Our News > March--April

March saw Glenn on the road a lot, travelling to do user-training sessions as the final stage of rolling out the applications he had been working on. The first week of March saw him in Ottawa, Halifax, Quebec City and Toronto. Later trips were to Regina, Winnipeg and Edmonton - all extremely cold places to be in late-winter, with temperatures in the -20C to -40C range! Between trips, Glenn was still tying up loose ends on his projects in the office, and getting ready for April.

April started with a quick sales trip to New York City for Glenn, and a great chance to catch up with his brother, Ross, who came down from Boston for the weekend.

After getting home from that trip, and after 9 months of working 70-90 hours per week, it was finally payback time! Two days later, we had our backpacks packed and were en route to Houston, TX. After a quick overnight stay at a dingy airport motel, the next morning we we on our way to San Salvador, capital of El Salvador, and only 3 hours flight from Houston. (In contrast, Vancouver to Houston is 4.5 hours!) This was the starting point for a six week vacation, which would see us backpacking through five countries in Central America!

The town was all but obliterated during the civil war in the 1980's, and that is when the Galdamez family moved to the relative safety of the capital. The town has been rebuilt, but when Enia took us hiking to a hilltop outside of town, in the jungle you still pass by the ruins of the rebel camps, and the temporary camps the people fled to when their town was being attacked by both the army and air force.

This photo shows a memorial building, listing all of the people from the town killed during the war. The number of names is incredible for such a small town. (The relatives we had lunch with that day lost four of their nine children during the war.) Inside the ruins of the old church was another memorial of sorts - the tail section of a government helicopter that was shot down during the war.

 

Our next destination was Antigua Guatemala, the on-time capital of all Central America. The photo here is the view from our $20/night hotel room, with La Merced church, and one of the many volcanoes that encircle Antigua. Indeed, it was the volcanoes and related earthquakes that eventually caused the capital to be moved to modern-day Guatemala City.

Despite the many times that some buildings here have been destroyed, they have been rebuilt time and again, and today Antigua is still an incredibly beautiful colonial-style city.

While we were based in Antigua, we also took an overnight side trip to Chichicastenango (Chichi), a small town high in the Guatemalan mountains.

The trip there was entertainment enough, as nowhere in the world has buses quite like the Guatemala Highlands. Even some Guatemalans now call them "El Cheeken Boos"! But there is something that makes travelling on the chicken buses just perfect! Being old Blue Bird school buses, they are neither modern, nor comfortable (seating 6 across, no aisle). However, despite stopping anywhere and everywhere, they are fast, as the drivers barely stop to let people on and off. Better yet are the conductors, who climb around the outside of the buses and haul heavy parcels up and down from the roof all while the driver is gunning it around precarious mountain switch-backs! But most importantly, being packed in cheek-to-cheek-to-cheek with the locals, you can't help but get to know the people and their families in the course of a trip!

We were headed to Chichi for market day, as it is home to the largest traditional market in Central America. Believe it or not, we were both up at 6:30 the next morning to start exploring the market, and to get some early bargains while stall keepers were still setting up. By 10 AM the market covered both the town plaza and all the side streets for several blocks around the plaza, and was just wall-to-wall people! While it was a struggle to get around, we didn't have to worry about losing each other as the Guatemalan Mayans only stand about 5-foot nothing - if they're tall!

After a week in the Highlands, it was time to hit the road again, as we headed back down through Guatemala City and on to Honduras.

Honduras was a bit of a detour for us, as we were really only going there to visit the Copan ruins, about 20 kilometres from the Guatemalan border. Of all the Mayan ruins, none come close to Copan in terms of the quantity and artistic quality of carvings. Here is Theresa with one of countless carvings of King Eighteen Rabbit - an extremely egotistical ruler from around 700 AD who commissioned vast numbers of carvings of himself!

Our one great memory from the modern town of Copan is the waitress at one of the restaurants, who balanced plates of food, cups of coffee, etc. on her head as she ran up and down stairs between the kitchen and her section of the restaurant!

¿Cual dirrecion, papi?

When travelling, you invariably end up with lots of photos of interesting sites, you in front of interesting sites, and great people you meet along the way. But few photos that help you remember the sometimes entertaining, sometimes frustrating, and sometimes just downright tiring process of getting from A to B. Few photos to remember all the hot, dry, dusty little towns you end up in along the way. (We have never been able to figure out why, but hot, dry and dusty seem to be prerequisites for road junction towns in Latin America...)

Well, here is one of our favourite photos from this trip, taken in the tiny town of La Entrada, Honduras. We were just there changing buses en-route from Copan to the Caribbean coast.

After 2.5 weeks away, we were ready for some real down time, so decided to head for the Honduran beach "resort" of Travesia. Actually, Travesia is the outer suburb of a less than salubrious port city (Puerto Cortes). It has one hotel, with six rooms, and a poor little puppy that spent too much time playing with the chickens (and hence likes to cackle-bark loudly from 3 AM till dawn). Staying at the hotel with us were various young Honduran couples getting away for a dirty weekend, and a retired Canadian from Montreal, who now lives in Ecuador and was on vacation in Honduras. What a strange but wonderful world it can be!

The story continues in May...