8.30.2007
A song about Flipper
8.28.2007
From the desk of Michael Peterson in response to flipper not showing up when Griff and I swam with dolphins:
They call him Flipper, Flipper, faster than lightning,
No-one in the sea, is a bastard like he.
And we know Flipper, doesn't love Shelly,
Avoiding her under, under the sea!
No one really knows the king of the sea,
Ever so snotty a bastard is he,
Tricks he will olay when tourists appear,
And how they curse him when he isn't near!
They call him Flipper, Flipper, that fishy bastard,
No-one you see, is worse turd than he,
And we know Flipper, soon will be slaughtered,
Dragged up with tuna, from under the sea!
Fabulous.
Hurricane Dean Update
8.20.2007
Last we heard, Hurricane Dean was bumped to a class 5. So Griff and I took a bus to Cancun and got on a standby list out of Mexico (extremely lucky). We are now safe and in the US.
Faulkner on Mexico
8.19.2007
In Faulkner`s As I Lay Dying, Addie Bundren claims that ¨Sin and love and fear are just sounds that people who never sinned nor loved nor feared have for what they never had and cannot have until they forgot the words.¨
Travelling in Central America has been wonderful. Griff and I suspect that blogging was our way of making the best of difficult parts of the trip (notice how many times we wrote about bus trips), but that when we are really enjoying ourselves, we don`t need to write about it because we don`t need words to create the experience for us. For whatever reason, I have not blogged much about the second half of our trip.
I miss you all and can`t wait to get home.
Adelaide
Cutting out the middle man
Griff and I have been robbed in our hotel room twice. As this poses a dangerous situation, we have taken to leaving our valuables in public. Like the camera we left at the internet cafe. We hope this leads to a safer and more efficient form of robbery.
* As a side note, any pictures past Venezuela have been ripped off from friends. To see pictures of Lake Atitlan and Lake Bacalar (where we are now), check out this site: http://coleychavez.com/atitlan/index.html . I talked to the guy who posted the pictures. He`s seems like a pretty cool fellow.
PADI Certified Scuba Divers
After 4 days of classes, videos, and practice dives, Griff and I are officially certified scuba divers. Or certifiable. had to write that to head off any blog comment jokes.
According to the video, ¨scuba divers are more fun than normal people.¨My cool points just went way up.
Here we are studying. Look how much cooler we are.
There are, as yet, no pictures of Griff getting drunk and falling asleep on the side of the road.
Yes, we are safe
Griff and I are now in the Quinta Roo at Lake Bacalar. We were planning to fly out of Cancun, but because of the recent weather complications, Mean, Mean Hurrican Dean, we may have to change our plans.
We are safe, and we`ll definitely try to stay that way. Updates soon.
**We are delaying our flight home until Thursday, stocking up on food and water, and hoping for the best.
International calls, anyone?
8.14.2007
I lost my notebook with the phone numbers of anyone who might read this blog in it. (Hey, I keep in close contact with my fan base.) So, if you get any calls from Guatamala, sorry about that. Edwin has already gotten one.
Strange postcards, on the other hand, are entirely from me. I call them WTF postcards.
I'm moving here
8.13.2007
Lake Atitlan-a deep beautiful lake that used to be a volcanic crater. The water is naturally that emerald color Lake Winnepasoka created with fish mutating chemicals. I went swimming in a secluded cove and could see well beyond twelve feet deep.
I spent a few days in a meditation center here and Griff watched a lot of South Park.
Every ridiculous looking American for himself
8.11.2007
Rode an overnight bus. Again. We have now stayed on buses more than hostels. This one was so cold that Griff wrapped a pair of his (hopefully clean) underwear around his head to keep his head and face warm. He wanted me to share my sleeping bag with him, but I said, ¨Lo, there is not enough bag for the both of us. Go and see if you can buy more before the bridegroom cometh.¨I mean, he´s had plenty of time to get his own blanket. I did share with him until he came up with that whole underwear on the head thing. After that, it was every ridiculous looking American for himself.
Venezuala--back in time blog
Caracas is a hard city to be in. It´s thought to be more dangerous than Bogota. Today I almost stepped on a decomposing dog carcass. Broken glass and tall spikes--even the McDonald's is vigilantly guarded. Griff touched the door of a closed LAN house, and, as a result of the severe shock, he will no longer be able to sire children.
Venezuela exports oil and diamonds. Neither industry bodes well for a country. There is a strong anti-American sentiment here fueled (ha pun) by the fear that Venezuela will be the next Iraq. Combined with the fact that Brittney Spears is still very big here, it´s easy to imagine George Bush saying, ¨Oops I did it again.¨
Still, the countryside is beautiful and most people come here for the mountain villages or the waterfalls. We came to see the latter. We took speed boats up the river, hiked around rough spots, and slept in hammocks with a view of Angel Falls--the tallest waterfall in the world. Griff was experiencing gastrointestinal distress which amounted to something like this: ¨Wow. That´s amazing. I hope we find a bathroom very soon.¨
The trouble with things going well is that it´s harder to write about. I think I´ve lost touch with beauty. Things have been so hard the past few years. I´ve gotten good at dealing with sadness--finding irony and humor in it. But straight unfiltered beauty? Beauty untinged by sadness? Riding up river on that boat, surrounded by sheer rock faces, waterfalls that cut their steep descent into the river--it was as if some old forgotten part of me opened up.
I walked on a trail close behind a huge waterfall. In the middle, I started yelling and dancing, spinning around in circles. The people near me started doing it too until we were all soaked and exhausted. It was one of the most incredible things I´ve ever done.
I was struggling with how to put it into words, when a British friend told me to write this: ¨Just saw a bloody amazing waterfall. You buggers aren´t here. Ha. Ha.¨
I´m not sure gloating is the right approach. Besides, that guy can be a real asshole.
Cheers.
Adelaide
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