High up in the Western Highlands, in the Cuchumantes Mountains, sits Nebaj, the largest of the towns in the Ixil triangle. Home to the small group of Ixil Maya it is rich in culture,blessed with beautiful countryside and scarred with history. As the civil war raged from the late 70´s until ´96, fifteen to twenty thousand people were killed and nearly all of the smaller villages destroyed. The peasant farmers here were merely unfortunate enough to be caught up in the bitter struggle between the army and the EGP (Geurilla Army of the Poor). The history of the Civil War is [View Full Entry]

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San Pedro, love it or hate it, you can't deny it has the best food in the whole of Guatemala. Oh, what heaven to find Thai curry and a roast beef dinner so far from home! Ok, not very authentic but certainly what the doctor ordered for Xmas and a real treat. Rocking up to Yarachik, I met a really nice group of girls and we spent an indulgent 10 days gorging ourselves on all San Pedro had to offer. The village itself is pretty low-key and filled with friendly locals, the small lanes near the shore are packed with gringo [View Full Entry]

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Being back on the road felt great after the island fever, I headed south to the town of Poptun and the infamous Finca Ixobel. The Finca was started by an American couple in the 80's, though Michael Devine was shot dead outside the property in 1990 during the civil war. Some say the CIA were behind the killing, a sad tale but his memory lives on in this fabulous low-key resort run by his widow Carol. In one afternoon I explored Cueva Ixobel, walked up a pyramid shaped hill, took a dip in the natural pool and tucked into the huge [View Full Entry]

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At the heart of tropical El Peten, lies the tourist hub of Flores. A small island on Lago Peten Itza, a causeway separating an idyllic bubble from the dirt and crime of the mainland. Flores serves as a base for the hordes that spend a couple of nights here to visit Tikal. I ended up spending a week in the hostel Los Amigos mainly because the food was so good but also psyching myself up for the language lessons and the volunteering. The food; huge vegetable kebabs with brown rice, salad, hummus and bread, vegetable curries, lasagnes and the most amazing [View Full Entry]

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The flyer from Mundo Maya sounded confident and filled with opportunity for activities from regional cooking to canoeing round the lake. I signed up for a week's worth, 20 hours schooling and a week with a family in San Jose. My new 'Mum' was Mirtala, she showed me around the family home. It consisted of two concrete and breeze block buildings. The first being the main home, had two 'bedrooms' soçectioned off by drapes. The main room had a table with a lacy cloth and six formal chairs, a short bench, a wardrobe, a table for kitchen utensils, a disconnected stove [View Full Entry]

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Tulum is one of those places that appear on the outside to be all about the hotels, the bars and the expensive restaurants. Discovering the real treasures means going underground and getting into the water. After traipsing around looking for a hostel free from bedbugs, we scored with Posada los Mapaches. The four-bed dorm was nicely furnished, the mattresses were ideally firm with fresh smelling sheets, a flower and a candy left ready for the next guest. Breakfast was included and could have come from a five star hotel, the fruit salad was a work of art and was followed by [View Full Entry]

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After reading rave reviews about the Candelaria Hostel we got there to find it had been closed down a few weeks ago. Still Hotel Lili had a treat - a cable TV, and shit though it is, MTV scores highly when deprived of such creature comforts. Following a further reccommendation from the Rough Guide we went to the King of Baseball's bike rental shop and waited for evidence of his 'insatiable character'. Antoñio 'Negro' Aguilar had a certian sort of gruff charm..'you break bike; you pay. You lose key; you pay'. He soon loosened up when we asked him his baseball [View Full Entry]

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The city name of Campeche is translated from the Mayan; 'Lord Sun Sheep Tick' a less appealing sounding destination. The guide book claims that it's an undiscovered gem'. It is certainly very charming with pastel painted buildings, all shorter than the cathedral. It had an air of Amsterdam on the Caribbean about it. The claim that it was untouristy was true and that was because there was nothing to do. So instead we had a cook-off in the hostel. Gene making bruschetta and carbonara and myself whipping up a veg curry...it took a long walk to Walmart to find that curry [View Full Entry]

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The quality of food has great bearing on the impression I have for a place and after eating a lot of crap for the past few days it was a welcome relief to find Govinda's vegetarian restaurant here and enjoyed a huge tray of healthy food without pig fat or a tortilla in sight. Morelia is also famous for it's sweets and have a huge array of the boiled-chewy fruit variety and the marzipan sort..we found a posh shop with free samples so this took away the guilt of eating so many. Since everyone had flocked to Guanjuato, Morelia was a [View Full Entry]

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Arriving slap bang in the middle of Mexico's biggest International Music and Arts Festival, the Cervantino had it's good and bad points. The good being the abundance of street theatre, free musical concerts and abundance of food stalls, the bad being the huge amount of people crammed into the small streets and the massive hike in hostel prices. The city of Guanajuato is wedged into a steep ravine, a jumble of colourful houses almost perched on top of each other. The strict planning laws have kept an authentic colonial feel about the place. Traffic lights, and neon signs have been banned [View Full Entry]

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