Central America

We landed in Guatemala city 5-6 weeks ago. After a day in the noisy & busy capital we embarked on a 15 hour bus ride, most of which was on an incredibly bad dirt road. We went to a Spanish school in the small lakeside town of San Andres near Flores in North East Guatemala. It did not live up to expectations. Instruction was OK but not great. We ended up living with a very poor family. Whilst our board money was important to them and they were nice people; living standards were very low. After a fortnight of sleeping together in a saggy single bed, an exceptionally odorous outhouse, fleas and a tiresome diet, we disengaged! Call us wimps, but it was not an environment conducive to learning a new language!

During the following 2 weeks, we explored the surrounding jungle region. After buying a flea collar, we set out in the back of a pick-up truck down another dirt road (lots of them here!!), then walked 5 hours into a protected jungle reserve (Zotz) with 3 friendly local rangers we met enroute and spent a couple of nights in a superb setting. We wandered about Mayan ruins, watched monkeys, learnt about the jungle from the rangers (in Spanish) and watched thousands of bats emerge from the caves at dusk. Awesome!

We then returned to civilisation, recharged our batteries, did our laundry (Glenn could hardly live with himself; you sweat buckets in the humid jungle) and set-off towards the Belize border. We hitched a lift down a dirt road, into the Mayan ruins at Yaxha. There is another superb campsite aside a lake that could pass as anywhere in Canada, except for the crocodiles (that’s another story). We pretty well had the ruins to ourselves and enjoyed sunrises & sunsets from atop of a Mayan temple upon a hill of monkeys and tropical birds.

2 days later, we set out along a small jungle trail, north to other ruins at Nakum. Animal and bird life abounds around ruins with all the fruit trees (often 100 feet high) descendants of those fostered by the Mayans 1500 years ago! It was a tough 5 hour hike through mud and swamp to reach a very lonely place: we met no one en route, only caretakers at the ruins. The previous visitors had been there 4 weeks earlier. The ruins were mostly huge mounds and earth covered walls with huge trees growing on them. Our imaginations were stretched to imagine the splendor of the ancient Mayan citadel. Birds and bats almost outnumbered the mosquitoes. We took an alternate (supposedly short cut) route back through yet deeper mud, weren’t sure of the way, backtracked along our original route in and 8 exhausting hours reached Yaxha. Jungle hiking is much tougher than walking in the Rockies!

Our next stop was the amazing ruins of Tikal, site of a partly excavated, immense Mayan city with temples towering above the jungle canopy. We spent 3 days watching monkeys (spider & howler), birds (parrots & toucans galore) and sunrise/sunsets from the top of the temples amidst a jungle setting.

Finally, we experienced 2 bus breakdowns in as many days on our return journey to Guatemala City and onto Antigua.

We have showered virtually everyday (including a sponge bath in the jungle when we used a single litre of water between 2 of us), experienced minor traveler’s diarrhea, had plenty of exotic insect bites (now healed), food has been fair to good, bus rides have been packed (eg. 7 adults sitting across in school buses designed for 4 American children across), have seen some pretty amazing things and our Spanish is improving. It is tough to get a full night’s sleep with church bells, firecrackers, roosters, dogs and even the howling of monkeys in the jungle!

We are currently here in Antigua, attending Spanish school and boarding in a family’s home. School is 4hrs each morning with one-on-one instruction. Cost with room and board is 110 USD per week. The climate is pleasant; sunny and 20-25 degrees C in the day and cool at night. This colonial city is surrrounded by volcanoes, one of which is always smoking. The Christmas season is celebrated with fervour and plenty of firecrackers. Our house is decked out in Christmas lights; the three wise men, a manger and a large star sit outside our rooftop room.

We completed 4 weeks of Spanish lessons in Antigua, Guatemala now have a repertoire of expressions like..I'm going to throw a spider (going for a leak), happy as a worm, I'm getting off my horse (going to eat with my hands), but now school is out for summer. Glenn graduates with honors and Sheila's report card reads "she tries hard but needs some more work".

Christmas in Antigua: our house father gave dancing lessons on Christmas eve and the neighbourhood burned off 1/2 of the country's GDP in firecrackers in an hour and a half.

We headed for the hot springs of Fuentes Georgina (thanks for the tip Barb) for a taste of winter: temperature dips to 5 degrees C at night but we soaked in hot pools in cloud forest and enjoyed the working fireplace in our room. Winter is nice, but 3 nights is enough for one year.

We spent a week at a meditation centre at Lake Atitlan: while staring at candle and meditating on "who am I?" the guy next to me had his candle go out, then his bungalow burnt down that night; a bad omen. I wonder how that guy's trip turned out. We left yogic flying behind....Passed through Guatemala City where we had landed 2 1/2 months earlier (at this pace, we will never make it to Patagonia) on chicken buses to Honduras.

In Honduras one person sits in a bus seat intended for one person...In Copan Ruins, we had a crazy hotel manager who kept giving us free beers until we fled to give our livers a rest.....We climbed the highest mountain in Honduras (Celaque) 2849 metres. Changing vegetation-pine forest- giant ferns- tree trunks covered with moss- vines-camped at 2500 metres. We could see San Salvadoran volcanoes from the summit, spider monkeys too. An outhouse hung from the edge of the mountain.

We returned to nearby town of Gracias- a trip into the past with cowboys on horseback riding down cobblestone streets and wooden store counters. Soaked in the nearby hot pools. Sheila wants to ditch our tent and buy an inner tube for hot pools and the ocean.

