Approaching the Land of the Free

I suppose it makes sense. The closer you are to the US of A, the more likely it is that the American power of meddling will affect you.

In South America, you can't even say you're from America, because they will bristle and ask you what you mean.

America, eh? You mean the United States? You mean North America?

And of course, they're right. South Americans are from America too. But they don't go around co-opting the term for themselves. And they are far away enough that their own problems, and those of their former colonial rulers, can safely subsume them.

But in Central America, it's perfectly clear what one might mean by "America." They know who you/we/they are.

Costa Rica

My first stop in my month long Central American tour was Costa Rica, for 10 yoga-powered writing-intense lazy-beachy days. My USF MFA writing partner of three years, Chellis, had been trying to arrange a Latin flavoured rendezvous for us and finally succeeded by finding me a crazy cheap ($300) ticket from Peru to Costa Rica (via Florida, naturally. Thank you, Spirit Air, and travel researcher extraordinaire, Chellis). Two days, two flights, a bus and ferry ride later, I found myself in the tiny surfing town of Santa Teresa on the Pacific Coast of Costa Rica. Absolutely lovely. Nicoya Bay is a feast for the eyes and luckily some of my photos from it survive.

Speaking of co-opting, Americans have taken over Costa Rica as their vacation destination of choice. Everywhere you turn, another nasal American accent. And as Lonely Planet will tell you, there's not much to do in Santa Teresa other than surf. Luckily, Chellis was there to get her surf on, along with all the other (Australian) (American) (Tico) boys and (a very few) girls. Every morning, she'd get up and float and crash and bruise and elevate her body over the sea.

Meanwhile, as the only non-surfer in Santa Teresa, I'd get up, do yoga under a thatched roof, and then write all day. Chellis and I would meet up in the late afternoon, brain and body exhausted, have an early dinner, and be in bed by 10pm. Like clockwork for 8 days straight.

Then on the 9th night, we thought we should go dancing at least once. So we shut our laptops and went to a beach front bar and danced like crazy in the strobe lit dark for 2 hours. Unbeknownst to us, in this time, our 2nd floor balcony was being scaled, the glass door was being jimmied open, and all our worldly (read: Apple) belongings were being stolen.

When we left the party, I was in a joyous mood as I always am after dancing. So much so that when Chellis suggested we run the 2 miles back home, I agreed. We got back and were laughing (heaving) so hard we didn't notice at first that our light was on. And why was our front door locked from the inside? Not yet panicked (though Chellis was having a suspicion), I came up with the bright idea of shouldering the door open, like in the movies.

1! 2! 3! Bang!

It actually worked. Except it opened up onto a totally destroyed room. Both our laptops, both our cameras, both our nanos, my iPod, my main back up hard drive, and whatever other dozen odds and ends we had in our laptop bags. Gone. $4000 of my shit and $2000 more of Chellis's.

It's true:
1) we should have figured out a way to lock up our laptops. Even though there were no lockers in the room like in all the hostels I stayed in all over South America. Even though the hotel reception closed at 6pm every evening (and also had a glass door). Even though our neighbours, two funny silly Australian boys, left their lights on and their (equally nice) laptops out on their beds in full view and went to the party with us, and they didn't get robbed.

2) we should have gotten travel insurance, but Americans don't usually get it. It's not part of our travelling culture, although you can be damn sure it is now for me and Chellis.

3) we should have jammed our balcony door with Chellis's surf board or something - all week the lock was acting funny, although this made us doubly sure to make it was locked before we left each time. But it probably meant it was easier to jimmy open.

The thing I'm still most upset about is my stolen scrapbook containing all my mementos and paper souvenirs from 3 months of touring South America. And my address book dating back to 1995 which I somehow stupidly didn't back up. [Email me your address and phone number please...]

But it doesn't compare to Chellis's loss. Three years of photographs and music and writing. Gone. Believe me, she's heard the cries of disbelief enough, and no, she didn't back her shit up, and yes, she will now. Gmail, young grasshopper. Gmail everything to yourself. Everything. Your contacts, your calendar, your little black book. Do it now. Get a second portable hard drive (less than $150 for 300 gigs at Best Buy), copy everything, and put it in your office, at your parents, wherever, but somewhere different than your computer. Preferably, a different city altogether. In case, you know, (the bad kind of) lightning (earthquake) (cyclone) strikes.

The next day, we left Costa Rica, but first I insisted we embark on a useless trip to the next town where the Costa Rican version of the FBI, the OIJ (Oy Hota!) had a small investigative office. I thought we might as well file a report, just so we could say we had done everything we could. Of course nothing would come of it. The hotel barely refunded us half our room rent for the week and only after much persuasion. $80 in return for a combined $6000 loss and unrecoverable data.

Everyone we spoke to in Costa Rica after that had a story of theft. From the Tico taxi driver who took us to the Oy Hota! to the American hotel manager to the Australian surfer on the airport shuttle. Robbery is all too common in these small towns. It's sometimes even clear who's responsible. In our case, a bunch of dreadlocked young Tico thugs who hung out at the corner surf shop. But no one's doing anything about it. Not yet anyway. And when privileged people visit a poor place bringing their pretty polished things, it's natural that some exchange might be expected. I just hadn't expected to be one of the losers.

Actually, I'm lying. I'd been waiting for (ie dreading) this moment for three years now. The moment that I might lose everything I have. And I had prepared myself so thoroughly that when it happened, I was astonished to find myself mostly reconciled with my "lighter" state within hours.

