Travel Log - Hunting, Hitchhiking, Painting & Getting Dirty: Traveling Across America

[Keepitrail]

^mayan turkey. did not get a chance to eat.

 

[Keepitrail]

 

The photos don't really do things of that scale much justice, so I'll cut it short there. You have to be there, spend five hours on a bus at two AM alllll the way through the middle of the jungle, and come up on these unbelievably pristine and unnaturally enormous achievements of mankind, that have just been sitting there, getting grown on by trees and bushes and animals for a thousand years. People who had no idea what cars or trains or television was. No idea about other people. Stars and clouds and sunsets meant something. Every day the sun would shine along and warm its descendants, and then transform at dusk into a jaguar to descend into Xi-Balba to slip through the underworld and arise at dawn.

[MedicineCabinet]

schooling other tourists & shit

 

fuck yesh in general, kir

[Inappropriate_Responder]

Sermonizing KIR

 

Moar!!!

[Keepitrail]

We left Guatemala and headed for Belize. Make sure to check the dates that the customs office stamps on your passport. They fucked ours up and tried to set us up later down the road for some bullshit corruption scam. Belize City is an absolute nightmare, even compared to Guatemala City. It's menacing before you even get near it, all the people on the bus start talking about how they hope this won't happen or that won't happen. It was very reminscent of Cidade de Deus in Brasil. Any sort of "policing" was done by truckloads of government troops. The bus station door has three M16's at its front step. We bypassed all that and dropped off right at the water taxi and took a $7 ferry to Caye Caulker, an island about an hour away by boat.

After a couple of weeks in dense cities and 130% humidity jungles, the beach was heaven.

[Cool_Hand]

:mexican:

[Keepitrail]

The hostel at Caye Caulker, $10 each a night for a 2 person private cabana, community kitchen and lots of free food. Lots of travelers from Spain, Holland, and Denmark. Very frew Americans. Some Aussies, which are always either exceptionally hilarious and incomparably wild, or exceptionally douchebaggish and rude. We got lucky and had the former. The night before they left, they all got wayyyyy far gone on rum and tried to go boating in the ocean on a tiny canoe, all fell out, lost their phones, paddles, had to tow the boat back by swimming along it too drunk to get back in. All up at six the next morning laughing about it. When they left I found a bag of really, really good * that had gotten soaked and I guess they left it out to dry but forgot it. Not much, but enough..

 

We booked a snorkel trip to the coral reefs, which is MUST do. Every outfit on the island (maybe a dozen) cost $75+, booked 20+ people at a time, you could drink and smoke and played loud music, they chucked guts into the reef to get a shit ton of fish coming, and let you have at it. That's cool and all, but...

 

The guy who ran the hostel passed me a blunt and said, "my man, you need to go see Juri. That's the only way to do it." So we went to see him. Juri had no crew, on a sailboat he built by himself, and only took six people. You could not smoke, nor drink alcohol. No music. And you had to help out on the rigging if he needed it. But, in exchange, he went an hour before every other outfit did.

And this guy was certified .... insane isn't the word. He made you feel like you were insane. You'd ask him a question and he'd just stare at you, and make a gesture towards the water, as if anything you could ever have asked could be answered by this little gesture, "the answer is in the waters..."

 

 

[CALIgula]

thread just keeps getting better and better!

[Keepitrail]

 

 

(2:00 mark)

 

Not my vids but these are the guy. I'm talkin... he gets into the water and the fish just come up and start swirling around him. No food or anything. He says he talks to the fish with his hands, making vibrations in the water. They come from all over, groupers and stripers and manta rays. He comes up for air and gathers us, "That ray..." pointing underwater at a huge manta, "she born here twenty eight years ago. I was dere for it. I swim wit her every week tha past twenty eight years. She is like my family. Watch, see er" and he swims down, under this eight foot diameter ray, and picks it up, and brings it to us, puts it on your chest and it squiggles and writhes and sucks on your chest hair and soon swims off in a quiet but powerful wave. Fuck me! Like, picking up a fucking Moray EEL out of its cave and playing with it, seven feet long. Jeeeeesus. He did magic with the turtles, the fishermen throwing conch guts into the water. He talked a little bit on the boat while we ate lunch, a very quiet, philosophical talk about fishes and how even though it took him thirty years, he can be a part of their environment, he can talk to them, and very few people will ever get to do that, get so in tune with what they really are.

