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To Guatemala from Honduras
2008-03-29 02:45:00
To Guatemala from Honduras Today was my last day of working at Copan, my last day of hanging out with the archaeologist campensinos, unearthing the Maya, and dreaming my way through the stone chiseled corridors and byways of a truly ancient city. I have learned much from this archaeology project - chalked up another mark on the old curriculum vitae - but it is time to be moving on. I offered my farewells to the cowboy hat wearing campesinos at the site, shook hands, got a little choked up, and made my final bows to good old Copan. For Guatemala calls. As well as a meeting with the Hobo Traveler.Andy made Antigua yesterday. I am excited to cross his path.The world turns, times change, but rivers still run to the sea. Guatemala is the place where I may soon meet the Hobo Traveler. I am thinking over the ways that I can get from Copan to Antigua. The Guatemala border is only 12 km from where I am standing, and I think that Antigua is only a few hours beyond that. I am close. There ar...

Writing for Magazines and Newspapers
2008-03-28 01:30:00
The Writing Life and the Struggle for Nickels and Dimes“Put writing in your heart. Thus you may protect yourself from any kind of labour.” -Egyptian scribe to his son 2400 BC.This is the idea. To find a way to write for my food. By any means necessary. But I have found that to do so means working long hours for a pittance, and struggling for my nickels and dimes. I almost feel like a beggar. But I have been publishing in small-time magazines, and getting paid small-time money. I do not complain, for at least it is something. I am rather pleased with myself, in fact. My mom is happy with me too. I do not mind slaving away for a few days researching, interviewing, and assembling a story that will only make me $50. I am actually very happy to receive the $50 for this effort. I think that I am well paid. I am satisfied. I am having fun. I do not need anything more.But maybe I am coming to the point where I need to take things to the next level. Maybe I should try getting published ...
More About: Magazines , Newspapers

Tourist Charity and Street Children
2008-03-27 01:27:00
Tourist Charity and Street Children I walked to the internet café tonight. They were closed. Their front gate was securely fastened shut with a steel chain and a big strong padlock; the lights inside were off. In futility, I shook the gate a few times for no good measure. The sign on the door read that they close at 10PM. It was 7PM. I suppose the owner just had better things to be doing than running his business. Businesses in Latin America only pretend that they run on a time clock like other places in the world, but in reality, a place is open only when the workers feel like working. Tonight, I suppose the internet café did not feel like working. I cannot blame them. On my disgruntled walk home I came upon two blond 20 year old American girls talking with a little shoe-less Honduran boy under the dark eve of a street-side doorway. The kids in this town are not too bad, they don’t really ask foreigners for money, and, from all apparent conditions, they do not need to. They are ...
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Vagabond Journey Newsletter 002
2008-03-27 01:23:00
Vagabond Journey Newsletter 002The second Vagabond Journey Newsletter has now been sent out to those who have subscribed to it. It contains links to the most pertinent posts on Song of the Open Road, links to photographs from Costa Rica, Panama, Nicaragua, and Honduras, and the archaeology excavation at Copan, an interview with a Guatemalan refugee who is now a university professor in Costa Rica, and a descriptive guide to Playa Gorgona in Panama. To subscribe to the Vagabond Journey monthly newsletter please submit your email address in the Topica box at the top left of this page or send a blank email to To read the newsletters online please go to Vagabond Journey Newsletter 002Eight years of round the world vagabond travel. Wade from Vagabond Journey.com

Copan Ruinas Travel Guide and Map
2008-03-27 01:16:00
Copan Ruinas Travel Guide I have put up a cheap travel guide to the village of Copan Ruinas on Vagabond Fieldnotes.com. It contains information on where to find a cheap restaurants and cheap accommodation outside of the tourist milieu, as well as a map of where these places are located. Copan Ruinas can be a little expensive, but the Vagabond Travel Guide to Copan suggests ways to work around these prices. Read it if you would like at, Vagabond Fieldnotes Copan Ruinas Travel Guide.Thanks,WadeMap of Copan Ruinas Cheap Restaurants and Places to Sleep:Click on the above map to make it bigger then print it to navigate the cheap restaurants of Copan RuinasEight years of round the world vagabond travel. Wade from Vagabond Journey.com

