A tribute to 10 years

Melanie and Chris

There´s shockingly not many pictures of Melanie and I after over 10 years of being together. Obviously mostly pictures of me as she is the much better photographer and me of course being so picturesque (a fine example in the album cover).

There are a few pics of us though and I´d like to share them with everyone as I think it shows our true colors when we´re together and our true love and friendship for one another.

Hope everyone enjoys!

(click on the picture to open the web album... mother)

Chris and Melanie

Shettling Down in Xela (pronounced Shay-la)

a.k.a. Quetzaltenango, Guatemala

We were both ready to leave Mexico and find someplace to settle down for a while. Although we have experienced so many incredible things there it was quite exhausting; the constant moving, bus trips, hotels/hostels wear on a person after a while.

This time, however, we did not choose the ADO busline and had a much nicer journey. We signed up with a private tour company for a reasonable rate and were promised a comfortable 12 hour journey into Guatemala in a nice van. They also promised to walk us through customs and other potential snags which turned out to be worth its weight in gold. More on that later.

The day of our departure we were down in the hotel lobby waiting at the specified time, 7:00 a.m. We waited, waited, then waited some more. I silently contemplated walking down the street to the corner store where we purchased our journey to see if the building was now vacated. We did hand over the full cost of the journey in cash days ago just going by the credentials posted on the plaque behind the desk. It was at least a hundred bucks. Had we been scammed?

No, right then the guy drove up with his coffee looking like I did when I would roll out of bed, throw scrubs on , and stumble down the stairs to work at the hospital -- pillow lines on his face and everything. Lets just say I don´t miss that in the slightest. He, and the nice dude that worked at the hotel, helped us load our things in to the back of the van and we were off.

It was a large van that could comfortably hold 10 adults. We were the first ones onboard so I thought maybe I'd be able to stretch out and get comfy. We proceeded to stop at six or seven other hotels, one of them picking up six passengers at once. We crammed into that bus like it was a clown car at the circus, all thirteen of us. I still managed to fall asleep during a large portion of the first part of the trip. Luckily we were right next to a small window that cracked. Appartantly from hearing the others complaints at the border it got quite hot and steamy back there. I had a dream about that same bus ride, only instead of dirty smelly backpackers, ligerie clad Victoria's secret models that smelled like flowers were cramming in. Where was I?...

...Oh ok, so I woke up a little while before our breakfast stop about 4 hours into the journey. The scenery was astounding; gorgeous gigantic mountains everywhere surrounding cute little towns and villages in the valleys below. Cute locals in colorful outfits walking right next to the highway some trying to get the driver to stop top sell there wares. We passed a cop going really really fast, definately speeding. The driver made eye-contact with the officer and gave a little friendly honk as we whizzed by. He actually honked at a lot of people. I was then especially happy we had gone with this service as they had apparantly paid off the police ahead of time. I had heard many stories of assuredly having to pay a ¨tax¨ to the local officers when making the journey alone. Also there were some stories of highway robberies. These people seeemed to know everyone and the journey went totally smooth.

We had a decent breakfast at a small town along the way. The bathrooms didn't have toilet paper and the toilets wouldn't flush though. Sorry to the person that went in after me... I had brought a bunch of kleenex in one of my pants pockets and I made Melanie steal the rest of our toilet paper from our hotel in San Cristobal before we left, thank goodness.

We arrived at the border and had to unload all of our bags, go through customs, and then load up on a different van. I was thankful here as well that we were using the service because it would have been quite confusing otherwise. This time we had to load our belongings on top of the van and I felt quite sorry for the little guy up on top when I hucked the box-o-books up to him almost causing him to fall off. A new driver took the helm for the Guatemala leg of the trip and we were off once again.

We passed through many more cute towns and around many more mountains. It was truly some spectacular scenery -- wish I had the pictures to prove it. Many hours later we arrived at a gas station and everyone unloaded to stretch their legs. It had actually been only eight hours of driving. We were the only two passengers actually going to Xela it turns out, so at this point we were instructed to get into the back seats of a pickup truck and throw our stuff in the bed of the truck. It seemed a little sketchy but at this point we were just looking at each other, shrugging, and saying what the hell. Our new driver got in along with his travelling companion. Turns out we were just minutes away from our destination down the worst road I have ever riden on in my life. Apparantly, our driver told us, it had been under construction for six or so years. Such is life in Guatemala apparantly. The driver was incredibly nice and actually gave us a rundown of the entire history of Xela (Quetzaltenango) in our 10-15 minutes together... well he tried to at least. To get the entire history in he had to speak some really fast Spanish and we had been crammed in a bus for eight hours so our brains were mush. We soaked up as much as we could.

