tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15835029810552186272024-03-13T11:47:57.990-07:00The World Is Different When You're Holding HandsAnna I(a)n Central & South America.
As we travel around holding hands, we're hoping to see a new world.Annahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12154757438270699170noreply@blogger.comBlogger23125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1583502981055218627.post-14992414149598973282020-06-17T02:41:00.001-07:002020-06-17T02:41:40.390-07:00Baby move your hips like you come from COLOMBIA!Benvenidos a COLOMBIA. Nice Place, nice people, cold in places and warm in others. (That was Ian´s contribution to the blog.) <br />
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Technically, we´ve now left Colombia, but I feel I have lot more to share on how wonderful Colombia is. Ian summed it up nicely, in a nutshell, that´s what Colombia is like. We`re in agreement though, its probably our favourite country so far. <br />
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By the Carribean coast, Santa wears shorts and a Zombrero, in Bogota, he´s more wrapped up. That just shows how different Colombia gets from place to place.<br />
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So what did we do there? Better question, what didn`t we do there. Colombia is probably the cheapest place in the world to Paraglide, dive, rappel down waterfalls or anything else that might fancy your tickle.<br />
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As you may remember, we arrived into Cartegena, South America`s only walled city. I think its the nicest city we`ve been to. Its got a HUGE castle and very thick walls surrounding the old city. The streets are beatiful cobbled paths with balconys hanging over them, they make you feel like you`re somewhere in the south of France. It also has guys on every street corner trying to sell you currency, emeralds and cocaine in that order. <br />
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When we were there we met the wonderful Duran Duran, our guide through the nautical museum. Duran Duran turned out to be hugely informative and extremely friendly, he kind of characterised the Colombian people for me. He told us about the five main cities in Colombia, Bogotà, Cali, Medellin, Cartegena and finally Shakira. (Originially known as Baranquilla.) The love Shakira is not exaggerated, she`s everywhere. Funnily, we didn`t find her here, and from what I`ve been told, she`s actually in Ireland. Who knew?<br />
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Cartegena is a place easy to fall in love with as its so pretty and the people so approachable. Even the street culture amazed me. The street meats had bbq`ed potatoes on them, and the street sellers walk around selling cheap coffee from flasks. The street coffee sellers are so popular in fact, that most restaurants don`t really do coffee. Heartwarming place.<br />
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After 3 days wandering the historical streets, we decided that we needed a bit more action, that the wonderful histories weren`t doing it. We decided it was time to meet up with two wonderful people that we had met in Honduras. We made the 9 hour trip (it was supposed to be 4) to the sea side town of Santa Marta. The next day we moved off to the small fishing village next to Santa Marta called Taganga. <br />
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We only intended on spending a few days in Tanganga, we ended up spending the guts of three weeks there by the time we left. I know its a clichè to say `We just fell in love with the place`, but that`s actually what happened. We turned up and were greeted by such a friendly, welcoming, fun and open atmosphere, that we didn`t really want to leave. Its difficult to explain why we liked it so much, its possible that you had to be there. A lot of it had to do with our friends from Honduras, Paula and Darwin. They had us over for dinner, met us for drinks, introduced us to their family and generally made us feel at home. Darwin is from Taganga and works at his mother`s dive shop, the only locally owned dive shop in the town, So we went diving with him. When Darwin was working, Paula would walk around the town with us, take us for the best juice and brownies. Our hostel felt like it was our own house and we ended up throwing more than one dinner party there!<br />
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Best of all, the epic Zombrero clad Santa`s were out in the 30 degree heat. I think the prospect of a hot christmas where people would still be in shorts, t-shirst and sunnies had me scared though. I didn`t know what to make of it!<br />
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While we were based in Taganga, we made out trip into the Jungle to visit the Lost City. We also visited the National Park at Parque Nacional Tayrona, recommended as one of the best beaches in all South America. While I can`t speak for the rest of South America just yet, it was incredible. The beach in Tayrona is littered with giant boulders that defy perspective. Ian would walk up to them with the intention of climbing a few and he could only ever get so far. It was pretty much impossible to judge the distances and size of the boulders.<br />
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While the beach in Tayrona was fabulous, getting there was another matter. Once you arrive at the park, we had to walk for about 2 hours through mud rivers and jungle paths which were heavy on jungle and light on the paths. It was a disaster! As it turns out, we had taken the recommendation of a guide we met at the entrance and it turned out to be poor advice. What is normally a relatively pleasent stroll through the jungle was turned into a never ending struggle through mud flows because of the rain. We should have gone right. After two nights on hammocks and the promise of rain for the next few days, we decided to cut our loses and head back to Taganga before the trail was swallowed whole. (We opted not to pay for the horses since Darwin told us they have ticks!)<br />
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After a few more days diving and generally hanging out in Taganga it was time to move on. We couldn`t really delay any longer, as much as we might have liked to. We said sad goodbyes to Paula and Darwin, did two last dives and headed for the adventure capital of Colombia, San Gil.<br />
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San Gil is where masses of Colombians head on their holidays. The weekend we arrived it just so happened to be a national holiday, our hostel was booked out. Completely with Colombian tourists. That`s one of the other really warm things about travelling around Colombian, you might be in an extremely touristy place. Chances are though, all of the other tourists will be Colombian.<br />
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The day we decided to take to the sky and go Paragliding, we hitched a lift with 4 Colombian tourists down for a weekend getaway. The other 40 people waiting to go Paragliding, all Colombian. We were other only two gringos there.<br />
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The paragliding itself was amazing. I felt like I was a bird, and a few times, I was looking down over them hovering underneath. There was a slight moment of nerves before we were about to take off, but the second I saw the ground fall away beneath me and I hear the woooshing in my ears, I was laughing and singing. R Kelly came to mind, `I believe I can fly`. Ian unfortunatley didn`t get to go because there wasn`t enough wind. Apparently, a breeze could knock me over as it is, so I didn`t need all that much. <br />
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When we headed off for some wild west action on the Cavalgatos, (horse riding), the other guy was a Colombian from Bogotà with his Finnish girlfriend. When we hiked up to the 40 meter high waterfall that some crazy people (like Nath & Mel) rappel down, we met only Colombians going to or from the waterfall.<br />
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You might be a stupid lost tourists in Colombia, but guaranteed, the other stupid lost tourists around you are probably Colombian and can talk you out of whatever it is you`ve gotten yourself into.<br />
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When we had had our fillAnnahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12154757438270699170noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1583502981055218627.post-59772964535452192702020-06-17T02:41:00.000-07:002020-06-17T02:41:26.226-07:00Ecuador, what can´t you do?Faithful to my New Years resolution, welcome to my ever more frequent bogging update.<br />
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In the words of Sash, ECUADOR! What a place, its rough and ready and brimming with fun places to go and some of the world`s friendliest people.<br />
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We arrived into Otavalo, Ecuador after a 36hour bus from Bogota. (There was a landslide, the bus got delayed). We were definately dirty and tired and stiff, but Otavalo`s charm won us over pretty quickly. Otavalo is famous for its market which is supposedly the best in South America. I haven´t been to all the markets in South America yet, but so far, its definately beat any in Central America and was fantastic fun!<br />
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We had one full day of market training, where I had to learn how to bargin. Now, Ian is a pretty big barginer, there`s few who beat Ian to a good deal. So I had a very good teacher. That said, from hwat I can tell, the secret to bargining is to show no interest whatsoever in anything in the market. This is easier said than done, particularly for me! (I`ve been known to get overexcited in the past.)<br />
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The market has everything from Woolen jumpers, socks and hats, to Cushion covers and jewerly. The colours of the wall hangings and rugs nearly make your eyes water they´re so vivid. The choice of hats is mind boggling, from leather and cow hide cowboy, to hardened woolAnnahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12154757438270699170noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1583502981055218627.post-87753834324942501442020-06-16T07:44:00.000-07:002020-06-16T07:44:25.980-07:00Patagonian WildernessWelcome back my fearless followers. <br />
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I realise that my resolution to keep the blog updated every two weeks has fallen by the wayside a little, but in my defence, there is little or no internet in Patagonia. Where there is internet, you have to sacrifice your first born child to pay for it, and as I had no children to give up, I ended up with very little internet time.<br />
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When I first heard talk about Patognia, I thought it must be some country in South America. (This was a very long time ago). In my defence, people talk about going to Patagonia in the same with they talk about going to the Galapacos (also not a country). You could be forgiven for the mistake if you were 12. <br />
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When you talk to other travellers about Patagonia, they've usually managed one or two hikes but more likely, they've avoided it altogether because its time consuming and pretty pricey. Everyone says Patagonia takes at least a month, probably more if you really want to see it properly, and they're right. It takes 4 days in a ferry to get from Puerto Montt (main starting point in Chile) to Puerto Natales (starting point for Torres del Paine National Park). There's no way around it, a visit to Patagonia is slow and expensive and you usually end up for days in a place that you had only planned on spending a few hours. Getting around is a pain in the back, quite literally you will develop a pain in your back from all the time on buses. Also, if you're from Ireland, you'll be surprised how much it looks like Ireland. Aside from penguins, snow capped mountains and glaciers, you could acutally be in Ireland. Right down to Fuschia and Foxgloves!Annahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12154757438270699170noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1583502981055218627.post-43942987808093509452011-02-19T11:22:00.000-08:002011-02-19T11:29:17.960-08:00Chile: Pronounced Chili, not Chilay.Welcome to Chile, home Pablo Neruda, the driest desert ever and rolling mountains of the Andes and of course, Patagonia. We`ve been here a good two weeks, and so its time for that bloggy fix.<br />
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So far on our trip, we`ve been having a pretty pain free and wonderful time. One of my favourite things about travelling over the last 8ish months has been that we`ve never HAD to be anywhere. If we like a place, we stay, if we don`t we move on, wonderful! Not even a deadline in the form of a plane ticket! We`ve had things pretty easy. No tails of horror or robbery. We haven`t had to deal with that hidious cash grabbing monster known as `High Season`. Everything has been fantastic! Alas, all cheap things must come to an end. Since we only have a little over 6 weeks left on our trip and we really have a lot of space to cover, we`ve had to start `planning` and worse, `booking in advance!` *Shudder. Also, we`ve now hit high season in an already expensive country and we pretty much know where we`re going to be on any given day over the next six weeks. *Sigh.<br />
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And worst of all, we`ve had our first run in with thieves. My wonderful camera, and Ian`s largely redundant one have both been rubbado. Which means my avid readers, less pretty pictures. I`ll have to resort to stealing pictures from the internet again. Blame the thieves.<br />
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However, the show must go on and we still have most of South America to get around by D-Day (April 4th if you hadn`t heard.) If you trace us on a map, we`ve just come from the desert in San Pedro de Atacama, via poetic town of Valparaiso to Puerto Montt, the beginning of Patagonia. Thats about 3,500km give or take. If you thought the 252km from Cork to Dublin was far, think again!<br />
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Arriving from Bolivia into San Pedro was something of a shock for us. Firstly, there were roads and those roads were paved. Public transport seems to function, and there are huge supermarkets that are reasonably well stocked. The weather was hot and dry and we were guaranteed sunshine. Suddenly coca leaves were deemed socially unacceptable, and probably the most shocking of all, the cost of a bed in a dorm more than trebbled. In one night we went from paying $2-$4 a night for a dorm to paying $16. No longer did we have our pick of the Lonely Planet`s funkiest and hippest hostels, everywhere seemed to have this strange sign out front "Llena". It didn`t take long to figure out that these hostels were full. What were we to do?<br />
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Well, you could do worse than San Pedro. It is expensive since water is scarce and everything has to be brought in. There also seems to be a tourist town and a separate town for local people that doesn`t appear to be nearly as pretty. But, we spent some lovely days enjoying the sunshine and staring and strange sand dunes. Unfortunately, we couldn`t get over the $8 for a chicken sandwhich and decided it had to be cheaper further south. It just didn`t make sense that anywhere could be more expensive than home.<br />
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While we were in San Pedro, we did make the acquaintance of Dave. Now, Dave is a nice guy from England, travelling on his own, but I feel he deserves a mention. Due to all the aforementioned high prices, we ended up sharing a dorm with Dave. I`ve been trying to think of the best way to describe this experience for the better part of two weeks. The best I can come up with is this: imagine you`re a hobbit, in the land of Mordor. You´re alone and scared in a strange place. The firey depths of volcanoes errupt and spit lava and ash around you`re little group. You quiver with fear and dread. Suddenly, Hordes of Orcs begin to surround you, and as their numbers swell, all you can hear is the thumping of the war drums and the snarling of their twisted beasts. The battlecries of a mob of angry demonic like creatures pound your eardrums. The roar is deafening. That is what Dave`s snoring was like. It was so bad, Ian tried to sleep in a hammock outside (several metres away) and could still hear the orcish battlecry through the walls. Being a former snorer myself (Ian assures me I`ve kicked the habbit), I sympathise with Dave. Its a terrible feeling knowing that you`re keeping everyone around you awake. Normally a shout would suffice, unfortuantely Dave was unwakeable, if it weren´t for his snoring, I might have thought he was dead. Take heed potential travellers, chose your dorm buddies wisely if you can!<br />
