So all of our border crossings (so far - fingers crossed) have been pretty straightforward, just the usual minor bureaucracy, none of the West African style nightmares. We´re in Costa Rica at the moment, going surfing in the next few days and maybe a bit more diving...
It always amazes me how much more trusting you have to become when travelling, whilst still being aware. When you´re in a mental bus station with hundreds of buses and people and some complete stranger at the bus station tells you that this is the bus you need, tells you to pay on board and throws your sizeable rucksac onto the roof in around three seconds. Or, when some dodgy looking bloke at the border with a calculator and a bundle of money looks at you and tells you an exchange rate that you haven´t researched (just add 10% to their first rate seems to be a good rule of thumb here). Also, I guess it´s all about making connections and finding tiny bits of common ground. Like our taxi driver in Guatemala City who didn´t speak a word of english and chattered away while rooting through his cds, selected one and with an enormous grin pressed play and stated "ingleterra" - out of the speakers blared "lonely, I´m so lonely" as sung by Kim Il Jong in team America. Random and hilarious.
So, anyway, Nicaragua. The most volcanic country of Central Amercia, still largely undiscovered and all the more lovely for the fewer travellers. We were on a mission to get to Granada for Christmas so sadly had to miss out on Leon... always hard, but reality is beginning to dawn that our trip´was pretty optimistic, given the amount of ground we have to cover in three months!
Christmas day was like no other, a long walk around the historic town of Granada (in need of a big clean up and a little diosappointing after what we've heard about it)and a bit of breakfast saw us watching Lord of the Rings on HBO (not too disimilar to a UK Christmas in the Pollard household!) Fellow travellers will understand our love of the ever reliable HBO for a little bit of familiar entertainment! To do Granada justice we took a lovely horsedrawn tour of the town (in the rain), with a lovely Spanish guide who gave us a really thoughtful insight into the history. Thankfully our Spanish is now good enough to understand and communicate effectively so we got a lot out of it.
The Spanish and US have a lot to answer for in this region of the world, millions of deaths over the last five centuries, and more recently political meddling, coups, general war mongering... for resources, access to the Panama canal, etc. Although, the UK's record isn't much better in many other corners of the world.
Anyway, a few days in Granada and we headed off to Ometepe, an island in the middle of Lago de Nicaragua that was formed by two volcanoes erupting. Naturally, we had to climb one (a touch higher than Ben Nevis). Naturally, it was chucking it down. We'd got quite excited about trekking through cloud forest (which seemed like quite a romantic prospect, however the reality was a little different but fun all the same!) The path up seemed to be made up of a small stream bed that on the way up was okay, just very muddy but trying to stay relatively mud free, lots of slipping and close calls but we were soaked close to the top. The view from the top was amazing, if the mist lifted, but typically the clouds were down and we could just about make out the near shore of the crater lake, never mind the other side. The mud added a bit of danger to the path down and Loretta was in prime position for the muddiest of the group until the army bloke in our group stacked it in brilliant style ten metres from the end of the trail.
The rest of Nicaragua passed by relatively quietly as we bussed our way to the border and jumped on a bus to San Jose in Costa Rica. Nicaragua´s a stunning, gentle and relaxed place and we left with a nagging feeling that we hadn´t done it justice. next stop the slightly less chilled and much more American Costa Rica was lying in wait, an interesting contrast.
The reality dawned on us that there was no way we could fit in Colombia and Venezuela to our itinerary and make Rio carnival so they´ve been put on the back burner for our next trip to South America and we´re flying to Lima, Peru on 6th Jan for the main event of our trip... South America.
Monday, 29 December 2008
Honduras... the honeymoon is over
We arrived safely in our little boat and winged our way to La Ceiba, which is the ferry port for boats to the Bay Islands - reputedly some of the best scuba diving in the world.
In spite of our driver´s best efforts, we also arrived safely in La Ceiba to be confronted with a very ´special´ hostel and an argument with the driver who had his own "official" inflated exchange rate which we were having none of...
