TravelStream™ news feed for member rem on TravelPod's free travel blogs service http://www.travelpod.com/syndication/rss/rem en-us Copyright ©2009 TravelPod.com Fri, 16 Apr 2004 13:32:49 -0400 http://www.travelpod.com http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/rem/olivia2004/1081407420/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/rem/olivia2004/1081407420/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/rem/olivia2004/1081407420/tpod.html Fri, 16 Apr 2004 13:32:49 -0400 On a Caribbean cruise with 1850 lesbians. There are worse things.

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At sea, Guatemala

It's nearly 3am here on the quiet, warm, humid and breezy deck of the ship as we travel from Guatamala to Cozumel where we'll arrive around noon tomorrow. I'm the lone soul up here with a bright moon overhead, sitting on the top deck at the very back of the ship, watching the quiet, white path of waves in our wake maybe 40 meters below. Sipping a little red wine, listening to some quiet music - it's hard to imagine wanting to ever be anywhere else.

And if my present surroundings don't inspire a general sense of gratitude enough, the past two days in Belize and Guatemala were brief and poignant reminders of the blessings all of us on board the Big Boat collectively represent. Just beyond the haven of the de-docking photo booth and tent with cruise staff eager to assist travelers with questions or a glass of lemonade at our places of port, is a sea of booths staffed by local artisans, some of whom travel six hours each way from their tiny hometowns on "cruiser days" in hopes of selling $100 worth of handmade jewelry, woven cloth and any little sundry you can imagine. And it's not really the hard sell or the bargaining that gets so hard to take, it's taking on the unrequested position of "person of wealth and therefore power" that is exhausting and heartbreaking. Today Rachael heard from one woman when bargaining over the price of a table runner "oh please lady, it not for me, it for my family" as the woman with maybe six teeth displayed her best merchandise and shuffled away her six-year old girl dressed up in full, traditional costume to go charge tourists for pictures and sell jewelry in the 106 degree heat. It's been surprisingly emotional for all of us to be a part of.

Perhaps I'm naïve, but I, and I think everyone who is traveling to this area for the first time, has been collectively shocked by the disparity of wealth. We visited the Mayan ruin site of Altun Ha yesterday in Belize and our travels began in Belize City where we were in port (although the country hasn't been able to afford to build a pier, so everyone is shuttled to the shore by motorboat.) The city is utterly poverty stricken and dirty, and as soon as our van traveled beyond the outskirts, the conditions of the rural homes were even worse. The road to Altun Ha, despite being one of the country's top tourist attractions, has not been maintained for 20 years and our guide Philip kept muttering something about broken political campaign promises and governmental corruption as we bumped along for an hour holding on for our lives.

Tourism is the number one industry in Belize, as evidenced at Altun Ha where we were greeted with a new slew of shops and equally fervent salespeople. Among them here were children ages four to about 12 carrying snakes, turtles and pigeons, asking for a dollar a picture with the animals. I preferred to talk with them about football (they all play and want to be stars when they grow up), I showed one little girl named Wasita a cartwheel since she'd never heard of gymnastics, and then gave them each a dollar to (pretty-please) take good care of the obviously unhappy creatures in their care.

Altun Ha is a small but impressive Mayan site, which suffered fairly severe destruction from construction crews in the 60's who were building roads in the area and didn't realize until Canadian and British archeologists jumped in that they were in fact leveling ancient ruins. About ¾ of the (remaining) buildings have been excavated so far, and others are still sitting as large mounds of earth waiting for funding to begin restoration. Altun Ha is best known for the huge, sculpted jade head that was found here in a tomb of a high priest in the temple. Beyond the obviously priceless value of a large, sculpted piece of pure jade from approximately 500A.D., it remains a greater mystery in that jade is only found more than 500+ miles from that region (in Guatemala), and is the second-hardest stone in the world - only diamonds can cut it. So they don't know where it came from or how they made it, and the fact of course that all the Mayans just up and disappeared one day and left everything behind is another puzzler. They really know very little about the Mayans still and have only managed to guess at the meanings of some of their hieroglyphics. We are hoping to go to Chichen Itza tomorrow from Cozumel, one of the largest sites of ruins, however it is somewhat of a journey so we'll have to see if there's time.

