regressed into speed-craving insanity.

Now, the boards we hold are lined with metal and an extra piece of “go fast” Formica. The fastest recorded time on one of these is roughly 51 miles and hour. In a car that’s not so scary, on an inch-thick wooden board on black volcanic gravel only slightly more forgiving than asphalt, it’s a whole different story.

This wasn’t my plan for a safe-but-fun activity.

I quickly think of ways to get my dad off the hill without sledding down, but can’t come up with anything. I can’t believe I’ve drug him up this thing. He did crazy things as a young person, but now he should be sensible. Once you’re in your 60s you should want to sit and read and take long walks, right?

Danny tells us we’re going down the hill in pairs. Two tracks, about 20-feet apart, defined at the beginning and then washed out farther down from past boarder’s rolling.

About two-dozen of us crowd around the tracks, wondering who’s going to go first and feeling nervous as volcano boarding becomes a reality. Nearly all of us are in our 20s, with the exception of my dad and two other men a bit younger.

There’s a pause and some feet shuffling after Danny asks for volunteers. I’ll feel better about this after I watch a couple go down first, I think. I’ll talk go-slow strategy with my dad. That’ll help.

Nope. Apparently, my father’s going to be the first one down the hill, I realize as he trots his board to the start. He and a 20-something Dutch kid. 

He takes off, impervious to my shouts to be careful, and I watch as he disappears over the edge, neck and neck with his racing partner. I can’t tell how fast they’re going, except the Dutch kid seemed fearless and disappointed that the speed gun wasn’t working because he wanted to beat the record.

A tiny speck at the bottom, I see my dad walking, though don’t understand why he’s so far away from his board.

Minutes later I, too, am at the bottom.

After I collect my board, and myself, and remove as much volcano gravel out of my clothes as possible, I look over and see him grinning ear to ear, blood dripping off his nose.

He fell, as did his partner. But, he got down first.

As racers pile at the bottom of the hill, some blackened and bloody, some just blackened, all stop in awe of his wounds.

One guy stops to take a picture.

“Man, that’s awesome. I was just telling someone else that I have to do this kind of stuff now, cause I don’t think I’ll be able to when I’m 40!”

My dad didn’t do it when he was 40 either; he waited until he was 61.

The comparison became a running joke, marking the age when everything ends. Though in reality I also find myself cramming in everything I can, figuring I won’t be able to do it when I’m 40, or 60.

But, after two weeks traveling through Nicaragua and Costa Rica with my parents, meeting countless other post-40 travelers, and coming in behind more than one post-60 runner in my only marathon, I realize my adventures have just begun.

If my dad can slide down the most active volcano in Central America at 61, and my mom can climb up one in her late 50s, surely I will be able to do anything I want. Though for my emotional well-being, I’d prefer if they kept the extreme sports to a minimum.

Donald Robinson after volcano boarding in Nicaragua.

Nicaragua, still a wonderful country

 

A string of volcanoes form a line outside of Leon, Nicaragua. We're standing on top of one of the youngest volcanoes in the world, preparing to slide down.

 

Managua is a death trap, we’d heard. Even staying in a nice place, we needed to be careful. As it turns out, it isn’t a pleasant city, and we don’t need to stay there again. On our last night before my parents came on December 27, we walked to a convenience store down the street from our very posh hotel. On our way back, down a dark, relatively empty street. We hear a man running up behind us, yelling for us to stop. He shouting in English, and we can’t keep walking, ignoring him. We turn, and both think that this is it, this is when we’re going to be robbed. He wouldn’t have found much, since neither of us had more than $20 or so with us, but the trauma would stay with us.

He needs help. He tells us he has AIDS and was deported by the U.S. when he was living in North Carolina. He can’t find food or medicine in Nicaragua and needs money to buy milk. He has papers confirming his disease, and says he can’t afford food. He isn’t going to rob us. Josh gives him the amount he wants and he walks away, shouting his thanks.