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Wanting to fulfil a promise to a friend to visit the house of Pablo Neruda, we decided to bus south to Valparaiso and spend some time on the beach. (The bus is where the hateful thieving happend, so no pictures of SanPedro`s beautiful Church.) As a warning to other travellers, I´m going to tell you all quickly what happened. I was pretty tired after Dave´s performance the night before and decided to take a nap at 2pm on the bus. Ian thought I was awake and thinking that the bus was about to leave, he very quickly answered natures call. At this time, the two women behind us equipped with kid for distraction took my bag under my seat, removed my camera and walked off with Ian´s day pack. Peachy. It was pretty stressful, but not the end of the world. <br />
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That particular bus not only was the first time I was really robbed, but it was also the most embarassing moment of my life. In an attempt to help all others travelling long distance by bus, I´m going to share my other tale of woe in the hope that maybe you can avoid my fate. Answering nature´s call myself, I went to use the bathroom on the bus. I was quite sure the door was locked, but as the bus took a particularly sharp corner I fell face forward into the door and out into the aisle of the bus with my pants around my knees arse shown to half of Chile. Always make sure the door is locked. That´s my lesson for the day.<br />
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Arriving in Valparaiso, we had to do things like visit police stations. Also, we actually ended up staying outside of Valparaiso on the beach near a town called Quintero. We intended on spending 2 nights in this oasis called Ritoque Raices. This place seems to be some kind of Vortex that traps travellers. Anyone who could rearrange their transport out did so that they could stay longer. Which we inevitably did, 2 nights turned into 5. We lit fires in the evening and sat around with some wonderful people talking about the world and learning world history from an Argentinian genius named Agustin. What a guy, he nearly knew more about Irish history than I did and I have a degree in it. We also spent an entire evening explaining to a Swedish couple exactly WHY we pronounced Chile, Chili and not Chilay. Chilay would be knobbish. It took a while.<br />
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I also took my very first yoga class out here. Now, having never tried it before I wasn´t sure what to expect, but it sounded like fun and it was on the beach, so I think I know a good idea when I see one. Well, we trudged through sand dunes for a half an hour searching for <b>The</b> Sand Dune where the lesson was to take place. A pack of local dogs kept us company on the trek. I watched the sun set and the stars appear while listening to the crashing waves all with my knees around my ears. What a way to learn yoga! I´d highly recommend it.<br />
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When we finally decided we couldn´t put off leaving any more we moved onto Puerto Varas after a quick stop visiting Pablo Neruda´s gaff, possibly the first cultural thing we´ve done since we were in Bogota. Anyway, landing ourselves in Puerto Varas, we camped in the back garden of a hostel and exploed the town. Puerto Varas is a pretty little town that reminds of be America a little bit. Its very clean and proper. We walked down the the lake side beach and watched the sun set over the lake. It was probably the most spectacular sunset I´ve seen. We sat in our shorts at 9 at night and watched the sky turn pink and purple and blue. The snow capped mountains that surround the lake changed colour with the sky, so we had pink mountains. It was beautiful.<br />
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Before we headed off into southern, more popular Patagonia, we decided to explore Isla Grande Chiloe. You´d be hard pressed to tell the difference between the coast line here and in West Cork. Except for the penguins. You don`t usually see a colony of penguins hanging about Mizen Head, whereas there were hundreds of fluffy baby penguins shedding their furry coats in this place. As well as sea otters, a few of them were splashing about as well. Seeing penguins in their natural habitat was really special, it was definately one of the coolest things we`ve done so far, I got really excited about it. For some reason penguins bobbing about in the water looking like ducks and waddling around the rocks was just brilliant.<br />
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When we originally decided to come down to Ancud and Isla Chiloe, we wanted to see if we could get some diving in. After seeing their diving equipment, we took a rain cheque. Basically they use a compressor to compress air into a beer keg and they run a garden hose out to you in the sea. The local mussel fishermen use it all the time, so our diving sales man assured us it was safe. Following Muriel´s advice about compressor reliability, we skipped it all the same.<br />
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While we were on Isla Chiloe we did some hiking hoping to see a pudu. Now a pudu, for you table quizzers everywhere, is the world´s smallest deer standing 30cm at shoulder height. We didn´t see any, but it wasn´t from lack of effort. We also sampled the local fare, for the first time in Chile I might add, we couldn´t afford it anywhere else! The food was great, oysters and mussels the size of your forearm! I wanted to take a picture to prove it to my Dad, but... grrrrr...<br />
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Isla Chiloe is a beautiful island that seems to get a lot less tourists than other parts of Patagonia or Chile. Its like most people forget that its a good place to visit. The coastal views are really specatular. For me, I just thought I could have been walking down to Sandy Cove or up Toe Head. It was strange being so far from home and yet it felt like I was right there. Its odd how two places can be so far away and so alike!<br />
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When we left Chiloe, we took a ferry to the real Northern Patagonia, a town called Chaiten. Now our guidebook is a few years out of date and when we decided to go there, we had no idea what had happened. About two years ago a volcano behind the town errupted and filled the river with ash. The river of ash then burst its banks and buried most of the town in silt, sand and ash. We had no idea when we walked up to the hostel that there was no running water or electricity. When we walked through the town we had a sense of it being something of a ghost town. Firstly, the usual congregation of village owned dogs were nowhere to be seen. It wasn´t until we went for a walk down the beach and discovered the roofs of buildings sticking out from under the sand that we started putting together what happened. There were dozens of houses completely buried with just the tip of the roof and the chimney sticking out of the top. The strangest thing to see was the school´s gym hall which was a huge indoor basketball court, mostly filled in with silt and sand. Even I could have gotten a slam dunk! It was a sad place, but we were glad we stayed and went indoor camping. Whats left of the old town definately needed the money.<br />
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Getting the ferry back to Puerto Montt we´ve hit the 33hour bus to Punto Arenas. In the next few days we´ll be trekking through Torres Del Paine National Park and roaming through Patagonia and Tierra Del Fuego. You have much to look forward to loyal readers. Will check in soon, but other than that I hope you´ve learned a few traveller tips.Annahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12154757438270699170noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1583502981055218627.post-58088285589562983422011-01-30T05:13:00.000-08:002011-01-30T05:13:20.976-08:00The Bolivia Special.Welcome to Bolivia, land of many extremes. Highest capital in the world, highest city in the world, biggest salt lake in the world, world`s most dangerous road and world`s worst internet. There I said it, the only negative thing anyone has ever said about travelling in Bolivia.<br />
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So when travelling around, you have the travelling conversation. Its the same one over and over but you always listen because you never know when someone is going to give you a bit of gemlike information that can save you money, time and maybe even send you to somewhere exceptionally cool. For the last 8 months or so (yes, you have been living happily without us for 8 months now), Bolivia has been high on travellers `must do when in South America`. Did we have high expectations? Yes. I was a bit worried it was going to be like when everyone says `This is the greatest movie of all time you have to go see it` and when you do you think, `Eh`. Were we disappointed, no. Did we like it? Yes we did! Should you go there? Emmmm.... Yes!<br />
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Now that we only have 2 months to go, we`re speeding up and whizzing through so we can get to Patagonia. Which means, we`re pretty much sticking to a very well trodden gringo trail. Nevertheless, Bolivia is a roughly epic country.<br />
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We started off on the Bolivian side of Lake Titicaca, which is apparently pronounced Titi-haha. Well we haggled our way onto a ferry and visited the beautiful Isla Del Sol. We hiked from one end of the island to the other, passing empty beaches and high hills. Its a quiet spot, not a lot of people living there, but they defiantely know how to charge. You get charged for leaving the north part of the island and then again entering the south part. Its very little and the money goes to the local community so its not all bad.<br />
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As beautiful and all as Titicaca was, having just spent a few days on the Peruvian side and being in search of some more adrenaline pumping thrills, we bussed it over to La Paz. Yes we survived the world`s most dangerous road, yes its scary but manageable.<br />
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So, in 1996 some international agency labelled the road as the world`s most dangerous because of all the people that died every year when a bus, lorry, truck would tip over and fall down the valley (on average 200-300 people every year). Ten years later they managed to finish the by pass and now that road isn`t normally used for traffic, just tourists looking for a thrill. So the fact that its no longer the main road definately makes it easier. That said, its still very easy to take a butterfly trip, (which I nearly did.) That`s when you get distracted by the beautiful scenery (or a butterfly in my case) and cycle off the edge. You`d think you`d have to be pretty stupid to do that, but trust me, its very difficult to ignore the rolling green mountains and giant blue butterflies.<br />
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From the stories we heard, we decided to go with the more expensive company, when travelling down death road, its probably better just to pay the extra for better bikes. It gave me some piece of mind anyway. You start off on the new road, biking to the beginning of the old road gives you a bit of practice on the bike before you hit dirt and gravel. I was badly in need of practice. But we biked the whole 64km to the bitter end. Surrounded by ice capped peaks of the Andes and green valleys of lush cloud forest, we raced down the thin dirt and gravel path where the edge was terrifyingly close and drop dizzingly high. We biked under waterfalls and passed the spot Top Gear made famous when Jeremy Clarkson came dangerously close to the edge. We ended in an animal sanctuary where monkeys were running around trying to pick pocket the bikers.<br />
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The trip back up in the bus is probably the worst part of the whole thing. There are times when you look out the window and all you can see is the drop and it is terrifying. There is no room for error as an inch in the wrong direction and the whole bus would be gone over the edge. Its at this point that the guide tells you about the worst accidents on the road and about how various bikers were injured or died during the ride. Their timing is impeccable as the bus stops underneath one waterfall at the narrowest point on the road and they open the doors for you to get a look. <br />
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As it turned out there were two Irish girls doing the trip with us, it was brilliant to hear a familiar voice! Particularly when it was all I could do to not look out the window of the bus. They regalled us with tales from home which kept me blissfully preoccupied and not looking out the window. Thank you Jill & Caitriona!<br />
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While in La Paz, Ian really wanted to break the 6000 metres above sea level mark declaring "I really just want to use some crampons and an ice axe!". Huayna Potosi was the mountain that obliged. We spent one day hiking up to 5,100metres to base camp, where we played cards with 2 Canadians and stuffed ourselves full of coca leaves, coca tea, coca hot chocolate and anything to relieve altitude sickness. We felt great! Well, that is I felt great until it was time to go to sleep. When you lie down your heart starts pounding trying to get oxygen around. It was a crazy feeling, liying down not moving, trying to go to sleep and yet your heart feels like you`ve just run a marathon.<br />
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At midnight we got up to start trekking. We donned our crampons, sharpened our ice picks and attacked the glacier with vigour. Unfortunately, I only had so much vigour in me, coca leaves and altitude sickness tablets weren`t enough to relieve my symptoms. I popped at 5,400 meters above sea level and couldn`t make it any farther. That said, it was a brilliant experience, we got amazing views over La Paz, we saw green and red lakes and ice blue glaciers. And, Ian got to use crampons and an ice pick and has a new resolve to make it past 6,000 meters above sea level. I`m ok with 5,400.<br />
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Leaving La Paz we went to what used to be the world`s biggest Silver Mine, Potosi. Potosi is a beautiful city (the highest in the world) and the silver mine which made it famous is horrible. When going to visit the mine, you first stop off at the miner`s market to buy presents for the miners. Here we got them such presents as orange, 96% alcohol, coca leaves and dynamite. No your eyes are not decieving you, we simply walked into the shop and got a couple of sticks of dynamite. Some for the miners and some for us to set off. No fluttered eyelids, so baffled looks, just our change and a smile from the shopkeeper. We wrapped up our purchases and our faces and headed off to the mine.<br />
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Our guide had worked in the mine for 5 years on and off since he was 15. Walking into the mine, I was a bit nervous, I don`t really like small spaces. But Diego, our reliable guide took us to into the mine without any hesitation. We went to visit the miners god, Tio, who is basically the devil. As we were sitting there and Diego was explaining the miners` beliefs and practices, we all felt a thump and heard a bang. the walls shook slightly and there was some more dust floating around our heads. A miner one grotto over had just set off some dynamite. I think that might have been when I started to get scared.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Big Bag of Coca leaves</td></tr>
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Going over to the next grotto, we met the miner who had just set off the explosion. He looked as old as the mine istelf. He told us that he had been working there since he was 14, he was a member of the mining co-op and as such had his own grotto to work. It was around 3pm when we got into the mine, this miner had been there since 7am and hadn`t eaten or drunk anything since then. All he had had was coca leaves and he was delighted when we were able to produce a new bag of leaves for him. He new how long he had been in the mine for because after 4 hours, coca leaves run out of juice and he was able to count how many sets he had gone through in a day. No need for a watch. Now I`ve heard of fad diets before, but that one really takes it to an extreme.<br />
