See You Soon?

Antigua and the rest of Guatemala

2009-06-17T15:05:00.000-07:00

Argh. I haven't updated in so long that I don't know where to begin. Keeping a blog when you're traveling is proving much harder than I thought it would be.

So I arrived into Antigua in the middle of May and started Spanish school straight away. I did 14 days in all, studding Monday to Saturday. To begin with I was staying in a student house which was fine but a bit like being in a hotel apart from the fact that we got 3 meals a day. Towards to end of my stay I moved in with a local family which was much better. The experience was more personable and obviously because you are living under the same roof with the family you speak a whole lot more Spanish. And that was one of the main problems with Antigua. Although it was a lovely town and a really great place to spend a couple of weeks there were way too many tourists. Every night would be spent speaking English. Saying that my Spanish is at a stage where I can say a few things but once I try to build on it I fall apart. I can explain to people where I'm coming from and where I'm going but when they ask how I'm in such a position it's difficult to answer. Practice makes perfect though and I had such a great time before that I want to do at least a few more weeks of Spanish, so I plan on making a few more stops possibly in Nicaragua, Panama and Bolivia.

In between doing my classes learning Spanish and speaking English to everyone else I visited a number of different places nearby. I spent a week over on the shores of Lake Atitlán which was described by Aldous Huxley (yeah!!) as being way better than Lake Como. I stayed in a town called San Pedro which was fine but so laid back that by the time I actually bothered to check how long I'd been there it had already been 5 days and needed to get back soon.

From Lake Atitlán I went over to Chichicastengo which is a town in the Guatemala highlands. It's a place where indigenous customs still take centre stage and for two days of the week is engulfed by the market. Thursdays and Sundays are the days to go. I went on a Thursday so maybe that effected things but I wasn't overly impressed. Basically they were selling the same old things which gets sold at every other market in Guatemala, but on a larger scale. The market folk were also a lot more aggressive than in other parts of the country, maybe they know the tourists are a soft touch. But so much so that I was forced into buying a tea cosy from a lady who should definitely try out for the Guatemalan version of the Apprentice.

In fact now that I think of it Guatemalans really do make fantastic sales pitches. On every bus you get on there will be a least someone selling something completely unrelated to sitting on a hot dusty bus. Like razor blades, or batteries. I got on a bus the other day and a man came down the isle and handed everyone a standard blue biro pen. He then stood at the front of the bus whilst it was bumping along the road and proceeded to make a 5 minute sales pitch on why this particular blue biro was so much better than every other freaking blue biro out there and that you'd be a fool to miss out on this fantastic opportunity. He sold a few, but I didn't buy, he just didn't put the heat on like the tea cosy woman.

Also spent a bit of time down on the black sand beaches of the Pacific coast. The town was called Montericco but it was way too hot (sand especially) and there were so many insects hanging around just waiting for the chance to rip my leg up that I couldn't really enjoy it. Luckily we only spent one night there... me on a bedbug infested mattress. This particular post is starting to become very negative, I can feel it. I am tired and it's hard to remember in detail things I did over a month ago, but that's no excuse, I will be better.

Next stop El Salvador home to a brutal civil war and glorious surfing, or so I think (that's in regards to the surfing rather than the war).

Lanquín and Semuc Champey

2009-05-26T14:15:00.000-07:00

Lanquín is a tiny village nestled right in the heart of the Alta Verapaz district. Alta Verapaz along with Petén which are both in the north of the country make up over half of Guatemala in size yet only something like 4% of Guatemalans actually live here. The landscape is truly stunning with lush rolling hills and valleys saturated in mist punctuated only by the occasional fast flowing river.

The reason for coming Lanquín apart from the scenery was to visit the pools of nearby Semuc Champey. The main river in the area, the Rio Cahabon cuts underground at Semuc leaving a limestone bridge of sorts. Whilst the river runs underground the top of the bridge hosts a number of natural pools which are the result of overflow from the river. The pools, which are fantastically clear and pretty warm I guess due to the fact that the water just isn't moving very fast, descend in a staircase like fashion until they join up with the rest of the river below.

On the river bank just down from Semuc Champey are the Kan'Ba Caves. Before hand I didn't think heading into a cave for 45 minutes carrying only a candle (!) which you have to some how swim with in freezing cold water whilst navigating your way over some very slippery jagged rocks in flip flops would be for me... but it turns out I actually quite that stuff. It's not actually as bad as it sounds. For starters the candles you are given are super strength nothing will harm me type candles and you can stick them in your mouth when the water is to deep to walk in, which is only for a small part of the way. It's also quite a wide cave and only part of the way are you squeezing yourself through cracks which you are 100% sure will never allow you through. Anyway in conclusion caving is brilliant and I want to do more.

