http://www.travelblog.org/Bloggers/Deemaguire/ Travel adventures in journals and photos from Deemaguire en-us Wed, 30 Dec 2009 11:00:29 +0000 Wed, 30 Dec 2009 11:00:29 +0000 After a bit of a fiasco with buses we made it out of Flores a day later than we'd planned. There was no direct bus to Lake Atitlan where we meant to go to next so we decided to go to Antigua first instead. As we had to go through Guatemala city it was a chance to get a good look at the place from a mini bus window once we changed bused in the main terminal. Guatemala city has a bad rep and http://www.travelblog.org/Central-America-Caribbean/Guatemala/Lago-de-Atitlan/San-Pedro-La-Laguna/blog-421577.html Getting up at the ungodly hour of 4am was actually OK. Reason being we had though that the minibus taking us to Tikal was going to get us there in time to climb a temple to watch teh sun rise. Of course no such thing happened or could have happened as we found out while watching the sun rise from the minibus seats that the gate of the site didnt even open till 6am well after sun rise. So http://www.travelblog.org/Central-America-Caribbean/Guatemala/Flores-Tikal/blog-419506.html Leaving San Pedro was extremely hard none of us wanted to go at all as wed had such a wicked time there. But as it was pretty expensive we decided it was for the best to move on so on Tuesday morning we headed for the boat with tears in our eyes. The scenery from the boat as you wizz down between the Cayes and the coast is amazing dense forest vegetation on the mainland side the trees huggin http://www.travelblog.org/Central-America-Caribbean/Belize/Belize-District/Belize-City/blog-419254.html Wow Wow Wow is all I can say Absolutely loving where we are on the island of Ambergris in the town of San Pedro in the Belize Barrier Reef. The Barrier Reef here is the 2nd largest in the world after the Great Barrier Reef in Australia. We arrived here on the 7am ferry from Corozal after staying there for our first night in Belize. It's exactly what I imagined a tropical paradise to be l http://www.travelblog.org/Central-America-Caribbean/Belize/Belize-Barrier-Reef/Ambergris-Caye/blog-417894.html After Palenque we boarded another bus to Merida the worst thing about traveling is the actual traveling have packing and unpacked my bag to death at this point. Merida is the capital of the Yuactan state and we had read that it is famous for its street parties at the weekend. We were arriving on a Friday so we thought that this would be great. Unfortunately the Mexican elections were happen http://www.travelblog.org/North-America/Mexico/Quintana-Roo/Playa-del-Carmen/blog-416968.html Yesterday we spent the day wandering round the ruins of Palenque. This time we were guideless so it was just the information on the plaques that informed us. It's truly breathtaking there so I'm just going to let the photos rather than me do most of the talking for this one. Some of the murals were from 600BC and extremely well preserved it's amazing to think of the difference in artistic and http://www.travelblog.org/North-America/Mexico/Chiapas/Palenque/blog-415189.html Travel blog is starting to annoy me as there is always a problem with uploading the photos so photos for this to follow. I wasn't looking forward ro the 12 hour bus journey from Oaxaca to San Cristobal de Las Casa as I never sleep on moving vehicles and it wasn't ro disappoint any of us on that score. Agter plonking myself beside Aoife on the bus we settled down to try and sleep but this w http://www.travelblog.org/North-America/Mexico/Chiapas/San-Cristobal-de-las-Casas/blog-413950.html So it was with a heavy heart that we spent our last day saying good bye to Mexico City. We all really loved it. There's so much to do there we were tempted to extend our stay some more but you could spend 6 months there and still have loads to do. Our last day was spent having a lazy morning much needed after pyramid climbing and then heading to the Mercado. This is the largest covered http://www.travelblog.org/North-America/Mexico/Oaxaca/Oaxaca/blog-413126.html So yesterday we booked a trip with the hostel to visit the pyramids of Teotihuacan. We thought it would be nice to visit them this way as we would also get a chance to meet some other people from the hostel. There were 6 of us going on the trip so after breakfast we got on our minibus with a French couple and the lovely Michelle from Switzerland. Our guide for the day was Alex who turned out t http://www.travelblog.org/North-America/blog-412560.html So after a fab dinner in the Condesa neighbourhood last night in an extremely veggie friendly restaurant in a working book shop very funky and the fact that it was mine and Dara's first experience of mole delicious we again headed back for an early night it's tiring work sitting on a tour bus all day long I'll have you know So bright and early this morning up I got to find another fabu http://www.travelblog.org/North-America/Mexico/Estado-de-Mexico/Distrito-Federal/blog-412019.html Hola mi amagias y amagos So we landed in Mexico city at about 4pm their time quite tired after traveling for about 15hours. Dara had gotten a different flight to us so as me and Aoife settled down to wait for her at the arrival347 gate we luckily noticed that her plane wasn't coming up on the monitor so once we asked me practicing my newly acquired Spanish we raced over to the correct http://www.travelblog.org/Central-America-Caribbean/blog-411665.html Me and Aoife in the profile pic from last year's trip to Zambia. This was the memorable cruise down the Zambeezi river. Here with two of the student's we were in charge of just in case anyone was worried we'd run off with toyboys it was a volunteer thing through schools sponsered by Dublin docklands. this time it's me Aoife and hopefully Dara for a student free 6 weeks of fun ah you can' http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Ireland/County-Dublin/Dublin/blog-406992.html