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Published: December 16th 2009
Oh look! Another wildly hilarious blog from Laura the intrepid traveller! But why does it look so plain and boring? Where are all of the awe inspiring, turn your face green with envy photos?
Well dear reader I was robbed by two Guatemalan village idiots and they stole my camera with all of my beautiful beautiful photos on. Photos that were so beautiful they would have turned your face so green that you might well have turned into a frog. Or a pea. Or some other green thing.
But that shit my pants experience only happened a couple of weeks ago so first of all I will tell you about these amazing places I visited that I no longer have photos of...
I ended up staying in Manaus for 6.5 weeks, a little bit longer than the 10 days that I originally planned. But who can blame me? I was after all shacked up with a hot Brazilian! A hot Brazilian who I am now engaged to and very much looking forward to moving in with in London next year 😊
So on 11th November I did eventually leave Brazil, with a ring on my finger, but it wasn't 100% voluntary. I was DEPORTED! I accidentally overstayed my tourist visa, told the Federal Police and was issued with a very seriously worded deportation notice and fine! So serious it actually started with 'Laura Blackhall, daughter of Lynne Blackhall and Andrew Blackhall, born on 20.6.84 with passport number blah blah'. And I'll tell you, when anything starts with a statment your parents names you know your in trouble!
So deported I was, to Panama! I had to change planes in Panama and because of flight timings I had 23 hours to enjoy the city. So I did a city tour which took me up to a view point from where you get a birds eye view of the city. Or I should say cities. On the right was Panama city. A run down looking ramshackle town. On the left was new Panama City, a mass of sky scrappers, ring roads and bright lights! Panama is quite a shopping hub, there are shinny new duty free malls everywhere. The nice Ecuadorian couple on my tour told me they were visiting for that reason alone! After the view point we went to see the Panama Canal. The wolds greatest short cut. The canal that eliminated the need to sail thousands of miles around South America to cross between the Atlantic to the Pacific oceans. I'm not sure what I was expecting exactly but I was a bit surprised to see that it looked just like a regular canal! Just like every other canal I've seen. There was no mystical canal aura that lead me feel that I was standing next to one of the largest and most difficult engineering projects undertaken. A project that caused the deaths of nearly 30,000 workers. A project that resulted in a passage that can confidently call itself the worlds greatest short cut, unlike any of my dads supposed great shortcuts! It really does, disappointingly, just look like a regular canal. Which is exactly what my dad told me when I told him I wanted to go to Panama. 'Why on earth do you want to go there Laura'? 'I want to see the Panama Canal dad! I want to see the Worlds Greatest Shortcut! I want to see that amazing Canal that you sailed down in the 1970's when you were in the Merchant Navy'! 'Laura its just a canal'. 'Noooo, don't be silly dad, its the Panama Canal'! Well it turns out it really is just a canal!
From Panama I flew to Guatemala city, a city I wanted to get straight out of. Guatemala city isn't safe and certainly isn't a place that I would want to spend any amount of time in. So when I arrived I went straight to the bus station and took a 9 hour bus north to Santa Elena in the north of the country. I arrived very late at night and checked into a cheap and nasty hotel which had the most disgusting bathroom I have ever seen. Neither the toilet or sink had running water. It was so foul I didn't even wash in the morning. Just picked up my bags and moved to an amazing hostel, which had the most delicious food, on Flores.
Flores is a tiny island perched in a lake, linked to Santa Elana by a short causeway. There is not much going on in Flores, you can walk the length of the town in 5 or 6 minutes. But it looks pretty, you can swim in the lake and you can take a day trip to Tikal which is the main tourist attraction in the north of Guatemala.
Tikal is an ancient Maya centre, the majority of it being built between the years 550 and 900, but some can be dated back to as early as 300 BC! In its height between 50,000 and 100,000 people are thought to have lived in the Tikal area. The most impressive part of the Tikal ruins are the Maya skyscraper temples which push up through the jungle canopy. Sat at the top of one you can see the ruined crumbling peaks of others poking out through the tree tops. My pictures were of course amazing, but you'll just have to take my word for that. The most interesting thing I learnt on my tour of Tikal was that the rulers of Tikal were making their children into egg heads! When they were born they strapped pieces of thick cardboard onto their heads to direct the growth into a point! The children would be kept hidden away until they had a fully formed egg head and then presented to the locals as some kind of pre-destined superior ruler! Sneaky shits!
From Flores I took a bus to Belize city, which funnily enough is in Belize not Guatemala. Belize is a teeny weeny country just 174 miles long and 84 miles across. From leaving Flores in Guatemala to traveling to and crossing the border and crossing the entire width of Belize it only took 5 hours!
