Top Ironic Music Moment of the Month (so far)

OK let's review one more time...what NOT to do...

While preparing for U2's FREE concert in front of Berlin's Brandenburg Gate at the 20th anniversary celebration of the fall of the Berlin Wall, what did event organizers do (at MTV's instruction, mind you) to ensure non-ticket holders didn't get the same privileged view as the 10,000 who did snag a free ticket online?

They put up a wall.

Jeesh. Silly primates.

Now, let's turn our attention and energy toward acknowledging the significance of the fall of the wall for Germany, for Europe and for the world, shall we? And watch some big colorful dominoes topple over too? (I wonder how the artist got THAT gig...?)

Studio Bound

It's kind of like when a new jar of pickles magically appears in your fridge.

Or when ocean waves splash your sun-kissed skin, sailing across the bay in your bikini. Or when you wake up to a snow day, pummeling around till your toes turn numb then retreating inside to hot cocoa warming on the woodstove. Or when apple crisp aromas, made with apples you just picked, come wafting from the oven.

Or, perhaps, when you find yourself on top of a volcano in the guatemalan highlands, watching another volcano erupt below just before sunrise having hiked all night with the full moon.

This is how recording music is for me: total magic.




For someone who always has about twenty projects going at once, and a hundred new ideas in my mind at the same time, there's something very spacious and calming about aligning 11 tracks next to each other in a neat package - a linear, cohesive, structured THING containing tidy tid-bits of creative ponderings and questionings and realizings.

"Laughing and Lamenting" will contain 11 new tracks, stripped down to just a few instruments, celebrating the loss paradox - the humor, the heartbreak, and the growth surrounding loss. i've got march 2010 on my calendar - hope you'll add it to yours cause i'd like to share this with you.

I might even share my pickles. If you're real nice.

Video: Eruption of Volcan Santiaguito

Costa Rica

WATCH OUR PHOTO SLIDESHOW



The only way to properly unwind from two weeks of waking up early, studying all day, freezing our butts off, and traveling around by foot, taxi, launcha, shuttle and chicken bus, is to sprawl out in the hot sun on an empty beach and get pummeled by warm Pacific waves. That’s exactly what we did at Bejuco Beach. A hot 3 hour bus ride from San Jose brought us to Jaco, once a quiet, quaint beach getaway for cityfolk on the Pacific coast, now an unappealing conglomeration of gringos seeking a daily fix of surf and illicit pleasures, and Ticos – many of whom cater to such gringos. Our buddy picked us up at Pizza Hut, also the bus stop, and we headed south to a small gated community he dubbed “little America.” The house was equipped with HOT water (except for a couple days when the water was completely shut off for reasons we could only speculate were related to the condo construction up the road) and a TV, which we hardly turned on till the last couple days to catch the Oscars, etc…


PURA VIDA
A short walk down a dirt road past a shack with several kids playing out front that may have been a Tico house, another “little America” gated community and a couple hotel/restaurants, lay Bejuco Beach. The sand was scorching hot, the water deliciously warm, the rip tide forceful, the waves unpredictable but totally surf-able and swim-able.
We ate the freshest of fruit – banano and platano, pineapple, mango, avocado, watermelon, sweet melon, papaya and pipa fria (fresh coconut with a straw stuck in it). And we used Lizano “salsa” (a yummy sweet curry sauce) liberally on pretty much every meal we made. The typical meal in Costa Rica is a delicious “casado” plate – arroz, frijoles, ensalada, platanos fritos, con pollo o carne o pescado o... (rice, beans, fresh salad, fried plantains with chicken or beef or fish or...) – which you can get at any roadside “soda” (little eatery, mini restaurant). The word 'Casado' is a spanish word for 'married' so pretty much what you get is a bunch of basic food elements married together to make a complete meal. Delicioso.

One evening after dinner we lit a bonfire on the beach and went swimming under the clear starry sky, stirring up phosphorescence in the waves. During the day, we were usually accompanied by two adorable dogs that were taken in by one of the “little America” year round residents, Playa and the Puppy. They would guard our stuff on the beach, greet us whenever we returned home, and follow us up to the tienda.

