Van Food

We had this idea that we would try to eat as local people eat while on this trip. And, to some extent, we do. But then, after a few days of meals consisting mainly of beans and cucumber/carrot salads, we inevitably lose our resolve and go to a restaurant. And I am nearly powerless to resist the occasional vegan-friendly place we come across. Still, we mostly do our own thing, food-wise, and we’ve developed a sort of routine.

Most of the shopping we do happens at whatever little open-air shack or, in larger towns, open-air market, is closest to where we’re camping. Even the smallest places (except in Belize) have at least cucumbers, carrots, onions, and bananas. Sometimes papayas and now, in late January, mangoes. At the larger markets, the produce can be almost as varied, and as high-quality, as that found at my beloved Hollywood farmer’s market.

The bananas we freeze for smoothies, and the cucumbers, carrots, and onions have replaced the normal lettuce salads we ate in the United States. Lettuce is hard to find, low-quality, and difficult to disinfect, so usually we skip it. (The exception is the rare occasion when there’s spinach. Spinach is worth it.) There are also certain things we brought from home. Fruit and nut snack bars, almond butter, fancypants vegan protein powder, fancypants chocolate, quinoa, wild rice, nutritional yeast, chia seeds, a rather vast assortment of silly and wonderful vinegars, and other high-maintenance things, a lot of which didn’t last long enough. And then there are the things we get from supermarkets when we find them: canned beans, soy milk, the occasional loaf of whole wheat bread. With these things, and thanks to the rattlevan’s fridge (whose only drawback is that it requires us, every three weeks or so, to go on truly epic propane-seeking missions) and stove, we’re good to go.

For breakfast, I cook oatmeal with bananas and peanut butter, or make almond- and soy-milk smoothies in a blender powered by the van’s inverter (so cool). Chuck almost invariably heats up tortillas – and oh, these tortillas! Homemade, thick, tasting strongly of corn, increasing in thickness the further we move toward the equator, and incredibly delicious – with little packets of refried black beans. “Hot sauce delivery mechanisms,” I call them.

Occasionally, we manage to get crazy-good fish right from the fishermen as they come ashore – huge shrimp that we sautéed with onions and tomatoes, fresh snapper and dorado for as cheap as $1, grilled or pan-seared with garlic and herbs.

More often, though, we eat a thing we call “van pasta,” which is really just whole wheat pasta with too much garlic (never) and lots of vegetables, topped with olive oil and nutritional yeast. It’s a lazy person’s dinner, because throwing the veggies in with the boiling pasta means we get to skip the disinfecting step. But it’s still delicious.

And then supplementing our rattlevan cooking is the wonderful street food always being offered up. Driving in Mexico and Central America (again, excluding Belize) is like food heaven. We can’t drive 50 kilometers without being offered something delicious from roadside vendors. Fresh pineapple, watermelon, mango, and cucumber with lime juice and chili; fresh coconut meat and water; popcorn, toasted spicy pepitas, and tamales. And all kinds of other lovely things.

There’s non-highway street food, too, if it’s usually more to Chuck’s liking than my own. Fried chicken, tacos, delicious empanadas filled with mystery and flavor, chuchitos of chicken, chile relleno with steak. And in El Salvador, now, there are pupusas filled with chicken, cheese, beans, or some combination of the three. 

Occasionally, Chuck’s quest for street food has unintended consequences, like the time we saw these little balls of something potentially delicious in a market and heard jamon (ham) when the woman selling them had actually said jabon (soap). Chuck tasted it before we realized our mistake.  Apparently it was not delicious.

Soap Eater

Best of all, there are cheap, delicious fruit and carrot juices, costing nothing. Downing orange juice squeezed on the spot and served formally in fancy glasses is a daily occurrence.

Gah!

Soap incidents aside, for the most part we're eating extraordinarily well (and cheaply).  And when I think of how difficult it would be eat this well on a road trip through the United States, I'm glad to be in Central America instead.

Antigua, etc.

We arrived in Antigua after a couple of decent but uneventful nights camped in various places between Nebaj and the old capital city. We stayed one night camped (and, after our backpacking trip when we needed showers, one night in the hotel rooms) at another of these self-proclaimed eco-hotels. This one, the lovely Boxbolandia, boasted of no nature whatsoever, unless you counted the dozens of pet bunnies running about the garden. There also was a water park of sorts – poured concrete filled from a creek, perhaps – and really nice staff who treated us as though we were the only guests there (which we were). In fact, when we returned for our hotel room after having been away backpacking for a few days, they greeted us warmly, seemingly pleased that the resident hobos had returned, and invited us to enjoy our old camping spot once again.

