Smooth trail in Lakewood Heights East Saint John New Brunswick

 

Riding out east on a warm October afternoon to see what has and hasn't changed in my old neighborhood.

There's Simonds, my old high school, still standing after over 40 years.

The house I grew up in.  We were on the left half.

I was surprised to see the old store still there. This is where I used to buy my comics once a week.

Our local beach lake, the Res, has had some major upgrades.

I love the Little library, a nice little box where anyone can take or leave a book for free. I wished I'd brought a book with me.  A couple of kids checked it out for anything good and were clearly disappointed to find nothing but romance novels.  

On the next trip, I had a stack of old comics from Mom and Dad's basement to contribute.   I met Kenny Hall then, an 80 something Korean vet in charge of maintaining the Little Library. He took the bag of comics and put them in his car to distribute them one at a time and make sure more kids had a crack at them. There are two more Little Libraries in Saint John and I visited the other two with a small stack of comics each.  The other two had no caretakers on hand to intervene so some young kid will get a windfall. Maybe they will share.

Kenny shared some stories.  He was only 15 when he volunteered for the army.  In Korea he'd been responsible for providing cover fire for refugees fleeing villages.  He'd almost died from a work accident at the Dry Dock.  I found out later that he and my father knew each other.   Kenny had been a young elementary student at Bayview School where Dad had one of his first jobs with the School Board.  Saint John can be such a small town city.  

The biggest change to the Res is the trail around the lake.  I remember this trail as an industrial dirt road with occasional dump truck and heavy equipment traffic. Abandoned cars were often dumped in the hidden coves of the lakes. Garbage was everywhere. This is so much nicer now.

Mark Melanson and I first discovered this waterfall when we turned off the main trail one day. Not a lot of people knew about this place and we kept our mouths shut.

This was the most popular spot for fishing.

This hill looks so much smaller now. My first bike fell into two pieces, right in the center of the frame, and I slid at least 3 feet to a gravelly stop on my knees. Ah, the pain. Little pieces of rock and sand were driven under the skin.

Worse was to come.  My parents still believed in the medieval medicine of iodine for wounds. There was no way to sneak into the house with the bike in two pieces. Fortunately for Dad, he'd been talking to a couple of men outside the house when I returned.  They helped him hold me down for the first aid.  

Pluma Hidalgo

http://youtu.be/MVHqsO5OxY0 Some pictures from a day trip I made to Pluma Hidalgo with my friend, David.
First scenic stop before the climb.



The sunshine didn't last long.



This lovely waterfall is about halfway on the journey.


We made it.


It's a very clean and environmentally responsible town.


It's such a nice place but after living in Huatulco a few years, I couldn't take that cold refreshing mist for more than one day.









It would have been a crime to have gone all that way without grabbing some of their yummy organic coffee.

On the road again.

Good-bye Guatemala

Villa Lupita

A cathedral in Panajachel as seen by night from the roof of Villa Lupita.


By day


The sock tree

At the end of my stay in Jaibalito, the money had started to dwindle. It was time to go. I could have stayed one more day but I went to swim off someone's dock and noticed the lake was relatively calm after a week of the rough stuff and I packed up. A storm was building from San Pedro's direction. My timing couldn't have been better. It felt like I was being chased.

I checked in at Villa Lupita for the night. I was tempted to just spend a few nights, draw out some more cash and return to Jaibalito for another week but that all changed when I faced my third short-lived financial crisis and stared hard at the possibilty of being stranded so far from home without cash for food, shelter or a way out of town. I'd been pushing my luck too long. There had been too many hints already that Guatemala wasn't a good fit for me and it was time to listen up just as soon as I straightened out the current mess.

I took my card to the only bank machine that ever worked for me and nothing happened. The screen said to insert and remove my card. I kept doing it. I went to every other machine in town and thought I was going to lose the card at one of them. The simple solution was that it was the end of the weekend and every machine was out of cash but I immediately thought in terms of worst case scenarios and filled three notebook pages with solutions. Things weren't as desparate as those three seconds in Xela when the evil grannies lifted my wallet, bank card and all, but it wasn't fun. Getting back to the Mexican border looked like at least a 36 hour fast.

But what if I'd become a victim of major bank fraud while the days passed quietly on Jaibalito? That would be the ultimate disaster. I went online and discovered that the final bonanza of the pension refund had arrived from Korea. I was about as affluent as I've ever been. I just couldn't get near any of it.

In the end, it all worked out. Tom from Cordon Blue told me the machines would probably be full again the following Monday around 1:00 and added some good advice on top of that in case there was a problem with the card. I couldn't just sit patiently until 1:00. I kept running back and forth from the machine to my hotel. The nasty local brat still hung out on Santander. He had long since given up on squeezing anything out of me by providing coke or prostitutes but couldn't just let me pass without calling me a "beetch". Eventually I had to force myself to take a nap and stop thinking about it.

When the money finally came through, the hunger stopped. I'd been resisting a constant ravenous appetite, eating only survival portions to maintain the scant funds. I was on a very tight budget. It must have been all in the head because suddenly that little breakfast I'd had hours before seemed adequate for a while longer.

Away I went on a nice comfy shuttle bus all the way across the border to beautiful San Cristobal de Los Casas with only a few refreshing stops for landslides.
It's nice here. My bank card works everywhere. I've gone back to wearing my wallet in my front pocket.

I took a fantastic tour yesterday. Saw an incredible cave, las Grutas, like something out of the "Journey to the Center of the Earth" cartoon of the 70s and a stunning waterfall, Cascadas de Chiflon. I took some great photos. You would have loved them. Sadly by the time we reached the Montibello lakes, I discovered my camera had been left behind. The van driver couldn't or wouldn't help when I asked if he would call somebody at the waterfall.

I tried not to be but I was a bit bummed. The truth is I never loved that camera. I only bought it because it was waterproof. It had virtually no zoom at all and so many pictures were complete trash. I feel a responsibility for everything I buy and resist upgrading until the current toy is broken and even then I try to fix it first. Now if I can just manage to find something nice in one of Mexico's poorest states, I'll be in good shape. I felt worse about all the great pictures I lost. A couple of ladies took my email address and promised to send some of their photos. I felt a lot better.

So the pictures on this entry are all we'll ever see from the Olympus. I thought I had everything covered when I bought a shock and waterproof job after dropping the Canon in Cheonggye Stream. Losing cameras is a habit I need to break right away.

Wait a minute. Not so fast. A great lady I met that day felt sorry for me and emailed me pictures. I've just ben slow about posting. Thanks again, Erendira Griego Fernandez.

First up are a couple of shots of Las Grutas. Cool place but very difficult to capture with a camera. You have to be there. The lighting is enough to see everything but they defy the lens. Here's some proof that it's not impossible but it really has to be seen in person.


Finally, Chiflon Falls. Magnificent.