Cancun to Caracas

Top 5s

Top 5 sites:

1: Tikal

2: Chichen Iza

3: Xunantunich

4: Tulum

5: Arenal Volcano

Top 5 experiences: 

1: Snorkelling with sharks, rays and turtles at Shark Ray Alley, Ambergris Caye, Belize

2: Swimming with dolphins, Placencia, Belize

3: Climbing the tallest building in Tikal, Guatemala

4: Floating in hot springs in a thunder storm, Arenal, Costa Rica

5: Watching a lighting storm over lake Peten, Guatemala

Top 5 hotels:

1: Chan Chich, Gallon Jug Estate, Belize

2: La Lancha, Peten, Guatemala

3: Casa Las Tortugas, Holbox, Mexico

4: Casa Panorama, Tulemar, Manuel Antonio, Costa Rica

5: Casa Cook, Tamarindo, Costa Rica

Last Post - Costa Rica

We’ve been really slack at posting as of late. I guess because we’ve been concentrating on making the most of our last weeks, rather than taking the time to reflect on them.

And what a great few last weeks.

I’ll be honest. When we first arrived in Costa Rica, we were a little let down. It’s a beautiful country, to be sure. But there’s something soulless about the place. But we quickly realised what it lacks in culture it makes up for in nature.

In our two weeks here we’ve stayed in the stunning Manuel Antonio National Park and watched spider monkeys and sloths hang out outside our window (see pic in previous post.) 

We’ve surfed one of the best beaches in the world in Tamarindo:

 floated in eco-thermal hot springs during a thunder storm:

and stared up at a 5,437 ft high Arenal volcano (which unfortunately refused to erupt).

And now we’re heading home. We’re happy and sad about that. Happy to be getting home to our friends and family and our own bed. But sad to be saying goodbye to this most stunning part of the world.

It’s been an amazing, amazing trip. And we probably won’t realise just how amazing till we’re back home and we can look back on it all. 

(These photos aren’t ours… I’m writing this while waiting for the plane, and our camera is packed. I’ll update them when we get home.) 

Back in Guatemala

Speedboats are a pretty cool way to travel. Especially when it comes to border crossings. Another trip across the Caribbean sea and we arrived back in Guatemala, this time to Puerto Barrios. 

We were instantly jumped upon by men offering to take us to Honduras, or Livingston, or lots of other places that weren’t where we wanted to be. We eventually worked out that we could either take a tour down the Rio Dulce for 5 hours, or get a taxi for 2 hours. Being hot and tired after the crossing, we went for the easy option and hopped in the cab of a very nice taxi driver, who was the Guatemalan version of Vince Vaughn. He seemed especially happy to be driving us. And when he stopped off at his house to pick up his wife and baby son, we realised why: he’d decided to turn this job into a day trip for his family. So there we were, racing down the highway, blasting middle of the road rock (just for us, he said), heading for the Rio Dulce and our hotel. 

Cut to a couple of hours later and we arrived at Hotel Catamaran – a beautiful location on the edge of Rio Dulce with little cabins hanging over the river.

Catamaran is also a marina where loads of the boating set come to moor their yachts for the hurricane season in Central America, because the hurricanes never touch this place. So, we spent a few days hanging out with our new ‘best mates’ on their boats, wondering if any of them might just sail us to Panama. Unfortunately, no one was leaving. And given how lovely the place is, we don’t blame them. We now have a new plan for our lives – get a boat and spend all our time cruising around the world.

While there, we took a trip up the Rio Dulce which is breath-takingly gorgeous. The boat ride took us around the old fort that was used to fight off pirates, through lily-pad-filled tributaries, past small children in their dug-out canoes trying to out cute each other, and finally to Livingston – an old Garifuna town.

In Livingston we met Pollo Martinez, a Garifuna elder and musician. Pollo took us for an impromptu tour around the village and explained the poor situation of the Garifuna people there - unrepresented in government and pushed out by the Spaniards coming into Livingston they are clinging to their way of life. Pollo is doing whatever he can to protect his people, including a feeding programme for the kids and trying to educate them about how important it is to look after each other. It was quite an eye-opening 40 minutes. 