Javanese Proverb
2008-03-27 01:14:00
Javanese Proverb“If you start off north, go north, don’t turn east, west, or south.”-Javanese ProverbI read this proverb from Java a few days ago and have not been able to shake it since. To take one single direction to fruition has never been my fancy. But the thought of it, has gotten my wheels a spinning. It is a simply philosophy, and one that I can learn a few lessons from.I have always held a certain fondness for starting off in one direction just to splinter off in another, and then another and then another, until my route of travel (or life for that matter) begins to resemble the colorful messes that elementary students call art. I have never really liked nice looking anythings, and fluid paths have never appealed to me. I think that I have made a career of dabbling - dabbling in professions, dabbling in lines of study, dabbling in curiosities. I think I am an incorrigible dabbler. Though one who gets quite lost in his dabblings. My path of travel has always been made ...

Easter in Honduras
2008-03-25 03:12:00
Easter in Honduras Today is Easter. I awoke well rested at nine AM - a little later than I usual begin to stir, but I did not feel lazy. I looked out the window. The sun was shining, the sky was blue, and I debated about whether or not I wanted to go to church or just walk around all day over the trails and rivers of the larger church. I like traditions. I went to church.It is funny to me how those who study culture have the uncanny ability to find sustenance in all traditions but their own. I chided my Guatemalan archaeologist friend about this the night before after he contorted his face into an exaggerated grimace when I asked him if he was going to church on Easter. I laughed at the thought that I may now be approaching my own culture and my family’s religion as an outsider. I now find myself going to church in the same way as I go to Buddhist temples - curious and wide-eyed with wonder. I think that I have become a perpetual visitor. But I walked to the church this Easter with...
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New Niece of Vagabond Journey
2008-03-25 03:09:00
New Niece of Vagabond Journey My sister pumped out her second child a few days ago. Wade from Song of the Open Road has been made an uncle for the second time. Now I have to make a visit back to the USA to check out this new pile of stuff that will someday grow into a real human. As I figure that I am going to have to travel through the JFK porthole to get back to the Old World anyway, a visit to Rochester will not be too far out of my way. I like visiting my family, and would like two weeks to study and re-provision for the coming journey (I want to pick up some books hehehe). There are a lot of new little kids in my family and a visit is akin to going to an everyday, all over the place playground. I sneak the kids candy and let them dig through all of the odd things in my room. They yell scream and I teach them how to play hockey.It is nice to make regular visits home. I want to keep myself in the family circle; I do not wish to voluntarily ostracize myself by never being home. Te...

Cheap Travel in Tourist Destinations
2008-03-25 03:04:00
Cheap Travel in Tourist Destinations I am currently a content traveler in Copan Ruinas. Even though this is a tourist town, and the general prices are very high, I have found ways to subvert the hand of gentrification and live cheaply. I have found good priced places to eat, a cheap bed, and free recreation. I am spending far under $10 a day.Daily expenses:Bed- $1.75Breakfast- $1.50Lunch- $1.70Dinner- $2.00Internet- $.80Random expense- $1Daily total- $7.75Weekly total- somewhat less than $56This total would be way higher if I utilized the tourist resources that line the main streets of this town. If I were to eat in the tourist restaurants - all the restaurants in the town center - I would be dropping at least three to six dollars per meal. It took me nearly a week to locate two local eating houses on the outskirts of town, where I can get a cheap meal for a dollar or two. I also usually prepare for myself one meal a day, which consists of fruit, vegetables, and peanut butter or mue...
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Sponsor Song of the Open Road
2008-03-22 18:25:00
Sponsor Song of the Open Road The finances are hitting the wall. I am planing on plowing right through it. Don’t know if I can make it, laughing all the way. Oh well. Going to work my way around the world. I still have a little bean money stashed away, but I know that it is slowly slipping away. Although I am spending very little money, I am not making as much as I am spending.In Andy’s terms, I am not keeping my fraction constant.Only $5,000 gets me a comfortable year of travel, including airfare. I have so far made $800 this year. It is the end of March, I am falling behind.This is not going to cut it a little farther down the Road, I know, so I am going to have to kick something up soon. . . going to have to find some form of paid employment.But for now, I have decided to try to find some sponsors:Song of the Open Road is accepting text link sponsorship. If you have a website, you can buy a text link on this blog or Traveler Photographs.com for $100 a year. If you look towards...
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Good Friday in Honduras
2008-03-22 00:56:00
Good Friday in Honduras A large procession of pious Hondurans, curious tourists, and men haphazardly dressed up in impromptu biblical getup moved through the cobble stone streets of Copan Ruinas today. They clogged the thoroughfares of the town with celebration and good cheer. For it is Good Friday across the Christian world, and the Stations of the Cross are remembered and honored with words of remembrance, faith, and . . . politics?I find it truly amazing how Latin Americans can somehow manage to inveigle and interweave political rants into every aspect of life, conversation, and, yes, even worship. As I watched the procession, I became nostalgic for the days of my youth when my mother would suit me up in uncomfortable ‘church clothes,’ warn be to be on my best behavior, and, as added incentive I am sure, fastened the top button of my shirt so that I was slightly choked. But once this chastening suit was fought over me - I, being a child of normal temperament, would of cours...
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Cockfight in Honduras Video
2008-03-21 01:04:00
Cockfight in Honduras Video The following is a video of the cockfight that I wrote about in the, At the Cockfight post. The ritual of the cockfight seems to be the same the world over. From the sucking of the rooster's head by the handler to the rules of the fight the cockfight to the symbolism, the cockfight seems to be very similar from Bali to Honduras. I have been reading my Clifford Geertz hehehe.Cockfight video: Wade from Vagabond Journey.comCopan Ruinas, HondurasMarch 20, 2008Eight years of round the world vagabond travel. Wade from Vagabond Journey.com

