11: Guatemala (again), Honduras, and back to Costa Rica

Well, we are now back in Costa Rica, ready to fly back to the UK tomorrow! Since our incredible sailing trip in Belize, we have done a few other exciting things...

Tikal, Guatemala 

We returned to Guatemala, the Eastern side this time, and visited Tikal. I think these were my favourite Mayan ruins, of all the ones that we visited. The ruins are spread throughout the jungle, and you have to do quite a bit of walking if you want to see everything. Some of the temples are incredible, rising above the jungle itself, and you can get some amazing views if you climb up them - not advisable if you suffer from vertigo!

View from the top of Temple IV

Some parts of Tikal date back to about 400BC but its peak was between 200 and 900AD. Approximately 100 000 people are believed to have lived there, but incredibly after it was abandoned in the 10th century, it was only discovered almost 1000 years later. There are lots of other Mayan sites in this part of Guatemala, but many of them are inaccessible other than by a few days trekking through the jungle!

Finca Tatin, Rio Dulce

Our next stop was down the Río Dulce, which is a river that leads to the Caribbean coast of Guatemala. We stayed in a hotel called 'Finca Tatin', a place which is only accessible by boat and therefore amazingly quiet and relaxing. We spent our time there playing games, swimming in the river, walking through the jungle, kayaking, and lying in hammocks! All in all, we had a great time, and were very sad to leave.

Johnny on the rope swing at Finca Tatin

Utila, The Bay Islands, Honduras

We then moved on down to Honduras to visit the Bay Islands, in particular Utila, which is the most popular island amongst backpackers. It's (apparently) the cheapest place in the world to go scuba diving, which means that it's the most popular pastime in the area. We had planned to stay there for a few days, but in the end we decided to move on, as we weren't diving and there didn't seem to be much else to do on the island. It was also quite noisy, with quadbikes and motorbikes driving up and down the main street. All in all I think we both preferred the Cayes in Belize.

Utila, The Bay Islands, Honduras

Santa Elena, Costa Rica

Finally we caught the bus back to Costa Rica, where we decided to visit Santa Elena before heading back to San José. Santa Elena is the base for visiting the cloud forest of Monteverde, as well as the forest of Santa Elena. It's a popular spot for canopy tours (zip lines through the trees), although we decided to keep our feet on the ground. We went on two hikes, first a night hike with a guide, and the following day a hike through the Santa Elena reserve on our own.

The night hike was great, we saw quite a lot of wildlife, including snakes (one viper!), a tarantula, a kinkajou, a two-toed sloth, an opossum, owls, and lots of cool and freaky insects. Our hike the next day was good fun too, although without a guide we didn't see quite so much wildlife. The forest was amazing though, it felt incredibly wild and exotic.

Santa Elena Reserve, Costa Rica

 We are now back in San José, and flying back to the UK tomorrow! It's been an incredible adventure, keep an eye out for the photos on facebook, I will put a link on here soon. 

10: Coastal Ruins and Sailing in Belize

Since our last adventures in Mexico, we visited one more place, called Tulum. It's on the Caribbean coast and there is plenty of beach but also some great Mayan ruins perched on the edge of the coast, which is quite something. We spent a couple of days in Tulum, the first day we just spent exploring on bicycles and going to the beach, and on the second day we visited the ruins themselves. It was quite a relief to be on the coast after being inland in the heat for a while.

The beach at Tulum, below the ruins

Ruins at Tulum

We spent a day relaxing and swimming in the turquoise waters of Caye Caulker, and the following day we set off on quite an adventure. We decided to take a three day sailing boat trip down the coast to a town called Placencia. The trip wouldn't usually last that long but this one is designed to be taken at a very leisurely pace!



Our boat, the Ragga King

The trip was amazing, as we took regular stops to snorkle or swim and there was constant fishing on the boat (Johnny caught a nice big Barracuda). After the first day of sailing we arrived at our first night stop, Rendezvous Caye. This is a tiny island, I think there were a total of about 5 palm trees and you could walk across it in less than 30 seconds. We arrived there and put up our tents, which had been provided. After that, we drank rather a lot of rum punch, until dinner was served - an incredible mix of seafood which had been cooked by the crew on the boat. Much of the food that night included the passengers´ various catches of the day. After dinner the crew set up a campfire which we all sat round, drinking more rum punch!

