Follow The Road: Alongside the People of this World

By Katja Lachmann

This volume offers a glimpse into the first part of our six year lasting world journey. It includes our travels through Mexico, Central America, and Cuba in the period of January 2006 to May 2007.

The story’s material originates from experiences gained on my journeys, during which I try to figure out the truth about life and people of this world. It is this book’s aim to allow the reader to look at the daily life of the personalities whose cultures we became acquainted with during our trip through the above mentioned countries and regions. Through sharing those experiences I hope to revise some of the negative impressions about the inhabitants of these countries, which are often spread through the media. I would like to make my readers think about the innate intention of all humans on earth which is simply to be happy. We all breathe, love, eat, sleep, live...like one another. From my point of view, cultural differences account for the indispensable ingredient without which humanity would lose a tremendous value.

Furthermore, it is my wish to motivate my readers to follow their feelings. I am sure that following our feelings is what will lead us to the right path, and open us to the necessary encounters and experiences that will guide us on our way. Intuition is an estimable good which in today’s high-performance society is not paid the attention it deserves. In my opinion, if we all had always followed our own feelings, the better life, of which we are now dreaming, would already be a reality.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Katja Lachmann
• Release date: Jan 24, 2012

Katja Lachmann

I traveled the world for six years with my thumb. I went all the way from Mexico down to Argentina, in ways of hitch-hiking any kind of vehicles, sailing vessels, and even a plane. The journey continued to Europe, India, South East Asia, and finally Australia, before I returned home to reconnect with my roots. My journey was focused on the beautiful people living all over the world, and discovering their life from their perspective. Including all adventures experienced in Middle America, this is the main focus of my book "Follow The Road - Alongside the People of this World".

Book preview

FOLLOW THE ROAD

Alongside the People of this World

Published by Katja Lachmann at Smashwords

~~~~

Copyright 2011 Katja Lachmann

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

~~~~

Acknowledgement

My sincere gratitude goes to Augustas for his company during each day of our journey, and more so for all his support and understanding of my dream to become a travel writer.

Special thanks go to all the people who made our journey possible. This is for all the Mexicans, Belizeans, Guatemalans, Cubans, Panamanians, Costa Ricans, Nicaraguans, Hondurans, Salvadorians, Europeans, Asians, Africans, and North Americans, whom we met during these first 16 months of our life journey.

Great thanks to Ben Blevins for his self-sacrifice in putting the finishing touches to my written lines.

~~~~

General Information

This book was printed and published in the author‘s own initiative. For purchasing a printed copy please get in touch with us over our website or directly by email:

http://www.FollowTheRoad.com/

[e-mail]

On our Follow The Road – Website you will find detailed information about the author and her husband as well as about the whole adventure itself. If you are interested in the progress of our journey you can order our newsletter. For further questions please contact us by website or email.

© 2011, Katja Lachmann

~~~~

for you

Life is a wonderful gift;

it is an invitation to follow your dreams.

~~~~

Table of contents

Preface

MEXICO

An immoral sacrifice (January 19-20)

Mennonites – meeting with people from a former century (February 4-5)

BELIZE

Fernando and Co. (March - July)

Twelve per cent of Belize (August 16-19)

GUATEMALA

Attacked and coerced by ants (August 28-29)

MEXICO II

People of a city with 22 million inhabitants (October 20-30)

Destiny (November 24-28)

CUBA

Motorized Sailing Attempt (January 15-18)

Escaping the one to be caught by the other (February 9-11)

PANAMA

Archaic Map (March 17)

COSTA RICA

Assaulted (April 3)

EL SALVADOR, NICARAGUA, HONDURAS

Two lucky devils (May 2-5)

~~~~

Preface

This volume is the English translation of my book Auf Dem Weg – Mit, durch und für die Menschen dieser Welt. Like the German one, this is an excerpt of the 500 pages spanning opus, offering a glimpse into the first part of our journey when traveling through Mexico, Central America, and Cuba in the period of January 2006 to May 2007. Nevertheless, it mirrors all facets of our vagabond life in those regions.

The story’s material originates from experiences gained on my journeys, during which I try to figure out the truth about life and people of this world. It is this book’s aim to allow the reader to look at the daily life of the personalities whose cultures we became acquainted with during our trip through the above mentioned countries and regions. Through sharing those experiences I hope to revise some of the negative impressions about the inhabitants of these countries, which are often spread through the media. I would like to make my readers think about the innate intention of all humans on earth which is simply to be happy. We all breathe, love, eat, sleep, live...like one another. From my point of view, cultural differences account for the indispensable ingredient without which humanity would lose a tremendous value.