The Romance of Traveling
2008-03-21 01:02:00
The Romance of Traveling “Once the traveler found civilizations radically different from his own awaiting him at the end of his journey. Now he finds impoverished imitations of his own, set off here and there by the relics of a discarded past.”-Clifford Geertz, The Cerebral Savage: On the Work of Claude Levi-StraussWhen I speak of the romance of traveling I am more speaking about the cerebral voyages of dreaming into maps, thinking of lands long gone, talking of uncharted lands, and planning journeys just for the fun of doing it. When I talk of the romance of traveling I think of the story of the two monks who would everyday talk about the journey that they were going to take together the following year. They would plan, write packing lists, and itineraries, but they both knew that these travels would never come to fruition; that they would only travel on together over mountain and sea in their imaginations alone. This dreaming, this joy, this excitement is what I mean by romance...

Travel Guidebooks: To Use or not to Use- Travel Tip #8
2008-03-21 00:58:00
Travel Guidebooks: To use or not to use- Travel Tip #8Guidebooks, guidebooks, guidebooks, a big question. Should a traveler use them? Are they really helpful? Are they worth their weight and cost? Is traveling more enjoyable without them? Can I travel without one? This long rant and more in this travel tip. Be sure to leave your comments and opinions below These are only my impressions. Tell me what you think. The Cons of Using a Travel Guidebook: Travel guidebooks tend to be big, heavy, expensive, incorrect, out of date by the time they are published, often times not well researched to begin with, and they make you look like a ripe idiot every time you use it within sight of other people. What is more, is that you can travel the world without one. They are not necessities. A guidebook is a clear cut sign that you have no idea where you are. I think most travelers feel a little bashful about digging out their guidebooks in a street full of people. It is a flashing sign that you hav...
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At the Cockfight
2008-03-20 04:06:00
At the Cockfight“For it is only apparently cocks that are fighting there. Actually, it is men.”-Clifford Geertz, Notes on the Balinese CockfightMen cheer, birds squeal, and the evanescent smell of blood permeates the squalid air as the last glimmers of life are stoked out of an uncomprehending, instinctual ruined rooster. I am at a cockfight in Honduras, and the mania of men in cowboy hats and shiny boots battling their cocks in public is almost too much metaphor for my humor to bear. It is too real to be funny.The men run, jump, and scream as their prize cocks peck and spur each other to death in fits of animal frenzy. The men too, become beast as their murderous howls cheer on the glorious victories of the winners, and their sorrowful wails accompany the dying breathes of the losers. Some cheer, some weep, but the money is always exchanged with the cold face of a better. A cockfight is a life or death battle that strikes the cords - which resonate to an astonishing volume - of...

