life @ 13

first off, apologies to those who didn't make it on my email list. i would have considered you the Lucky Ones, but apparently not everyone agrees. if you were slick like me you would have set up an autoresponding email that said something like "strangely enough, after giving this school XXX dollars they couldn't afford to pay the rent on my email address, so they sold it to the highest bidder. you can now reach me at YYY. Darien Little of the class of 2006 does not want your Love Letters." but, since you're not as much of a computer geek as i am/was/maybe will be (unless you are bill stube, (by the way, i've been wearing your gym shorts every day, thanks)), so long as you forgive you are forgiven.
not surprisingly i've been moderately sick for almost the entire trip, but sunday i ate a bad banana or three which cost me 16 hours of sleep, as well as an extra day here in touristy flores. which, at about $11/day, isn't all that bad, moneywise.
yesterday was mostly a waste of a day, which is a good thing. i had a nice juicy post ready, but the daily power outage occured at the wrong time.
today i finally visited the tikal ruins, my first official visit to a Tourist Attraction, and my first time riding the Bus this trip. like most attractions, tikal is a lot of hype and a little delivery. i took a 5am bus which unfortunatley arrived 20 minutes too late to watch the sunrise from the top of temple 4. i felt much less safe on the rich gringo bus in a poor country than as a lone unshaven cyclist with rotten bananas and empty bottles in the basket in a poor coutry. less comfortable as well.
the ruins are impressive, but not exactly in a worth-a-day-trip sort of way. of course i stayed for 11 hours, until the last bus left, but a good portion of the day was spent napping in the shade and hanging out with people i met in cancun.
i'd like to buy some native arts/crafts/linens/etc. here -- they're cheap and beautiful -- but postage is almost prohibitavely expensive. the book quotes $115 for 12 pounds, which means it's probably $130 now. $10 for the goods, $130 for postage. $3 for a hotel, $1.50 for dinner, $.80 for an hour of internet, $0.20 for 5 oranges, $130 for postage. el salvador (probable next country) is much cheaper, but my legs don't seem too keen on hauling much crap around.
all of you seem to enjoy mentioning (complaining about) the cold weather in the northern US, and, trust me, i thouroughly enjoy recieving your complaints. 3 weeks down here and i haven't even seen a drop of rain, much less the thermometer dropping below 65.
two weeks ago today i started cycling, which means i should be in better shape now than i was two weeks ago. so tomorrow i should be going at least twice as fast as i did last thursday.
tomorrow i'm heading down to poptun, possibly staying on some sort of work/study/eat/sleep ex-hippie tourist farm, which sounds interesting, if not entirely guatemalan.
finally, as if i didn't remember (and i almost didn't), many of you reminded me that i was born 23 years ago today, albeit several parallels to the north. if anything, birthdays are always a reminder that Girls keep better calendars than Boys. thanks for the emails, of course i appreciate them. hopefully i won't get a speeding ticket and 3am prepress errors (unlikely) this year. guatemalan postage stamps will be gladly accepted as gifts.
if you're bored and reading this (inside the dept. of redundency dept.), check out this guy's site: http://www3.utsidan.se/corax-e/ . after tens of thousands of words describing his travels through china, his description of travelling throgh central america was "i travelled through central america."