 

More to come soon, just moved back into the bay into a houseboat and I've got to build myself a kitchen and unpack. Anyone out in SF or Oakland want to kick it? I don't know hardly anyone here. Hopefully STAN51 and I will be meeting up this week.

[Schnitzel]

oh holy shit what an update.

[Keepitrail]

I think what was most incredible was that he lived his entire life on that island - at least the last forty years or so. Built his first boat at sixteen and sold it to a captain of the royal navy, who controlled Belize at the time. I asked him about the politics of Guatemala and Belize, the US involvement with United Fruit (look it up for a good read on the rampant corruption of the US in the fifties, fucking unbelievable what we did there) and he just says... "I don't care about that stuff.. I live on the island, I am a part of this water, the life that lives and does not kill. The fish, they may eat, but they do not kill, do you know? it is a difference you will take a long time to understand... I know not of what goes on with the people on land. I don't care about dat stuff, it is not for me."

 

[Deine Mudder]

Nice update.

Good to hear you're doing good.

 

LOL @ "..All up at six the next morning laughing about it"

 

 

 

(...) we were skimping on anything we could (...)

So I understand you're on a tight budget most of the time.

ANYWAY.

THIS SHIT REALLY NEEDS TO HAVE PICTURES TAKEN WITH SOMETHING SERIOUS LIKE A LEICA, REALLY.

I know this place is pretty dead by now, but there must be a way to crowd-fund this.

Or is there somebody on here who can actually borrow this guy one.

I mean really - it would be so awesome if some of this would be properly captured on film!!

 

 

Anyway stay well & thanks for sharing KIR, take care.

[Keepitrail]

That night, we met a man on a bicycle, who at one time must have been white, but now betrayed by the sun, was a nice chicory leather brown, soft and folded skin rippling from a toothy grin. "Nah, thanks" was the usual answer to anyone instigating conversation on the island, as our needs were mostly met with the Belican (Belize's Budweiser, but legally monopolized) and the greenery we'd stashed along the way. But this man seemed of a different nature. "Eyyy, man, chocolates, you like chocolates?" At midnight, the offer struck us as odd, yet appealing. "Magic chocolates, I hook you up - eighty Belize"[2:1 US] "Nahhh, thanks man, sounds good but we're backpacking, low budget."

 

"AHHH! My man, no problem, we are all cool here, check it out..." as he pulls some gold foiled rectangle from his pocket. Okay, fuck it, why not... "This is good for one or two?" "Oh two for sure, you're gonna be fine, man, trust me mon, its Jonny. Everybody knows Jonny." Through some skimmilidanging, we haggled him down to $10 US for the chocolate. "Tell you what, if it's good, we'll get more, at your price. For now, our price." Usually works with most foreign transactions.

[Keepitrail]

Nice update.

Good to hear you're doing good.

 

Anyway stay well & thanks for sharing KIR, take care.

 

Thanks, man... You too! I am working on some insurance finagling to uhhh... retreive... my.... stolen.... camera. Well, anyway. It's not an amazing camera, but I'm stoked to get it back. In working order. What you can do with twenty bucks....

 

 

Last image we took before eating chocolate and blazing trails through really weird and abandoned mangrove jungles, dehydrating ourselves to extinction, drinking creek water, crossing an airplane landing strip (?) and arriving back at the norther part of the island to talk with Danish men who we could not understand not because of their accent but because we were so engrossed in their strange luminocity..

