This Just in: English el Mejor

27 years and 3 days after my uncle brought home an ugly ass, tiny, barely passable as trophy deer, we find ourselves on a reappropriated American schoolbus headed inland on a Nicaraguan "highway." I dont know if its the fresh, smell 'o diesel air, or the delirium one feels when sharing a single bench seat with 46 other people and one dog, but for the first time im having a moment of clarity on the subject and i feel i have no choice but to levy the following accusation:

Another hunter downed the deer, and upon seeing its homely figure and not wanting to fill his tag with such a meager kill, left it for the coyotes. Then you, and you know who you are, found it that way. And found is a generous word. Because heres how i imagine the scene. It was mid-afternoon on yet another disappointing day, indistinctly lacking success. So in a drunken stupor (because what goes better together than adolescent men, guns, and beer) you went searching for a place to relieve yourself of post processed cervezas when you tripped over something that that your EMS instincts told you was experiencing slight rigor mortis. And thus concludes the story of your first deer. Except the part where you got back to town and no one gave a shit. Youve had many different names over the years, but i think its time we call you by your true Indian name, Uncle Tracks Dead Deer Drunk Fall.

Now as promised: We went to Antigua. It was nice. We roasted marshmallows over lava. It was toasty. The kiwis, it turns out, have contributed nothing to the planet (Rutherford my ass). And the dog we saw was a rare breed of Germanoguatemalan Streetroofshepherd. It was glorious to behold this majestic beast in its natural environment, perched on a colonial tile roof above a liquor store, barking maniacally at anyone not of its race or creed. Streetroofshepherds, especially the Germano kind are notorious for their bigotry.

Then we left Guatemala, without exploiting anybody unlike some other people we know (Ahem, United Fruit). Antigua was nice though. They had not one, but two of the fanciest, most luxurious fast food restaraunts in the modern world. The Mcdonalds had an internet cafe, a garden larger than most lots on which American homes are built, the most pristine, beautiful indoor playground with a maze of tubes so elaborate that a well to do hamster would crap on the floor upon seeing it. But it wouldnt matter because the poop would get cleaned up before individual bacteria were able to contact the surface of the ground. They had the freshest big macs and cheaper mcflurrys. The biggest coke didnt require a handle and girdle for transport, and the security guard at the door with a shotgun and sidearm was a nice touch as well. Generally im an outspoken opponent of American excess and i feel a bit of guilt that the best things are shipped to western countries while the rest of the world gets whatever is left (ever had a chopstick with a splinter? Not in the US. But in Cambodia, wood is simply added to the menu description of every item.) But now i realize that weve been getting the short end of the proverbial (chop)stick with regard to multinationalmegalomaniacal fast food corporations. Fast food in Antigua is what fast food should be. Im willing to bet, though i have no evidence, that they slaughter organic pasture fed steers in the back of the restaraunt, fresh every morning, to make those quarter pounders. Yeah, that sounds plausible. A GARDEN! A FUCKING GARDEN! It was so lush and productive i bet there are undiscovered species and cures for cancer growing right there in the McJardin. I think i saw a research team from UC Davis collecting samples.

Oh, and what is this bullshit about blowing a hole in the moon? How many years will it take before the gretest minds on Earth, people who can do math that involves numbers, letters, and things that dont really fit under either category, realize a very simple truth. Kindergartners (after their first semester of world history and their second semester of applied physics) know this. Humans + projectiles of any kind + targets of any kind = bad. Slingshots, bb guns, atomic warheads, it doesnt matter. It always ends in tragedy. Its an easy equation too, all letters. Can we get a vote or something? I'm all for progress and science and spitting in the face of God by violating celestial bodies that dont really do much for the Earth except provide nighttime illumination and regulate the tides of all the oceans of all the world. But couldnt we just cure hunger first. Yes, cure hunger. There should be a rule that if there is a single person on Earth who doesnt have access to clean, drinkable water, we should focus on fixing that rather than trying to find a way to ruin theoretical water on another planet. Dont email me. I know the moon isn't a planet and i know this all happened weeks ago and i know a lack of water is a question of thirst, not hunger. But i just saw a stream that didnt quite have the proper color or smell from my window seat here on Busline Pothole Seeker and it reminded me.