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The way that the mine is organised, or disorganised rather, emans that its every man for himself. A Co-op member can employ regular miners to help him work but there`s no over all structure to the mining. One miner could literally be undermining someing. (I`m sorry I couldln`t resist the temptation.) The mine has no proper air circulation as there`s no air vents. The temperatures in the mine range from stifiling hot to below freezing in places. The shafts are held up with rotting wood that is cracked and caving in places. When asked why they don`t use horses to remove the tonnes of material, our guide told us it was because the mine shafts were too narrow, a horse wouldn`t fit. The shafts are barely a metre wide in places. Now, I would have though, why not make the shafts bigger, etc, but that wouldn`t work because its every miner for himself. The place has no safety standards whatsoever. Its a disaster waiting to happen. Specialists have apparently given the mine 10 more years before it will eventually collapse the entire mountain. I doubt very much that it will take ten years to reach that point. The miners start every day with a large shot of 96% alcohol and continue it all day topping up with coca leaves and lime.<br />
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When we reached the lower levels of the mine, I was scared stiff. Or shook rather, I couldn`t stop my hand shaking. I was suitably terrified. Chatting to another one of the miners while he tried to hit on a german girl on the tour with us, he told us he was 20 and had been working in the mine for 10 years. This place is like taking a trip back in time to the Industrial Revolution in Britian when children used to work in the mines becuase they could get into the smaller spaces. Nothing has changed in Potosi, except they now have electric headlamps.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Tight squeeze</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Yes, that is a big bundle of dynamite.</td></tr>
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When we left the mine, our guide set up our dynamite for us, we all took pictures with the lighted exploive in our hands, and then he ran down to the side of the road and left it there. A car driving by was quickly waved in the opposite direction before it actually exploded. I might point out that he simply left a lighted explosive lying at the side of the road with oncoming traffic, on top of the mine. Zero health and safety.<br />
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Having had enough excitement for a while, we went to a place called Tupiza. (It had a very cleverly named restaurant called Tu Pizza). Tupiza is where the careers of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance kid came to an end after robbing one too many trains. We were literally in cowboy country. We did a horse trek around the area to see the amazing rock and cactus formations. There are places where its like there used to be an entire mountain but everything except for the front wall has been washed away. Its spectacular.<br />
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Carrying on from the `traveller conversation` one thing that most people say is the `Best thing we`ve done in South America` is the Salar de Uyuni. This is the world`s biggest salt falt, and its without a doubt an ocular delight! Also, because its rainy season, it was particulary amazing!<br />
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We decided to head to Chile through the Salar and took a three day tour in a 4X4 to San Pedro through the Salar. Day one is through the actual Salt flat where hundreds of people are taking funny looking perspective photos. We joined in and Ian jumped on his passport and even stood on my hand. Fun times!<br />
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Driving through the salt flat in the rainy season is like driving on a mirror. The sky is perfectly reflected in the water and when you see another 4X4 in the middle distance, it looks like its floating in mid air. Visually its like nothing else you`ve ever seen in your life. How the driver has any idea where he`s going is anyone`s guess. As it turns out, one car was actually lost in the salt flats for two days while that driver tried to figure out where he was. A compass would be a good idea for these drivers, but they seem to prefer to go off instinct.<br />
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The second and third day is like driving on a power plate, you know those exercise machines you stand on and they jiggle your whole body? By my reckoning I must have lost at least a stone and a half through all the jiggling. the trip is fantastic though, we went from snow covered mountains where it was hard to tell where the snow stopped and the clouds started to gysers flushing steam and finally to the world`s driest desert. It was surreal, the whole 3 day trip.<br />
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We started off by visiting the train cemetery where Bolivian trains go to die. We visited one of the salt factories and saw where they process the salt. We visited buildings made entirely of salt and our hostel was even made of salt. There are islands in the middle of the salt flat where there are giant cactus growing in the middle of nothing. We saw huge lakes of vivid blues and reds where hundreds of flamingoes were chilling out.<br />
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Bolivia is a special place of extremes for those seeking adventure. Remember though, you will have to put up with zero internet, bad or non existant roads and the craziest drivers since Mexico. Be warned!!!<br />
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From here on in is a jam packed schedule taking us to Patagonia, Buenas Aires and Brazil. The count down is on and we`re stuffing as much as is physically possible into the 2 months we have left. Remember, you now only have 2 more months of joy without us, make use of it wisely.Annahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12154757438270699170noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1583502981055218627.post-51972545177061435532011-01-15T15:56:00.000-08:002011-01-15T15:56:05.256-08:00Peru: Nazca, Salkantay & Machu PicchuWelcome back, welcome back loyal readers. Feast your eyes on me keeping up with my New Year`s Resolution to update the blog every two weeks.<br />
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When last I blogged I told you all about the wonders of the Galapacos and today, I`m going to skip Christmas and Ecuador (those stories and more to follow). Today, we`re here to hear about a near vomit commet over archeological signs; 90km hiking around glaciers and jungles; ending in stroll around the world`s most famous Inca ruin, Machu Picchu. If we`ve time, we might get to hear about the lovely Lake Titcaca (pronounced Titihaha) and the floating islands there.<br />
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So, when we left Ecuador we took a 30 hour bus to Lima, overnighted in a hostel and then took another 12 hour bus to the desert town of Nazca. Along the way we drove through miles and miles of uninhabited, otherworldly desert wasteland. When we finally arrived in Nazca, the heat of the desert was pretty much overwhelming. It is hot, and I mean really hot. Like what you`d imagine living in the Sahara is like hot.<br />
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Well we decided that we could only fully appreciate the famous Nazca lines from the sky so we charted a plane and off we went. Now, the Nazca lines are like giant hyroglyphs in the ground that you can`t actually see unless you`re very high above them. Flying is pretty much the best way to see them since you can only see one or two from the viewing stand that`s been constructed. <br />
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Now, the plane held 6 people including the pilot and co-pilot. The first 10 or so minutes you spend getting over to the Nazca lines, so in spite of my initial nerves at the fact that the plane nearly tipped over when I got in, I was doing ok. A few mintues later, we`re soaring over huge marings in the ground, over 100m long. First the right side, then you`d swing back so people on the left side could see. This is where the problems started. You feel a bit the way you do in a wobbly lift when your stomach tries to jump into your brain and then gets sucked back down to the ground again. A bit like that, only in the extreme. At one point, I thought my whole insides would be sucked down to the ground. It was then that I handed Ian the camera and grabbed the sick bag with both hands just in case. I had to go for a good lie down for an hour after that flight! While I was turning several shades of unchartered green, Ian was having the time of his life. <br />
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Flight and dodgey plane aside, the lines themselves are really interesting. Nobody really knows what most of them are or why they were made. Some people specualte that they are landing markings for aliens, which is all a bit X-files for me. But one of the figures does look like a cross between a man and alien and an owl. Its all a bit odd.<br />
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Anyway, from Nazca we headed to Cusco to make our way to Machu Picchu. Now we`d been told that the Inca trail can be pretty pricey and that there`s another trail that`s a bit more of a hikers hike to get to Machu Picchu. So we picked the Salkantay trail as the way for us to get to Machu Picchu. Now, the Salkantay takes you to just under 5,000M above sea level, through the mountains, under a glacier, through the jungle and around the mountain that Machu Pîcchu itself is on. It goes from very very cold, to very hot! Every day you see a completely different scenery, you go from high altitude with only bugs for company to jungle heat with monkeys trying to steal your dinner. Its a fantastic way to arrive at Machu Picchu.<br />
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Day one is a pretty easy going day. You walk for 8 hours, up a bit, flat a bit, up a bit, flat a bit. You stop for lunch and you watch as the Salkantay mountain slowly gets bigger like its coming out of a backdrop for a film at you. You spend one very cold night in a tent well wrapped up chugging down coca tea to combat the effects of altitude on you. It was the first time we had seen stars so clearly in a long time. We watched as the sun set over the Salkantay mountain, the snow turned from crisp white to firey red until eventually the mountain disappeared and we could only see the faint glow from the moonlight reflecting on the snow. It was cold, and probably not all that poetic, but it was beautiful.<br />
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The next morning your up at 5.30 or so and hiking by 6am and the tough part starts. Now, the climb isn`t that difficult in and of itself, its just the altitude gets to you a bit. So after 10 minutes of walking your starting to huff and puff your way up like a chain smoker. After 15minutes, your wheezing like an asthmatic wondering why you`re doing this to yourself. But you set yourself targets, like, I`ll walk to that next big boulder and then I`ll sit down. By the time you do sit down and take a few minutes your heart is pounding like you`ve just run a mile when really you`ve walked very slowly a few metres.<br />
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We were exceptionally lucky with the weather, we had crisp cold and clear skies our whole way up and pretty much all of the way back down. You could see the whole of the Salkantay mountian and the valley around it. The feeling when you get to the top on that second day is brilliant, not only becuase you`ve made it up without suffering the dizzing effects of altitude sickness, but also because you know its all downhill the rest of the way. What a feeling!<br />
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The third day you walk through jungles and end up in the `city` of Santa Tereasa. Now, I say city with a little bit of sarcasim here. When they sell you the tour they tell you that Santa Tereasa is a big town, its not. Across the road from our hostel (which was really just a camp site) was the local abattoir. This consisted of a concrete platform at the side of the road, covered by a corregated iron roof, completely open to the world and it had a hose and a drain at the side. It was the first time in my live I`ve seen a whole cow slaughtered in a mere 15mintues. From full animal to carted away in the back of a pick up truck in minutes. We all had a morbid curiosity about it and everyone stood around to watch at some point. Some of us were extra shocked as inedible enrails were tossed into the hedge along with a fetus. It was not pretty.<br />
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That night we all looked at our dinners long and hard before eating. Unfortunately, monkeys would try nd nip it off your plate which didn`t leave us with a lot of time for too much reflection, probably a good thing.<br />
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The next day was our last before reaching Machu Picchu and some of us had some sore heads becuase of some crazy american drinking game. Word to the wise, never get into a drinking game with american MBA students where you`re not allowed to make any facial expressions, it won`t end well for anyone involved, especially Ian.<br />
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That said, the walk was beautiful and by lunch we`d perked up enough to enjoy the landscape again. Most of it was clouded with heavy rain, but we were still awed by the huge green mountains leering over us.<br />
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Day 5, finally we reached our destination, the world famous, Machu Picchu. We got up at 4am, and started to walk up to Machu Picchu at 4.30am. Even at this early hour, there are groups of people walking very quickly towards the entrance. Everyone is trying to make it look like they`re not runing when all they want to do is break into a sprint down the road. The thing is, if you get to Machu Picchu early enough and you`re one of the first 400 to the gate, you get a special stamp so you can enter Huayna Picchu. Huayna Picchu is a mountain at the back of Machu Picchu that overlooks the whole site and where you can get some of the best vistas in the valley.<br />
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Now as we were walking up ot the gate, you suddenly feel really competitive. Like you`re thinking, Ive just walked 90km, I`ve had about 5 hours sleep and noone is going to take my spot in Huayna Picchu away from me. They just don`t deserve to be up there as much as I do, and I refuse to allow anyone to take my spot away from me. Subsequently, I was one of the first 30 people to the top. Taking it two steps at a time, I whizzed past anyone who got in my way and stopped for noone. I was really just trying to keep up with the Belgian man from our group. This guy goes ski mountaineering every year and is probably the fittest man I`ve ever met and if we hadn`t taken a wrong turn and missed the steps at one point, he would have been up there first with hours to spare.<br />
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At 6am having gotten our precious stamps, we met our guide who took us around the site. Machu Picchu is fantastic, there`s a reason its as famous as it is. Its every bit as amazing as everyone says and there`s nothing anyone can do to talk it down. It is pretty crowded later in the day when the trains start arriving, but when you get there that early, you more or less have it to youself. Even with the crowds, the site is so impressive on so many levels that the only way to do it justice is to go and visit it for yourself. Everything from where it was built (on the top of a mountain) to the plumbing (the aquaducts that run through it are still fully functional) and the farming technique that were used. On top of that, the whole city is basically a calendar where on the June soltice the first ray of sunlight hits an exact spot on a carving of a lama. The place is spectacular and not to be missed.<br />
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When we got back to Cusco we headed in for some well earned Alpaca burgers before making our way to Puno. Puno is a town on Lake Titicaca and from there we were able to visit the floating islands which are completely made out of reeds. We were also able to stay with a host family on one of the natural islands and take in the scenery. The thing about these places is you have to see it to believe it. There are litarlly people on these floating islands that have never set foot on dry land. The traditional dress on the natural islands is so important that if you don`t know how to make the kind of hat that shows your married, you can`t get married. The people here hold their traditions very close, but at the same time, they`re really open to sharing it and letting outsiders learn about it. Which is brilliant!<br />