Through the course of our journey I've felt less and less bad about my Spanish comprehension, as it seems that usually when I don't understand Melanie doen't either. She's naturally way better at salvaging the conversation and/or pretending like she did understand than me. I usually get that squinty-eyed head tilt look, mouth half open. After looking at me for a few seconds, then chuckling politely, most stop trying to address me directly and just start talking to Melanie.

We pulled up at our hotel, unloaded our stuff, checked in and went to a restaurant across the street, the closest one to our hotel. The entire meal ended up costing five dollars total and the food wasn't half bad. Turns out after being here for a week that is the norm-- really good food at amazingly cheap prices. Eating out is costing us about 5 - 10 bucks per meal on average and as stated the food has been great. Way better than in Mexico except of course for Marcela's home cooking. We ended up switching hotels because the one we originally were staying in was a pressure cooker with one tiny window and the light switch in the bathroom shocked the shit out of me every time I turned the light on. I really didn't want to die from electricution in a Guatemalan bathroom-- not quite the end I had envisioned.

We are now staying in a really cute hostel and have a private room with a comfy bed. I say private, but it is really one big room that has been separated in to two by an extremely thin wall made of plywood. It hasn't been that bad except for some dude that was staying in the room next to us for a few days that had unbelievably bad gas. I mean this guy must have been drinking a two liter of soda water right before bedtime. Luckily I never smelled them but the sound was bad enough. They have since moved on thankfully.

We officially signed up for a Spanish school today and will be living in a private apartment on school grounds. It´s really really cute, almost the same size as our apartment at Westside Animal Hospital (extremely small). It´s up a cute windy staircase, kind of an attic apartment. For the next couple of weeks we will be studying Spanish five hours a day one on one with a professional teacher. Hopefully that will help my Spaninsh speaking immensely. We´ll see.

Sorry no pictures this time, but Melanie I´m sure will post some in her blog. We plan on being here for at least two months so plenty of time for picture taking, however, I don´t plan on taking any more pictures of the locals after Tara made me feel so guilty. :(

After that, who knows where we´ll go, we sure don´t....

Hasta Proximo (until next time)

Chris

Saint Christopher and the Tortilla Beggar

Saint Christopher and the Tortilla Beggar

"San Cristobal de Las Casas"

Before I get to the parable let me tell you about our journey there:

México City was completely exhausting. The 13 hour bus ride to the town named after me was even more so. Let me just rant for a second about the bus company we used. Before getting on the bus, the dummies at ADL-GO bus company, made us check all of our bags at the baggage check counter kind of like at an airport. Unlike an airport (and any other bus company for that matter) though, the bus was ten feet away from the baggage check counter. Every other bus company had let me take my guitar on board the bus for safe keeping with no problems. The jerks at ADO, however, made me walk through a metal detector (which doesn´t detect metal at all – I had a knife in my pocket) and then used a metal detector wand on me (all for show). They wouldn´t allow my guitar on board because of space restrictions and made me go five steps over to the baggage check window to check it. I wasn´t a very happy camper when seeing that the bus was almost empty. I did remember to grab the valium I had stashed in the case out before checking it which came in handy later (see Melanie´s blog). I also had a little upper respiratory thing going on that wasn´t exactly helping my mood. The bus ride was crazy so I hear. I actually slept through most of the scary parts. Melanie woke me up looking very worried and I could see why. The road visibility was about two feet and the driver was racing around corners, racing up on other vehicles and having to slam the breaks, and then passing them reclessly. I think he must have driven that route a million times before and was having fun with scaring the crap out of everyone. He probably could have driven it blindfolded. I gave Mel a valium and was able to relax as soon as she dozed off. It´s not so fun to see her pale-faced with a slightly greenish hue holding her stomach. I´ve seen that look before when I´ve been the driver (several people on several occasions actually). I tend to speed up and slow down without thinking about it when driving, so I wasn´t too bothered. I was bothered by the green boogers I was blowing out my nose though.

