Baffoon Bombs it on the Beach

In Cancun the water is pretty choppy and so in the swimming areas they have these great big giantic ropes so that if you start to get tired, or are swept out to sea you can grab onto one rather than trying to swim back to shore which won't work anyway and will probably kill you.

Anyway, one day I went for a run and happened upon a wedding just near a couple of the ropes. 

I jumped over the first one, turned toward the camera and threw my arms in the air in an attempt to photo-bomb a shot of the bride and groom.

Success! 

Hilarious!

BAM! 

...I forgot about the second rope and it got me right in the knees and I face planted in the sand. Hard.

That's whatcha get.

Great Mexican Road Trip

Well...not really. But I've never been to Belize. And so when all my friends went home yesterday from Cancun I rented a car and started driving. Belize is about five hours away and along the way I stopped and visited the ruins at Tulum and Coba. 

When I left the car rental shop, I rolled down the windows (manually, of course) to let the wind blow through my hair. The freedom! A single American blonde woman traveler just rented a car to drive around in it! Look everybody! Look at me!! 

Immediately on the right hand side of the road was a taco stand and I was starving. So I pulled over into a parking lot. This kind of stuff is fun for me because:

1) I love food

2) It forces me to speak in Spanish

3) It's a mini spontaneous and very safe adventure

4) I love food

So I ordered up two tacos and they fried them right there in front of me. I loaded up on the pico de gallo. "muy picante?" I asked, "medio" they said and then I asked "por Mexicanos...or por Noruegas?"and they laughed! They laughed at my joke! Everybody! Look at me!!

I paid them $1.75 and then stood there and ate the tacos with my new side-of-the-road-taco-stand friends like a real local person. 

I thanked them and went to get in my manual stick shift Mexican rental car.

Which I realized had one of those funny reverse situations.

You know, where you can't really just put the car in reverse? You have to perform a pushing motion on the stick and then move it. But that didn't work. I tried for several minutes, while all of my new side-of-the-road-taco-stand friends watched in confusion. ...But wasn't she a single American blonde woman traveler? Shouldn't she be able to put a car in reverse?

---

I rolled down my window again (manually, of course) and yelled: "POR FAVOR! AYUDAME!!" and one of my side-of-the-road-taco-stand friends came running over, reached across my dumbfounded face and pulled up on this silly lever and slipped 'er into reverse.

And then I drove away, the wind in my hair once again.

The Mexican Chevy Aveo: Man's most complicated car

"Get Thee to a Sunset!"

Whenever I've been traveling in a location that has a western coast it has been an unspoken rule that at day's end, I'll position myself somewhere so that I can watch the sunset.

Nicole and I made our way to the beach almost nightly to walk for miles along the beaches of Costa Rica, sometimes speeding dangerously down the highway so that we wouldn't miss that last sliver of light. We learned to time it -- about an inch in the sky was ten minutes. In South Africa, they call it "sundowners" and most often Mineska and I would view it from blankets with wine at Llandudno Beach. When my friends and I visited Sarah in San Diego we made a fire at Oceanside and illegally drank wine from coffee mugs. In Hawaii, every night without exception I and my friends made a plan as to where we would be watching the sunset. 

Sometimes orange. Sometimes pink. Sometimes blue and even white. Every night it's different. It never gets old. There's no sense whatever that you can skip it because you've "been there done that". 

Costa Rica

Maui

South Africa

San Diego

And the location doesn't have to be exotic. Even in Roosevelt, Minnesota, at the lodge where I worked we had rows of west-facing windows that overlooked gigantic Lake of the Woods. I'd stop running for a few moments to join our guests and watch the sun silently slip below the horizon.

Minnesota, 9:20pm

You know what though? I don't do sunsets in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It's not even on my radar here. Perhaps because there are too many trees and buildings to block it? I don't know. But that stops now. 

In my quest for post-vacation-similar-to-New-Year's-resolution-self-betterment, I vow this summer to make sunsets part of my day. I won't even have to go far. Here's the view right out of my apartment window:

Minneapolis

NOT TOO SHABBY, EH?