If you don't know anything about Belize, which I didn't, i´ll give you a few quick facts. Number one, the money has The Queen on! Yes The Queen! This of course led to a ´Wooooo LOOK! IT¨S THE QUEEN! What the hell is she doing in Belize´!? from me and prompted a little further investigation into the country´s history and resulted in me now being the proud bearer of the following other useful facts: The first settlers were English with their black slaves from Jamaica in 1640. The official language is English, so the country is nice and easy for us foreign language incompetent Brits to navigate. The population boats an interesting mix of Blacks, Mayas, Garifuna (Black Caribs), Chinese and North Americans. And now for the best bit - just off the coast there is a 184 mile long coral reef and shit loads of tropical paradise islands!
So i didn't hang around in Belize city, I jumped straight on a boat to Caye Caulker, a small but highly populated island with a ´Go Slow´ motto. The island is so small there are no roads, just sandy paths. The only vehicles are golf buggies, which are even used as police cars!
I stayed at Tina´s Backpackers on Caye Caulker where I found myself in a dorm with Spencer (a surprisingly uannoying American) and Abadabadodar (a fellow Brit abroad). Together we made TEAM LOOSER! Mainly by way of the fact that we all liked to go to bed at 9pm when everyone else was going out!
From Caye Caulker I went on a snorkel tour to Hoi Chan Marine Park. I saw a sea turtle, eels and giant sting rays which I swam down to the bottom of the ocean and touched! They are kind of slimy and hard! Oh and I saw tones of multicoloured fish. My favourite was a navy blue one with a bright yellow tail and electric blue spots which glowed so bright it looked like the fish had swallowed a light bulb. Knowing that Central America has great snorkeling I invested in an underwater camera in England and carried it around with me for 3 months. When I saw this amazing fish I dashed after it, camera in hand, ready to snap it. I was chasing it around and around, getting more and more excited. But the camera didn't work! It was completely useless. It didn't take a single picture! So here is an important lesson, don't invest in underwater cameras from Wilkinson's!
I enjoyed my snorkel tour so much I booked onto a 3 day sailing trip. It took me from Caye Caulker which is off the north coast of Belize, all the way down to Placencia, which is in the south. It was an awesome trip, the scenery was beautiful. Picture perfect. Not that I can show you 😞 I doubt that I can put into words how beautiful this place was, but I will try to describe it. Imagine this, we are sailing through is crystal clear water, its so clear it is like a giant bottle of mineral water. It isn't very deep so you can the fish and rays swimming around the boat. The sun is high in the sky, the breeze is in our hair and some chilled out tunes are wafting out of the stereo. We are all basking on the top deck sipping rum punch and eating cerviche (shrimp in lime, tomato and onion salsa with tortillas). Ohhhhhhh I am drifting back into the memory. It is blissful..... huummmmmmm ........
OK i´m back! So where was I? Yes the sailing. We spent our days fishing off the back of the boat, snorkeling, catching conch (although I'm not sure if I can technically call it catching as giant shell fish don't exactly try to escape, they just sit there), and relaxing on deck. On the second day I volunteered to go spear fishing for that nights dinner. I was pretty shocked when they just gave me this massive spear gun and let me go off with it! I was shit scarred! I thought I was going to spear someone, or shoot myself in the leg! I'm sure this wont come as a surprise, but I was really crap and didn't catch catch anything.
The first island we slept on was Rendezvous Caye. It was TINY! It had just 7 palm trees! My pictures where AMAZING! I am SO gutted I cant show them to you. I could get some off the other people on the tour, but in all seriousness they weren't half as good as mine and just wouldn't do the place justice. The island loomed up out of nowhere. A tiny ring of white sand with a handful of palm trees and a natural wood jetty. The sky and the sea were exactly the same shade of powder blue, there was no knowing where one turned to the other. The island appeared to be suspended somewhere between the two. As our boat glided up to it was like a dream. It didn't seem real. It was more like a hallucination.
The island caretaker was called George. He was 24 and the biggest bullshitter I have met. He reckoned he´d been on that tiny island for a month! All on his own without leaving once! We all knew that it was a fibaroony because Captain Miguel had been there 2.5 weeks before and he wasn't there then. But we all indulged him anyway. He also told us that he was a professional dance teacher which he clearly wasn't (like he´s going to get many customers on a deserted island) but we let him have that one as well because we thought that it was a pretty ingenious way to get to dance with the ladies, not that any of us took him up on his offer for a private lesson behind the coconut tree.
George had a pet shark! God knows how he caught it but there it was, with a hook through its mouth, tied to the jetty. We all thought that it was pretty mean, especially when he told us that it was a present for him mum who liked to cook them up and eat them! Little bullshitting George came to his senses though and set it free the next morning.