Rendez-Vous Caye, where we spent our first night

Crewmember Jahlee bringing in a fish

We woke up quite early (and
hungover for some) due to the sun, and after a relaxing breakfast got back on the boat. An awesome day of sailing, snorkling and swimming was had, and then we arrived at our second nightstop, Tobacco Caye. This island is slightly bigger, though  not by very much! After setting up tents, we relaxed and some people went to do some more snorkling. We also spotted a huge sting ray and a turtle next to the dock! After dinner, some traditional drumming had been organised for us to enjoy, which we did, and eventually the locals persuaded all of us passengers to do some
dancing.

The next day was sadly our last, and we sailed down to Placencia not wanting the trip to end! We made some great friends on the boat, all the other passengers (about 12 in total) were lovely people. If you ever happen to be in Belize, I would thoroughly recommend the trip (organised by raggamuffin tours). I wouldn't, however, if you don't enjoy reggae - as our rasta crew had reggae playing during the whole trip - although it did feel kind of appropriate!

Final photo with crew and passengers

Next we're back in Guatemala, seeing Tikal and Rio Dulce. Will keep you up to date soon :)

9: Mexico

Unfortunately I haven't been able to update recently since we've been moving around a bit too much! At the moment we are in Tulum, on the Caribbean coast of Mexico.

Since Guatemala, this is what we've done:

San Cristobal de las Casas

This is a really nice colonial town which was sort of similar to Antigua in Guatemala and Granada in Nicaragua. The town was perhaps the nicest of the three, although also the most expensive! Refreshingly, due to the altitude the weather was lovely, in fact a bit chilly at times. 

We spent most of our time looking around town, exploring the market, and seeing the sites, including the cathedral and the church of Santo Domingo. We also visited the amber museum which was pretty interesting - did you know that real amber is very light (in weight) and never cold? 

Street in San Cristobal

Mexican skeleton drinking tequila

View from above of San Cristobal

After a couple of days enjoying the town, we moved on to:

Palenque

Palenque is the site of some pretty important Mayan ruins, and according to trusty wikipedia: "By 2005, the discovered area covered up to 2.5 km² (1 sq mi), but it is estimated that less than 10% of the total area of the city is explored, leaving more than a thousand structures still covered by jungle."

This is pretty amazing considering how many ruins we saw! The ruins involved a main temple, the Temple of the Inscriptions, where K'inich Janaab' Pakal (a great Mayan King) was buried in a huge tomb. Unfortunately we were not allowed inside, but the temple itself was pretty impressive, as were all the other temples; Johnny of course took it upon himself to climb up each and every one of them.

We camped and had a bonfire near Palenque

Temple of the Inscriptions at Palenque

Chichen Itzá

After Palenque, we moved on to a more well-known Mayan site, Chichen Itzá, which also happens to be one of the seven modern wonders of the world. Actually, we visited it today, so this has been a few full days of Mayan ruins! 

The 'Castillo', which is the famous pyramid of Chichen Itzá that you may have seen pictures of, was in the middle of the site, with lots of other smaller temples and things around it. The castillo was pretty amazing, very much intact considering how old it is.

Chichen Itzá certainly had something about it, but I think I preferred walking around the ruins of Palenque, where you could get up a lot closer to the ruins (and climb them if you wished). Tomorrow we should be visiting Tulum, so more Mayan ruins to come! 

The famous "castillo" at Chichen Itza

Mayan skeleton carvings at Chichen Itza

Mayan Noughts and Crosses...?

8: Lago de Atitlán and Xela, Guatemala

After Antigua, we visited a lake called Lago de Atitlán, which was formed out of the crater of a volcano a very long time ago (about 84 000 years). There are a few towns and villages on the edge of the lake, and we stayed in a village called Santa Cruz, one of the smaller and quieter ones. We stayed in a hostel called La Iguana Perdida, which was recommended to us by a Kiwi couple we had met in El Salvador. The hostel was great, very relaxing and pretty quiet. Meals are a bit different there, as they are served as one big "family" meal in the evening, everyone eating together (both staff, and guests).


