Viva Leon

In the early morning of a typical thursday in Leon, I walk by the scenes that have become familiar to me walking around before 9am. The old lady selling some kind of bread derivative, followed by a young lady posted on an ideal spot on the corner selling bags of delicious fruit for 10 cordoba a piece (50 cents). Street vendors are unloading their carefully boxed bootleg cd´s and dvd´s, and arranging them on displays, these go for 20 cordobas a piece ($1), and span a wide range of quality. Taxis drive by honking, for what I´m still not sure. They seem to honk at you, the gringo, as if saying ´I know you guys dont walk.´Sometime thisd is accompanied by a full stop and gestured hand motions, paired with nnverbal mouthings of something akin to ´come on, you want the taxi or what?´ As if you are too dumb to even realize you want a taxi. I cross the street, careful not to get hit by any of the wild aforementioned taxi cabs, springing to the other side of the street which is shaded. In many places the difference between walking in the shade or under the sun may be nominal, but here in leon it will completely change your little foot excursion about town- from a nice albeit hot leisurely stroll through the shade, to melting in a pressure cooker and collapsing about 5 blocks down. I walk into Big Foot hostal, my favorite in the city and where I stayed a few times, to drop of my very dirty laundry that is in very serious need of being cleaned properly. If you wanted to continue walking, you would pass by Via Via, another hostal which tomorrow night will have live music. Tonight the music is at Olla Quemado. Turn the corner at you will walk by the movie theatre, which is actually quite nice. The theatre usually has 3 or 4 movies going at a time, and you could buy a ticket, popcorn and soda for something approaching $5 US. During the day there is a hobbled over old woman begging, usually roasting in the sun as opposed to the security of the shade opposite the movie thatre. At night there is a gang of street children jumping around and begging for money as you exit the theatre. I suspect some are high off glue, and yes they do sniff glue as well as god knows what else to get high. These children are who Quetzaltrekkers, the organization I´m volunteering for, is trying to help. The other day we took a group of ten or so kids to the beach, which is about an hour from here by bus. They were all crazy and full of energy. some of the attention we were giving them on this day is the most they would have all week. We brought kids from the older half of the Las Tias Project, ranging from 13-18. Although they all looked like they were about 9 years old, from the malnutrition they have had. I think some of us trekkers are going to the beach today, minus the kids. Chris is guiding El Hoyo, which I was originally scheduled to do but I had to pull out, because I didn´t sleep at all the night before as I helped guide the Full Moon hike, which is once a month and starts at 11pm and goes until the next afternoon- no sleep. I managed to wrangle about 3 hours of sleep at the Quetzaltrekkers house, which is equal to about 3 hours of sleep in a frat house I´d imagine. Living in the house is like being back in college, noisy and fun. Chris and I were scheduled to do El Hoyo back-to-back, but I had one of the newer volunteers take my place today and I´ll join Chris Saturday for the hike. All this writing is making me hungry, might be time for another leon tradition we have, going to Comedor Lucia and getting a nice plateful of food for a little under $2.