Calling Clever Computer Cartographers

Those of you following this webpage might have noticed some changes over the past couple weeks. I have been cleaning up the website and adding little bells and whistles along the way. I´ve added more recent pictures to the side bar, and filled a footer up with with a random assortment of pictures from the trip. So, now that it is "done" I was wondering what you think about it. Is the page ridiculously slow to load? Is the page too wide or too thin? Do some bits never quite look right? Too few pictures of scantily clad travelers? Do you have any other suggestions? If you see anything, fire us a comment.

I´m also in the process of starting a GoogleGroups e-mail list to send my sporadic ponderings and updates to friends around the world. Once I convince google to let me I´m going to add everyone whose address I already have and send out a message, but if you´d like to add yourself to (or, remove yourself from) my list click on the new link over to the right.

One suggestion we´ve gotten already is to integrate a map where we could put in our route along the way. Personally I think it´s a fantastic idea, but I don´t really have a sense of how to do that. I´ve put a couple maps on the flickr site for the countries we´ve been to. And, if you click on them and go to the flickr site you can roll your mouse over them to see little comments showing places we´ve been and things we´ve done.



Guatemala

or

Honduras


You can always find these maps by going to our Flickr site and searching for "map." But that doesn´t show a path where you can see us working our way down and it´s about impossible to read any map that has more than one of these small countries on it. Does anyone out there have any advice?

Travelers Toys

It seems like a lifetime ago when Tyler and I were running around collecting things to bring on our trip. I just clicked back to the old post I wrote about what sort of electronic gadgetry I wasn´t going to be able to live without and am shaking my head in disbelief. Slowly but surely Tyler and are dropping weight out of our packs, something small is given or thrown away in most of the stops we´ve made. I´ve already dumped about a third of my clothes, and most of those electronics are far more trouble than they are worth.

First of all, the shiny new Palm Pilot (with detachable keyboard) I bought as my computer subsistute hasn´t worked out nearly as well as I´d hoped. I wrote a couple e-mails and a little story on it mostly to prove that it was doable. The trouble is the tiny little screen, while readable, isn´t something I found myself wanting to spend an evening staring at. So far we´ve run across a plethora of inexpensive internet cafes along the way (now I´m paying, roughly, $0.50 per hour), so if I feel the urge it´s easy to take my time writing and pondering on a big screen connected to the whole world. Worrying about few hundred dollars of delicate and expensive electronics is far more trouble than it´s worth. Thats why I was almost relieved when it stopped working (the battery instantly discharges) so I don´t have to feel bad about tossing it.

The MP3 Player, on the other hand, started this journey very loved but quickly caused the most divisive sibling conlfict of this whole trip. The vast majority of non-live music down here is recycled 80s pop. Old school Madonna, ABBA, and Michael Jackson are very much at the peak of their careers down here and are played constantly. I have a daydream of meeting a Latin American Radio DJ and telling them "Greetings Earthling, I am a visitor from the future and in order to prove it Í´ll make some predictions. One day there will be this band that changes the face of contemporary music. They will be called Nirvana and ...". There is, of course, a fair amount of Latin American music on Latin American radio, sometimes half of the airplay if you´re lucky. But at least half of that is the song "Gasolina" by the Daddy Yankees. It´s a catchy little dance song that I´ve heard is slowly coming to the US and Europe. Here it´s played constantly, hourly on most radio stations, booming from bars and on repeat out of the HUGE speakers set up by most of the sidewalk CD vendors. I´m not really complaining (ok, maybe a little) but it was nice to occasionally be able to sit back with our 40GB MP3 player and dial in any music we missed as we drifted off to sleep or sat reading a book.

But then, one fine evening, Tyler reformatted the whole $%&/ing hard drive. Puta Merde! We went from having all the music either of us have ever owned or loved instantly accessible to having to look after a small but heavy expensive electronic brick. The fact that both of Brothers MacAllen lived through Tyler telling me about the disaster means that we´ll be able to get along for this whole trip and beyond.

Now we`re looking forward to mailing a bunch of things back to NY to lighten our packs a bit. As well as the above gadgetry we´ve both started using the detachable top of our rucksacks rather than bulky daypacks to carry things throughout the day. The GPS has yet to prove handy, but I´m holding onto it in the hope that one day it´ll help us out when we´re hopelessly lost.

