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Published: April 6th 2009
Capital Building
Guess which Capital this was modeled after. Well it has been quite a while since my last update, and I have covered a lot of ground since then. From San Cristobal I made my way to Palenque to see maybe the most impressive Mayan city. (Unfortunately I sent home my memory card with Palenque photos!) I got up and made my way around the ruins when they opened to avoid most of the crowds. Without a doubt my favorite ruins thus far. I could elaborate more, but words cannot do this place justice.
From there I made my way to Cancun for purposes different than the majority that visit there. My intentions were to get certified for Scuba Diving and get out. Not much culture, very pricey and resort hotels take away the real feel of the country. I did get certified after three days and bought a plane ticket to a place I´ll just call the "island" or abuC.
Back in the late 50´s their revolutionary leader we´ll call, lediF ortsaC, overthrew the current president who was more or less a puppet to the United States, and also known to be brutal at times with his own people. Although in no way
Capital city
In the restored part of town, where the buildings have been repainted and the streets are a little cleaner. do I think lediF ortsaC is a great leader or improved the country immensely, I also cannot say he made it a lot worse. There was a huge gap between the rich and the poor before ortsaC, along with his charisma and drive he won the revolution and the island is what it is today thanks to him. Now there basically is no upper class, unless you count ortsaC and his closest friends with the majority of the country living in a low-mid or lower class state. They are extremely kind and happy that travelers choose to come to their country. The country is a socialistic dictatorship where the majority of the people seem to be happy and you almost never hear a bad word spoken about their leader, though it makes you wonder since even if they did want to bad mouth their leader it could work out very negatively for themselves and their family. This is a very lengthy and complicated subject that I have only begun to be slightly informed about. Its problems and exact details of its history are still over my head. After visiting, I personally cannot help but to wonder, what if? Though I
La Floridita
Hemingway´s old stomping ground, now an over-priced tourist bar. usually feel that is a waste of time, but this place you can’t help but think about its obvious potential. If certain major historical events had gone differently this island as well as countries close to it(like mine) could be benefiting greatly from a close and positive relationship. On another note I usually choose NOT to express much political opinion openly, especially on the internet, but this was a country that I had hoped to go to for a very long time, my feelings of it after visiting are more different that I could have assumed they would be before. Just to make it clear, I think the current leader of this country is terrible and in no way do I admire him or the things he has done, I´m just not sure that what was going on before him was any better.
If you have not figured it out by now, my country does not currently allow most of their citizens to visit this place, but like Jackson Browne said, "Free people will insist on the freedom to travel." I set aside two weeks on the island starting in the capital city, anabaH. I spent a few
days there and actually caught "The Magic Flute" opera at the Teatro Nacional(national theatre), which was a great experience, since it was such an impressive old opera house. Can´t say I´ll be frequenting the opera a lot more any time soon though. After a few days in the Capital, I made my way to the middle of the country where I stayed in two different towns(sogeufneiC and dadinirT). The first was nice, but the second was closer to the beach and was also known for having tons of great local live music. I even got some scuba diving in. Really enjoyed my time there and to end my trip I continued to the opposite end of the island to the second largest city in the country, ogaitnaS ed abuC. This town I did not really care for though it did still have impressive architecture, the Capital was much more fun. I did make it to a historic site that our country was involved in. Teddy Roosevelt was the key figure in all of it, I really enjoyed that as well as an old Spanish fort that had been well preserved. (Hope you all can break the code I used on
Inside the Teatro
Sala Garcia Lorca. I was front row 2nd or 3rd balcony, great seats almost straight back from the stage. the people and places I mentioned)
When I made it back to Cancun my Dad was there to meet me and we headed to Punta Allen, a town about two hours south of Tulum, surrounded in a huge environmentally protected area. If you are a sport fisherman you have probably heard of this place. Known to be probably the best place in the world to catch a Permit fish. One of Dad´s oldest friends lives there for part of the year so we got to see him. Aside from the fishing this place was truly the quiet little paradise I had been looking for. No paved roads and the town ran on generator that wasn’t working all the time. After a couple days there Dad and I went up the coast close to Playa del Carmen to do some Scuba Diving. We saw some great stuff including sea turtles and plenty of fish. After my father went back I decided I didn’t get enough of Punta Allen so I took a taxi to the entrance of the wildlife area and hitched a ride to Punta. Since there was only one destination on this 40km road it was completely
safe to hitchhike. My Dad’s friend Bill, and another guy from Colorado, Greg, still had another week or two before they headed back home. I ended up staying there almost two weeks. I did get one or two fly fishing lessons from Bill, though I can’t say I was the most eager student, I did enjoy it enough to where I’d like to try it again on a river where they say it is far easier to learn. I had a great time in Punta, VERY relaxing; I read quite a few books just lying around in hammocks all day. I was there about 13 days and fished maybe two of them. To any accomplished fisherman that would be a ludicrous ratio given the place I was at. I’d compare it to skiing two days out of 13 when there is unlimited fresh powder on the mountain. Unfortunately this was fishing and not skiing and I just didn’t have the drive, which was exacerbated by being in a sleepy little town on the Caribbean. I finally found the inspiration to pack my things and move on.
I went directly to Belize City where I caught a water taxi
Streets of dadinirT
Beautiful town with narrow cobblestone streets and color buildings. to Caye Caulker. I got in town early in the evening and booked a scuba trip to the Blue Hole the following day and found a place to stay. We headed out at 6 in the morning since the Blue Hole was a two hour boat ride away. The Blue Hole is a huge vertical cave in the middle of the ocean. There are a few around the world, but this is the only one you can dive in. It is almost 500ft. deep with huge stalactite and stalagmite formations in it. It is also a very popular hangout for various kinds of sharks. Our first dive was in the Blue Hole. We went down to about 130ft where we saw the huge stalagmite and stalactite formations, they looked like gigantic tree trunks. Looking straight up it just looked like a towering 130ft cliff above. It was absolutely amazing being down there. Since we were so deep we only had about 8min at that depth, afterward we started to ascend diagonally where at about 35ft we stopped and spotted three Reef Sharks in the distance. As we were heading in I caught a little closer glimpse of another shark. They
say that when you go 100ft or deeper you begin to feel a little Nitrogen Narcosis. Which more or less just makes you feel a little drunk, but everybody reacts to it differently. I don’t think I was affected by it greatly though seeing all that amazing stuff gets your adrenaline going anyway. From there we left the Blue Hole and made our way to a little island in the middle of nowhere. It was a protected bird refuge/place for divers to eat lunch. Small gorgeous island surrounded by bright turquoise water. We dropped the snorkelers off there and went to another dive spot. This time we went about 60ft for about 45min where I saw the best marine life and coral I had ever seen. Spotted Eagle stingrays, Barracudas, schools of fish, and plenty of coral almost made you forget how amazing the first dive was. After that we headed back to the island and all had lunch. Our final third dive was similar to the second, but in a different place. There were even more schools of fish, which is why that location is called "The Aquarium." After all the dives we headed back to Caye Caulker. This
was truly the best day of my trip by far. I may never find bettering diving than what I did that day. The next day I headed to Guatemala and the largest Mayan city of all. This is a country I plan on staying in for the next month.
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Ross
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Punta Allen
I've been to Punta Allen too! That little town is a little slice of heaven. The best part about it are the unpaved roads. You almost feel like the entire town is related, like one huge family.