Saturday, July 19, 2003

 

i ahve to make this quick because the others are waiting but i just thought i should let the world know about the smarm of the salsa club we went to last night, torreos. o my goodness you have noit seen smarm until you have seen this place. all night loren was warning us not to make eye contact because they will take it as invitation to come over and try to get you to dance and they don´t give up easily. but amy and i certainly enjoyed ourselves watching their antics. there was one man, always dancing with girls half his age, who was constantly making thrusting motions at them. another man was dressed all in black, tight black trousers and shirt and dancing heels (complete with cuban heels) and the hair was slicked back. he was very smarmy and he goes about all day in his dancing outfit. but the dancing was very good, we commented how we felt like baby in dirty dancing when she first sees the dancing ("i carried a watermelon?!") gaping at these amazing dancers (every bit as raunchy as the dacers in the movie, in fact more so). est i wished you had been there to laugh at it all with me.

posted by Brianne 12:49 am

Tuesday, July 15, 2003

 

So I am in Guatemala. It feels quite surreal, i have been planning to come to central america for a while now and so it feels strange to finally find myself here. Where did the time go? will i wake up one morning and find that this time went as quickly? I´ll be back in newcastle one september day and be amazed that not only did i make the long awaited trip to central america but that i also survived to tell the tale...and the tale was shorter than i thought it would be. Is that something about getting older? the closer we are to death the quicker the time seems to pass. Ha ha ha.

Anyway, Amy and I arrived in Guatemala at about 9.15pm yesterday (i think it would have been 4.15am in uk) after a long flight and very rude cabin crew and the people in houston were scarily mean (take your shoes off!!!! if you do not comply you will be shot!!!). While you all slept amy and i dragged our weary bodies out of the airport into the wet Guatemalan night. We met Loren there and took a taxi to the boarding house in antigua. I looked out the window at Guatemala city flowing past and then the hills enclosed us as we raced around windy roads (no seatbelts and i was holding a cup of tea as i was thrown about). In my corner of the shadowy taxi i couldn´t help grinning as i thought we are no longer in kansas toto. We arrived in antigua and drove along extremely bumpy cobbled roads. Everything seems so different i don´t know where to look first, i can´t take it all in...i feel a bit lost in all this colour and language. So much to see and do so little time. We are in guatemala until saturday and then we are going to el salvador. We might be travelling in something called chinken buses, which are apparently old american school buses painted various colours. People have to sit three on a seat designed for two 5 year old kids and people stand down the middle but this is not legal so they have to duck when passing the police. Sounds like fun, i´ll let you know how it goes.

posted by Brianne 7:56 pm