May December Bromance

When I was staying in Guatemala at Lake Atitlan (Remember the Guatemalan toilet microphone?), my hostel dormmate mentioned that she had been horseback riding with "Jack"*, the older gentleman who was staying at our hostel.  Apparently he was an expert horseman and had a place across the lake where they gave him a good deal.

The next day I asked him if he would be interested in taking me to this special horse place so that I could ride.  We made plans to go, but also ended up having coffee together.  He told me about his deceased wife which was very sad, and then we talked about our travel history (as will happen over coffee at hostels) and then made more plans to get together that evening to play Scrabble.  We had dinner that night at a fabulous place by the name of Restaurant Fe (if you're ever in San Marcos).  I didn't beat him at Scrabble, but I came very close.  He was impressed by that.  Probably because he thinks all women are stupid.  The fact is, he was stupid.  He kept trying to argue that 'dem' was a word, because it was an acceptable abbreviation for the word Democrat.  He also pushed for 'prof' for professor.  In his defense, he is British.  In my defense, I am right.  Scrabble has never and will never allow abbreviations.

SCRABBLE 101.  AM I RIGHT?

Anyways, based on that little blip, I'm sure you can agree that I actually won the game, because I didn't fight every little battle like I fought the Abbreviations Battle.

The more I hung out with him, the more I realized that he was kind of flirting with me.  He was at least 60 if not older and so I blew it off.  I was completely alone in Guatemala and really wanted to go horseback riding, OK?

"Jack" is one of these people who will say he speaks Spanish.  But he doesn't.  My Spanish is bad, but I can tell when someone is crap at it.  Trust me, he was crap at it.  His pronunciation was the worst part.  No, I lied.  The worst part was his propensity to correct and teach others Spanish when his Spanish was so bad.  This misplaced arrogant attitude translated to horseback riding too.  I could tell he assumed I would be a complete novice due to the way he kept coaching me on the most basic things.  I just sort of ignored it all and gave my horse the "YAW!" and ran on ahead to get away from him.  This only served to further impress him.  Also he assumed I spoke no Spanish and insisted on translating everything for me, and finally I just spoke over him and had full on conversations in Spanish with our guides.  Again, he was impressed.  I can only guess that his love for me just kept on a-growin', because I had to purposely avoid his attempts to be alone with me the whole day.

The whole point of this story is to give you a gross quote from Jack.

At one point during the day I caught a glimpse of my reflection and said, "ha I look like a boy!"

He looked at me, slowly, up and down over the rim of his glasses and said,

"There's something very non-boyish about you", (in the creepiest way imaginable.)

You're wrong, Jack.  BOY.

Boy.

Boy.

Later I found out he had been through all the girls at the hostel, doing the same dog-and-pony show.  These girls told me that days before I arrived, his girlfriend who had driven all the way from the US with him had just left him there all by himself.  He must have forgotten to mention her when he was garnering sympathy by telling me all about his dead wife.

This is the only photo I got of Jack and it's kind of accurate.

*Names have not been changed.

Donde Esta YOUR PANTS??

I hate wet clothes.  I am not the girl that can go to the beach, go swimming, then put on her pants and have a wet crotch for the rest of the day.  I can't do it.  Sometimes I even opt NOT to get in the water for that very reason.  Ideally, I make sure to swim first when I get to the beach so that I have plenty of time to dry off before it's putting-on-clothes time.  

Well, one day in Costa Rica, we had ten people in one SUV plus one quad.  I was riding on the back of the quad with Ted, the Californian.  Here we are, happy and dry, on the way to the beach:

Granada 6!

When it was time to go home, I hadn't had time to dry off, so I just put a towel on the seat, and sat on it with my wet butt, making sure to leave six inches of space between Ted's butt and my crotch.

At the stop sign, the SUV pulled up with all my other friends in it.  Dustin rolled down his window and asked, "Donde esta... YOUR PANTS?"