The hostel only had dorm beds left and they were truly horrific, skanky sheets and minging washrooms. Loretta declared the honeymoon well and truly over and nestled down into her sleeping bag - making sure that no single part of her body made contact with any sheet, towel, floor... Now, as many of you know, I don´t take too well when things get between me and my sleep. We were in a seven bed dorm room and eventually (around 1am) the loud conversation/argument between an obnoxious Israeli and an equally arrogant American directly outside our window had died down and they´d switched off the flashing christmas lights that covered our window. Not the greatest start to a night´s rest but I was hoping to get a little sleep. That was until the extremely hirsuite Mr Tumnus lookalike at the opposite corner began to snore. I´ve never heard anything like it. It sounded like when you let the air out a balloon and stretch the neck... a kind of whistling grunt. Even my my ipod couldn´t drown it out. After twenty minutes and because no one else in the dorm would, i went over and tapped his leg and asked him politely to turn over as his snoring was keeping everybody else awake. After ten minutes he was back asleep and snoring. A few snatches of sleep later and one of the other inhabitants of the dorm went and did the same, ten minutes of peace until once again he started up again. After a few hours of sleep between the worst bouts he started again around five. At this point I couldn´t take anymore and threw the spare pillow which landed on his head and woke him up. He wasn´t too amused but the rest of the dorm found it funny.
Anyway, the next day we were off to Roatan, one of the islands and what follwoed was three days of relaxing and diving, a deep wreck dive, drift dive, night dive and one other and we´re well on our way to being advanced divers, we´re probably going to finish it off in Panama. Stunning visibility and thousands of fish, lots of luminescence, coral, etc really brilliant. There was a minor incident on our last dive when one of my fins got caught between the bench and the edge of the boat which, on a backwards roll entry led to me dangling for a few moments with my head in the water... when I´d been levered free I rolled in the water and whacked my head on the boat... quite a noise and everyone was worried but I was fine, although my tank was a buit skewed by the impact so I spent most of the night dive rolled onto my left side...
We were hoping to make Granada in Nicaragua for Christmas so legged it through the rest of Honduras, staying one night in the capital Tegucigalpa, before crossing into Nicaragua overland.
In spite of our driver´s best efforts, we also arrived safely in La Ceiba to be confronted with a very ´special´ hostel and an argument with the driver who had his own "official" inflated exchange rate which we were having none of...
The hostel only had dorm beds left and they were truly horrific, skanky sheets and minging washrooms. Loretta declared the honeymoon well and truly over and nestled down into her sleeping bag - making sure that no single part of her body made contact with any sheet, towel, floor... Now, as many of you know, I don´t take too well when things get between me and my sleep. We were in a seven bed dorm room and eventually (around 1am) the loud conversation/argument between an obnoxious Israeli and an equally arrogant American directly outside our window had died down and they´d switched off the flashing christmas lights that covered our window. Not the greatest start to a night´s rest but I was hoping to get a little sleep. That was until the extremely hirsuite Mr Tumnus lookalike at the opposite corner began to snore. I´ve never heard anything like it. It sounded like when you let the air out a balloon and stretch the neck... a kind of whistling grunt. Even my my ipod couldn´t drown it out. After twenty minutes and because no one else in the dorm would, i went over and tapped his leg and asked him politely to turn over as his snoring was keeping everybody else awake. After ten minutes he was back asleep and snoring. A few snatches of sleep later and one of the other inhabitants of the dorm went and did the same, ten minutes of peace until once again he started up again. After a few hours of sleep between the worst bouts he started again around five. At this point I couldn´t take anymore and threw the spare pillow which landed on his head and woke him up. He wasn´t too amused but the rest of the dorm found it funny.
Anyway, the next day we were off to Roatan, one of the islands and what follwoed was three days of relaxing and diving, a deep wreck dive, drift dive, night dive and one other and we´re well on our way to being advanced divers, we´re probably going to finish it off in Panama. Stunning visibility and thousands of fish, lots of luminescence, coral, etc really brilliant. There was a minor incident on our last dive when one of my fins got caught between the bench and the edge of the boat which, on a backwards roll entry led to me dangling for a few moments with my head in the water... when I´d been levered free I rolled in the water and whacked my head on the boat... quite a noise and everyone was worried but I was fine, although my tank was a buit skewed by the impact so I spent most of the night dive rolled onto my left side...
We were hoping to make Granada in Nicaragua for Christmas so legged it through the rest of Honduras, staying one night in the capital Tegucigalpa, before crossing into Nicaragua overland.
