Paid US $47 for another week here at Posada Don Carlos. No word on the rack other than what it says on the tracking page for USPS: Your item left the United States from ISC SAN FRANCISCO at 4:44 PM on July 11, 2010. If it happens to get here before the week is up I’ll leave and try to get the difference back on the hotel bill. I’m really anxious about getting back on the road. I think it’s because of how slow I’ve been moving for the past couple weeks and now that I’m healthy I want to take advantage of it.

Staying here hasn’t been so bad. My only complaint is that it gets a little loud sometimes with the kids playing and people talking on the couch that sits right outside my window. The windows are those kind with glass slats that don’t shut all the way so it’s like they’re sitting right there in the room with me. It helps with my Spanish so it’s not so bad I guess. The weather has been a mix of sprinkles all day or mostly cloudy with steady rain in the late afternoon/evenings. The cool weather is nice though. Been a couple nights now when I wish I owned a pair of pants.

Lot’s of good places to eat around town. I’ve been hitting up the street vendors a lot more since a good meal with a couple beers can be had for $5 vs. the $12-$15 for a restaurant meal and drinks. There a couple ice cream places that I’ve been frequenting quite a bit too.

I haven’t had much of a desire to hop on a boat and visit any of the villages that surround the lake since I’ve seen a good share of quaint Mayan villages and I don’t need to be buying anything. That might change if the weather looks like it might cooperate for the day. Lounging around watching movies on TV, catching up on Entourage and The Office and web surfing from the comfort of a warm bed is enough excitement for me when I get to take breaks like this.

Been doing a lot of reading about Guatemala and Russia (Stalin mostly–what a freaking monster and Time magazine even made him Man of the Year–twice). It’s funny how differently he was portrayed back in school (Canada) when we studied Russian history. This ended up starting a Wikipedia link bonanza where I’d being reading one article, see another interesting reference and open that up in other tab for later reading. Killed the entire day doing that yesterday.

Grabbed a bunch of free books using iBooks on my iTouch that I love so much (even though iOS 4 sucks–poor battery life, lame multi-tasking and app crashes, folders are awesome though). One of the books was a report prepared by the United States Army on the effects of the atomic bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Talk about chilling. We sure do a good job of blowing the crap out each other.

Not sure if I’ll do this yet but I might end up just hitting Antigua for a volcano tour and then just riding into El Salvador and skipping the run up to the northeast to see the ruins at Copan. We’ll see what happens with the rack delivery and how it messes with my 90 day travel limit.

06/18 Made it to San Ignacio safe and sound. There are a lot more hills in this part of Belize and it made for some great scenery along the last 20 miles today. I didn’t stop and take any pictures because a mean looking storm was chasing after me. Just as the first drops started falling I saw a shelter off to the side of the road so I rolled inside and talked to a guy who was also taking cover. It didn’t last very long but it gave me time to learn a little about how people get around here. Hitchhiking is extremely common. The buses don’t run very often so when people need a ride they just stand by the road and raise their arm up and down like you would if you were flipping someone off only with all your fingers extended. There’s probably a better way of describing it but that’s all I could come up with.

Given that I’m less than a days ride from Guatemala I was thinking about some of the differences I’ve noticed between Mexico and Belize. Other than Canada these were the first 2 foreign countries I’ve ever been to. Since I was only in Belize for a relatively short period of time I can’t judge too much but the couple things I noticed were that the major roads in Mexico are much better than in Belize, the trash problem is nothing in Belize like it is in Mexico and the people in Mexico are far more vocal in their greetings (honking/waving/whistling although when you do end up talking to someone in Belize they are extremely friendly). Couple other things: people don’t drink the tap water in Belize, Snickers bars can be found in most road-side stores here, there are a lot more private vehicles on the roads, shower curtains are standard and all toilets have seats on them. No flushing toilet paper here either–use the garbage cans for waste. Hot and cold water taps are rarely labeled and never on the same side in both countries. Chinese people seem to own almost all grocery stores and a lot of the restaurants in Belize.

I went over to grab some dinner tonight and realized that I’d forgotten to account for the time zone change when I flew back into Mexico from Florida. So for the last 2 weeks I’ve been an hour ahead of everyone else.

Monkey Bay ended up being a mess. A group of students staying there were up until 1am (my time) making a bunch of noise and then these stupid dogs started barking at 4:30am. The place they stick you to camp was also overrun with fire ants.

I haven’t mentioned the World Cup but let me tell you it’s all people talk about here and every TV has it on. When Mexico was playing last week at 7am or something like that every bar/store I passed was full of people watching the game. It’s just crazy yet I still couldn’t care less about soccer.

I’ll be in town for the next 3 nights hanging out and waiting for Karin and Marten’s arrival on Sunday night. There’s lots of things to see here so there’ll be more posts.

GPX Track

Worst rest days ever. I don’t know what I have or who I got it from but I think I’ve almost kicked this thing. What started out as a headache has worked its way down my poor body in a rather systematic manner: headache, runny nose, sore throat, coughing and then stomach problems (won’t go into details). I tried walking around today to get some fresh air and didn’t do too bad. There’s a church at the top of a huge hill that I wanted to see but I gave up half way. Didn’t have the energy for it.

Lot’s of people out enjoying the nice weather. The market was crazy. Not a good place for tall people though. Glad I was wearing my bike helmet. Just kidding.

There are a lot of people struggling to survive here which is sobering when you’re strolling around with a nice camera and a full stomach. There was a guy sitting in one of the aisles at the market with his leg extended out. He had a really bad case of elephantiasis on it and I doubt he could even walk. The indigenous people, mostly of Mayan descent, have tonnes of sidewalk booths set up where they sell everything from blankets to jewelry. There are just so many you have to wonder if entire days go by where they don’t sell anything.

The hippy/dreadlocks people here are a bit wacko. I can’t tell where they’re from but I don’t think it’s the States. One pair was playing a set of drums outside a church while a hippy girl spun around some rope or something. Really? It seems a bit tacky to me to travel to a developing country and try to hit people up for loose change so you can keep traveling the world. Maybe its just me though. Besides the hippies the other foreigners here, of which there are quite a few, seem to stay pretty low key.

Tourism has definitely left its mark on the people that live in the main historical area of the city though. For the first time someone made a snide comment when I couldn’t explain in Spanish what I wanted. It was a guy in a bike shop and after spending all of 15 seconds trying to tell him I wanted a bike tube he walked over to get it and muttered “Spanish” under his breath. Fair enough–not speaking the language very well sucks but give me a break. It’s not like I was being demanding about it and it was kind of obvious I’d traveled a long way so there shouldn’t be an expectation that I know every word in the language. If I encountered a foreigner traveler in the States or Canada and they couldn’t speak English it wouldn’t even cross my mind to be anything but helpful. If I was living here totally different story. Of course you never really know what experiences he’s had with people before me so I’m sure that played into it. Pete had a similar experience with some seemingly anti-gringo sentiment and that guy speaks Spanish better then anyone I know. On a positive note, one good thing about this place is that almost no one stares at me (except the ladies). I kind of miss the small towns now.

I also haven’t seen anyone since I got here. I had to bail on seeing Roland/Belinda and Karin/Marten this morning and Pete left this morning and I didn’t get to see him either. If I got any of them sick I’d feel horrible.