Chichicastenango Guatemala Market Photos

Chichicastenango Guatemala Market Photos

The following travel photos are from the Chichicastenango market which takes place on Thursdays and Sundays, and is under a hundred miles from Guatemala City. My theme for taking pictures in this market was "babies in papooses, people carrying things on their heads, and drunk men passed out on the street." I found many targets for these photos.

For more travel photos from around the world go to Vagabond Journey Travel Photos.

Look at them by clicking on the links below:

Chichicastenango Market-

Chichicastenango Market in Guatemala

Market Day Chichicastenango Guatemala

Babies in Papooses and Mayan Women at Chichicastenango Market Guatemala

Guatemalan Food and Girls Cooking at Chichicastenango

Chichicastenango Market and Mayan Clothing

Guatemala Market and Baby in Papoose and Mayan Clothing

Blog Posts, Letters, and Photos

Blog Posts, Letters, and Photos

Hello,

I just put up a few new blog posts, answered a few reader questions, and published a whole bunch of new travel photos on Vagabond Journey.

Travel Blog Posts:

My Early Travels

This post is about the 7 or 8 years of travel before I began writing regularly on Song of the Open Road.

Backpacking is Dead- Long Live the Backpacker

Thoughts in Antigua, Guatemala about how I do not understand how backpackers can afford to spend days of travel funds on a few beers.

Living Under the Radar in Antigua

About working on the Road, and the balance that a little work a day can bring.


Travel Questions and Answers:

Traveling with a girlfriend question

About the pros and cons of traveling with a partner.

Where I want to travel most

Question about where I really want to travel to right now.

Travel money question

Question and answer about travel funds.

New Photographs:

Photos from Panama

Photos from Guatemala

Click on these links to go to the stories, letters, and photographs.

As ever-

Walk Slow,

Wade

Travel Photos from Gibraltar England Panama Morocco

Travel Photos from Gibraltar, England, Panama, and Morocco

The following are links to images that I have taken while traveling through Gibraltar, England, Panama, and Morocco. I am trying to create a huge database of photographs at Vagabond Journey Travel Photos as well as test Andy's experimental lifestyles project.

Click on the below links to go to photos of Gibraltar, England, Panama, and Morocco:

Gibraltar:

Barbary Apes Macaques Gibraltar

Barbary Apes Monkeys Gibraltar

Gibraltar Monkeys British Flag

England:

Paddington Bear Station London England

Panama:

Casco Viejo Miraflores Locks Panama

Miraflores Locks Panama Canal

Beaches in Panama

Morocco:

Hassan II Mosque Moroccan People

Images from Morocco

Moroccan Perfume, Women, Cats

Mosques in Morocco

Mosques, Perfume, Olives in Morocco

Sale Minaret Sweet Food Morocco

Marrakech Morocco Riad Hotel

Vagabond Journey Travel Photos - check out the places you want to travel to before you get there!

Wade from Vagabond Journey.com
Antigua, Guatemala
April 25, 2008

New Travel Photos Index!

New Travel Photos Index

Attention anyone who reads this Song of the Open Road Travel Blog! I have since been working diligently on the Vagabond Journey site and I have put up a new index page for the photographs section. I am trying to publish fifty travel photos a day, so this is one of the biggest sections of the site. Check it out at:

Vagabond Journey Photos Index

Thanks and Walk Slow,

Wade

New Vagabond Journey

New Vagabond Journey.com . . .again

I realized that the Vagabond Journey index page was beginning to lag a little, so I scrapped it and started anew. Look at the new index at Vagabond Journey.com

Read about why I did this at Raising a Travel Website Child

"yesterday, I sat down, gathered up a little steam, and put all of my website making skills to the test. I came up with a new index page for Vagabond Journey. I worked it out almost from scratch, I know what all of the code in it does and means. I had to learn how to speak its baby language. But I did so, and know I can communicate with my own kid. I like this incarnation the best."

So, this is where I stand with the site, tell me what you think!