As we were letting everything we’d learnt sink in, we sat and had a coke in a small bar where they were showing the Champion’s league final between Man U and Barcelona. Everyone was a Barca fan; cheering on Messi and the rest, while booing at Rooney’s antics. So we kept our voices down and smiled and nodded, hoping no one would realise we were a) English and b) didn’t really care less about who won. Football is a religion in Guatemala, so admitting we didn’t share their passion might have got us in a little trouble. 

Back in our little cabin at the end of the day, watching the fish swarm around the cockroach we’d just fed them, we said goodbye to Guatemala and pledged to come back and explore it properly one day. Because tomorrow we were heading for Honduras and then our flight to Costa Rica. 

Central American drink guide

Coca-Cola - Everywhere
The prolific traveller’s staple. Requires zero language skills. 

Corona - Mexico
Thirst quenching cold beer. Slightly more cool than Sol. Drunk with Lime.

Sol - Mexico
Drunk by blokes in white jeans in the UK and by everyone in Mexico. With lime, cold, on the beach.

Pacifico - Mexico
Nice beer. Slightly darker and more tasty than others.

Gallo - Guatemala
Gallo means cock. It tastes better than it sounds.

Mojito - Everywhere
Rum, lime, sugar and mint. Classic fave.

Rum - Everywhere
White, light, dark, coconut. Cheap and available everywhere. Makes you feel like a pirate.

Rum punch - Everywhere
Mix of local fruit juices and rum.  Strength varies from left jab to haymaker but hovers around right-hook.

Agua - Everywhere
As you’re in a constant state of sweatiness you need to keep topped up.

Coffee - everywhere
Good in Belize. Amazing in Guatemala.

Wine - everywhere
Expensive and often spoiled. Err on Chile, California etc. Mr Coppola’s were nice in his lodge.

Belikin - Belize
Available as regular, premier and stout. 95% of people drink regular - it’s great. The stout is 6.5%, often warm and particularly hard work in 34 degrees.

Limon/limonade
There’s a lot of sugar and key lime here… This rocks.

Guinness - Belize
Strangely, they brew it here. Cheap alternative to rice and beans.

Cacao, chickenbuses and crystal skulls

From Placencia we headed for a great little rainforest lodge called Hickatee in Punta Gorda owned by fellow Brits Ian and Kate.

Ian met us from the plane and informed us we’d increased the number of Brits in south Belize from 12 to 14. He knows because he used to work for the High Commission. Although now that he’d told us, he’d have to kill us… Strange that the people we’ve met that play the ‘I’m secretly a spy’ shtick are actually the least likely candidates in the known universe.

Hickatee is great. Good company. Great food. Amazing location. More birds, bugs and wildlife. Explaining we only had a day we asked Ian what he’d recommend. He told us that he had a great day adventure planned for us that may push us out of our comfort zones but would be an experience. 

We woke early the next day and had coffee and were advised to knock up some jam sandwiches that would be our lunch. At 8.30am we were dropped at Ma’s in the vegetable market where we had fry Jacks, beans and cheese with the world watching. A local homeless dude joined in and gave us signs to feed him, so we promptly obliged and ran away.

We knew we had an hour or so to kill before our bus so wandered about a bit and stumbled on the Cotton Tree chocolate factory. Belize is full of cacao and this is the area where Green and Blacks work with the local farmers. We were given a very tasty tour around the factory and I had to drag Kim away from licking the bowl. (She was also eyeing up their brass-doored cold room strangely… I think she was dreaming about being locked in there).

Next step, an hour trip on the local chicken bus to San Miguel to check out some spooky ruins. We only had to stand half of the journey with half of the world watching us. Local Mayan families in traditional dress gawping like it was a new conquest. We exited gracefully on a dirt track at midday, into the baking sun, in the middle of absolutely nowhere. (Actually Chris slipped and fell on his arse which gave the locals a chuckle).

Turning off the road we followed the sign for Lubantuum home of the (in)famous crystal skull. A swift hour stroll and we arrived refreshed at the site. When I say refreshed I mean it looked like both of us had just showered in our clothes.

The local guide, Santiago, was great. Showed us around the visitor centre, explained that the crystal skull might have been planted as a treasure hunt find for a girl’s 17th birthday and showed us lots of pottery figurines and fragments - some that worked as whistles to call between the sites on various hills around the area.

Lubantuum is a pretty interesting site and we had it all to ourselves. It was nice to wander around in the cool breeze and explore the ruins for ourselves. We had our ‘famous five’ jam sandwiches and Kim noted that we didn’t have many photos of us - so here’s a quick one.

