My Front Porch

Ok except for the barbed wire (this is Guatemala after all) you have to admit that my front porch ROCKS.

The Green Caribbean

Izabal, the region where I work, has more protected areas than any other region in Guatemala.  Called the Caribe Verde, or the Green Caribbean, it abounds with breathtaking scenery as far as the eye can see. Part river, part bay, part jungle, and part ocean, Izabal is a unique area teaming with wildlife and inhabited by a diverse mixture of cultures.  Yet just how protected these areas truly are is up for debate.  The government lacks proper resources to ensure that these massive sections of jungle are protected from threats such as deforestation, slash-and-burn farming, and poaching of endangered species.

These threats, combined with an increasing number of tourists who come traipsing through the wildnerness and zooming up the river in motorboats has created a problematic vision of the future and only serve to highlight the importance of creating conservation awareness and fostering environmental education now before it’s too late.

The Joys of Boat Travel

Livingston, Guatemala is not an island, yet the only way to get here is by boat.  In many ways, this has helped preserve the local culture and charm, but in other ways it has also limited development and educational opportunities in the area.  To get to a hospital, grocery store, university, or shopping center, you need to take a boat ride.

At first I thought it was lovely going everywhere by boat- what a beautiful concept, right?  However, after living here for a month I have already grown tired of the commute and dealing with all the hustlers down on the dock.  I have also had to deal with quite a few rocky rides through the crashing waves, clutching my laptop to my chest and praying the water doesn’t come overboard.

Since I’m here working on a project in sustainable tourism, one of the proposals that always comes up is building a road to Livingston to increase the flow of tourists in the area.  While the reality of this happening in the near future is almost non-existent, I can’t help but wonder, would this destroy the place or improve it?  At what point are development projects and improved infrastructure more detrimental to the places they are trying to help then beneficial?

Getting away from it all…

Imagine sailing across the ocean, with nothing as far as the eyes can see except blue horizon and the endless sea.  After hours of cutting through the waves, tiny dots finally pop up in the distance, and slowly take the shape of palm tree covered islands, ringed with white sand and surrounded by water so blue it hurts.

You are miles from anything, there is no electricity, no cell phone service, and you are lucky to find running water.  Welcome to the Sapodilla Cayes Marine Park of Belize, a protected area comprising a few scruffy islands and miles of untouched coral reefs teaming with life below the surface.

The first day we went snorkeling, and I jumped into the water and found myself, quite literally, on top of a Sting Ray.  We glided along together for a few minutes, and I was mesmerized by his fluttering, graceful slide through the water.  Before I came to my senses and realized how dangerous he could potentially be, he had already swum off into the murky depths and I resumed my leisurely paddling.

The next morning, we were supposed to go see a ship wreck that I had been dreaming about for a week.  Yet I awoke in a feverish haze, felt sick to my stomach, and promptly fell asleep under a palm tree.  The group left me to rest it out, and I woke up in a sweaty delirium realizing, to my great delight, that I was the only person on the entire island.   Even though my fever and body aches made for a miserable day, I can’t help but think that, truth be told, I was really quite lucky.  How often do you get to have your very own island for the day and not pay a dime?

So long paradise, I’ll be back soon.  That ship wreck and I have a date and I plan to keep it, denguesque fever be damned.

Independance Day- are we really free?

A few days ago, Guatemala celebrated it’s Independence Day.  It falls on the same day as Mexico’s, but unlike last year which I spent shouting and dancing in the Zocalo (VIVA!), this year’s was spent watching school children parade about the tiny town of Livingston.  Some of the girls were quite sassy, and wearing colorful uniforms and shaking it about town.  Others looked more like delicate little flowers, wilting in the brutal sun.  And yet as all the children danced about town and all the men got wasted in the cantinas, I couldn’t help but wonder- are we really free?  Or is this fiesta just a grand cover-up for some of the massive injustices and inequalities that continue in Latin America?

