Central America

---

It's expensive, you can buy Irn Bru in the supermarket and everyone looks like they've just stepped out of a Gap advert, so I must be in Canada. I've been in Vancouver for a few days now, and I love it, I can see why it's meant to be the most 'livable' city in the world or whatever. Or perhaps it's still the effect of having spent 2 days in Dallas immediately before coming here, which has got to be one of the world's most unlivable cities. Bit of a contrast.

Hopefully this will be my last mammoth update, as I now have a digital camera, bought due to my other camera giving up in the Costa Rican rainforest (broken by taking a picture of a spider's web) - it's going to cost as much to fix it as it would to buy another one, so I decided to treat myself to a fairly decent camera which will mean I'll be able to file lots of reports along the lines of 'here's what I had for breakfast and I haven't even digested it yet'. There are lots of photos in this blog entry, so remember to go to the other pages of photos, especially if you can't be bothered reading it.

But back to business and the last 3 months of my life in Central America. What could be duller than wading through all that information, so I've decided to write it in a user friendly format. Also known as a list. Also known as I'm lazy.

Anyway, to pick up from where I last filed a report in Isla Mujeres in Mexico:
* I went from there to Tulum, supposedly one of the top ten beaches in the world. Obviously I had to investigate this claim fully, so ended up spending a week there despite having planned to only stay for two nights. It helped that there was a good crowd of people in the hostel, the owners would run you to the supermarket whenever you wanted and the breakfasts were amazing. And yes, the beach is that good.
* had a long bus journey to Flores in Guatemala, including driving through Belize for a day. From Flores got up at 3am for the sunrise tour to Tikal, biggest Mayan site, didn't see sunrise due to cloud, but still worth it to be at the top of a pyramid in the early morning and see all the birdlife - toucans, parrots - and monkeys swinging through the trees.
*then to Antigua, beautiful colonial town choc a bloc with tourists. Went on great trip to Volcan Pacaya where you get to stand right next to the lava coming down the side of the volcano and feel your face slowly cook in the heat.
* went for a couple of days to hostel just outside Antigua called Earthlodge with great views, good company and amazing veggie food, so ended up staying nearly a week.
* from there to Lake Atitlan, stayed in San Pedro and did the 4 hour climb to get to the top of Volcan San Pedro to get amazing views over the lake. There was the annual fiesta in the town while I was there, so there was a funfair and lots going on.
* from there to Quetzaltenengo, or Xela as it's more handily called, where I thought I was going to go from to do some voluntary work on a coffee farm, but it was going to take too long to organise, so headed instead further up into the Western Highlands to Chichicastenango for the big market and then on to Nebaj by packed chicken bus up very twisty roads.
* spent a week in Nebaj living with a family and doing 4 hours of one to one Spanish classes every day. As one of the kids was a 9 year old girl, the week also involved a lot of dancing, getting my hair done and painting toenails.
* then returned to Antigua to go to Guatemala city for bus to Nicaragua, a journey that took a day and a half, having to spend the night in the bus station hotel in El Salvador (as nice as it sounds) and then drive through Honduras and northern Nicaragua to spend the night in the capital, Managua, before moving on to Granada
* spent a couple of nights staying in a hostel in Granada and exploring the town and then moved to La Prusia, the community that I stayed in for the next month, living in a volunteer house with mostly Spanish volunteers. The project was to build decent houses for the families of the community, who live in shacks and don't own the land that they live on. The volunteers were there to basically help out the families build their own houses. When the work was full on, it was pretty hard going, but there would be plenty of days when there wasn't that much happening on site. I also taught English to some local people and the teachers in the primary school as well, which was a really good way of getting to know people a bit better. The people were really amazing, they were so friendly and open, and really good fun, and despite the language barriers, there was plenty of banter with the locals. Come to think of it, most of the banter was about my failure to understand what was going on! Although many of the families had hardly anything, they're really generous spirited people, the kids would run up to you in the street and throw their arms round you the first time they met you, and people were really patient with my improved but still terrible Spanish. Working on the construction site was a real eye opener in terms of how hard people have to work - everything is done by hand, partly to do with the cost of machinery, but probably more to do with the fact that the electricity goes off every day between 7.30 in the morning and 4pm as Nicaragua is in the throes of an energy crisis. Cement is mixed by carry buckets of water, sand and 45kg bags of cement to the spot on site and then mixing it with a shovel. (tried carrying one bag of cement and decided it's not for me!) Foundations are dug by spade and then earth is removed by carrying it in buckets, large concrete bricks are carried by hand. Needless to say the locals, even the ones that don't look it, are unbelievably strong.
Living in a houseful of Spanish people was really good for my Spanish as well, I was immersed in it the whole time and I picked up a lot just in a month. While I was there I had a couple of weekends away with other volunteers, one to Omotepe, the large island in Lake Nicaragua, and one to San Juan del Sur, surf town on the Pacific coast. I had a great time in Nicaragua, friendly people, music everywhere, it definitely gets the thumbs up from me as being the Partick of Latin America.
* got bus from Granada to San Jose in Costa Rica where it's rainy season, went from there to Quepos, where I spent a sunny day in Manuel Antonio national park, the postcard beaches of Costa Rica, and they were really beautiful. Saw different types of monkeys and sloths in the trees. From there to Montezuma on the Nicoya peninsula, in what must be the slowest ferry in the world. While I was there it rained a lot and the sea was pretty wild, so didn't see it at its best, after that went to Santa Elena in the cloudforest. Went on a really good tour of the reserve, although all the monkeys and whatnot had scarpered, as there's no fruit on the trees at this time of year. On the upside, there are also fewer tourists, so got the chance after the tour to spend a couple of hours wandering round the forest and didn't meet anyone the whole time. Also went on a night tour of the forest with a very nervous group of Spanish people who were in Costa Rica on holiday - after we saw the venemous tree snake, they got a lot more nervous. Travelled from there to Alajuela to get my flight the next day, although the journey took 3 hours longer then expected due to torrential rain, so the bus had to change route twice due to landslide and flooding. So Costa Rica is very pretty, even in the rain, and even in the rain there are still tourists everywhere. If Nicaragua's like Partick, then Costa Rica's a bit like Edinburgh.

