It was just a brief little taste of Mexico before we headed off the Belize. In our minds, we live so close that it’s pretty easy to come back and see more of Mexico when we want to. To make sure we had enough time to get all the way to Caye Caulker in the same day, we left on the 5:30am bus to Chetumal, the border town. Now, if you flew into Mexico and you aren’t planning on re-entering the country, you aren’t supposed to have to pay the exit fee. Unfortunately, when you get a greedy corrupt border patrol agent who is telling you otherwise and not letting you pass, you don’t really get much of a choice. So we paid our fee that quickly put us over budget for Mexico and made our ... read more

Overall, we have to say that the north island had been pretty awesome. If what people were saying about the south island was true, then we’d really be in for a treat! There really wasn’t a whole lot to see right off the ferry in Picton other than go check out some wineries. The only problem was that we really weren’t here at the right time of year for this as many of them we tried to visit were actually closed. Of course, we were also trying to visit some of the ones with free tastings being the cheapos we are. So with the wineries a no go, we ventured down Queen Charlotte road to check out the sounds. Now these sounds, although very beautiful are just large water filled gorges. The road was extremely windy ... read more

It was still raining on us a bit when we arrived in Sabang, so it was a little tough to tell what this little fishing village was all about. We checked out a couple of the bungalows and decided to take the one fitting for the 3 of us to stay together. The owner wasn’t actually there and since her worker managed to accidentally break the cord for the generator, we would be without electricity that night. Poor Rachel probably wasn’t loving the whole situation, especially after being sick and stuck in the rain for a while. For us on the other hand, after being stranded on a piece of cardboard for 2 nights, we didn’t really care. Besides, we were having instant soup by candlelight for dinner. How much more romantic can it get right? ... read more

There were plenty of options for buses to take when we got back to Caticlan, all heading to Manila via the same route. Originally when we had spoken with a man at the tourism office in Boracay, we got the impression that there was one company operating this trip with a few different departure times throughout the day. In reality, there were at least 5 different companies all with their own touts trying to recruit you as soon as you took a couple of steps in the direction of the buses. They were probably a bit irritated with us that we wouldn’t commit to anything without seeing the actual bus we would be taking, but we were glad we waited. Obviously not all of the buses turned out to be as nice as they had been ... read more

There was no way to hide the fact that we were feeling a little down about having to leave the place we had fallen in love with. When it was time to go, the owner even waited out by the road with us and flagged down a tricycle, making sure that they would only charge us the correct amount to get back to the town we were leaving from. After letting a couple of guys go away because they wanted to hammer us on the price, we eventually found one who was fair. We tossed our bags up on top and squeezed into the tiny little seats that seemed to be made only for toddlers. On the way to the pier, we ended up talking to a couple of local women as the man picked up ... read more