Final highlight was a visit to a butterfly farm that Ian helps manage. Here they breed hundreds of people-friendly butterflies that get shipped as pupae to butterfly houses all around the world and we got to hang out with them.  An incredible end to a fun, hot, sweaty day. 

Belize just became extra brilliant

It was while hanging out in Miramar, our air-con’d apartment facing the sea in Placencia, that I got a rather fantastic email. Well, a Twitter Direct Message, in fact. From an awesome agent saying that he’d like to take on my book. 

I couldn’t quite believe it. And I waited for a few days, expecting him to message and say he’d only been joking. Or he had been drunk. But on Monday I gave him a call and it was serious. He liked the book and wanted to represent it. 

So there we are. I now have an agent. And the moral of the story: you spend a year stuck to your laptop, waiting for an agent, then go away and ‘ping’ the message you’ve been waiting for arrives. Watched kettles and all that. 

But now I will always remember Belize as the best place on earth!

Whale Sharks

Back over the border to Belize and a quick flight courtesy of Vern again (who we now like to think of as our personal pilot) and we arrived in Placencia – famous as one of the few places in the world where you can hang out with Whale Sharks. 

Now, we’ve already snorkeled with Nurse Sharks which get up to about 9ft. But Whale Sharks can get up to 40ft! So we headed off the first day after the full moon hoping to catch a glimpse of the giants but also slightly anxious that they might, just by mistake, eat us. Or run us over. Or just look at us funny. 

The plan was that we would work in tandem with a bunch of divers who were on another boat. They would hover around at 80ft below the surface, sending up bubbles (that the whale sharks apparently like to come and check out) while we floated about above. I’m not sure what part we were supposed to play in helping them – I like to think that we had their backs if anything went wrong. 

Watching my reflection in giant, bowl-like bubbles, racing up out of the dark blue depths, is one of the most surreal experiences of my life. It was like the world had been turn upside down, and I was looking down at the sky while glass orbs fell towards me. Weird and wonderful. 

Anyway, after a full day of hunting them we didn’t get to see the sharks this time. But we did get to snorkel with a couple of dolphins. Beautiful, graceful and happy-looking, they totally blew us away. I’d never even seen a dolphin outside of a zoo before, so I was in watery heaven. And personally, if it’s a choice between sharks and dolphins, I’ll go with dolphins every time. 

That said, we are going to head back out and hope to see the big guys again. 

Tikal

So you’ve probably guessed by now that we’re pretty keen on this Mayan stuff. And Tikal has been top of our ‘must see’ stops ever since we started planning this trip. So when we headed off to see it, early on Saturday morning, we were pretty excited.  

All I can say is that it not only lived up to our expectation, but totally blew them away. And it’s going to take a far better writer than me to really express how utterly amazing it is. Awesome doesn’t even come close. Neither does spectacular. We’re going to need a new set of hyperboles to describe it. Awe-stagger-acular. Fantazing. 

 

We were lucky to have a fantastic guide in the shape of Antonio who is a hugely informative guy. He knows Tikal inside out, the Mayan culture, as well as being pretty frank about Guatemalan politics (and has some great insider tales about working for and meeting the Coppolas – who, he says, are fantastic people).

What was really refreshing about Antonio is that he didn’t dumb down, he assumed a level of intellect and prior knowledge which meant for a really interesting tour and we learnt loads about Tikal, as well as getting an even better knowledge of all the other Mayan ruins we’ve visited. 

He’s also a great fan of cinematic ‘kodak moments’ - making us shut our eyes and leading us to amazing views, sitting us down on the King’s throne to explain how later rulers skipped the gods and declared themselves divine.

Antonio helped us imagine how Tikal would have worked, who lived where, etc so it was easy to drift back a thousand years to when it was bustling with 100,000 people. 

We started the 4-hour tour in a temple area they re-built every 20 years. Moved on to the central plaza where a ruler constructed a tower for his wife and later himself - each aligned with Equinoxes.

We also climbed the tallest temple (70m) that give incredible views across the metropolis and rainforest canopy. More vertigo moments were had!

The pictures don’t do it justice either. Look, you’re just going to have to come yourself one day, and see it for real. And when you do, ask for Antonio.