Thanks,

Wade

Pucaya Volcano Photos

Pucaya Volcano Photos

The following photographs are from a visit to the Pucaya Volcano of Guatemala. I got to get realy close to lava and feed a muffin to the volcano. Good fun.

Click on the links to go to the below photos:

Pucaya Volcano-

Horseback riding Pucaya Volcano Guatemala

Pucaya Volcano Guatemala

Hot Lava Pucaya Volcano Guatemala

Go to Vagabond Journey Travel Photos - check out the places you want to travel to before you go!

Wade from Vagabond Journey.com
Antigua, Guatemala
April 22, 2008

Carhartt Work Boots for Travel

Carhartt Work Boots for Travel

The footwear that I tramp in are a pair of trusty Carhartt working man's boots. They have been going strong for over two years and have not let me down yet. Go to Carhartt Work Boots for Travel.

"Carhartt makes gear that is meant to be used, beaten, and battered. They make gear for the working man. I push my travel gear to the breaking point, and I have found that my Carhartt boots not only hold up to the test of the working man, but also that of the horizon struck wanderer."

Read the full posts at:

Carhartt Work Boots for Travel

Follow the above link to read more about these boots that I have found to be virtually perfect for traveling.

Vagabond Journey Travel Blog Directory

Vagabond Journey Travel Blog Directory

As part of my experiment to begin writing this travel blog on Vagabond Journey.com I have put together a link directory that allows for its navigation. Visit the Vagabond Journey Blog Directory.

Craig from Travel Vice has suggested that I begin working from a Word Press system that is downloaded to my own server. This is not a bad idea, I must say, as Word Press seems to be more versatile than Blogger. But my only reservation is that I will still be working from within the bounds of an easily identifiable blogging system. I do not know that if, in the end, this will much different than Blogger. I want to try to keep everything very simple - I want to throw up made-by-hand pages that do not have much clutter.

Craig's site and travel blog does look very good though, it must be said, and I think his navigational system is very easy to use and highly effective to prevent posts from being completely buried in time. Word Press seems to work for Craig very well, but I do not know if it is for me right now.

I just want to put up a posts, some photos, and nothing more, to see how they they fare in the search engines in relation the the posts that I have buried in Blogger. I want to keep everything simple. Very simple. I just want to put up content and nothing more. No side bar, no overbearing template, no restrictions on anything, no rules to follow. I want to try to make this as raw as possible, bare-bones, simple.

This is an experiment.

Let me know what you think. If this is not a users friendly system, please let me know. I am coming at this from the inside, I know what is going on, so if this is too odd of a blogging method to use effectively let me know and I will do something about it.

There are still many kinks in this experiment, but I am working through them.

Thanks for all the help, advice, and suggestions!

New blog posts:

Travel Sickness in Guatemala- Sick again, fever dreams, don't know why. Travel Sickness. Antigua, Guatemala.

Dirty French Men and Courtship- Taking some notes on how not to court a girl from New Zealand.

Hippies in San Pedro, Guatemala- A hippy town on the other side of Lake Atitlan where drink, drugs, and "freedom" flow.

Wade from Vagabond Journey.com
Antigua, Guatemala
April 20, 2008

Photos from Honduras

Photos from Honduras

The following pictures were taken in the Copan Ruinas region of Honduras during the spring of 2008. They are of the archaeology excavation that I was a part of, the main cluster of the Copan ruins, livestock in Honduras, and the Honduran countryside. To view more travel photographs go to Vagabond Journey Travel Photos - Check out the places you want to travel to before you go!

Pictures from Honduras:

Cockfight in Honduras

Archaeology at Copan, Honduras

Copan Ruins, Honduras

Ancient Maya Copan

Countryside of Honduras

Wade from Vagabond Journey.com
Antigua, Guatemala
April 20, 2008

Travel Photos from Panajachel Guatemala

Travel Photos from Panajachel Guatemala

The following pictures are of Panajachel, Guatemala and Lake Atitlan. They are of volcanoes, Mayan women, indigenous Mayan clothing, tourist scams, markets, sunsets, and cheap food. For more travel photos go to Vagabond Journey Travel Photos. Look at where you want to travel to before you go there!