Guatemala... Flores and El Mirador

2009-05-19T15:50:00.001-07:00

I arrived into Flores after spending the day on buses coming from Belize City. It's about 130km but takes forever because the roads are pretty terrible, especially on the Guatemalan side of the border. Flores is a lovely little town - it sits on a tiny island in the middle of quite a large lake. All I knew about Flores before arriving apart from it's setting was that it was close to Tikal, one of the largest archaeological Pre-Columbian Mayan sites in the world. The size of Tikal is unmatched, most sites have one or two big pyramids whereas Tikal has maybe six or seven. The place is simply amazing, some of the pyramids are so big it's hard to fathom how they were ever constructed. Tikal also has a great setting, it's right in the heart of the rainforest about 60kms from Flores which is the nearest town. In terms of setting it compares with Palenque in southern Mexico but in size it dwarfs it.

The following day I signed up to a five day hike in the El Mirador basin which is a huge geographical area in far northern Guatemala boxed in on all sides by Mexico. Few people live in this very remote area which is all tropical rainforest and low lying swamp. In the heart of the El Mirador basin is one of the earliest political states in Mesoamerica, El Mirador. The site is so remote though that a huge amount of it is still largely uncovered. It also means that tourism to the area has still not taken off and anyone who wants to see it either hikes or flies in by helicopter. I wanted the latter but unfortunately I just couldn't justify spending 4 months budget on it. There were five of us on the hike including our guide, a French guy I'd been traveling with since Mexico City, an Israeli girl and a Canadian guy.

We set off the next day and got the bus from Flores to the last town before the rainforest proper begins, a place called Carmelita. It's a tiny village of about 500 people and it's where we spent our first night, the guides mum being our hostess.

The next day we set off walking and did about 28kms in all making camp by about five in the afternoon. Camp was basically an area cleared of trees with enough room for us to sling our hammocks. We had all the food and water we needed as four horses came along with us. The entire basin has sites dotted all over the place varying from huge mounds of earth to proper excavated sites which poke out of the rainforest. On our first morning we (I) woke (was woken) at 5am and climbed (and was dragged) to the top of a pyramid very close by to watch the sunrise. In truth it was definitely worth it because it gave us the first sense of how far we really were from everything.

On the second day we hiked for 35kms and ended up at another camp which was a little bigger and even had a makeshift football pitch. The pitch came with giant roots where the penalty spot should be, rocks just small enough not to be able to see but big enough to cut your feet on and a gradient so ridiculous that football was all but impossible to play. Is it any wonder Guatemala doesn't produce any football players.

The second camp was in the heart of El Mirador site. To clarify, the geographical area is called the El Mirador basin, within that area there are hundreds of Pre-Columbian Mayan sites and the most impressive of them is called El Mirador. On the third day after resting up we walked around the El Mirador site which was very close to our camp. The site is bigger than even Tikal in size but unfortunately because so much of it is still uncovered it isn't as impressive. What makes it special is that you are so remote and there are no other tourists budging into you and asking for you to take pictures of them posing like an idiot. The stand out of El Mirador is the giant pyramid El Dante which was constructed roughly 2,500 years ago and up until the late 80's was still the largest man made structure in Guatemala.

On our forth day we set off back to Carmelita via the camp we spent our first night at. The forth day was the hardest and we were all starting to feel the strain. I guess a good way of avoiding unnecessary pain especially in the feet would be to wear proper hiking boots. As you will remember though my shoes (not even hiking boots) were stolen on a bus in Belize, so I wore my flip flops the whole way. I was going to buy some shoes in town before we left but the trip was planed so last minute that I ran out of time.

We decided to sleep on top of the pyramid close to camp on our forth night (the same pyramid we climbed for sunrise) as it was a full moon. The effect you get when you are at the highest point around and it's a full moon is something like being at the bottom of the sea and looking up. The sky towards the horizon was supremely dark but as it got closer to the moon it became a navy blue. The top of the pyramid was lit up to such an extent that at 1am it could well have been dusk or dawn.