As we turn around to go back to our hotel, I realize standing about 50 feet away are three armed guards from a nearby bank. They weren’t standing there when we walked to the convenience store, but they are there now, hands on their hips, feet planted firmly. I had always wondered if guards would do anything if people were robbed near them, and I learned tonight that they were ready to interfere had there been a problem.

My parents came the next day, and they started their two-week journey through Leon and Granada, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica.

We’d heard nearly as many horror stories about the dangers of Nicaragua as we had about Mexico, and worried about traveling through the country. But, as with Mexico, Nicaraguans proved to be nice, helpful, friendly and safe. Each person we encountered seemed eager to work with us and make sure we had everything we needed.

When I lived in Honduras I recommended people visit Nicaragua, but other travelers made it sound like the country is more dangerous now. It’s not, and I still encourage people to visit because of the volcanoes, forests, colonial buildings, revolutionary spirit and engaging people.

One of the many cathedrals throughout Granada, Nicaragua. Colonial buildings are part of Granada's charm.

Lost

• If you’re not directionally inclined, travel with someone else who is: My sense of direction is generally laughable. If I use a map, and the streets have signs, I can find my way. But, if navigation requires that “sense” that some people have, I will go the wrong way 98 percent of the time. Fortunately, Josh will (almost) always choose the right way.

Additionally, the one who is always wrong should stop arguing with the one who is always right.

I recently wrote a tip column with the above section included. One would think that means I fully understand my horrible sense of direction.

So why, several days after I wrote that column, acknowledging my uncanny ability to get lost, did I decide I should be the one who found a hotel while Josh waited with our bags, is beyond me.

We are in Antigua, Guatemala, when we decide to test a tip we heard in Mexico. A man told us when he looks for hotels in cities with many options; one person waits with the luggage while the other tours rooms. It sounds reasonable, and a good way to find what we want without lugging our backpacking backpacks around with us everywhere. Since Apparently, since I’ve been to Antigua several times before, the streets form a logical grid around a center square, and my hotel-negotiating Spanish is better than Josh’s, I launch out on my own.

I have a map, with some streets and some names. We’ve marked where some of the hotels could be. I am feeling brave and confident. Josh promises he won’t move.

The farther I walk the more lost I become. None of the streets have names matching the ones on my map. All the buildings look the same.

How could I be this lost so quickly?

Surely I’m not lost. I can figure this out.

I stand on a corner, holding the paper map in front of me, and know I’m in trouble when I have to turn my body so I line up with the map.

Fortunately, the city’s safe, and full of other tourists. They’re lost like me, I’m sure of it.

I turn left. I’m sure I should go left.

Now I really don’t know where I am, and am not sure how many blocks I’ve walked. I can’t find myself on the map.

Panic sets in.

I see a hostel. It isn’t one of the ones we were looking for, but will work, and I can’t bear to wander any more. The woman tells me she’ll hold the room for 15 minutes for me to return.

I tell her I hope I can make it back that soon.

I walk to the end of the street, and, by luck, turn right. When I look up I see the square, where I left Josh 20 minutes ago.

Somehow, I managed to walk myself in a maze of a circle, eventually ending up one street behind where I started.

Josh laughs when I pronounce that his Spanish ability far exceeds my directional one. Never again will I venture out on my own.

“But the streets form a grid,” he says.

I don’t respond, I’m too busy thinking: Now where was that hostel?

Orchids, coffee, and a little bit of Germany

The monja blanca, Guatemala’s national flower. The middle is supposed to look like a white nun praying, hence the name.

In Guatemala’s mountains, known as the highlands, sits Coban, a wonderful city with a bizarre mix of German and Latin.

German’s came to Guatemala in the late 1800s, establishing coffee and cardamom plantations for export. While most of the Germans have apparently left, many pressured out of the country after World War II, the plantations, and architectural influences, remain.

Our guide in one of the coffee fincas, told us that jesuit priests brought coffee to Guatemala in the 1700s as decorative plants. People then began to cultivate and drink it, replacing the cocoa bean as the hot beverage of choice. 

Most of the best coffee is exported to the U.S. and other countries, while nearly all of the spices leave the country.

Most of the cardamom produced is sent to India. Carmen, our guide, told us that because of cardamom’s high price, very few Guatemalans buy or use it.

