Travel

Last weekend I took a trip with some other gringos from San Andrés. We rented a minibus for the weekend and drove south to Semuc Champey. It is an area with lots of limestone and lots of water. Predictably, there are caves there, and other interesting things to see. We caught the bus at 5 AM from the shack with no walls that serves as the bus station in San Andrés. We drove south for a couple of hours over fair roads, then headed up into the mountains. The driver knew a “short cut” that would make the trip take less… something. We weren’t clear what, but he seemed to know where he was going. 6 hours later, after 70 kilometers of dirt road, we got there. It turned out that the short cut was meant to save diesel, and as we had neogotiated a fixed price for the trip out and back, it was to his advantage to try to save gas. I’m personally highly skeptical that a mountain road traveled at less than 20 km per hour saved any diesel over the slightly longer trip over pavement, but who am I to argue with a Guatemalan bus driver? ...

I have more time to write today, so here is a better description of my new life for the next few weeks. First, a look at how my day goes. At 5 am or so, the roosters start making noise, which in turn wakes up the pigs who make snuffling noises in the street. In some parts of town, diesel powered corn grinders start up to grind the corn for the morning torillas. One gringa friend of mine here has one next door, and cheerfully uses it as an alarm clock. There are happily none near me, so I can sleep in. (I think my mama gets her tortillas from a tortilleria down the road.) ...

Those of you who have been wondering, I made it to little San Andrés, Guatemala and am settled in with my family. I do not have time for a full update today, but I am doing fine and am really happy with my choice of programs. Already I have had 5 hours of instruction and have homework, and got to visit an animal rehabilitation clinic. More in a few days when I get back to Flores. San Andres does not have Internet (but does have electricity, gas, and cold running water). ...

I’ve been having some more sedate adventures during the last couple months, so I’ve been remiss in telling y’all what I’ve been up to. Well, now I’m about to start some new stuff, I figured I better flush out the queue! My last update was from New Years. I spent January in Arnold. I occupied myself there by working on DTN2, the reference implementation of the emerging Disruption Tolerant Networking protocols. This work will be useful both for the Interplanetary Internet, and also for getting information to parts of the world where networks don’t reach reliably, like developing regions. For more information about how this (and other technology) can improve people’s lives in emerging regions, see the TIER website at Berkeley. ...

Hello, all my travel-watchers! Hope you all had a good holiday season. Thanks to those of you who put me up, and those others who asked, “Where are you?” Since I last sent out an update, I’ve returned to the US from Dakar, Senegal. I made my way home by a sequence of trips that, if the TSA had known about them, would have put me on the no-fly-list for life. I flew one way from Dakar to Lisbon, spent the night, then caught the second half of a round trip I bought back in October. I landed in New York and made a bus trip north to Boston, then spent several nice days there with Jennie Hango. It was cold outside, so we did traditional winter things like hang out and play video games, and make chicken soup from scratch. Jennie makes really good noodles, and she does it like an Italian grandmother, without a bowl; she just puts the eggs into the flour and goes for it with her fingers! ...

Some random observations about Senegal: You must bargain over virtually every purchase. I would have thought that would drive me crazy, but you get used to it. And the Senegalese sense of humor makes it fun, since a huge part of the bargaining process is making the other guy laugh. If you are at a place where negotiations seem to be at an impasse and you add in some Wollof sprinkled with even more broken French, they crack up into gales of laughter, and give in on the price. Once a guy told me that he could not possibly go any lower because the money was for his mother. I countered, “But this is a Christmas gift for MY mother, and I cannot go any higher!” (Sorry Mom, it was actually something for me!) ...

Hi everyone! We made it to Senegal! This passage was much easier than the last one. It was over 850 miles, so we were prepared for it to take over a week to get here. That’s a long time on a little boat! The weather was pretty much in our favor all the time. That meant almost the entire way the wind was behind us, or on our port beam (perpendicular to the boat on the left side). When the wind is exactly behind you, you can put the main on one side and the jib on the other in a configuration called wing-on-wing. It’s really beautiful to behold! And it makes the boat go fast, so we got here in just 7 days! ...

It was my night to cook dinner tonight. I’d been looking at the crepe page in the Moosewood cookbook for ideas for dinner crepes ever since I made them for breakfast a few days ago. They were a hit for breakfast, so I figured dinner was the logical next step! Moosewood suggested a spinach and ricotta filling. That sounded ok, but a little bit boring. I was also a little worried about finding ricotta here. Spanish supermercados are a little funny about cheese. There are often 15 variations on manchego, but no other kinds. Want parmesian, ricotta, or brie? Too bad! ...

I said before that on watch we only need to check for traffic and other changing conditions. If that’s all we have to do, then who’s steering? The answer is the autopilot! Wonderland has two autopilots on board. The first one is an electronic one. The other one is analog and operates off of the power of the wind and the boat going through the water. They are both pretty interesting, so I’ll explain them both. ...

You may have noticed I’m not sending out many updates. Plenty is going on, it’s just hard to squeze in time to go write an update at an internet cafe. So I’m trying a new system where I write updates offline when I get a chance, then upload them when I am online. My last update was from Graciosa, a small island in the northeast of the Canaries. That’s where we made landfall after our passage. It was a great place to unwind from the passage-making lifestyle and get back into the cruising lifestyle. ...