Central America

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Panama City, David & Boquette, Panama (2nd April 2011 - 5th April 2011)

The best thing to see in the capital of Panama is definitely the Panama Canal. While Nat took some convincing that it was worth a day trip, even she was glad she went in the end. It was stinking hot the day and we had to wrestle our way through crowds of tourists to get a view of the huge container ship working its way through the Miraflores Locks. What we didn’t realise was that the route from the Pacific Ocean to Atlantic Ocean involves the ships actually going uphill. The locks they pass through allow the ships to rise by over 50 metres, which is some feat for 1913 engineering.
We jumped on a six-hour bus through to David, in the West of the country towards the border with Costa Rica. Dave made sure to get a photo with his very own named-bus. Our hostel in David couldn’t have been decorated any more garishly. It was decked out entirely in purple, from the walls to the furniture to the dinner plates. It pretty much made you want to vomit. Picture attached.
Our main reason for being in David was to go and see Boquette which lies in the hills an hour north of David. Once we arrived we legged it up to Café Ruiz for a coffee tour. It was expensive but very good and very interesting. We learnt a lot about coffee that we never knew including the fact that the world’s best rated coffee hails from Panama. They produce very little compared to other nations such as Brazil and Vietnam but it is consistently rated very highly and all gets exported. Dave even tried the taste test at the end of the tour, the first time he had ever drunk the stuff. He isn’t a convert.

Bocas del Toro, Panama & Puerto Viejo, Costa Rica (6th April 2011 - 10th April 2011)

Two incredible beach paradises, but it rained the whole time. We can’t really complain as we’ve had such amazing weather for most of our trip. It didn’t stop us cursing the rain while here though.
It was the sort of rain that just didn’t stop. We managed about an hour on the beach one day in Puerto Viejo but you could still see the grey clouds approaching as we lay there. Still, we found a great restaurant called El Loco Natural which served up amazing Asian/Central American fusion food. Plenty of reading was done.

Jaco, Santa Elena, La Fortuna & La Cruz, Costa Rica (11th April 2011 - 18th April 2011)

We headed across to the Pacific coast in search of sunshine. Jaco was full of male American retirees looking for skirt, but it was sunny and we found a hostel with a pool which was close to the beach and an amazing sushi restaurant, so we were amused ourselves there for couple of days.
From Jaco, we headed to Santa Elena to see the Monteverde cloud forest. The most popular activity here is certainly the canopy tour zip lines and we made sure we booked ours in at Selvatura. The lines are spread out between tree tops throughout the forest and you get kitted out in a harness, helmet and gloves before getting clipped onto safety lines high up in the trees. There were thirteen lines ranging from quite short learning lines to one that was 1 Kilometre long. It was a really cool afternoon and we both enjoyed it immensely, especially the super-long line which we got sent down in pairs. It actually felt like you were flying above the rainforests.
The following day we headed to the Monteverde cloud forest reserve to try and catch a glimpse of some of the diverse Costa Rican wildlife. Loads of people come here just to see the Quetzal, an elusive and brightly coloured bird. Luckily we saw one within about 5 minutes after we happened to bump into a guide who had found one and showed us through his telescope. It was a good job because we didn’t manage to spot anything else for the next two hours! The park lies on the continental divide, the point in the highlands which is said to separate the Pacific and Caribbean tectonic plates, and the viewpoints certainly made up for the lack of monkeys or snakes.
We booked a jeep-boat-jeep trip to get across to Arenal. As we jumped aboard the boat you could see the Arenal volcano looming in the distance. While it is supposed to be ‘active’ it isn’t currently releasing any lava so there wasn’t too much dangerous stuff to see. Still, we found a great hostel which was more like a hotel with its swim-up bar in the pool and comfy rooms. We took the lava trail tour and didn’t get to see any lava, which was disappointing, but the thermal baths they took us to in the evening were great. The waterslides even added an element of danger as they were unlit, built for speed, not comfort, and shot Dave out at high-speed into the thermal pool below, spraying anyone close with water. They certainly wouldn’t pass any health and safety tests back home.
The only reason we stayed in La Cruz was because the border between Costa Rica and Nicaragua had become incredibly busy with queues of up to 6 hours to cross. We decided to stay a 20 minute taxi ride from the border at a hotel listed in the Lonely Planet. Knowing you have to get up at 5am never provides the best night’s sleep but having a lizard crap on your face just as you’re nodding off doesn’t help. Dave was quite repulsed when this happened to him. The sound of a man with one leg and pregnant woman getting busy next door also didn’t help. The irony was that after all our pre-planning we managed to get across the border within an hour the next day.

