Hola

For the request of the audience, I'll try to blog in Spanish a bit :).
Bueno,
Estoy ahorita en la frontera de Belize y Guatemala. He tenido aqui en Belize un buen tiempo, pero todo es tan caro, entonces no puedo quedarme aqui mucho mas. Y tambien qiero a llegar a guatemala, porque escuche muy bien cuentos de aya. Todo aqui en Belize es muy gracioso. Hay 240,000 personas y teinen un ejercito??? Y como Elad dice - el idioma es muy extreña. Puedes a entender palabras, pero los oraciones no hacen razon. Por ejemplo, una nina me ensña:
"Where are you going?" en creol es "wheyu goi?"
"Thank you" es "Thanyu"
Los estadounidenses pueden entender todo... Es muy extraño.

Bueno, y ahora tengo muy buenos photos:

Esto es del zoologico: tres monos estan durmiendo asi :)


Pensaba que solo en "la gurra de las galaxias" tienen esos animales:


Todo el parque tiene letras de canciones de rap, y noticias como este:


Son las 6:00 en la madrugada, Caye Caulker:


Estuve jugando con la camera, y saqué esta foto a noche, con la luz de la luna y 15 segundos de exposición:


Una mas, con el efecto de "sapia"


Estuve un poco aburido en un restaurante en san pedro (si, es la isla bonita de la cancion de madona). Pero en realidad la isla es muy fea :) Puedes ver mi libro en los lentes.


Por las nuves, no podemos ver la caida del sol pero sin embargo creo que es una bonita foto:


Otra foto es del mismo barco:


La playa en Tulum, muy cerca de las ruinas. El color del mar es asi en realidad. No he usado filtros aqui:


Este perro tiene hambre... Pero vive en un buen hostel que se llama "Tina's backpackers hostel"... Los casas en toda del isla estan de colores pastel.


El mismo pero en la manana:


En mexico, los folkswagon son todavia muy populares. Este folkswagon necesita poco trabajar, pero cuando viste un convertible asi?


Ya, es la ultima:


Hasta pronto,
Eitan.

A quick post

The internet here is slow and expensive. (Actually, the poorer the country, the better the internet service, coz ppl use it instead of buying computers... interesting phenomena...). Anyway, I'm now in Belize city (missed a water taxi to the islands yesterday...). Actually it was fun, coz it turned out to be a holiday yesterday (They moved it a day earlier without notifying me... I was really lucky to get a visa). So, being a holiday, the city was relatively safe at night. Had a chat with a security guy from Nicaragua, that his cusin was trained by Ariel Sharon in 79-86 in Israel. He really admired Israel, and especially an Israeli gun called AKA (???), and thanked us for training the Nicaraguan army to fight the comunism in the 80s. (He himself faught communists and got shot in 4 places... A lucky guy). At the evening, they put outside a couple of large speakers. About a 1000 ppl - kids, parents, teenagers, (a muslim couple with a kid), all with really dark skin and rastaz (we were only 4 white ppl there) gathered and started to sing and dance Jamaica style. Soooo funny.
A couple of 6-8 years old sang
"We ain't too small to rap" (x79)
with a lot of creol gibberish in the middle.
A couple of poets rapped against the gvrmnt.
Then a thunderstorm and an electricity blackout just when we reached our hostel.
Real fun.
I'll get to the islands now... (should be more touristic over there).

Cheers,
Eitan.

Entering Belize

I'm gonna try to enter Belize tomorrow. They don't officially admit that you can enter without a visa, but all the rumors say so. So I'll try and see. Anyway, waiting 20 days for a visa is out of the question, so worse case I'll have to pass on. It'll be a shame though, sounds interesting to see a country with a population smaller than Haifa. The beach here is simply amazing. Never saw these colors of blue. I hope the pics I'll soon upload will reflect this.

Shabat shalom,
Eitan.

