Here at last, here at last!

So some people might be recalling, “wait, weren’t they supposed to start their grand adventure in Guatemala? In what.. January?” Well, yes; but plans change (frequently) and now we are here! We made our first land border crossing from Mexico into Guatemala without incident (amazing, no large fences to scale!) and boarded one of many “chicken buses” we would take throughout Guatemala. Chicken buses are essentially re-vamped US school buses from back in the ‘80s now painted 30 different bright colors with luggage piled high on top and full to the brim with locals. While we didn’t see any chickens, it is possibly because they are just squished into the few available cracks between people.

Our first night was in Huehuetenango (just say Way-Way, took us long enough to get it) then on to Cunen and the warm hospitality of Reina and Napallo, friends that we served with in Peace Corps Jamaica that had re-uped to serve again, this time in Guatemala where they’ve been a year and a half already. So we got the inside scoop on things while getting our bearing, learning some more Espanol, seeing their wonderful pueblo, and getting some work done. There was also the experiences of buying from the local market and trying new exotic fruits (how do you say in Spanish.. “can I try that liquidly brown mushy thing in the bag over there?”). All of it, OK most of it, was fantastic. We can’t say enough about there wonderful meals (everything from scratch), their patients with our first of many Spanish lessons, and their care as we learned the hard way “when they say don’t drink the water, then DON’T DRINK THE WATER!”.

Since our school was not starting until April 6, we had some time to explore Guatemala (and celebrate Brooke’s birthday). Guatemala has many natural treasures and top among these is Semuc Champie where beautiful turquoise waters cascade down from pool to pool and we swam in every one of them. We also got our exercise in as there was an incredible hike to a near aerial view from the top of a mountain. There would be more water in these pools but most of the river above roars into the earth to travel below our tranquil swimming holes and comes out in caves we got to go exploring as well. The spelunking was done with candles only which you often had to hold above your head as you swam through the water, exploring the far reaches. Besides all this fun there were also swings going out over the water from high up branches and a bridge to jump off of.

Our last stop as tourists was in Lanquin where we found a little slice of paradise at El Retiro hostel where a river runs by thatch-roofed huts and provides a perfect place to cool off after warming in a hammock. Traveling through Central America you join a self selecting bunch since not just anyone would pick up and go tromping around a developing country, and we are glad to be in the midst of some amazing people. It was a pleasure meeting many new friends (and seeing old ones) and we know there will be many more to encounter as we continue on our journey. But now it is now time to buckle down and start Spanish school, where we can finally learn if people here are in fact saying “Hello, welcome to our country and have a great day!” or putting a curse on us.

The Other Mexico

So my first thought as I sat down to write this was that it would be fun to write this blog all in Spanish. But then it hit me. Wait a minute, I don’t know Spanish. Then it hit me again (this time a little harder). That sucks! Yes, Spanish would certainly come in handy considering Brooke and I have finally left the gringo friendly confines of Mexico’s Caribbean Coast and have just recently spent the last four days traveling through Central Yucatan and Chiapas on our way to Guatemala.

Actually though, for as little (poco) Spanish as we speak (hablamos) we have done quite well for ourselves. Of course we owe part, if not all, of the credit to our incredible CouchSurfing hosts, Pedro, Rolando, and the rest of the San Christobal crew, as they made us feel right at home in our new surroundings and helped us see their cities better than any guide book could ever do.

We certainly would have experienced the wonderful tastes of the Yucatan without Pedro’s love of his city and the local flavors that his favorite restaurants have been serving him since his childhood. He would lead us into this sometimes fancy looking, sometimes no more than a little hole in the wall, where we would order from a menu that could have been Greek as easily as it was Spanish. But without fail, we always ended up with an incredible meal that left us eager to dash off to the next thing that we must see or eat. Sometimes we even got to try items without Pedro’s suggestions. You see, Brooke loves to call new Spanish words when she recognizes them. Unfortunately when these words happen to be menu items and you are dealing with the fastest waiters and cooks in the world (yes, even faster than your local El Rancho), it meant that we would soon have a new piping hot meal or cool drink delivered to our already crowded table. But oh well, what can you do? We just had to bare it and force down more fantastic, mouthwatering, Yucatan cuisine. It is a tough life.

