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so-journ

a travel blog by cjones


A year of exploration in the rural tropics, learning about places, people, the good and the bad, how I can help and what's next in this wild ride for me.


Teach us to number our days aright,
that we may gain a heart of wisdom.

May the favor of the Lord our God rest upon us;
establish the work of our hands for us — yes, establish the work of our hands.

Psalms 90:10 & 17
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El Estor

El Estor, Guatemala


Spent about 8 hours today in an old bus with bad suspension on a bad dirt and gravel road, traveling from Coban to El Estor on Lago Izabal, the largest lake in Guatemala. Too much bouncing around to do much other than admire the scenery. Couldn't really converse with the other passengers since they seemed to speak mostly Q'eqchi'.

permalink written by  cjones on October 1, 2007 from El Estor, Guatemala
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Road to ruins

Copan, Honduras


Met new friends from Australia day before yesterday near Mariscos on Lago Izabal, then went for a swim and stayed at the lake one night at a place called Denny's Beach.

Yesterday, we rode buses to the border of Honduras, arriving at dusk then today we explored the Mayan ruins (from around 500 to 800 AD) that are the main tourist attraction of Copan. The town here is beautiful, caters to tourists but has a lot of charm. Judging from the look of the houses and streets, conditions in here in Honduras seem noticeably less poor than across the border in Guatemala, but this could be just around Copan.



permalink written by  cjones on October 4, 2007 from Copan, Honduras
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El Carib

Tela, Honduras


Yesterday, explored around and stayed overnight in the Afro-Caribbean Garifuna village Triunfo de la Cruz, a short distance along the coast from where I am now in Tela. Very chill with practically no tourists. Checked out the local live music at a disco on the beach and this morning I visited the botanical garden in Lancetilla reputed to be the finest in Latin America. The grounds were impressive and nice to walk around, but I'd hoped to find more information on tropical forest conservation and agriculture. Rode much of the way to Tela in the back of a pickup in pouring rain. Drying out now.

permalink written by  cjones on October 7, 2007 from Tela, Honduras
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Tegucigalpa

Tegucigalpa, Honduras


In the capital city of Tegucigalpa, doing some planning for the rest of the trip and stopped in a bookstore this morning. Of course most of it's in Spanish but found a lot of good material on subjects I'm trying to learn more about such as economic, social and ecological factors affecting the situation here in Central America. Strange that the historic downtown area has a nice park and baroque cathedral but mostly US or similar fast-food chains for restaurants.

permalink written by  cjones on October 9, 2007 from Tegucigalpa, Honduras
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End of the long bus ride

Panama, Panama


Arrived in Panama City yesterday after 3 days on long-distance buses from Tegucigalpa. Very heavy rains and flooding in Costa Rica, which delayed the bus 6 hours because part of the Pan-american highway collapsed. Giant waves on rivers we crossed over. This is the same highway that passes through KC as I-35.

Relaxing here at a hostel and looking into options for transportation into Colombia. The city here is very modern and not too unlike the US, but especially diverse being located between South America and the rest of Central America and the only Central American capital on the Pacific coast, so there's some Asian influence.

Read in the paper here that the "economy" of Panama grew 7.5% in the past year, but 64% of the population is in poperty with a third in extreme poverty, and the poverty has not decreased. Also read that at least by one account the richest man in the world now is from Mexico, another country where there is much poverty. Something's wrong with this picture! Whose really benefitting from the economic growth?

permalink written by  cjones on October 14, 2007 from Panama, Panama
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Setting sail

Portobelo, Panama


Leaving on a chartered yacht (very reasonable) for the San Blas islands and Colombia tomorrow!

permalink written by  cjones on October 17, 2007 from Portobelo, Panama
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On solid ground in Colombia

Cartagena, Colombia



The Melody has landed! Arrived yesterday in Cartagena after 5 days and 4 nights on the water with 9 other backpackers from the US, Canada and Sweden. It was a fun trip aside from getting seasick on the 4th day.