COSTA KARAOKE
For our nightlife fix, we cruised 15 minutes up the road to the small chill surf town of ESTERILLOS OESTE. At low tide you can walk out on the reef of black volcanic rock and investigate the sea creatures hanging out in the tide pools (while cursing the insects nibbling at your ankles if it’s dusk) before perching on a barstool at one of the open air tico bars. One night we stumbled upon karaoke night at the local discoteque (picture your local dive bar with a bunch of Ticos singing cheesy Spanish love songs and sloppy salsa numbers). We brushed up on our salsa dancing (did we ever mention we took a few salsa classes in Xela?), tried to figure out which one of us the off-duty cops sitting nearby were winking at, and moved on…

JUNGLE BOOGIE
Determined to see some monkeys and other creatures of the jungle, we spent a day in MANUEL ANTONIO PARQUE NACIONAL amidst loads of other camera-touting tourists. Mission accomplished: little white-faced monkeys were swinging from palm tree to palm tree, we spotted a couple of sloths hanging out up in the trees, and we heard the infamous sound of howler monkeys. We also happened upon what looked like an ant-eater, a huge hungry iguana that kept pestering us once we settled onto a secluded beach for lunch, and a couple curious raccoons. One of the beaches was only accessible at low tide and we didn’t time it quite right but a little precarious volcanic rock climbing brought us to a beautiful beach with hardly anyone on it. It was dreamy to spend the afternoon swimming, snorkeling, reading, snoozing, and keeping the iguana at bay. Dinner at Ronny’s Place, perched above a beautiful ravine, was the perfect finish to a perfect day.

RIDING HORSES AND THE WAVES

Almost every day a group of horseback riders would come charging down Bejuco Beach, and the last day we finally got to be those people. After an hour and a half riding through a beautiful jungle trail up above a huge development company, owned by a gringo who actually came on the trip with us, we let the horses loose and cantered up the beach. That afternoon we had to pack it all up and set our alarm. But it wasn’t a bus we got up early to catch, it was the 5:30am waves at Oeste. Undeniably the best surf of the entire trip.

HOMEWARD BOUND
That afternoon we found ourselves in Alajuela, just north of San Jose, a nice little city to wander around before flying back to the cold northeast. After buses and taxis and airplanes and being stoked the car actually started after being parked at the bus station for 5 weeks, we landed home late Thursday evening.

Don't forget to check out our photo slide show (
VIEW SLIDESHOW) if you have minute, and we hope you’ve enjoyed following our Central American adventures. We look forward to catching up with you all soon. SALUD!

Hot springs from heaven, chicken buses from hell

After two laborious weeks of Spanish language instruction and forgetting more verbs than we learned we bid farewell to our Guatemalan host family and headed for the hills. We left their drafty but very loving home promising that when we someday return to Xela we´ll pay them a visit. Their hospitality over the fourteen days we lived with them was extraodinary doing everything they could to make us feel welcomed and amply stuffed with liquified beans and white bread, a staple of just about every meal served. To add to fond memories we shared during our short time on Diagonal Eleven in Xela their blue Chow Chow let us pet him on our final day, something the friendly but so skittish animal wouldn´t allow the entire time we were there.



From Xela a short bus ride on one of Guatmela´s ten-thousand Chicken Buses brought us to the ramshackle pueblo of Zunil nestled under the shadow of the Volcano we had climbed the previous weekend. From Zunil a three dollar truck ride is purchased from the waiting cadre of Toyota´s on the side of the road. Preferring the fresh air of the bed, we proceeded nine kilometers up a twisting mountain road with the driver operating at excessively high speeds for the hairpin turns. The views from the back of the truck were absolutely stunning. The clouds, the first we´d seen in the previous three weeks, were shrouding far hills as the valley floor disappeared. Every spare hectare of land was cultivated with cabbage and radishes and numerous other vegetables, tended by indigenous farmers.

Our destination was better than expected. Fuentes Georginas is a natural hot spring nestled in a steep valley high up in the clouds. Frequented by touristas and locals alike, some with visible ailments like broken bones and multiple sclerosis, the mineral pools are known for their curative qualities. The largest and hottest pool was almost unbearable at first but after slow submersion, poco a poco style, all our cold nights in Xela disappeared. Not a bad way to spend El Dia del Cariño.