In fact, because I had so much of my stuff backed up - on DVDs I mail back to my parents every few months, to the extra hard drive hidden in my clothes that the thieves didn't find, to Flickr.com (I love you, Flickr, and Flickrdown, which helped me get back hundreds of my South America pictures, complete with tags and captions) - I had been ready for something far worse. I still had (mostly) everything I needed. My photos, my writing, my music. I just had no media to access it anymore. But media is gettable. You just need a credit card, generous friends and family who help you fundraise, and a willingness to start over.

I should add that the thieves (quite deliberately) left our passports and credit cards. Chellis's theory for this is that if they take these, then the victims are stuck in place for a couple of weeks while they procure new passports, and thus have more time to track down the villains. This way, when all you have of value remaining is your passport and a credit card, you'll probably just get the hell out as fast as you can.

Panama

I arrived in Panama with 2 bags instead of 3, my trusty dorky laptop bag that had travelled around the globe several times over now gone. I met my sister, Simi, and her design partner, Apichart, in Panama City, and we drove 5 hours to Venao, where the two of them were designing a house to be built overlooking the sea.

Eco Venao was beautiful. Since I had no camera or laptop, I read like a maniac. And did even more yoga. And went walking on the beach. And drank more than my share of Herradura. And ate delectable home cooked meals every night. And toured around various resorty and stand alone residences with Simi, Apichart, our amazing host, Nico, and his super fun friend Dan.

Ok, fine, I did have a camera. My lovely swivel lens Nikon point and shoot survived the theft (of course it would be my SLR that got nicked). So you have some photographic evidence that I continued my trip through Central America. Panama is the most "American" of these countries, naturally. The currency is US dollars; the US only just reluctantly gave up its lease on the canal; and land is being bought and developed, hundreds of hectares after another, by Americans.

On our way back from Venao, we stopped for two days in the gorgeously decrepit old neighbourhood of Panama City: Casco Viejo. Deserted, graffitied, crumbling, ornate, overgrown, and utterly captivating. Even though we chose the midday to go walking and the light is so horrible then that I sometimes resorted to the sepia setting on my camera to capture any sort of detail or nuance.

The final highlight was lunch at the Canal restaurant. Well, not lunch so much as the restaurant's balcony from where you can watch the hugest tankers and freight ships navigate the lock system of the Panama Canal, up close and MASSIVELY personal. Because the lake that the canal traverses inland is 50 metres higher than sea level, every ship that crosses the canal has to be lifted through and up a 3 stage lock system before the lake, and then back down again after the lake. We watched the lowering process for ship after ship, as lightning crackled the sky - a flabbergasting and awesome experience.

Master packer and mistress of minimalism that Simi is, she helped me get rid of even more stuff so that I would leave Panama with only 1 bag: my well worn orange duffel bag containing only clothes and toiletries. My fellow travellers from Bolivia, you can stop laughing at me now. Ok well, my duffel is still a rolly, but at least it's all I have left. Ha.

Mexico

I knew I'd like Mexico City. My sister and I usually have unerring predictions about each other's likes. And she's loved Mexico City for years. She's told me all about the street food, the mad traffic, the modern architecture mixed in with the traditional, the public art, the museums, the murals, the clubs, the tequila, the music, the pollution, the water systems, the taxis, the danger, the dirt, the vibrant energy everywhere, everywhere. I loved it instantly. Plus the weather is like San Francisco's on a September day. Which as any SFer will tell you is pretty pitch perfect.

Kem, a Couchsurfing friend who had toured Rio with me, joined me in Mexico City and we spent a week having the best tacos of our lives, going dancing all night, walking all day, and additionally visiting the largest city in pre-Columbian America: the spectacular pyramids of Teotihuacan.

Next, we spent a few days in Mexico's second largest city, Guadalajara. I loved our cheesy double decker bus tour of that city, the magnificent two towered church (where I sang with the other worshippers and remembered how much I love (and miss) singing), and the fantastic shopping town of Tlaquepaque (and I don't even like shopping!). But I think my favourite part was our hostel - a beautiful, clean, quaint, well kept establishment with ridiculously good kitchen and laundry facilities, flowers and plants everywhere, and a roof terrace perfect for doing outdoor yoga in the dying light.

My last week in Mexico was spent beaching in Baja, Mexico. Unfortunately, my Nikon camera decided to develop a lens error just as we got there, and so I have no photos from here. (piss poor camera luck this year for Abeer.) You'll have to check out Kem's photos when he gets them up on flickr...

In La Paz, we ate yummy fish tacos everyday and went snorkeling and swimming with the sea lions. And in Cabo San Lucas, we played scrabble on the most beautiful beaches I've ever seen in my entire life: Lovers Beach and its counterpart, Divorce Beach (harhar). Like being in a Corona commercial, I kid you not.

I must also tell you that going out in Cabo San Lucas will make you laugh your ass off. I've never seen more ridiculous behaviour in my life. Conga lines for free tequila shots. Contests to see which couple can simulate the most sexual positions in 60 seconds. Beer chugging races. Embarrassingly bad Spanish singing lessons. (Can you guess which nationality dominated the willing crowds?)

The Giggling Marlin, Zoo Bar, El Squid Roe, Jungle Bar... Kem was more thorough in his rounds of CSL's night life than I was, but we both made it to CaboWabo because we couldn't resist Lonely Planet's description: "like a frat party, only everyone's older and drunker."

I'm still laughing. And anyway, it's nice to be dark brown again after my years out of the sun. I'll write more soon, from the paler side of the world.