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So that`s Peru, next up should be hair raising bike journeys in Bolivia and mountain hiking with ice picks, but watch this space!Annahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12154757438270699170noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1583502981055218627.post-62376466686553935182010-12-31T12:10:00.000-08:002010-12-31T12:10:24.659-08:00Galapacos: Seals, Sharks and Boobies.Apologies to all avid blog readers, I`m sorry for the delay in telling you all about adventures south of the Equator.<br />
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So, the question for today is, can you go to the Galapacos without having to thieve from the very strigent budget? Is the ROI positive?<br />
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Lets get this straight, the Galapacos is expensive, but its brilliant! We made a few adjustments to the budget to funnel a little extra to Decembers budget and it was well worth it! We went, we swam with seals, hammerhead sharks and penguins and were still able to afford to go on holding hands throughout South America. <br />
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So for starters when going to the Galapacos you have to get a three hour flight from the mainland to get out to these tiny volcanic islands in the middle of nowhere. A plane and not a 36 hour rickety bus? Yes please!<br />
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Despite all the cost fearmongering, this dynamic duo did everything we wanted to without having to call the IMF (International Mammy Fund) for a bailout. For starters, we met a nice man who had been on the flight and who offered us our own apartment complete with wifi (weak as it was), television, dvd player and kitchen all for the low low price of only 15$ per person. Considering all research points to accommodation at least 20-25$ per night for dorms, we were pretty chuffed. In general, all the accommodation is of a pretty high standard because land based tours have to compete with boat cruises, so you can do very well in terms of finding somewhere to stay even in the supposed high season.<br />
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There are heaps of fun things to do on your own in the Galapacos, like a trip to the Charles Darwin Centre where you can meet the saddest Turtle in the whole world. His name is Lonely George and he is the last of the turtles from Isla Pina in the galapacos. He is litterally the only one of his kind. Thanks to those loveable rogue pirates who used to eat turtles and all the introduced species destroying turtle nests and habitats, 70 year old George is the last of his kind. George isn`t the oldest turtle in the research centre, and he isn`t the biggest either, he`s just the only one left. <br />
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After visiting George, you can wander off down to Tortuga Bay which is the softest whitest most beautiful beach in the world. Its also home to a load of marine Iguana`s and blue footed boobies. You walk about 2.5km down a path lined wth cactus and finches and you arrive and a surfers heaven and a paradise beach. No wonder turtles like to lay their eggs in the sand dunes at the back of the beach.<br />
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When we were in the Galapacos, we made a decision not to go on a cruise and to visit what islands we could by ourselves. Instead of an 8 day cruise, we did 8 dives from two different islands. The water is cold, and the diving is unbelievable. You hear the guide`s rattle and look up, there`s a seal swimming by. Look back again, there`s a hammerhead shark. If you see one of those, look up, look around, do a full 360, because when you do you`ll realise that there`s probably about 20 or 30 swimming around you. If it were possible for your jaw to drop to the ground in sheer awe as Manta Ray`s the length of a table glide by, it would! <br />
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Some of the diving isn`t easy, you can spend most of your time stuck holding a rock trying not to get pulled into the school of sharks by the current. Also, the diving isn`t cheap, but if you shop around the dive shops you can get better deals, they don`t all charge the same price. I was definately wishing I had my drysuit, all this warm water diving has me spoilt, I can`t handle the 18 degree water anymore.<br />
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Once we had spent a few days exploring Isla Santa Cruz, we got on the fast boat to Isabela and booked straight into a hostel under contsruction. The owner was slowly building his hostel and most of it is still a small building site at the moment.<br />
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Our first stop on Isalbela, Volcano Sierra Negro. A recently active volcano who`s lava flow cooled only 3 years ago. Its not a particularly high volcano, and its not a difficult walk to the top, but the crater is just over 10km wide, and as you go up and around it, the scenery changes dramatically. On the walk up the volcano, the guide points out plants endemic to the Galapacos and the introduced fruit bushes that are taking over and strangling them. The green is vivid. After we stop for lunch, we move on to Volcan Chico which is a series of volcanoes that go right down to the coast of the island. You feel like you`ve stepped into the Land Before Time and any minute a T-Rex is going to come charging after a herd of Stegasoraus. The quiet around the innermost part of Volcan Chico is deafening. There`s no life in the rocks yet. It was only about 5 years ago that it errupted and lava seeped down to the bay below. There are no plants, no insects, no birds, nothing. Since the island is by law mostly uninhabited, there is no sign of any kind of civilisation anywhere. Not only that, but you can actually see down to the point where the Equator passes through the top of the island. You`re litterally standing in the Southern hemisphere on a volcano, looking at volcanoes on the northern hemisphere. I`m not sure how many places in the world you can do that.<br />
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One of the cooler things to do while in Isabela, is to go on a tour of the bay. The bay is literally the harbour where the boats come in. Its so protected and shallow though that it takes any captain a lot of patience and great skill to get in and out. Not only that, but seals think its a great place to hang out since its so shallow, not many sharks. You can snorkel with baby seals while they try to impress you with their spins and then snort bubbles at you when you`re simply not as fast as they are. You drive by blue footed boobies and penguins hanging out on the lava rocks. You walk around to pools where sharks like to hang out for a few zzz`z and get trapped when the tide goes out. You might be lucky enough to catch 10 or 15 sharks taking a cat nap there. One of the best parts though, is snorkelling over to the car wash. There`s a particular lagoon formed when the tide goes out, and that`s where the cleaner fish like to hang out. Coming up to mating season, in preparation for their big night out, you can find 15 or 20 turtles hanging out about 4 meters down, sitting on the sand waiting their turn to get cleaned up and dolled up for their upcoming big night out.<br />
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When we`d explored Isabela including checking out Flamingo hot spots, (the birds rather than the nightclubs) we made our way over to Isla San Cristobal. Chilled out, popular with surfers and sea lions, its actually the capital of the Galapacos, even though its a smaller town. We went all around Cristobal, everywhere we were allowed. There were sealions everywhere from park benches to the locals boats. The locals got so desperate in their attempt to keep the sealions out, that they started putting barbed wire around their boats.<br />
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The sealions as a rule are very cool They`re not terribly aggressive, but you would definately know when you`ve gotten to close. Generally, the biggest, grumpiest bull seal on the beach will waddle up to you and shout furiously. I`ve seen people not being able to get into the water because a bull seal was blocking their path. We also watched as one poor man who was trying to get an artistic shot of a baby seal was chased down the beach by a bull seal. The man was trying to keep his camera from falling into the water while holding onto his shorts which were now somewhere around his knees and all the time the bull seal shouted and chased him down the beach. Kodak moment if ever I saw one.<br />
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So, the Galapacos has penguins, famingoes, boobies, turtles, more turtles, sharks and some of the most beautiful beaches in the world. You can surf, dive, snorkell and hike. Its a place like nowhere else in the world and it is spectacular. If ever you get the chance to go, do it! You won't be disappointed.Annahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12154757438270699170noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1583502981055218627.post-86644532344980854982010-11-17T11:28:00.000-08:002010-11-17T11:28:35.479-08:00La Ciudad Perdida, Alterna-trekking.Let me ask you a few questions: Do you like hiking? Do you like jungles? Tired of the `regular` Machu Pichu with its 3,000 visitors a day? Well, I have the answer for you, and it is The Lost City.<br />
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So we´re in Colombia, its fabulous, Shakira Shakira all around. Colombia is home to pretty much every kind of adventure sport you can possibly imagine. Paragliding, horseback riding, diving, white water rafting, the list goes on. Its also where the Tayrona indians, who were erradicated by the conquistadors in the 1500´s/1600´s built their spectacular city. The city which is perched on top of breath taking mountains and surrounded by jungle from all sides, has become known as La Ciudad Perdida or The Lost City. <br />
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Why the ominous name? Well, the only way to reach the Lost City, is mans oldest form of transport. There is no short way around, no back door entrance, the only way up is using the old fashioned way, your two feet. Potentially you could do what we did which was get a donkey to carry the heavy stuff, while we carried ourselves, but I´ll tell you more about that later.<br />
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So we were settled into the sea side fishing village of Taganga met up when we met up with our travel buddies, the wonderful Nath and Mel. Reunions over, we decided the time had come to wander off into the Jungle to see where the Tayrona indians built their fortress! <br />
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Day One: <br />
Our first day was pretty relaxed. Archie, our guide to the Lost City picked us up in an aging 4X4 and we started out. 2 hours by regular road, and then another hour and a half on a dirt track that was more river than road in most places.<br />
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We reached the end of the line for the 4X4, which is a tiny town in the middle of nowhere. Everyone knows each other and driving through the town took nearly as long as the drive there as we had to stop and say hi to everyone as we passed through!<br />
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After a dignified lunch of sandwiches and the sun high in the sky overhead, we were on our way. We had been told that we would have to walk through rivers and mud and that we were going to get wet. But I honestly didn´t expect to get so wet so soon. Within the first half an hour we were at our first river, wading through it, the water well past our knees in places. I, being the princess that I am, refused to get my good hiking boots wet as I wanted to wear them in the evenings. So I held everyone up at every river to change into my sandals for the river crossing. I didn´t feel bad about it in the evenings when everyone else´s shoes were wet and mine were lovely and dry.<br />
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After about an hour of walking through jungle and fording rivers, we came to our first stop. A watering hole where we were able to jump into the river to cool off. Which we were all happy to do as the heat was definately on. When we continued our walk, we were signifcantly slower than when we had started. We were climbing up up up a hairpin trail where the mud was the colour of rusted iron. We had to weave our way up the trail letting the occasional donkey pass us by as we trugded along, pretty much in silence. (The donkeys had the thankless task of carrying the food.) <br />
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Now, Archie our fearless leader, was there when they first started excavating the site in the 1980`s, and he`s been a guide up to the Lost City for a long time now. Which means, not only does he know his stuff and every indigenous person along the way, he´s also not as fit as he once was. Archie, is slowing down a little. We were pretty happy about that though, because the trail was tough.<br />
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When Archie sat down outside a house with a beautiful garden, we all greatefully followed his lead. The owner of the house was a little old lady who couldn´t have left her garden in at least 15 years, there´s no way she would have make it back up the hill without bringing on some kind of heart attack. The lovely lady gave us a big smile and a bag full of oranges from her trees, personally, I´ve never been as happy to see an orange before. The wonderful thing about having a guide who´s soft around the middle, is that you can be pretty sure you´re going to be well fed. <br />
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We continued up the winding trail that was growing redder and redder. Every so often I´d look behind and wonder how we´d made it up this far. I could never bring myself to look ahead in case I got disheartened by the sight of the mountain above us that we had to climb. After three hours of up and down (with mostly up) we arrived at our first camp sight, sweaty, disgusting and happy! Our bed for the night, was a hammock. Our entertainment, was cards by candlelight. Our spirits, were high. We had made it through the first day and we were still alive!<br />
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Just before dinner, a conspiratorial Archie came and asked us if we wanted to learn about cocaine production. He said that there was a chico who would show us for the low price of 30,000 pesos (11 euros). Myself, Ian, Nath and two dutch guys decided that when in Rome, learn about cocaine. Which meant getting up at 5.30am the next morning to see what all this cocaine jazz is all about anyway.<br />
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Day Two:<br />
Up we get with first light and follow a friendly looking Colombian guy further down into the jungle. He takes us to a little tent by a river that would be absolutely impossible to find if you didn´t already know where it was. Now, he wouldn´t tell us his name, and he wouldnt let us take pictures of his face, but he did show us all about the first stage of production of cocaine. We sat and watched as he added chemical after chemical to a pile of leaves that was smouldering. Everything from water and petrol to caustic soda and sulfuric acid went into this concoction. <br />
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It reminded me a little of a cookery show, after showing us how they mash up the leaves, he produced a bottle with some already made up saying `here´s one I made earlier´. 20 minutes later the paste is ready to go. The smell from the whole production would burn you nose, the leaves that were still smoking ten minutes later leave you questioning some people´s sanity for actually putting that up their nose! <br />
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Not only did we talk about how its made, but our friend also told us about the effect its had on the local people. About how they had nothing else and so had to grow coco leaves, make paste and sell it to paramilitaries. He told us how the government has basically bought out the local growers and paid them to grow anything else, banana´s and coffee being the most usual replacement crops. But our cocaine guide here wasn´t the only one to tell us about the effect that drugs have had on Colombia. A Colombian friend told us that only in the last six years is it possible to travel overland to the capital from the coast. Any buses making the trip were likely to be shot to shreds either by paramilitaries or terrorist organisations. Can you imagine not being able to drive from Cork to Dublin? Colombia is a much safer place, and probably the friendliest country we´ve been in, but the drug trade has a lot to answer for here.<br />