We hiked back to Carmelita the village we spent our first night at on our final and then the next morning returned to Flores on the bus. It was a fantastic trip and something that should be done by everyone with enough time who travels through Flores, Guatemala. The actually hiking was pretty straight forward in the sense that we weren't constantly going up and down and the terrain was all fairly easy to walk on hence why I could do more than 120kms in flip flops.

The Belize experience

2009-05-17T11:50:00.000-07:00

24 hours or just over was about how long I spent in Belize. There were a few things I wanted to do in the country but unfortunately they were all working out way too expensive. Belize is one of the most expensive countries for a tourist in Latin America despite the vast majority of it's population having very little disposable income. I still don't quite understand that, I guess it has something to do with me not being a economist.

So I spent the night in Belize City which is a strange place. It's the biggest city in the country by a long way and has a bit of a dodgy reputation which from what I saw is not completely undeserved. The city is very dilapidated and with clapboard houses everywhere it has a very Caribbean Island feel to it. Gangs and drugs certainly run the place and there presence is pretty obvious. I woke up the next morning still undecided on what I wanted to do. I was helped by the fact that the country had closed down for 4 days. I arrived in on Thursday and Friday was the 1st of May which is Labour day and in Belize that means everything closes down for 4 days so nothing was due to open until the following Tuesday. And when I say everything I mean everything, the banks were all closed, as where all the shops and even the hospital. How the main hospital in the biggest city can close for 4 days I don't know but it was most definitely closed! With Guatemala so close and the knowledge that I could get to Flores within a day I decided to head straight out of Belize.

My Belize experience went from mediocre to pretty terrible when on the bus from Belompan the capital to the Guatemalan border by bag was broken into. I stupidly put it at the back of the bus and then sat about five seats in front meaning that I couldn't keep an eye on it. It was an amateur mistake and I blame the buses in Mexico, they were just too damn safe. I lost a pair of shoes, some jeans and a shirt. I think it was a two man job as this guy sat down next to me and talked for the whole way until he got off which was about 20 minutes before we hit the border. He distracted me just enough so that his friend at the back of the bus could put his hand in and grab what he could. I might be wrong and he could have just been a nice guy who likes to talk for hours on end about the inane details of his life, but something tells me he had a part to play.

Luckily they didn't get anything too valuable and you hear some real horror stories when your on the road so in the context of things, I think I got off pretty lightly.

The Yucatán

2009-04-28T15:02:00.000-07:00

I arrived into Campeche looking forward to the fact that I was now on the coast for the first time and I had also entered the Yucatán Peninsula. My happiness was quickly shot down though when I realized that Campeche city has no beach to speak of. Just a very firm concrete sea wall. Add to that the fact that the town really doesn't have any sites, apart from an even older sea wall which protected against pirates rather than the water. It's all well and good to aimlessly walk down the cobbled streets marveling at the vibrant colour of the houses. But even that can only occupy you for a few hours. So I got out of Campeche as quick as possible and took the bus to Mérida.

Mérida is state capital and seems to have a lot more going for it. It's bigger for a start and there is a real buzz about the place. I managed to find a great hostel to stay in (the best so far). It even had a swimming pool and I mean a proper swimming pool, not something only your feet can in enjoy. On one of the days there I made a trip out to the cenotes with my French buddy and few other people at the hostel. To explain - a cenote is a sinkhole with rocky edges which gets filled up with rain and ground water. The ones I visited were all underground but all were slightly exposed to allow enough light in. The colours given off especially when a ray of sunlight shines through are amazing. I don't think I've ever swam in water that was clearer and it makes swimming in the turquoise waters of the Caribbean seem like a hideous chore.

From Mérida I went to Cancún via the Mayan site of Chichen Itza. Chichen is impressive no doubt, but I think the more of these sites you see the less impressive they gradually get. I visited it at the height of the day which was a mistake and there were so many waddling tourists around that it wasn't particularly enjoyable. That evening I ended up in Cancún. Cancún is ugly beyond belief and serves no purpose other than allowing Americans to spend $150 a night staying in some 30 floor mess of a hotel whilst partying all night in a collection of truly abysmal clubs who hoover your pockets of every last peso... or dollar which they prefer. People talk of going to Cancún for the nightlife but it really isn't worth it. I've had much more fun in San Cristobal and Mérida... save your money and go some place else.

From Cancún I went to Isla Mujeres which is a small island just off the coast. There really is very little to report from this place. It's nice enough, but if your not into sunbathing or splashing about in the sea it's really not for you.