It's a good thing I'm wearing a helmet.

A Blow to My Ego

I'm about to go on a big huge hike, as you may know, on the Inca Trail up to Machu Picchu.  I did a few mini hikes in Costa Rica, and so I know that it is possible to look cute whilst hiking.  Exibit A:

Rachel from New Mexico looking super duper cute.

I haven't mastered it.  Exhibit B:  (I am the man on the left of the tree.)

So, now the Machu Picchu thing.  I have these neato touristy North Face zip-off pants/shorts that I have been schlepping around for a year for the very purpose of trekking in Machu Picchu.  I discovered them in the bottom of my backpack in Brazil and started wearing the shorts around quite a lot.

Remember this magical day?

Well I wore them so much I decided to wash them, and for some reason they turned blue in the wash.  I blame fabric softener / operator error.  Just the upper part of the pants of course, the shorts part.  I didn't need to wash the bottoms because I hadn't used them.  So now I'm going to hike for four days in the following:

Blue on top and brown on bottom.

To top it all off, or, more correctly, to "muffin top" it all off, I gained 634 pounds they must have shrunk.  I can't button them.

This is me sucking in.

And...after the exhale.

How to look cute on a hike...don't ask me.  Jeez.  I'll most likely get a debilitating sunburn on half my face the first day.

McDonald's Jeans

In Costa Rica, I saw for my very first time the phenomenon at a McDonald's in which all of the employees were wearing jeans with the McDonald's logo on the butt.  I was so fascinated by this...but never had an opportunity to take a photo.  It's harder than it seems to take a picture of an innocent person's butt, trust me.  (Not to mention how creepy you might feel.)

Anyway, I finally got my chance in Brazil.  Here, for your viewing pleasure, an innocent McDonald's employee's butt, in the McDonald's logo jeans:

Poor guy.

If you google 'McDonald's jeans', you can see more innocent people's butts.  The crazy thing is...in my opinion, they seem to look good on EVERYONE. 

In summary, if you want to buy me a present, this is just one idea.  I also need plane tickets.

EW (A Post I Forgot to Publish)

Can you believe they let these things run around Willy Nilly down here in Costa Rica?  Neither can I.  And I will put them on the list of things I will NOT miss when I leave Thursday.


(I think this was scheduled to be posted on March 14th.  oops.  But you get the point.  EW!!  When we were walking around in the town square, we looked up and saw these, and one even fell to the ground and made a loud THUMP!)

The 60-hour Trip

From Brandi and Grady's house to Managua:  (5.5 hours)

Brandi and Grady drive us to end of their 45-minute bumpy gravel road at about 7:30 in the morning on Thursday, where we met our taxi drivers.
Taxi drivers bring us from Leon to Managua where I had my last Nicaraguan meal at Tip Top, which is Nicaraguan fine cuisine just like KFC.  You really can't leave Nicaragua without eating Tip Top!  Unless you're Josette, who had orange juice and did not get diarhhea.  I think.

From Managua to San Jose, Costa Rica:  (9 hours 45 minutes)

Central American buses give you a seat number, kind of like they have on flights.  And this is awesome, when they overfill the bus.  It means you have a seat.  But jeez, people, when the bus is empty, you really can sit where you want.  I have had women go and 'tell on me' with the bus driver because I was in their seat, had the stinky fat man next to me NOT move across to the row next to us when it emptied (even though I begged and begged him inside my mind), etc.  Well on this bus I was seated next to a woman but all the rows behind us were taken, so I moved one row back to have two seats to myself.  I fell asleep.  Enter a stupid schoolkid, who WAKES ME UP from sleeping to show me I'm in his seat.  Irritated, I grab my crap, noisily move a row back giving him a look, like "ooh you're a big man. Why don't you just take any of these thousands of empty seats?!"  No worries, I'm snoring again in seconds.
Then a poor poor poor grandma gets on the bus, with her daughter and granddaughter and it takes a half hour because she BROKE HER LEG and was trying to get to a hospital in Costa Rica.  I mistakenly thought she was just extremely obese because of a jerky American sitting in front of me saying, "whoa she is really big. What were they thinking letting her on this bus?"  She wasn't really that fat actually, she just couldn't move because her LEG WAS BROKEN.  I had a panic attack on her behalf because somewhere during the 9 hour bus ride when she couldn't even get off the bus to go through the border with the rest of us, she tried to go to the bathroom but then gave up after making it only like three rows back.  Stupid American man tries to tell her daughter that the bathroom is too small for her.  So she had to go back to her seat where I imagined her peeing or pooping right there on the seat.  Later towels would be changed and I was sure it was for peeing or pooping but it wasn't, they were just propping up her leg.  I will never know how she made that whole trip without going to the bathroom, Pobrecita.