The lake was great, but unfortunately there had been an algae bloom the week before, which meant that swimming was out of the question and anything else, like kayaking, wouldn't have been very pleasant. During our one full day at the lake, however, we went on a walk to another village round the edge, which was great but pretty hot!

View of Lago de Atitlán from our walk (you can see the algae)

After spending an awesome and very relaxing time at La Iguana Perdida, we (sadly) had to move on, and came to a city called Xela (pronounced Shey-la), which is sort of our next step up to Mexico. We arrived here yesterday, but personally I am missing the lake as the hostel we're staying in now isn't half as nice (called La Casa Argentina).

We did have some fun today though, as we went to a couple of great places. First we went to a village outside Xela (open air in the back of a truck which was fun) called Almolonga, where it was market day. It seemed to be a big vegetable exchange, as I gather quite a lot of fruit and veg is produced nearby. All the women were dressed in their local typical dress, as you can see below:

Market at Almolonga

 After the market, we headed up to Las Fuentes Georginas, which are some amazing hot springs. We spent quite a while there bathing in the hot water, it was really incredible! One of the pools was too hot though, and it was only possible to go in for a few seconds, but I was too much of a coward to even do that!

Las Fuentes Georginas

 So that's all for now, folks. I'll hopefully be updating this soon, but you might have to wait until we get to Mexico!!

7: Antigua, Guatemala

It is Saturday now, and on Thursday we arrived in Guatemala. We caught a bus from Santa Ana in El Salvador, straight to Guatemala City, where we changed and caught another bus to Antigua, which is where we are staying now.

Antigua is an old colonial town, I believe it used to be the capital of Guatemala, a long time ago. It´s very well preserved, with lovely cobbled streets and nicely painted buildings. Because of strict building regulations, shops don´t even seem to be allowed their traditional signs - MacDonald's even has a classy wooden and gold one!

Yesterday we spent most of the day exploring the town and seeing a few sights. Below you can see the Santa Catalina archway in the centre of Antigua. After that we visited La Merced, which is a big church in the town, followed by Las Capuchinas convent.

Santa Catalina archway

Panorama of Las Capuchinas Convent, and Johnny

 

 

 

Today we visited a small village outside the town called San Juan del Obispo. There is a big "Palacio" there, which is where the first ever bishop of Guatemala lived, and introduced Christianity to the country (as far as I understand). It was a lovely quiet village, nice to escape the touristyness of Antigua. You also had a great view of the Volcano (Volcan de Agua) from the village, which is the volcano that shadows the whole area.

 

 

 

Volcan de Agua, as seen from San Juan del Obispo

I think we will spend the rest of the day chilling out, and tomorrow we're going to head on to Lago de Atitlan, so will let you know how we get on hopefully! Here's a couple of extra photos I thought you might like:

Bus library, in the centre of Antigua

View from the rooftop of our hostel

6: Moving on... El Salvador!

So, I have now left everything behind in Costa Rica, and am now in El Salvador! Johnny and I took an 18 hour bus from San José, Costa Rica to San Salvador, El Salvador: leaving at 3am on Sunday night/Monday morning (depending on how you see it) and arriving in San Salvador at about 9pm. We spent the night in a niceish hotel in the city, but moved on quickly the next day to Santa Ana, a smaller and more manageable town about an hour's bus ride away from the capital.

The bus ride was pretty entertaining, we even had our own clown, performing interesting (though perhaps not very convincing) magic tricks in return for any tips or donations the passengers were prepared to give. It seems that the best way for street sellers to make money here is on the buses, seller after seller jumps on any bus they can, selling anything from cashew nuts to herbal tea with "magical properties", to spongebob stickers (which of course Johnny bought - the guidebook is now covered in mini spongebobs).

We spent the day yesterday relaxing around Santa Ana, which is quite a pleasant town. After a couple of beers on the rooftop we visited the Cathedral (see below) and then headed in to the central market, which was busy and smelly, but a lot of fun.

