Advertisement
Published: October 15th 2008
It's just so blatantly there, 8 countries long, linking North and South America. And yet I forgot all about it, it kinda slipped my mind like forgetting a birthday(something which happens a lot with me by the way). But in all my plans for 2 years before leaving, and since being away nearly 2 years, I always said "yep then I'm gonna do Canada, America, and South America.." It wasnt until I got about half way down the west coast of the US that I happened to glance at a map and thought ohhhhh Mexico and Central America, oops. We did consider flying over it all and heading straight to South America as we have heard certain parts can be fairly menacing, but that would've been the easy option.
The optomist sees opportunity in every danger, the pessimist sees danger in every opportunity. Winston Churchill.
Now we know Winnie is never wrong so we had to listen to him, well except the fact he was a Tory, but we can't all be perfect. And so it was that we spent 3 weeks heading through Mexico and Central America. It's rainy season here so not good for the old tan,
and was very UK-esque as we had about 2 dry days in the 3 weeks we were here!As if to emphasise that this was a return to the 'real' travelling ways, it was an interesting experience language wise, as it was the first area I have travelled through where there wasn't much English spoken. Even in the most random of Asian countries like Laos, English was a second language or at least pigeon English, but here it's all Spanish speaking, and no compromise. I'm crap at languages anyway, but my excuse is I studied French in school and not Spanish, so my attempts were particularily crap. We have had to buy some phrase books and have held lots of funny conversations with locals, our sign language and pointing skills have come along beautifully. We have learnt how to order cups of tea efficiently though so all is well with the world.
Mexico The first shock about Mexico City was that it wasn't anywhere near as populated, polluted or dangerous as we were led to believe. People love to tell you that it's the most populated city in the world (it's actually 3rd on the list with 20million if you
Look out Hulk Hogan!
Please note I couldn't breathe due to no mouth hole, and Ev being smashed inonly count metropolitan areas) but you would never know that by wandering around. I was expecting a city like Bangkok or Hanoi, crazy hectic action, rammed with people, smells and noises etc, but the truth was miles away from that. We stayed right in the centre, at a cool hostel in the Centro Historico (mental note, not all Spanish is just taking an English word and putting an 'O' on the end, we tried this and failed miserably). Anyway, what we found was a very well laid out and not overly busy centre. The traffic was manageable, the streets not crowded with people and some very cool sights to take in as you wandered around. We did a walking tour and checked out the main cathedral, National Palace and Government buildings. The city also had a great mix of old and new, new cars and people in the latest threads walking along old cobbled streets and traditional ways of living, it was quite the contradiciton. We also took in the Torre LatinoAmericana, basically a massive tower in the centre of the city with an observation desk 183m up, and it was from here that you could really see the size
and sprawl of Mexico City, it went on for miles in all directions and then you could understand how the city can claim so high a population, but it was so spread out it never seemed congested which was great. We also found no troubles off locals, and the 15p street tacos didnt bother our stomachs, well not too much..
We also went on a couple of tours whilst in Mexico City. First, we went all mature and visited Teotihuacan, which is an enormous archaeological site containing some of the largest pyramidal structures built in the pre-Columbian Americas. Teotihuacan was, at its height in the first half of the 1st millennium, the largest city in the pre-Columbian Americas and was very impressive, imagining an ancient civilisation wandering these streets and praying to these pyramids was mind blowing. The pyramids were originally painted bright red, blue and yellow too so it was interesting trying to imagine them like that as they were impressive enough in grey. We even found the time for a little siesta (hey check me out fluent Spanish now) on the top of one of the pyramids! On the same trip we also visited a workshop, watched
them make weapons,and were also fascinated by their many uses of cactus (sowing, alcohol, paper you could write on and coloured fabrics, well I never) and did some stereoptypical things like wear sombreros, ponchos and drink lots of tequila, well when in Rome, or Mexico.
The same night we revisited our youth and went to the wrestling to watch oiled up muscly men in tights fumble with each other, OK so it's not everybodys youth but then I am special. It turned out to be probably the best night of Central America, it helped that we got smashed on tequila provided by the tour guide, then more drunk on the cheap litres of beer in the place. We started off high in the stands laughing at it all, but by the end of the night had wormed our way near the front, totally involved in it all, chanting, booing, taunting and running up to high 5 the 'stars' as they made their entrances. They had all the stereoptypes from goodies, baddies, midgets and also the gayest man in pink tights(since me at Mardi Gras anyway) and his finishing move was to ass a guy in the face and kiss them..To
finish the night off properly Mexican masks were then bought outside and worn all night, in the bar, to the 7-11 shop, wandering the streets, and all the way wrestling with each other, jumping off objects onto prone bodies, and taunting the whole of Mexico from our hostel window. We even made a makeshift ring out of discarded mattresses and battered each other for a while. May I remind you me and Chris are in charge of future generations, I like to think this is our way of keeping in touch with our childish side..cough..or we are just idiots, you decide.
We finished off Mexico with a trip to Palenque, an ancient Mayan site dating back too the year 400, which had some amazing sights. The city and temples were nestled in a rainforest so gave some serene views and was well worth the trip. On the way to the border we stopped for the night in San Cristobal, a more traditional town giving us a taste of old school Mexico. At this point I also need to introduce the latest character in our little play, a Mr Calum Mckenna. We met him in the hostel in Mexico City,
got him drunk at the wrestling night, whispered sweet nothings in his ear and in no time had convinced him to ditch his previous plans of heading North and join us. Thus it was that the 22year old Surrey boy jumped on our bandwagon, has come this far with us and should be with us for the forseeable future through South America. A great addition and similar to us in everyway-immature sense of humour, incesant movie quotes, drunken antics,and game for a laugh, its a shame he's English really..watch this space for the new tripod.