So I waved ciao ciao to Latin America and head for err, Latin America. Well, not quite, but in Dallas all the information on signs, bus timetables etc is in Spanish as well as English. Unfortunately my experience of Dallas didn't involve any right wing reactionary old cowboys, which is what I was there to see. Although, as expected, it was very strange - there are no people at all in the streets and getting around by public transport was not exactly impossible, but very near it. I visited a couple of art galleries in Fort Worth and the next day went to downtown Dallas (I think I was in the downtown, difficult to tell as there weren't any signs of life) and went to the aquarium and stood outside the building that JFK got shot from and saw the grassy knoll. At that point I gave up trying to get anywhere else by public transport, went back to the hostel and then flew to Vancouver the next day, where I've been for the past 4 days, sorting myself out (getting hair cut, buying clothes) visiting stuff and generally mincing about. Tomorrow I'm going to go to Vancouver Island, where I'm hoping to see whales close up and bears from a distance. So hopefully the next blog entry will: a) not be 4 months from now b) have photos of things I have recently been doing.

If you've read this far, congratulations.

---

Photos

La Prussia kids, Nicaragua
Friendly kids I would pass every day on my way to build houses

Church of San Juan de Chumula, Mexico
Went on a trip to an indigenous town near San Cristobal. This is a catholic church where they practice Mayan rituals, including drinking lots of fizzy drinks to induce the burps and expel bad spirits.

Zipolite beach
On the Pacific coast of Mexico

Mazunte beach
View is from the balcony of the hostel I was staying at

Monte Alban ruins
Near Oaxaca, Mexico

Teotihuacan
Near Mexico City, something like the 3rd biggest pyramid in the world

Teotihuacan from pyramid
this was taken from the top of either the Pyramid of the Moon or Sun looking towards the other one, can't remember which way round they are now

Palenque
The ruins of Palenque in Mexico in dense forest, sound of howler monkeys, birds and school trips all around

beach, Tulum, Mexico
you get the idea, even if the person who developed the photo dropped half their lunch over it

Tikal, Guatemala
A huge site with what seems like hundreds of structures like this one spread over the whole area

Chickenbus ready for action
Spent many hours in Guatemalan buses like this one

Nebaj family
Juana, Brenda and Felipe with their friend whose name I can't remember now at the front

Victim of a Guatemalan hairdressing incident
Take one unwilling tourist and a 9 year old aspiring hairdresser...probably just as well you can't see what happened to the top of my head

Nebaj from above
The language course I did included a couple of free walks with a guide. On this one, we were accompanied for part of the way by some boys who were a bit overwhelmed when they discovered I'd seen David Beckham play in real life

War memorial, Nebaj
Nebaj is in the Ixil triangle, one of the areas most brutally affected by the war. This memorial is in the graveyard and shows scenes of local people hiding in the forest while helicopters fly overhead

Lava, Volcan Pacaya
Close enough to feel the heat