Panajachel-

Volcanoes, Mayan Women, Lake Atitlan, Panajachel, Guatemala

Cheap Food and Restaurants in Panajachel, Guatemala

Volcanoes of Lake Atitlan and Panajachel Guatemala

Mayan Clothes Market of Panajachel Guatemala

Indigenous Mayan Clothing Market

Ropa Americana, Dental Gold, Mayan Textiles in Panajachel, Guatemala

Tourist Scams and Volcanoes in Panajachel, Guatemala

Sunset Over Lake Atitlan, Guatemala

Wade from Vagabond Journey.com
Antigua, Guatemala
April 19, 2008

Guatemalan Market Video

Guatemalan Market Video

This is a video of the Saturday market in San Pedro, Guatemala. It is one of my walk-through-and-film type of videos that are just meant to give an impression of what it is like to travel where the film takes place. I am not a professional videographer, and my camera is a small, hand held Sanyo. Perhaps I care more about raw impressions than making things look good haha.

Market in Guatemala video is below:



Wade from Vagabond Journey.com
Antigua, Guatemala
April 18, 2008

Song of the Open Road on Vagabond Journey.com

Song of the Open Road on Vagabond Journey.com

For many reasons varying from SEO to personal tastes to the advice of the Hobo Traveler, I have considered moving this blog over to Vagabond Journey.com, my main site.

This is just an experiment at this point, and I am wondering what you think. I do not really like conventional blog templates and I would like to have all of my work on my own host. Please let me know what you think.

Perhaps I am prejudiced a little, but I like the simplistic nature of the new blog layout (there is hardly even a layout), and I think that the navigational directory keeps older posts from getting completely buried.

I intend to keep posting photos, videos, and excerpts on Blogger and linking to the posts on Vagabond Journey.com. So this blog can be used as a navigational tool to move around to the new posts on Vagabond Journey.

Read New Vagabond Journey Travel Blog for more about this idea.

This is only an experiment, so let me know what you think. If it does not work out, I will be putting the bulk of my posts right back on Blogger, as it is a really good service.

To go to the other posts on Vagabond Journey.com go to the Travel Blog Directory.

Or go directly to the posts from here.

Immigrating to the USA- The glory land at the end of the rainbow is a lot of work.

Boat Travel on Lake Atitlan, Guatemala- Working the hustlers of Lake Atitlan, Guatemala.

Hotel Webpages on Hobo Hideout.com- How to live in hotels for free. Panajachel, Guatemala

The Battle of Ahorita- Standing my ground and getting a shower. San Pedro, Guatemala

Free Hotel in Santiago Atitlan- How I stayed for free in Santiago Atitlan, Guatemala

New Travel Blog- Why I am moving away from blogging systems. San Pedro, Guatemala

Please let me know what you think of this. All advice, tips, and ideas are appreciated

Thanks!

Walk Slow,

Wade

San Pedro Guatemala Photos

San Pedro Guatemala Travel Photos

As part of Andy the Hobo Traveler's experimental lifestyles project, I present yet another batch of travel photographs from Guatemala. I am using Andy's system of putting up 50 photos a day, everyday.

The below pictures are from San Pedro, which is a hippy town across Lake Atitlan from Panajachel. Check out what San Pedro, Guatemala looks like before you go! Click on the links to go to the photos.

San Pedro-

San Pedro Guatemala

Coffee Beans, Hippy Bars, and Mayan Women in Guatemala

Hotel in San Pedro, Guatemala

San Pedro Lake Atitlan Guatemala

San Pedro Guatemala Market

Hippies and Mayan Women in San Pedro Guatemala

Mayan Clothes and Textiles in Guatemala

Kayaking on Lake Atitlan Guatemala

San Pedro Guatemala and Lake Atitlan

Passenger Boats of Lake Atitlan, Guatemala

Photographs from Guatemala

Wade from Vagabond Journey.com
Antigua, Guatemala
April 16, 2008

Photos from Santiago Atitlan Guatemala

Photos from Santiago Atitlan Guatemala

The following pictures were taken in Santiago Atitlan, Guatemala. They are of Mayan women, art, Lake Atitlan, passenger boats, the Hotel San Pablo, Mayan jewelry, and Guatemalan food. All photos were taken in April of 2008.