Really curious about seeing Colombia firsthand, since I've heard so many conflicting things about the country. Appears that all those things could be true, just that different people see different sides. Today I glanced through a book on the subject called Las Dos Colombias (another book apparently not available in English or probably in the States). There are a lot of police and military roaming the streets, but the ones I've seen so far seem no better or worse than those in the US - most seem like decent people and I'm sure they make the streets safer for gringos like me.

Met a Colombian lady who believes that most people here are not truly patriotic but have a regional mentality and are not very concerned about what is happening in another part of the country. The human rights organizations and the UN all say that the level of violence against the poor and indigenous people in the rural areas is the highest in Latin America at this time - akin to the violence in Guatemala in the 80s and most of it perpetrated by paramilitaries who have ties to the military and police. Colombia is also known to have the highest internal displacement (largely due to the violence) in the world except for Darfur - estimates are 2 to 4 million people over the past 20 years.

Back to my immediate location: Cartagena is a popular tourist destination for both backpackers and upscale tourists. The historic center is a beautiful place to walk around with colonial architecture and narrow cobblestone streets lined by 2-story buildings with balconies overflowing with tropical flowers. Such contrasts in this country!



permalink written by  cjones on October 23, 2007 from Cartagena, Colombia
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Cali

Cali, Colombia


Torrential rains in Cartagena yesterday morning. Rivers of water about a foot deep flowed through the narrow streets and about an inch of water washed in from the streets onto the floor of the restaurant where I had breakfast. My flight from Cartagena to Cali was delayed by more than 5 hours because of the rain.

National elections are Sunday and as in Guatemala it's very dangerous to be a political candidate here. Candidates and their families are often targeted for assassinations or kidnappings. Read in the paper a couple of days ago that as of then there had been 29 assasinations, 9 kidnappings and 27 other attacks. Other differences I've heard about with elections here are that bars and liquor stores are closed the whole weekend of the elections and buses and many other businesses don't operate on election day. Wonder if that makes it difficult for some to travel to the polling place.

permalink written by  cjones on October 26, 2007 from Cali, Colombia
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Emilio's farm

Cali, Colombia


Today I met a friend of my friend Naresuan who lives here in Cali, and is a consultant for the World Wildlife Fund working on conservation, sustainable development and land use planning in the Putumayo department to the southeast. This was completely unplanned before yesterday and an incredible opportunity for me to learn more about Colombia and many of the things I'm most interested in learning about on this journey!

In addition to his consulting work, Emilio has a farm about a hour's drive from Cali, near Dagua, where he grows coffee as well as many experimental crops for income including flowers, ornamental plants, giant bamboo, tropical hardwoods such as mahogany, butterflies and aquarium fish. In addition he grows a variety of food for his family and is planning to open an ecotourism center. At breakfast, I changed my plans to leave Cali today and instead rode with him to the farm where he gave me a tour for a few hours. Enjoyed a lot of good conversation (in English) and views of beautiful countryside and interesting roadside market activity.



permalink written by  cjones on October 27, 2007 from Cali, Colombia
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Pasto

Pasto, Colombia


Now in Pasto in southern Colombia, after spending most of the last 4 days with Emilio - Sunday at an amazing private nature reserve called Nirvana run by the family of a friend of his, then the last 2 days traveling with him from Cali. He had to go to work in the forest just east of here (with indigenous communities in the Putumayo) and offered a ride in his car. Many interesting sights along the way, including many army or police checkpoints, especially between Cali and Popayan, which is in an area of much guerrilla activity in recent years. We were stopped a couple of times and searched once. Drove through some very diverse and beautiful terrain. Pasto seems like a nice town but I'm not going to have much time to look around since I need to be in Quito tomorrow. It's much cooler here in the mountains and has been raining much of the time.

permalink written by  cjones on October 30, 2007 from Pasto, Colombia
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