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Enough about the evil of drugs in Colombia, so after our mornings lesson in chemistry, we headed off for camp two. This was a two and a half hour hike, more ups and downs, and not terribly horrific. When we got to camp two, we couldn´t believe it had only taken so little time. I myself was just delighted that I wasn´t stiff and sore from the previous day. <br />
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Camp two was pretty much the same as camp one, hammocks and candles all around with a few small differences. Camp two is actually run by an indigenous family, so there were kids walking around in potato sacks and everyone has a handbag with them at all times (they don´t have any pockets). Their clothes are cream cloth that are either worn in a giant t-shirt fashion, ala sack of potatoes or the men have pants under the potato sack. The indigenous people are paid for each person that passes through on the lost city trek, so they actually do quite well out of it. The people themselves also don´t normally live in the type of camp that they run in camp two. Normally they are nomads, but they have 250 bronze age style huts scattered around the jungle for religious ceremonies and business purposes. There were a few times that they would power on past us as they were on they way to one place or another. There is no keeping up with an indigenous person in the jungle, its just not possible.<br />
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The other thing that camp two had that camp one didn´t, was a big river where you could go swimming and jumping off rocks. Well, we swam in the cold water and jumped off rocks to cool down from the hike. The only thing about it, is that you can´t really go after half two in the afternoon because once the rain comes in, the river becomes dangerous and you can´t swim. As it was, I walked to far into the middle of the river and found it very difficult to get back out to the edge! <br />
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After our refreshing dip in the icey cold river, we headed back to camp, for tea, hot chocolate and dinner. By the time 7pm came, everyone was ready to crash. It was pitch black outside and your body was telling you it was past midnight, even though your watch was telling you its only tea time. Everyone went to bed early, becuase everyone had to be up early!<br />
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Day Three:<br />
On day three, we had our first really big hike. We walked for 5 and a half hours up and down hill, across rivers, through the jungle (again, it was mostly up!). In total we had to cross 5 rivers to get to the base camp. In some places there was a rope tied across the river that you could hold on to to get you across. In other places, there was a cage that could be pulled across using a complicated system of levers and pulleys. Archie said it was only used when the river was so high that it was too dangerous to cross on foot. Personally, I think he didn´t want to have to pull us across. And still, I refused to get my good hiking boots wet, and I took them off at every river. <br />
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On the way we passed through the villages of the indigenous people. When we finally got to the base camp and saw the sign that said ´Ciudad Perdida 1km´ we were pretty excited. The next day would see us at the top of the mountain actually in the Lost City. <br />
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Day Four:<br />
This was a tough day actually. We got up at 5ish, standard for the lost city trek really. Crossed the river at least 6 times, again, standard lost city trek. (Mel actually hitched a ride across the river on the shoulders of one of the guides.) After walking up the river for little over a half hour, Archie pointed out where the stairs to the Lost City began. It took me a while to be able to see where he was pointing though, because the stairs are a little overgrown.<br />
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We bravely began the final part of the trek up to the Lost City, climbing a total of 1,200 steps to reach the top. It takes a good 45mins, and I think the term ´steps´ is a bit loose really considering some of what they call steps are more boulder than step. Once I saw that first section of wall and I knew I was there, I ran the rest of the way up. Getting to the top, I was pretty happy with myself. I was there, I had made it and it was worth it. As we walked through the parts of the city that are open to the public, Archie would explain a little bit about the history of the city, about the culture of the Tayrona Indians who lived there, and about the excavation process. <br />
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As you walk from one part of the city to the next, the sense of awe grows. You start off climbing the stairs that are closed in with jungle all around. When you get to the first section and the jungle opens up a little, you see the first of the circular structures that are sprinkled all around the city. As you press further into the city, the areas open up even further and you can see jungle covered mountains and valleys on all sides. The sight of the waterfall on the mountain behind the highest of the circular platforms with the High Shamans chair at the base is breathtaking. <br />
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When you look up to the highest platforms, you can see something moving. Its only when you stare for long enough that you can make out the camoflagoued figures of the Colombian army staring right back at you. They have big guns, I wouldn´t risk looking at them the wrong way. Ian tactfully stole one of their guns... well actually, the guy lent Ian his gun for a photo op. At this point I´d just like to mention that aside from our military entourage, there were 8 of us at the ruins and that´s including the 2 guides. <br />
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After thoroughly exploring the ruins, we headed back to camp for lunch before making the 5 hour hike back to camp 2. The next day was equally long with another 5 hour hike all the way back to the starting point. <br />
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All in all, the Lost City is specatular. Never will you have an entire City to yourself and never will the journey there be as rewarding. It was without a doubt one of the best things we´ve done while we`ve been away.Annahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12154757438270699170noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1583502981055218627.post-42514474023624466432010-10-22T07:32:00.000-07:002010-10-22T07:32:32.853-07:00Sail Away, Sail Away, Sail Away!When faced with the dilemma of how to get to Colombia from Panama, we looked at a few options. Overland is out because of terrorist activities and the sheer physical impossibility of crossing the Darien Gap. Flying is out because, well its expensive and we´re trying to do the whole year with no flights. This left us with the option of sailing. <br />
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To our minds it made perfect sense to sail, particularly since we wanted to visit the San Blas islands. The San Blas, while technically a part of Panama, are administered by the local indiginous people, the Kuna. The Kuna don´t like outside influences, so they make it somewhat difficult for people to visit. They charge an additional tourist tax and they also restrict where tourists can travel within the San Blas. Its not possible to live in the San Blas or to operate a business in the there unless you are Kuna. With the sailing trip, we would spend three days on different islands in the San Blas and cut out a lot of the difficulty associated with travelling there. Also, we would get the chance to sail the seven seas and pretend we were pirates.<br />
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On the recommendation of several travellers we met along the way, we booked in with the Austrian catamaran ´Fritz the Cat´. We made the right decision. Fritz is an ex-restaurant owner and definately knows how to cook a crab. He´s been sailing back and forth between Panama and Colombia for two and a half years, and he´s a most sea worthy captain. He also plays the trumpet and will go spearfishing for your dinner whenever possible. His catamaran was also used in the background of the filming of ´James Bond, Quantom of Solice´. As you can imagine, its a very nice boat. <br />
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So we got up on our day of departure at 5am and got into a 4x4 which took us up and down windy roads. It took us across some pretty rugged landscape to arrive in the Kuna-run port of Carti. Just to get into the Kuna territory, you have to pay 6$. Arrive we did in torrential rain, but we were definately excited. There were three Americans, two New Zealanders, three Canadians, one Quebecer, one Dutch guy, two Liverpudlians and the two of us. Plus one Colombian boat hand, the Captian and his significant other. It was a pretty well packed boat. Of course, this dynamic duo somehow managed to get the best room on the boat, en suite and everything! <br />
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On our arrival to the boat, it was pretty wet and miserable, so we weren´t too hopeful. But as soon as we got on board, our shoes were taken from us and we wouldn´t see them again for 5 days. Our bags were dumped somewhere and we were sat down at a table with freshly baked brown bread and a giant pot of tea. That pot of tea was on the go the whole time we were on the boat, I was a happy chappy. One thing that you were never short of was food, and good food at that. There was always more, and every meal we had was delicious. Every time we´d eat we´d say, "Fritz, this is so good, its really delicious" to which he would respond, "You like it? I am so lucky! Ha Ha Ha!" (His laugh reminded me a little of the Count from Sesame Street.)<br />
Once everyone arrived we hauled anchor and made our way to our first destination where Fritz organised all our passports and immigration nonsense. Easiest border crossing yet! Fritz actually has to soften up one of the officials with a bottle of Scotch every time he comes through. He says he doesn´t mind in the slightest, because at least things get done! We went for a swim and we motored on towards another group of islands where we spent the night. After a very civilised dinner, we went ashore for some beach volleyball and a few beers. Very relaxing. <br />
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The next two-ish days we spent by the lovely islands, the owner of which came on board and ate breakfast lunch and dinner with us every day. The way the Kuna run the San Blas is that certain families will have coconut rights over some islands and some people have fishing rights over some reefs. Well, our new Kuna friend, (who´s been working with Fritz ever since he started running this trip) took us out to his reef. One morning bright eyed and bushy tailed, we got into his little wooden dug out canoe and he took us to his Coral reef. To be honest, it was some of the best snorkelling ever. <br />
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The reef was beautiful and the life abundant. (Notice how I´m really streching my positive vocabulary from the last post). Our new guide showed us how to use the traditional Kuna method of catching lobster and crabs. Its basically a stick with a wire noose which you have to hook the lobster or crab on. Well dear readers, you´ll be happy to hear that for the first time ever in her short life, yours truely caught her own dinner. Yes, I hooked a HUGE kind crab. Although, if I´m really honest, myself and one of the Americans (BJ) worked as a team to catch the crab. And as soon as BJ went back to the boat to get the bag for the crab, I immediately wanted to throw him back. I felt really guilty. On the plus side, I didn´t have to cook him, Fritz took care of that. There´s nothing so tastey as dinner you´ve caught yourself! Our catch was pretty shameful in comparason to what our guide caught, he came back with several more crabs and a few lobsters to boot. He even brought a baby turtle back with him. Initially I was a bit worried that he was going to eat the turtle as we´ve seen done in other places, but no, he just wanted us to get a close up look. All in all, it was a sucessful fishing trip.<br />
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That night we set sail for the open sea, and everyone had to take their turn at the helm. Now, this all sounds a bit more dramatic than it actually was. Fritz said the crossing was the smoothest he´s ever had. Well, there was no wind, so we motored the whole way. And the auto-pilot did all the hard stuff like navigating. All we really had to do was make sure there were no icebergs dead ahead. But we did it like hardened sea faring professionals! We looked port, we looked starbord, and never did we come anywhere near anything that could potentially cause damage or sink our fair vessel. In my head, I was a pirate ARRrrrrrgh. In reality, I was probably half asleep most of the time.<br />
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We spent a full day at sea, watching the endless horizon. We were joined on two occasions by dolphins. To pass the time, we played cards and catchphrase. Once or twice I would be sitting at the front of the boat and I´d look around and realise that there were ten people looking out over the sea and noone was saying anything. It was very very peaceful, and very quiet. We watched the sun go down over the open sea and everyone was snapping it because it really was a sight to be seen. We then had a large discussion about why sunsets are universally beautiful, which led in turn to many other odd conversations. <br />
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The other people on the boat were a pretty special bunch. It was a pretty rag tag group of people. The three Canadians were a family motor biking the whole way from Canada through South America. And Jing, the mom was I think the most perceptive person I´ve ever met. Really special lady. Ray, the Quebecer told us all about French Quebec and the culture there. I now have a burning desire to go visit it and see if everyone there is as friendly and as funny as Ray. But all in all, we met some very special people, they all make me smile.<br />
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We arrived into Colombia about 8 or so hours early. I went to sleep and there was nothing in sight, I woke up to this amazing skyline. It was really exciting. Not only was it new place day, it was also new country day, new continent day, new currency day AND best of all, New Guidebook day. Yes indeed, we´ve gone through a whole guidebook. <br />
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I´ll tell you all about Colombia shortly in the next post, but I think I´m in love with Colombia. Ahead we´ve got a 6 day hike through the jungle to the Lost City, we´ve got Colombia´s best National Park and also San Gil which is apparently adventure sport central of South America. Who knows, but the trip goes one and we´ll let you know all about it.Annahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12154757438270699170noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1583502981055218627.post-53687252410411261542010-10-21T09:05:00.000-07:002010-10-21T09:05:07.780-07:00Carribean, Canals, and Catamarans...In the famous words of Bono, HELLO HELLO! HOLA! I`m at a place called Vertigo!<br />
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When we left you last we were getting drenched in the mountains of Costa Rica. Since then we`ve been having quite the adventure. We`ve been to the carribean and back at least three times!<br />
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Moving swiftly along from our last meeting, we went to the Carribean for some much needed sun. We arrived at a place called Cahuita with the friendliest people I`ve ever met. On our way, we were misled by a gringo who was sending us the wrong way to the bus station. A taxi driver stopped his car in the middle of an intersection blocking off the traffic and gets out of his car to point us in the right direction. We were pretty unsure about this apparent mad man screaming that the bus station was 2 and half blocks in the opposite direction, but he was backed up by a woman who looked like a 90 year old prostitute. She came up to us, asked us what we were looking for and pointed us in the right direction. In the mean time, a man waiting for his bus offered to walk us down to the bus station. Like I said, friendly, helpful people.<br />