Monday, 22 December 2008
Merry Christmas!!!
So, most of you will have finished work for Christmas and I imagine that the build up is as always spectacular, we're in real danger of forgetting to celebrate as it's boiling over here (ha, ha, ha!)
Anyway, just to wish you all an amazing and lovely Christmas, hope it's a fun time - we're thinking of you all and missing you, however we're fully expecting the Christmas sunshine and view of the lake in Granada (Nicaragua) to make up for it.
Take care and lots of love.
PS Mum, Dad, Fig and Grandma - we'll try to ring you in the early afternoon as we're six hours behind you guys... x
Anyway, just to wish you all an amazing and lovely Christmas, hope it's a fun time - we're thinking of you all and missing you, however we're fully expecting the Christmas sunshine and view of the lake in Granada (Nicaragua) to make up for it.
Take care and lots of love.
PS Mum, Dad, Fig and Grandma - we'll try to ring you in the early afternoon as we're six hours behind you guys... x
Belize (in three nights)
Before arriving, I always thought that Belize was going to be a tropical paradise with amazing diving and palm fringed white sand beaches. My first impressions were somewhat different, with scrubland as far as the eye can see and a surprising number of burnt out/rusted cars lining the road from the border crossing to Belmopan (the capital, which I previously thought was Belize City... probably should have read the guidebook beforehand).
However, things drastically improved once we'd made it to Belize City and then hopped onto the ferry to Caye Caulker - one of the small islands off the coast). Lovely beaches, baking hot sunshine and the very laid back vibe of a country known for it's offshoot of Rastafarianism - the Garifuna.
Signs all over the place simply read 'go slow'. You get the picture.
We had planned to dive the Blue Hole - as it is one of the most famous in the world (it was a bit of a glorious legend in Berwick Diving Club all those years ago), however our timing was a little off and we had a last minute change of plan, if we wanted to get to Honduras (on a dodgy little boak across the sea) then we would have to be down south in 48 hours... otherwise we'd miss the twice weekly boat. Not that gutted as we had been planning on getting some diving done in Honduras and from what we've heard subsequently, the Blue Hole isn't all it's cracked up to be.
So, after a few relaxing days and nights on the Caye we made our way by local bus (belting out the standard reggae tunes, including some quality reggae style Christmas tunes) and to a tiny backwater called Mango Creek- cool name. A short (very fast and very bumpy) water taxi ride later we arrived at Placenia and the next morning made the boat.
Once two hours of immigration bureaucracy had been completed it was relatively plain sailing... although it was a pretty small boat and the 12-15ft swell made most of the younger kids hurl - always nice when you're trying to keep your own breakfast down. One mother had been feeding her astonishingly fat children coke, biscuits and sweets for the first few hours of the journey (it was amazing to watch them put those snack away) and she seemed surprised when they became ill... the little girl was quite cute until her splash back started to inch closer to my flip flopped feet.
Everyone was pretty pleased when we arrived on the north coast of Honduras, if only to avoid the puke.
However, things drastically improved once we'd made it to Belize City and then hopped onto the ferry to Caye Caulker - one of the small islands off the coast). Lovely beaches, baking hot sunshine and the very laid back vibe of a country known for it's offshoot of Rastafarianism - the Garifuna.
Signs all over the place simply read 'go slow'. You get the picture.
We had planned to dive the Blue Hole - as it is one of the most famous in the world (it was a bit of a glorious legend in Berwick Diving Club all those years ago), however our timing was a little off and we had a last minute change of plan, if we wanted to get to Honduras (on a dodgy little boak across the sea) then we would have to be down south in 48 hours... otherwise we'd miss the twice weekly boat. Not that gutted as we had been planning on getting some diving done in Honduras and from what we've heard subsequently, the Blue Hole isn't all it's cracked up to be.
So, after a few relaxing days and nights on the Caye we made our way by local bus (belting out the standard reggae tunes, including some quality reggae style Christmas tunes) and to a tiny backwater called Mango Creek- cool name. A short (very fast and very bumpy) water taxi ride later we arrived at Placenia and the next morning made the boat.
