We decided to set ourselves the challenge of travelling from Monterrico (a very awkard place to get to, or from, on the Pacific coast of Guatemala) to Copan in Honduras in one day using solely local chicken buses, where possible, all of which go a very roundabout route. Many people thought we were a little crazy and that it was not feasibly possible but we succesfully crossed the border and cruised into Copan in time for dinner this evening. Admittedly our trip did start at 1 am (after walking the beach for the last time) and involved a car ferry, 3 [View Full Entry]

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Having thoroughly brushed up on our Spanish we made our way to our next volunteer project, in Hawaii. Not the American Hawaii, but a very small village on the Pacific coast of Guatemala and one of the main nesting sites for the Olive Ridley Sea Turtle. This was of course accompanied by the obligatory super long bus journey but we made all our connections on the magic buses without any hitches so it was a smooth 11 hours. We arrived at the project around midday and were shown round and briefly told what the volunteers did. The majority of the work [View Full Entry]

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For our change of scenery after our week of city life in Antigua we chose to visit one of Guatemala's largest lakes and stay in one of the small villages on its shores. San Pedro was a bus and boatride away from Antigua and we were there by lunchtime. We were greeted off the boat by the usual group of people touting for their hotels and got chatting to one whilst we had some lunch by the quay (using our newly developed Spanish skills!!) and he offered us a double room for 20 Quetzals which equates to about 1.40 in English [View Full Entry]

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After almost two months of getting away with speaking 'Spanglish'and having spent a month of that time in Belize where they speak English and so not getting any practise, we decided it was time to sort ourselves out so that we could get through the rest of our trip being able to be a bit more communicative! Our solution was to enroll for a weeks intense Spanish lessons, studying 5 hours a day with each of us having a private tutor. In addition to the lessons we also decided to stay with a Guatemalan family for the week rather than in [View Full Entry]

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We saw both extremes of Guatemala´s bus network travelling down from Flores to Antigua: the typical air conditioned coach for the first (and longer) potion of the journey. We travelled with a very cool Swiss couple, Paulo & Anja. It was doubly good to have a few of us together when we had to change buses in Guatemala City as we had not heard good things about it from either locals or tourists so quickly hopped in a taxi across town to get on the other extreme of Guatemalan public transport, the chicken bus. Chicken buses are so called because of [View Full Entry]

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Flores is a very pretty little town on an island in the middle of a lake. It is connected to the mainland town of St. Elena by a bridge and you can easily walk between the two. Flores is also quite expensive being the main town base for tourists, such as ourselves, wanting to visit the famous mayan ruins at Tikal, an hour away in the jungle. As always hotel staff and tour shops are touting for your business as soon as you step foot in the town and after weighing up the costs we decided it was worth paying the [View Full Entry]

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No we weren't going back to the future, but Livingston does not have any roads connecting it with the rest of the country so we made our way by boat to the town of Rio Dulce. We travelled up the river of the same name which you enter through a steep jungle covered ravine spotted with tiny little Mayan villages where women were doing there washing on the riverbank and men in dori canoes tried to dodge the speedboats whilst doing their fishing. The river has a number of places to stop on route to the town. Our first stop was [View Full Entry]

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After leaving the farm in far more relaxed style than we arrived ( taken down river in a boat by some neighbours - nice) we crossed the border into Guatemala by boat to Livingston. But only after Tash attempted to order us some breakfast before we got on the boat, which was proof that we needed to improve our Spanish: we had seen what looked like a little shop selling hot food and cold soft drinks, ideal for a quick breakfast, Tash went and ordered some meat taco´s and a couple of cokes and and ended up with some dry tortillas [View Full Entry]

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Apologies if this entry turns out to be a bit of an epic; we´re going to try and cover the entire 3 weeks we spent at MMRF in one go! Here we go................ I think the journey to reach the farm in San Pedro is going to be one of those that will only be equalled by the likes of the Inca trail!! We set out from Dangriga early in the morning by bus (what else) and being that it was rainy season the road looked a little water-logged, this soon progressed to the road being completely flooded as a river [View Full Entry]

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We arrived in Belize City yesterday, but it was a dive, accomdation double the price of Mexico and quarter as nice (infact just not nice at all), people dodgy and out to scam and everyone offering Kev drugs because of his hair style! Needless to say we just stayed the one night and got straight on a water taxi to a nearby island the next day. The water taxi was a rather bumpy experience on a speedboat surrounded by american missionaries but still a very cool ride resulting in arrival at a beautiful sandy island surrounded by crystal blue waters, hammocks [View Full Entry]

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