Back on track. In antigua there was also a bar that was supposed to be entertaining. And this isnt so much an entertaining or blogworthy story as it is a cautionary tale. Consider this a public service of the greatest magnitude and someone get a street named after me (or my testicles). Theres a place in Antigua called the Mono Loco which according to a girl at the hostel was located at "take a right out the front door, a right at the first corner, then a right at the next corner, and a right at the next one after that." So we took one left and we were there. We went because it was ladies night and drinks were extra cheap for women or extra convincing trannies. we figured that since there was one kiwi girl, two kiwi guys, and the two of us, we could pretend we were into some sort of weird group interracial thing and everyone would get cheap drinks. Apparently the Mono Loco had anticipated such strokes of genius and had put into place a series of Charlie Bravo manuevers to thwart us. The ladies night was only taking place on the top floor. The stairs leading up to said top floor were roped off with a sign instructing those possessing y chromosomes to buy a full price drink and then "join the ladies upstairs." The sign was in English and south of Mexico City, if the sign is in English or the price listed in US dollar, it means youre about to get ripped off. We figured, though, that we could just have Alissa buy us drinks once we all got upstairs. The interesting thing about the setup is that the top floor is in now way visible from the bottom floor. So upon ascending the stairs we discovered a sausage festival the likes of which have never been seen, even in Germany in Oktober. Furthermore, the bartender insisted that Alissa's "friend" for whom she was buying a drink be present during the transaction and also have a vagina. Thwarted, we left, sober and without even the slightest possibility of contracting an exotic tropical STD.

The moral of the story, well not so much the moral, but the best thing we can all do as a nation to stop further exploitation of young American males travelling through Guatemala is boycott the mono loco, boycott them like loco. I dont have a problem with a company protecting its profit and getting creative with their marketing. But i do have a problem when it becomes manipulative and creates a system that is difficult for me to exploit. They were unscrupulous in their tactics, worse than Halliburton. And their security sucks. Not only did the metal detector go off when it passed over the 8 inch knife i had in my pocket, but the guard actually touched it. I guess in order to rouse suspicion i would have to carry an uzi in plain view. Do not go to the mono loco. Youll pay out the nose for cerveza and someone will stab you, possibly me.

The following day we left antigua after negotiating a pretty sweet deal for a shuttle to a beach called El Zonte in El Salvador. When youre walking around the city looking for the best deal on a shuttle, you can be damn sure that if they tell you that you wont find another better deal in town it means that both travel shops next door have better deals. And if a guy who looks like someone who took up the travel agent gig after he washed out of car sales school tries to tell you that hes the only licensed travel agent in a town of literally hundreds of individual travel agents, hes lying the hardest. But still in a less egregious manner than The Mono Loco, United Fruit, or Uncle TDDDF.

Licensed travel agent or not, we took the one that was $10 USD less than every other one. They picked us up when we asked and they did so with a brand new microbus and a uniformed driver who was actually careful with our luggage, spoke both English and Spanish, and didnt drive like a pissed off 73 year old asian woman on amphetamines. It was probably the easiest leg of the trip to date. And he even explained to us how, even if hes working, if he doesnt make it home by 8 he doesnt get to eat dinner and his wife makes him sleep with the dogs. At that moment everyone in the bus realized the underlying unity of all life on earth. No matter what the nationality, the rules and punishment are the same. Logic dictates then, that a license to be a travel agent in Antigua is nothing more than a license to screw people. An unlicensed travel agent doesnt have that right. They do however, have the option to run a reasonably priced and respectable business.