Once two hours of immigration bureaucracy had been completed it was relatively plain sailing... although it was a pretty small boat and the 12-15ft swell made most of the younger kids hurl - always nice when you're trying to keep your own breakfast down. One mother had been feeding her astonishingly fat children coke, biscuits and sweets for the first few hours of the journey (it was amazing to watch them put those snack away) and she seemed surprised when they became ill... the little girl was quite cute until her splash back started to inch closer to my flip flopped feet.
Everyone was pretty pleased when we arrived on the north coast of Honduras, if only to avoid the puke.
New Job!!!!
Before I left I applied for a few jobs in London and a few days before the wedding I popped down to London for a final interview (much to Loretta's amusement!)
After a long distance phone call while in Guatemala I found out that it had worked out well and from the end of March I'll be the Head of Fundraising at SOAS (the University of London's School of Oriental and African Studies, where I did my Masters). A really exciting opportunity with lots of potential and the usual challenges...
I guess that means we definitely have to come back...
After a long distance phone call while in Guatemala I found out that it had worked out well and from the end of March I'll be the Head of Fundraising at SOAS (the University of London's School of Oriental and African Studies, where I did my Masters). A really exciting opportunity with lots of potential and the usual challenges...
I guess that means we definitely have to come back...
Sunday, 21 December 2008
Guatemala
After a night in the Sheraton at Heathrow (fulfilling Loretta´s lofty lifetime ambition!), a very early morning and rearranging our flights with Iberia at the check in desk (the agent had accidentally booked us on a flight that no longer existed) we arrived in Guatemala via Costa Rica.
We had no real plans at this stage except for five nights of good hotels booked in Antigua and Lake Atitlan - after all it is our honeymoon, so a little luxury was very welcome.
Having heard only bad things about Guatemala city we went straight to the gorgeous colonial town of Antigua. After a fairly hectic week we were both exhausted and it was lovely to chill out for a few days (although our chill-out did include a climb up the local live volcano). Continuing the theme we moved on to Lake Atitlan which is probably one of the most stunning places we´ve ever been to (and a contender for one of the new official seven wonders of the world - apparently). San Marcos was a short bus and boat ride away and had been recommended by a friend (thanks Minta) and it didn´t disappoint - massage, yoga, conoeing on the lake, walking to the next village and eating lots of good, healthy food was the perfect start.
Guatemala is beautiful, very laid back and friendly, but surprisingly expensive therefore we commtted to using the local ´Chicken Buses´as often as possible - these were surprisingly good and there wasn´t a chicken in sight.
Guatemala City was our next stop to catch the night bus to the Mayan site of Tikal in the north. ´Él Guate´as the city is affectionately know is pretty hideous. We had a few hours to kill so ventured out to Central Park, amidst the druggies, tramps, defaecating and urinating men we planned the next leg of our trip and decided that the honeymoon was truly over. Heading back through the most dangerous part of town (Zona 1) is depressing, loads of formerly grand Spanish colonial buildings have been left to rot or form the bases of many hideous grey monolithic concrete apartment blocks. The only place to eat was a McDonalds (vile even by home standards) so we decided to while away the remaining three or four hours in the bus station.
Christmas is huge over here and there´s more tatty decorations than in Alnwick, believe it or not. Our favourite (?) so far was the singing christmas tree in the bus station whose monotonous beep belted out a medley mix of Santa Claus is coming to town, jingle bells and we wish you a merry christmas on a permanant loop. It had stiff competition in the volume/annoying stakes from the raucous Guatemalan Semi-pro Cage Fighting event taking place next door and the Guatemalan equivalent of the X Factor belting out from the TV... you´ve gotta love those travelling bus station moments!
We arrived at Tikal the next morning and despite the minging and very expensive accommodation four or five hours in the ruins definitely made the trip worth it. The huge Mayan ruins set in deep tropical forest were spectacular, we braved the rickety wooden steps, climbing nearly 180ft to the top and were rewarded with brilliant views of the forest canopy stretching out as far as the eye can see, which bore a striking resemblance to some scenes from Star Wars (Ed - not sure if any of them were filmed here?)
We decided that rather than retracing our steps back to Guatemala City, to pop into Belize (not on the original plan but an interesting detour - this is what I love about not having anything booked, just wake up one day and change the plans, depending on what we fancy!) for a few days...
We had no real plans at this stage except for five nights of good hotels booked in Antigua and Lake Atitlan - after all it is our honeymoon, so a little luxury was very welcome.