Click on the links below to go to the pictures:

Santiago Atitlan-

Boats on Lake Atitlan Guatemala

Santiago Atitlan Guatemala

Mayan Jewelry Clothing Guatemala

Mayan textiles, women, and villages in Guatemala

Santiago Atitlan Mayan Guatemala

Lake Atitlan Guatemala

Photographs from Guatemala

Wade from Vagabond Journey.com
Antigua, Guatemala
April 16, 2008

Mongolia photos

Mongolia Photos

The following are links to photographs from Mongolia. They are of ranches, Ulaanbaatar, livestock, Mongolian people, and the Golden Gobi Guesthouse. I traveled in Mongolia during the spring of 2007.

Click on the below links to view the photos:

Mongolia Travel Photos

Ulaanbaatar Mongolia Temple Photos

Ranches, Cows, and the Countryside of Mongolia

Golden Gobi Guesthouse and Train from Mongolia

Vagabond Journey Travel Photographs





Wade from Vagabond Journey.com
Santiago Atitlan, Guatemala
April 10, 2008

Bus from Antigua to Panajachel

Bus from Antigua to Panajachel

Bought a ticket on a tourist shuttle from Antigua to Panajachel, Guatemala. 30 quetzales (around $4) is the cost for this two hour voyage from the Universal Travel Agency in Antigua. This is a little more money than I would like to pay, but it is not bad. If it was 5 quetzales more than I probbably would have walked down the street and caught the public bus.

I like to pay $1 per seat hour of bus time. If a journey is 8 hours, I want to pay $8. But, as I well know, a begger cannot be a chooser. I take what I can get. Short bus trips, bus routes, expensive countries, gas prices, and a whole variety of factors often times shake this ratio a little, so it is not something that I can stick to ardently. But when I get on a bus and pay $1 per hour, I am a happy vagabond.

So the tourist shuttle from Antigua to Panajachel costs around $4 and is a two hour ride. This is double what I want to pay, so I made inquiries into how much the public bus, referred to as the chicken bus, would costs. What I found, set me back a little. If I wanted to take the chicken bust to Panajachel I would have to take three different buses and pay 25 quetzales. This price is only 5 quetzales less than what I paid for the direct tourist shuttle.

"Es el mismo," I say to myself, so I luxurize my life a little and strut my stuff out to the tourist shuttle van. . . . and on to impending disaster.

The van that picked me up at the Universal Travel Agency was already full of stark white tourist, and only two seats remained unfilled. Myself and Mira were the only ones seking to fill these two open seats. It all made sense to me, it made sense to Mira as well, but somehow, someway, this threw the entire van of tourists into an uproar. They simply could not figure out how to arrange themselves to allow two more indivuals to fill two empty seats. So the entire van of six adventure outfitted tourists pour out into the street and left Mira and I all the seats in the van to choose from.

I think there was some kind of issue going on that was far beyond my intellect, as I could not figure out what was wrong with these people. As they poured out into the street, traffic soon ground to a halt. Horns began to honk. The tourist stood in the middle of all of this with the van doors open, setting up a perfect baracade across the narrow colonial street. I left the scene and walked over to the side walk to watch the befuddled crowd point in various random directions, as they tried to figure out who really needed a seat belt and who would be willing to brave the Guatemalan roads without one. Not all the seats in the van had seat belts attached, and this seemed to throw the fray into a frenzy. Mira and I soon grew tired of this charade, and we jumped into the back and left the tourist to sort out their own jumbled mess. In this moment I was thoroughly, genuinly confussed. I did not even know what was going on, so I pinned my nose against the window and absconded in the back corner of the van. The tourists soon followed and everyone who demanded a seatbelt soon received one. I then began to hope dearly that I would not be assaulted by eminant stream of small talk that I knew would soon fall upon my countenance.