The following day we descended in the back of yet another yota whose crazy driver was bent on meeting every oncoming pickup loaded with indigenous families at breakneck speeds. We requested that he drop us off in the vicinity of the revered San Simon. People kept pointing us down narrow paths festooned with spent confetti and tamali corn husks where we found the residence of Zunil´s own deity, who moves from house to house each year. The god of San Simon was represented by a mannequin dressed in a running blazer, white cowboy boots, a backwards (Purely symbolic) yellow cowboy hat with the initials SF on it and aviators glasses. Lit candles flickered at his feet and wreaths of flowers and other ornaments were drapped over his throne. A priest was busily chanting some incantation as he used the gods own gloved hands to bless the worshiper knealed before him. A bottle of Venado, the local hootch, was then ceremonioulsy poured into his open mouth from a silver chalice as he was tilted back by one of the young attendants, the same who took our 5 Quetzale admission fee. This whole experience was brief but poingnant. It was amazing to see how unique, reverent and strange religion can be anywhere in the world.

Thanks to a speedy shuttle service we arrived at our next stop, Chichicastenago, in time to see the hustle and bustle of one of Guatemala´s reknowned weekly markets. Attended by tourists and locals alike all manner of fruits, meats, grains, t-shirts, carvings and weavings were available for a haggled price. The abundance of craftwork all made by hand in Guatemala was amazing. It was even more enjoyable to see a religious procession that culminated in a frenzied fire works show which included setting off mortars and home made bottle rockets from the church steps amidst crowds of people. Included in the procession was a marimba band and three men wearing animal frames covered in baloons and more homemade fire works the size of beer cans which would be lit off while they were still dancing around in the contraptions.

The following day, after outsmarting a con shuttle service with the help of the alert and honest hotel keeper, we were headed south onboard the always hazardous Guatemalan public transportation. We enjoyed the heartpounding experience of a van packed with more Guatemaltecos than one ever imagined possible, a second class bus careening around curves and passing dump trucks in the fog on Guate´s only highway, if you could call it that, and a bona fide chicken bus doing fifty miles an hour through narrow residential streets to only slam on the brakes moments before pesky speed bumps.

The Chicken buses are by far the most thrilling diversion in Guatemala. Absolutely crammed with riders the buses are everywhere which means you never have to wait long for one. They are all converted school buses from the U.S. that have been painted and blinged out with horns and lights and other glamorous decoration. They comprise the bulk of Guatemala´s public transportation and often end up in the accident section of the news paper but unless you´re willing to shell out the dough for private transportation at every turn they really are a conveient and fun way to see the countryside from the local point of view.

Thankfully we arrived safe and sound in our final and first stop, Antigua. After three weeks it´s comforting to be somewhere a little touristy to catch up on our souvenir shopping and to have something besides liquified beans for dinner. Tonight we´ll watch the sun set behind a Volcano one last time and pack our bags for the coasts of Costa Rica.

El Volcan Santa Maria

Last Friday night was uneventful. We were in bed by five in the evening with earplugs inserted to drown out the fire crackers of weekend revelers as we tried to get a few hours of restless sleep before midnight. When the alarm went off we quickly dressed and were out in the silent and deserted streets of Xela. After a brisk walk through the always empty and erie late night streets we arrived at the gated office of the guide outfit. With a group of 20 other students they would be taking us up the side of Santa Maria, an extinct volcano about thirty minutes up one of the valleys near Xela, in the middle of the night.

The bus ride was bumpy and somewhat foreboding passing through the trash strewn outskirts of Xela. We disembarked at 12:30am under a nearly full moon onto a dirt road following our three guides, one of whom has hiked Santa Maria over 70 times in his life, a true Xela diehard. The road,which in the morning would be used by farmers and caballeros hearding goats and cows up the mountain to graze, meandered in and out of the woods as we approached the foot of the Volcano. We hiked by moonlight and flashlights bundled in all the fleece and wool we had with us, including the lovely long johns we purchased at Mercado Minerva earlier that week (remember?) for the next five hours...

With a group so large it was necessary to stop every thirty of forty minutes to allow the slower ones to catch up and ensure everyone was feeling ok. For kids like Sorch and I who grew up near the ocean 3772 meters is higher in altitude than either of us had ever climbed. The thinner air was very noticeable, especially if attempting to move any faster than our lead guide who slowly shuffled his feet up the dusty switchbacks.

The views on the way up were spectacular. The seriously cold and clear air showed a glimmering lights of Xela beneath us spread all over the valley floor. Everyone was suprised by the size of the city of around half a million people. The stops, which seemed frequent, served to freeze the perspiration we had accumulated but for those who hadn´t gotten much sleep they were necessary.

