Guatemala!

So we pushed through Belize very quickly, within 24 hrs actually. It seems like a very beautiful, quiet place, great for exploring / chilling out, but we made a spontaneous decision to push on. We caught the water taxi to Belize City which was beautiful traveling through the Carribean sea.

Water taxi, awesome transport option :-)

We then caught a 5 hr bus to Guatemala. It was an enjoyable trip watching the green countryside roll by, with small villages vege gardens, orchards, schools, horse paddocks etc. At the border stop everything was a bit odd. There was a long line at the Guatemalan immigration and our bus driver who only spoke Spanish, convinced us to part with a few dollars and our passports. Not entirely sure what was happening, we watched him like a hawk as he appeared to be having a fairly assertive conversation with the immigration staff. Soon he arrived back with our stamped passports, all good.

The landscape changed traveling through Guatemala. Everything changed back to Spanish and there were lush rolling hills and more beef cattle. Lots of ranchers out on their horses. It really is beautiful countryside here.

We arrived in Flores and promptly found ourselves in a hotel and on a 4:30am tour to Tikal the following day. The hotel isn't 4 star by any means but I found it absolutely gorgeous. It's kind of like a dated mix of Spanish and local design. The prize feature is a rooftop hangout complete with hammocks, overlooking the lake. All a little quirky but very cute :-)

Rooftop hammock area on top of the hotel, looking over the lake at sunset.

Flores itself is a small 'island' town in the middle of a lake. Very beautiful and a great place to hang out and explore the ruins of Tikal.

The following day we were up at the ridiculous time of 4am to tour the ruins early and beat the crowds (and heat). The bus was full of backpackers from around the world and also a couple of Aussie lads. These were the first Australians we'd met in Central America and Vanessa got her fix of 'Aussie humor' bantering at any opportunity ;-)

The Tikal ruins are massive. The area mapped / excavated is 16 sq km and about 3000 structures. This is estimated to be about 20% of the actual ruins. The mystery of the city is that it was not conquered by the Spanish, the Mayans abandoned it 500 yrs before Spanish arrival. The theory the guide presented us was that the culture destroyed themselves by felling so much forest in order to build the city (sound familiar?).

The structures of the site are impressive, but I was more taken by the beauty of the jungle and wildlife within it. This is what it's really about for me. There are mounds upon mounds of unexcavated ruins, overtaken by the jungle. Nature always wins out in the end and is more beautiful than any man made structure.

Ceiba - the national tree. We were all blown away by the beauty of this tree, but the photo doesn't do justice.

Greeted by some 'orbs' at one of the half restored structures.

An unexcavated mound (returned to nature)

One of the temples

Gorgeous tree. There are birds who build nests that hang from the highest branches of these trees,  'away from cats' as one person on the tour put it ;-)

Temple II. We climbed some crazy dodgy stairs to get up this one, seriously, like every second one was missing. On the equinoxes, The sun rises directly over Temple I, casting a shadow over Temple II.

Ruins complex where Temples I and II sit.

Cute little fella poking out of the tree. Maxed out the zoom to get this ;-)

Another temple. Gives some scale as to how tall these are.

Took a few attempts to get this guy flashing his red feathers at us ;-)

Another pyramid

At the end of the tour we climbed Temple IV which is 20 storeys high. I sat up there for ages enjoying the view and the amazing energy, only the intense heat eventually drove me down.

The view from Temple IV. Temples I, II and III poking up from the jungle (after the 20 story climb, yes my butt is sore today)

On the way out we came across a group of about a dozen monkeys enjoying a siesta in a very large tree.

Monkeys...snoozing.

Today I've been catching up on sleep, exploring Flores and hitting the wi-fi via a hammock on the rooftop. Tomorrow, the plan is to take the overnight bus to Antigua and check out the surrounds. I like it here so far, one could definitely spend a lot of time exploring Guatemala :-)

Leaving Mexico

After a few chilled out days in Tulum we decided to head to towards the border. Tulum was a lovely place but it seems full of quaint little restaurants, hotels etc that well meaning expats (who know what tourists want and how to make money) have set up with a focus on ecotourism. It seems there is a trend of gradually moving down the coast as each of these places gets ‘too touristy’.

While in Tulum I checked out the ruins (with several bus loads of people from Cancun arriving at the same time…argh).

Gorgeous ruins by the ocean - the Mayans had the right idea ;-)

And swam in a ceynote.