Rachael and I split up today and did our own things in Guatemala and apparently she got the short stick. She went to a beach "resort" for a day of relaxing, which sounds nice, but turned out to be a dirty, overcrowded beach with muddy water full of garbage. Note to self: stay in the water in Belize, stay on land in Guatemala.

I on the other hand enjoyed perhaps the best day yet on an "eco-hike" in the jungle of Guatemala off of Rio Dulce. About 30 of us took a bus for about an hour and a half, where we caught a boat for a quick trip across the river to an eco-lodge called Hacienda Tijax. There we took a 2 and ½ hour hike through the jungle and over rope bridges up to an observatory at the top of one of the highest points along that river, boasting a spectacular view in all directions of Guatemalan countryside. This was followed by a fantastic lunch, kayaking in the river (which, as it turns out, was informative if only that I realized that my fear of sharks is nearly equaled when paddling about by myself in muddy, crocodile and water moccasin-infested river water - so this part of the adventure didn't last long) and then a little topless swimming with a bunch of rowdy ladies in the lodge's pool before heading back to the ship.

Our guide Roberto was amazing and spoke of everything from the only recently-ended (in 1996) 40-year civil war, to Guatemalan culture and politics, to wildlife and ecology. He was a vast wealth of information on the country, its history, and local flora and fauna - we hung on every word for 7 hours. It's hard to know where to begin as there was so much to take in. So perhaps some bullets of the factoids that stuck with me most:

- Guatemala is approximately the size of Louisiana, with 12.5 million people. 3.5 of which live in Guatemala City, the only large city of the country (which I didn't see).

- The country consists of 24 main ethnic groups, many of which are considered indigenous and the rest of which are simply referred to as "mixed". The indigenous people make up the majority (about 62%) of the population, however as in most places of the world, they are usually treated as an inferior class of people. They are regularly referred to as "ignorant" by other Guatemalans, much to the chagrin of our guide who was stalwart in their defense. Public schools are not mandatory here, and as a result nearly half the country is illiterate, but as he described, the priorities of the indigenous people are different - to teach their children their trades and culture above everything else. He says " the are naïve, but not ignorant." Each ethnic group has its own traditions, dialect, costumes and complete culture. They are generally localized to very specific areas of the country, rarely leaving those areas, but all the indigenous groups band together as necessary and tend to be unified politically.

- Speaking of which, Guatemala has 16 political parties (makes for interesting elections apparently) although the candidate with the most campaign money tends to win and the governmental and military corruption is rampant. Roberto has hope that it is improving though and volunteered that even the very rich politicians who usually win tend to want to do things to improve the country. (If you haven't guessed yet, Roberto worked out pretty well on our bus as an outspoken progressive ecologist with very liberal sympathies.)

- And to put things in perspective, we asked much about his own personal experiences of which he spoke freely except with regards to the civil war, which he said was difficult to talk to Americans about because of the U.S. involvement. 90% of his high school friends were killed or disappeared during a ten-year period of the war and he was labeled a communist for speaking out against the government and had to hide in the U.S. for 11 years. Yet another fascinating sidebar: Roberto said that American Mormon missionaries are still very unpopular here, as the U.S. government hired them during the U.S. occupation to act as intelligence. He found out (through a direct personal experience I won't do justice to repeat) that local missionaries were keeping files on every local individual in their mission "territory". Always thought them Mormons were creepy.

- Roberto affectionately encouraged us to take care of all our Guatemalan friends at home or his country will be in big trouble... and he's right. Tourism is the second largest industry here. The first? Money sent from relatives in the U.S. No joke.

- OK, and talk about disparity of wealth - 80% of the harvestable land in Guatemala is owned by 14 families. It almost appears in places to be a feudal culture, as the large banana, pineapple, rubber, broccoli and other plantations are surrounded by rows of tiny houses in poor condition which the field workers are given in exchange for their labor.