To those of you who have been following along in this journey, you well know that I am not the most social of human creatures. In fact, you could refer to me as a misanthrope by definition. Small talk freightens me. I do not mind conversations, but talking just to assuage or slaughter an otherwise silent moment is not my most cherished of activities. I do not want to be asked where I come from, what I do, how long I have been in any certain place, or where I am going ever again. I do not have a clear answer to any of these questions. I am under the impression that I do not even know where I am going and that my journeys are boring. I do not even want to talk about them.

I like talking to Andy the Hobo Traveler though. He his the kind of guy that can be prompted into an exciting tale of adventure and woe by a simple 'good morning' greeting. Andy would walk into the hotel that I was staying at in Antigua and I would only have to say "hello" to be launched into a good and humorous conversation about Africa, Iraq, or the particulars of search engine optimazations. I do not yet posses these social graces, but that does not mean that I cannot admire them in another. Perhaps when I am Andy's age I would have learned a thing or two about being a regular, socialable human being. For now, I will just sit in the back of the van like an old grump.

My sole ambition is to will be a hermit on some mountain side in China, grow my beard even longer than it is now - maybe I will grow it down to my belly - and rage like a lunitic everytime I am disturbed by a benign, inquiring sole.

Benign and inquiring was just what my traveling companions were though. So even though my nose was stuck to the window and I tried hard - so hard - to not make eye contact with anyone, I too was soon affronted with the base, dare I say meaningless, questions that every traveler is asked a dozen times a day. In despair I realized that my gallent effort at being an arrogant, unsocialble A-hole had failed me. I was confronted with small talk.

It came from the direction of a thirty something, red-haired Canadian. I nearly lost my misantropic nerve and broke down to make a joke or two about the Canadian flags that he surely had sewn on his bags. But I held my tongue and only grunted nervously in the face of his interogation. Maybe I mumbled a thing or two. Mira, my lovely lady, soon came to the rescue, and talked up a blue streak. She thoroghly had the attention of the tourist throng. I think they thought she was very cool. Another female tourist soon felt compelled to try to one-up Mira's yarns as she tried hard to prove to everyone that she, too, was also very cool. I was not convinced, but, then again, I am a window licking weirdo.

Mira and the other female tourist continued to share the conversational reins. Mira talked about Mayans, the female tourist about her trip to "Lao." I was happy, as everyone let me stare out the window without impediment. Sometimes I become very glad when the company I inadvertinly keep find me unworthy of conversation. I would have hated to let that beautiful Guatemalan country-side pass unrelished. I smiled at the mountains. But soon enough we desended a steep mountainside full of jack-knife switch backs, and I watched Lake Atitlan rise out of the be-cratored earth. Volcanoes abounded on every shore, and I let out a deep sigh of relief. The scene before us was beautiful. So beautiful, in fact, that I was please that I did not have to damper it with idle chatter. We quickly descended the cliff face and were let out into the streets of Pananjachel.

Photos from Guatemala

Wade from Vagabond Journey.com
Santiago Atitlan, Guatemala
April 10, 2008

Travel Work Skills

Travel Work Skills

I received the yearly travel work offer emails from the archaeology firms in the USA. Each year around this time I receive emails from three different companies inviting me to come and work on their projects. I usually take these offers, as this is the time of year when I usually start to go broke. But, this year, for the most part, I have decided to push through and to find other avenues of making up my bean money. I think this is a matter of self-imposed personal development. Traveling around the USA , working on archaeology projects for a couple of months a year is a good way to go to find nether-regions of my homeland, as well as to make up the money to take off and travel the rest of the year like a vagabond king. But this has gotten a little too easy. Save for some stints of doing farm labor in Europe and teaching English in Asia, I have been making up my traveling money like this since the year 2000; I am looking for other avenues. I do not mind working, and would not be oppose to working the whole year round on the Road broadening my horizons, rather than putting in two months and taking the rest of the year off. Hobos travel to work, no?

