Blogs from Río Dulce, Caribbean Coast, Guatemala, Central America Caribbean - page 12

We left Copan Ruinas, Honduras about 8am, stopped once to stretch after about 2 hours, then arrived at Quirigua Ruins about 11:30am. The ruins are off the main road a ways on a dirt road, thru banana plantation(s), Dole I think. Although very small, Quirigua was still interesting with some cool stellae and zoomorphs (human-animal sculptures). The guide in Copan had told us his opinion was that the Mayans that made some of the designs in stone were probably on drugs... some peyote, mescal concoction popular at the time. Some of them were weird enough that he might be right! After a brief walk-thru, we had a picnic lunch from the Copan hotel, then headed down the road towards the lake and our stay at Rio Dulce. When we arrived at the lake, we pulled ... read more

Martin: Having learnt the entirety of the spanish language in two weeks (ha!), and being so completely fluent we were asked to translate for complete strangers, it was time to cut the apron strings and set of to explore guatemala in the raw. We said good bye to our Maestros and left them some spanish versions of ¨the cat in the hat (not realising that it doesnt rhyme in spanish...) took photos (which got fried in a power surge) and set of on the next leg of out trip. After numerous discussions in spanglish with the travel agent down the road, Hugo and the charming but incomprehensible Raquel pursuaded us to part with $US1,500 in return for some hand wirtten pieces of paper, that they assured us would provide us with hotel rooms, private shuttles to ... read more

Rio Dulce: The next stop after Flores was Rio Dulce and the trip gave us our first real experience of chicken buses… they’re called chicken buses because the people inside are cooped up like chickens. The buses themselves are old American school-buses that have been kinda pimped and now have yellow red and green designs and massive engines to deal with the steep mountain roads around here. The tiny seats would maybe sit two people but here they sit at least 3 on each side of the aisle. Its intimate to say the least… It took us a few different chicken buses and about 5 hours or so to reach Rio Dulce. Our hotel there was pretty cool as it was a sort of jungle lodge again but entirely raised a few feet from the ground ... read more

First a quick disclaimer- photos are loading up about two per hour. It doesn't look good for a lot of pretty pictures. But hang on, I'll try again at th next backwater town internet dive... Sunday morning I arose at 5:30am to catch the mini-bus to Tikal. There I ran into a British guy from the bar at my hostel, Mark (of course), and we walked around for the next 5 hours at this giant city in the Jungle filled with stone temples and Mayan history. The city was built by a certain Mayan tribe out of the jungle between 600 and 900, when they abandoned the city, possibly because of droughts. But the Mayan history is not the reason I was there. Two reasons to haul across Guatemala for Mayan jungle ruins: 1) Monkeys 2) ... read more

Remember the theme song to Gilligan's Island: something about thinking they were going out for a three hour cruise? Well, that's about how our adventure as three middle aged couples lost in the marshes of Lago Izabal began... We had great trip out to Finca Parasio in the morning. We took a boat with the same captain as we used yesterday for the Livingston trip, and brought along our Canadian friends and another couple from their marina. The trip to the finca (ranch) takes about an hour from our hotel, along a lakeshore populated with wealthy residents at first, and then abruptly changing to mangrove swamps interspersed with cattle pastures and an occasional fisherman's home. The Mayans living in this area were attacked by the military during the uprising in the 80's and some villages were ... read more