- Guatemala, like Belize, is struggling with a cocaine epidemic, however in a different way. In Belize it is basically a social problem - there is a huge unemployment rate and much crack addiction - thus, there is rampant petty theft, as illustrated by tiny, run-down houses everywhere that are barely standing up, but have bars on all the windows. In Guatemala this is not much of a problem, however they estimate that 90% of the drug trafficking from South America goes through Guatemala, where the topography and political structure work in the favor of the dealers. So the most recent problem in this country is a new population of what they call "nouveau, narco riche" - who Roberto described as "the big guy with lots of gold chains, fat like a salami, shiny guns..." to which we all responded "hey, I know that guy!" The level of indiscriminant violent crime and power-mongering by these individuals is creating a brand new set of issues to the country, as are the Guatemalan illegals who get involved with gangs in the U.S. and then are deported back home with their new hobby. As of yet though, these problems are pretty localized to the outskirts of Guatemala City.

- Let's see... what else... Guatemala boasts over 20 volcanoes (3 of which are active all the time) and the most fault lines (and the largest) in all of North and South America. The San Andreas starts here, and the two major tectonic plates that join North and South America meet here. The last major earthquake was in 1976, in which I think he said more than 200,000 people were killed. They estimate another quake of that magnitude approximately once each century. Ready to get your plane ticket yet?

Please don't let my brief overview deter you though (and I haven't even mentioned the mosquitoes the size of your head and many poisonous snakes yet) - the country is lush, green, gorgeous, hospitable, rich with culture and I would come back in a heartbeat. And frankly, there are probably no areas here that are any more dangerous than east LA. The variety of cultures makes it seem like many smaller countries and the geography takes one from sandy beaches up to elevations of 15,000 feet on the west side of the country. They also have some of the largest protected rainforests and wildlife preserves (and the largest jaguar preserve) in the world. My brief glimpse was fantastic and just the tip of the iceberg. (And you'll never taste sweeter pineapple ever in your life.)

It seems this edition of the travel log has become more of a cultural lesson than a vacation journal. Keep in mind that all of this is based upon the vast store of knowledge I've soaked in over the course of less than 48 hours, from a couple well-paid guides, in our air-conditioned vans, after sipping frilly drinks and eating from the buffet on the ship. My perspective is obviously tempered with a relatively sheltered, rich tourist bent, and undoubtedly contains wild over-simplifications if not inaccuracies. Nevertheless, I'm finding these discoveries to be my favorite part of the trip so far.

Not much else to report from the more traditional vacation side of things, except that I've managed to procure a pretty wicked sunburn on my belly, I won $300 in the casino last night at the quarter slots, and both Tuaca and Rachael are still in the final 10 of "Olivia Idol" - a saga that continues for two more nights and is proving to be quite the popular draw. It undoubtedly promises to continue to be great fun for all of us in the audience, while inspiring severe bouts of what I'm dubbing "competitive stress disorder" in Rachael. This ailment is most commonly found in the species of human who does not handle competitive situations well. Symptoms include stomach cramping, anxiety attacks, and bouts of nausea. While ego-stroking friends are helpful in battling many of the symptoms, the only known cure is winning. I'm so glad I slept though auditions. Oy!

I just realized that the clocks moved forward an hour tonight, which officially makes it two hours till room service delivers breakfast. With this, I abruptly stop my ramblings and head to bed.

Perhaps one more installment after Cozumel...
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Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, United States

Well I think I learned their strategy this morning for making everyone actually want to get off the ship - give 2000 lesbians an hour and a half to get breakfast all in one little place with about six staff people. Mayhem at the buffet! (You do not want to stand between this many lesbians and their food, kids.) With a little patience I managed to procure a nice omelet though, (although coming across juice and silverware was another story.)