After eating our way around Merida with Pedro (along with the times spent at cenotes and Mayan ruins) we were compelled to keep moving, this time on to San Cristobal de las Casas in Chiapas. San Cristobal is one of the most beautiful cities we have traveled to, although all of a sudden we found ourselves needing jackets. The city has a lively produce market where you can find absolutely everything and craft markets as well (too bad we can’t get anything as our packs already weigh too much!). Coming into the home of Rolando and Mark and Hugo, it was more like entering a wonderful hostel- all sorts of people, some full timers, some long-timers, some not quite sure, and some just there a few days like ourselves. These three are CouchSurfer’s extraordinaire. We were first welcomed with a delicious vegetarian breakfast and such warmth from everyone. Mostly there we just enjoyed walking around the beautiful city, sitting on the steps of the cathedral and taking in the sights and sounds of our surroundings, or hanging out in their inner courtyard lined with hammocks. Definitely a Mexican treasure that needs to be revisited.

So muchas gracias to all our amigos nuevos. Your generosity has made our trip and this world a better place.

Mexico's Cenotes and Mayan Ruins

Topping the list of the amazing sites in Mexico are the majestic Mayan ruins and the natural wonders of cenotes- underwater caves that peak their heads through many holes dotted along the Yucatan. The short-hand story is we got to see Coba, the Grand Cenote, three cenotes of Cuzama near Merida, and Chichen Itza for the spring equinox (another amazing coincidence of timing working out for us just right). A picture tells a thousand words (especially if they’re captioned :), and we’ll let them talk for us- check out our Cenotes and Mayan Ruins album in Picasa and you too will want to visit Mexico. Pura Vida!

Its a Small World After All

OK, so I apologize to all of you who now have that never-ending, I want to bang my head against the wall, tune stuck in your head, but a couple hundred plastic singing children do not tell lies. It is truly a small, small world. This we have found out over and over again as coincidences, or good karma, or “dude, its all the circular flow of energy, man” have followed us throughout our adventures. Whether it is the exact right person getting in contact at the exact right time, or just lucking out on a wrong turn that takes us to the right place, everything seems to be connected.

Our most recent example lead us into Mexico, a country we were not even supposed to visit, two months after the time we believed we would be in Guatemala waist-deep in our projects for The GROW Initiative (don’t worry, we’re almost there to start language school and projects, really!). As it so happened two days later Donny’s parents were arriving in Cancun (or so they thought), a trip they had scheduled months before. While Donny’s parents had no idea where the hotel was located, we were delighted to find out that their hotel was the exact hotel we had snuck into (I mean accidently got lost and ended up by their pool) while docked with Cinnabar in the town of Puerto Morelos (30 minutes south of Cancun) in one of the only ports that could accommodate our boat’s 8 foot draft.

Furthermore, we had been racking our brains for days trying to figure out how on our way to Cancun we were going to stop off and visit a friend we had met in Puerto Morelos to see his research project on the calcification rates of corals (way cooler than it sounds). Well, problem solved!

So as we said our goodbyes to Lars and Inger, we headed North for our first attempts to take the local collectivos with packs on our backs so big they could have been filled with a whole family of Mexicans headed for a boarder run. After surprisingly failing to fool anyone that we were just really light skinned locals (I still don’t know what gave us away), some really nice Mexicans helped us on a 12 peso (less than a dollar) bus were we sat like totem poles with multiple bags stacked upon our laps.