I have been writing magazine articles for a pittance (I am making so little money that some magazines even forget to pay me), as well as putting my nose to the grind-stone on the websites. I figure that I am working around 6 to 8 hours a day on these ventures, and am scarcely making $3 for my daily effort. I am happy, I am making something, and I am not digging holes. $3 a day is a dinner and a lunch. I am pleased. But my travel funds are running out of my pockets as if through a sieve, and I will soon myself on the beach, without a copper, if I do not even out my fractions soon. So the yearly archaeology fieldwork emails struck me as just what I need right now. They go a little like the following:

"Any time you want to work pretty much show up at the office at 8 am like usual and you and mira got a job. Call a day a head if you need a room."

"Starting in about two weeks we are getting slammed with wind tower stuff, even your old friend Empire. Let me know if your interested, or always call the office all summer, as we look swamped whenever you are free. You can hop on with me anytime/anywhere man. Talk to you soon."

So when I ask myself if I will dig some holes in some nowhere hill-billy town in the USA this summer, I must answer with a whole-hearted yes. But it probably will not last for too long.

On the path from Central America to Eastern Europe and the Middle East I should be running through the USA for 20 days between mid-May and the beginning of June. Archaeology work has been offered to me, and a true vagabond takes a traveling job whenever he can get one. So I replied to the email in the affirmative, and will probably dig holes for a week or two and slightly revitalize my travel funds. A couple of weeks of working a regular archaeology job will get me around $700 to $1,000. If I work with the high-paying company that I did last summer (I was making over $200 a day) this amount will be doubled. One thousand dollars gives me three months of traveling. I appreciate these job offers.

In my experiences of working on the Road and of working in general, it has come to my mind that there are two work skills that an employee needs to have to easily find employment, and two skills only:

1. To be able to wake up in the morning - to get to work on time.

2. To keep your mouth shut - to do what you are told.

If a vagabond has these two skills he should never go hungry.

Vagabond Journey Photographs

Wade from Vagabond Journey.com
Antigua, Guatemala
April 9, 2008

Fishermen of Halong Bay Vietnam

Fishermen of Halong Bay Vietnam

The following links lead to photos of the fishermen of Halong Bay Vietnam. There are also photographs of Hanoi, Vietnamese beaches, and the boats of Halong Bay. Click on the below links to go to the photos.

Hanoi and Halong Bay Vietnam

Halong Bay Vietnam

Fishermen of Halong Bay Vietnam

Vagabond Journey Travel Photographs

Wade from Vagabond Journey.com
Antigua, Guatemala
April 8, 2008

Tibetan Refugees in India Photos

Tibetan Refugees in India Photos

The following links lead to photographs of Tibetan refugees in the Bylakuppe camp in southern India. I took these pictures in the autumn of 2006 when I was doing research for an article on exile Tibetans called Seekers of Refuge in a Land of No Return that was published in Abroad View Magazine. Click on the links below to go to the photos of Tibetan refugees in India.

Tibetan Refugees in India

Tibetan Buddhist Monks and Nuns

Vagabond Journey Travel Photos

Wade from Vagabond Journey.com
Antigua, Guatemala
April 8, 2008

I meet the Hobo Traveler

I meet the Hobo Traveler

On the last day of March in the year 2008, Wade from Vagabond Journey.com finally met the the masked man behind Hobo Traveler.com. His name is Andy, people call him foreigner, and for a long while I only knew him through his blog posts and emails. I can now call him a friend. He is an interesting character, and he quickly became one of those rare birds that I mention frequently on Song of the Open Road. Now, in Guatemala, I have finally met the Hobo - I suppose all apples eventually fall to the earth. This meeting was, perhaps, inevitable. I was very curious to find out what Andy looked like, as he does not show photos of himself on his websites, and, on the day of our meeting, my only direction as to his appearance was "blond hair, red shirt."

