Playa del Carmen was our first stop when we arrived at the Yucatan on Monday 4 July by bus from Belize. It’s by far the most touristy place we went on our trip, full of American tourists, American chains and americanised restaurants, although it does have a really nice beach where we spent a very relaxing Tuesday. We had a great time, eating amazing fish, watching a brilliant fire show at the Blue Parrot and we were unpleasantly surprised to find that Americans actually dance in real life like they’re on MTV. It’s quite um…graphic. Our next stop was the [View Full Entry]

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Before getting to the Belize update - we have updated the Guatemala edition to include our 2 days in Flores and Tikal on our way from Mexico to Belize. There are some new photos there too - Kez got another old fashioned film developed - so jump back to it if you have the time (and energy and inclination)! On Monday 28th May we left Flores early to go to Belize city. We arrived just in time for a lovely lunch right on the water but our luck ended there cos the Mexican embassy was already shut for the day. [View Full Entry]

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Our Mexican adventure started with a bit of a panic! On Monday 14th May, we arrived at the Tecun Uman border crossing at 6pm, having travelled by bus from Xela in Guatemala. Our guidebook reliably informed us it was open 24 hours. It was shut. It was open until 7pm, so the Guatemalan side was open, but since Mexico is on daylight savings time, it had shut 5 minutes before. So we raced to the 24 hour border crossing at Talisman by bicycle taxi, foot, 2 combi van collectivos and a taxi, which makes it sounds a bit hectic, which [View Full Entry]

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On 6th May we caught a little minibus shuttle from Copan into Guatemala and went straight to the old colonial town of Antigua. It is a really beautiful town, full of tourists but we loved it. Lots of colourful buildings and quaint cobbled streets and funky restaurants. That night we went to Café La Escudilla, a lovely restaurant in a little courtyard full of plants. It has a daily special of a soup, main course and lemonade for just over a quid/ R15. Such a bargain and the food is delicious! The next day we headed into the sprawling Guatemala [View Full Entry]

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On Sunday 29h April we started our long journey to La Ceiba on the Caribbean coast of Honduras, right the other side of the country. We caught a bus to a town nearby to Leon and then another bus to El Guasale, the border town. From there we got bicycle taxis to take us the 3km to the actual border post where we spent 45 minutes arguing with the money changing sharks and still didn’t get a very good deal. Luckily we didn't need to change a lot. Then very conveniently a bus was leaving in 20 minutes to Tegucigalpa, [View Full Entry]

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On the 23rd April we caught a bus from Liberia in Costa Rica to Rivas in Nicaragua. The border crossing went remarkably smoothly and only took us just over an hour. By the time we got dropped off in Rivas, Kez was bursting and there was no restaurant in sight so she just asked a random lady sitting on her porch if she could use her toilet and the old dear was so sweet about it. Imagine doing that in Vienna! From Rivas we caught a collectivo (basically a taxi that takes as many people as it can) to the [View Full Entry]

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The Costa Ricans, or Ticos as they call themselves, have a saying, Pura Vida, meaning Pure Life that you hear constantly as a greeting or to say something is cool and it’s a very worthy description of the country in general. It is a very vibrant place with so much to offer that you could easily spend many weeks here and not be bored. It’s also extremely easy to travel around because it’s a small country with a well developed tourist infrastructure and almost everyone speaks English - not so good for practicing our Spanish! It’s also not called Costa [View Full Entry]

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We arrived in Venezuela on Sat 31 March in Santa Elena de Uairen, just over the border from Brazil. We arrived in much the same way as we would travel around the rest of the country, on a FREEZING bus. Night buses in the rest of South America are pretty cold from the air conditioning, but Venezuela is something special. Kerry was freezing despite wearing 2 t-shirts, 2 fleeces, a rain coat and a sleeping bag inner. It seems a whole industry is built on selling woolly hats, gloves and winter jackets just for bus travel. Santa Elena was only [View Full Entry]

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Our base for organising our trip to the rainforest was Manaus. It’s a big city, packed with tour agencies offering all sorts of Amazon adventures. We had already pretty much decided to go to a sustainable reserve called Mamiraua so we could avoid the pesky tour agents and spend our days doing all the admin we needed to do like book boat tickets, pay our deposit for Mamiraua, buy long sleeve shirts to survive the mozzies, visit the Colombian embassy etc. All tasks were successful except the Colombian embassy because they wanted so much detailed information to give Kez a [View Full Entry]

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After carnaval in Salvador, we needed some serious chilling out, so it was time to hit the beaches of northern Brazil. On Friday 23 Feb, we arrived in Maceio, which had some great palm fringed beaches for a town, with some amazing restaurants built between the palms. The highlight was going to the natural pools - when the tide goes out, shallow pools are formed in a reef 2km off shore. First we had to argue with tourist information about their tide table, pointing out that it couldn’t be low tide as the water was 10 metres from their office. [View Full Entry]

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