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Published: April 21st 2008
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Chichen Itza 2
Amy in front of the main temple - it was boiling! Hola!!
How are you all? well, we're in Guatemala at the moment and its boling hot here! In fact it keeps getting hotter each country we go to...
Cuba seems like such a long time ago now, but i think Simon promised in his last blog our thoughts on the country....I'll keep it brief...well....in some ways Cuba is quite under-developed. It was a bit of a shock to see all the houses are all falling apart, the roads have holes in them, there are no shops and in the few that exist there is no stock (going into a Mexican supermarket was like a wonderland!) and the cars are from the 1950s. But in some ways its a society to look up to...everyone is quite educated, its so safe to walk around and the people are so friendly and proud of their country. We still have questions on how the dual currency works...and we feel a bit like we had the tourist tour of Cuba at times, with the old cars and Cuban music, but it was great fun and I'd definetly go back.
Okay...well what we've been up to since Cuba...After flying back to Havana from Santiago de Cuba, we spent one night in Havana (our casa owner was a bit mad, and decided to clean the kitchen at 1 in the morning when we arrived from the late flight!) and then flew onto Cancun to start our Central America adventure. We have to be in Costa Rica by 5th May to start our Spanish course, so the plan is to head down there deciding on our route as we go along.
We decided to take the coach straight from Cancun to Valladolid (near Chichen Itza). We didn't really spend much time in Valladolid, as it was really just a stop to see Chichen Itza...which was amazing! It's so clever how they built the pyramids with such purpose...if you clap in front of the steps to the top of the pyramid the echo sounds like a bird and during the equinox when the sun is falling or rising a snake illusion appears ( one of their gods). Very cool!
After Valladolid we took the coach to Tulum...a gorgeous place by the beach to see some more Mayan ruins. Our "apartment" was very cute. It was really just a hut on the beach with a bed and a mosquito net. We woke up and fell asleep to the sound of the sea which you don't get to do too often. The Tulum ruins were good to see, but maybe more for their location which is just by the beach.
We also almost got attacked by iguanas in Tulum. We were just sitting down on a bench by the ruins about to make a sandwich with some bread and ham, when all of a sudden we were surrounded by iguanas from all angles. They must have some amazing sense of smell, coz when we moved to another location to try and out smart them, they followed! Maybe the no food sign was there for a reason...
Our next coach trip took us to Belize City, where we have just come from. Belize City is not great and I wouldn't recommend going there. It got ruined in a hurricane a few years ago so most of the buildings are falling apart. There also seemed to be quite a few homeless people and people just generally a bit out of it so we decided to take a boat to Caye Caulker which turned out to be a great decision as it is beautiful. We spent the day snorkelling in the coral reef. We swam above sting rays (which are massive) and I saw a baracuda which I swam away from when it gave me an evil look and showed me its teeth. We're thinking maybe we should try and do a diving course at some point now.
And then that brings us up to today. This morning we got the coach from Belize City to Flores in Guatemala. Took a little while as the driver kept stopping to talk to other coach drivers along the way. We're going to see some more Mayan ruins in the morning in Tukal. The plan is to wake up at 3 in the morning to see the sunset from the top of the temple. Hope we wake up!
Hope you are all well!
Amy x
p.s we're still having problems downloading photos. The files seem to be too big. We will get some up as soon as we can!
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