Then, due to a certain torsion bar situation that Chuck described, we also stopped in a place called Santa Cruz Quiche, a medium sized city serving as the capital of the region going by the same name. We camped at a little place that may or may not have been a sex motel. But even if it was, the owners, a Mayan family, could not have been more charming. They toured the rattlevan, invited us to enjoy the private pine forest that fell away behind their establishment, wonderfully dotted with Mayan prayer sites, and generally made us feel at home in their driveway.

And then, perhaps a day or so behind our nonexistent "schedule," we pulled up into Antigua. (Not, however, before taking our first real wrong turn of the trip and driving two hours out of our way on a rough dirt road and therefore opting not to tackle accomodations in Antigua so late in the evening and choosing a horse farm for our campsite instead.)

Antigua is a charmer to be sure, and we took full advantage. Broad, colonial streets with multi-colored one-story buildings, interrupted by the ruins of centuries-old churches and convents.  It’s a perfect town for wandering. 

It’s also a perfect town for eating, and we took full advantage of that, too. 

Now, the food’s been pretty okay during our trip for the most part, but Antigua totally knocks it out of the park. We actually ate at the same restaurant, a little place called Hector’s, twice – it was that good. And we also ate a meal in a French bistro (we’re allowed to do that now that we’ve been traveling for two months) and, over dessert, had a draw-off. 

You have all seen photos of the rattlevan, so I’ll let you be the judge: Mine is better, right? (I kid; it’s pretty clear which of us went to design school.)

My Effort

The Winning Sketch

We also took advantage of the tourist infrastructure to jump a shuttle bus and join a group hiking up the Volcano Pacayo, an active beast of a thing whose last major eruption, in 2010, buried more than 300 homes and closed the international airport for five days. 

Turns out it was a good thing we went with the group, as the normal tourist sendero (trail) wasn’t passable.  Our guide (whose own home was destroyed in the 2010 eruption) explained that the new park administration wasn’t popular and that neighboring land owners had taken it upon themselves to make the trail difficult in a number of ways. Good to know, I’m sure.  So, we went up the other side of the mountain.

A brief climb across broken-down lava most of the way to the summit, where we stopped and roasted the marshmallows our guide had brought for that purpose right on the lava. (“For shame,” our guide joked with his friend, another park ranger, “you don’t have a pack, and you don’t even bring marshmallows for the tourists! For shame!”)
   


And then we headed down again, to some really amazing views.

We camped in Antigua at a strange and wonderful place: the tourist police parking lot. The size of a city block, the lot is on the grounds of an old hospital and an even older hotel, both of which have been reduced to ruins that essentially close in the open field in the middle. The police are totally welcoming (and guard the gate with shotguns all night) and the place is free: perfect. 

Our first night or two, we had the place to ourselves. We flattered ourselves that we were a rare breed, the Guatemala RV-er, since we hadn’t seen anyone else doing it for the past five or six weeks. But, slowly and steadily, the campsite grew in numbers. At one point, when we were back again after trying to leave for the beach (a mostly boring story about Chimaltenango and car problems), the campsite consisted of the following, in order of appearance: (1) a rattlevan with two American hobos and their dog; (2) two friendly young Quebecois hippie dudes in a VW van who are trying to make ends meet by selling hemp jewelry and juggling; (3) a young surfer couple from Vancouver who are finally and reluctantly making their way back North after spending a month surfing in El Salvador; (4) a retired Swiss couple who have been on the road for more than 500 days; and (5) a Belgian couple and their three little blonde kids, enjoying their year (!!) of maternity and paternity leave after the birth of their most recent. Not a bad assortment.

After Antigua, we spent a really good few days in a place called Hawaii, Guatemala -- days worthy of their own blog post -- and now we're at the surfer mecca of El Tunco, El Salvador, slowly on our way to Nicaragua.  

Next up, maybe, a post about Awful Border Officials Who Look Like Kenny Powers from Eastbound and Down (mullet included).

Chicken Buses–Don’t Be Fooled

 

We’ve done a fair bit of driving in Guatemala and I’ve done an equal amount of thinking about chicken buses.  They’re transport buses called camionetas or autobuses here, but gringos call them chicken buses because you may see a variety of animals on and in them.  Having nearly died several deaths at the hands of these monsters, I’ve committed myself to a little investigation and have discovered some troubling things that I must now share. 

Most people assume that the chicken buses are sold south of the border and converted by new owners once they finish their useful lives in the states.  That is what they want you to believe.  The truth of how the buses got here is a much darker story. 

