Guatemalan chicken buses and onto Belize

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Antigua

Rin: Our first few days in Antigua I spent in bed with the worst ear infection I think I've ever had. I then proceeded to have a chunk of tooth chip off, from rice of all things, and so had to visit the dentist.... Which unfortunately meant that we weren't able to make it up to the organic finca in the mountains for a few days of wholesome recuperation...Grrrr... It did mean that we were in town when there was a shoot out a block up the road though.

After a few days, on a recommendation from Isabella, we decided to go on a small hike up a volcano to see some molten lava with Hamish and Cathy. As usual, trying to get a sense of how difficult the walk would be was a challenge. My pulsating ear and I plodded up and up, last in the group as usual, desperately wishing I'd taken the 'horse-taxi' or one of the sticks the kids were selling at the start of the trail. The skills I acquired in Bariloche for descending steep scree slopes were put to good use as we 'skied' down a small slope before the last uphill towards the lava. As the fine rock and sand filled our shoes the wind whipped up as we struggled our way closer and closer to the crowd of other tourists who had also come to see the lava. No barriers here! You could get as close as you dared to the molten rock burping its way out the side of the mountain face! It was pretty cool to see but also quite bizarre with the 50 or so other people all clamouring to get their photos taken in front of it.

Day of the Dead Festival
We managed to coincide our Antigua visit with the Festival of The Day of the Dead. In Guatemala this means making specially construction huge hexagonal kites and then flying them as high as they will go (I think to represent freeing the souls to heaven, I can't remember and don't have my diary with me). We made it out to the small village of Santiago de Atitlan which has one of the more traditional kite flying festivals around. With a huge festival atmosphere, decorated streets filled with music and food stalls, we were befriended by Jose, visiting from another village, who directed us to the main area for kite flying - yep, the cemetery! Our first kite was unfortunately caught by another and ended its flying days in the nearby fig tree. Which seemed to be a cemetery for kites as by the end of the day there were kites of all sizes and colours decorating its branches!

Not to be put off, we invested in another more traditional hexagonal style kite. After writing all the people we wished to be remembered on it we clambered on top of a family tomb (hey, it was the thing to do! Just following the locals!) to launch it. My ever competitive Nicko was determined to compete with the local boys for kite flying honours and before we knew it our little kite was but a speck in the cloudy skies. We managed to avoid another near encounter with the tree and numerous other crashes of other less experienced kite fliers. That was until one of the larger kites' string came crashing down over ours. We thought up until that point that we were flying the kite, only to realise that numerous other people were holding our string up and some other small boy was actually doing all the flying!

As I stayed atop the tomb madly trying to reel in the tangled string, Nick jumped down and followed its crazy path to the flier so that we could try and bring it back. It was very amusing to see so many people determined to help us keep it aloft and helping me to untangle it from the crosses and bunches of flowers. Once reeled in we decided to break against local tradition to burn the kite as it was such a good flier and might just decorate our home once we get home!

These photos were also unfortunately stolen...why couldn't he have left us the memory card???

Lago de Atitlan

All the stories of dodgy chicken buses in Guatemala came true when this Sunday morning we were on our way Lago de Atitlan. Sitting in the wheel arch seat with my knees around my ears Nick very kindly put my day pack on the rack above our heads. Well, one thing led to another and the pickpocket that was trying to steal Nick's wallet realised he'd have better luck with my bag. Being very good at his job he'd bolted off the back of the bus as soon as we realised something was fishy.... We stopped the bus, hauled our gear off and then nick hitched a ride in a family's car to try and find him. Not surprisingly the thief was no where to be found. oh well. Again we'd had no threat to our personal safety so we counted ourselves lucky.

We managed to get the last boat across beautiful Lago de Atitlan to the other main town. Sensing an uncomfortable edge to the place we left the next morning to the smaller pueblo of San Marcos. We found out later that there had been a drug bust in the town the day before, so everybody was probably strung out waiting for their next hit. Glad we scarpered out of there!

San Marcos
We spent a lovely lazy few days in San Marcos. Soaking up the sun on the shore of the lake, overlooking the volcano - just spectacular. I don't think our little instamatic camera will quite do the job of capturing its beauty... We bumped into Hamish and Cathy again jumping off the rocks on the edge of town and spent the evening watching Obama win the US elections. Yay!

Lanquin & Semuc Champey

These two places really do live up to all the hype that surrounds them on the travelling trails. Watching the bats leave their roost in the Lanquin cave was just amazing. When the lights were turned off at the entry of the cave I was sure that someone in the group would have a bat bump into them - there were literally hundreds of them! It was quite surreal as someone had a strobing flash on their camera. We'd have these millisecond images of the cave lit up, bats in matrix-like 3-d motion, and usually one or two of them inches from your face or body. Very cool.