So here my breakfasted self finds me in the calm of my stateroom again, sitting on the little verandah with the laptop, back at port in Ft. Lauderdale where we arrived a couple hours ago. We're all waiting for the loudspeaker to start calling the disembarkation numbers, which will cue a three hour process of getting all of us off the boat. The morning rain here has left everything covered with a foggy cloak of humidity - we're rooting for the sun to win out, since we have nothing to do and no place to go today except the beach before our plane leaves late this evening.

The whole trip wrapped up with a bang yesterday when Rachael was officially crowned the very first Olivia Idol. After the full week of stiff karaoke competition, she performed with the other eight finalists in the big theater to an audience of about 1000 rowdy women. All the singers were fantastic - Tuaca kicked off the show with a bang and Rachael closed it with a helluva rendition of Irene Cara's "What A Feelin" from Flashdance (my suggestion, thank you very much) to which she scatted all the instrumental parts and was an absolutely wild success. She finished and the whole theater just erupted - the entire floor on its feet, the balcony folks beating on the wall and Suede, one of the entertainers on board this week and one of the "celebrity judges", said she was ready to sign Rachael to her label. It was all pretty surreal and Rachael hasn't paid for a drink since. Suddenly I'm dating a boat celebrity! Everywhere she goes people are coming up to her with hugs and compliments. It's been a sweet ending to a sweet week. (And, as she says, her head is now officially too large to pack up so it's being FedEx'd home later this week.)

That was obviously the highlight of yesterday, our final day at sea. It was a delightful day, the greater portion of which I spent on the pool deck with my nose in a book. The day before was Cozumel, where Tuaca, Rachael and I visited the Mayan Ruin site of San Gervasio - it was fantastic. (Chichen Itza is back on the Mexican mainland and was too far... next trip!) San Gervasio is a large site near the center of the island and at one point was the central Mayan community not only of the island, but was the "mecca" site for all Mayan women. It is (I think) the only Mayan site that had areas for women only. The site is remarkably unsupervised, in that we were able to just wander all over without a guide through the ruins and surrounding jungle with very few restrictions as to where we could and couldn't explore. Refreshingly un-American. Tooling around for a couple hours we enjoyed glimpses of what life here may have looked like 1000 years ago. (There were still little red handprints on some of the stucco from the 12th century!) Our tour guides this time were hundreds of birds and iguanas who had the run of the place. My words can't do it justice - we each had strong emotional reactions to the place.

The rest of the Cozumel we saw was pretty much the tourist-saturated Mexico I think of, but the water and weather were gorgeous. That night found me back on the boat with about 10 other women drinking too much, dancing into the wee hours of the morning, and at some point there was skinny-dipping involved. Suede passed through the pool area around four and much to her surprise found a bunch of naked women in the hot tub (lesbian soup!) and serenaded us with "No Regrets". Nope, this doesn't suck.

Well disembarkation is now well underway so I'm off. While I do look forward to getting home, it's bittersweet, and the time of course went too fast. I'm glad we'll get to enjoy one more lazy, sleepy afternoon before we hop on the plane. I think Tuaca, Rae and I will head back to the B&B where Tuaca's staying again tonight and try and get a nap in. (And here I was under the silly impression that I'd actually sleep on my vacation.) Thanks for reading my little ramblings - they've been a challenge to articulate (and even more to send (internet access on the boat has been frustratingly spotty and ridiculously expensive) but a great way to capture a little of the experience.

Looking forward to the next one!
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At sea, Belize

Day two? Three? I've been blissfully unaware of time since we got on the boat, to the point where I quite honestly didn't know what day it was till I logged in on the computer. And so much to report... where to start?

At the moment I'm enjoying the very stereotype of what one imagines when thinking of a cruise in the Caribbean. I'm up on the top deck of the ship with loads of sunbathers, donning a swimsuit and gauzy beach shirt, soaking in the sun with a cool breeze through my hair, sipping on the ship's "drink of the day" - something involving Blue Curacao - complete with orange slice, cherry and little umbrella. My hair is windswept, my nose is freckly, my shoulders a tiny bit burned, I smell like salt and sunblock, and my belly is full from the ever-present all-you-can-eat buffet (which I'm pleased to report is just now beginning to lose its novelty.)