Coban’s other draw, aside from its close proximity to interesting caves and waterfalls, is its orchids. The national flower, the monja blanca, or “white nun” grows naturally near Coban. Juan, our guide at an orchid nursery, said growers produce 1,000 monja rosas, or “pink nuns,” for each monja blanca. He’s spent 29 years working at the nursery, obsessing over thousands of types of orchids.

Some of the orchids were as small as ants, growing in the center of leaves the size of thumbnails. Others grew out of wine corks.

One orchid perched on top of a cement post. When workers tried to place it soil like the others, it died, but a portion continued growing on the cement.

Another plant grows on a telephone wire outside of our hotel. 

The interesting, and affordable, sites, coupled with cooler weather and friendly people, make Coban a good stop between the ruins of Tikal and Antigua, Guatemala.

Coffee beans ready to be processed at a plantation in Coban, Guatemala.

Ah, Central America

For a brief time, between the leisure of driving myself in Wyoming and comfy travel buses in Mexico, I forgot what those preschool buses felt like.

It only took 20 minutes at 3 a.m. in Belize for me to remember. 

Chicken buses, as most foreigners call them, or public buses, as they’re more commonly referred to locally, welcome travelers with green, straight-back seats and just enough leg room for a 5-year-old. I forgot the discomfort in the past three years. I also realized my prior Central American travels didn’t include all my worldly belongings.

In Mexico, on the nicer travel buses, backpacks weren’t a problem. They went in a compartment under the bus to be retrieved at our destination. Unfortunately, chicken buses don’t have compartments underneath, so bags must go inside. 

At 3 a.m., still groggy from sleep and already sweaty from walking, we plopped in seats near the front of the nearly empty bus, put our bags next to us and prepared for some sleep.

The bus started filling, and within 30 minutes each seat had two people and Josh and I became those Americans taking up too much space. I pushed mine as far to the side as I could, Josh, with a bigger bag, put his on his lap. For the next four hours we sat: me, wedged against my bag with my dirty sandals in my face, next to a large, perspiring man, and Josh, his knees jammed in the back of a seat made for toddlers, 60-pound bag on his lap and Belizean girl trying not to fall off the bench.

That bus took us nearly to the border, when a taxi way past its last legs took us to immigration and another beyond.

Our final three-hour leg on our way to Flores, Guatemala, put us in a 12-passenger van filled with no less than 22 people.

At one point there may have been the option to put a child on Josh’s lap to make more room. Only by a small miracle did the door roll closed.

Taxi drivers mobbed us at the bus stop, asking to take us everywhere we didn’t need to go all over the city and country.

Oddly, it felt good to be back in the chaos.

Surprising central Mexico

We can add Chihuahua, Mexico to the list of places in Mexico worth visiting. While reports coming from the city describe it as a haven for dangerous activity, we found it peaceful, beautiful and friendly. Our hotel sat several blocks from the main town square, with rooms surrounding a manicured courtyard full of colorful birds.

Off the main square families, grandparents, children and teens wandered down a shop-lined street walking street. The city government has poured money into creating welcoming parks and both the government and private citizens continue restoring colonial buildings and palaces to their former glory.

I’m sure some areas are not welcoming to visitors, though that can easily be said about many U.S. cities.

We stayed for two nights and could easily have stayed longer.

Hidalgo de Parral, best known as the city where men filled revolutionary hero Pancho Villas’ car full of holes, is another Mexican city worth a stop.

The day we arrived I think every school child in the city ran through the streets. Each wore sports uniforms, traditional costumes or beautiful dresses. A parade wound through the streets, past a platform full of Mexican officials.

Several hours later, we stopped a mother and daughter in a square with scores of vendors and asked why the celebration.

The mother stared at me for a second, “It’s the 20^th of November. Independence day.’

“Mom, it’s the day of the revolution,” her teenage daughter corrected.”

“Ah yes, the day of the revolution.”

Now it all made sense. In each Mexican city we’d visited for the past three weeks we either stayed on, ate on or walked on a street called the 20^th of November. Now we knew why.