Cathedral in Santa Ana, El Salvador

Today (Wednesday) we went on a day trip to a local national park, ´Parque Nacional Los Volcanes`, which is a couple of hours bus ride away from Santa Ana. We planned to climb up Volcan Santa Ana, apparently (or so we were told) the nicest of the three volcanoes in the park. Once we arrived we had to wait until 11am for a guided tour to start, as you are not allowed to climb up on your own, due to crime/muggings, etc... In the end we had a guide, and two police escorts! (Unfortunately we had to pay about $8 each instead of about $3 that we were expecting).

The guide was going at quite a pace, so it was a bit difficult to keep up. The whole trip (up and down the volcano) was supposed to last 4 hours, but we did it in about 3! The whole climb was really cloudy, but luckily we could see the crater once we got to the top:

Crater of Volcan Santa Ana

After getting back down and waiting for the bus for about 1h30, we got back to Santa Ana ok in the end! We are currently deciding what to do next, but it looks like tomorrow, we're heading to... Guatemala!!! Will keep you updated, hopefully :)

5: Nicaragua

This week I went to Nicaragua so that I could renew my visa (UK nationals - and many others - are only allowed to stay in Costa Rica for 3 months at a time). Joanna, Johnny and I set off last Sunday at 6am and started on the 9 hour bus ride to Granada, which is on the Western side of Nicaragua. The capital of Nicaragua is Managua but we were told to avoid it and stick to the more interesting and picturesque Granada. On arrival in Granada we checked in at a hostel called The Bearded Monkey which turned out to be pretty cool, despite the grumpy receptionist. We also met a girl called Annefleur, from Holland, who ended up sharing our dormitory and joining us for the following couple of days.

We spent out first evening and full day exploring Granada, which looked something like this:

Granada from above

The town has a lovely feeling about it, it was full of tourists but it didn't really matter - the colourful buildings and the atmosphere of the place made it worthwhile. Horse and carts were trundling around the town carrying tourists and, seemingly, some locals too. Granada was originally founded by Spaniards and architecture is famously colonial, very different from anything I have seen in Costa Rica.

On our way to breakfast at "Kathy's Waffle House" - which was excellent, by the way - we realised that something interesting was going on... there seemed to be a film being made, with lots of people wearing red t-shirts and bearing flags running enthusiastically up the street. It turned out that an advert was being made for a presidential campaign for "El Gordo Presidente" (The Fat President). It seemed very fun and the latino music was blasting out of the speakers. I'm not sure a campaign like this would go down well in Britain!

Making of a TV ad for El Gordo Presidente

On our second day we made a day visit to Masaya, a town which is about 45 minutes away from Granada and famed for its craft market. We spent the day walking round and discovering the town, and made a few (cheap) purchases in the market. The town and surrounds were a lot "rougher" than Granada, perhaps more indicative of the "real" Nicaragua (unseen by tourists)... but we still had good day.

In the evening we went to a local Irish Pub (run by a genuine Irishman) and had the best fish & chips I've tasted for a while! It was a real taste of home, although slightly odd knowing that home was such a long way away.

We decided to leave Granada on day three (Wednesday) to head to Laguna de Apoyo, where we spent the night. The lake was lovely, and we spent a lot of time lounging around reading and using the facilities provided by the hostel (such as kayaks). Here's our view from the hostel:

Laguna de Apoyo

We went back to Granada on Thursday and then made an afternoon trip to a place called Coyotepe. This is an old fort that was used as a prison up until the 1980s. A volunteer from the Nicaraguan boy scouts took us round on a tour of the place, and told us about the gruesome history of the place. Some pretty chilling stories! It was principally used for prisoners of war during the Nicaraguan Civil War, and we were shown pitch black cells and torture cells where prisoners had had to endure some pretty horrific things. All in all an interesting but slightly chilling experience (and there were plenty of bats flying around above our heads too).

Sadly we headed back to San José on Friday, but having had a taste of Nicaragua I want to go back and see more! I just hope I have the time and the money to do so...

Check out the photos here: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=280593&id=614663552&fbid=10150128491258553