[Above: Who is the real Colin "Corndog" McAuliffe?]

Journal by Colin "Corndog" McAuliffe

We left the tourist city of Antigua, surrounded by beautiful imposing volcanoes, watching the volcano known as Vulcan de Fuego erupt plumes of smoke. The majesty of that sleeping giant was impressive. Unfortunately we ended up watching this wondrous sight from the location of our breakfast break: the parking lot of a Guatemala McDonald’s that had hedges cut into the shape of the trademarked “M”. Strange feeling, but as my 2 Egg McMuffins disappeared into the depths of my stomach, so did my qualms concerning ingesting American fast food in a developing nation.

The day had started out early at 6am, the time we’ve set for days when we are planning to cross borders. On this day, we were planning to cross from Guatemala to El Salvador. We arrived at the border around 10am -- nice and early, and eager to move on. As usual though, the moving on part was the hardest. Personally, I’ve learned that one word rings truest at borders -- and that word is “patience.” There is tons of red tape and bureaucracy that takes place on the frontier between nations, and the only way to make your way through it is to kick back and enjoy the sketchy scenery that surrounds. I like to use the time to sit around to work on my Spanish, and who better to learn from than children.

Children in border towns often live sad lives: They spend the majority of their time panhandling or selling low-cost goods, mostly beverages, to the people in transit. On this particular day my most meaningful encounters were with two children in particular, Dennis and Mila.

I met Dennis as soon as I exited my car. He came up and asked if I needed any help (in Spanish) and I asked him if he could take me to a store where I could but some stuff I needed. Of course he could help, and off we went in search of a local tienda, at which I could buy what I needed. On the way, he asked my name, and when I told him, he couldn’t really pronounce it -- so I defaulted to “El Gringo Loco”, which immediately put a huge smile on his face. The store was found, and I used my change from my purchase to buy my newfound friend Dennis (third photo from the top) some candy. After that, Dennis was my best friend for an hour or two. We hung out and talked for a while. I used the Spanish I have to find out a little more about my new amigo. He was 13, had two brothers, had no girlfriend (although there was one girl he liked), he also liked soccer, and went to school, which he surprisingly said he enjoyed. Apparently, I had met him on the month of his summer vacation, and that was why he wasn’t in school. I asked which he liked better, school or vacation -- and as I figured, he preferred vacation.

Anyway, after some time spent in friendly conversation, Dennis’s friends came around, introductions were made all around, and when the others struggled with my name, Dennis informed the bunch that I was formally know as El Gringo Loco. Within minutes I had a bunch of little El Salvadoran kids yelling “El Gringo Loco” in unison, and just generally having a good time. They were an agreeable bunch of guys, so I bought them and myself an ice cream cone (the grand total for nine ice creams was one dollar). Now I had a little posse all my own. They followed me everywhere for a while, and I was having fun working on my Spanish and just horsing around. I taught them my “monkey dance” and Todd and Adam played some guitar so we could try and teach them some Beatles songs. I asked them all the standard “getting to know you” questions in Spanish and they all responded nicely: they all went to school and were enjoying their month off, and only one of them had a girlfriend, and her name was Roxanne (I tried to teach him the Police song of the same name, to no avail).

Eventually the guys started hounding me to give them stuff and I had to sit them all down and tell them all that begging for money wasn’t going to work, and that having fun in life was more important than money. That worked for a little while, but my fellow redhead Nancy decided to hand out some give-aways to some of the kids, and that started the begging all over again. At that point I kind of just wandered off and sat down on the curb.

So there I was, relaxing and trying to get away from the fray of children, when a little angel with a basket of beverages on her head walks up and sits down beside me. She asked me to take a picture of her and I was more than glad to. She told me her name was Mila, and we had a nice conversation about what her siblings’ names were, and if she went to school. She was definitely the most agreeable and cute out of all her peers at the border, and the whole crew took a liking to her. I spent a nice hour with her having simple discussions in Spanish and teaching her a little English here and there. We took some more photos with her sister for my “Cult of the Corndog” collection (see above), and she enjoyed seeing the images on my digital camera. Adam and I broke out our video camera and shot some interesting footage for our show, and then it was time to roll on to El Salvador.

When I first arrive at a border, I always have fun. The children are fun, cute, agreeable, and for me easy to understand and talk to. Eventually though, I always grow disheartened. It saddens me that these kids are out there begging for money for food. They always tell me they are hungry, and I usually believe them. I’ll never know if it’s true or not, because there is always the possibility that they just have nothing better to do, but for now, ill just assume that I am helping these kids out.

Colin
colin@drivearoundtheworld.com

Logbook for November 28th
Start: Antigua, Guatemala
N: 14* 33.606'
W: 90* 44.252'
Finish: El Tunco, El Salvador
N:13* 28.978'
W: 89* 19.955
Mileage: 135
Notes: Team entered El Salvador. Crossing took 5 hours.

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