There is a bit of gear I put together along these travels which has proved invaluable. I got a little zippered pouch and a woven cord for a couple dollars from an 8 year old master saleswomen with big brown eyes. I strung some stuff I came down with on it and use it to carry day to day money (I carry my normal wallet in my back pocket while travelling as a decoy). There is a little flashlight, a compass, a Leatherman plier-pocket knife, all clipped onto my belt loop with a carrabiner. This little kit has yet to be more than 5ft from my body since I put it together and I´ve easily used it more than the $1,000 worth of advanced electronics (save my Camera) I´ve been hoofing around all combined. Live and learn.

Brilliant Blue Backpackers

One of the first rules of traveling I try to live by is... Whenever I visit a new place I always find the Australian (there always is at least one) and hang out with them. Invariably wild things happen and good times are had by all.

The first Australians Tyler and I really got to know on this trip were Tom and Chani Blue. They were at Casa Rosario when we arrived, showed us the ropes of life in San Pedro, and told us about the first 6 months of their year+ round the world trip.

The reason I mention them is because Chani (sitting next to Tyler in the picture above) writes for a magazine and just published an article about life and traveling in Guatemala. Not only is it a good snapshot of what it was like to bum around, but she used a picture of ours of Tikal. If you're curious the article is here.

My Life as an Amphibian.

Long ago, before I left the US for the first time I was amazed by how different places were within my country. To go from barren mountains above the treeline, to the controlled chaos that is Manhattan offered such a breadth of experience it was awe inspiring. But then, once I got to Europe, I realized that many of the experiences I'd had before were similar and that Europe was totally different. It still bewilders me to know that a three hour train ride can take you too a different country with a different language, food and customs. It's not that uniqueness neccesarily makes things better but it is really spiritually refreshing. But then, alas, I got to Japan. There I realized that despite all the differences Europe and the US share a lot of how we think and interact and so, in many ways, are very similar. It was Japan that was totally, totally different.

Yesterday we took our first ever scuba dive in the ocean. It was incredible, and after 15 minutes of practicing skills (we spent 3 hours the day previous doing others in a pool) we got to swim around a coral reef for about half an hour. And I'm utterly flabbergasted. We saw thousands of brilliantly colored fish that make me seriously doubt pure Darwininian evolution. How could something evolve to be so aesthetically beautiful and to stand out like a masters painting on such a breathtaking backdrop? Floating in the water like a hummingbird was surreal but oddly felt really comfortable as well. However things work out for the rest of my life, I know this... There will be more scuba in my life. A lot more.

I also realized something else. Of all the places I've ever been they've been defined by one overriding factor. They were all generally dry. In other words they're all nearly the same. Life Underwater, however, is totally different.

Mandatory Merriment

... And thats an order!

I left our readers hanging at the end of my last post. We had just become fully aware that we were suffering a drug-induced deppression from the medication we´re taking to prevent Malaria. I didn´t know what we´d do, or not do, about it. And truthfully we still don´t.

Malaria is one of the worlds deadliest diseases, about 400 million people get it every year,and about 4 million die from it. And although most of those suffering catch it in Sub-Saharan Africa it hits pretty hard around here too. The French, for example, had to give up digging the Panama Canal because they lost so many people to it. And although some cases are readily cured, others stick around for a lifetime.

Our symptoms could come out of a psychological textbook for minor depression. We´re finding our selves a little listless with low energy and not totally appreciative of things we used to enjoy. We find ourselves eating more, yet more hungry. Neither of us are used to sleeping much, but now we sleep a lot. Tyler used to open his store at 4am and I´m a lifelong insomniac, but now we´ve found ourselves averaging over eight hours a day of sleep. It´s not that things are bad, they aren´t and we´re having a lot of fun. It´s just that I don´t feel quite like myself sometimes and thats quite disconcerting.

So we have been, and will continue to, look into alternatives (Does anyone out there have any suggestions?) but our latest plan is to tackle it with Good Ol´Fashioned MacAllen Stubborness.

If our symptoms of those a normal psychological depression, could the solution be to treat it as if it was? Since we´ve identified what was happening it has gotten a lot better. When something I normally enjoy comes up, but I just don´t have the energy to do it...I force myself to do it anyway because I won´t be beaten by medication. And then I invariably end up enjoying it just as much as I´m used to. And we´ve both started putting a little excercise back into our daily routine and feel better for it. We´re trying to eat and sleep regularly and slowly I´m feeling myself come back into it.

The true test comes tomorrow, when we are due to take another one of our weekly pills. Thats when we hit our bloodstream with the heaviest dose, therafter it gets weaker and weaker and we naturally feel better and better.

So, in other words, tomorrow morning we´re both waging an internal war with a pharmaceutical. Can living deliberately defeat the malaise of Chloroquin?