We arrived in the border town of Chetumal and took a bus to the tiny town of Xpujil. There are very few tourists here but some people use it as a base for exploring the local ruins, the largest of which is Calakmul.

We took a wild 3 hr round trip out to the ruins the following day where our driver actually ran off the road at one point. The Calakmul ruins are huge and not yet very well known. The difficultly in getting there also means there are few tourists and all of structures and pyramids can still be climbed on. I climbed 3 pyramids, several other structures and was delightfully tired afterwards.

One of the pyramids at Calakmul

Later on back in town we ate at a tiny local restaurant by the road. Check out the 'English' side of the menu!

Anyone for 'villager liked' or 'nosedives'?

The problem of being vegetarian is that people (for some reason) think that chicken is not meat . Unfortunately the vegetarian enchilladas verde came out with pollo and I felt terrible as the lady had gone to so much effort and I really didn’t want to eat it. She very kindly made another which was delicious and I left paying extra to make up for it.

Today we said goodbye to Mexico and caught a water taxi to San Pedro in Belize. It’s very quiet here, relaxed, with lots are local crafts, artworks etc.  Everyone also speaks English here – we can actually converse with the locals who are quite keen to chat :-)
The plan at this stage is to spend a couple of days or so in Belize on our way to Guatemala.

Crazy Cancun and the Caribbean Coast

Our Cancun experience was 'interesting'. We’d intended to catch a bus straight from Chichen Itza to Tulum, avoiding the ultra-touristy towns of Cancun and Playa Del Carmen. As luck turned out, we could only seem to get a bus to Cancun so headed there. On arriving we couldn’t get a bus to Tulum for another 4 hours so jumped in a taxi to find a ‘cheap’ hotel and bunker down for the night. Little did we know no such thing exists in Cancun.

The taxi took us somewhere he said was cheap and we drove for miles past endless luxury hotels, stores and restaurants. The hotel turned out not to be ‘cheap’ at all but well above our budget so we headed back into town and found a Hostel (I think we broke a cardinal rule about allowing a taxi driver to find us a hotel).

Cancun was awful. This place is kind of like what the Gold Coast wants to be when it grows up. The scale is hard to describe. The entire place consists of over the top opulence everywhere you look from hotels, designer labels, bars and restaurants. There is little to do here aside from eat, drink, shop and party.

Cancun - miles upon miles of hotels just like this one.

In it’s defense, the beach itself is beautiful, only it’s covered in coca cola umbrellas, drunk/sunburned bogans and a DJ pelting out beach doof with a few bikini clad girls dancing on stage.

Beach at Cancun

Someone told us that Cancun used to be a little fishing village (and probably absolutely lovely) until the Mexican government turned it into a tourist trap in the 70’s due to it’s stunning location (poor locals!). Haven’t verified that but I guess if the tourist dollars are helping the rest of the country I can’t judge too much – just not for me thanks. It’s hard to believe people visit Mexico just for Cancun.

Cancun 'entertainment'

Authentic Cancun merchandise hawked on the streets. Apologies if someone wanted this as a souvenir - I didn't get one.

We head out to grab dinner which was nice except for the incredibly drunk and obnoxious American guy at the table near us. Vanessa and I spent some time debating if he was really drunk or just a natural f*wit. We tried to walk around but there are hawkers everywhere. Not really wanting to spend the night in that kind of energy, we flipped a coin and caught the 7pm bus to Tulum.

On arriving we’d had no chance to hit the Internet and find a place to stay. The (very patient) taxi driver took us to quite a few hotels before we finally found one with a vacancy (at 10pm). Waking up to the beach only metres away was quite a treat!

The view from the cabana in Tulum

Tulum seems to have an emphasis on ecotourism. Most of the places here are little thatched roof cabanas on the beach and utilise recycled materials. People come here to chill out and get away from the pretentious tourist scene. There seems to be a lot of Spanish speaking expats who come here to work, or holiday. Everyone is relaxed and friendly. Couldn't be further away from the Cancun scene. Certainly a cute tourist town although in danger of getting a bit too big.

Our cabana in Tulum

 

Raw food cafe - yay!