Not Going to Belize
2008-03-19 17:55:00
Not Going to Belize I am not going to Belize. Nope. I will not enter that country this time around. Why? Because it is expensive and I would have to pay $19 to leave the place. Charge me $19 to enter somewhere, and I may think about it, as I would be paying to get something - the joy of being in the country. Charge me $19 to leave somewhere and I must ask, “What the hell for?” I am obviously not receiving anything for that $19 fee. It is just a final slap in the face for the poor vagrant who had already grown use to paying $20 a night for lodging and an incalulatable amount for food.Perhaps this is a last ditch attempt to drain the last remaining dollar out of travelers who had already had loads of money squeezed out of them by the tourist trap that Belize seems to be. ¨Get em one last time at the border!" Belize is expensive. I cannot figure out why the cost of traveling in Belize seems to be beyond that of Western Europe or the USA. I must conclude that it is this expensive so...

Undernourished in Honduras
2008-03-18 01:55:00
Undernourished in Honduras My thumbnails are becoming textured with slight waves and ridges, I have gone for weeks on end without an adequate amount of vegetables or fruit - I feel tired, slightly weak, and prone to illness. I think that I am becoming undernourished in Central America. I need to begin frequenting the markets, rather than restaurants, to satiate my nutritional needs.In travel, it is very easy to come by dishes that boast high protein, carbohydrates, and sugars, but outside of the southern Asian triangle, I have found that it takes a little effort to come by a day’s dose of plant food. I know that if I only eat in restaurants in many regions of the world that I could go for weeks without a good, properly cooked serving of vegetables, and, as far as fruits go, the only ones that I will consume will be the slices of lime placed upon my plate for appearance’s sake. This is not enough fruit and vegetable batter to keep a wanderer moving on. I want my five fruits and ve...

New Travel Strategy
2008-03-18 01:52:00
New Travel Strategy I have never really given much thought to how I plan my journeys, what countries I go to, or the number of lands I have ventured in. Rather, I have usually just traveled to what ever place strikes my fancy at any given time. A look at the cover of a book, an off-handed comment in a conversation, or a simple thought or a passing reminiscence is enough to send me to the far side of the planet. The intuition that emerges out of a blank morning-time mind has always been my guiding grace. But having this website and writing so often of my travels has made me slightly more conscious of my methods of travel.Planning on going over to El Salvador for only a week makes me realize how much my traveling style has changed over the years. When I first began traveling, I would have never of thought about going through the hassles of crossing a border to only visit a country for a few days. Many times I have skirted various borderlands without even a thought of crossing into a ne...

El Salvador for Semana Santa
2008-03-17 00:19:00
El Salvador for Semana Santa Next week is Saint’s week across Latin America, a holy holiday between Palm Sunday and Easter devoted to the Saints of Catholicism. There is no work, in some countries no alcohol is sold, and the people have nothing to do but worship and have a holiday. In my experiences in Latin America, a day off of work seems to equate to a day of partying. I am sure that there will be many smiling faces, many fights, and many people just hanging out in the streets watching the week go by. This is Central America. Map of El SalvadorI am thinking about going to El Salvador for this holiday. It would feel good to be back out on the road for a week in between my month of working at Copan. The El Salvador border is only two hours from Copan Ruinas, and I hear that there is good hiking just across the frontier. Maybe I will go to the artist village of Palmas, and just hope that I can turn up a cheap bed. I imagi...
More About: El Salvador

Travel Tip 9- Turn a Plastic Bag into a Cup
2008-03-17 00:09:00
Turn a Plastic Bag into a Cup- Travel Tip #9Have you found yourself at a water source with the desire to carry water with you but without anything to carry it in? Are you at a stream in the middle of the woods with a water filter but without a receptacle to filter to? Do you need something to do with all of those plastic shopping bags that you have forced upon you every time you buy something? Or maybe you just need a stinking cup?If so, then this travel tip is for you. How to turn a plastic bag into a cup- Honduras style.I am currently in Northern Honduras working on an archaeology project at Copan. The most of the other archaeology crew members are Honduran rancheros with big white cowboy hats, button up plaid cowboy shirts, and cowboy boots. The men are cowboys in Honduras. What else can I say?Well, these cowboys have a taste for Coca-Cola, and every time they take a break from excavating a skeleton or restoring an ancient stone wall, they drink down a couple bottles of pop using...
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Mayan Archaeology at Copan
2008-03-14 03:04:00
Mayan Archaeology at CopanArchaeology at Copan moves at the pace of a tropical afternoon. That is to say, very slowly. Weeks of work by a crew of fifteen men and one woman amounts to only a few cubic meters of excavated earth. If one is in search for a career which has small chance of ever running out of work, I can fully recommend the field of archaeology- especially Mayan archaeology. I am confident that when New York City is a pile of ruins, and the heathen hoards have conquered and burned the civilized world, archaeologist will still be hard at work excavating the mysteries of the Maya. There will always be work for the archaeologist, and time only adds to the amount of research that has to be done.I am now standing at the edge of the Copan site looking out at endless fields of un-excavated mounds - which are the buried remnants of this great city. Miles of archaeological ruins stretch out to the horizon of mountains beyond. Archaeological excavations have been going on at Copan...
More About: Mayan