That night an 11-member Ranchero band played classics to crowds in the same square.

I kicked myself for not realizing the importance of the day earlier.

The next day we traveled to yet another city with cautions. Yet Durango, in between Chihuahua and Mexico City, has more art museums and cultural centers than many of the smaller cities I’ve visited in the U.S. Another walking street allowed pedestrians to wander freely.

Best of all, both nights we were in the city live music poured from the main square. Saturday a band called The Baby Boomers: Rock and the Beatles, played odd selections of American music, some in English, some in Spanish, from the ‘50s, ‘60s and ‘70s. The next night one of Mexico’s more popular easy-listening boy bands played for the night. While we waited for the show to start sitting in two of the several hundred folding chairs, I wondered if it was safe, it was slightly after dark. Then I realized next to me sat a man in his 70s, kids played in front of us and an older woman in her 80s crocheted a pink beanie while she waited for the show to start.

I don’t doubt the possible dangers in most cities we’ve visited, numbers of kidnappings and robberies don’t lie. But, at least as far as we’ve seen, the main squares and town centers are filled not with gangs and drugs but grandparents, families and mariachi bands dressed in cowboy boots, hats and Wranglers.

We still don’t stray far from our hotel after dark, and remain constantly aware of our surroundings. We are also still constantly surprised by Mexico, an incredibly diverse country with kind people and endless possibilities.

 

A mariachi band plays in the street in Chihuahua, Mexico.

 

 

A different kind of dining

Urique has three restaurants. We ate at one that morning and she only had eggs, sausage and ham. The other  was closed.

We walked into our third and final alternative to find a room full of smoking men, one table, and one very old, very gassy, woman.

They stared at us, we stared back.

“Can we eat here?” I asked, trying not to sound scared.

They stared.

Finally one man said,  ”go through that door.”

Through the door we found the kitchen and a sweating woman.

She stared at us, we stared back.

“Do you have food?”

“What do you want?”

“I don’t know, what do you have?”

“Meat…shrimp…and porkchops.”

“Meat would be good.”

“Meat with vegetables or without.”

“With vegetables, please.”

A long pause, as she continued to stare.

“How many?”

“Oh, two, please.”

She then turned around, and we saw another door led us to a long table with chairs. We left and sat down.

Several minutes later, our meat and vegetables arrived. To our surprise the meat was a rich, spicy kind of pot roast with avocado, tomatoes, lime, refried beans and tortillas. Even if we hadn’t been starving I think it would have been amazing. The shrimp dish looked even better.

We walked out of the canyon that morning, hot, thirsty, hungry and starving. Since our plan had been to hike part of the Silver Trail, which ran from a town called Batopilas to another called Samachique where we could come directly back, we didn’t bring our guidebook or many supplies.  Unfortunately, no guides in Batopilas would take us on the four-day hike up the Silver Trail, but one would take us on the three-day one to the opposing town.

Labrao Valderama, led Josh and I and his two mules (until one hurt its leg, and then just one mule) up and out of Batopilas Canyon and down into Urique Canyon. He took us into Urique, a town of no more than 400 or so, and dropped us off at one of the more questionable hotels I’ve seen.

“Here’s where you stay, it’s a good place,” he said.

“Really?” I asked, too weak to argue.

The hotel owner emerged, told us he had rooms, said the price was 150 pesos, less than $12, and with hugs Librao left.

Since our room appeared to be slightly less-friendly and spacious than a prison cell, we immediately left to find food.

Eating in Urique redefined “home-cooked meals.” We weren’t in our mother’s homes, but we were definitely in a mother’s home, asking her what food she had in the refrigerator, and eating what she made.

Between the relatively unfriendly people and spider-infested sleeping quarters, we were more than relieved when we climbed into a glorified Chevy Suburban with 13 other people yesterday morning to take us back to Creel. Eight-hours on crumbling dirt roads, a puking kid and significant discomfort later, we were back.

Tomorrow we head to Chihuahua, eager to continue our journey south through central Mexico.