I later learned that most of the schoolchildren in the parade came from private schools, and that their parents had to pay for the uniforms and the instruments, which were pretty pricey for the average family here in Izabal.  Quite a few kids watched with jealous eyes from the sidelines, although one little guy found his own unique way to join in.  He just wants to play too.

As for me,  while I certainly enjoyed watching the most exciting thing I’ve seen thus far in the sleepy town of Livingston, the day seemed bittersweet.  While I raise my beer to Latin American independence from colonial rule,  I’ll celebrate with joy on the day that I’ll little children can afford to participate equally in any parade they want to, can eat all the rice and beans their little bellies can handle, and can swat away a mosquito without trembling in fear that they might fall victim to the latest wave of dengue fever that has been killing scores of young people in the area recently.

Poetry in Motion

On a recent afternoon I watched this couple fishing on the shores of the nearby beach. It was back-breaking labor, the man and woman paddled out to throw their net deep in the water, and then slowly pulled it ashore inch-by-inch, leaning back and using every once of strength to reel in the tangled web.

I wasn't the only one mesmerized

It was an everyday act for these two people, and yet I was mesmerized by the simple grace and beauty of their movements. At once adonic and brutal, they pulled hand-over-hand waiting for something to emerge from the deep to provide them with sustenance.

I was reminded yet again of how far removed Americans tend to be from the food they eat. This couple labored for several back-breaking hours just to cull a few fish and shrimp from the deep, and yet at home I casually stroll down long, air-conditioned aisles searching for Alaskan salmon or Chilean sea-bass, toss it in my cart, and drive home. I wonder how drastically we would change our eating habits if we were forced to produce or gather the food we ate instead of simply buying it?

Shotgun Shack…

And you may find yourself living in a shotgun shack
And you may find yourself in another part of the world
And you may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile
And you may find yourself in a beautiful house, with a beautiful Wife
And you may ask yourself-well…how did I get here?       -Talking Heads

Shotgun Shack?

Seriously, this is exactly what happened to me.  I suddenly woke up in a shotgun shack in a small Caribbean village only accessible by boat.  And I keep asking myself, how did I get here?

I had everything all planned out.  I had just finished traveling around Mexico for 2 months and was gloriously settling into life in the good old USA.  I had a waitressing job where I was making like $200 a night, a fabulous house to live in rent free, and was once again reunited with my cat Mariano.  I even had plans to buy a car, an ipod, and maybe a pair of high heels.  And yet, after 3 short weeks in the consumerist capital of the world I found myself on a plane to- Guatemala City?  And then suddenly on a 5.5 hour bus ride, and then on a boat ride?  And next thing I know, I´ve abandoned my country yet again, and holed up in some exotic corner of the world.

home sweet home

Livingston, Guatemala is hemmed in by verdant jungle, a river, and the ocean everywhere else.  When I tell people you have to take a boat to get here, everybody thinks I live on an island.  Think again.  In the irony of ironies, Livingston is spelled almost the same as  my hometown in the Blue Ridge Mountains, Lovingston, Virginia.  One letter off, and yet worlds apart.

When you pick up and move so quickly between two different worlds, the cultural, economic, and social differences become adamantly apparent.  The weekend before I left the states I was selling fancy laundry pick and delivery services to rich UVA kids so they would never even have to think about carting their laundry to -gasp!- the washing machines in the next dorm over!!  Meanwhile a few days later I suddenly find myself walking past the public laundromat of Livingston, a bunch of concrete slabs under a dilapidated tin roof.  The women come from miles around to beat their clothes out and scrub them for hours in the hot sun.  While I guess it beats using a dengue-infested creek/sewer, it sure makes me wonder how privileged Americans can be sometimes.  Oh the ironies.

Public Laundromat

I apologize for the delay in updating my blog, but moving to a different country in less then a weeks notice can be a bit unnerving.  I’m currently working as a travel writer/marketing guru for a really cool sustainable tourism consulting firm.  We’re working on a project to create conservation awareness and improve tourism infrastructure in the Izabal region of the country, and I am really excited about the work I’m doing.  Stay tuned for more updates from my new and exciting Shotgun Shack.