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They also seem to spend a lot of time stoned. Its not unusual to get a whiff of the whacky and look around to find a man bouncing his baby girl in one arm while handling a massive J in the other. The carribean is a pretty relaxed place all round.<br />
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Cahuita is an amazing beach town, relaxed, no fuss and best of all, beautiful beach and national park. We woke up in the morning to see a sloth hanging outside the kitchen window. We were greeted at lunch by a rhino bug the size of your face on a palm tree at lunch time and when we went for a walk through the beach and national park we saw monkeys, racoons and even more sloths. Its a pretty special place.<br />
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When we eventually decided that the time had come to head to Panama, last stop on our Central American adventure, we headed for the infamous Bocas Del Toro. Entering Panama we had to cross a pretty shaky bridge that had huge holes in it and you couldn´t walk down the pedestrain acess because the handrails had fallen in. On the Panama side we were greeted by one of the most itimidating soliders I`ve ever come across, the guy was the size of a house and didn`t look like he`d ever heard a joke in his life. I`d say he cut fun out because it took time away from working out. This was our introduction to Panama.<br />
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When we got to Bocas after many the bus and boat, it wasn`t exactly what we were expecting. The beaches weren´t great, but the party definately was. After two very tiring days trying to keep up in Bocas, we headed for the chilled out Isla Bastimentos. Isla Bastimentos is pretty much the exact opposite of Bocas. Bastimentos has no cars, no roads and an amazing beach, Playa Wizard. Playa Wizards is hidden down a mud path through the jungle. We passed snakes on our way to the beach as well as guys on horseback carrying surf boards and ukeleles. No word of exaggeration, it was a kodak moment if ever I`ve seen one. By the time we got to the beach, I was covered in mud from head to toe. I slid the whole half hour hike to the beach, Ian laughed. But the beach was worth the wait and the walk. Pretty much deserted sandy beach that streched for miles. (Miles may be an exageration, but it was very big).<br />
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We spent a full day on a snorkelling trip visiting different reefs, watching dolphins, checking out the red poison dart frogs. After which we went for a well deserved Carribean dinner. Its very difficult to explain how friendly the carribeans are, but they genuinely want to know if you enjoyed your dinner. Food was amazing, I`m not sure what was in that carribean sauce, all the chicken lady would say that its that special carribean sauce!<br />
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Anyway, we pushed on to the lovely town of Boquete. Boquete is a little town in the mountains where it rains a lot but the hiking is great and the people were friendly. We didn`t spend a whole lot of time in Boquete, all we really wanted to do there was this hiking trail which we`d heard wonderful things about. The Sendero del Quetzal. The walk up to the start of the trail nearly had us turning back, it was a very steep very windy road. Up and up and up we went until we thought we`d gone the wrong way. We asked the local goat herd who assured us it was only another 10 minutes up the raod. <br />
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A half hour later we made it to the start of the trail. We met one other person the 4 hours we were hiking. The trail crossed a fair few rivers and at one point we had no alternative other than to shimmey across a tree that had fallen across the river. It was by far the least walked trail we`ve come across. It was like something out of a horror film: Two hikers, on the trip of a lifetime. They think they`ve found paradise. They thought wrong. (Flashes to some dramatic music and shots of Anna and Ian running through the forest with looks of fear and terror.) Luckily nothing untoward happened, we just had a thoroughly enjoyable walk through an amazing forest listening to howler moneys.<br />
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Once we got to Boquete we realised that we were going to have to speed up our trip through Panama in order to catch our boat to Catamaran to Columbia. We ended up rushing to Santa Catalina on the Pacific Coast so that we could dive the world famous Isla Coiba. Santa Catalina is a tiny beach town that becomes the centre of the surfing world once a year when it hosts the ISA World Surf Masters. That will give you a clue to the amzing surf on offer here. We were there at the wrong time of year for surfing, (they were too big) but we definately made it out to the Coiba National Park for some diving.<br />
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Now the lonely planet says very little about Santa Catalina and the Coiba National park, which from what I can tell is a big pity. Some people have described the diving in Coiba as rivalling the Galapacos or the Coco Islands. Not having dived either of those, I can`t compare, but it was very very good. The boat journey out takes an hour and you pass some of the most beautiful coastal landscapes I`ve ever seen. <br />
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Well after an hour´s boat drive we jumped into the water. We did two dives out there and saw a lot of cool stuff. Schools of barracuda, there were literally thousands of them, turtles (the first we´ve seen while diving on this trip), eels swiming around our fins, sharks swimming around our fins. I´ve never seen an eel swimming out in the open water before, here I saw maybe ten of them. There was a group of maybe 15 sharks swimming around us hunting something or other, completely unbothered by us or our bubbles. For those of you not into diving, sharks normally don´t like people, they usually get a little scared by them and they definately don´t like divers bubbles. All in all, the dives were pretty spectacular. The dive guide was another matter (our worst guide so far) actually he was down right dangerous and as for the gear, it wasn´t great either, in fact it was shit. All in all, a positive experience.<br />
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Well since we knew we were getting a boat to Colombia, we figured we should push on and head straight for the Capital. So off we went to Panama city. Panama city is probably the most cosmpolitan in the whole of Central America. The skyline is spectacular, skyscrapers the whole way down the coast line. Coming into Panama city you drive over a huge bridge that takes you across the Panama Canal, the view is something else.<br />
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What´s more is the personality of Panama city. The whole way across Central America, different places have had a different personality. Things like in Mexico city, everyone had the shiniest shoes no matter how much money they did or didn´t have. There were guys to shine your shoes on every street corner. In Guatemala, the street food vendors were something else. In Panama city, at every street corner there are at least 5 sets of women doing pedicures and manicures. Every single woman in Panama has the most elaborately painted toenails you´ve ever seen. They´re not just painted, they´re decoarted with intricate pictures and designs. Everyone sits down on the street corner getting their nails done exchanging gossip and having a good time. If the weather in Ireland were better, some enterprising person could make a fortune!<br />
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Anyway, we got up to lots in Panama city, it has a lot to offer. We went to casinos and won some money, we then went back to the casino and lost some money. We walked around the old walled part of the city. Some of the Casco Viejo as its called is being regenerated and its becoming fashionable, but walk two blocks in the wrong direction and you´re asking to be robbed and potentially attacked. So its a fine line, but it is an absolutely enchanting place. (I´ve been running out of words to describe how cool some places are, and I haven´t used "enchanting" yet, suggestions for other positive adjectives would be greatly appreciated!)<br />
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But yes, the Casco Viejo is an enchanting place. The rest of the city is big skycrapers and shopping malls, but the Casco Viejo is quiet and reserved, and the buildings that have been restored are really impressive. Other than the old city, we also visited the famed Panama Canal. Ian was obviously in his element. We got out to the Miraflores locks right when a whole load of huge freight ships and car ferries were going through. The Panama Canal is very impressive, I know I say that about lots of things, but this is a canal that spans the width of Central America, divides a country in two and was built about 100 years ago. Impressive.<br />
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The last thing we did before leaving Panama was to take the train from Panama city on the pacific coast to Colon on the Carribean coast. We got up at 6 in the morning to get the train, so we were both pretty sleep. The only reason you get this train is for the journey, because the town of Colon is a bit of a kip. The train follows the Panama Canal the whole way so you get some brilliant views of the canal. Ian was delighted because you can see where they´re extending the canal and building the new locks. (Which incidently was why we weren´t able to dive the canal because of the dredging thats going on to widen it.) <br />
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</div>So that was our trip to Panama. Come very shortly will be a post on our sailing trip to Colombia. In my opinion, the only way to travel to Colombia, is by Catamaran, but more on that next time. The jealously photos from the boat are pretty bad, so its going to have to be a whole post on its own!Annahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12154757438270699170noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1583502981055218627.post-33821982001141873272010-09-28T16:10:00.000-07:002010-10-01T15:37:46.974-07:00Farewell Nicaragua, Hello Costa Rica.At last check, we were in Granada enjoying the sites and sounds of a city more European than Central American. Currently, we´re wet and happy in Costa Rica. How did this happen I hear you ask, all will be revealed, we might even have some pictures of us in the blog! Dnnnn Dnnnn Dnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn...<br />
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So, leaving Granada, we got a bus and a Ferry to Isla Ometepe which is a volcanic island in the middle of Lake Nicaragua.<br />
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We had heard that there was a hostel run by an Irish guy there and it was supposed to be pretty good craic. We decided that we´d like to hear a familiar voice and off we went in the direction of Little<br />
Morgan´s. We shared a taxi to the place with a bunch of Dutch girls (there was to be no bus for several hours.) On arriving to Little Morgan´s we were greeted by what can only be described as a biblical plague of flies.<br />
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Saioules (sic.) are little flies the size of a midgie fly and they live for a short 24 hours and then die. Upon dying the smell like rotting fish. When they are alive, the live in huge swarms and they get in your eyes, nose, mouth. In your clothes, they´re so small they fall through mosquito nets so your bed is constantly covered in a layer of them.<br />
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So, when we get to Little Morgans, we can´t really see or anything, we´re greeted by the lovely Tess who sends us up to the Mirador. The Mirador is a viewing tower, and because its a bit higher up, we were saved the worst of the flies. Unfortunately, we were stuck in the tower. So we quickly aquainted ourselves with the owner, Morgan and some of the other guests over a few bottle of beers. There was little else you could do but drink that first day. From the tower you could see big brown clouds of the flies coming in off the lake. You also got a spectacular view of the sunset which we definately took advantage of.<br />
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After a terrible night´s sleep eating flies, we decided the best thing to do would be to get up at 6.30am and climb the volcano from the bottom. With a pair of sore heads we headed up the volcano with a group of German guys and our guide. It was the first time we climbed a volcano from the very bottom, no lift to a starting point. The starting point is across the road from the hostel, right on the lake.<br />
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For the first time, we weren´t powering ahead of everyone else all the time! It was by far the hardest hike we´ve done so far. The path was muddy and slippy, it went up then down then up and then up again. Most of the time there was only space to walk single file, and I´ve never sweated so much in my life. The heat wasn´t as bad as it had been on other hikes, but the sheer physical exersion needed to get through the mud on a uphill climb was a lot.<br />
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We walked through people´s back gardens and banana plantations, through small rivers, cow paths and small mudflows! It was gruelling. Its exactly what I´d expect from hiking through a jungle, the guide literally had a machete for clearing the path ahead of us. There were howler monkeys growling down at us and humming birds zipping around us. The climb was breathtaking. Litterally, you were very much out of breath a lot of the way up!<br />
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Once you get to the very top, you´re not actually done yet because you climb down to a lake in the middle of the volcano.<br />
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The view is quite nice, and a few people were bold enough to swim in it. Personally, I just ate my sandwich and enjoyed the view, I was too relieved to move! the view of the lake is nice, but not exactly breathtaking. Its not what you get up at 6.30 and climb for 4 hours to see. After a healthy lunch of fly sandwiches, (a rat tried to steal Ian's sandwich), we started back down the volcano. Which actually meant climbing back up to the top and then back down. We were about half way down the volcano when we came to the view that you get up at 6.30 and climb for 6 hours to see.<br />
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Its a perfect view of the second volcano on the island with Lake Nicaragua on either side. At this point myself and Ian were way ahead of the group having regained our mojo over lunch. Ian came out of the undergrowth ahead of me and all I heard was ´Oh Wow!` I was wondering what Ian was seeing when I emerged from the jungle and was caught by the sight myself. ´Oh Wow!´ is an understatement. Every single person as they came through that path had the exact same reaction, allbeit in different languages, but the sentiment was the same. We sat there admiring the view for a half an hour unable to move.<br />
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On coming closer to home we realised that the flies were still hanging around the hostel in their millions. Brushing against a banana leaf would remind hundreds of them that they were still alive and all of a sudden you were surrounded by the little bastards again. Up your nose, in your eyes and ears, I don´t even want to tell you what the toilets and showers were like, needless to say there was a layer of rotting flies an inch thick covering everything. If the billions of flies didn´t get to you, the smell certainly would.<br />
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Our newest ozzy friends (Nathan & Melanie) had had enough and moved to a hostel on higher ground. Myself and Ian toughed it out for one more night but decided we were also fed up and arranged to meet the ozzies at the 7.30 bus to head to fairer shores.<br />
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After an extremely painless trip, we arrived at San Juan del Sur, a beach town on the pacific side of Nicaragua only a half hour from the Costa Rican border. We have no pictures from San Juan because we immediately fell into a pattern of surfing during the day, and playing cards and cooking at night. For three days we surfed and cooked and played cards with Nath and Mel. On the fourth day, while the two boys went off surfing, myself and Mel had a girlie day. We ate ice cream and decided where we would go in Costa Rica the next day. That evening we did something pretty special though. We all sat in the back of a pick up for an hour down dirt roads that are really more rivers. At 9.30ish we arrived at a beach that is also a turtle reserve.<br />
