Follow Amanda & Rob around the world for a year. From 30 September 2005!

Sunday, November 20, 2005

Tikal ruins and rest of Belize (it´s a long one...)

Well I keep saying that we are blogging too much but we’ve been a bit stuck due to weather problems recently and internet is cheap right now, so we’ll update on the recent (and very dramatic) goings on.

First of all, Rob didn’t mention Tikal (Mayan ruins) in his last update, which was our last stop in Guatemala. We got up at 3am in order to get there for sunrise. We arrived in the dark and climbed to the top of one of the ancient Mayan temples just as it started getting light. Unfortunately it was far too cloudy to see a proper sunrise but we were above the jungle and mist as it got light, and we could hear the birds and howler monkeys waking up as the cloud began to disappear. It was quite magical and eerie to experience the jungle waking up, and definitely worth the short nights´ sleep to do so. We spent most of our morning monkey-spotting and wandering around the ruins. Also saw several brightly-coloured toucans.

After that we went to Caye Caulker in Belize, which Rob wrote about. A little more on the diving: we both really enjoyed it but the learning experience was not without hiccups – namely Rob getting seasick from swallowing too much water, and me being a scaredy-cat doing the exercises… but apart from that it was fun and we got to do it in clear, warm water on a coral reef instead of in a swimming pool, which was fantastic.
Caye Caulked itself was fantastic. There were no cars on the island, just golf carts and bicycles!The ´roads´were made of sand and there were just two of them: Front St and Back St.

Having left Caye Caulker (sniff), we headed south down the coast to Hopkins. We thought we’d get a little way off the beaten track… you could tell we had done so when we arrived on the bus and nobody approached us to offer a place to stay. After seeing a room with about 30 bats hanging from the ceiling (the proprietor’s comment: “oh…we’ll just leave the door open for them to fly out”) we found a half-decent room but soon realised there was not a huge amount to do and so left the following day for Placencia, our ultimate Belizean destination.

We had a lovely few days on the coast at Placencia – the main ´street´ is called “The Sidewalk” and was built in order to make walking through the sand easier. It is only about 3 feet wide and obviously not really a street, but is in the Guiness Book of Records as the narrowest street in the world. Certainly would have been hard work without it as most of the hotels, bars etc. were on this walkway. The school playground is entirely sand, as are people’s gardens. Imagine a sand playground in a British school, paradise!

It was here that we first experienced the tropical storm that was developing (Gamma) when we went on a diving trip with 3 others we had met. The dive shop told us we wouldn’t go out too far as the weather didn’t look too good, so took us out 18km to Laughing Bird Caye (see this link for an aerial pic: http://www.laughingbird.org/). The ride out there was pretty rough in the small boat and we were drenched by the time we arrived at the island to drop off our lunch. Having done the first dive, we returned to the island for an extremely windy lunch, and watched on while 6 guys tried to save a boat that had been moored on the wrong side of the island from sinking due to broken steering. By the time we surfaced from the 2nd dive, the weather did not look pretty. As we began to return to the mainland, the weather got worse and worse – we were being battered by the waves and I was holding on to the flimsy tent-like roof so hard that it came off, so we were completely open to the rain and spray from the sea. With 4 of us huddled under a towel to keep in some of the warmth, the driver shivering and no land in sight because of terrible visibility, the giggling soon turned to worrying… not for long as the storm soon blew over and we eventually reached land again. Walked home still in our wetsuits and laid our things out to dry: EVERYTHING was wet, and I can say for certain that that was the wettest day of my life, with a little fear thrown in for good measure. Little did we know this would not be the last of our experiences with this storm…

Our boat to Honduras was supposed to leave on Friday morning but was cancelled due to the weather (they were on red alert down there apparently) so we were pretty pleased when we went back on Saturday to be told we would be going; the weather had improved, wind now coming from the right direction. However, during the course of the ride, the conditions went from mildly choppy, to large smooth waves, to downright huge choppy waves and torrential rain. It was worse than we had ever imagined. They handed out life jackets, people were not very well and it really was the scariest thing we have ever been through. At one point the waves were higher than the (pretty small) boat and it was crashing down so hard I thought it would split open. The one thing that was good was that neither of us felt seasick, despite being tossed around by the massive waves. I am finding it hard to convey how awful it was and how scared we were, but we were relieved to reach land!

We have certainly had enough of boat rides for now…

Saturday, November 05, 2005

Lake Atitlan and Lanquin

Hi again...
it seems like ages (again!) since we wrote, but our days are just so action-packed that time flies by! It's a hard life...

So, after Rob last wrote we bid farewell to our host family in Antigua and took a long bus ride to Lake Atitlan. Consequences of the mudslides were evident in the hills with parts of the road having collapsed completely due to the hillside having collapsed underneath them. To get the last few kilometres to Panajachel we had to get off the big coach and were piled on (standing) to the back of a pick-up truck, yes a pick-up truck to go across a kind of make-shift bridge (which was in place of the road that collapsed) that the coach would have been too big and heavy for. Slightly unnerving! Once we made it to the jetty to get across to our destination, we saw that half of that had collapsed too...

Anyway, we made it to Santa Cruz safely on a ‘lancha’ and our hostel was luckily right in front of us when we arrived. Great place, and we spent a very relaxed few days there. Our first night was the ‘legendary’ BarBQ, the legendary bit being that you had to dress in drag... we’ll post the pics asap, Rob looking ravishing though.
We walked to a nearby town, San Marcos (Gwen!). This took a while, and took us through to small villages on the way. Again, the devastation from the hurricane and consequent mudslides was pretty awful. Seems that people don’t have much to do but wait for help, and these villages are only accessible by boat or foot which doesn’t help. Hardly any tourists about due to the mudslides and at the time another hurricane was on its way...
Other than that I don’t think we did much, but the place we stayed was fantastic and the lake extremely beautiful. We didn’t have electricity or hot water but that made it even more fun!

On Tuesday we spent all day on another very long bus ride (total of about 10 hours) via Antigua and Guatemala City to Coban, where we stayed for the night and got up first thing the next morning to get the bus to Lanquin. The following day we went to Semuc Champey (Gwen again!), a natural limestone bridge of turquoise pools and waterfalls, with a river running underneath. Stunning, just like paradise. But the best part of that day was the caves we went to first. Stripped down to our swimming things and were each handed a candle (our only light) before we proceeded to swim though pools, climb up and down ladders, jump into pools and climb through a very small hole in these amazing caves. A fantastic experience, probably my favourite so far.

After another few relaxing days we decided it was time to move on, and this morning got the bus back to Coban and up here to Flores. Was absolutely boiling when we arrived and then proceeded to bucket down with rain – I don’t think I have ever seen so much rain in so little time. But it’s ok, coz it’s kind of an island so hopefully doesn’t flood!

We will take a trip to the Mayan ruins of Tikal tomorrow before taking a bus to Belize on Monday. Phew!

Oh, and to answer a much-asked question, yes I am using the hairdryer when electricity is available, cheers Em!