Next Move from Central America
2008-03-14 03:00:00
Next Move from Central America - Connecting Air Travel HubsI am pondering on some ideas about where I will make my next jump from Central America . I am thinking about staying in this region for a couple more months to visit El Salvador, Belize, travel in Guatemala, and then exit from Mexico.But exit to where? This is the question.Central America is easy to access to and from the United States. There are very cheap flights from NYC and Miami. But to get to other regions from here is a little difficult. Even many flights from Central to South America are first routed through Miami.It is looking like I can go in three directions:1. Fly to JFK for cheap from Mexico, do another 10 days in the USA to visit family and my sister’s new child, then return to NYC to fly to another region of the world. Depending on price I may London, Frankfurt or Istanbul and travel on from there. Or maybe Cairo.2. Go east through the Carribean. It would be great to travel in Cuba right now, but I think the r...

Blog Comments and Email Slow Replies
2008-03-13 00:41:00
Blog Comments and Email Slow Replies I have been rediculously delinquent with responding to the comments on Song of the Open Road as well as my personal emails. I am writing this just to let anyone who has left a comment know that I have read it and I plan on responding, but at this moment I am out in the field doing archaeology for eight hours a day, and my access to the internet is not as easy or cheap as I would like it to be. I have been fortunate these past few months for all of the good, free internet connections that I have been able to find. I was able to complete the layout for Vagabond Journey.com as well as publish on Song of the Open Road, Traveler Photographs.com, and Vagabond Fieldnotes regularly. But I am now back in the bush leagues; back to using internet cafes with slow connections at the rate of 80 cents an hour. Old Faithful is also not able to connect to the internet at the cafe that I have been going to for some reason, so I have not been able to publish the n...
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Mayan Warfare
2008-03-12 02:34:00
Mayan Warfare A four inch long conical arrow made of animal bone sits wedged against the spine of a skeleton buried in a residential area of Copan. During the days of this excavation I had wondered more than once at how this individual met his end. Now I know. He was killed by another human. Probably another Mayan. An arrow pierced through his abdomen and struck against his spinal column, as he died by a turn of violence. The history of the Maya, like all civilized peoples, is strew with the vestiges of warfare.I stood in awe over the curled up skeleton that still harbored the sharp bone point that was plunged into him over a thousand years ago. He died in a flash of a bow string, but the story of his death has survived through the ages. Archaeologists now gaze upon the remnants of his skeleton and pick through his dry and brittle bones.I think about the seemingly inlayed violent attributes of the human species.Some blame warfare and inter-group violence on the advent of civilization...
More About: Mayan

Dell Laptop on the Rocks
2008-03-12 02:28:00
Dell Laptop on the Rocks My big bruising Dell Laptop, Old Faithful, is beginning to falter. After more than two years on the road, she is experiencing her first problems. I think that she is in desperate need of some tech support medicine, though there is not a computer hospital for over a day of travel in any direction.Well, so the story goes, I was uninstalling some useless programs off of Old Faithful’s hard drive on a fateful day a couple of months ago when I got to a program for Word Perfect Office that said that I have not used it for a year. Now I use the Word Perfect word processing program everyday, so I figured that this Word Perfect Office was some trial version “buy me” crap that came with the computer. So I began the uninstallation procedure only to realize that I was axing my word processing program. With a start I halted the proceedings, but some kind of odd damage was done. My Word Perfect word processing program was saved, but something really stranged happened...
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A Vagabond Journey Around the World
2008-03-11 03:59:00
A Vagabond Journey Around the World I travel to feel free. Or so I think. I write to feel free. Or so I also think. “You keep trying so hard to be free that you are just wearing yourself out,” says my mother.Maybe she is right. But I feel fine. The sky is blue, and I would take the one thousand hardships of the Open Road gladly for the joy of waking up each morning with the sun on my face and the notion that I have another town, another city, mountain, or country to explore.Perhaps discoveries are now only for the personal use and enjoyment of the discoverer.I do not think it matters at all how many times a discovery has been made, it is still a discovery none the less . . . to the discoverer.But we still play the same game that all the old-time explorers played. They had the attention of the masses, while we have only the attention of ourselves. I actually think we are better off. These journeys are for ourselves alone.I want to walk around the world.Yes, I want to walk around t...
More About: Around the world , The World