San Jorge & Isla de Ometepe, Nicaragua (19th April 2011 - 21st April 2011)

We only stayed one night in San Jorge before getting the ferry across to Isla de Ometepe. The island is made up of two volcanoes emerging out of the lake, which make it pretty special to see. We stayed in a great hostel on the beach which also did good food. Plenty of time was spent in hammocks here. We decided that we couldn’t come here without climbing one of the two volcanoes so we headed off with our guide to climb Volcan Maderas on the second day of our stay. It was supposed to be easier than climbing the other, slightly higher, volcano but it certainly didn’t seem that way on a stinking hot day. The climb through the cloud forest to the top of the volcano was steep all the way, with seemingly no respite. After more than seven hours walking either on a steep uphill, or a steep downhill we both felt exhausted. More annoyingly you couldn’t actually see anything from the top! We should have stopped at the incredible lookout half-way up, as it was the most spectacular point of the day and would have saved a lot of blisters!

Granada, Leon & Managua, Nicaragua (22nd April 2011 - 26th April 2011)

It was great to see Semana Santa, or Easter Holy Week, with lots of people joining processions through all the local towns and villages. We had wisely made it out of Costa Rica in time though as they have an alcohol ban for the four days over Easter.
Granada and Leon are both old colonial towns and their cobbled streets have a certain charm about them. We thought Granada was nicer as it had more to explore and was generally a lot more pleasant to wander around.
We took a day trip to Laguna de Apoyo from Granada. It is a lake formed in the caldera of an ancient volcano and was great amazing to see. We relaxed on the beach, swam out to a platform in the lake and even took a kayak out for a while.
In Leon we managed to find a cool hostel with a pool. So that made the sweltering heat all the more bearable in the middle of the day. We even stumbled across a trivia night in one bar but it seemed our lack of US-based knowledge would hold us back and we missed out on a podium finish.
We booked the Tica Bus to get up to El Salvador and were surprised to find that this involved getting picked up the evening before the scheduled departure and taken to Managua to stay in the Tica Bus Hotel. This definitely won the prize for the hottest hotel room on our trip. Even the fan didn’t seem to cool things down at all so it was having had very little sleep we boarded the 5am, 13 hour bus trip the next day.

Juayua, El Salvador & Copan, Honduras (27th April 2011 - 30th April 2011)

The bus took a long time to get through Honduras and into El Salvador before finally reaching the capital, San Salvador. We had arranged for a pick-up to meet the bus and drive us a further two hours to the Ruta de las Flores region and the small but pretty town of Juayua and a beautiful hostel with a lovely garden. We chilled out for a couple of days eating the local “pupusas” and wandering around the town and the local area. Whilst there wasn’t a huge amount to see, the pretty, sleeply little town certainly didn’t feel scary or threatening as some had lead us to believe that El Salvador could be.
We headed up towards Hondarus and the town of Copan on the day of the Royal Wedding so didn’t manage to catch much of it, apart from on a little TV at the Guatemala border, where the guards were very excited that they had Brits passing through on such an important day! We couldn’t believe how many people knew about it and they all wanted to ask us our thoughts when they found out we were English.
Copan is a touristy little town, probably very different to most of Honduras. We stayed in the Via Via hostel, bar and restaurant which seemed really nice in the day and was one of the most popular places in town at night. Sadly, this also deprived us of getting much sleep over the two nights we stayed. It was good fun though so you just had to join in rather than try sleeping through the noise.
We walked out to the Mayan ruins, just outside of the town. It was reasonably quiet with only a handful of visitors, much less touristy than Tikal and Chichen Itza proved to be. Still, it was good to see them and the setting was pretty spectacular.

Antigua, Lake Atitlan, Flores & Tikal Guatemala (1st May 2011 - 5th May 2011)

Antigua was a bit like Granada and Leon, but smarter. There are also a lot more tourists in Guatemala than Nicaragua so it was a bit overrun. Still, it meant there were some great restaurants and bars to enjoy, which was welcome. We met another couple from London and shared a great dinner, too much red wine and even a few shots.
Lake Atitlan was great to see, with some amazing views. We hired a boat to take us across the lake to some of the little villages dotted around the shore and enjoyed lunch in a small restaurant overlooking the lake. We thought we were going on a group trip, but it turned out that we had the boat to ourselves, so we jetted around in style in our private motorboat! We only came here on a day-trip from Antigua as Nat had visited before and we were running out of time to get up to Cancun for our flight home.
Flores is on a little island, which you can run around in about 10 minutes. We know that because we did it one night as we were feeling pretty slobbish and you rarely find somewhere suitable to take yourself off for a run. The sunset that followed was a great reward for doing some exercise. The Guatemalan President seemed to be taking photos of the sunset at the same time as us, or at least someone pretty important judging by the amount of arms the bodyguards were carrying!
Flores is also the base for visiting the Mayan ruins at Tikal. It felt like you were on the Forest Moon of Endor in Return of the Jedi. The temples are spread out throughout the rainforest and some are up to 60 metres high so you can climb to the top and see other buildings rising out of the forest canopy. I think we both agreed that we enjoyed Tikal more than Chichen Itza, despite the latter being voted one of the modern Seven Wonders of the World.