I then ended up in Playa del Carmen which seems to be a slightly more sophisticated version of Cancún. It's certainly no were near as hideous and the nightlife is a lot better, but it still throngs with tourists. As with a number of other places on the Yucatán coastline there really isn't anything else to do in Playa other than sit on the beach all day... and by this point I was kinda sunburnt so I couldn't even do that. So you end up reading and sleeping by day and partying by night. That is until your backpacker senses kick in and tell you to get the hell out because this isn't what your travelling for.

An hour south of Playa is Tulum where I am now. The only reason to stop in Tulum is to see the ruins which are fantastic. They sit perched right on the cliff edge over looking the Caribbean with iguanas and palm trees perfectly positioned for you photos.

That brings me to today. Tomorrow I head into Belize which I'm really looking forward too, mainly because I can start using English again without feeling like a dumb tourista.

San Cristóbal and Palenque

2009-04-16T19:05:00.000-07:00

I arrived into San Cristóbal on the night bus from Oaxaca. It wasn't much fun, night buses never are. I remember this one particularly for an annoying little kid who insisted on playing with his star wars toy all night. A star wars toy which when touched made a whoosh sound like a light-saber being swung round. I was so annoyed but no one else seemed particular put out, which I thought was strange.

San Cristóbal is known in Mexico as the place the Zapatista's took control of for a few days. They have been in a state of war against the Mexican government ever since but San Cristóbal has since calmed down. Although you can't walk two blocks without seeing their red star flag or a t-shirt with Subcomandante Marcos' face printed on the front. With that the town attracts a lot of backpacker hippies who ramble about town pulling their 2 foot dreadlocks behind them. I'm not really sure what the locals think of them, but one defining memory is of this guy playing a digerido to an audience of 5 year olds all pointing and laughing. That I think about sums up their presence in town.

Sunday, my second day in town happened to coincide with Easter Sunday, and the culmination of Semana Santa which is the biggest of all holidays across Latin America. There was a parade through town consisting of many different floats all promoting different themes. It was fantastic to watch and started off with girls dressed up as fairies waving at the crowds and kids from the local schools marching through with theeir drums and trumpets. The funny thing was that as the parade went through it got seedier and seedier until the last couple of floats where literally just girls on the back of pickup trucks dancing in bikinis. These last few floats were all sponsored by either Coca Cola or Sol (local beer) and made for a truly amazing contrast from the first few very family orientated traditional floats. Only in Mexico it seems could that kind of thing happen.

A few days later I made the trip down to Palenque, a small town close to the Guatemalan boarder known only for the ruins the town is named after. The first thing you really notice as you get off the bus is the unrelenting heat and humidity. It really was unbearable. Coming from San Cristóbal you drop about 6,000 ft and it makes all the difference. The ruins themselves are fantastic, probably the best I've seen so far. The setting is the real selling point here as you really are in the heart of the jungle. The heat though, unfortunately really takes it's toll and after about 10 minutes you are dripping with sweat (and this is 8.30am before the sun as really come out!). With that to deal with you can really only last a couple of hours.

I decided that I'd had enough of Palenque what with it's ridiculous climate so I decided to make the trip north to Campeche on the coast of the Yucatan peninsular. On my first day which is today, it was 40°C !!! Argghhh

Oaxaca

2009-04-11T17:03:00.000-07:00

I love how many of the people I've met on my trip have insisted on calling the place Ox Haca, despite me constantly dropping in the fact that it is actually pronounced Wa Ha Ka. That's sounds terribly bigheaded and I'm not particularly good at pronunciations anyway, or spelling for that matter so I'll move on.

I arrived in on the night bus from Mexico City. It's about 300 km and takes just over 6 hours to complete the journey. My bus left from the southern bus terminal in Mexico City at 11.40 pm which got me into Ox Haca at 5.40am! For some reason it didn't dawn on me before that 5.40am is quite early to be arriving into a not to big town (200,000 odd). The bus terminal was a hive of activity but one step to the left or right and it was pitch black with very few taxis. I decided I could walk to the hostel that I had singled out using my guide book. Bad move. I walked for about 10 minutes in probably the wrong direction (still not sure) and then decided to try and hail a cab. Sure enough one came along in about 5 minutes and took me directly to the hostel. The hostel was not there anymore. Well it was, but it was the shell of a building. It looked like it had closed down quite some time ago. I suppose that's what you get for using a guide book which was researched in 2005. I decided that walking around aimlessly in the dead of night was probably a bad idea and I knew I was near to the zocalo (main square of town) so I proceeded to set up base camp and drift to sleep, bag firmly clutched to chest.

