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 :)