[Keepitrail]

Fuck.. I feel like I'm missing a ton of photos... Well the real trip didn't really begin until we got past Hopkins, the middle of Belize. We had been in the Northern part, just shy of the tourist area, and avoided all the disgusting representatives of upper middle class america, taken the bus down through Dandriga, the "cultural capital of Belize", as you could tell by the many cultural representatives of people who would rob you the moment you stepped off the bus, and on to Hopkins, the halfway point. There we stayed at the Funky Dodo, a mildly (by my standards) recommended place. It was 8 a night, with kitchen and private room. Dorms were the same for 2 people combined, so we stayed privee so we could insert and retrieve penis from vagina without being rude. Lots of drinking strange concoctions by very black and very happy Belizian men, who told me not to drink this, unless I wanted triplets in six months.

 

[!@#$%]

dude. wow.

i travel the world and you make look like a novice.

 

kudos. props. all that.

lovin the updates

 

[CALIgula]

thanks again for sharing KIR.

sharing is KIRing.

 

we still need to kick it.

oakland/sf are an hour away from me.

[the.crooked]

KIR- I moved back up to Oakland just recently. If you ever wanna kick it, find some good food/beers. I got a few spots worth knowing about.

 

Update was way too fresh. Looks like a wonderful trip.

[slowDown]

Well damn, I just spent the better part of two days reading these 40+ pages and totally shucking responsibility. Vicariously, it has been fun to see the pics and the stories that go along with them.

Thought it really sucked how you got treated in Vegas at that mural painting. Liked your comment though, "Fuck meeting people you think you admire." Kinda figured those balloons might have popped.

Anyway, thanks for sharing, what an epic journey you've been on.

[VEINESTONE]

[Keepitrail]

Leaving Hopkins, on the way to PG, where we were to meet our host family for the next six weeks.

 

Probably the hardest names I've come across in my 10+ years of grafflife

 

[Keepitrail]

and they're huge. Fuck new page

[Keepitrail]

Shit, I've uploaded the pics fucking massive. I'll have to revamp them on a better connection.

 

Anyway, IR, Medicine. Symbols, Caligula (need to kick it, indeed), crooked (PMing you this weeks, you down?), slowdaon, thanks. More coming. Can't say it enough, cheesy as it is, but a lot of what's happened in this trip, and many times over, documenting and continuing on, I owe a lot to 12oz members, just meeting someone (somewhat) familiar in a foreign town, after days or weeks without talking or seeing anyone, or anyone I knew at the least, has meant a lot.

 

 

When we finally arrived at the place in Lubantuun, Belize - where we were to stay with our host family for six weeks.

[Keepitrail]

We met them on WWOOF.

 

We brought them booze and books from the US, per their request, schlepping 30 pounds of their stuff on our backs for three weeks. When we first arrived, they poured us each one shot from the bottle, and put it away.

 

 

The next few days involved me awakening at the asscrack of dawn to a foray of limitless jungle frogs, wild birds (skeeeeeeee-wop, chuwunnnnng - wung - wung - WIP!), and having breakfast at 5:30 am. Then off to water their two acre farm of cacao trees, by hand, from a well. With a five gallon bucket. You had to do it all before 8:00 am or else the water would boil the roots. It was quite hot. Then on to shoveling sand into five gallon buckets to walk up two flights of stairs to hand mix into cement, with five indigenous mayan workers being paid the equivilent of a dollar a day.

[theprotester]

Resized mate, hope I got them in the right order.

[MedicineCabinet]

pure badness

[the.crooked]

KIR- hit me up. I'll PM you some contact info. I'm still on the unemployed circuit, so the time is rampant.

[Sleazeside Heights]

 

 

 

 

cute as fuck! holy crap!

 

 

Last page was amazing, KIR just moving through paradise....

[_blank_]

i really like that this is still going. saw some tier over the past weekend in your home town man.

 

over my friends though. thats that shit i dont like.

 

 

not mad. keep doin you

[Keepitrail]

 

Fuck yes, good flick. At the end of the trip, in Maine. With Vane, Coke & Link on some abandoned military battery island. More to come on that later..