Then he appeared at the door of my hotel. He surprisingly looked much like I thought he would. Though his youthful disposition and energy struck me as being of that of a man much younger than 52 years of age. If I did not already know his age, I would have taken Andy to be at least a decade younger than what he is.

"The girls still like me," he has written to me before, and I must say that it is the truth. I watched as he wrapped a pretty Guatemalan lady nearly 15 years his younger around his finger. It was a pity for the Hobo Traveler that her mother was a crotchety old crow.

The Hobo Traveler is a great talker. He has the ability to tell wrap a travel yarn around, through, and over the top of what would otherwise be a sterile evening. This man knows how to tell a story, he has one of the greatest gifts that a traveler can have. For this past week Mira and I sat and listened to his tales from the nether-regions of planet earth, stories that even the best of wandering grios could not touch. Iraq, West Africa, Niger were some of the places that he told far-gone tales about. Mira and I listened with open ears. Andy's observations were surprisingly astute, poignant, and, yes, very entertaining. What he writes on the Hobo Traveler blog is but only a shadow of what he tells in person:

"What do you want?" a stern-faced soldier asked Andy at the gates of the Garden of Babylon in a war torn Iraq.

"To go in," replied the Hobo Traveler.

"What are you?" questioned the soldier.

"A tourist."

I am under the impression that I have two sides to my personality: one is severely introverted, the other is mildly extroverted. I either talk or I listen. I have never gotten the hang of bouncing between both. These two sides of personality switch back and forth depending on my surroundings like the swaying of a pendulum. I cannot control this, as one side simply takes over the other whenever it feels like it. Sometimes I listen, and sometimes I speak. When in the presence of the Hobo Traveler one would be a fool not to listen. And even if you do not agree with him, you must fully regard the direction that his opinions come from.

I am a good listener.

Andy writes about how he constructs his blog posts in a matter of minutes. I did not believed this to be true until I met him. It is true, the Hobo Traveler seems to prefer the real world of the living to the stale dimensions of the Internet. He writes his thoughts, publishes them, and then goes out and plays. He works hard for a couple of hours a day, and then he spends the rest of his time talking to people, walking around, and looking at pretty women. "Life is good." All the while that I am slaving away writing and making web pages, Andy is out enjoying the fresh breezes of the traveling life. Andy makes $125 a day, I make $1.25 if I am lucky. I must laugh at the myself here.

My goal in this website venture is to make a tenth of what Andy does a day. I would be jumping in the streets if I could put together $12.25 a day from Vagabond Journey.com, the 900 photo project, Vagabond Fieldnotes, Song of the Open Road, and Traveler Photographs.com. I do not mind working hard for this. I rather like it. But I must grumble a little when Andy walks in on me in my eight hour of work and chuckles about how he had his work finished before I ate breakfast. The man is a master in the old time sense. But he is willing to share a small portion of his mastery to help a bubbling young traveler to make up the funds to keep traveling on.

The Hobo Traveler is a traveler in the old time sense.

He seems to chuckle at my erroneous ways, letting me make my rightful mistakes, but he also does not hesitate to toss me a bone to chew on every once in a while.

I am chewing up these bones with great relish and appreciation.

Vagabond Journey Travel Photographs

Wade from Vagabond Journey.com
Antigua, Guatemala
April 8, 2008

Antigua Guatemala Market Photos

Antigua Guatemala Market Photos

The following links lead to pages of photographs from the various markets around Antigua Guatemala. They show the artisan market, the fruit and vegetable market, as well as some photos from the general commodities market. There are also many pictures of food in Guatemala. Click on the links below to go to these photos.