When I woke I didn't quite know what time it was but the sun was certainly up. I got a few odd looks from people who thought I'd been there all night but apart from that no harm done. I found a hostel a few blocks away and was then told I couldn't check in until 1.30pm. Great!! As for what I actually did in Ox Haca apart from shuffle along the colorful streets from one site to the next... was, well not a huge amount. It's seems in most of these colonial style towns most of the fun is just walking the streets and people watching to your hearts content.

I visited Monte Alban a few days into my stay and although not as big as Teotihuacan (just outside of Mexico City) it's still an impressive site. What amazed me the most about this place is that it's 6000 ft above sea level and 1,300 ft above the valley floor. It seems like it was built on top of a hill simply to prove that it could be done. The ground is noticeably flat as well, which is remarkable as it's about the size of 4 football pitches. The overriding feeling I got looking around is the absolute painstaking work taken to construct something of this size. People would have spent their whole lives over it.

Greater Ox Haca is also home to "the worlds widest tree" which in my book is up for debate. Firstly who is going around measuring trees? I'm sure there is someone, but have they measured enough to give an accurate picture? It's a great tourist trap and honesty is an impressive tree, but I think calling it the worlds widest is cheating a bit. I've seen Baobab's and Redwood trees that you can drive you car through. Add that to the fact that the guide couldn't actually tell me what kind of tree it was, and the fact that it looks suspiciously like three or four trees that have grown together. Can that happen?

Anyway, in conclusion Ox Haca is a fun place to visit for a couple of days... just make sure you make the journey in the day.

Next stop San Cristobal. Well, I'm here already, but that is the next blog update.

Mexico City

2009-04-06T08:48:00.000-07:00

This is my eighth day in Mexico City and what a fantastic city it is. When I arrived on last Monday evening I was expecting to spend just a few nights and then move on. But it seems easy to be seduced by this truly huge city.

On Tuesday my first real day in the city (having arrived the night before) the hostel I was staying at was providing a free walking tour. It ended up at the fantastic Museo Nacional de Antropologia which is Mexico's biggest museum by quite some distance and charts the history of the country and it's people from the first to step foot on the continent via the bering straight to modern day indigenous groups.

On Wednesday I went out to Teotihuacan which is about an hours bus journey outside of Mexico City. This was the first pre-Columbian pyramid structure I had ever seen so naturally I was blown away by it. The Pyramid of the Sun, the biggest of the three pyramids is amazing and great fun to climb, the steps at points are so steep you may as well be on all fours.

Thursday was spend exploring the city a bit more, the Frida Kahlo museum is great, but mostly because the house is so lovely.

Xochimilco in the suburbs of the city was on the agenda for Friday. It's hard to explain but Xochimilco is basically as serious of canals with punt boats to rent (along with punter). The day I went happened to coincide with some kind of beauty contest which was a serious of girls being paraded on very extravagant boats. There were so many boats on the canal at times through that you could barely see the water. Watching the punters trying to overtake each other with little space for maneuver was great fun.

Then Friday evening I went of to see a wrestling match which disappointed slightly. Suspending your disbelief is import obviously but some of it was ridiculous. All to often a big guy wearing only pants and a mask on would slap another big guy wearing only pants and a mask. And when I say slap and I mean a big back handed slap to the chest. This would carry on for a while each wrestler taking turns at slapping each other until they decided that it was time to spectacularly jump out of the ring onto each other.

Saturday was spent hanging out in the city visiting a few more things including the Torre Latinoamericana building which up until 10 years ago was the tallest in Latin America and now seems completely unused apart from the lookout. The top was a great place to get some pictures of the city and also see the massive amounts of pollution emitted which you can't really see from the ground.

I then travelled out to the town of Taxco on Sunday. About 2 hours on the bus but defiantly worth it. It's a gorgeous little town made prosperous from silver mining, which it seems is on offer in every other shop. The town is perched on a steep hillside so walking around the town you are constantly either climbing up or down and it really adds to the uniqueness of the place.

So today I'm off to Oaxaca a 6 hour bus journey and will update you on my findings.

Off today

2009-03-30T01:23:00.001-07:00

Sitting at home with about 20 minutes until I need to set off for the airport I decided I wanted to make a blog. With the Ibrahimi inspired title I can't go wrong. Mexico prepare yourself.