Guatemala

As we prepare to head out for Guatemala in the next day or so we are busy trying to get everything in life organized. We have had to rush and get tickets bought for when we are in Peru in June since the popularity of the place at that time caught us off guard. I was able to get a good deal on tickets though through LanPeru to fly us into the heart of the country. Puno and Cusco will be our destinations with a train ride through the Andes for 10 hours to arrive in Cusco. I am looking to that part of the trip. Should be magnificant.

With Guatemala however, I am not sure what is happening. I know we arrive at noon in the capital and then get picked up by Silvia uncle and driven about 3 hours to their house in the mountains, but from there I can't say what will happen really. Taryn and I have plans to go to Copán in Honduras for two nights and see the Mayan ruins there, but Silvia has not decided to come with us still. So we may meet up with her later in the week.

We will then catch a bus to Río Dulce for the night and see sights around there. There is an eco-lodge that looks interesting and also cheap so we hope to stay there. From there we will catch a bus up to Tikal and see the Mayan ruins there. They are supposed to be better than Machu Picchu in some ways. We shall see in June which we prefer.

After two nights in Tikal we are going to come back to Guatemala City and climb Pacaya volcano to see the magma! We want to do this at night since this is said to be the best time to see it. We will then head out to the lakes and chichicastenango where the is supposed to be a huge market. Taryn ought to like that. That should just about cover most of what we are doing down there. Everything else is up in the air. The way I like to travel but not the way the girls like it.

The weather in New Jersey is heating up and getting us ready for the hot central american climate. I can't wait but still have so much to do. And then when we get back we have to move out of our appartment. Fun.

I hope to update this once or twice while I am there. Stay tuned.

The weather has me out

As the seasons change to a better feeling time, I have been spending my time away from the computer and in the elements. This has been a good thing for my sanity but perhaps a distressful occurance for the one or two people who actually read this blog! My apologies. I have however spent much time at work reviewing the new google map site that now offers aerial photographs of north america and to some degree the entire world. It has been a fascinating learning experience to zoom around the world in order to see what the vegetation is like in a remote area. I highly recommend the site for all mapping needs.

On Saturday, Taryn and I went in search of the backpack that will lighten my back load in the coming weeks as we travel through Guatemala. We ended up driving to south jersey and getting one at the new REI store that was just opened there. Afterward we went acroos the street to the Apple store to check out the new iPod Photo. I think I might be sold on it unless something new comes out in the next few months, in which I will then get the newest version.

On our way out of the store we ran into my brother, Elton, who was searching for a free wifi spot to do some things on the internet. Chatted for a few moments and then headed north on 295 to buy more food at Whole Foods. The bain of my week. Food shopping has cost me more than $250! Arg. But we went exploring in the Plainsboro Preserve afterwards and that was great.

We walked the blue loop which was about three miles. We had to jump and build bridges over streams with fallen logs and I got to be yelled at my Taryn because her sneakers were getting muddy. But we made it through with smiles on our faces and the plan to watch a movie when the sun went down. The Village was not as bad as everyone says it is.

Of benchmarks and caches.

Yesterday was such an amzing doy weather wise that I was scrambling getting out of work as to where to go. I knew I had to pick Taryn up at 7:30 but wanted to get something in before that. I thought I would try my hand at finding a benchmark.

I ran a quick search around Plainsboro just to see what was new in the area and to my surprise the Cranbury cache #2 appeared to be active again! I jumped in the car and headed out for this historic town. I hadn't thought of it though that I was hitting rush hoour and the amount of cars going through the town was almost more than the town could handle. I was not deterred though.

I arrived at the dam where the micro cache was located and noticed the worn green string hanging out from the pipe. I know I wasn't very descrete about it but grabed it as about 5 cars went driving past. Signed the log then replaced it without being to noticable. I hope so atleast. I returned to Plainsboro with the renewed intent of finding a bench mark. The first spot I Parked in was in a cul-de-sac of a new housing development (they are hard to avoid these days in New Jersey). I lady opened her front door and yelled at me that I was on private property. I was standing in the street and was going to walk over to the main street. Not wanting to correct her in front of her young child, I got back in the car and moved closer to the benchmark.

It was just as well though. I was on the wrong side of a major road. Parking in the Catholic church parking lot, I quickly found the survey disk in the ground. No real excitement in seeing it but it makes my geocaching profile look and bit diverse. It was also a good hunt for not wanting to leave the neighborhood.

I checked on my cache, the geese are loose, behind my place and all is in order there. I spent about 15 minutes cleaning trash up around the cache area. Can't believe in a city park there is so much junk laying around. ¡Que va!

If you want to visit my cache page go here: http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?guid=e3d2a189-d736-46b8-8fe1-3a4f084a6062

Tomarrow, I will find etra biker. The elusive cache!

Paper in Demand?

Here is an interesting post that I saw on treehugger.com today. I hadn't realized that US paper products are so wanted overseas. I thought we couldn't get people to recycle here. One more thing to export I suppose.

Demand for U.S. Recycled Paper High

April 5, 2005 10:42 AM -

Recently, China has had a voracious appetite for scrap paper, much of which it imports from the United States. The demand in China grew more than 50 percent in 2003, according to the paper industry. Chinese mills purchased about 6 million tons of the 50 million tons of recovered American paper last year, according to the American Forest & Paper Association. To meet that demand, China's mills offer higher prices than many American paper makers, as do mills in India, Indonesia, Japan and South Korea.

U.S. scrap paper often ends up in the new Nine Dragons recycled paper mill -- the world's largest -- in Dongguan, China, north of Hong Kong. Workers there are paid about $3.40 a day to sort mixed paper by hand -- far less than American workers, who are paid at least the $5.15 per hour minimum wage.

Demand for recycled paper is improving in the U.S. too, according to Merilyn Dunn of InfoTrends/CAP Ventures, a Massachusetts consulting firm. Nationwide, shipments of recycled paper rose nearly 12 percent from 2001 to 2003, according to InfoTrends. A variety of factors are involved, Clapp said, including the fact that environmental groups are pressuring retailers and catalog producers to offer more paper containing recycled material, and the price of recycled paper has dropped, reaching a price equal to virgin paper.

[by Justin Thomas]

Planning

Working towards getting thoughts and items together for the trip at the end of the month for Guatemala. I am thinking of getting a new camera but am not sure about is really. I think I might hold onto my Olympus camera just to keep costs down even though the picture quality is not always really good. Need to figure out how to avoid bad pictures with it.

The scenery of Guatemala promises to be outstanding.

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Originally uploaded by jirafa.

Here is a picture of me.

Still learning....

Working out the format of this thing. I was indecisive on which type of blog I wanted to use. I found one called iBlog, which is a mac app but I want the option of updating this when I am away from my mac for a period of time. So then I thought about using typepad, but they wanted some money and I am not ready to commit to paying for the service yet. So I came back to google. Good old google. So this will be the spot for now.

The Start

This is the start of what I hope will be an ongoing project of mine. I have a few ideas of where I want this to go but will hold off on listing them right now. As I build the blog, I will add those topics and features.