Costa Rica to Mexico City: (13 hours)

Arrive at airport at 9:45pm.  Ready to just sleep in airport.  Figure I have tons of internet time, since my flight doesn't leave until 7am.  WRONG.  No available wi-fi.  Good LORD.  I don't even know what airline I'm flying.  I just know I'm going to end up in Miami at some point.  Brush teeth, pinch every zit on my face, put on sweatshirt and fleece, take out towel and use it for blanket (always bring a towel when traveling).  First time sleeping in an airport, that I can remember.  Well, it sucks.  I can't sleep, there were no chairs so I'm on a full-on tile floor, worrying too much about getting ripped off.  Finally the morning comes, I figure out I must be flying to Mexico City to get to Miami eventually, change into jeans, get in the correct line, pay my $25 exit fee (ugh) and depart Costa Rica. 

Mexico City to Miami: (5 hours)

There was a Starbucks in the airport at Mexico City! STARBUCKS!  I was so excited I dropped $4.50 on a mocha!  And took a photo!

I don't know if I've ever been this happy to see a Starbucks before!

People ran past me and made such a ruckus that I followed.  Somebody told me it was Itati Cantoral, a famous Mexican actress.  Usually it's me the paprazzi is after, so I was glad to get a reprieve for once.

 

Pathetic far-away shot of famous celebrity being chased by paparazzi.

Miami to Santiago, Chile: (15 hours)

Arrive in the United States!  Kiss soil, as I have not seen the US for five months.  Pinch every zit on my face, brush teeth, wash armpits, read magazines! When you're out of the country, English smut magazines are a luxury only the very lucky can find and the very rich can afford.  Oh, the magazines!
Brad and Angelina are so happy! Jen Aniston has fungus fingernails.  Suri is given explicit toys to play with!  She's RIPPED from her bed at 1am for crazy dinners that Katie prepares.
Then an old lady fell down on the moving escalator.  But I was on the one running next to it.  I jumped! over to the one she was on and ran and ran to help her but by that time her stupid husband finally figured it out and slowly helped her up. 
Flight delayed 4 hours due to weird fire on tarmack and we have to stop in Cancun Mexico to get GAS.  haha.  I pop a Xanex for just such an emergency as flying and wake up in Santiago.  Amaze-balls!  10 hours went by!  I must have been tired after all that Celebrity News!

Santiago Chile to Sao Paulo Brazil: (8.5 hours)

Boring.  But check out the Andes!  Super gorgeous to fly over.  And I got my own row of three seats! Sleepy time!!!

I finally finished Anna Karenina too!  Spoiler Alert: she dies.

Sao Paolo Brazil to Florianopolis Brazil: (2 hours)

I figure out my connection was screwed up because of the delay out of Miami, and they slowly take their time at the connection place to get me on the flight and I waited there for 40 minutes while a girl tried to ask each person what to do.  I am patient, infinitely patient, but I have somebody picking me up in Floripa, so I want to make this flight!  It's leaving in 20 minutes, people!  Finally they print me a boarding pass and tell me to run.  Which irritates me.  So I sort of jog.  I make it with plenty of time, and get picked up in Floripa by my fabulous friends Tadashi, Fabiano, Luciana and Maria.  60 or so hours.  To get from stupid Nicaragua to stupid Brazil.  But the flight was cheap man. 

