My Final Thoughts

Now that I have settled back into the rat race, doing taxes, work, commute, stress etc, I have few thoughts about my trip.

I am glad that I took a Spanish class, some people say it didn't help, but in my case - no speaking or hearing experience, and a little knowledge of the grammar, it helped me on the speaking and hearing part. I was able to get by with what I learned.

As with most of the developing countries, the needs of the people often come before any environment damages that might result of the development. Slash and burn are common in Guatemala. And most of the other countries, there are not many pristine areas left.

As for the people of CA, most of them are friendly, some areas are more so than the others, while some are less (Guatemala highlands, where Maya lived)

With ending of any good trip, it is time to ponder where to go next. I am incline to go back to CA next winter and visiting Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama with family. It will be less of backpacking (may be Nicaragua by myself), and more nature sightseeing and culture visit.

Finally I like to thank those of you who read my blog and/or commented. I enjoyed you all's comments. Until next time, be out there!

Favorite list:

• Towns: San Cristobal de Las Casas, Mexico and Copan Ruinas, Honduras.
• Maya ruins: Tikal, Copan, Uxmal, Chichen Itza, Tulum
• Maya things: ATM cave, San Juan Chamula Village
• Best treks: El Mirador - 120km jungle trek, Tajumulco climb - highest point in Central America over 14000 feet, 10 waterfalls hike in Juayua, seeing and feeling hot lava on Pacaya
• Food: passion fruits

Can do without list:

• Food: Frijoles & tortillas combination, Mexican food
• People: the crazy and the drunk
• Insect: mosquitoes in the room
• Transportation: black smoke spewing chicken buses
• Towns: Rio Dulce, Antigua (must see, but only once - like that of Disney)

Final Trip Cost Breakdown:

Country/Payment	Prepaid	TC	Cash	Credit Card	ATM	Misc	Total
Airplane Ticket	$417.03						$417.03
Honduras		$450.00	$141.00	$38.73	$132.31		$762.04
El Salvador			$265.92		$50.00		$315.92
Guatemala		$150.00	$13.00	$35.06	$691.53		$889.95
Belize		$150.00	$30.00	$65.57	$172.51		$418.08
Mexico		$50.00	$22.00	$4.68	$951.48		$1028.16
							$3,795.82 (-$35 for change back to $)

I also update my trip map to reflect the actually places I visited

My Last Day and the flight home

I spent my last full day of my trip checking out museums, National Palace, wondering the streets, markets, and visiting Templo Mayor, an Aztec ruin right in the center of the city. Actually Mexico City is built on top of a great Aztec (Mexica) City of Tenochtitlan, the capital of Aztec Empire, after the Spanish defeated the empire.

I saw some murals of Diego Rivera, a famous Mexican painter, at the palace and Diego Rivera museum. The strangest thing is that the palace (free) had 5-6 of Rivera's murals, but the museum ($1.5) that dedicated to him, only had one! Ok, the museum is under renovation, so the upstairs was closed.

I tried to visit the engraving museum, but it was closed, and I can't understand what the reason was because there were what looked like people there (the guards tried to explain to me, but my Spanish was not that good). My final visit was to the Post Office Palace, which was built in 1908 of Italian Gothic Renaissance. Still a functional post office with pretty interior, a postal library, and naval museum.

I also got more silver coins and old paper currency (happen to walk by a coin shop), and loaded up on more passion fruits.

After shower and packing up, I met Brian for dinner again. He was struggling with his ex-girlfriend's cancer, his future plan to move to Columbia, and his promise to another girl for a road trip in western US in May.

After the dinner, I just got ready for the final packing. But the dorm is now full, at max of 12 people as well as mosquitoes. I tried to goto sleep around 9, but the light was on, so by 10:30, I asked the couple people in the room to turn off the light. Even with lights off, I still had really hard time falling sleep, too many mosquitoes buzzing around, too hot, and just too worried about overslept for my flight home.

I got up around 4:40AM, because it was too hot and few people were already making noise with their luggage rummage. Couple people in room got up because it was just too hot sleep for them as well. I took the metro to the airport. It took about 45 minutes with 3 transfers. Only at one of the transfer that I have to wait for may be 10 minutes. The Benito Juarez airport looked pretty new, I think I got there early, so the lines for checkin and security were short. The United flight was not packed, and the middle seat of my area was empty - it was only a 4-hour flight to Dulles.

With two-hour time difference, I arrived in Dulles around 3:15PM. It was cloudy and started to rain and sleet soon as I stepped out - welcome home! At the immigration area, someone or something trigger a hand-held device of an officer, and we went into "hold" the line mode for few minutes while they search for the person who I guess carried may be radioactive, biological, or suspicious content. The person who sat at my row was pull out, but he was not the one. I also had bad luck of meeting a strict immigration officer who took his time, and make me goto the baggage inspection area, which I waited 15-20 minutes, only to be asked the same questions, but no search. I think the officer there was wondering like me, why am I in the baggage inspection area. This is the first time, I got pull for baggage inspection, it's more common with people with lots luggage and travel in family. A backpacker? come-on, the immigration officer must be green. He marked the lady in front me for inspection as well. Although I did see a young girl that had big luggage, and they found 4-5 large cartons of what looked like eggs, big no no!

I'll wrap up my blog with my final thoughts and upload the rest of my Mexico photos in a week or 2, need to do tax, catch up on mails, emails, and various finance stuff.