Furthermore, it is my wish to motivate my readers to follow their feelings. I am sure that following our feelings is what will lead us to the right path, and open us to the necessary encounters and experiences that will guide us on our way. Intuition is an estimable good which in today’s high-performance society is not paid the attention it deserves. In my opinion, if we all had always followed our own feelings, the better life, of which we are now dreaming, would already be a reality.

~~~~

MEXICO

An immoral sacrifice (January 19-20)

A packed up camping stove reminded our already self-consuming stomachs of their sadness this morning. Our clothes were washed, our bodies clean, our backpacks arranged, and our stomachs were still empty. We surpassed each other in turn in a competitive stomach rumbling concert. Thank goodness that soon we stumbled upon two iced coconuts. When we finished slurping them down, the seller swung his machete to crack our coconuts wide-open. With relish we scraped the coconut meat out of the shells, and in addition, devoured a dessert of two ripe and sweet bananas; an extremely satisfying meal.

Around early afternoon we arrived in Dzitas (20 km North of Piste). Our worries about finding a shelter for the coming night were wiped away by our driver. He offered to talk to the head of the town. Hardly reaching the town’s centre, Carlos came rolling along in his VW-Minivan in the company of his pals who were bombarding us right away with endless questions. As soon as we mentioned our origin one of the pals retorted at the top of his voice, Germany! Hitler! Ha-ha! Welcome! Although I already had been asked several times about Hitler, this welcoming gave me the impression that here time had come to a standstill long ago.

Our driver passed us on to Carlos, who took us, like kids, by the hand and led us to the church in order to get the pastor's permission for letting us camp right in the church’s garden. Since the pastor was absent we all went over to the nearby town hall. On the way there Carlos stumbled into an intense conversation with a friend, followed by a long-lasting discussion with a local police man (obviously another good fellow), and once arriving at the town hall’s office got – for us unexpectedly - handed over the key for an iron-barred gate of the gigantic town hall, about ten meters distant to the market square.

We arrived at the gate where Carlos started demonstrating carefully and with thorough explanations how the gate’s old rusty padlock was to be opened. Look here! Insert the key, exactly like this (he showed the position of the key), fix the padlock with your right hand, and turn the key, SO! At a snail’s pace he turned the key forwards and backwards in the padlock. And, don’t you see now the padlock leaps open... We were asking ourselves in that moment if we made the impression we were descendants from another planet on which neither keys nor padlocks existed. At last we were standing inside. In front of us lay a place of the size of a soccer field. We were speechless for a while. For all the space being offered to us we faced a problem in choosing the right spot for putting our tent. Toilets were available, water wasn’t. Though, with good fortune the hall was big enough that we could keep out of range of the intense smell of urine.

We seemed to have arranged our visit to Dzitas at the perfect moment. Without suspecting anything special, the evening of our arrival began with a festival paying homage to Santa Ines, the patron saint of the village. An enormous amount of people pushed their way through the market square, which actually doubled as an amusement park. Quite a few men and women were absorbed in a game of table football. We expected a wide range of things to happen, but table soccer, the main attraction during Santa Ines festival, was definitely not one of them. We reached the arena, which was assembled with simple wooden branches and posts covered with banana leaves for the roof. Here we met Carlos again who introduced us right away to the president of Dzitas village. We extended our hands upwards for a handshake as the president sat enthroned, dressed in a traditional cowboy costume, on top of his proud stallion. Having done so, we received his personal and thus free of charge invitation to the festivities taking place at the arena. It saved us the entrance fee of 5 Mexican Pesos ($ 0.50).

We choose to sit in the back of the stand, but regardless, nearly all of the spectator’s eyes were fixed with curiosity towards us from all sides. Snack sellers balanced their huge baskets along the wobbly stand construction, offering green-yellowish fruits called ciruelas (a plum reminding us of cherries in shape and size). We took one small bag of these salt-and-chili-sweet ciruelas. The fire in our mouths was close to what we expected to happen once we stuffed them with those ciruelas, since chili is not one of our favorite spices. Carefully we tried and noticed that the sweet-sour combination was not that bad, which we became addicted to right away. Our soda bread came in handy though, a good balancing food in this case, which got us out of wine-red colored faces.

The ceremony started. After the president had presented his horse riding tricks, a whole lot of toreros (bullfighters) rushed into the arena. Oh my God. A bullfight! It turns out the festival’s cultural highlight. After a short demonstration of their bending skills the toreros chased their living target into the arena: a bull, which was actually a cow. I felt quite weak at the knees. Simply escaping was not possible since we did not want to offend the president’s good-naturedness. Whether we wanted or not, we had to be witnesses to this bullfight. I decided to look away. Augustas took out his camera to capture the crowd. As a result of this he received an invitation to sit between some kids right at the edge of the stand. Seconds later he found himself dangling his legs between the happy and excited audience. We darted sympathetic glances at each other when the poor cow was chased into the arena. The crowd loudly let it be known when the spear was rammed into the back of this terrified animal. I shuddered at the thought of this action and tried to distract myself with the observation of children at the stand. Short glances at the arena to find out if the bullfight had finished showed suddenly riders who, equipped with lassos, tried to catch the strongly wounded cow. At last Augustas managed to escape from the edge of the stand due to the bloodlust which had seized the audience. We left the place at the high spot of this event, and were happy that due to the crowd’s excitement nobody noticed our disappearance.

The earplugs I had taken as a precaution, turned out to be a wise choice. Those and the scarf I wrapped around my ears additionally secured my sleep as music, dance, and fireworks filled the night, magnified by our tin-roofed hall. It reminded me of a scene where two fleas are sitting in a 2 x