It seems like six weeks is our natural limit in one place. We arrived in San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas on December 23 with no idea what our holidays would hold. In the whole city there was one person accepting CouchSurfers over Christmas and we all ended up there. In 24 hours we planned, prepared and pulled off a beautiful Christmas Eve dinner for any and all foreigners with nowhere to go. Our holiday family consisted of Mac (Texan who rents this really cool house and uses it like an informal hostel), two Basque girls, one mexicano, two Dutch folk, one Vietnamese Canadian, a girl from Oregon, some random stragglers that just came for dinner, and us. Over the freezing cold weeks of late December we huddled around the fireplace, cooked lots of food, and became a family. On New Year's Eve we feasted once again, drank posh (the locally-made corn cane liquor) and tequila, danced in the streets and bars, and welcomed the first sun of 2010.
After the holiday madness things calmed down significantly. Most of our family disbanded to home countries or further adventure and we decided to stay if we could find a job. We love the feel of this town, being able to walk everywhere, shopping in the market, meeting interesting travelers and exploring the surrounding communities. We checked all the language schools and looked into a few restaurant jobs and for the first few days things didn't look good. Then one of the school directors contacted us with our first payed work in Mexico. One of his best students needed private lessons and was on a strict schedule. Since we couldn't fairly decide which one of us would do it we teamed up and rented a room in Mac's house for a month. For three weeks we taught our 17 year-old heavy metal fanatic pupil Monday through Friday for more than two hours a day. This experience was incredibly positive for everyone involved. We gained valuable experience, references, and enough money to get us to our next stop. Our pupil improved his English greatly and we always had fun during class teaching him how to say "damnit" with the right inflection amd bonding over our rejection of religion (something he had rarely had opportunity for in his life).
Outside of work we had lots of time to relax, read, and pick up new hobbies. Emily has been making beautiful jewelry from hemp, beads and shells in hopes of one day finding a good place to sell. Tyler picked up a guitar for about 20 minutes and is hoping to find a cheap, small guitar to travel with while learning. We've both been playing a lot of backgammon, sometimes for several hours a day. This area is also the center of the 2012 phenomenon and we have had a lot of eye-opening experiences and conversations. We recommend people look into it for themselves.
Since we started this email we have acheieved our first border crossing; estamos en Guatemala. Our last day in San Cris was Super Bowl Sunday. We hosted a party and I won 50 pesos on the Saints, what a great game. We said our goodbyes and headed off to Palenque, an impressive ancient stone city. Camping near the park we met a lot of interesting people and were even joined by friends from San Cris. One day we hiked up a river bed in the pouring rain and climbed waterfalls, the rain kept away the bugs and it was comfortably warm. Another day we trekked through the jungle to enter the ruins covertly but were discovered and ejected before we could see them all. At night we were treated to our friends' tunes and the insane screams of howler monkeys which sound nothing like they do on TV. Eventually we decided it was time to leave Mexico behind and head to our next wwoof farm in Belize.
A bus took us to the border, a boat took us across and a lovely Czech couple lent stupid us some money so we could catch a bus on the other side. The next five hours were spent in a 15-person van with 31 people and some chickens. Then, expecting it to be one of the only ATMs around I hopped out before our destination to get some cash to pay back our benefactors. Unfortunately, the ATM was hungry and gobbled up my card without dispensing any cash. I´ll spare you the rageful details but we were unable to repay our friends and lost one night (I got the card back in the morning).
Halfway through Guatemala's northern section are the ruins of Tikal towards which we are currently awaiting a bus. We spent last night with a wonderful Guatemalan family on the shore of a lake who gave us a place to camp, shared valuable information, and cooked us a wild chicken soup. Everyone we've met since we've been here have been very welcoming and open. We feel like we had just started to think in Mexican terms and now we have to start all over, no more pesos now it's Quetzales. But we should only be here for two more days before we're in Belize. Tonight we will camp at Tikal and catch sunset and sunrise at the largest archeological site in the western hemisphere. So, we're a few days shy of five months down here and going strong. Our next stop is a group of farms in Belize that need some help with a gardening project. That's all we know except that they also keep bees, grow fruit and make their own wine! There will apparently be a lot for us to learn. Check it out at belizebamboo.com. We're extremely excited to get back to work and stop spending so much damned money. We've posted new pics of San Cris on Picasa http://picasaweb.google.es/
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