The driver dropped us off at an intersection, spewed a couple of sentences, or possibly one really, really long word, and drove off. After we refused multiple taxi drivers who wanted an outlandishly high price (5 whole dollars) to take us 4 miles to the hotel we started the long walk beginning to really feel the weight of Pepe and his familia on our backs (not the fault of Gregory packs or anyone associated with Gregory packs). It didn’t take us long of sticking out our thumbs once again before a very nice family in a pick up took pity on us. We hopped in the bed of the truck and a mile or so down the road where we were about to be let off, a crazy car started beeping its horn wildly at us. Convinced that it was a very undercover policia (their car was only a little bigger than a wooden go-cart I used to have) coming to arrest us for our previous trespassing, we hid behind our packs. But as it turned out it was our brand new Gregory Backpacks that my parents had seen in the back of the truck and were now trying to apparently scare the truck in to stopping. Of all the roads at the exact right time, there they were. Up until that point we didn’t even know if they were in Mexico. Flying standby often means you don’t get flights the day you want them. We also didn’t know how we could check into the hotel (or if we were even supposed to, wink wink) without them but with the sight of them in that car all those worries were gone. It was a great reunion and after a circus act of shoving ourselves and our packs into their six foot car (everyone take a deep breath in), we were headed down the road again,

While at Puerto Morales’ Marina before there had been another coincidence- our neighbors, of all the boats in the world, was the boat we almost sailed on as crew (except that they decided to take some other people for some superficial, silly reason such as they actually had experience sailing on the ocean before) Lauderdale Lady, a beautiful Catamaran was in the slip next door. That wasn’t even the port we would have sailed with them to, and it was over a month after we would have sailed with them at all, and yet there they were.

The rest of that week was great, though the feeling of being in the lap of luxury made us feel oddly out of place. This was supposed to be a trip of no money, sleeping in uncomfortable places and helping others and not sipping down the margaritas on the beach. But after a full afternoon of fighting off high pressure sales pitches explaining to us that we can easily afford to buy into their condos for the next twenty years (even with the modest combined income of zero dollars we will be making over the next two years), we felt much better about taking their “complementary” beach BBQ and their catamaran snorkeling trip (actually very beautiful).

So thank you Don and Shirley Comer, Lars and Inger, all the incredible generous Mexicans we have encountered(except those weighing down our backpacks), Robin (the Marine Biologist) , our sponsors Gregory Backpacks, and all the little plastic children at Disney World who have made this such a wonderfully small world.

Shipwrecked!

We are very excited to have reached Mexico and the land portion of our travels. But one of those first encounters with land was a little more abrupt than we would have hoped. You’ll have to keep reading to find out what happened.

Crossing the rest of the way to the Yucatan was a little less exciting than the first crossing of the Gulf Stream, but in a good way. Another sail that went overnight, but this time with a beautiful full moon and waves that were big, but not too big. Donny did not feed the fishes, the current did not fight us quite as much, and all sails were in their right condition upon entering Mexican waters. We entered at Puerto Morelos, a small town with a beautiful new marina where we went through the usual customs checks and were finally cleared. After one night being there enjoying being attached to land, we disembarked for Puerto Aventuras, the home of Lars and Inger and the (not-so-)final resting place of Cinnabar- at least where she’ll be calling home for a while until she’s all fixed up and headed for Europe. That last day sail was beautiful with the crystal clear blue and turquoise waters, good winds, no current against us, more good conversation and waving at the people all along because we were that close to land (now this is what sailing is supposed to be like!).

Then we went to enter the harbor. Just the narrowness of the entry way was enough to make us nervous, and then the all too familiar beeping of the depth meter began to signal trouble. What was supposed to be a channel of 13 feet did not have that much water at all, especially at the entryway. We ran aground- hard. It wasn’t just a matter of getting stuck in the sand/mud and trying to back off as it had been the 10 other times (not an exaggeration) we had hit ground this trip, this was boulders and there were lots of them. If that was not bad enough, we also had the waves that continued to hit from the back and throw us deeper onto the hard ground. As the boat was tilting and the surface of the water was sometimes up to the gunnels on one side, it was an exhilarating feeling. We all knew we would be fine- the shore was only meters away and the sea was calm inside the channel, but the question of Cinnabar and all our belongings could have been a different story.