Mayan Textiles Market

Markets in Antigua

Fruits and Vegetables in Guatemala

Fruit and Vegetable Market

Guatemala Fruit Market

Vagabond Journey Travel Photographs

Photographs from Guatemala

Thank you,

Wade in Antigua, Guatemala
April 8, 2008

Lady The Tramp.com Female Travel Guide

Lady the Tramp.com Female Travel Guide

Mira, from the former Wanderjahr Jill Travel Blog, has now consolidated her efforts in a new project oriented towards sharing travel knowledge from a female perspective. This new site is called Lady the Tramp and is a travel blog full of ideas, tips, warnings, and suggestions written by female travelers for female travelers. It is Mira's mission to create a forum on this site for discussing the particulars of being a female traveler "in a man's world" as well as providing a space for women to encourage each other to get out there and travel the world.

Lady the Tramp's mission:

"While traversing the globe females have to overcome certain difficulties unbeknownst to their male counterparts. Sexual advances, machismo, how to find sanitary products, where to pee, and how to keep an eye on one’s purse are just examples of gender centric problems a female may encounter on the road."

"I hope to give a few good tips, advice, and guides for women travelers, and a little push of inspiration for all those women who are too afraid to make that leap into the great unknown adventures of the world."

Photo of Lady the Tramp Mira looking mighty fancy standing side-by-side her paternal cousin, Barak Obama. (hehehe)

Lady the Tramp Womans Travel Guide also presents the other side of the Song of the Open Road story, so read it to find the dirt behind the man who writes these words.

Wade from Vagabond Journey.com
Antigua, Guatemala
April 7, 2008

Cheap Food in Antigua Guatemala

The Price of Cheap Food in Antigua Guatemala

Went to a restaurant tonight near the market in Antigua, ordered the cheapest item on the menu, and received a hot pot full the flabby, fatty skin of a pig. This was not a specimen of Guatemalan food at its best.

A mistranslated menu is one of the perilous pit-falls of traveling. It happens to everyone at some point on the Road: you think that you order pork chops and rice, but come to find a steaming bowl of pig skin soup set down in front of you.

Cheap Guatemalan Food: pig skin soup. I made an attempt to try it, but I think my stomach of steel has finally met its match.

Now my tastebuds have been trampled, beaten down, and worn-in by the rigors of budget-travel: I do not heave at the sight of unseemly food, I can eat a plate of gross looking entrails with a smile, and I hardly even balk before tossing some unidentifiable foreign object referred to the locals as food into my mouth. But this Guatemalan soup bubbling over with the plump, fresh skin of some butchered and processed pig was too much for my iron-willed stomach to take. I said no way, I would not eat pig skin soup on this occasion, no matter how cheap it is. . . and, mind you, pig skin soup sells cheaply in Guatemala. So I ate the accompanying rice, and strolled out into the streets of Antigua in search of a more palatable supper.

I ate a cheap hamburger, and was never more please at the appearance of solid, edible meat. All for all my two dinners costed 25 quetzales - which is far lower than the average price of a single meal in Antigua. So, relatively speaking, I did not squander too much of my bean money on my picky extravagance.

The going rate for a plate of food in touristy Antigua seems to be around 30-80 quetzales - $4 to $10.

Yikes.

But behind every main drag of a tourist town is a market area that serves good, cheap plates of food at a fraction of the down-town prices. This is where Mira and I found the pig skin restaurant, across from the market in Antigua. We ate dinner there three times, and it took us these three days before we realized that the cheapest items on the menu were more or less “spare-parts.” For two days in a row I ate liver thinking that it was a peculiar tasting steak, and then, on the third night, I ordered pig skin soup thinking that I was getting a porkchop. For now on I know that I should inspected the menu a little closer when eating at cheap restaurants in Antigua. But, in reward for the pangs of poking at soggy pig skin, I did learn some new words:

Chicharron in front of Cerdo means pig skin

Panza in front of Res means cow stomach

Higado in front of Res means cow liver

Beware of entrails and spare parts when traveling on the cheap in Guatemala!

I am not sure if even the Guatemalans eat this stuff.

Cooking my own dinners from now on.

Photographs from Guatemala

Wade from Vagabond Journey.com
Antigua, Guatemala
April 7, 2008