About an hour before sunrise we reached the summit rising above large pines trees that cover the Volcano. A rocky summit was barely visible in the dark, the moon having set by this time, but the lights of the country side spread out in all directions for dozens of miles. While setting up a makeshift camp on the grassy southern side of the volcano we were greeted by a spout of lava and a burst of dark ash reaching hundreds of meters into the air. Along with the predawn eruption we enjoyed the warmer air wafting up from the much lower but active Santiaguito volcano.

As the stars disapeared and the eastern horizon became visible behind a range of steep mountains the guides fired up a large pot of hot chocolate, a staple for anyone in the cold in Guatemala. With a sugar buzz from the rich cocoa we watched the break of day what might as well have been the top of the world. Just after dawn another plume of ash, this one much bigger than the first, exploded from little Santiaguito garnering ohhs and ahhs from all of us. The still air allowed the plume to mushroom thousands of feet into the air and slowly get spread out of the valley below.

The hike down was long and resulted in very sore calfs and hips but the warmth of day allowed everyone to strip off layers of clothing. The descent into a Guatemalan saturday morning was met with suprise as local Mayan family after family passed us with boquets of wildflowers and babies swaddled in blankets wrapped onto their mothers backs. The thin sandles, radios and heavy loads of food and water for the kids made our hiking boots and camel backs seem frivoulous. I had a hard time picturing some of the women my grandmother´s age treking up the volcano we had come down but full moon rituals rooted in Mayan beliefs were something they´ve done since they were the babies precariously carried up on their own mothers backs.

Zoologico y La Terminal

Our first full week of spanish lessons made our brains hurt. But it´s been amazing, and has allowed us to communicate less awkwardly with our host family and around town, poco a poco (little by little). With so many estudiantes, the desks spill into the garage and outside into the garden (the warmest spot, by far). Those studying en la cocina are lucky enough to get first dibs on the big basket of sweet and savory breads supplied during each mid-morning break.

Each morning we awake a little before 7am to windchimes just outside our bedroom door, a lukewarm shower if we´re lucky (though after a week of this we FINALLY figured out how to make it hot), and a big desayuno (breakfast) prepared by our host sister before we head off to school a few blocks away. Each morning we unsucessfully try to befriend their dog who frequently growls at us and only takes bread bribes every now and then. We fill our brains with spanish articulos, sujectivos, vocabulario, chistes and verbos for 5 hours, then head home where an even bigger amuerzo (lunch) awaits us. We explore all afternoon, then return home to eat a slightly smaller cena (dinner) and laugh histerically with our familia as we compare the names of fruits, vegetables, animals, and how many more parts of a cow Guatemaltecos eat than us wasteful Norteamericanos. Who knew that liver, kidneys, lungs, tongues, hearts, and eyes commonly appear on people´s plates in these parts? Nuestra familia promised us we would never find eyeballs floating around in our sopa during our stay. Yah. Por favor y Gracias.

Monday afternoon we explored Xela a bit, mostly around Parque Central - a lovely park filled with big lush trees, little rose gardens, a fountain, several statues and two huge flags. El Parque is surrounded by grand buildings in neo-classical architecture including the ¨Museo Casas de la Cultura¨ (more on our trip to the museum later), cafes, banks, city hall (where there are always about 5 or 6 armed policia congregated) and of course a McDonalds. Every day there are shoe-shiners set up throughout the park, from young boys to old men, and they always have customers. En la noche, we pulled out all our past-time charade tricks during dinner, attempting to understand what on earth our family was saying to us...hablan muy rapido.

Tuesday after class our host brothers walked up to the Zoologico with us. The zoo here is gratis, thankfully, as it´s very small and boasts a couple monkeys, some un-exotic looking birds and a couple of exotic looking ones, a few racoons and foxes, some anteater-type creatures, and some fish swimming around in water we wouldn´t dare touch with a ten foot pole. It looked like a great place to get robbed. Realizing after a few minutes we had seen all there was to see, we bolted across the busy street to peruse the big fancy mall and get a few provisions. A mall is a mall is a mall. There´s a big fancy clothing store, lots of zapatarias (shoe stores), a food market, everything sparkling clean and each store equipped with security guards.