While it is true that in a former life, they were once school buses in the US, how they come to be the fire-breathing, demon possessed machines from the depths of hell is quite another story.  It is a seldom known fact that once these old school busses find themselves in a US junkyard and begin to rust, their rust and souls drop deep into the earth where they are absorbed into the groundwater and transferred south to a Guatemalan forest.  Within this forest, in a dark muddy spring, the angry soul of the bus seeps.  Mired in the mud, the bus reflects on the noisy American school kids that screamed, fought and soiled the seats of the bus for years. 

It’s no surprise that when, years later, the bus finally emerges from the bog, it is very angry.  The children, the over-reaching safety rules of the American school system, the inept drivers, the repressive paint scheme – it was all too much for the bus and now, upon its reemergence, the bus plots revenge.   

During its time in the bog, the bus  has undergone a most dramatic transformation.  The womb of the forest has given birth to new vehicle that barely even resembles the tired old mass that rusted into the earth in the US.  The automatic transmission has been replaced with a much more sporty 6 or 7 speed.  The brakes are upgraded.  Seats are replaced with wider ones to increase capacity.  Engines are upgraded and performance tuned.  But by far the most dramatic changes are in the paint scheme.  Mostly gone is the institutional yellow and uniformity of US school buses.  The new paint schemes are brightly colored and fantastical.   Much chrome has been added. 

Religious symbolism and sayings cover the buses. The buses are not followers though.  They understand that only two things keep them on the road. One is that they provide a valuable service – they transport people, animals and products with economy, efficiency, and excitement throughout Guatemala. The other is that few people are aware of the true nature of the buses.  If it became known that the buses were demonic monsters with no regard for humanity or street dogs, someone would put a stop to them, despite their great service. It is in this interest that buses adorn themselves beautifully to charm and beguile the populace.  An especially useful disguise is religious symbolism.  This way, folks assume that the buses fall on the good side of the evil/good line.  Let me assure you that they do not. 

In order to hedge their bets between the godly and the godless, chauvinistic crowd, the buses sometimes mix sexual symbolism and claims of love in with claims of godliness. 

In a particularly manipulative move, the buses even play upon cartoon imagery to win over the hearts of innocent little children.  This is one of the most egregious examples of psychological conditioning that I have seen.  Here, the use of the Road Runner character, leads children to believe that the excessive speed, dangerous maneuvers, and generally violent behavior is as noble and harmless as the actual Road Runner’s behavior.  For shame, chicken bus.  For shame. 

I have also seen the buses play off of people’s brand loyalties to win favor.  Harrumph.  Harley Davidson. I think not, bus, but well played. 

In addition to this Harley logo, I’ve seen Mercedes emblems placed upon what is clearly an International or Bluebird model bus.  Once, I even saw an Apple logo proudly emblazoned upon the most  highly ornamented chicken bus ever. I don’t think any of you have any doubts as to what is currently happening to Steve Jobs in his grave.  (I would, however, love to see what the bus would do to a cease and desist letter from Apple). 

Strangely, American patriotic symbolism is a common theme on the buses - American flags, old US license plates, claimed allegiance to various US states. I have yet to determine if this is indicative of a glimmer of fond memories of days past for the bus or if it’s simply a plot to win the hearts of unwary gringo travelers.   

 

There are some more patriotic than me, but hear this chicken bus: I will not be fooled by any amount of American flag, rock-n-roll, Mickey Mouse or other lies that you dress yourself up in.  I have seen into your soul and I know what lies within. 

The first clue as to the true evil of these buses came to me on quiet and winding mountainous road, up which the rattlevan climbed with slow persistence.  First I heard the rumble of a diesel of substantial size, then within a second of realizing what was behind me, a horn blared and my rear view mirror was rapidly filling with a fire breathing monster at top speed with no regard for the impending blind turn. 

On US roads, the fastest vehicle may be a punk kid in a tuner or on a superbike.  On these roads, I have yet to see anyone drive faster, with more aggression and more dangerously than a chicken bus.  I have seen the mad buses pass three vehicles at once going twice their speed, at dusk, on a blind curve, heavily loaded with cargo perched high on a roof rack, with the tires squealing around the turn only to jerk right at the last minute toward a most pathetic street dog as if the bus were greedily going for the extra points.   They are consistently the fastest and most aggressive vehicles on the road. 

I understand that the Guatemalan government has attempted to control the buses, but with little success.  Safety checkpoints, monitoring, suggested speed limits all do little to control the demons.  The only thing that slows them are steep topes.  The buses, though, quickly memorize the locations of these bumps and brake violently for them and accelerate dangerously away from them. 