Finally, after 3 months of travel we hit the ocean at Tela Honduras. Amongst other items, Sheila lost her bathing suit: we got mugged in broad daylight while walking along the beach very close to a posh resort. Note: Sheila was not wearing her bathing suit at the time, but there is a very large black guy wearing her swim suit. That's a sight we would like to see! Gazing out to sea, we decide there is more to life than sand and surf. We figure it also includes seafood coconut soups and cold beers as well...Over here on Utila, Bay Islands, Caribbean we are going diving this afternoon on the world's second largest reef.We begin an advanced diving course tomorrow with at least one deep dive so we can test out Martini's law(every 33 feet of depth= one martini)...

Sun, sand and surf have dominated our last 2 months, in short; THE BEACH. We last wrote from the idyllic Bay Islands, Honduras. Like many other visitors, we stayed longer than planned. We felt somewhat hypocritical enjoying diving amongst the fish during the day and eating succulent seafood dinners by night. Most of all, we enjoyed the local characters, but didn't eat any of them! Sadly, we returned to the mainland, proving that studying Spanish and lounging at the beach (Trujillo) don't mix easily. Although we were surrounded by banana plantations and could see huge banana ships being loaded up for world markets, the town was out of bananas.

We then head for politically aware Nicaragua and the colonial cities of Leon and Granada; towns of outdoor cafes, beautiful churches and huge outdoor murals portraying the country's turbulent past. The 'tipico' food changed from plates of rice and beans to dishes beans and rice. We took the world's 2nd slowest boat (we passed the slowest) across a very rough Lago Nicaragua (world's 10th largest lake) to Ometepe Island where we climbed Volcan Madera. We think it should be renamed Volcan Lodo (mud) because that's all we walked through. Bands of howler monkeys, flocks of parrots, and fluttering butterflies greeted us at the base and golden frogs met us at the mist covered crater lake-a place that time seemingly forgot. We stayed at a hacienda/coffee cooperative with snoring pigs to keep us company outside our window.

We then crossed over into the more developed Costa Rica, mango season just starting up and day time temperatures of 38C in the northernmost state of Guanacaste. It's a long hot 19km walk along a dusty 4WD track to Naranjo Beach in Santa Rosa National Park. Our efforts were rewarded by a pristine, deserted 8km beach adjoining campground and great body surfing. Iguanas lounged the campsite, raccoons pillaged the garbage cans at night, pelicans glided inside curling waves in search of fish and white faced & howler monkeys played in the trees.

Later at Monteverde, we wandered thorough a superb cloud forest and marveled at how the Costa Rican tourist industry squeezes dollars from visitors from around the world. Sheila's mom flew down to meet us and we have all piled into her villa at Jaco Beach. T.V., hot showers, air conditioning, choice of swimming pools, a kitchen and lots of surf make it a real vacation. Snooker on ESPN and unending news-stories about nothing on CNN remind us (at least one of us) that T.V. is not something to be missed. After 2 weeks of resort living, we'll be "back to work" shortly on the traveler's trail.

We spent a few days in San Jose, Costa Rica, catching up on movies, before setting out for Mt Chirripo, the country's highest at 3,880 metres. We teamed up with Tracy and Eric and "enjoyed" freezing night time temperatures and watched the clouds rise on both sides of us, from the Pacific and Atlantic oceans until we were engulfed in them.

From the frost of Chirripo, we went to the humid sauna-like rain forests of Corcovado National Park. We stayed 2 weeks in and around the park. Whilst the beaches were scenic, the forests were amazing. We saw four types of monkeys, virtually every day, witnessed some of Latin America's unique animals (sloths, agoutis, coatis, tapir, tayras), an incredible array of frogs & toads, ran (literally) across columns of army ants, and met with four types of 'friendly' insects (mosquitos, sand flies, chiggers, ticks-promoting daily tick inspections/grooming, just like monkeys do!). And we saw a snake a day. One memorable morning, we watched a band of spider monkeys, admired tiger herons, were awed by a grazing tapir, interacted with curious white face monkeys, spotted a green vine snake and then chanced upon a f@*#ing big snake (first reaction to a large boa constrictor) all within 1 1/2 hours. Then we followed a river upstream and cooled off in a swimming hole flanked by lush rain forest hillsides. At one campsite, our tent was on the edge of the beach in a beautiful ocean bay (good swimming) with a 20 minute walk to waterfalls and another swimming hole. Further afield, we walked to a completely deserted (except for crabs, jaguar and tapir) 18km long beach and a 20 metre high waterfall that descended directly onto the beach.

We left the Pacific for the Caribbean and the Pacuare Reserve and worked for a week on a voluntary basis, patrolling the beach as part of a Leatherback Turtle program. Leatherbacks are huge (500kg, 1.6 metre shells) pre-historic marine turtles. We chased off egg poachers, measured & tagged turtles, and sometimes relocated nests. We held back on swimming with the sharks in the sea and man-eating (no kidding, but that's another story) crocs in the lagoon.

We then head for Panama; and were chased across a train bridge by a banana laden freight train as we entered Panama. At Bocas del Toro we saw (and handled) plenty of the tiny bright red poison dart frogs, then cooled off in the mountains of western Panama. Yesterday we watched ships pass through the big ditch (Panama Canal). Now we are heading for Ecuador and the Galapagos in a couple of days. Next its off to Ecuador and the Galapagos Islands....