Guatemala Seeing as a lot of these places were bonuses and all unplanned, we pretty much made it up as we went along based on guides, books and word of mouth. We therefore headed for Antigua in Guatemala and chilled out for a few days, there wasn't masses to see or do here but it was nice to relax in a cool little town. The highlights of many of these countires, as with Asia, can be found in simply passing through them on a bus and watching the world go past your window. So even though we were only in the country for 4
days I still got a fairly good sense of the place, lots of it was a traditional way of living and happy smiley people, small towns, cobbled streets, horse drawn carts etc. For the record Guatemalan roads are bumpy and potholed to hell, and there are landslides every two minutes. But if they dont kill you then showers will. We had one in our room and when you went to turn it on or off you receieved a lovely electric shock, now I'm no electrcian but im fairly sure water and electricity aren't a great mix..made shower time more exciting though!
Honduras Honduras was one of those menacing places we were told to avoid at all costs, apparently there is good diving in the North but that aside its a rough place. As a result we planned to whip through and got 2 buses through the country in just over 24 hours, and I'm thankful we did as the one bus had a window smashed by a rock thrown from the side of the road, and there was another incident I shan't relate just yet(people will worry) that also proved how dodgy it was. Overall it was 23hours 55minutes
too long spent in that country.
Nicaragua It sounds like an excotic faraway place and true to form it charmed the pants off us. Nicaragua was probably our favourtite place in Central America, despite yet another incident occuring here! We first headed to Granada, which provided us a few days to chillax, take in some scenery and enjoy a laid back traditional place and pace. It was the kind of town where we witnessed a funeral procession of an Ordinary Joe, yet it was on a horse drawn cart and the locals walked behind in a procession through the main streets, it was strangely surreal and yet interesting. After a couple of days relaxing and waiting for the weather to clear, we finally headed up Mombacho volcano, which is 1344 metres high. It was hard work and it rained for most of the trek but the reward was equal to it as we could see right across Granada, a stunning view of it nestled between two huge lakes. The guided tour took us to lots of random places too like halfway inside the volcano and to steam holes etc. We did the trek with 5 American girls who had
Teotihuacan-Pyramid of the Sun
These used to be painted bright red, yellow and blue so would have looked even better great banter so that made the trip entertaining too, and the drunken night that followed was predictably messy.
Next up was San Juan del Sur, a little beachfront town, sadly without the beachfront weather. We stayed for 4 nights and hired quad bikes one day, taking them off road through tracks, rivers and hills and was great fun overall, not too mention cheap. Another day we hired some surfboards and took to the sea, confirming my previous held notion that I can't surf and the sport sucks (I hate any sport I can't do by the way). After spending about 3 hours in the sea I'd say I was stood atop my board for about 4 seconds total. It took about 20minutes of being pummelled by waves to get out to a decent point, to turn around, attempt a wave, fail miserably, get carried 50feet, then turn around and try it all again. I was almost hankering for the Canada bike ride again. We also met some Essex people here and had a good few nights drunken messiness with them before we sadly had to go our seperate ways.
Costa Rica So to our final stop in Central America,
we decided not to push on to Panama as the flights from there to South America were too expensive, plus canal aside there's not much there apparently. Costa Rica is a nice little country and we stopped in 4 places overall, a couple just overnights in Liberia and Puntarenas and the majority of our time in Monteverde. This place was up in the cloudforest and so again surreal, and also very bloody wet! We did some actitives here like zip lining, this was amazing fun and I highly reccomend it! It basically involved going up into the forest canopies and being harnessed on to lots of wires via carabenas and then flying through the air to the otherside. There were 14 cables in all, the longest being 2250ft, and the highest was 450ft. There was also a tarzan swing, a rappel of 90ft and lots of walking! Great fun and we had a good laugh. The majority of my time in Costa Rica was spent under a cloud (see the pun there people)as I was ill for a lot of it with some unknown thing, hopefully not malaria, but whatever it was it felt like man flu and I was
lucky not to die, cough. Its now progressed on to tonsilitits, which is nice,but only the second time I've been ill since being on the road(last time was Laos) so I'm doing fairly well so far. We then headed to San Jose,the capital, to await our flight to Chile.
So that's Central America and Mexico done, an added bonus in the grand scheme of things. Admitedly it has cut into the South America time but I think its a worthy sacrifice and we should still have enough time to do all we want, especially as we have dropped Colombia and Venezuela from our itinerary. I'm stupidly excited for South America and it's the culmination of many years of planning, hoping and wishing and a lifetime of wanting to go there, so fingers crossed it's all I hope it to be. First stop is Chile for a few days, then a couple of weeks in Argentina and so on, Im not sure how many blogs I will do across the continent, depends on how much we squeeze in. Plans to come home are up in the air, could be mid to end of December but I'm hoping to stretch it
to January, we shall see. Keep in touch via the usual comments at the bottom, always nice to know who's reading and what you thought. Miss and love you all
00
DAYS
00
HOURS
00
MINS
00
SECS
Since I left Wales!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.141s; Tpl: 0.016s; cc: 8; qc: 24; dbt: 0.0767s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Lori
non-member comment
Ok, so now I am curious as to what happened in Honduras.