The women are everywhere - the people watching is unbeatable. It's hard to imagine that a boat full of lesbians would be a terribly diverse group, but indeed, every age, race, size, shape, and personality is represented. I've already met some really great people who I imagine I'll stay in touch with after the trip.

Today I've been enjoying being on my own. We're at sea today, on our way to Belize where we'll be at port early tomorrow morning in Belize City. So I've just spent a lazy day ignoring the two-page schedule of activities they put together for us and have enjoyed downloading music and making vacation mixes for the mp3 player, napping often and staying quiet, contemplative and in awe of being surrounded by water as far as the eye can see.

The past couple days have been more exciting. Of particular note was my (if I may be so bold as to say) downright heroic bravery yesterday on my very first snorkeling expedition. Now for one who is consumed (even on land) by an overwhelming, albeit illogical, fear of sharks, this was something of a feat. I realize for one who does not share this fear, the "adventure" would certainly have been pretty benign, but my chest is puffed up nonetheless. We (about 40 women and I) hopped on a large Catamaran in Key West and sailed south for about an hour to a spot along the 3rd longest reef in the world. A popular snorkel site (there were about five or six other boats moored out there as well), the water was between 3 and 30 feet deep. We got a 30-second "snorkeling for dummies" lesson, a five minute sermon on the no-no's of touching the reef for fear of irreparably damaging the ecosystem and thereby one's own karma for the next six lifetimes, then slipped on our flippers and hopped overboard. I politely let everyone else go first, and when the shark-food ratio was comfortably high, I too jumped in and had (even for me) a surprisingly panicky few moments before Rachael convinced me to actually look in the water with my face mask, at which point I said (through the muffle of a snorkel) "Hey look! Fishies!" and my anxiety vanished. The Great Unknown was suddenly a hospitable and exciting place, and after a moment of holding hands with R, I was off exploring on my own for the better part of an hour.

I could have stayed much longer had the water temperature been a few degrees higher and the mask less pinchy. I found a school of yellow snapper to be particularly gracious hosts, and a larger silver and blue fish became my personal tour guide. I was a little disappointed to not see any sea turtles as we'd heard the morning group had seen in abundance, but was otherwise awestruck and completely moved - a highly content, quiet witness to their world. The experience won't be soon forgotten - and I'm almost tempted to look for another opportunity tomorrow (at the 2nd longest reef in the world) off the coast of Belize. The only drawback was a horrific chill that set in upon getting on the sailboat, which didn't subside for nearly an hour when we docked back at Key West. That, and I did learn (most gratefully after I was safely back aboard) that the waters were, in-fact, shark-infested and that several of my fellow snorkelers saw at least one when they were out. I chose to come down with a sudden case of deafness upon hearing the beginning of a few accounts and am still choosing to believe that what they saw was simply a benign little nurse shark at the bottom somewhere. Rachael smiled kindly and patted my knee when I told her this, which means it wasn't, but that's ok.

Not to be outdone by our little excursion, the Key West cruise plans had us in the intimate little on-board theater shortly after reboarding the ship where we saw an hour and a half of the Indigo Girls from the front row. Now I've seen these ladies in concert dozens of times in the past 10 years, but to sit there in such a relaxed atmosphere, surrounded by an audience full of appreciative women and sitting less than 8 feet from them was quite a treat. I soaked the whole thing in feeling mooky and blessed.

What else... Oh I should mention that Rachael and I met a woman who stayed at our B&B in Ft. Lauderdale who is also on the cruise who we've spent most of our time with thus far. Tuaca (yes, like the liqueur) is a recently heartbroken single woman who was a little skeptical about the whole trip at first, so Rachael and I have officially taken her under our wing, where I'm pleased to say, she has blossomed to be perhaps the most well-known "solo" (as the call them at Olivia - they get a dog tag and everything) on board. She's hard to describe - consumed with a voracious love of life, she will try anything and so far I don't think she's slept. It has seemed a bit like kismet, in that she stayed one room away from us at the little Florida B&B and then we got on board to realize our room numbers and dining room tables are again only one number apart. She has been pledging her gratitude profusely for our friendship during a difficult time of her life, so it seems to have worked out well. Our mission has been to get her a date, although I think she's doing fine on her own.

