Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Pastimes : Archaeology -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Tom Clarke who wrote (58)	2/19/2006 4:16:56 PM
From: Lazarus_Long	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 7897

Nah. I avoid war zones. Or try to. When we went to Guatemala, turns out they were in the 20th year of a 40-year civil war. NO WONDER the people were pissed off! No matter what they did, the shooting didn't stop! Saw more Mercedes roaming the streets of Guatemala City then than we saw back home in Silicon Valley. And the average and extreme highs of wealth were probably 1000-to-1. You were either very rich or very poor in Guatemala. We also saw people with oozing wounds that weren't being treated and some with a right-angle turn in their lower leg. It had been broken in the earthquake a few years before and they didn't have $25 to get a cast on it and were now crippled for life. What a shame. And a case of elephantiasis which resulted in crippling. Tikal in Guatemala is the the most overrated site on earth. Copan in Honduras or Chichen Itza or Uxmal or Teotihuacan or Monte Alban in Mexico are much better. And we visited San Cristobal las Casas in Chiapas in Mexico about a year after Subcomandante Marcos marched in and took it, then shot it out with the Mexican Army. When we went, everything was supposedly settled and quiet according both the US and Mexican gov'ts. So we're driving on some little unpaved dirt road on the way back from a small site, look off in a cornfield by the side of the road- -and there's a Mexican Army armored division parked in the cornfield. So if everything's so quiet, why do you need armored divisions? And on every street corner of Tuxtla Guttieriz, the capital of Chiapas, is a Mexican soldier with an M-16. We were stopped for ID and searched by federales (Mexican federal police) 3 times, and once by the Mexican Army, who also took our pictures. Oh. And we've bribed the cops four times in Mexico. The purpose of their stopping us was to get the bribe.