Our next destination could not have been more different. Across the street from the big fancy mall beyond ¨La Terminal¨ - the bus terminal (which is really just a long line of chicken buses) - is a huge market ¨Mercado Minerva¨ stretching blocks and blocks. It was a little overwhelming to walk into - dust and trash flying under the feet of indigenous mothers dodging in and out of the crowd with bundles balanced on their heads and babies on their backs, chicos and chicas yelling out prices for their fresh fruit, men wandering around shouting how much for the belts piled on their shoulders, the chicos sitting atop enormous piles of clothing yelling ¨Quinze Quetzales, la ropa, la ropa, la ROOOOOOOPAAAA!¨ trying to out-yell the woman atop the pile of clothing next door who´s yelling ¨La Ropa, tres Quetzales, TRES QUETZALES!¨ We were on a mission to find sweaters and long johns. Digging through the piles and piles of clothes - some still sitting in the back of pickup trucks - we found some pretty decent name brands...basically all the rejects from Estados Unidos. Keep in mind that 1 US dollar = approximately 7.8 Quetzales. It felt a little bit wrong to haggle over a sweater that was only going to cost me $2 (and would cost at least $10 or more at home), but it was still pretty fun. Every so often a truck would come driving through and people would have to move the wares they had set up in the middle of the street. As soon as the trucks passed, the streets were immediately full again. Beyond the clothing piles we walked by stall after stall selling grains, fruits, vegetables, spices, pastas, raw meat, fried platanos and tortillas and corn on the cob, machetes, bouquets of roses, shoes upon shoes upon shoes, traditional woven skirts and shawls, stacks of brand new Deisel jeans (we imagine they went out of business or something, anyone know?)....pretty much everything you could think of and a lot you couldn´t even imagine. No wonder it was mobbed with Guatemaltecas...we most definitely stood out in the crowd. We somehow found our way out of the Mercado maze tired, dirty and very pleased with our purchases.

Quetzaltenango

We left the balmy shore of Lake Atitlan by van yesterday in pursuit of a place a little more authentic, a place owned and inhabited by more Guatemaltecos and less expatriots with a grudge agains the U.S and a propensity to study metaphysics. A place with more spanish language schools and tortillerias than back packer night clubs and gringo holistic healers.

Atitlan was wonderful, especially on our side of the lake where the tourists were less abundant and our breakfasts were made of only organic ingredients taken right from the gardens in front of the restaurant itself. A highlight was our early morning boat ride to San Pedro La Laguna to meet our first pair of Spanish teachers. We shared the small outboard powered launch with more than a dozen local kids who had a weekend lesson in larger San Pedro that they couldn´t normally attend on the weekdays. They were crammed in the boat, greatly outnumbering the lifejackets onboard, and spent the ride talking and giggling just like kids on a school bus at home except they were speaking a language almost as old as the volcanos looming above and known only to thier small portion of the lake. Where we were headed across the lake another Mayan language is spoken. In Guatemala there are over 20 different indigenous dialects. The boys were dressed in ratty sneakers, jeans and American t-shirts while the girls all wore the colorful and glittery home made traditional long dresses and blouses. Their Spanish, a second language to them, was good but their English was limited due to the lack of available teachers in the poor indeginous areas of Guatemala which is the majority of this impoverished country.

Finding transportation to our next destination was easy. Instead of taking the $2.50 chicken bus with our bags strapped to the top we splurged and spent $40 dollars for a two and a half hour van shuttle from Panajachel up to the CA-1 highway (Parts of the corrider that link North to Central America are still dirt) to Quetzaltenango, commonly known as Xela. On short notice we arranged for a two week immersion course which entails ten days of one on one instruction, five hours a day, and the hospitality of a host family just up the narrow streets from the school to feed and shelter us.

We both agreed that having dinner last night with our new Guatemalan family was one of the most incredible traveling experiences either of us have ever had. The house is a typical ubran dwelling with a central open air common area, in this case it is used to store a dusty beat up truck that will never run again, a questionably functioning washing machine and piles of collected junk of minimal usefullness. Around the courtyard is a kitchen with gas stove, a bathroom with hot water and a living room with couches and TV all entered through separate doors. We have our own room with a bed and a shelf and today they´re finding a lamp for us. The also provide us with purified drinking water aware that the local tap water will give our uninitated GI tracts Montezuma´s Revenge.

The mother had to work last night so her eldest daughter still at home prepared fried plantains and beans for us which we immensely enjoyed with star fruit juice and a warm nutritve drink that resembled porridge which we think was made from corn and sugar. We spent the entire evening trying to communicate with twin 15 year old brothers and their 20 year old sister with very limited skills in our Spanish and their English. After sharing the names of all the horror moves we´ve seen, fruits and animals typical to Maine and Guatemala and favorite music, we retired to the living room to watch the Exorcism of Amy Rose which scared the bejesus out of the brothers (and Sorch). We fell asleep exhausted but excited to start our fourth day of Spanish lessons and our first at the much larger school here in Xela. There are upwards of 80 students matched with local teachers here this week.