Our guide, 64-year-old Librao, moves his mule down one side of Urique Canyon in the Copper Canyon area of Mexico.

 

 

Why traveling by bus is great

I sat in between Josh and Alexis, in my assigned bus seat, on the hour-long ride from Navajoa to Alamos.
Alexis,11, rides the bus every day to and from Navajoa with his mom and two brothers. His school, along with his mother’s work, is in the much larger city.
He informed me early on in our conversation that I don’t always use the right feminine or masculine version of the word “the” with my Spanish words. It’s not hard, I learned, words like agua are masculine, everyone knows that. El agua.
“Which language is harder to learn, English or Spanish?” he then asked.
“For me, Spanish is harder to learn, but for you, English.
“No, English is harder. Why do vowels in English make different sounds in different words?”
“I don’t know, because it’s a hard language.”
“Hah, so you admit English is harder to learn than Spanish.”
“It is harder for you to learn, but not for me, because I learned it when I was young. But, if you had a person who didn’t speak either English or Spanish, English would probably be harder to learn.”
“A person who doesn’t speak English or Spanish? Like a baby?”
“No, not a baby, someone who speaks something else.”
“Like a Chinese person?”
“Right, a Chinese person would maybe have an easier time learning Spanish than English.”
“Is English harder than Japanese?”
I said no, and then launched into a lesson on Romantic languages that may have been lost on him, then again, my Spanish may not have done the trick either.
When he grows up he wants to be a professional. He doesn’t know what kind, just a professional. Maybe a painter, he likes to paint. But, painters don’t made a lot of money, and he wants to make a lot of money.
I told him he could be a doctor or a lawyer .
“I couldn’t be a doctor, because here if you don’t fix the person who is sick their family might kill you. It’s a dangerous job.”
“That does sound dangerous, maybe you could be a veterinarian, like you’re dad.”
“No, no, no. I hate blood and there’s a lot of blood.”
We also covered why Alamos is wonderful, why school is boring and why he doesn’t care about English class.
Without bus travel, meeting an 11-year-old boy willing to give a Spanish lesson would be tough. I’ll remember that the next time a person selling tickets tells us a bus might come at noon but might not come at all.

It’s hot, and I’m a mountain person

Day of the Dead didn’t happen in Hermosillo.

While I know the day passed, there were more signs celebrating Halloween than the cultural Day of the Dead.

Josh and I returned to the city hoping there would be festivities of some kind. In the main square between the Cathedral and primary government building men worked around the clock earlier in the week to set up booths. Surely they would be doing something interesting with the booths.

Nope.

When we arrived anxiously back at the square on the night of the 31^st we found empty booths again. I asked an official-looking woman what was going on, and she told us it was for a book exhibition on Friday.

Will anything happen for Day of the Dead, I asked, with hope in my voice.

No.

So, Josh and I realized northern Mexico, or at least northern Sonoma, is not the place to experience Dia de Muertos.

Three nights were more than enough in the hot, crowded city of Hermosillo, and we left Monday morning.

The journey from Hermosillo to San Carlos began with a long bus ride Guaymas. followed by a trek through a blazing-hot city for 30 minutes looking for a local bus. Arriving in San Carlos still a little sweaty, we left the local bus, walked through town and finally found a dive and snorkel shop in town advertising in English.

The American woman inside was kind and answered our hotel questions with sympathy. She and her husband have lived in San Carlos for 40 years. Originally from Tucson, Ariz., they’ve made the beach town their home. So have many other Americans we discovered, since most of the signs in town are in English and U.S. license plates largely outnumber Mexican ones.

“Where are you going?” she asked.

Trying to make conversation, I told her eventually we’re planning to go to the tip of South America.

“You’re doing the long haul.”

She looked at me and paused, noticing the copious amounts of sweat and permanent worried expression on my face.

“You’re going to have to toughen up to make it down there, honey,” she said. “You look beat.”

Dang it.

I have now vowed to look fiercer when talking to strangers, and tougher. Unfortunately, I don’t think I can do much about sweating when walking around with a 35-pound pack in 90-degree weather.

The only Day of the Dead recognition we saw in the city.