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Soldiers with big guns wandered around us as we walked down the path to the beach. The soldiers weren´t there for our protection but for the turtle. This beach is where hundreds of thousands of endangered sea turtles come to nest every year. According to our guide, every species of sea turtle is currently endangered, and this particular beach is where thousands of Olive Ridley turtles nest.<br />
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As soon as we walked down the beach we could see an odd track in the sand that came from the sea and stopped at a big dark thing that we couldn´t really see properly. Following our guide, we came upon a turtle building her nest and laying her eggs. We sat there with her until she had finshed and watched as she closed in the nest and patted it down. That part was actually my favourite, she does a little dance on the top of the nest to make sure its well and truely covered and then does a dance around it to hide the nest a bit. Then she turns right around and heads back to the sea. Sea Turtles are surprisingly quick on the land, I mean, they´re completely helpless, but they´re a lot faster than you´d imagine!<br />
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I don´t know how many people get to see turtles nesting, but I´m very lucky to be one of them. That night we watched two turtles nesting, and all in all, it was one of the coolest things I´ve ever seen. It wasn´t adrenaline pumping like some of the other things we´ve done. I think you might have to see it to understand what it feels like, its difficult to explain. In any case, although it was quite the expensive trip (30USD), it was worth every penny.<br />
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Here we say goodbye to Nicaragua and hello to Costa Rica. We walked the kilometer across the border, with the Nicaraguan governement wishing us well. As Mel pointed out, they´re probably obliged to wish you well at this point given the amount of money they take off you in immigration fees!<br />
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On arriving in Costa Rica, we headed straight for the beach town called Samara. I should also mention that by now we´ve adopted Nath and Mel as travelling companions. They´re headed the same way as us for the next while and they share the same love of cheap and cheerful travelling as well as card games.<br />
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When we fnially get to Samara after one taxi and three buses we all sit down for a well desereved break in a coffee shop. This is where we met the lovely ladies. The two ladies working at this coffee shop were the friendliest women you could ever meet, they were really concerned about where we were going to stay. When the two boys came back from scouting out all the local accommodation, they let us know that it was a good safe place to stay.<br />
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We ended up on a beach front dorm with our own balcony overlooking the bay. We spent the next few days in a familiar routine, surfing, cooking and playing cards. Although, the one night we broke out the catchphrase, things got out of hand, there was celebratory table dancing when Team Wo-Man kicked Team Man´s Ass twice in a row.<br />
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Ian and Nath were surfing constantly. I preferred playing in the waves being photographer to the surfers. I think the results were pretty good given that my camera is so rubbish that I was in the waves up to my waist to get a decent picture of surf pro O`Gorman.<br />
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When we realised that the weather was not really holding up for us, we decided to head inland to Monte Verde. (Which incidentally means Green Hill in Spanish).<br />
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So as you may or may not realise, normally they way myself and Ian decide where to go is we talk to everyone we met and see what they say about a place. If we hear good things, we check out the guidebook and make our way there. The plan is very loose really, and we more or less go off of people´s suggestions. When we talked to people about Costa Rica, we heard two things. One, Costa Rica is very expensive and more importantly, every single person we talked to recommended was Zip Lining in Monte Verde. We have not been disappointed.<br />
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When we got to Monte Verde, we were greeted off the bus by the lovely Ronny who took us to his hostel ´Sleepers Sleep Cheaper´. Don´t be fooled by the name, its the best place we´ve stayed at so far, and definately the best value. We´ve been getting free breakfast, brilliant kitchen, free internet, television, blankets. And best of all, HOT SHOWERS! Travelling around, I´ve come to realise that the two things I take for granted the most at home are probably hot showers and washing machines.<br />
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Anyway, once in Monte Verde, not happy with your usual zip lining tours, we signed up for the Extremo Canopy tour. Extremo is not an exaggeration. Ian reckons its the single most fun thing we´ve done. So we got up early and headed to Extremo base camp and got all kitted up.<br />
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Anna and Ian kitted up.<br />
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Team Man kitted up.<br />
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Team Man on return.<br />
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Ian and Anna on return.<br />
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To say we got wet and muddy is something of an understatement. We went across 15 zipline cables, 1 tarzan swing, 1 rapel and one of those cables was in the fashion of superman. For those who don´t know what zip lining is, its basically attaching yourself to a cable with a complicated system of levers and pulleys and hurtling through the jungle very fast. A tarzan swing is literally swinging like tarzan from a cable. A rapel is just jumping off a platform with a rope, and superman is where you go on the cables headfirst.<br />
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Why would you pay to do this to yourself I hear you ask? Well to be honest I asked myself that a fair few times too. There were times when I´ve never been so scared in my entire life, (Even more so than the wasp attack) and I literally had to be pused off a few of the ledges. I had a mantra that got me through some of the scarier zip lines `I´m very well tied in, I´m very well tied in, I´m very well tied in`.<br />
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Going along the zip lines, the mist was so heavy that you couldn´t see the ground or the cable, and when you were getting to the end of the cable, the ground would just come up out of nowhere at you very very fast! The best one was the superman. I can only describe it as flying. You literally feel like you´re soaring through the clouds flying. The superman cable is a kilometer long and its incredible. The adrenaline rush at the end left me somewhere between a fit of laghter and tears and definately all limbs shaking. It was a truely strange experience.<br />
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So that´s us for the moment. We´re heading to the Carribean side of Costa Rica tomorrow and from there we´ll be making our way to Panama. We´re sticking with the wonderful travel companions Nath and Mel for the next while, hopefully they´re not sick of us yet.Annahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12154757438270699170noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1583502981055218627.post-78539698178487634852010-09-18T09:57:00.000-07:002010-09-18T09:57:31.239-07:00Nicaragua: Land of Revolutionaries, Rocking Chairs and Cowboys.Welcome back to yet another updated blog post. When we left you last, we were trucking through Honduras about to hit Nicaragua. Well, we hit Nicaragua and Nicaragua hit us! The thing about Nicaragua is, if it hasn't been blown up in a civil war, destroyed by volcanoes or earthquakes or devasted by hurricanes, you are not in Nicaragua. Not that any of that gets the Nica's down, oh no! They're an upbeat people considering their recent history.<br />
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So, we arrived tired from 2 days on buses and decided to stop immediately in Ocotal. Its a small town just over the border with a pretty square and friendly people. When we asked some shopkeepers where was good to eat they entered into a 20 minute discussion trying to figure out the best place for us to eat. It was quite funny, we hadn`t seen any other gringos for so long that the day we left Ocotal when we saw a bunch of Americans, we couldn`t stop staring. What were these tourists doing in the middle of nowhere? We stared for so long that they had to talk to us or it would have been really awkward. Turns out they were missionaries travelling around some of the smaller towns.<br />
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Not a lot going on in Ocotal though, so we pushed off for Estelli. Estelli, a lot like Ocotal but bigger. We`ve now been in Nicaragua for two days and the two things that are most apparent in Nicaraguan society are rocking chairs and revolutionaries. Nicaraguans love their rocking chairs. Every house has about ten rocking chairs in their front porch and the locals love to sit outside nattering away all day and all night. That and their revolutionaries, This is particularly obvious in the Northern part of the country which was heavily involved in the fighting in the recent wars. You can see bullet holes in some of the buildings, and the bigger towns all seem to have museums dedicated to the martyrs of the revoutionaries, which are run by the mothers of the dead.<br />
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We again moved quickly to the lovely colonial town of Leòn which was very pretty. One of the big attrations of Leòn is not only the interesting architecture, pacific beaches but also the nearby Cerro Negro.<br />
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Cerro Negro is Central America`s youngest Volcano. Its not very high, not a difficult hike, maybe 30 mins or so. But when you get to the top, you can smell the sulfer, see the steam and feel the heat coming off the volcano. If you put your hands in the ground for more than 4 seconds and they will be burned. But its not the walk up thats the interesting bit, lovely and all as it is. What's really interesting is how you get back down. Leòn is the home of `Volcano Boarding`, which is a little bit like snow boarding or sledding down a volcano. People have reached speeds of up to 80km/hour sledding down this volcano. That`s faster than what the average bus travels at. (Which by my estimation is about 10km/hour.) Its pretty quick. So Ian and myself spent 40 mins hiking up this volcano then we got into our orange jumpsuits - yes we did look like inmates in an American television show. After a brief 10 minutes of instruction on how not to smash your face on the way down, we readied ourselves for the big plunge. Sitting on the top of a volcano about to slide down it is intimidating, I`ve never been skiing, but I imagine its something like going down a big slope for the first time. Except that if you fall off or put your hands out you`ll be completely cut up by the lava rocks which you`re sliding down.<br />
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Now what everyone wants to know is who went faster? Well, I`ll have to disappoint you, it wasn`t Ian. Actually, we both hit 50km/hour on the way down. Its quite scary, but there are a few simple things to remember, keep your back traight so you`re well balanced, that way you won`t fall off. Also keep your mouth closed unless you`d like to eat the volcano, which would be a bit like chewing a gas bbq. The ride down is fast and scary and exhillirating. By the time you get down, you're covered in lava rocks, right down to your underwear and yet, all you want to do is go again. <br />
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After being given a celebration can of beer each by the guide, we piled back into the big open truck to head back to town. We were all having a brilliant time, chatting about how much fun it had been when all of a sudden a bunch of what I though were leaves came in the back of the truck. I look over and Ian is making a mad dash to jump out of the back of the still moving truck. Its at this time that I start to realise that my legs feel like someone has thrown a pot of boiling water on them. I look down and realise that there`s a nest of wasps currently waging war on me. Thats when I also ran and jumped out of the back of the truck and ran down the road screaming until I found Ian, who was by this point waspless. It took me a few minutes to realise that I was still screaming and no one else was. It was the first time in my life that I had been completely hysterical, actually dictionary definition of hysterical.<br />
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The wasps dispersed and we headed back to the truck me still shaking quite a bit. I got the worst of the wasps stings. Ian had about 10 and the guy next to him had about 10. I had 40 or 50 stings on my knees, it felt like I had been scalded and my knee was swelling. It was the ozzy guy sitting next to me that had it really bad. He only had 5 or 6 stings, but it turns out he was allergic. He had to make a trip to hospital. I was limping for two days because my knee was so swollen. But we got ourselves together and decided to head off to the beach on the Pacific. We spent a few days on the beach at Las Penitas playing in the waves, body boarding and generally having a good time.<br />
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At this point, I'd just like to tell you a little bit about the chicken buses here. They're old american school buses, very often with the name of the high school still written on the side. They're called chicken buses because the locals bring all kinds of things including chickens on the buses. We've been keeping track of funny things that people bring on the buses, from a 2 year supply of rice to a basket of live crabs. The funniest thing we've seen so far was a man who brought a tree trunk the length of the bus onto the bus with him. Everyone had to climb over the tree to get on and off the bus. I don't think you'd get away with a suitcase on Dublin Bus, not to mind a basket of crabs or a whole tree.<br />
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When we left Las Penitas, we made that fatefull decision to go to a volcano crater called Cosiguina. The shortened version is that we spent 2 days getting to the middle of nowhere, and surprisingly there wasn't anyone in the middle of nowhere. Turns out the mother of woman who owns the hostel we were supposed to stay at was sick. She told us unfortunately they were closed and she couldn't look after us. Stranded as we were in the middle of nowhere, we got straight back on a bus for another 8 or so hours and ended up right where we'd started.<br />
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At this point we were actually getting a bit sick of buses having spent 10 of the previous 14 days on chicken buses. So we decided to hit up some more of Nicaragua's famed Pacific beaches. We got the 5 hour bus to Pochomil and landed in the land that time forgot. Remember that episode of The Simpsons where Bart goes to the world fair and arrives 50 years too late? Its supposed to be amazing and all that's left is a falling down theme park? That's exactly what Pochomil is. Somebody told the locals that if they built restaurants and bars they'd make loads of money off the tourists, but no tourists ever came. The place is crumbling and falling apart and the locals have absolutely nothing. When you get off the bus they crowd around you as if you're the first tourist (Nica or Gringo) to have turned up to this place in the last ten years. It was actually intimidating and very uncomfortable. The first time we've really felt like that since we've come away. <br />
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We had had enough. We went straight to Managua airport and got on the next flight to the Corn Islands. We took a holiday from our holiday and landed in paradise. There are two islands that make up the Corn Islands, Big Corn and Little Corn. We spent a full week just on Little Corn and it was by far the best place we've ever been. We stayed in a place called La Casa Iguana, we had our own litle cabin that looked over a sandy white beach and water so clear you could see where the coral was for miles. The snorkelling was fantastic, we could swim out to the reef and spend hours looking at the life. The water was actually too hot sometimes, and you'd have to swim to the bottom to cool off. We did 5 dives there, 2 on a sea stack about 16km out from the island. Honduras has nothing on Little Corn diving. The rock formations, the cavern systems, the sharks, the life was spectacular. <br />
