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Feral Green Swerves Into Guatemala

By admin | October 24, 2007

Billy here, broadcasting from El Salvador……

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….. picking up where Eric left off in Mexico.  We were all impartial as to where to surf that afternoon or where to sleep that night, so we just got on the road, as Kerouac would say.  The event of the day wasn’t a delicious papusa, a hermaphroditic cur, or Sean’s mustache.  It was a hitchhiker.  He jumped in, got our names and called us gentlemen.  Then Richard went into a trance of story telling.  We heard about his college buddy Chris Farley jumping off a roof, totaling a car, and walking away unscathed.  We heard about drugs, travel, history, politics and theories.  Sponge Bob is a government sponsored population control, because with his gay voice and wristy gestures, he subconsciously influences America’s youth to be gay, controlling procreation.  The Mayan Calendar ends in 2012, which is when a galactic committee of several alien races will decide whether they accept humans as members of the committee, enslave us, or simply exterminate earth.  They will use the pyramids, which these aliens built thousands of years ago as communication devices to the outer reaches of space, which is why many pyramids are astrologically aligned.  He told us very personal things about his family, hard times, and hilarious stories.  After a family quarrel he made the choice to separate himself from his parents, “I gave back the condo, the jeep, all of it, and I got on a plane to

Spain, because I knew that would really drive them up the wall.” 

“Wow,” Eric said, “were you all right when you got to Spain?”

“Actually yea, it worked out great, because I got hired to sew the biggest pair of blue jeans in the world like two days later.”  Richard was immediately one of us, and he started sleeping on the bench seat of the truck by night.  By day he would give us Spanish lessons.  Rich needed a lift and had no money; we needed some Spanish tutoring; Richard had a degree in Spanish from Marquette, and he’d been a translator for some extremely influential people he’d rather I didn’t mention because of the sociopolitical ramifications of their current circumstances.  Needless to say, Aventon is a big believer in karma.

 

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To the Hispanic people we met, Richard introduced himself as Ricardo, so we amped it up to Don Ricardo.  He also came to be known as Aventon (hitchhiker), Don Aventon, Tricky Dicky, and Rich.  Just as he was known by many names, Richard contributed to our journey in many different ways.  He was brilliant with language, so whenever Sean or Hongo didn’t know how to say FFFFFFFF or FFFFFFFF he was there to tell them it was FFFFFFFF or FFFFFFF.  As we drove to Chacahua, he had me jump out of the car and taught me to cut down a gaggle of bananas and hang them to ripen.  Ten days later we each started eating four bananas a day.  Aventon taught us yoga and did one on one sessions with Eric.  He speared and cooked fish with Kevin, and he talked shit to Sean… relentlessly.

Chacahua, one of the first places we stayed with Don, was a great right point off a river jetty.  I got the longest wave of my life and broke a board.  Sounds pretty cool eh?  Well it’s not.  I broke the board walking down the slippery rock jetty before getting in the water.  The other five surfers in the water watching, I slipped on some moss trying to scurry back up the rocks to avoid getting pummeled by a set wave.  I fell hard and cut up my back and hip, damaging the board in the process.  Then I got hit by the set wave, pleasant.  I paddled out anyway, while the other guys in the water nodded in my direction whispering about the idiot bleeding in the water.  Oh well, you can’t make an omelet without getting really embarrassed about being inferior to your peers.

At Chacahua Kevin finally got to use some the fishing equipment again as well.  The river was a hot bed for tiny fish, and he got a bunch.  First Kevin went out with a spear gun he’d bought and got one in his sights.  His aim was true and the spear hit the little guy perfectly… perfectly gently, because the spear daintily bounced off the fish, which seemed to wink at Kevin before swimming away in a leisurely manner.  At that point the locals yelled over that spear guns weren’t allowed in the river.  Luckily a retired cockfighter named Scary Larry, who we’d met in the water earlier, told the locals we were all right, and they let us carry on.  So Kevin went back out with fish from the Hawaiian sling.  Don Ricardo cooked them up and we had a great dinner that night.

We moved on through Mexico to Oaxaca City, where Don did some yoga in the Zocalo (town square) and earned some money.  He also met his future future ex wife, who he fell in love with after their ninety minute conversation.  We all ate mole, a delicious locally conceived oozlatron that can be combined with almost anything to be an A+, and we shopped around, taking in the local culture.  We all bought straw hats for ten pesos each (91 cents), and had a great time in preparation for some serious surf. 

Puerto Escondito is heavy duty.  Only Sean and Eric went out the first morning.  The set waves had eight to nine foot faces, which we’ve surfed in other places.  At Puerto Escondito the white wash comes down so hard it rebounds twice as high as the original wave.  Sean and Eric caught some waves and got hammered by a few others.  They called it quits after an hour, and we did some yoga on the beach with Rich.  We can all stand on our heads unassisted for over two minutes, see people behind us without rearview mirrors, speak to Jesus, and we’re working on scorpion position.  The second day at Escondito was more crowded, but Eric and Sean got into some big-cheese waves, and the professional photographer thought them worthy of a few pics.  Check them out in the Mexico album, because they’re up on the site right now. 

When we left Puerto Escondito we brought Karl and Robin from Montana.  We’d already met them and hung out in Nexpa, and Escondito, and we were all headed to Barra de la Cruz, so Karl rode in the cab with us and Robin rode in the camper with Aventon.  It was a great surf camp.  The wave was a point with a heavy current and a tiny take off spot, but when you got one it was a long, fun ride.  We all had a good time, accept Hongo, who contracted Dengue Fever.  He and a few other surf camp temporary residents unfortunately had to sit it out.  While we were there, school was out for “teacher’s day,” so we gathered up all the surf kids in town and read our children’s book, courtesy of  wetsand.com.  They loved it, and when we gave each of them Wetsand stickers for their boards and their chests, they were ecstatic.  But the surf was about to die down, so we headed back inland.

Next we went to San Cristobal in the highlands, Eric trying to sleep off the Dengue in the back seat.  It was raining, and we could see our breath, but the city was great.  It reminded everyone else of Europe, and it reminded me of landscape descriptions I’ve heard from people who’ve spent time in

Europe.  There are great hand woven everythings.  The Indigenous people make everything in the surrounding villages and conglomerate to sell in the modern city, Richard explained to us.  He then took us to one of those surrounding villages, San Juan Chamula, explaining that the elders thought gods spoke through them when they burped.  When Coke was introduced a number of decades ago, they thought gods were really talkative all of the sudden.  Coke signs are everywhere in that village and it’s the most popular drink by far.  No joke.  Seriously.  Anyway, after a few more history lessons from Dick we moved on to

Guatemala, which got a bad rap from everyone we spoke to.

 

The Mexican Border departure fee is about twenty bones, so we didn’t know what to do with Richard.  But, as usual, things worked out, and Don Aventon shimmied across the border, no fee incurred.  We stopped by Lake Atitlan and Antigua for a night, and found all negative rumors about

Guatemala to be false.  The people were extremely short, but nothing short of wonderful to us.  The next stop was Finca Ixobel (Ishobel).  Finca means farm in Spanish, and the Finca Ixobel is an organic farm where travelers can rent a bed for 20 Quetzales, about $2.75 a night.  It was clean and very nice… before we got there.  You see Sean’s 25th birthday was October 16th, and we got there the night of the 15th.  Sean’s birthday was just hours away.  Off to the Ixobel proper with Kevin and I to buy rum.  We got back and got things started by teaching everyone in shouting distance how to play liar’s dice.  Then Jackie, an employee volunteering from UCSB took us down to the bar.  It was about two blocks distance from the beds.  The bar was empty, accept for a kid with his parents and a bunch of hoola hoops.  We hoola’d well into Sean’s birthday, Don Ricardo doing more advanced yoga maneuvers with each successive drink.  He was trained in

India.  Somehow we all got up on the 16th in time for a guided cave tour at 2:30pm.  Our guide was a very nice little guy who laughed his hilarious laugh when Sean, Eric, and I showed up in sandalias with no shirts on.  More on the best / worst / best hike of our lives in the next blog….

Topics: Guatemala |

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