More to come...

La Lago Atitlan

We never would have thought that two 2 and a 1/2 hour flights from the snowy streets of Boston could land you in a place so surreal you would spend the first two days blinking in wonderment at each cobble stoned street you turned on to. Our first impression after swooping over the barrios of Guatemala City was an orderly and clean airport with easily negotiated customs officers and a cadre of waiting taxi drivers willing to whisk us away to any town in Guatemala we desired. Fortunately one driver was holding a sign with the always easily distinguishable SORCHA emblazoned on it. We knew we had found our man.

After a short drive winding our way out of Guatemala city we were laboriously hauled up huge forested hills and in and out of ravines by a tired Mitsubishi mini bus. We immediately noticed the boon in private security here in Central America. Almost every business had a uniformed and formidably armed private security guard, from auto dealers to mini malls and even one dangerous looking ex-guerrilla outside a flower shop.

The mini bus brought us to a small colorful town rimmed by two gargantuan volcanoes. Instead of arriving on a main thoroughfare again the bus began winding through alleys and back streets which we realized were the only kinds of roads in this colonial town. All of the buildings were two stories or less, a reminder that several centuries of earthquakes had leveled all the churches and buildings of any stature. The streets were almost all paved in stone organized in a strictly cardinal fashion. In the center of town, like all typical cities in Latin America was a square originally meant for military processions and now filled with a green park and several fountains. Along the sides were Government offices, a Cathedral which the monks had taken time to rebuild over and over again and shops surprisingly more modern than the buildings that housed them. Spanning several blocks along one side was a mazelike market full of anything you could want (and loads of things you´d never want, such as a truckload of bras) from fresh produce to mayan weavings.

That night we stayed in Casa De Don Ismael, a lovely little inn run by a kindly and dignified man who was as helpful as two newcomers to his home could have hoped. The night air turned cool after watching the sun set immersing Volcan Agua in a blend of purple from it´s lush vegetation mixing with the golden twilight as we sipped Gallo cerveza from a rooftop bar.

After a fitful night´s sleep from the numerous noises of a very unfamiliar place, including the all night raucous from a religious jam fest next door and a rooster at two in the morning, we were delighted to have a desayuno typico de Guatemala of scrambled eggs and black beans with bread and watery instant coffee. Soon after we were loaded into a waiting mini bus and spent the next three hours being jolted around as we enjoyed the views from the narrowest, steepest and switch backing road two cars have ever passed on.

From Antigua the van took us to Panajachel where a boat ushered us into the surreal and mystical realm of grigolandia set in the small Mayan highland village of San Marcos La Laguna. This idyllic bit of jungle surprised us in several ways. For one it´s much smaller, at least the part where tourists like us frequent, than we had expected. It´s also chock full of small hotels, each with its own cafe or restaurant and resident massage therapist set behind bamboo or concrete walls like little gardens of Eden. Living, working and studying amongst town is a cadre of hippies ranging all ages who look as if they ditched the back pack long ago to live here over all the other places they toured in Central America.

There are no roads in this part of town, only stone paved paths that bend through the privately owned plots of land, some being hotels, some holistic healing centers, some locally inhabited and others full of brush and trash. There is a large presence of Europeans and North American expats here that own many of the hotels, restaurants and therapy centers and the only large live music venue in town - a beautiful restaurante up the hill where the locals mostly live. It seems the locals find employment largely amongst the restaurants and hotels.

One of the striking things about this small town is that the locals are always smiling and saying ¨Hola¨ or ¨Buenas¨ every time you pass and it´s truly genuine. We even experienced this in Antigua but wonder if it will last as we travel further from areas so used to tourism. We´ll see. For now we are content with spending the next week holed up in a small pension, El Bosque Encandido, sipping strong coffee grown on the same plot of land and swimming in the crystal water of the lake under a hot Central American sun (San Marcos is known for it´s good swimming, including the 9 meter cliff Jeff launched off of this morning).

Zero Degrees

Mornings like these in the northeast make my hair freeze. But in one week’s time, I set off for Guatemala and Costa Rica to study spanish and explore the bumpy roads, lake views of volcanoes, highland salsa dancing, markets and hot springs, and of course music – to fuel my next record and snap me out of my mid-winter shivers. Here, I will post notes from my journey.