greetings from the land of bling-bling, but not really
as i said before, i've been anxious to get to guatemala. caye caulker was ok, but i simply wasn't in the mood for it. while urinating in a resturant bathroom, the bartender asked me if i dive (diving is one main attraction to the island). i told him i didn't dive, so then he told me that i must get stoned. i informed him that this wasn?t entirely true, although if he was offering either for free my ears were open. so that pretty much sums up my experience on caye caulker, although i did have an interesting chat with an old resturant-owner who lived on the island long before the tourists showed up, and watched a local football game. belize is the official country of the '89-'91 toyota camry -- like the one i used to drive. belize is also the land of junked 'parts cars' parked on the street, although none of them are camrys.
friday morning i woke up at 5:45 to take the 6:30 boat to belize city. i arrived in the city at 7:30 and promptly started cycling, alone for the first time since cancun-playa del carmen. riding in the morning was, well, painful. my legs hurt, there was a headwind, the first 70k were all slightly uphill, the sky was grey and gloomy and i had my first flat tire (even worse, a slow leak). a morning of no smiles. around 70k i met a german guy, cycling in the other direction, who had been going since los angeles. after a brief 1-hour chat about nothing, he informed me that there was a fruit stand selling bananas (my staple food) only 2k up the road. so after an hour rest, 3 bananas, 1 orange, and 500ml of coke, the sun coming out and the wind stopping, i felt better. the last 65k were hilly, scenic, and hot. my determination to make it to the guatemala boarder paid off, and I was rewarded with a nice hotel room for $2.50. i spent almost 9 hours on the bike on friday.
to finish off the cycling drivel, yesterday was tough too. the first 17k of roads outside of melchor de menchos (the boarder town) were unpaved and in very poor shape -- it took almost 2.5 hours to ride. the remaining 65k were quite hilly; pretty similar to the roads in wisco, actually, but my legs held up and i made it here, to flores/santa elana.
the transition from belize to guatemala was striking and almost instantaneous. belize immigration is in a nice, clean building with friendly, english- and spanish-speaking staff who charge you $19 to leave the country. 15 feet past is guatemala immigration, where you shove your passport under a dark window get it back instantaneously with a stamp and some illegible scrawl (something i know a lot about). suddenly the roads are dusty and in bad shape and every third person has gold teeth, apparently a sign of wealth. guatemala is like the latin-american version of the old west, with horses, cows, guns and machetes everywhere. i was shot at yesterday, but fortunately it was only a 4 year old with a water gun. people are polite and friendly here, but there is a noticible seedy undercurrent, which is much to my liking. it seems like the the poorer the country, the friendlier the people and the more numerous the hijackings. i actually feel safer on a bicycle that i would on a tourist van or bus. i'm having this recurring vision of being greeted warmly by a gang about to rob a tourist bus. because, after all, i'm a cyclist, not a tourist (participating in cyclism?).
today is a rest day. a couple of israelis i met in cancun are here, so we're going to hang out and swim/canoe in the lake here today. tomorrow we?re taking a 5am bus to Tikal, supposedly the most impressive mayan ruins site. it better be impressive, because i dropped a whole $16 on a new camera for it.

the internet here (caye caulker, belize) is expensive, so this will be brief
bacalar in mexico was really cool. cheap hotel, cheap food (hot dogs with mayo, ketchup, onions, picante, cheese), a beautiful lake, friendly (usually) locals, and the few tourists that were there were very cool. A welshman gave me an extra coat he had, and a young american gave me some sunscreen and his guide book. I'm not sure how big the town was, but there was a real sense of community there, something I have never really known. i slept outside in a hammock saturday night.
Picked up some new bike parts on the way to Belize, new handlebars and a basket for the front of the bike, a nice improvement. We only did 40km on monday, but made up for it with a brisk ride of 135km yesterday.
Belize is a very cool country. only 250,000 people, a very vibrant mix. People of carribean, mexican, latin american, mayan, british, german and chinese descent all living within the same city. English is the official language, but english and spanish are spoken everywhere. People are very friendly -- when we took breaks from cycling people driving by would stop to say hi and tell us how much longer to belize city.
I ordered a hamburger from a chinese resturant in corozal (in belize, near the boarder) and, to accompany it, two kinds of hot sauce (one in a mustard container), but no ketchup or mustard. a picante burger. and fried rice.
caye (pronounced "key) caulker is a very relaxing place, with cheap hotels and outrageously priced food. lots of gringo tourists here, which, for the time being, i'm trying to get away from. maybe i'll slip into a groove here, but my stay may be short. again, i'm anxious to get to guatemala, and to start cycling by myself.
armchair philosophy is suspended until the internet is cheap again.

