i need some alone time

i had my first instance of vaguely-familiar-person-who-i-cant-quite-place syndrome last night. and only 10 days in.

im walking along the coast here in flores, and some fat topless dude pounding beers at a cafe shouts "hey, you made it out of san ignacio without being shot, huh?"

i stared at his massive whiteness. nothing registered. was he talking to me? shot?! finally it dawned on me that he was doing the exactly same thing in san ignacio when i checked into my hotel there. sitting around, drinking beer, and spewing friendly nonsense. but with a shirt back then. thats what threw me off, i think.

he was refering to the fact that the day before i arrived in SI, there was a bank robbery one block from my hotel, directly across the street from my favorate panades shack. a shootout in the streets ensued and two people were killed. which is pretty weird considering san ignacio seemed like such a mellow, friendly place.

the other more common occurance is running into people ive met before who i DO remember. i ran into the "no foreplay" girls again, for example, deep in the bowels of ATM cave. i have run into "new york couple cycling around the mayan sites" several different places, and had dinner with them twice.

i meet nobody at home. but on the road even when i try to sneak off and find time to myself, my plans are thwarted. 2 nights ago i was supposed to have a quiet night in laid back el remate, but a group of germans who had lived there for 4 years invited me to join them forced me to drink ridiculous amounts of gallo (the local beer). (this didnt make tikal @5:30 am particularly easy). and last night i specifically sought out an empty bar/restaurant with the plan to have a drink as the sun set over the lake and then run off to use the internet. instead i ended up having dinner with sophie from quebec and talking until late. another night in san ignacio, i got corralled into a trivia constest joining 2 canadians and an expat american kid. we won, by the way, and i made some dough. largely thanks to a deep knowledge of movie trivia that i had no idea i had.

i guess this post is for people who think that traveling alone is in any way lonely.