As synchronicity would have it the place we are staying at has a raw vegetarian café (yay!) and a normal restaurant for those who are carnivorously inclined. I was just having lunch (a slice of raw chocolate cake and strawberry/kiwi smoothie) and met a lovely chap from Kauai (where we’d just been) who grows his own cacao :-)
Quickly found out we had at least 3 mutual friends and that he is a good friend of David Wolfe. Wow, small world!

Anyway, plan is to stay here 3 nights and relax. Maybe check out some of the ruins by the beach and see the 'secret' river (if I can find it) :-)

Traversing Mexico

Well, the last week has been busy. We spent three nights in Palenque and enjoyed the ruins there. They are absolutely beautiful and surrounded in jungle. There is an amazing river that runs through the site with waterfalls. The water is so clean that you can drink it.

The entrance to Palenque ruins

Gorgeous waterfall at Palenque :-)

The following day we decided to head out to Yaxchilan on the Guatemalan border. The only way to get out there is to book a tour. This involves a 2 ½ hr drive to the river where we caught a 40 min longa ride into the jungle to get to the site. We spent the day with a lovely group of people from Mexico, Italy and Germany where our Italian friend cheerfully translated for us.

An American archeologist also joined us for the ride out to the border on his way back to ‘work’, a largely unexcavated site in Guatemala. Do to the lack of transport out that way he needed to catch a tour across the border.

Yaxchilan was absolutely gorgeous. Not as well preserved or ornate as Palenque but there is something about being in the middle of ancient jungle that is incredibly serene and beautiful. There were lots of stairs and climbing to be done here.

Longa ride out to Yaxchilan

More stairs at Yaxchillan

Vanessa mirroring my thoughts, "OMG more stairs!". Hard to see just how far these go. So much nicer than the gym though :-)

After lunch at a local restaurant we headed out to Bonampak ruins, lots more stairs again.

The view atop Bonampak

The following day we’d planned to head back to Villahermosa, then get another bus to Comalcalco, then the overnight bus to Campeche. On arriving in Villahermosa we couldn’t find a bus to Campeche, apparently the route is not economical...argh Internet you fail us again! We make an impromptu change to head straight to Campeche.

Let me tell you one very big disadvantage of not speaking the language, is accidentally getting on the bus that stops at every village and every stop along the way. What is normally a 5 hour bus ride became about 8 hours. We had all sorts of folk getting on and off with their boxes of (smelly) fish, pork and live chickens. At least we got to experience the local culture somewhat ;-)

We spent the night at Campeche and caught a taxi out to Edzna ruins the next day. It was refreshing to have the entire site to ourselves and Vanessa and I were a bit naughty and climbed the pyramid which is normally off limits.

Edzna

We caught another bus to Merida, this time we managed to get a first class one…ahhh and watched a crappy movie dubbed in Spanish. The size of our backpacks seems to be a great conversation starter with American tourists who just can’t believe how big they are. On arriving in the hotel in Merida we met two lovely Americans who gave us the super fast tour of the city and showed us a great place to eat (with lots of vegetarian options, yay!).

The following day we took the craziest bus tour to 5 sites around Merida. On the tour we had people from Canada, Poland, Germany, UK, Taiwan, none of whom spoke Spanish. The bus driver (who only spoke Spanish) had the schedule worked out down to the minute. We literally had 20 mins at each site, although one was 26 mins, just enough time to walk in and take a photo to say we’d been there. We did get to see the cacao museum though, yay, and enjoyed a hot chocolate there (very quickly). 

Cacao Museum

Chemtrails at Labna - not cool :-(

The highlight of the trip was Uxmal where we had the luxury of 1 ½ hrs at the site..still nowhere near long enough. Here I absolutely loved the magician’s pyramid. Unfortunately we couldn’t climb it but it was awesome nonetheless.

Magician's pyramid, Uxmal

Atop another pyramid at Uxmal, this is still only a very small part of the site.

Today we headed to Chichen Itza. We lucked out and once again, got on one of the buses that stops everywhere. The ruins themselves were a bit disappointing. They are probably the most well preserved/restored that we’ve seen, however the place is covered in hawkers and it attracts a fair bit of the ‘Cancun’ crowd. Being close to Spring Equinox we were hoping to see ‘the snake’ make it’s way down the pyramid, but no such luck.