The most horrifying fact in the life of these buses is not those that lie maimed in their paths, nor is it the fear that they routinely and joyously strike into the hearts of drivers, pedestrians and street dogs.  It is the brutal enslavement of their “drivers.”  In order to maintain their worldly pretense, these buses must employ drivers.  They couldn’t very well just drive along the roads with no drivers now could they? Of course not.  That is why they’ve captured and enslaved people to sit at the wheel and pretend to be driving.  They lure them in with shiny interiors and allow men to sit in a comfortable seat woven just for them.  Once the victim feels the power of the bus course through the steering wheel and into their bodies, they are caught. 

These hapless victims have been possessed by the bus based on that power and the promise of pride of ownership – and proud they are. 

They quickly enlist the bus to help them enslave others.  Each driver requires a helper to collect fares from passengers, wrangle luggage and most importantly clean the bus.  At all times, the bus must be maintained with as much shine as possible and these helpers work tirelessly to that end.   In the massive bus stations (demon strongholds), the helpers scrub the bus to a sparkling shine.

It is my hope that many people will read this and stop idolizing these terrible, but beautiful, buses. Their reign of terror on the roads of Guatemala must end.  Yes, they are beautiful works of art and many a gringo heart has been charmed by them.  Yes, they are loved for their beauty and utility by Guatemalans.  Still, the terror must end.   

See my photo album for some more pics of these monsters. 

Trespassing on Farmland (a.k.a. Backpacking)

Guidebooks, on a trip like this one, are like friends, trusted advisors whose dog-eared pages are eventually all but memorized.  That's true even if the guidebook's author is sort of a dork, not the sort of guy you'd actually like for an advisor, a Guatemala-born American dude with a penchant for boutique hotels and fancy cocktails and a subtle but persistent fear of the outdoors, of street food, and of poor Guatemalan people.  Our guy for this Guatemalan portion of our trip, one Al Argueta, might have been okay in small doses, but after more than a month of traveling with him, I can't wait to say goodbye.  I'm looking forward to hanging out instead with the Honduras guidebook author, who from what I can already tell is a livelier, more adventurous, more outdoorsy type of guy.  Unlike our buddy Al, who I think writes about nature purely from hearsay he gathered while sipping mojitos in a lounge in Guatemala City, the Honduras fellow seems to have actually done the hiking he writes about.  

That's all a long way to say that perhaps we shouldn't have planned a backpacking trip based on a single sentence Al wrote about how there was a hiking guide of the Ixil region available for sale in a town called Santa Maria Nebaj, from which it was safe to set out trekking alone.  From this scant information, we drove way up into the mountains to Nebaj, stopping at a famous open-air market in Chichicastenango where we almost got blown up by errant fireworks, and headed to the spot from which we believed we would purchase the rumored "trekking guide."  

Just like a topo map, except totally different.

Without looking up from their facebook pages, the girls in the office of the place that supposed had this guide told us such a thing didn't exist.  Hmm.  We had driven sort of a long way to get here, with this thought of backpacking through the countryside to little villages that roads didn't reach.  The absence of any map made that plan a little tougher.  But actually, we did have a map of sorts, in the form of some pictures we took of the wall of the office.

We got our packs up and set out over a pass from Nebaj to a town called Acul.  We began in the furthest corner of the paved portion of Nebaj, on a dirt road that started past little shops and then farms and then farmland.  Before too long, the road narrowed and headed pretty much straight up the mountain.  There is no such thing as a switchback on a trail built purely as the quickest way from one town to the next.

Nebaj in the distance.

 On this stretch of road, as on the rest of the hiking trip, the only other people we saw were carrying huge, impossible loads of firewood.  Backbreaking loads, carried sometimes by whole families, with little kids carrying quite respectable loads for their size.  These folks looked at us like we were crazy, carrying loads up, not down the mountain, and for sport.  Still, they always greeted us crazy gringos with genuine smiles.

After a couple of hours, we came to a sort of saddle through which the trail passed.  It was pasture land, green and welcoming, flat and calm and beautiful, with oak and pine mixed throughout.  We had started in the afternoon, so we considered stopping early for the night in this beautiful place.  Alas, there wasn't any water, and I rejected Chuck's suggestion that we just be thirsty all night (and skip coffee the following morning!  forget it), and we pressed on for Acul, which came into dramatic view as the trail turned steeply downhill.

Lena thinks we are the slowest things alive.

