The Big Loop: Part 2

Straight away, I want to express my severe astonishment about Marissa coming out on the O.C. Holy, jaw on the ground!

And now, the journey continues...

POPTUN
Travelling south through the northern jungle of Guatemala, we decided to stop at a working farm in Poptun for a few days. The silver monkey, Nena, welcoming us at the front of Finca Ixobel, was recently rescued from a local brothel where she was found tied to a 1 meter chain wearing a dress and her fingernails painted. Now, she is well kept and sleeps in the hammock with her hands behind her head. It was a good introduction for our next few days...lounging, sleeping, catching up on sleep, and more relaxing.



I went horseback with mi amigo, Jorge, up into the mountains on the second afternoon. It was the first time I had ever put a horse into fourth gear. Apparently that is not the correct Seabiscuit term; gallop. It was so campesino; it was hot. And you know I grabbed Bronse´s mane when I almost pulled a Paris Hilton dismount. Definitely not wanting to be the next non-flying Superman.

RIO DULCE, LIVINGSTON y BELIZE
After driving through the mountains of Guatemala, I have a better understand about death of the late Lisa ´Left Eye´ Lopez and the car accident in Honduras. I know TLC is looking for a replacement, but I seriously don´t need to be following her footsteps off the cliffs, or waterfalls if you will, down here. With that said, I can understand how a little girl on our bus would chuck oatmeal all over the place because of the terrifying turns on the freeway. Even though she aimed for the `open`window, she got most of the grey matter in the window curtain. Oh I mean, the curtain that was flapping in the wind at Christa and I. I know you can hear me dryheaving while I was picking the chunks out of Christa`s hair.



So we hiked down the highway a few kilos and caught a bus headed south to el Rio Dulce. Jumped onto a launcha and took the boat down river to the Caribbean Garifuna town of Livingston. Immediately the heat and chill atmosphere of the only black community in Guatemala took over us. We sipped on more drinks and I got my hair did and cornrowed by Rosie. Oh you know I did. I was buying Rosie drinks as she put fatty brasos down my sweat fro. On the front porch, Coolio style, por supuesto.



We had this big GP to attack the Rio Dulce Yacht Club and both work separate corners of the bar for some sugar to take us into the Caribbean on any 120 foot catamaran available. But at this point, Christa is living Q to Q (quetzal to quetzal = $0.125 to $0.125) so she desparately departed early for a ferry to Puerto Barrios in hopes to make a connection back to the Guate City; and I sweated through my last pair of inside-out dirty underware in Livingston.



COPAN, HONDURAS (Cop,p,pan not Cob,b,ban)
Fet up with the heat and `hey mistah, wanzum weeeed???`, I jumped back on a lancha and headed back upstream to Rio Dulce, jumped on a series of buses and made it to the frontera at Honduras. Copan is a cowboy country dreamland and ... shit, I can`t be bothered.

The Mayan ruins at Copan aren`t gigantically as impressive as Tikal, but the fact that I was practically the only person in the entire site was brilliant. A little sketchy on the hike there, and the fact that random Honduran cowboys would approach me out of the jungle from nowhere was a bit strange. My camera was working and the sculpture was spectacular.

So now I´m back home...in Antigua, ooops, and staying at Bobby´s house. Oye!

Oh, and bi the bi. Does anyone know how to get Jerry Curl out of white boy hair? The Garifuna put some serious Slick Rick in my doo. I picked the bad boy braids out while in Honduras and now I´m walking around looking like Barbara Streisand. Gracias a dios.