Chichen Itza

It was a regular day trip to one of the ruins here in the Yucatan peninsula. But judging from the amount of busses at the parking lot, it was obvious this place was a bit different... Tens of busses of organized tour companies, with obese people getting out of them, left no place for mistake - I'm getting closer to the american invaded parts of Mexico - Cancun. Of course, the entrance price was higher than any site I've visited so far, even after a student discount. The place itself not that impressive, compared to the amount of broken Ingles guides that sworm the place, and the prices just fit to Americans as well. 100% higher than anywhere else.
So, I was quite surprise to see an American guy haggle. He wanted to buy this mask that I saw they sell in another place for 10 pesos (1US$). The Mexican offered it for 50, the American told him this was too high, and actually offered to pay 10. This is quite rare to see an American offer this low price. They finally settled for 35. But then the American said he doesn't have Euros, only Dollars... So he took out 35US$(!!!) and payed the guy. The seller was sure he was going to get 3.5US$ (35 pesos)... So he nearly swallowed his tounge, but accepted the money :) They both left happy from the good price they got. Oh well...

I'm now at the beach at Playa del Carmen.
Cheers,
Eitan.

Another startup

I am totally jazzed about this podcasting thing. (google for it if you don't know what it is...). Yesterday it has just got me through a 6 hour bus ride in a breeze. And I am hearing so much interesting stuff on these rides, that I can hardly wait for my next bus I'll catch :) Got to hear news from Israel, an audio story, some science news, a bit of Jazz, and Adam Curry (A former Dutch MTV VJ that brought life into this podcasting idea) which is quite entertaining... And, it solves the basic problem of traditional broadcasting - you don't have to turn to any common denominator anymore. People download these casts because they are really interested in what the podcaster has to say.
Which, led me to the simple idea of PodGuides. I am sure that in less than a year PodGuides will start to spring up... (If not, I'll have to make some money on this thing when I return :) The idea is that you'll d/l an audio guide to this site you are going to visit: A file for each important location. And tada - you have the best explanations, with music incorporated in it, maybe original historic audio clips, in different languages, financed by advertisers (the production of these PodGuides should be quite cheap), portable with you wherever you go.
I guess you should hear some PodCasts and go visit a couple of Mexican ruins to understand the full potential of this thing :)

I'm having a great time as usual...
Now in Palenque with an Australian and Dutch guys - Pieter and Steph,
Bye for now,
Eitan.

Some photos

It seems like every day there is a cause for celebration here these days. This is a march I ran into randomly on May 2nd in Mexico DF.


Whach that little fella


And this guy is a bit tired from all this marching thing...


Some Indians in the Zocalo (centeral plaza) of Mexico DF have their thing too:


These kids have prepared their show for 2 years...


Their profesora has choregraphed the most boring dance I have ever seen - about 30 minutes with a monotonic repeating music and dance, when the 4 people just run one after another....


And this is the part where you bribe the judges and throw pineapples on the crowd (which should try to avoid getting wounded from the ziggy parts of it).

Getting outa here...

I woke up this morning with 9 rings of the bell, from a church just a block from here. It was 8:51 in the morning (¿!). Right after them came another 8 rings. Then another one. Then 10 fast ones. Well, what can you expect from a church that looks like the pizza tower? (Aparently the whole city center sinks back from the times of the Aztec). Well. That was for waking up.
Everything in Hostel Moneda went on tranquill. The people outside went on yelling 'chekere', people came and went even faster than girls in the army, and the flag in the zocalo kept stuck on its torn (in contradict to what people got used to around here). This was until this morning a group of three Israeli girls arrived. Currently the only Israelis in this place except for me. Just as I saw how they were talking, brought me a bit closer to my dying in young age from a heart attack. It was as if a war is going on, we have to conquere street Haifa in Baghdad, and the cheapest room must be conquered with no mercy. You'd expect that after 6 months in south america they'd know that the clerks don't speak fluent Hebrew. They tried anyway. So, after yelling and shouting they finally got their room just as everybody else, and left us all back to the tranquility. Thank god I leave this place tonight for Oaxaca... It's amazing how much stress Israelis bring about.
Well... I have some more pictures I'll try to u/l next time I'll find a capable Internet.
I hope the night bus will be OK.
Bye for now...

Eitan.