Darkness was starting to fall, so we sought refuge at a working dairy farm that we had seen from across the valley and that we thought we remembered our buddy Al mentioning as a place with rooms for rent.  The people there said we could camp for free, and later on they even made us a dinner.  A definite improvement over the freeze dried things we had with us.

Don't judge.  It's adorable.

At the farm, Lena continued her descent into total streetdogdom by rolling gleefully in fresh cow manure, something she never used to do.  Gross.  We had thought Lena was civilized, but it turns out she's totally just a dog.  Chuck found a hose and washed her off, and within minutes she did it again.  Bah.  So: Another bath, an hour of silent treatment, and a banishment to the vestibule of the tent.  But at least she still had her sleeping bag.

The next day, we sat and enjoyed the view, somewhat guiltily eating breakfast while the farm buzzed with workers.

Even Lena was being productive.

Then we set off, thinking we would walk to a place called Las Mejades and then make it a loop back to Nebaj.  Shockingly, Las Mejades was not on our awesome, comprehensive map, so we did some asking.  The first person we asked, the grandmother at the farm, said it was impossible to walk that far.  She said it took three hours by car and advised us to return to Nebaj.  The next person likewise said it was too far.  We almost gave up, but Chuck really remembered seeing something online about a three-day loop trek like this, so we asked one more guy.  He pointed to a mountain and said Las Mejades was three kilometers away.  Someone else said a six hour walk.  Someone else said four.  (Pretty standard stuff, really, in a place where most directions are just, "directo, directo!" regardless of whether there are in fact turns involved.)  It was still early, so we decided to go for it, and we once again headed up a little dirt road between farms.

Pretty soon the trail started to roughen.  There were climbs through barbed wire, that kind of thing.  A guy on horseback told us the trail was really bad up ahead.  "You can go that way," he said, "but you're going to pay for it."  Okay, whatever.  Chuck and I are pretty tough, and Lena never gets tired.  

But after a few hours, things really began to deteriorate.  We started describing certain areas as "trail-y" -- that is, sort of resembling a trail (but more likely a cow path).  We were clambering straight up a mountain toward what we thought had to be the pass between Acul and the mythical Las Mejades.  We ran into a few farmers early on, but as we got higher and higher the place became totally deserted save a handful of wells from which we pumped water.  The trail-y-ness of the whole place got more and more suspect, but we were continuing toward our pass, from which point we were sure we'd be able to see Las Mejades.  

Finally, late in the afternoon, we reached the peak.  We had been picturing something like the last saddle, a camper's paradise full of flat, grassy tent spots.  Instead, there was a wasteland of logged forest treated with weedkiller, an almost hellish spot that was very nearly impassible.  

Determined to see the next valley, we clambered slowly over fallen logs and brush, and eventually we were rewarded with a view of what may or may not have been Las Mejades.

A view of Las Mejades, maybe.

Unfortunately, there was no trail down, and the last water we had seen was a cow well back on the other side of the deathtrap logging area, and we weren't sure if it was Las Mejades at all.  We wavered for a while while Chuck tried to open the valve on a mysterious pipe on the mountaintop.  

Eventually, we did the wise thing and turned around -- heart breaking, doing that -- and returned to the Acul side of the ridge, and to the cow water.  We filled up and began looking for a place to pitch the tent.  And there simply wasn't one.  This mountain was way too steep for a two-person tent.  We kept looking, and the sun started going down.  And we kept looking, and descending, and making the likelihood of pushing on for Las Mejades the following day slimmer with every several hundred feet we descended.  

About halfway back down the mountain, and just as darkness fell, we finally found a tiny but almost flat spot for the tent.  We made camp, made dinner, made a little fire, and crashed early.  I think it was the first night in a week that the loud sound of street dogs fighting didn't fill our ears all night.  (I almost missed it.) 

When we eventually returned to civilization, the people we came across were shocked, totally shocked, by the fact that we had willingly (and eagerly) hiking up a mountain, for fun.  They were shocked, totally and completely shocked, by the fact that we had slept in the woods at night.  And, although the hiking was great and the trek really fun overall, I'll admit that there's also something sort of weird and dissatisfying about camping in an area as poverty-stricken as the Ixil Triangle.  People are truly struggling to survive.  Their day-to-day is hard, and something doesn't feel quite right about doing recreation-type things in such a place.  That said, we're already drooling over the descriptions of the forests and hiking our new and more worthy guidebook advisor promises we'll find in Honduras.

Next up, maybe: Van Food (or, a series of pictures of Chuck snarfing tacos and chuchitos from various stands)