Page 5 of jessmason Travel Blog Posts


Central America Caribbean » Honduras » Northern » La Ceiba January 7th 2011

following on from the last entry... Next morning we headed to the docks at 8am to get our passport stamped and got on the 9.30am boat to Puerto Barrios in Guatemala. it cost us $37.50Bz to exit Belize which was annoying but good as we had to get rid of our belize dollars anyway, we just hadnt wanted to spend it! My last $1.15 of coins i spent on chips onthe exit ramp lol. The boat took about 1hr 45min but it was a beautiful day with no wind. it was only a small motor boat but they packed us in, about 20ppl with all our luggage. When we arrived we went and got our entry stamp to guatemala and to change the rest of our belize notes at the bank and noone would change them. ... read more
Omoa jetty
Honduran Lempiras
yay we´re rich!


So... theres a bit to update on! On new years eve during the day we went on a snorkelling tour from around 11am to 4pm. We had many options but for a few annoying reasons which i wont go into, we ended up booking on a speed boat, but it ended up being a pretty great day out. We stopped at 3 places to snorkel, there were 9 of us on the boat plus 2 crew. The first place was called .............. it was the first marine park in Belize and its beautiful with lots of big big fish, a few sharks and green sea turtles swimming lazily around! The second stop was shark and ray ally and you instantly saw why, we were surrounded most of the time by many rays, only a couple of ... read more
HOLA
more turtles
lazy hammock over the water


hola! so now we are in belize... all of a sudden EVERYTHING from taxis to milk has at least doubled in price! taxi drivers seem like extortionists to us! but we paid the $30belize to get from the border to a town called San Ignacio, a bit of a border town but with many other attractions close by, worth the visit! (the belize dollar is exactly 2 to the US dollar so we're about the same, just for those interested). We found a hostel called Bella's backpackers run by a woman called Natasha who's daughter is called Bella... hence the name! we arrived so early in the morning that we had time to get our bearings and then for a small fee Natasha and Bella and a few other young girls came with us to the ... read more
cahal pech ruins, san ignacio
dario on the river
mouth of ATM cave


Hola! San pedro ended up being a great little town to be in. We went horse riding the next afternoon with a guide (and owner of the horse) named Pedro. He took us to an amazing look out piint on the nearby hillside, a 3 hour round trip. Unfortunately my saddle was pretty damn uncomfortbale and i ended up having bruised thighs and my shins got bruised too coz the stirrups were weird! loved my little horse though, she loved to run, so we did! We learnt a lot from Pedro about the local fauna, including the snakes, spiders and the local wildcats that apparently looks like a mini black and grey tiger! The horses looked pretty well looked after, but one of my horses shoes fell off right before we started but they said it ... read more
Juan´s family
cave trip
feet tied to thongs with pink string!

Central America Caribbean December 16th 2010

Hola, we are finally in guatemala. i dont have long for a long blog entry but ill do a shorty. we were able to get out exit stamps in mexico next morning and then waited for our minibus to return as we had arranged. It arrived full of more people so the company paid for us to take taxis to the border. once there it cost us $2 US to get the guatemala entry stamp and our minibus to take us further arrived. BUT a bug truck broke down right behind it and we couldnt go anywhere for an hour! finally we found out that the driver can take the bus into mexico and go around another way which takes 5 mins but that the border police were charging him about 100 quetzales, so everyone on ... read more
Dario carrying coffee
Jess studying

North America » Mexico » Chiapas December 13th 2010

Hola, we didnt get to see many of the festivities last night because I got a bit sick (all better now) and we were both very tired anyway. but we did have dinner in the festival and saw many more pilgrims. This morning we had to be up at 6.30 to have breakfast and catch our shuttle which would take us to the border, with another shuttle waiting on the other side for us all organised to take us to panajachel in guatemala. We met a Japanese girl, 2 Kiwis, a german and an american all hing the same way on our shuttle. we all know each other a little now. We had a 4 hour minibus ride to the border town of Ciudad Cuautemoc, then a 2 hour wait in line (but our bus driver ... read more
travel mates stuck with us at the border

North America » Mexico » Chiapas » San Cristobal de las Casas December 12th 2010

Hola, San Cristobal is a very pretty town in the hills of the state of Chiapas, 2000m above sea level. It has a few pretty churches and a cathedral and lots of small one way streets with colourful doorways and buildings. The people here are mostly of Mayan descent with a mix of hispanic in there as well... so most people are a full head shorter than me or more which is unusual. We arrived here at night and were wearing thongs and swimmers and only one layer of clothing on as we had just come up from swimming in aqua azul... the temperature here was about 5 degrees centigrade! needless to say we were pretty cold and shared a taxi with 2 british backpackers to a hostel asap. But we moved on from there pretty ... read more

North America » Mexico » Campeche » Campeche December 10th 2010

Hola, We didnt do much in campeche except eat breakfast on the rooftop and watch street vendors setting up before heading to the bus station. The bus to Palenque took a while, but we had movies (dubbed in spanish) to keep us occupied, e.g. Star Trek and confessions of a shopaholic. There were gappers on the bus, 4 of which were aussies which we bumped into over the next few days as well. Had a chat and they-re on a 27 day trip with gap adventures. Finally we got to palenque and grabbed a colectivo that heads towards the ruinas of palenque (ruins) but got dropped off at a place called El Panchan, a family run area of the jungle with cabanas, dorms etc run by different members of the family so you can choose your ... read more

North America » Mexico » Yucatán » Merida December 7th 2010

Okie dokie, Net day in Merida, we walked down to the bus station to go to more ruins called Uxmal. On the way we were surprised to see so many streets blocked off to traffic. We asked a policewoman what was happening, she said, every sunday lots of the townspeople walk/run the streets of Merida, just for their health! talk about community. As we spoke some kids ran past and we looked down the street to see a mass of people coming our way, so we took an alternate route. The bus took us 2 hours to get to Uxmal! the ruins were great though, lots of cool carvings etc and huge mounments, i have to say, the Iguanas were also very cool! and the microbats that have taken up residence in the ruins! Ill post ... read more

North America » Mexico » Quintana Roo December 5th 2010

Hola, We got up early, but didnt leave the hostel until late (after the previous entry and many other things we had to do). about 10am we wandered down to the bus terminal, but on the way found a colectivo (minibus) that goes to chichen itza for only 20pesos each instead of the 60 we would hae paid on the bus. we had to wait half an hour for it to leave but we didnt mind. It was a full colectivo but the man next to us, Manuel gave us entertainment. he works at chichen itza selling books and told us all about how the site used to be owned by one family who were forced to sell it to the government recently for around $20 million US. I didnt catch all the info but Dario ... read more
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Wall of skulls
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