Canadian Nomad

Tags: Exhaustion, Language Learning, Money, Struggle, Working
Posted in Personal Development | 1 Comment »

I’ve been so busy doing so many things I have not had time to blog. I’ve been working, eating sushi, playing in golf carts, frolicking in fresh water caves, dancing in the rain, cooking incredible meals, tanning around the pool, going on hikes, fighting off tarantulas, kayaking through the canal,  and swimming in the beautiful Caribbean ocean.  So much to do on such a small, yet gorgeous island of Honduras.

The other day a group of twelve of us rented golf carts and made our way to the caves. Once we got the caves I was having too much fun driving the golf cart to want to stop right away so one of the guys and I took off in the cart. We went exploring the dirt roads and took the golf cart on roads that were 4X4ing worthy! We were doing 180s, drifting the cart and going through huge puddles.

Once we got back we hopped into the caves to cool off then all of us jumped back into our carts and made our way to Pumpkin Hill. I was trying to do some fancy reverse work and almost killed the guy, Rusty, who was sitting on the back of my cart by backing into a barbed wire fence. Oops! So he then decided he should drive, because now he doesn’t trust me. But, once we got to Pumpkin Hill Rusty started going up a steep hill and hit a stump in the ground. Which because of the angle, made us start flipping backwards down the hill. Luckily the big guy, Big G, sitting on the back of the cart jumped out and started pushing the cart back down so we didn’t fully flip. If the cart had followed through and flipped, we would have tumbled into the third cart directly behind us and all of us would have been seriously injured. But, we all got out fine and we able to laugh about it afterwards.

Later that night while working at La Pirata Sports Bar, I was standing on the patio around 3:30AM just cleaning up a bit before close. All of a sudden, this local girl walked over to where I was standing, grabbed a bottle and smashed it on the ledge right in front of me scattering glass alll over my legs and in my flipflops. She then kept the neck of the broken bottle in her hand and went back to dancing.

I walked over to the other bartender to see if he saw the incident that had just occurred. Right when I was about to talk to him he ran over to the DJ and told him to cut the music. Once the music was cut you could hear two girls yelling at each other in the corner of the patio. Before I knew it a girl, surrounded by people, was walking towards me just covered in blood holing a heap of napkins to her bloody face. The other bartender had taken the girl with the broken bottle neck out of the bar and I was taking care of the girl with the slashed face. I’ve never seen so much blood. I had to clean the blood splatter which covered most of the patio, chairs and tables. The girl who got slashed was later taken to the local doctor, she will defiantly need stitches. I had a night off after that horrifying accident. I was very thankful.

My flatmates and myself decided it would be an ingenious idea to shave Big G’s chest. Our first thought was to do a happy face, but that seemed too average. Then, we thought “Well how about a Superman symbol?”. Once we pulled up the Superman symbol to copy from we had one more great idea. A Super G symbol for Big G’s first initial.  It was a night full of fun and laughter. The next morning while walking with Big G down the street people would stop and laugh or stop to take a picture. It was great fun.

Tags: 4X4ing, Bar fight, Caribbean, Cooking, Dancing, Dancing in the rain, Fresh water caves, Frolick, Golf Carts, Hiking, Honduras, Kayaking, La Pirata, Laughing, Super G, Superman, Sushi, Tanning, Tarantulas, Utila, Working
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Feb 14th, St. Valentines day was the start of the most recent part of my journey. That evening I went to a local bar to hang out and see what kind of local festivities were going on. It turned out that it was just a slightly busier night then usual. That is all. But then a weird set of coincidences started to happen.

I met a person from Canada. Not terribly unusual, I admit, and we got to talking. The usuals “oh what part?” and “oh really, I used to live there.” Then I mentioned that I used to live on the other side of the country. Well it turns out that this guy not only lived on the same street as me in New Westminster, BC but also on the same street I grew up on in Ottawa. How strange. Further he turned out to be an excellent web programmer who owned property here in Zihuatanejo. My rental was just about up at my current apartment and With times being tough down here, his geodesic domes were being left un-rented.

Back to the night at hand. I met a group of really fun and curious group of Mexicans at the bar and was practically pushed into talking with a shy but cute girl from Morelia, Mich. We hit it off and started going out. Food, parties, shows, and just hanging out it has been an interesting couple of weeks.

I moved out of my place in La Noria and moved into my Canadian friends place near La Ropa Beach. We decided to try to push each other to program online to make money. It worked and we are both doing fairly well right now freelancing and competing with Indians and script kiddies for online work. The plan has always been to take it slow, earn dollars and spend in pesos. Simple enough, it took longer then expected to get here, and it still has some ruff spots, but in general I hope this works. Time has passed and times have changed. I have settled into a pattern here working most weekdays, hanging out with friends in the evenings and weekends and generally enjoying myself.

But with a group of Mexican friends I can say I am learning more intricate things about the culture and people here. But then how to describe such things without coming off as a person who is judging, misinformed, or generally naïve? There is certainly nothing like black and white in any culture and this is no exception. Most of the people I have met have been honest, good people with good intentions and interesting things to say. Others seem to be just out for a buck or barking up the wrong tree, but this is just par for course in what merely feels like a magnified reality.

Tags: Beaches, Friends, Mexico, Travel, Working, Zihuatanejo
Posted in Personal Development, Travel | 2 Comments »