It's amazing how easily one rest day becomes two
101km on thursday, 115 on friday, and my ass is really sore. But my legs feel good, and my knees are intact, a good sign.
Thursday night I got a taste of a more authentic mexican city (felipe carrillo puerto), one that is almost always skipped by tourists. Maybe this is too obvious to state, but this is possibly the best reason to travel by bicycle -- you meet more local people when you get off the tourist trail.
Friday night we wound up in a townie bar (in Bacalar, where I am now) where the locals insisted on buying us drinks -- actually they didn't ask -- in exchange for english lessons and good gringo company. Another reason to travel by bicycle, free alcohol.
The weather here in Bacalar is almost perfect. Being about 20 miles inland, the sometimes chilly costal winds diminish to a light breeze, right now it is 79 degrees, sunny, with moderate humidity (type "chetumal" into weather.com for full details).
Tomorrow we will head to belize stopping in Orange Walk about 30km south of the boarder. We will hit Belize city on tuesday, then probably take a boat out to one of the islands off the coast (caye caulker). From then it's foggy. We will probably cycle to the belize-guatemala boarder together, but I'm probably going to catch a bus in northern guatemala, as the distances may be a little too far between towns to cycle without camping gear. From there I'll probably be cycling on my own, and I'm looking forward to it.
Monday and tuesday nights I slept in the top bunk of a dorm bed, wednesday in a rope-suspended bed outside on the beach, thursday on a hammoc strung across a hotel room and friday on a matress on the floor.
This week I was eating 4500-5000 calories a day. We buy water 18 litres (5 gallons) at a time, and it doesn't last much more than a day.
My spanish has been upgraded to one notch above survival-grade. FYI, most of the learning takes place at some sort of bar.
Anyway, that's all I can type for now. One day I will get used to these keyboards. Be like me, stay warm and safe. Adios.

Today I cycled with Gunnar and Oskar (the norwegians) from Playa to Tulum, about 75km total. Our average speed was almost 28 km/hr (about 17.5 mph). Fast.
I'm anxious to get out of mexico. It's somewhat expensive, and there are too many tourists.
I will probably be travelling with G and O through Belize and part of Guatemala, about a week or so.
In two days we should be in Chetumal, on the boarder of Belize and Mexico.

Thanks for all of your emails, it feels good to be in touch with friends and home. I'll get back to you when i take a rest day.

Well, I´m here, and, for the moment, I can actually tell you where here is. Playa del Carmen is in the northwest corner of the Yucatan, with the larger hotels in Cancun still visible.
Apologies for the mass email, although I know at least half of you have some vague interest in knowing that I´m still alive and kicking. Let´s make that alive and cycling.
Upon arriving in cancun i went directly to Isla Mujeres, off the coast near Cancun, and spent 5 warm, relaxing days. I´ve already met more people than I can count. The day after I arrived my interest in using bicycle instead of bus to get around was piqued by a couple of very enthuastic and friendly Norwegians who have spent the past 6 months and 7000km on their bicycles. So yesterday afternoon I bought a bicycle (new, cheap) and a few necessary supplies and cycled from Cancun to Playa, about 75 km. As crazy as it sounds the ride was a breeze (and helped by one coming out of the northeast). Tomorrow I will leave for Tulum about 60km to the south. Cycling is a well-accepted form of transportation in this area of the world, and motorists are alert and courteous.
My plans at this point are vague, although over the next several weeks I will travel from mexico to belize to guatemala, possibly spending several weeks in Antigua or San Pedro on Lago de Atitlan.
Being the new age traveller that I am, I set up a weblog which will be updated periodically at http://dlittle.blogspot.com . Since I´m not going to send another email like this, the blog is the line to my world for the time being.
I do not know when and where I will have internet access, so if you send me an email and I do not respond, you are required to assume that I am holed up in a remote village without access. Or I am simply having too good of a time to sit behind a sticky keyboard in a hot room on a very slow connection just to find that my only email is a cell phone bill (which, by the way, does not work).
So that´s that. I´m warm, safe, and happy to be on the road. Adventures are impossible to plan, but I think some of the ingredients are there for me. Keep in touch, I want to know how all of you are doing. Me, I´m going to make a large pot of spagetti, have a few beers, get some rest, and tomorrow cruise down to the next hostel.


David