1) First 2 Weeks

Central America Caribbean » Guatemala » Capital Region » Antigua
September 14th 2011

Published: September 17th 2011

The hardest part is knowing where to start, whilst I have only been out here for 2 weeks it feels more like months. With 3 countries visited and multiple days spent on buses a lot has happened. With scuba diving with sharks, ancient mayan ruins visited, accidentally being involved in a Guatamalan Political Protest for 9.5 hours that that made the Guatamalan National news, caving, tarrantulas and scorpions and relaxing times on the hammocks there is a lot to say.

My flight landed in Mexico City but I was pretty keen to start heading towards Belize and the beautiful sunny beaches for some sun. After a day walking around Mexico City I jumped on the bus to Cancun, what I didn't realise was that the bus took 25 hours (and as our bus driver got lost it actually took 28 hours). By the time I arrived in Cancun I was on the verge of getting DVT with my feet size being doubled. Te bus trip itself was strange, the woman behind me loved my hair and kept stroking it when she thought I wouldn't notice and to stip it I started playing with her kids, which was fine until they started punching my arm. I got off the bus with loads of bruises and a dislike of small children.

Cancun itself was nothing spectacular,so after a day looking round I jumped on the next bus to Belize. This was actually my first local bus and it was hilarious, when we reached the border I got "fined" by the Mexican Border Police, which is annoying but kind of expected. However the person in front of me was a transvestite and with the photo on hos passport being male and him being dressed as a female the Mexican police were leading him off for questioning. It was ridiculous but then again Central America is a pretty conservative country.

With no further drama then the Chief Constanble of the Belizian police falling asleep on my shoulder as we drove into the city, it was a fairly uneventful if slow journey. I hadn't heard great stories about Belizie City but was pretty convinved that it coudn't be as dangerous as it sounded so the plan was for me to stay a night and then head onto the Islands. However after walking 5 minutes (through the apparent dodgy part of town, which I didn't know at the time) and being followed into the bank by 2 homeless men, I decided to leave straight away and jumped onto the boat to take me to Caye Caulker (one of the Belizian Islands).

Caye Cauler was amazing, the people were friendly (if the males were quite sleezy), the seafood was amazing and just in general it was a great place to relax in. Luckily the hostel that I stayed in was really nice with a great group of people staying there at the time. The one thing I was desperate to do was some diving, with some of the best diving in Central America here it was too good an opportunity to miss. On my second day of diving I went to The Blue Hole (you can see it on Google Earth if you are interested), it was incredible. With a 40m dive into the most blue sea you will ever see it was a fantastic way to get back into diving. At one point I turned my back on the reef wall and all I could see was blue sea above, below and in front of me - I got a little bit of vertigo. Then suddenly 5 grey sharks swan right out of the blue in front of me. It was incredible (you know how much I love sharks), unfortunately there are Hammerhead sharks but I didn't see them, which I was quite gutted about.

The rest of the dive itself was absolute carnage, the one problem with Caye Caulker diving is that they will let anyone with a Padi Open Water do the dive to 40m, there were 10 in my group and by the end of the dive there were only 2 of us not panicing. With 4 people running out of air about 15 minutes into the dive and some of the others getting impacted by the Nitro on the dive (one guy was swimming round and round in circles at the surface he said he didn't even realise), it was chaos. The remaining two dives were shallower but we saw more on them with a turtle swimming in between the divers for almost the entire dive, sting rays, a spotted tail ray, more sharks and also lionfish it was a really good days diving and worth every penny.

The remainder of my time in Caye Caulker I spent relaxing in hammocks and after 4 days on the siland I sadly decided that it was time to head to the North of Guatamala and towards some ancient ruins called Tikal. The journey again was pretty relaxed, although once again I was "fined" as I entered the country with a tax that goes straight into the pocket of the government official. Saying that it wasn't expensive and if you don't pay they don't let you into the country.

The ancient runis in Tikal were incredible, I can't describe how large the temples were (I have some photos that I will put up soon) and just how many runis there were. It was phenomenal. Our guide was a local Guatamalan man, and he was so passionate, just just about Tikal but aout the country and preserving the history and customs. It was fascinating to listen to him and all the outreach projects that he ran within local communites to stop poaching and destruction of the thousands of Mayan runis in the north of Guatamala. He also managed to find a tarrantula and I held it, it was huge and started running up my arm to hide in my hair. Can you imagine? It would have taken my days to find him again if he had succeded.

After visiting Tikal, there wasn't really that much to do in Flores (the closest town to Tikal) so I jumped on a bus to head down towards one of National Parks and a town called Lanquin. The bus trip itself was scheduled (as much as they schedule in Guatamala) to be roughly 6 hours long. Unfortunately the first round of the Guatamalan election was this week and the locals had just found out that the candidates who would be running for the re-election in November were. Having heard the choices I don't blame them, one of the villages we passed put up a orad block and refused to let anything pass until their demands were heard. We were stuck there for 9.5 hours and it was fascinating to walk through and see Guatamalan history unfolding in front of you. Having arrived there at 1pm we finally got through the road block at 10pm as we drove past the locals were all dancing and singing so I am assuming that they got quite a positive response to their demands. By this time we were shattered and had been on the road for around 13 hours, when suddenly the bus front tyre blew up. It was so ridiculous that you had to laugh, with no spare we had to wait for another bus to pass until we could continue. In all we arrived in Lanquin at 2am with the journey taking roughly 17.5 hours overall.

Lanquin itself was beautiful and it is Natural Park in the Jungle. The main reasons that backpackers go though is for a day caving, tubing and swimming in some beautiful lagoons. The caving ws hilarious we were all given candles that we had to try and keep dry whilst diving under waterfalls, climbing up ladders, jumping off rocks. It was amazing fun and really creepy going deep into these caves with the flickering candle light as your primary way of getting light. We were in the caves for around 2.5 hours and then we headed along the river and got on rubber rings and floated down some river rapids for a while. It was fun but not as good as the tubing in Laos. After a long walk up 1000's of steps to get to the view point of the national park and the lagoon it was time to relax in these beautiful and clear pools where tiny finsh attacked your dead skin (a bit like the fish pedicures that you can get), except it was natural. All I can say is that those fish loved my sunburnt shin, I think it was a banquet for them. After all the energy of the day we then relaxed and had a few beers in the evening. It was a perfect day.

The following day I left Lanquin and I am currently in the beautiful town of Antiqua next to Guatamala City. Its a really old Colonial fell town so this afternoon I am off to explore.

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