El Castillo at Chichen Itza

So anyway we are almost ‘ruined out’ and heading to Tulum tomorrow to check out the Caribbean coast. I am sitting by the pool in a hammock at our hotel, surrounded by fruiting orange trees, hoping one of the staff members will 'telepathically' understand that I feel like a cold beer ;-)

Hola! from Mexico

Well after an uneventful three days stuck in the hotel room due to flooding in Kauai; we headed to Mexico utilizing the cheapest route we could find which unfortunately involved four back to back flights. This time it was Vanessa’s turn for an unanticipated airport drama where a correction to her name on the itinerary was required before being allowed to board.

About 26 hours later we arrived exhausted and armed with about three words of Spanish we somehow navigated our way to the hotel room in Mexico City. Mexico City is about 13 million people squashed into a sprawling urban, smog filled landscape, think Bangkok but more cars. Nonetheless, part of me is very excited to be here.

 Not handling the pollution well, we head out of the city the following day to Teotihuacan. We spent a couple of nights here and leisurely make our way around the ruins. Climbing the pyramid of the sun was a lot of fun, tiring, and I thoroughly enjoyed peaceful scene from up top :-)

 Pyramid of the Sun

Looking down on the Pyramid of the Moon

View from the Pyramid of the Moon

My lameass Indiana Jones impersonation ;-)

Next location on the agenda…Palenque. Although the bus system here in Mexico is really quite good, I am yet to figure out how it all works (slight language barrier). In the end we settle on a bus back to Mexico City, a flight to Villahermosa, followed by a bus to Palenque.

Vanessa and I rise early to ‘beat the traffic’ to Mexico City. We had one of those ‘we’re in Mexico’ moments when the police stop the bus for a routine security check. This involves patting down all the passengers, checking the seats, children etc. It seems like such a regular occurrence, all the male passengers automatically get off the bus and line up outside for their ‘patdown’ with no complaints, seeming happy enough to undergo such checks.

While on the road we were wondering, “where is all the traffic?”, before realizing it was Sunday…lol. This resulted in us being about 2 ½ hrs early for the flight. Thus adding to the feeling that most of the holiday so far has been waiting in airports, or in flight...sigh.

We arrive in Palenque late afternoon and settle into a hotel on a beautiful tree laden strip of hotels and restaurants. It is absolutely gorgeous but I can’t help but feel a little sad that this is ‘for the tourists’ and how nice it would be to see the entire town covered in forest.

Overall, I am really liking Mexico so far. I really love that the locals are so friendly and smile warmly, wave and say ‘Hola’ to a complete stranger. Or smile patiently and do their utmost to assist a tourist who knows no Spanish. I love the food here, I even woke up this morning craving chilli :-)

I am also resolving to learn a new word or two of Spanish each day. Today's word was 'aeropuerto'. At least Vanessa won't need to do her impersonation of an airplane anymore ;-)

Beautiful Kauai Island

After spending 3 nights on Oahu, Vanessa and I head to Kauai. This is the island we've been looking forward to the most as the scenery is spectacular. We arrive and decide to splash out and rent a car, as there are basically no transport options otherwise. Kauai is called the 'garden island' for a reason and it has a great feel to it as we are driving around. We drive for well over an hour through Kokee State Park and arrive at the Camp Sloggett grounds.

The place was completely deserted with the exception of a lovely US-polish couple who are hiking/camping through Kauai. We phoned the 'caretaker' and were told to leave the $15 fee in a locked box...ok. To say the least this was not the most comfortable place to stay, but it was cheap and it was about 6pm so we were ready to bed down for the night. Although I've probably had more 'interesting' accommodation experiences WWOOFing etc, after a cold, sleepless night I was ready to move on in the morning. The place left quite an impression on Vanessa and you can check out her far more 'descriptive' post over here ;-)

On the way out we stopped at the Waimea canyon lookout...wow!

The funny thing about Kauai is that there are wild chickens everywhere. So much so I hear that permaculture cats earn their keep by helping to reduce the wild chicken population.

We hit the road and landed in a 60's style motel by the ocean in Kapaa, complete with aqua blue/green carpet, groovy ;-)

The following day we booked in for a helicopter tour of the island which was pretty amazing although unfortunately cut short due to bad weather conditions. We did get to see the 'Jurassic Park' falls and Waimea canyon which was awesome beyond what any photo can capture.

Waiting to board the chopper

Jurassic Park falls

Around the canyon.

Last night the weather turned bad and there are flash flooding warnings on the local tv channels. Good excuse to curl up with a book in the hotel room, watch a dodgey movie or two and plan the rest of the trip ;-)