No Photos of Copan Archaeology
2008-03-11 03:48:00
No Photos of Copan Archaeology Another day of excavating skeletons. Well, actually, I just stood around watching today. The Japanese osteology specialist was at the helm. He scraped, ever slowly scraped the grains of soil from the orangish bones with dental tools. Archaeology is a slow process. We are only making an few inches of ground a day, only getting further into the soil by the tedious scrap, scraps of small metal tools and plastic haired brushes. But archaeologist know time, and they know that what has been buried for a thousand years can wait for the patient hands of archaeology. Photo which does not really show any discoveries or sensitive data. I think this photo is alright to publish.I would really like to show my photos of this excavation on this blog, but I am not permitted to publish any details about the site- especially photographs- and I had to sign a document that said that I would obey this rule. I do not think that what they consider as “publishing” is really...

Honduran Sunday
2008-03-11 03:37:00
Honduran Sunday Copan Ruinas on a Sunday afternoon: rancheros in big cowboy hats gather in the village square with ladies in flowery dresses and dirty white aprons who are selling mangoes. Tourists walk by with big cameras pointing at things and taking photographs. Little brown boys in buckshot t-shirts play chasing games and laugh. Sunday is an easy day in Central America.The market is open today and everyone is walking in the streets with their weekly supplies of fruits and vegetables. There are no supermarkets in this little village, there is no need for one. You can’t have what you want whenever you want it in Copan Ruinas. It is a relaxed, day watching, do it tomorrow Central American pueblo. Tranquilo. Photo of Copan RuinasVillage life moves by slowly on a Sunday afternoon. A ragged boy on a horse trots by making clop-clopping sounds on the cobble stone roads. There is not anything else to do but listen and breathe deep, look up ...

Travel and Food Poisoning
2008-03-11 03:27:00
Travel and Food PoisoningFood poisoning is one of the biggest threats to a traveler, and, unfortunately, is one that anyone who wanders for a little jaunt will invariably have to deal with from time to time. I do not know where food poisoning comes from or how it really happens- probably something with bacteria- so I can not write about any of the deep biological impacts of it. But what I can share is a little of my experience with eating bad food.I pride myself with having a stomach of steel, but after I put it to the test the second time I was in India - I was trying to impress Mira by showing her that I could eat any darn dirty piece of food that is vended on the street, but I only got really ill - it has been faltering slightly. Maybe I am still not 100% from India; maybe I have broken down some of the defenses that I built up from years of travel; maybe it has just been my turn to eat the rotten apple in the barrel a few times in a row? Whatever the case, I have been jumping th...
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Unearthing Skeletons at Copan
2008-03-08 02:18:00
Unearthing Skeletons at CopanCopan is the first archaeology site that I have worked on with the regular presence of human remains. Skeletons are growing out of the bottom of trenches as the soil is gingerly removed from their exteriors. The Central American and Japanese excavators stand over the remains and talk shop. Digging up the ancient remains of humans is all part of the day’s work for these weathered Mayan archaeologists.I cut my archaeological teeth in the forests of the United States and on the Manabi Coasts of Ecuador. A big site for me is a few post molds, a couple good hearths, and a scatter of lithic remnants and tools. Copan has pyramids. Copan is a city of mortar and art and sporting courts. Copan is far beyond anything that I have experienced in archaeology. As I peered down into an excavation unit on my second day of working at Copan, I found the discarded remnants of a crushed human skull tucked away on the inside of a broken clay vessel. A single tooth sat neatl...