Brooke decided to take a swim- not so much out of wanting to bail on the boat, but we hit so hard one time that the anchor light on the top of the mast broke off and fell into the water nearby. When a fishing boat came by and snuck into the channel around us, they helped pull us off the rocks. Brooke rejoiced in the water as Cinnabar sailed away from her. Though she is a master swimmer, Cinnabar was too fast for her as Donny, Lars and Inger continued up the channel, hoping to reach her slip. Brooke got picked up by the fishing boat and was so happy to see Cinnabar afloat again she was about to crack open a beer offered to her by the spring-breakers aboard, when Cinnabar ran aground again. Luckily this time it was on sand and the water was calm, so she at least stayed upright, almost as if nothing were wrong, she just wouldn’t budge. Brooke sadly put the beer down and hopped back on Cinnabar to see what we could do to get her moving again. Some boats tried to help, but as we looked at the water line on the nearby rocks we could see it was a very low tide, and the decision to wait until high tide was made. We tried to keep the boat from going closer into the side of the channel where the wind was trying to push us, and waited. Eventually the waters rose, and the wind did push us almost into the next bank and so we were still stuck. Amongst many efforts to rock ourselves into the center of the channel in hopes of floating (it was like rocking a piano across a floor- now pull in the stern- which was tied to boulders on the far bank- now pull the bow- also attached to boulders, repeat), we finally got unstuck. But still, the channel would not let us pass, and we made a half exit to drop anchor and wait.

Next morning when we found out the exact time of high tide and after Lars and Brooke had snorkeled the channel to find the best path, we tried again. There was mostly one shallow area that was mainly sand, then it was rocky but deep enough, barely (assuming we got the timing perfect). We had one boat pulling us with two lines, as we had our engine going full blast as well, and with a few thuds through the sand we powered through and were free. We sailed her to a beautiful little spot (though not the slip where she was intended- it’s too shallow to ever get her there) and there she sits until Lars and Inger are able to get “floaties” to sail her back out of the channel and into a port that can better accommodate her.

Cinnabar is a great boat, but we’ve learned if we ever crew on a boat again, we think we’ll put a stipulation of it having maybe a 6 foot draft max! The solid land has been good to us now though. Our time in Puerto Aventuras with Lars and Inger after Cinnabar was safe was lovely, like snorkeling at Akumal and enjoying the ambiance of the community like the dolphins, manatees and sea lions in the center. We were sad to have to say goodbye, but it was an incredible experience and we have two new dear friends from it!

A tale of Cuba

So as we watched the outline of American soil slowly turn into a uniform line on the horizon as we finally started our long voyage south to the Yucatan and South America, (only two months later than we planned) we had countless hours of sailing time to fill with our new friends Lars and Inger. In that time they told us a fantastic tale of a trip to Cuba. Their words were so descriptive and they told it with such emotion, we felt like we were there ourselves. We promised we would tell their story to the world on our blog, and so here it is, in their words:

“Cuba has a look and feel different from most places. First, it is best to go without any preconceived notions, but a strong grasp of the history of the country and fluency in Spanish are great for figuring everything out; sadly we didn’t have either of these two things down very well, so we’ll have to be going back someday. But here are some thoughts on what we did see and get to experience.
“Havana is a beautiful city with a vibrant culture. The cars rumbling past make you feel as if you’re in a constant antique car show, but they are what they use every day. The old façade of the buildings may have been crumbling slightly, but it gives a feel of a city with such a rich history that it is much preferred to having a cookie-cutter set of buildings looking pristine. Havana is somewhat like being in a time warp of going back to the 50’s yet knowing everything else that has been happening in the future. Posters rejoicing at the 50th anniversary of the revolution are everywhere; for the most part people seem happy with the system.

“One thing we found refreshing was the mosaic look of Cubans. There are all types of people, short, tall; skinny, fat; white, brown, black; the rich and the poor; punks, preps, nerds and the cool people. This made it much easier to blend in (as the cool people of course) than in almost any other country we’ve been to, as white skin can make you stand out like a sort thumb as a tourist/foreigner in many developing countries.