And now I'm here!  In Brazil!!!!


By the numbers:
6 flights (including stop in Cancun)
2 Xanex
1 bus
6 passport stamps
2 old lady emergencies
3 times getting a row all to myself
1 book
1 underwear change
0 showers
3 days
1 overpriced coffee

Ode to Kerrie Louise

Josette wanted to visit both Brandi and me in Central America, so we all agreed that she would fly into Managua, and I would take a bus up from Costa Rica and meet her there.  Together we went up to Leon to visit Brandi.  Kerrie, our mutual friend from Minneapolis couldn't make it, but sent a little gift for the three of us, along with a card with a photo of three ladies from the 40's in jail with their booze.  It said, "The trouble with trouble is it starts out fun".  So Cute.

Here we are, about to open the present:

I had no idea what it would be, but it ended up being the BEST. GIFT. EVER.  Leather passport holders!  Adorable functional, creamy leather passport holders!  Mine had "ALRN" sewn into it, for "A Lady Reveals Nothing".  Isn't that so so so so so so awesome!!??!!!??  And Josette and Brandi got neat-o designs on theirs too!

I gave my stupid old passport holder to Grady, who actually didn't think it was stupid or old. 

Here's a close-up:

If you're interested in purchasing an adorably awesome passport holder for yourself or the traveler in your life, send me an email at krazykady@hotmail.com and I'll put you in contact with Kerrie!!

Quite a Shock

Josette and I used a taxi service for all of our taxi-ing needs while in Granada.  One day I stupidly took coffee into the poor guys car and of course spilled it.  He said, "no problem, there is a rag under the seat."  So I dug around and had my hand under the seat, and it felt the rag and then I pulled it out.

I screamed!  It was UNDERWEAR!  I threw them to the floor.  The driver died laughing.  He was laughing so hard that he cried.  And so did we.  He goes, "don't worry.  They're old!"  Which made me feel worse.

EW.  But don't worry.  They're old.

Trip to the Pharmacy

While Josette and I were in Nicaragua visiting Brandi, we all dropped into the pharmacy to pick up Vitamin B injectables. They're only available in the States with a prescription, and in Nicaragua you can get them pretty cheap without. Don't ask me what they do, I really don't know. Brandi convinced Josette to get one for general health, so we went there for her. Then Brandi decided to get one too, and then I decided to go for it. Why not? Brandi has a friend who is a doctor and he was out with us, and he agreed to do the injections. Problem was, his grandma doesn't like him doing any doctoring around the house and so we had to find an alternate location for the injection. We decided on a dirty bathroom behind the Pupusa Shop. And then Josette decided that dirty bathroom injections aren't for her. Smart girl. 

Here's the Vitamin B injection.  Gwyneth Paltrow takes them!  (According to my source.)

The doctor.  And Brandi.  With her Band-Aid.

I'm happy. 

I mean scared.

OW!

Monkey Band-Aids make everything feel better.

I'll let you know if I notice any positive effects.  Nothing so far. 


Hey, while we're on the subject of pharmacies, check out this marketing ploy for a product we saw there:

Josette had to point this out to me.  It's a Cork.  The mascot for an anti-diarrheal medication.

Saying Goodbye to Costa Rica

All my crap and the bags it had to fit in.  STRESS. 

Veronica and I traveled together to Nicaragua by bus -- I insisted we wear the shirts and hats we happened to have had in common.  Nobody noticed.

I Didn't Die...

...I just didn't have internet for a week.  I met Josette in Nicaragua for an amazingly relaxing 7 days.  We had a ton of fun, doing stuff like this:

Jumping into Laguna de Apoyo

Swimming at Laguna Asososca

Hammocking at the "Rancho" outside Brandi and Grady's house

Parting - but only until May

The Hog's Final Days

Safety first!

Even Chileans can ride!

Trying to use hot models to sell it at the beach.  Didn't work.