Tuesday, October 12, 2010 Tourists, My traveling style, Palenque

There were all these European tourists at the bus stop. I love having tourists around, but only at hostels or at clubs and bars. Not on transportation, at restaurants, in cities, or at attractions, because clearly I want to hog those all for myself. But I do like having friends to party with and speak English to. I'm such a spoiled brat of a traveler, aren't I. Two things I don't really get about toursits. One, why do they all buy these tacky ugly hippie clothes and wear them every day? Your friends are going to get your Christmas card and be like ¨Since when does Lisa have dreadlocks, wear Aladdin pants, and use a Mexican poncho as a shirt and purse?¨ I guess maybe for women it's a rape deterrent... since no one's getting any dressed like that? Maybe for men they think it'll make them look more like a local and less like a tourist (since the locals all wear Major League Baseball hats, t-shirts in English, and fake Diesel jeans). Okay and number two is, if you've been traveling for a while, why haven't you learned how to pack? I'm here for three weeks and have a tiny backpack, maybe 15 pounds max. All of these people have enormous Mt. Everest status trekking packs, with two pairs of hiking boots hanging off, 3 bottles of wter (that are available for purchase at any street corner), 2 types of hats, another full daypack, and my personal favorite, the guitar case. Heaven forbid you have a buy a t-shirt or some toiletries in Mexico... I swear these people are like under the impression that they are going to space or Antarctica and stores don't exist. But then again, whatever, at least they're traveling all over the world for cheap and having a great time. I'll shut up now. Especially since I think the opposite is worse; when people bring all their luxury goods to third world countries, go on packaged tours with drunken friends and don't interact with any locals, stay at fabulous resorts for hundreds of dollars a night, and get drunk every night at super clubs that play Lady Gaga and Usher. I guess I just fall somewhere in between, but my style is to do everything at 4x the speed of the average human being. I blame work; since I'm working now, I have okay money but no time. Heaven forbid I spend a day just chillin, or spend hours at a restaurant or cafe waiting for my beard to grow. Which is probably why no one wants to travel with me, because I sacrific everything for efficiency and a multitude of experiences. If it means I have to, I'll skip food for the day, take overnight buses to save time and mney for hotel, and I buy absolutely nothing except for super discounted clothes I actually want, maybe postcards, alcohol to preparty with, and local music CDs. And of course, I'll sacrifice anything for good pictures. Like in Iceland when my camera fell into a lava field cavern and I fished it out. Traveling alone, I can say I'm like a 9 out of 10 at self-timer adeptness. It´s gotten to the point where people will watch and ask me if I want them to take the picture, so I have 2 and I end up deleting the one taken by a human being because it's lopsided, I'm too far away, or blocking the main object in the background. I just don't trust people with my camera anymore, sorry! Ok, so today: Bus from hell, so nauseaus, it was an hour late, and I had no chance to get food, and it was a 5 hour drive through the winding Chiapas countryside to Palenque. The drive was really pretty, though, I'll admit. The mountains were really verdant, and little valleys with small wooden or sheet metal farmhouses, indigeneous friendly albeit very impoverished farmers, and corn fields cut into the landscape. Palenque was definitely not in the highlands, and in the jungle. It was hot and humid, and I was sweating almost immediately. I took a little combi van to the archaeological site, which is why people come to Palenque in the first place. The Mayan ruins here were pretty spectacular. It was a whole town and complex, incredibly well-preserved. There were over a dozen temples, including very picturesque and imposing step pyramids, all of which I scaled of course, despite sweating out gallons of water and pounds of salt. I was so sweaty that my face was white with running sunblock and it was stinging my eyes. All I was doing was climbing up the pyramids. I can't even imagine trying to CONSTRUCT these things (don't forget; without the use of the wheel or work animals). After taking a zillion and one pictures, I had to walk through the jungle with waterfalls, to the exit, which was pretty and cool because I saw lizards, snakes, and a coati. I'm pretty sure I'm sunburned, since in SF I never go outside and I never do fake tanning, nor real tanning because it's awful for your skin. I drank 2 liters of water and went to a restaurant and ate an entire chicken for dinner. No exaggeration. I had to go to the bathroom and of course, they have Western style toilets, but you can't flush the toilet paper, and they rarely have a seat. So I don't know what the usual person does, but I've ended up just squatting with my feet on the lip. It's like, at that point, why not just get a cheaper and way more simple squat toilet? I actually prefer them for dirty public restrooms to be honest; there is no contact, and by now I've had lots of practice in Asia and Africa. The bus was pretty much empty except for some Frenchies brave enough to face this Caribbean hurricane. During the night, there were some security checks, including one by border patrol where I had to show my passport. No offense Mexico, but you didn't make my top ten list of countries to which I'd most likely try to illegally immigrate.