Caye Caulker & Caye Ambergris, Belize (6th May 2011 - 10th May 2011)

We caught a bus from Flores through to Belize City and then hopped on the boat for an hour-long journey to Caye Caulker. Things suddenly felt very Caribbean with thick West Indian accents all around us.
The waters are fantastically clear and you can see why so many people come here to dive and snorkel. We stayed for three nights in the end as it was so idyllic. They have platforms which go out into the sea, which is protected from the big waves by the world’s second largest coral reef. Sadly it was out of lobster season so we had to make do with shrimp for dinner most nights. Tough life!
We got another boat across to the other main Caye, Ambergris for a couple more night’s stay. From here we went snorkelling for a half-day trip. First stop was the protected marine park and more fish than either of us had ever seen. As soon as the boat stopped you could see loads of big fish swimming about and there were even seat turtles cruising about. The guide took our group of eight on a little tour round the area and pointed out plenty of fish and also some moray eels. We then jumped back on the boat and headed for shark alley. The sharks were only small though so there was no danger of us getting eaten. Dave was more worried about the stingrays and those barbs! It was an excellent experience and we would definitely do more snorkelling again after this trip.

Playa del Carmen, Tulum, Chichen Itza & Cancun, Mexico (11th May 2011 - 18th May 2011)

We based ourselves in Playa del Carmen for four nights and hired a car to see the local area. Dave couldn’t believe quite how many tourists were in this place, it was swarming with them. The main street makes you feel like you’re in Tenerife. The beach here was fantastic though with pure white sand and lovely clean water.
We drove across to Chichen Itza one day to see one of the seven modern wonders of the world. While the main pyramid is very striking and impressive the rest of the site didn’t match Tikal, in our opinion. It was also stinking hot with no sea breeze to cool us off, so our visit was brief, to say the least.
The next day we headed down to Tulum, stopping off at Cenote Cristalino on the way. There are loads of these cenotes dotted around the Yucatan peninsula and this is one of the better ones. It was basically a water hole, but with crystal clear waters, and a huge cave which you can swim through in the dark. It was a nice relaxing spot, until you felt the need to leap of the high rocks into the (luckily very deep) water below. Once you got to the top you realised that it was a lot higher than you thought from down below, but given that we were following a couple of 8 year old girls, we thought it would be bad form to chicken out. To finish off the experience, we even let the fish nibble at the dead skin on our feet, which people a lot of money for in Harrods. They apparently eat up all the dead skin. We realised that Dave’s feet may have suffered from a year travelling as every time he put his feet in the water they all ditched anyone else nearby and made a beeline for his heels.
We had decided that we needed to finish the megamoon in luxury so had booked three nights in an all-inclusive resort just outside Cancun. All those Air Miles racked up through paying for the wedding came in very handy when we realised that they would fund this for us, although it took Dave a while to get used to not asking for the bill after dinner or trying to pay in the bars. It was an awesome place to stay, with four different pools, hammocks over the water, a pure white sand beach with crystal clear water and waiter service drinks all day! Dave played volleyball in the pool every day and we made plenty of trips to the swim-up bar! We even managed to fit in a massage each on our last full day, to try to get rid of some of the knots from carrying a backpack around for a year. All in all, it was a fabulous way to finish off the trip.

The Big Trip Has Ended (21st June 2010 – 19th May 2011)

So the year-long honeymoon is finally over. We can’t quite believe that it has been that long and we’re heading back to reality. However it has been amazing and we would thoroughly recommend it if you can find a way to make it happen!

After 6 continents, 49 Countries, 22 flights, numerous buses, trains and boats, 4 hire cars and even a few motorbike taxis, one overland truck through Africa, 9 blogs (they got far less regular you will have noted), 3 cameras, haircuts for Dave in Syria, Tanzania, Namibia, New Zealand, Chile, Guatemala, over 8000 photos and 100 videos, seeing 4 of the big 5 on safari (damn elusive leopard), amazing hotel stays in Budva, the Dead Sea, Livingstone, South Africa and Cancun, great stays with friends in Doha, Johannesburg, Dubai, Sydney, Auckland, Invercargill and Taupo, climbing the world’s tallest free-standing mountain, seeing two of the new seven world wonders and one ashes cricket victory it all comes to an end.

Hopefully see you soon………….

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