Having heard only bad things about Guatemala city we went straight to the gorgeous colonial town of Antigua. After a fairly hectic week we were both exhausted and it was lovely to chill out for a few days (although our chill-out did include a climb up the local live volcano). Continuing the theme we moved on to Lake Atitlan which is probably one of the most stunning places we´ve ever been to (and a contender for one of the new official seven wonders of the world - apparently). San Marcos was a short bus and boat ride away and had been recommended by a friend (thanks Minta) and it didn´t disappoint - massage, yoga, conoeing on the lake, walking to the next village and eating lots of good, healthy food was the perfect start.
Guatemala is beautiful, very laid back and friendly, but surprisingly expensive therefore we commtted to using the local ´Chicken Buses´as often as possible - these were surprisingly good and there wasn´t a chicken in sight.
Guatemala City was our next stop to catch the night bus to the Mayan site of Tikal in the north. ´Él Guate´as the city is affectionately know is pretty hideous. We had a few hours to kill so ventured out to Central Park, amidst the druggies, tramps, defaecating and urinating men we planned the next leg of our trip and decided that the honeymoon was truly over. Heading back through the most dangerous part of town (Zona 1) is depressing, loads of formerly grand Spanish colonial buildings have been left to rot or form the bases of many hideous grey monolithic concrete apartment blocks. The only place to eat was a McDonalds (vile even by home standards) so we decided to while away the remaining three or four hours in the bus station.
Christmas is huge over here and there´s more tatty decorations than in Alnwick, believe it or not. Our favourite (?) so far was the singing christmas tree in the bus station whose monotonous beep belted out a medley mix of Santa Claus is coming to town, jingle bells and we wish you a merry christmas on a permanant loop. It had stiff competition in the volume/annoying stakes from the raucous Guatemalan Semi-pro Cage Fighting event taking place next door and the Guatemalan equivalent of the X Factor belting out from the TV... you´ve gotta love those travelling bus station moments!
We arrived at Tikal the next morning and despite the minging and very expensive accommodation four or five hours in the ruins definitely made the trip worth it. The huge Mayan ruins set in deep tropical forest were spectacular, we braved the rickety wooden steps, climbing nearly 180ft to the top and were rewarded with brilliant views of the forest canopy stretching out as far as the eye can see, which bore a striking resemblance to some scenes from Star Wars (Ed - not sure if any of them were filmed here?)
We decided that rather than retracing our steps back to Guatemala City, to pop into Belize (not on the original plan but an interesting detour - this is what I love about not having anything booked, just wake up one day and change the plans, depending on what we fancy!) for a few days...
Tuesday, 9 December 2008
Hi all...
Hi all, first things first, thank you all so much for making Saturday absolutely perfect! We hope you all had as much fun as we did.
So, rather than bore you all to tears over the next few months with long, smug emails of our adventures in central and south america I've set up this blog, to keep all of the boring smugness in one place. If you're interested in hearing about our travels you can subscribe to email update things by clicking the link at the bottom of this page, or you can just check it at your leisure when you are having a particularly slow day at the office. We'll miss you all so please keep in touch by posting your comments, or even using the traditional email, as it's always nice to hear that home and the world as we know it hasn't changed too much.
Also, I'll be adding photos so you can see for yourself what we've been doing.
And finally, we know that loads of you have travelled in central and south america so any suggestions would be most gratefully received. Please add your comments to the post below...
So, rather than bore you all to tears over the next few months with long, smug emails of our adventures in central and south america I've set up this blog, to keep all of the boring smugness in one place. If you're interested in hearing about our travels you can subscribe to email update things by clicking the link at the bottom of this page, or you can just check it at your leisure when you are having a particularly slow day at the office. We'll miss you all so please keep in touch by posting your comments, or even using the traditional email, as it's always nice to hear that home and the world as we know it hasn't changed too much.
Also, I'll be adding photos so you can see for yourself what we've been doing.
And finally, we know that loads of you have travelled in central and south america so any suggestions would be most gratefully received. Please add your comments to the post below...
Travelling suggestions
We've got no firm plans as yet and loads of you have been around this neck of the woods so please do share your suggestions and highlights of central and south america and let us know what we shouldn't miss... all ideas gratefully received.
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