W had a good night on Rendezvous Caye. We had a delicious seafood dinner washed down with plenty of rum punch. We got some tunes pumping out of the boats stereo and partied on the jetty. After that we made a fire, toasted marshmallows and told bad jokes. The South African passed out in the sand, we splashed around in the sea watching the plankton light up like stars when we kicked them and then we all went to bed convinced that we had had a hardcore night of partying. Which we kind of had, if you disregard the fact that we were all tucked up by 10pm!
I abandoned my tent that night and slept out under the stars on the jetty. It was amazing. Almost magical. I could hear the waves lapping up against the shore beneath me, feel the tropical sea breeze blowing through my hair and see thousands of stars twinkling up above. The only thing that was missing was Italo 😞
The boat dropped us off in Placencia, a beach town which holds the Guinness World Record for having the narrowest street in the world. I stayed in Placencia for a few days and hung out with Mike Montana who had been on the sailing trip. As the name suggests Mike was from Montana and was a real Authentic North American. All of his tales and anecdotes revolved around fishing, eating nuts and being deep in the forest with nothing but a knife and some bear spray to keep those grisly´s at bay.
I left Placencia for Punta Gorda, the southern most town in Belize, from where I took a speedboat to Livingston in Guatemala. Yes that's right, I took a speed boat from Belize to Guatemala! It was awesome! I was zooming across the sea at what felt like a hundred million miles an hour. In all likelihood it was probably only 50 million miles an hour but even that is pretty dam fast! It was one of the most fun things that I have done on this trip!
Livingston is populated by Garifuna so it feels more like Jamaica that Guatemala. Its a colourful town full of colourful people. One friendly local posed for a couple of pics for me. He was a jolly man, most likely because he was drinking neat rum at 9am, with gold teeth. He was wearing a purple, yellow, red and blue stripey shirt that was so big it hung down around his knees. For this reason he didn't really need any pants, but he was wearing some big baggy denim shorts. He topped his ensemble off with a green raster hat which was perched on top of his waste long dreads. He squatted down on the floor at the side of the beech and played me a tune on the bongos whilst he told me that his name was Choco Bon Bon (Sweet Chocolate) !
The pictures were amazing. Mr Choco Bon Bon was in sharp focus, the beach looked hazy in the morning light and there was a Bob Marley esq flag blowing gently in the breeze behind him and wafting in to half of the picture. I think that I could have won a prize for those pictures but alas I do not have them.
So let me tell you exactly how I came to loose these prize winning snaps....
I didn't like being in Livingston. Despite its colourful charm and laid back party atmosphere I was feeling lonely and miserable. I left less that 24 hours after arriving. I took a boat from the estuary at Livingston through a beautiful gorge into Lake Izabal. On the northern shore of the lake was the town of El Estor, so named because there used to be one store there and people used to go to ´El Store´. I chose it because the guide book said that it had one of the most beautiful vistas in Guatemala, situated right on the lake side surrounded by mountains. The book was right, there certainly was a picturesque view, but it failed to mention that it is also pretty far off the tourist track. Indeed I was the only tourist in the entire town! Not exactly the ideal place for a lonely misery guts to end up. Still I was determined to do something nice with my time so I borrowed a bike off a nice local lady and went to ask Oscar, an English speaking owner of a hotel that I had looked at but couldn't afford to stay in, where I should go. Oscar told me about a canyon about 8kms away where you get paddled up steam in a boat and then float back down. I was a little bit dubious about the safety of me going on this trip but Oscar assured me that El Estor was a very safe town, that I should definitely take my camera and that there was no need to go back to my hotel room to drop off all of my things. He told me that there had never been any problems for tourists in this area. So off I went on my little red bike...
When I got out of the town and on to the main dirt road a bad feeling washed over me. It started in the pit of my stomach and travelled up to my head and made me feel a bit sick. It was so strong that I had to stop the bike. My instincts were telling me to go back, no doubt about that. I pondered my dilemma for a few minutes and eventually came to the conclusion that the feeling was most likely because my body did not want to cycle 16kms in the heat. So I told myself off for being a lazy bones and convinced myself that it would be a nice day and that it would be good for me to do a bit of exercise.
I was actually quite enjoying myself. I remember thinking to myself at one point that I was getting a taste of the real Guatemala. I was out in the countryside, cycling past people working in the fields, trucks jam packed with local ladies in traditional clothes and men in filthy clothes and work boots were hurtling past me leaving me in clouds of dust.