Colima

Calle Colima, a humble tree-lined street in the heart of Roma Norte, is one of the best places to find hot vintage items, unique designer t-shirts, and blue corn quesadillas. This is why I love my hood, because the senora on my corner still rolls out the tortillas by hand (and at only 10 pesos this is a serious steal) even though hip new boutiques have slowly started to pop up with increasing frequency. Take that, Condechi!

The latest endeavor is Clinica, the atelier of Paola Hernandez, an up and coming young designer who has been called Mexico’s next it girl and whose designs have been featured in Elle and Vougue.  In addition to Clinica, Colima is home to Sicario, Goodbye Folk, U Store, Shelter, and, on the bougey side of Insurgentes, American Apparel.  While it was triste to see a corporate chain popping up in la Roma, at least it’s on the Condesa side of the road, AKA the part of Roma that doesn’t real count as Roma.  On this side of Insurgentes the only big-name brand I’ve seen is Subway (thank god there’s no starbucks yet!).

A good friend of mine and an amazing journalist just made the switch from Condesa to Roma and has blogged about how she’s slowly succumbing to the undeniable charm and hip style that is la Roma.  Ugandanesque power outages and water cutoffs may come with the territory, but so does fabulous street art and my new favorite vintage store ever.

Dispatches from Juarez

Ciudad Juarez, the epicenter of Mexico’s drug war and a major industrial hub and border crossing, is a surreal place.   Old American school buses painted over with white chug through this gritty town transporting hundreds of workers from the slums where they live to the massive factories, or maquiladores, that have sprung up in recent post-NAFTA years.  The army has taken over the town, and caravans of young soldiers with machine guns and rocket launchers patrol the streets, setting up road blocks and searching houses at random.

There are several factors at work in this city, and the combination of all of them has created a violent, lawless, center of urban  sprawl.  Migration, drug traficking, cartels, gangs, industrialization, and overpopulation are just a few of the problems here in Juarez.  Yet for all the negative things people say about it, I have been pleasantly surprised by much of what I see here.  For the most part, things here have been normal for me, except for the occacional brush with the army (they did come search the house I was staying at for guns and I happened to answer the door to an armed troop of soldiers in what was a seemingly peaceful suburb).

I am currently volunteering at a migrant shelter, La Casa del Migrante, a few kilometers from the border.  We mostly receive Mexicans who have been deported but we also get a few Central Americans who have come up on the train and on their way to the states.  It is both awe-inspiring and heartbreaking to talk to these guys and watch their faces as they come in every day.

Yesterday I met Alvaro, a young guy from Hondurous, who had left home with a little less then $100 and survived for three weeks on the train.  The Southern border is infamous for being controlled by las Mara, a ruthless gang that likes to murder young migrants with machetes, rape women, and extortion the poor families of the Central Americans they catch by kidnapping their victims and calling home to ask for money.  Alvaro told me he was once shot at, and saw many others falling off the train.  Another time, the Mexican migration (or las Mara pretending to be Mexican migration) rounded up about 80 of them and was placing them in a holding cell, but Alvaro somehow escaped with one other guy and ran off in the woods.  When I think about all he has been through, it blows my mind.  He is only 19.  His English is amazingly  good for having only spent one year in the states. I think he was deported but he just tells me he went back home to see his Mom.  He tells me he’s going to New Orleans, and I sure hope he gets there.

When I asked Alvaro which border was more dangerous, the southern one or the nothern one, he said he wasn’t sure.  They are both a living hell, he says.

Chiapas Street Art

Chiapas, the southernmost state in Mexico and home to the zapatista revolution, is an amazing place, rich in natural beauty and indigenous cultures.  I recently traveled there with my father and was awed by the friendly people, breathtaking views, and political graffiti.  San Cristobal de la Casas, a town where we spent several nights and the main hub for tourists in the region, is a picturesque town located high in the mountains and full of crumbling colonial buildings covered in edgy graffiti.  It was the first time in Mexico I have seen graffiti be so political.