For instance, our first night on board we participated in a raucous evening of karaoke that went late into the night. Turns out we have a host of talent aboard the ship - who knew? Tuaca sings in a country band in LA, so she led the group in a lovely rendition of the Dixie Chick's "Earl's Gotta Die". Toofer (our official nickname for her now, to which she cringes), sang a host of additional songs through the evening, into which she managed to insert her room number each time. Rachael and I ended up doing a little ditty too, and ever the activist, I insisted that karaoke was inherently discriminatory of accapella music, so we did "Blue Skies" without the benefit of back-up or lyrics. Turned out well actually, considering neither of us had sung it for at least a year and never as a duet.

Last night then was the first round of karaoke "Olivia Idol". I was exhausted and went to bed early so I missed the whole thing, but apparently Rachael brought down the house with her version of "Get Here if You Can" and Toofer with a back-by-popular-demand rendition of "Earl". They of course both made it to the next round tonight where we'll see if either of their on-stage personalities will be tolerable enough to hang out with.

Tonight is "formal night", so I had best be off to get myself all gussied up and attempt to guide my hair through a lesson in handling humidity.

More after Belize!
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Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, United States

Well I'm officially in the midst of my vacation adventure, and until the 10th at least, this is now my travel blog: a tale of a woman at sea with 2000 lesbians. Arrived in Ft. Laudedale last yesterday evening and have spent and uneventful day tooling around town, preparing to board the Big Boat of Beans mid-day tomorrow. Went to a disappointing welcome reception for the cruise tonight, where our $15 entry charge got us each one lousy drink and two pieces of cheese in a hot, overcrowded room. And we were entered to win a tank top or golf balls. We didn't win.

We, being my girlfriend Rachael and I. I got grouchy at the reception as a direct result of an empty belly, and was directly responsible for the evening's disintegration into total wordlessness as we sought food for an hour, quickly scarfed some bad fried food down and returned to the B&B. She left to walk on the beach and I took to blogging. So it goes.

This all sounds like a pretty disappointing beginning to our much-anticipated and very expensive, well-planned vacation... but not entirely unexpected for me at least, in that I assumed it would take a couple days for the pendulum of anticipation swing back to a place where my expectations aren't quite so unreasonable. I'm looking forward to a generous supply of alone time in the coming days which will undoubtedly help. And perhaps several frilly drinks with umbrellas.

I was telling Rachael about my little blog today and told her that I hoped that since I'd always recognized that while the overt idea of anyone reading my journals always seemed horrifying, the notion co-existed with a heartfelt and almost intended desire for some ghost reader to glimpse my blatherings. In fact, this idea always pushed me to write and fomulate my thoughts better, so I have hope that this experiment may turn into something theraputic. (Not to mention my complete and embarrasing inability to sit down and write with a pen on paper without my arm aching after a paragraph and my handwriting being entirely illegible.) She responded that for this very reason she has conciously made an effort to never write for ghost readers or the self-editing would prevent her from ever writing. This is a great point, and if her faithfulness to her pen is any indication (she's on journal number 49 I think?) she may be on to something. Especially in comparison to my 100% lack of journaling in the past 8 years or so. If I'm able to live up to my self-standards and keep this up for two days I'll be impressed.

So I'm officially chilled to the bone (and had to come to Florida for this?) at this little outdoor workstation at our B&B (which I highly recommend by the way - Gigi's Resort by the Beach), so I'm heading back to Nairobi. (This is the name of our little safari-themed room... mosquito netting around the bed and all.) Looking forward to my first adventure on a boat roughly the size of Maryland. Should be fun.
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