Once in El Salvador, at a place called Playa El Zonte, the strange factor of the trip slowed down by quite a bit. I guess its kind of ironic that as soon as we got into a country where the official currency is USD, things normalized when compared to what weve come to expect as normal.

On a little excursion inland to San Salvador we did find one of the world's hidden culinary treasures, the papusa. Im not sure exactly how to describe it and do it justice so ill just say what it seems to be. Its like a ball of tortilla dough filled with any combination of meat, beans, or cheese, and then fried flat. The preparation is mesmerizing and im certain that the people who make papusas would have been world class pianists or championship cats cradle competitors had they been born in another place and time. I also have a confession to make. Three of us eating entered the papuseria as theyre called. We cautiously ordered one each. by the time we left we had eaten 12 between the 3 of us. Slightly embarrassed, we looked around and noticed that most people were eating 3 or so. So we didnt appear to be total gluttons but we did get some looks when we kept raising our hand for one more, then one more, then one more, etc. The bill was 3 dollars. The damage done to the bathroom at the hostel was greater than the GDP of El Salvador. The life changing discovery of the 25 cent papusa was priceless.

We didnt stay too long in El Zonte. Maybe 3 days. Then we went back to San Salvador because thats the place from where all the buses to Nicaragua left. There was a hotel at the bus station, which ended up being convenient because our bus was due to leave at 4am. Being bargainhunters, by grace of genetics, Calen and I and one of the kiwis, Rich, set out to find cheaper, better accomodations. Its always fairly easy to determine what "side of the tracks" one is in by the number of armed guards posted outside of buildings in a given area of town. The number of armed guards around the area of the hotel roughly equalled the population of a small eastern seaboard state in the US. So we put on our chinchilla body armor (found them in Guatemala finally) and headed out to try and save 50 cents a night. Per person. The first three or four places we went to informed us that they would have rooms available just a little bit later. When Rich would ask if he could see them (we were looking for something with a victorian crown moulding) they would invariably reply that they couldnt show us a room right now, but they were the same as any normal room. Rich was perplexed by this, but pressed on. Calen and I, being born in the US where practically everyone frequents an hourly motel at least 13 or 14 times by their md 30's were slightly less naive. I told Rich that the hotels were of the hourly fare and eventually explained why they wouldnt show us the rooms. From that point on the "hospedajes" in any given town have been his favorite discovery. At the end of our search we decided that the bus motel was probably our best bet given that it was a 9 ft. walk to the actual bus at 4 in the morning (we were still the last ones on).

After negotiating our accomodations (it only took an hour or so to get our 50 cent per person savings) we ventured out into San Salvador. We made it a block before we found a papuseria and did what we do. Eat. We were the only patrons of this particular establishment and were given a somewhat warm welcome and very personal service including a round of cell phone photos at the end of our meal. We then continued to walk around, mostly in circles even though we didnt know it, interacting with the locals, and buying random items of fresh fruit until we had the following encounter:

A Salvadoran man walked up to us and began speaking English to us. It turned out that he was a teacher of English, distinctly different from and English teacher which he explained to us was a teacher from England. For an English teacher, his English wasnt that developed, but it was pretty good comparatively. Rich, ever the Spanish scholar, tried to practice his Spanish with the man who was trying to practice his English. The conversation, while hilarious from beginning to end reached a comedic climax when Rich attempted to say, in Spanish, "You are the best English speaker we have met in San Salvador so far." What he actually said, in Spanish translated to, "All the best people speak English." It was the single greatest instance of accidental ethnocentrism I have ever witnessed and made Rich look like more of a bigot than a Streetroofshepherd.

Knowing that we wouldnt be able to top that experience we headed back to the hotel so we could all watch a movie and fall asleep at 7pm. We did. And then we were the last ones on the bus, even after people who appeared to have travelled in to the terminal from the deep jungle by foot with luggage and children. Then it was off to Nicaragua.