When I got to the canyon I stopped to take a picture from the bridge. Two young men on a bike, who I had overtaken earlier and said hello to, past me by. They cycled a further 20 metres or so and then turned around and came back. I was pretty much oblivious to this and only really noticed them when they were back on the bridge. I climbed back on my bike and was about to set off when they asked me to borrow the bike pump. I picked it up and handed it to one of them, but for some reason he wouldn't take it. This is all a little blurry now but I remember that it was at this point, as I was smiling and holding out the pump that I noticed the gun. It was tucked into his shorts and he was stood there staring at me holding his t-shirt up so that I could see it. I think I must have been a little bit puzzled by this, like I didn't comprehend what it was, because I think I was fixated on it for a long time before I realised exactly what it was. I'm not entirely sure what I was thinking when it clicked that it was a gun, but I guess I must have thought that they wanted my bike, because they were two guys on one. So I grabbed my camera out of the bike basket and took a step back. Of course it wasn't just the bike that they wanted because he started to take the gun out of his trousers. I have no memory of what he did with the gun next but I remember saying OK OK and putting the camera back into the basket and stepping back. Similarly I have no memory of the second guy during any of this. My memory becomes more clear as I see them both cycling off down the road, one of them on my bike, one on theirs. After they turned down I side road I chased after them to see where they had gone. I could see them in the distance so I started yelling PLEASE NO at them. Of course my cry went unanswered and off they went with all of my things including the camera, my phone, my wallet which was full of money and had my bank cards and credit cards in, my diary and all kinds of other stuff. All this must have happened really fast, but in my head its all in slow motion.
So there I was 8kms out of town on the side of a dirt road with nothing but a little red bike pump. I flagged down a bus 2 minutes later and cried my eyes out whilst I told them what had happened. They looked after me for a bit and then flagged down a pick up which was heading in the direction of El Estore and told them what had happened. I climbed in the back and got a ride back.
The ride back was a nightmare in itself. About a km down the road the guy stopped the truck and told me that he had to go to his house in a near by village first. I had two options, get out on the side of the road and try and make my own way back, or go with them. And when I say them I mean a dad and about 3 or 4 sons from age 15ish to 30ish. Bearing in mind that my Spanish is pretty shitty and I was in a state of shock I didn't think that I would be able to explain my situation again so I decided to go with them. It was when we were about half a km down this derelict side road that I really started to shit my pants. I was considering jumping out of the truck and making a dash for it. But then I thought that that could put me in an even more venerable situation. I sat tight and in the end we arrived at his house where his whole family were. The sons jumped out and they had some kind of coconut party where they all sat around drinking coconut milk. They were very nice and brought me some water, offered me a coconut as well, but i wasn't in the mood for one, I was feeling pretty sick by this point. Then they loaded a huge pile of rotten coconuts into the truck and off we went, picking up some local women on the way and giving them a ride somewhere else.
Eventually I made it back to El Estore with my little red bike pump and charged into Oscars hotel crying my eyes out and told him what had happened. Rather embarrassingly my charging in on him had interrupted his Internet sexy time, so I ran out again feigning dehydration to give him chance to close down the incriminating website!
Over the next few hours we did all the usual stuff, called the police, went back to the scene of the crime, searched the bushes, questioned some locals to see if they had seen anything, cancelled my bank cards etc etc. I spoke to the British Embassy, hoping that they would come and get me, but who were no help whatsoever and simply told me to get my parents to Western Union some money to me. By now it was Saturday night though and the bank would be shut until Monday. So I was all on my own stranded with no money. Thank you very much British Embassy. Oscar very kindly let me stay in his hotel for free and even cooked me some food.
Monday didn't come soon enough and as soon as I had some cash I made a quick trip around the shops to buy a new bag, a new bike for the nice lady, and a bottle of whisky for Oscar and then I was out of there.
I headed to Antigua, the tourist hot spot of Guatemala where I had arranged to meet Rayna in about 5 days time. I had to spend a night in Guatemala city on route and was so shit scarred I barricaded myself in the hotel room blocking the door with my bag, a table and a chair. All around me I was seeing danger. I stayed in the budget hotel opposite the bus station in Guatemala city as I was to scared to stray any further knowing that it is a dangerous city. I didn't feel safe there though and when they guy was showing me around the hotel he took me up to the roof to show me the cheaper room that I had asked to see. I didn't want to go up there so just popped my head up to tell him it was OK and I would take the more expensive one. He had disappeared into some kind of make shift shed and I was convinced that he was going to get a gun and attack me. My heart was going so fast I thought I might have a heart attack.
I have never felt so unsafe or scarred in my life. I was so relieved to arrive in Antigua where I could hide out in the hostel until Rayna arrived on Dec 4th...
That of course is a whole other blog though so I will finish here and just tell you that I am currently safe and sound and and getting tantastic on a beach in Mexico with Rayna 😊
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OMG
OMG, Laura I hope you are OK that must have been sooooo scary x x Apart from that sounds like you are having the most awesome time and congrats on the engagement xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx