Surfing
El Salvador
Well, after a few days in Antigua I finally climbed the volcano to see the lava pouring out and my list of things to do in Guatemala was done. I gave a ride to a couple of Israeli guys and a Finnish girl down to the beaches of El Salvador and I’m now chilling by the beach and picking up my surfing. The waves down here are great, I traded in my old board and bought something a bit bigger and it seems to be helping. I’m still not 100% there yet but over the last 3 days I’ve been working on my skills (and fitness). Paddling out really takes it out of you!
Yesterday a group of us took a trip up to see some nearby waterfalls which was cool, we got fish from the market and took a grill. There were natural rock slides and places to jump into the pools. Great fun! I think I will stick around for a while yet to get my surfing up to where I want it to be. I have a few jobs to do too, like tint all the windows of my car and get 1/3 of my hair cut off. I can’t see the next wave when I wipe!! 
What to do….
Antigua, Guatemala
I arrived here yesterday and found its full of tourists, and most depressingly, loud English guys who talk a load of bollocks. Its only for a while, I need to climb the Volcano tomorrow and get the hell out.
Ilona wants to go down to San Salvador to visit some mutual friends which sound probably for Friday. I spent the day doing some ‘work’ which hasn’t happened for a while. I also wandered around taking a few photos but its so dark and overcast its not really very good for it.
The Black Cat Hostel is full o…
The Black Cat Hostel is full of noisy English lads !! Bah Humbug!! :p
right, Im off to Antigua. Will…
right, Im off to Antigua. Will be staying in the black cat if anyone wants me,…
we went to 4 cinemas this week…
we went to 4 cinemas this weekend trying to find UP in english. All we found was potter 6, Ice age 3 and the joke, transformers 2… sigh
I finally get the chance to do…
I finally get the chance to do some work and then I get a migraine and can barely see. Bah!
well
I didn’t find Phil and I didn’t really do any work but I got some cash, found a super fast (and free) wifi place and downloaded a load of Lonely planet guides, lots for Central American. Why oh why did they have to change the password when I was on 90% of a 9Mb email that had been going for 40 minutes !!! Grrrrrr
Otherwise, pretty Sweet!
whoohooo I just found a site w…
whoohooo I just found a site with nearly all the Lonely Planet guides for download
Passengers Wanted?
If you saw my ad you might want to come discuss it in person and I would certainly want to meet you. I’m not just going to take anyone!! :p but here’s the deal in a nutshell.
I’m driving to Panama and want to take my time doing so, I could take a month, I could take 2… Some surfing, camping, hiking and partying on the way. I like to explore and if you know somewhere interesting lets go look at it!
I can tailor my budget to suit you and like to combine camping, cheap hotels, hostels and couchsurfing. I’m looking more for company than help with the gas but if you can afford it 1/4 of the gas costs per seat would be appreciated.
I’m a couchsurfing.com ambassador and its a great way to meet the locals on the way down. Check out my profile and excellent references (:p) at www.couchsurfing.com/people/traveltrousers.com
I have camping gear, a bike, a surfboard, a guitar, a load of music. The minivan doesn’t have aircon but I have an electric cooler. I also have a great camera and know how to use it so if you want some awesome photos of your trip you’re in luck!
All you need is a sense of adventure.
I’m currently staying at Hostel de Lago in San Marcos if you want to talk to me in person and I look like this :
Aren’t I beautiful!?!
mmmmmmmmm fresh guatemalan cof…
mmmmmmmmm fresh guatemalan coffee and a Dr. Brownie brownie in San Pedro…. what could be better 
Trying to work.
I spent the afternoon back in San Pedro with 3 things to do. I had to get some money, see Phil and do some work.
I took a Danish girl over to the other dock for Santiago, explaining several times how to avoid getting ripped off by the ticket sellers for the boats and then went to hunt some wifi. Zoola wasn’t working again and I couldn’t be bothered to hang around wondering if they would fix it. That really would be the perfect place if they could get a reliable signal going and start serving local coffee. Actually, forget the wifi just dump the Nescafe! Yuck.
I ended up in the internet place that did real coffee but charges 8Q an hour for the privilege of wifi. One day all internet, worldwide, will be free… I fired up my bittorrent client and even cued up about another 50 movies. If I’m paying for it….
I didn’t see Phil, the place where he worked was closed. I saw Ilona though, she walked past with Kristy, who we met at the rock jumping place. I called her name 3 times and she was only 4 meters away but she didn’t hear me. Just as well, I needed to do some work.
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Ilona |
Kristy |
I got my parents online and tried to do some stuff while simultaneously having to chat away. Nothing stays the same in the world of Internet money making and its causing me a few problems. I think I know what to do though. Things are still good as far as my income. I need to stop being so lazy and earn more money if I ever want to be able to justify a new camera set up. I’ve priced up a beautiful new set up based around the new Canon 5d mk ii with 3 L lenses that would set me back £4,600 :p That’s assuming I go to the states to get it all. Back in the UK it would cost me about double!! Crazy.
I had put up my notices but haven’t heard anything as yet. I have a friend from Xela who is working in Guatemala City for the next week so maybe I should go and see her and then maybe my passengers would turn up while I did that. I couldn’t even get any money as the ATM wouldn’t take my card. I’m surprised it ever takes my card. Its absolutely f*cked. It has two big cracks in it which I tried to fix by melting together, bad idea. The chip (which doesn’t work) was falling out so I pulled it out (and lost it). Then when I got to San Cristobal with 20 pesos to my name none of the ATMs would accept it. I had to pull out another chip from an old card and sellotape it in and then it started working. Quite a relief!
So no Phil, no money and little work done. Top that off with a boat back that was dangerously full, a place of the boat that got me rather soaked on the way back and the fact that the ‘Snack Shack’ was closed. I was actually perfectly happy, my post Mexico depression has lifted and life is good The sunset was awesome.
time for breakfast at the moon…
time for breakfast at the moonfish cafe….
The view of the lake from my dock….
I finally had a day when it didn’t rain. That didn’t stop my futilely carrying my umbrella all day but I didn’t mind, it was so beautiful. I nixed the possibility of changing hostels by spending most of the afternoon in across the lake in San Pedro. I had a look for my friend Phil who works over there but didn’t manage to meet him. Maybe tomorrow….
I sat in Zoola and waited and waited for the wifi to start working. I filled the time by figuring out how many couchsurfing references I have to write. Turns out I’m shy 33….. Better make them short and to the point :p I have one dating back to October 2007 …. bad, bad ambassador!!
I finally heard back from Ilona who should hopefully come find me later tomorrow… I wonder if she wants a ride south. I have to make up some ride offer posters but then with the weather being so nice I’m quite happy to stay stay here for a while longer. There is a 6 day medicinal plant course starting on Monday which could be fun. Or should I just be running to the beach in El Salvador….?
Panorama’s are such fun!!
Quick and dirty Google Earth Cache building
One of the most useful things I use while driving around is Google Earth. I bought a map of Mexico and it was useful but rather limited. The street signs in Mexico are appalling! Often you would be driving down a highway, say the I190 along the pacific coast and it would branch off, many times, but remaining the I190!!
A lot of the time you could just follow the road and it would usually take you to your destination, but often it is very, very nice to have a up to date map which shows your current location right now.
This is what I use Google Earth for. The latest non-Pro version allows you to use the GPS to show your current location.I pair my computer with my Royaltek RBT-2300 GPS tracker and it picks it up through bluetooth. They did something to it in version 5.0.11733.9347 so that it only shows if you tick the ‘ automatically follow the path’ which is unfortunate. This means it has to follow the path and then hovers a few thousand feet over the GPS, constantly tracking it. There is an older version of the pro version on the usual bittorrent sites that doesn’t have this bug.
Google please make it so you can follow the GPS location and adjust the orientation of the camera on the fly. Having it ‘birds-eye’ overhead isn’t that much fun. If it would follow the car’s position and let you see the road ahead (like in a tour) it would be so much better….
The problem is that when you’re driving through the jungle or desert you don’t have an internet connection to update the maps. You can only see what is already stored in the GE cache. You could zoom around the route you’ll be taking and manually building it, or you can do it the quick and easy way. There are also programs to build a grid of points which you can use to do the same thing, but of course countries and places aren’t square and who wants to start figuring out how many kilometers square the grid should be…. just do it with a tour.
First change the navigation options to the following. An angle of about 70 degrees is good, you can get a good look ahead then and 500 meter height is useful if you’ll be in a place that has a lot of mountains to obscure the view.
Add a path and draw on the map a load of lines covering the area you want to fill the cache with. Save it and then click the ‘play tour’ button. You then get a control in the bottom left of the map which you can use to accelerate, stop, reverse or loop the tour.
Connect to the net, set it going and go to bed. If you loop it (and its not insanely large) you should get a couple of loops around and a full cache ready for your next trip.
Flying along the tour, building the cache.
Tags: google, jungle, maps, internet connection, birds eye, gps location, kilometers, street signsWatching Movies
I spent the afternoon (once again) sorting out my stuff. I spread it all out with the express intention of throwing most of it away but it didn’t quite happen like that. Its all so damn useful…. my problem stems from the fact that I have been to the UK twice and each time I brought back a load more clothes and bits and bobs. I did get rid of some rubbish but it was mostly inconsequential. As expected, halfway through it started to rain and then from 2pm until 10pm I was trapped in my room. I filled some of the time by finally watching Schindlers List.
I have had this on my computer for months but never had the privacy and time needed to view it. I also expected it to be emotionally traumatic but it wasn’t too wrenching. Not to say what he did was not heroic in the end but I kept waiting for him to start saving people, and waiting…. It was interesting to compare it to the Pianist which was also partially set in the Warsaw ghetto. This is part of a ongoing personal challenge to watch all the movies in the IMDB top 250 and according to my spreadsheet (I know :p) I now have 66 to go, and only 14 in the top 100. Nearly all of them are ‘classics’ from the 60’s or earlier and the chance of me managing to download the rest is slim in this internet starved country. Not much wifi to steal at the lake, I have to pay for access! Shocking.
Back at the Lake and back on my trip
Everything is so green and the Lake is so high!!
I got back to Lago de Atitlan yesterday in Guatemala after an uneventful 7 hour drive down from San Cristobal. The Mexican border guards didn’t seem particularly sorry to see me go but then what do they care. On the Guatemalan side the guy that sorted out my car importation was slightly perturbed that I didn’t have my Mexican importation information, but that was because my car had been illegally in Mexico since last September. It didn’t seem to cause any problems despite the fact that it had been parked on the road for the majority of that time. In fact the only time I have had any trouble In Mexico was last week in Mazunte when we parked outside a Bank and came back after lunch to find a parking ticket on the windscreen and missing licence plates. Roland and I went to pay the fine but ended up pointing out that there were no signs anywhere and they ended up rather sheepishly returning it without a problem.
I had a few Queztals from my previous trip but then needed to pay 40Q to get my tires sprayed, a 10Q bribe when I stamped my passport (silly to be counting my money in front of them) and then another 40Q for my car. I changed my 122 pesos that I had left and was then scrapping around for another 15Q to pay for my car. I eventually found a money changer who would change the $2 required to give me enough money and I was good to go. For future reference there is an ATM 100 meters up the road which would have been an easier option….
I set off at 11.30am and figured it would take about 8 hours which wasn’t too far off the mark. The road is pretty much straight all the way which was good since I still couldn’t get my GPS to work with Google Earth. Happily I had done the same trip before so when I got to Quatro Caminos (The Four Roads) I knew which way to go and then most importantly which turning to head off when I was at the right place on the Pan-American. I was soooooo glad I had finally got my front brake disc replaced since there were 2 sets of very steep switchback turns on the way down to the lake which wouldn’t have been fun with my previous set of brakes.
I headed for Hostel de Lago since I knew I could park there and went back to La Paz for the great set vegetarian dinner before getting an early night. I spent dinner reading my Lonely Planet and planning my route through El Savador and Honduras and getting excited!!