Semuc Champey
For once the description of the day trip to Semuc Champey were accurate! Our guide into the cave system was great, probably because he was one of the group who originally discovered it. Candles in hand, we slipped, sloshed, swam and jumped our way through the freshwater cave system. Some of the formations were just beautiful. The 15m jump off the nearby bridge however was another story...one you'll have to ask Nick about! Getting stuck in the whirlpools around the rocks on a fast flowing trip down river was a perfect way to finish the first section of our day.
And so on to Semuc Champey proper. These limestone waterfalls and cave systems were again stunning. After lunching amongst the pools, feeding the fish and having a little swim we met our group for the final adrenalin pumping part of the day. 'At your own risk', one by one we tentatively climbed down the rope ladder, through the waterfall to the cave system where the main river flows. Chilly and hearts a-pounding we all managed to safely make our way back out again....

Flores & Tikal

Tikal is the main reason you go to the town of Flores that is situated in the north of Guatemala. Its then a choice of whether you go onward to Mexico or Belize if you are coming from the south. Buses up this way are once again a bumpy ride of connections via chicken bus or an choice of taking a much touted tourist shuttle and seeing if the extra cash really does get you there faster, or in more comfort. It really depends sometimes on luck.

Tikal is quite an amazing sight especially if you can get there early in the morning. 'Warning' its a pricey destination comparitively, but its hard not to go and see what it has to offer. Giant Mayan structures and pyramids which you can climb with the help of wooden scafold stairs, monkeys swinging through the forest and toucans in the trees. I would say that compared with Copan it had much greater scale but not quite as intricate carvings.

So not long after our tours of tikal, rin and i picked up a pair of jeans each from the local market for our European winter leg of our journey for US$26. The locals in Guatemala, indeed most of central america are quite happy to wear jeans for most of the year, when you or i would be stripping down to the bare minimum for public decency in an effort to staying cool.

Belize

What can I say. Belize is beautiful, costly, similar in many ways in its jungle experiences to Guatemala, but its people are very relaxed and being able to speak english has its benefits. Its also got some of the densest rainforest in central america - so if you

can get out and about with a guide into the Jungle you can see quite a bit. However be careful as the British SAS train here, and regularly there are drug raids, secret drug crop defense by exGuatemalan military militia with ex military weapons, and plain landings on the remote roads to transfer some coke between couriers. We learnt most of this from a couple of hours drinking conversation with a Belizian Leutenant who was on leave.

So Rin and I mainly were keen on coming to belize to spend tour time out on Glovers Reef Atoll. A 2 hour boat ride from the main coastline, where you can find a very very quaint group of islands with thatch huts, gas stoves and a beautiful reef. Now, Glovers resort is a budget option and we had quite a fun time there, but i have to say the family there is pretty quirky. with quite a few extra charges and rules that add up to reduce the amount of fun that you can have. If youre going out there to catch lobster and be self sufficient, well sadly there aren't that many lobster left outside of the marine reserve. there seems to be plenty of marine life inside the reserve and unfortunately we saw some of the other guest poaching some of these.

Having said that, we did some good snorkeling and attempted to do some tom hanks style survival cast away style by eating and drinking fresh coconuts, creating a bamboo handspear to get fish and generally living in close quarters with all kinds of nifty hermit crabs, lizards and other island life. Fun stuff. We hung out with a cool Alaskian couple Mike and Sue whilst we were there who helped suppliment our lack of seafood produce with a few conch (shellfish thing). I would have to say the coolest thing i did was trying to pursue a barracoota with a bamboo handspear... perhaps that was the dumbest thing i did. Needless to say it was very difficult to keep up with, and a little too savvy for me. Also getting out into the surf zone and freediving down into the current surges with the fish was pretty darn amazing too. Rin and i are big fans of the snorkle and facemask after our time in Central America.

Now the challenge with these tropical paridise islands is you have to get out there and back. Unfortunately for us the weather was pretty poor for the days at the start and the end of our get away. We managed to time our departure perfectly returning to go through a ocean squall, high winds and seas in a small 14 foot speed boat. With the boat speed and the wind the rain was coming sideways as we slammed our way toward the belize coast, squeezing through the barrier reef whitecaps. We were lucky that our hosts were taking us directly to Dangriga the second largest town for a fuel run. The unlucky side of this was that the boat was full of empty 20Gal fuel containers. One of which took off in the wind and bounced off my head before disappearing in the wake of the boat. No turning back.

Dangriga is a town that Rin and I really liked. The townspeople have a very jamaican way about them having settled from the inslands generations ago, and its a very laid back place. And the people and their food is just as nice as can be. Creole fried chicken and fish and spices... and lots of Rum.

Unfortunately still being without a camera, we cant bring you any of the Belizian photos.

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