The Tortilla Beggar parable:

We finally arrived, starving, in San Cristobal. I did feel a little better as I had somehow, through the course of the bus ride, mostly overcome my illness. It was nice and cool compared to México City and was a beautiful sunny day. After following Melanie around in circles in and out of the bus station a few times, panicking about whether we were really in San Cristobal or not (we were), we settled in at a restaurant across the street for breakfast. In her defense she had just woken up from valium sleep and she was going off of my assurances that we were in the right place. I am directionally dislexic after all.

As soon as we sat down we started getting psychologically pummeled by elderly women selling bracelets, belts, rugs, blankets, etc… that they had presumedly woven. I say psychologically pummeled because they had gone through some kind of sales seminar that took not taking ¨no¨ for an answer to a whole nother level. It was unlike any begging experience we´d ever had before. I ended up buying a bracelet for a few pesos purely out of guilt and I am highly desensitized to guilt having been raised by a Catholic mother (only outdone by those of you with Jewish mothers). She looked at the Jesus statue behind us, looked at my breakfast I was eating, looked me in the eyes with the most pathetic look (indescribable), and asked me to buy one bracelt so she could buy some tortillas to eat -- she was starving. Melanie said I should have just given her my tortillas (obviously her guilt training being way more advanced). It was too much for me to endure being in the town called Saint Christopher and all. I think buying that poor old lady tortillas earns me some sainthood. Unfortunately though word got out that I was a sucker (or maybe it was the halo over my head) and I was accosted non-stop the rest of our time there. Just kidding, actually, It was Melanie who bore the brunt of the begging. It seems their sales training has shown them that women are more likely to have bleeding hearts than the men – they had it all wrong with us though. It got me off the hook though so what do I care.

Anyone that gets the meaning of the parable please feel free to post a comment and I will tell you if you are correct.

To continue...

Our hotel was, as Melanie said, run by some hick from Oklahoma (I resemble that remark) that didn´t speak a word of Spanish. We immediately bonded as soon as Melanie spilled the beans (Mexican pun not intended) about me being from cow country as well. I say bonded but I actually thought it was quite embarassing to have an unabashed redneck in the middle of Mexico putting his arm around me while calling the housecleaning dude ¨lil pork rinds¨ and talking to the Spanish speakers in slow exaggerated English to no avail. It was an interesting experience nonetheless.

We took a side trip to the ruins of Palenque halfway through our stint in Saint Christopher. Try to imagine running up two hundred steps in 105 degree heat, beating sun, and 100% humidity. It was truly a test of health and willpower. I can´t say that I wasn´t completely exhausted by the end of the day but I did ok. Before all that running up and down the pyramids we took a tour of the jungle and saw some great waterfalls, some monkeys (none of which came close enough for me to spank), and some tasty looking medicinal herbs (this pic´s for u pops). ----------------------------------------------->

We stayed at a cabana hut in the middle of the rainforrest that was cool (not temperature wise). There were lots of little animals running around including a deer named Bambi that gave away cute little deer kisses.

"Palenque"

Back to San Cristobal for a couple of more days to be beaten some more with guilt sticks. We mostly spent the next couple of days recooperating from the Palenque journey and writing in our hotel room (also to avoid being guilted into buying that 30´x 30´hand woven hemp rug). I did manage to sneak around and take a few pictures of the locals. Considering how beautiful San Cristobal was scenery-wise it was surprizing how few picture taking tourists there were. It seemed as though the locals really didn´t like having their pictures taken. I guess what they don´t know won´t hurt em right?... At least I hope I didn´t ruin a bunch of peoples souls or something. Hope that won't end my bid for sainthood. Wait that picture of me on the cross in my previous blog probably took care of that.

"Cute little girl in San Cristobal"

Well nothing more exciting to write about San Cristobal. We´re in Guatemala now having a blast. I´m enrolling in a Spanish school and salsa lessons. We are going to stay here probably for a few months. I´ll let you all know how things are going soon.

I bless anyone who reads this with the power vested in me,


Saint Cristopher