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Published: March 10th 2006
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Rio Dulce, Guatemala
View from balcony of our room at Rio Dulce - a hard life!! We have had a fascinating first 9 days travelling up from Antigua in Guatemala to Cancun in Mexico, with our Tucan tour group.
Highlights to date (in date order):
- getting stuck in a 45 mins traffic jam en route from Guatemala City airport to our hotel in Antigua. We may as well have been in London!! However, this gave us time to realise that the Guatemalan capital city is a very bustling, smoggy place, full of lots of cars - so not fussed it is not on our itinerary!
- exploring the colonial town of Antigua, with its beautifully coloured buildings (although as another UNESCO World Heritage site, it reminds one of Trinidad in Cuba to look at).
- staying in a hotel room in Rio Dulce (Guatemala) which was on stilts over the lake, so we went to sleep listening to the water lapping under us! The next day, we encountered our first (and to date only) rainy day; unfortunately, this coincided with our boat trip up the lake to the sleepy town of Livingston (at mouth of the estuary). So there are some fab photos of a wet-looking C&H on the boat, as we
Caye Caulker, Belize
Our hotel on the beach in Caye Caulker had the front seats & bore the brunt of the rain!
- visiting the Mayan ruins at Tikal, where we had a 10km walk around the various temples that have been uncovered from the jungle (- and it is only 40% of the actual site that has been uncovered to date). We also got to climb a number of temples, but while C found that climbing them is often far easier than getting back down again, H had more problem climbing, as the steps are high for those more vertically-challenged!
- visiting the inside of the Barton Creek caves (San Ignacio, Belize) in a dug-out canoe, with some huge stalagtites, stalamites & other rock formations on show. And then relaxing on hammocks & splashing in the river afterwards.
- discovering what happens when one of your tour party has an upset stomach & needs the toilet whilst on a local bus in Belize - the bus driver heads off & leaves them wherever they get off! (He managed to hitch a lift with a truck-driver to catch us up later, thankful that Belize is an English-speaking country!)
- finding out that 2 of the our tour
Playa del Carmen, Mexico
A local fisherman in Playa del Carmen group (on this section of the trip) went to Coloma school in Croydon, and that Chris went to school with one of their brotherĀ“s - a small world!!
- spending a few days on the relaxed, caribbean-atmosphere island of Caye Caulker (Belize). Had a hotel 10 metres from the beach, and 30 metres from the Caribbean Sea - so not bad really! Whilst there, we had H coming face-to-face with reef sharks and stingrays whilst on a snorkelling excursion for the day, and our tour group discovered that the local cocktails can be deadly (but extremely entertaining to the group members not drinking them!!)
- Helen having the Belize immigration official ask for her e-mail address when he noted that her marital status was "single", as she completed paperwork to to leave the country. And the official asking again even when Helen pointed out that Chris was standing about 20 metres away!!
- spending most of the day eating, drinking & relaxing on a quiet section of beach at Playa del Carmen (Mexico). And then burning a CD of our photos to date - which seems easier to do in Central America than we had originally thought it may be. In fact, there have been more photo shops and internet access places than we could possibly want!
- visiting the Co Co Bongo nightclub until 4am, on the hotel strip at Cancun. It is a huge Las Vegas-style club, with a show on up on the stage & trapeze artists entetaining the punters all night (just above our heads - we were the safety net!) But the building had been demolished by Hurrican Wilma in October, and although other buildings not all re-built, the club had been in 4 months - perhaps the Wembley stadium builders should take note!
- taking the bus & ferry over to the Isle De Merjeres, just off coast of Cancun. There we hired a golf buggy & 5 of us rode around on a tour of the island. Chris was driving & missed spotting a few speed bumps (oops!) & managed to break the reverse gear (oops again!) - however, C was then somewhat embarrased when the owners showed that reverse was working & it had been C not using it right!!
- saying farewell to most our tour group, and welcoming new people to travel back down to Antigua (via Mexico) with. (The Tucan tours are modular, so each bit of our 7 weeks has 2 week segments, with some different tour members on each segment).
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