white sand beaches, turquoise waters, perfect avocados, friendly locals, pina coladas, cheap beer, rustic cabanas, hammocks, mayan sauna, cenotes, swimming and a monkey too. what more can you ask for in a trip... enjoy some photos.... read more

We have finally made it back to Melbourne... We had a wonderful three weeks of roughing it in our tent and are glad to be back here. It's sort of a home away from our home. Anyways, where do I begin? We flew into the gold coast airport which is in a small town called Coolongatta in Southern Queensland. We walked from the airport to our first caravan park that we stayed in and just stayed one night. It was a beautiful place, the beach was just that, golden and the sky so big. We decided to move further north the next day but only made it as far as Surfer's Paradise which we found to be a horrible place. It is very touristy up there with heaps of high rises and casinos and shopping centres ... read more

Well I finally made it to the aquarium the other day! It was alright but not really worth the twenty-three dollars per person. Luckily we had a 2 for 1 coupon. I think that the neatest thing was this aquarium tunnel in which you could stand in and watch all the sea creatures swimming above you. There were giant stingrays and sharks in there! They also had this giant squid on display which has been frozen in ice. It is 7 metres in length, but doesn't really appear that giant because it's tenticles are all curled up. I really liked the jellyfish tanks... We also went on this simulator ride that we thought would simulate some sort of undersea adventure, but instead we were driving through some sort of iceland while boulders crashed into our sides. ... read more

I have now been here 25 days and still haven't really done a lot in the way of touristy things... However, we have moved from the living room floor of our friends house to a room in this gigantic house. It is a big three bedroom place a few blocks down the road from where we were staying before. There are two others who live there, an aussie and a girl from France who doesn't really speak much english. The flatmates are about as good as they get in a sharehouse situation, everyone keeps to themselves and does their own thing. In our room the ceilings are like 15 feet high and we even have a fireplace (not that we would use it in this heat) but it is nice to wake up and see this ... read more

Before I go on about Chichicastenango, I realized I forgot to explain why the local buses are called Chicken Buses. Basically anyone is allowed to bring aboard pretty much any kind of cargo which sometimes includes live chickens. You pretty much never know what to expect when you get on. I also forgot to show you a picture, this one isn´t that great, I have to take a better one, but you get the idea... Most of them are more colorful and have a woman´s name painted across the side, usually a daughter´s or wife´s. The same is for most of the comedors, restaurantes, cantinas, etc. Anyways, So yesterday I visited the town of Chichi to walk amongst their weekly Sunday market which covers about 10 to 15 street blocks, it is so big! I thought ... read more