“Arts are thriving as you can see by the paintings and sculptures for sale and galleries everywhere, like the home of Fuster who is known as the Cuban Picaso and has decorated his entire complex in mosaic work (as well as most of the street!). And everywhere you go there’s someone with a musical instrument, playing not even for the money as a street performer but just for the sheer joy of playing. That instrument is sometimes a voice, such as the beautiful voice of Adriana, a wonderful person we met through Couch Surfing. One of the most memorable nights was with her and a group of friends, having an all out jam session in a beautiful park. She was the main vocalist, but certainly with very talented accompaniment, there was a drum, someone tinking away on a bottle, maracas, etc. Strangers walking past would stop and join in, singing if they knew the words, always dancing. This was all after attending a performance by her and others on a rooftop theatre in Viejo Havana, a little place we would have never even known existed if we hadn’t been invited there. After the performance drinks were enjoyed by all, followed by impromptu dances, including salsa, square dancing, and unfortunately, yes, country line dancing.

“Going to the market was a different experience than what they had expected. Lines start forming before it even opens, and a government truck rolls in with the produce. People go in one at a time, all with their ration books. People are only allowed so much per month- not only at the market but at other stores for staples such as meat, rice, and beans. There is less food now than usual as three hurricanes have ripped through the country, devastating crops. The discontent that you might find with “the system” is caused mostly by this lack of enough food. While food is the number one concern, there are other government regulations- for instance, you can’t just sleep on someone’s floor if they invite you (a hindrance to Couch Surfing, and people don’t break this regulation as you never know what neighbor might be listening a little to closely), if they are not registered as a “casas particulares.” This put us one night at the home of Glady, who is registered to house guests at her lovely apartment in Havana. Through a language barrier, we enjoyed a lovely morning and only wished we could have gone out dancing with her later that night, she seemed like a lot of fun.

“Transportation was interesting. At first it was taxis we would use, which were expensive because they were for the tourists and only accepted CUCs. There are two types of currencies in Cuba- Cuban pesos which is what the locals use and CUCs (1 CUC = 24 pesos) which is what the tourists use. Mostly as a foreigner this meant you couldn’t even have access to some of the things reserved for the locals- such as the local buses. But if you can figure out the system and you have the pesos to pay, you can ride. And it is always an experience to use public transportation, plus about 250x less expensive! For Havana, people get packed on buses until the doors can barely close. But the buses run frequently, work well and allowed us a new perspective on the city.

“These are just a few thoughts on the many things we saw and did in Cuba. Through many miles walked in Havana, conversations with locals, eating the cuisine, and just generally enjoying our time, we felt like we got a good taste for what Cuba is like. At least what it is like in Havana; we’d like to have spent time in the rural areas, but this trip did not afford us that. After leaving Hemingway Marina we thought we could see some countryside at ports West, but all that greeted us where a boat with an 8 foot draft could be accommodated were mangroves. So we left Cuba, puffing on a cigar with only mangroves to bid us farewell as the shoreline faded in the distance.”

Lars and Inger related all this to us, as well as many other stories as we sailed. As we listened we could imagine ourselves walking around and taking in the beauty of Havana, being introduced into someone’s home as they were by Zulma and getting to fest on a traditional Cuban meal of frijoles, arroz, pollo, pan y vegetables; having a couple walk us around the city for a while just because they wanted to show us their city and get to know us. So when the boarders are opened up and Americans can freely visit Cuba hopefully we will get to have as wonderful an experience as they did.

Surfing the Gulf Stream

There is nothing more beautiful than the starry sky when you're out at sea miles from any lights or land, except perhaps the rival of the bioluminescence in the sea that sparkles the mirror image of those stars. That's how it was as we crossed the Gulf Stream heading South from Key West. Or that's how it was if we're just remembering the wonderful things; forgetting that Donny got such a good view of those stars because he was lying in the prone position nearly the whole time as he tried not to get seasick, or looking over the side at that bioluminescence as he did get seasick. Or the memories of the flapping of the jib that reminded us of a freight train that wouldn't stop for our 20 hour crossing because it got fouled in the furling, or the huge rolling waves and nearly gale force winds, the cold and the wet (like when a wave washed over Brooke) that persisted throughout the long dark night. But really, it was a good first crossing, though we're not so sure about weeks like that, so maybe we'll eventually get on a plane for our grand voyage around the world.