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One of the best things about Little Corn was the brilliant and funny people we met there. Cole our Dive Guide and her lovely assistant Kate (Dive Master in Training) were both from New York and diving with them was like diving with the mafia. Every briefing was in mafia speak and we were informed we would be 'swiming with the fishes'. The way these two girls went, you'd swear their weight belts were made of guns or concrete boots! That said, Cole was by far the best and most professional Dive Guide we've had. From the minute we stepped off the boat, Brandon (Aka Sponge) was there looking after us and generally having a laugh with us. <br />
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If anyone is looking to get away from it all, go to Little Corn Island and stay at the Casa Iguana. You'll be well fed with fresh Barracuda and Lobster regular meals. There is one footpath down the island, but mostly its just dirt paths along the island, which means no cars, motorbikes or other such nuisances. Little Corn island is the postcard definition of paradise.<br />
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So that brings us to Granada (the city in Nicaragua not the island). Granada is a lot like Leon, a beautiful old colonial city thats starting to crumble a little. Its as if you're in a part of Europe that had a lot of money but doesn't any more and the granduer is starting to fade a little. That said, Granada, like Leon had been fantastic. <br />
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So this is where we leave you, on our way to Isla Ometepe in Lake Nicaragua. Would you believe that we're a quarter of our way through our trip already? Its been 3 months, 5 countries, 7 cans of insect repellent, 5 bottles of suncream and a lot of laughs so far.Annahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12154757438270699170noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1583502981055218627.post-41963140208987994172010-08-28T11:15:00.000-07:002010-08-28T11:15:02.428-07:00Hello Honduras!In attempt to catch up to our current location (Nicaragua) I`m going to try to whizz through the WHOLE of Honduras without missing a beat. <br />
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So we left Guatemala from Livingston by way of several boats and then a few buses to boot. The bus took us from Puerto Bairros to San Pedro Sula in Honduras. We became very well acquainted with Pizza Hut Honduras in San Pedro`s bus station. (It was the only half decent place to eat there.) Our gastronomic tour of Central American Fast Food continues!<br />
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We got yet another bus from the San Pedro bus station to arrive in the lovely D&D hostel near Lago de Yojoa. This place was fantastic. We were up in the highlands of Honduras where the only other tourists were the ones staying at our hostel. The locals were pretty curious about these odd white people as few enough venture this far up into the hills. The kids though were extremely welcoming, anything to practice their english. We were constantly plagued with `Hello! How are you?` questions from 5 year olds who were so excited because they saw their first ever gringos. They were really sweet and friendly people.<br />
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D&D hostel is in fact a micro brewery that operates out of a shipping container in the back of the hostel. It also has a swimming pool and makes excellent blueberry pancakes the size of your face. What a place, even the tap water was purified! Simple pleasures like being able to open your mouth in the (hot) shower make life worth living! Time for a classic jealousy shot:<br />
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It`s also a 5 mintue walk from the lovely Lago de Yojoa and a short bus ride from a 40m high waterfall.<br />
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The lake is lovely, really pretty, not a lot of interesting stories to tell about it really. We took a row boat out one day and nearly gave ourselves sun stroke rowing around the lake. (See Facebook for pictures) The water fall however, now there`s an adrenaline pumping place to visit!<br />
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So this is the full frontal of the waterfall above. It`s pretty impressive really. Well you go for a nice walk down the side and take some pictures and its all very pretty really. Then a gardener might offer to take you to the caves behind the waterfall. Now, you might remember from posts about Mexico that, we went for wanders behind waterfalls at Misol Ha and we went into the caves there, sure it was kind of pretty, but not mad crazy or anything.<br />
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Well, our guide warns us that we probably want to go in our togs as we`re going to get wet. I figure, a bit of spray can`t be all that much. You see, in my head I was picturing a path, possibly with a handrail that walked behind the water of the waterfall. No no no you silly girl. I misunderstood his spanish, he literally said, UNDERNEATH the waterfall, not BEHIND. A crucual and important point to miss.<br />
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Myself, Ian and our new Dutch friend Erica followed our guide down to the front of the waterfall. I realise there is no path and handrails are positively unheard of here. So we`re standing on some rocks just in front of and to the side of the waterfall, I can`t see for all the spray that`s coing from the waterfall. Actually, its kind of hard to even keep your eyes open, you have to walk backwards glancing over your shoulder every so often to make sure you`re not about to fall in.<br />
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When we jump into the water at the basin, we`re all holding hands with our eyes closed walking along the bottom of the waterfall. The water is pounding on our shoulders so hard it left bruises. It`s kind of sore. You can`t really breath either. It`s like standing under the most powerfull shower you can imagine except there`s no way to get your face out for air. Oh and if you let go of the person beside you, one or both of you will probably fall into the basin of the waterfall and probably be dragged down rapids to your death (possibly just serious injury.) Eventually we come out to an overhang and we can catch our breath, an at this point, we`re so full of adrenaline, our hands are kind of shaking. There`s a small opening about a meter and a half wide and that`s the cave. We go up and the four of us sit in the dark listening to the waterfall raging outside. As I`m hoping to myself that the cave doesn`t collapse above us, I start to realise that the only way out is back the way we came.We made our way back through the water again, it was just as scary second time round.<br />
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Eventually we decided to leave D&D and head over to the Bay Islands, (Utila) for some diving and a hopefully a chance to see Whale Sharks. Well, after many the bus and the boat, we made it there and promptly found ourselves settled into the Cross Creek Dive Centre. Lovely job. The diving was just lovely and the dive centre was brilliant. We had hammock and air conditioning, which was a god send. And there were constant humming birds at the bird feeder across the way, it was fantastic.<br />
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We were diving in our swimming togs, so we spent a lot of time messing under water, namely Ian flooding my mask, so me stealing his fin. That sort of lark. We got to dive a very cool wreck where there was a whale skeleton next to it, we saw a cool looking reef shark. I went on my first ever night dive, and got to mess around with the glowing plankton! That same night dive we saw a very cool octopus, and some lobster. I never realised that lobster`s eye`s light up like cat`s eyes in the dark. The glorius Captain Cookie took us swimming with dolphins twice and swimming with a Whale Shark once. <br />
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Let me tell you a bit about Captain Cookie. He`s the Captain on one of the boats in Cross Creek Dive Centre. The man is a living legend. You`re getting out of the water, and he`s standing there `Throw me ya life line sista!` Meaning, `Give me your hand`. What a man. He even has his own theme tune, which he plays everytime you come back in on the boat. The man is the happiest person I`ve ever met, he even has his own fan club on Facebook.<br />
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On our last day there, we said, you know Captain Cookie, we really want to see a Whale Shark, so after our dives, we went Whale Shark hunting. Captain Cookie went a long way out of his way to take us to see a Whale Shark. It starts off, everyone on the boat is all lined up in two rows in snorkling gear. You can hear the dive masters on the boat shouting things like ´he`s over there´, ´the size of him´, and `get ready guys, go go go!` I imagine its what a paratrooper feels like before they jump off the plane. Anyway, we slip in to the water and I`m looking back to the boat hoping they`ll point me in the right direction, I look down and there`s 12 meter`s of Whale Shark swimming directly underneath me. So I follow it, Ian was right next to me. He got so close to the Whale Shark that at one point he had to frantically swim backwards to avoid a whack in the face with a fin. It was by far the coolest thing we`ve seen so far. It was unbelievable. Yes there are pictures, a lovely French man named Fabreze sorted us out, just have to get the pictures. In the meantime, this is what they look like:<br />
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Very big and very cool! Its really hard to explain what it was like bring that close to just a rare and HUGE creature. Sharks swim through water with such elegance that its kind of mesmerising. It was a really great feeling to be able to see one up close in the wild. <br />
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Anyway, after a week`s diving we decided it was time to move on and go white water rafting. So off we trecked to a jungle not far away, checked into a very expensive hostel and went white water rafting the day after swimming with the Whale Shark.<br />
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White water rafting was brilliant! Now I`ve been rafting once before, but it was absolutely nothing in comparason to what we did in La Ceiba. The rapids were grade 4, 3, 2 and 1. Grade 4 was pretty scary. Again, picture our faces on these people:<br />
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It was terrifying. And afterwards your legs and arms were just like jelly because of the strain they`d been under. We were walking around like we`d no bones in our legs, wobbling around the place! I might point out here that Ian fell out on the last rapid and I did not. <br />
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The next day we went on a four hour hike to a waterfall. We were alone in the jungle with jelly legs from rafting the day before. We saw some really cool stuff hoping around the jungle. Frogs that looked like leaves, lizards that were blue, red and green. We also saw the coolest butterfly in the world, (Mariposa in Spanish in case you`re wondering). Now, some people aren`t terribly interested in butterflies, but this thing was the size of a small bird and bright blue.<br />
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It was very cool and fun. Afterwards, I think we were fit to fall down. So we left honduras. It took us two days by bus to make it to Nicaragua with an overnight in the capital. Teguicalpa, not quite as bad as Belize city, but still not exactly a friendly place.<br />
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And finally, we`re more or less up to date! Hopefully I`ll never get this far behind again!Annahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12154757438270699170noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1583502981055218627.post-2624217936346038232010-08-22T11:59:00.000-07:002010-08-22T11:59:38.974-07:00Lovely Lakes, More Spanish Lessons and a Dislike for French.I am very far behind in blogging status, I apologise to everyone for the delay. When I started writing this, we were diving in Honduras, now we`re waiting for a bus to the capital. (Points for anyone who can tell me what it is without Googling it). But I`m not going to tell you about all that just yet, first and foremost there`s Guatemala to finish.<br />
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Firstly I need to tell you all about the wonderful Lago Atitlan, about our last week of Spanish and why we now hate French people. Hate is a strong word and probably inaccurate, but all will be revealed shortly.<br />
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So when we left you last we were hiking volcanoes and resetting dislocated shoulders. Action packed stuff. After climbing our last volcano in Xela, we slept all day and then got on a bus to Lago Atitlan. Actually it was 3 buses, but it only took a few hours. After several hours in the bus, we walked through the bustling and super touristy town of Panajachel to get a lancha (boat) to Santa Cruz. We had agreed to meet our good friend Tom of Xela fame at this hostel called ´La Iguana Perdida´.<br />
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I wanted to live in Lago Atitlan and never leave. In fact, I may have tried to convince Ian that we should try get a job in the hostel! A picture of the view you wake up to every morning will demonstrate why:<br />
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The Iguana is one of the coolest places we´ve stayed and I´d say my favourite hostel so far. They have a family style dinner, so everyone eats a three course (amazing) dinner together and afterwords you play cards. We met some cracking people there and learned manys the card game. Catchphrase was definately brought out on more than one occasion and the smack talk got offensive! Catchphrase had to be put away at one point because we were getting so roudy! Classic Catchphrase...<br />
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If anyone is going to Lago Atitlan, I can´t recommend the Iguana Perdida highly enough. If anyone wants to go diving, they are a very slick operation and the dive guides are very sound.<br />
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Anyway, while at the lovely lake we went kayaking, we swam a little and we also went diving. Now, Lago Atitlan is a lake in what was once a volcanic crater. Its at high altitude, so what we really did was dive in a fresh water volcanic lake at altitude. This might not mean a whole lot to some of you, but for the divers among you, it was cool.<br />
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There were volcanic rock formations, a petrified tree (which we didn´t get to visit because it was covered in algae) and hot mud along the fault line from the volcano that the lake sits on. The diving was a lot like diving at home, dark, not much vis, but the water was considerably warmer. You also have to add another level to your pre-dive equipment check: scorpian check in your wetsuit. Time for a classicly stolen picture from the internet:<br />
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This isn´t either of us, its purely for demonstration purposes. Just imagine its us.<br />
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We went to Santa Cruz with the intention of staying at a different town around the island every night. We liked the Iguanga so much, we just stayed in there the whole time and did day trips to the other towns.<br />
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Every morning we´d get up really early to make the most of the day as it usually rained at about 3 or 4 in the afternoon for the rest of the day.<br />
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The one other place we did stay while we were at the lake was Casa Del Mundo. Get your jealous faces ready folks, becuase this is actually the nicest place I´ve ever stayed in... ever.<br />
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The Garden:<br />
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The HotTub (again, just imagine our faces in this picture):<br />
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The view from the Balcony:<br />
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Casa del Mundo, also known as paradise. It was a bank holiday at home, so we splashed out.<br />
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When I finally agreed that, yes it was time to leave Lago Atitlan, we headed off to Antigua in search of yet more Spanish classes.<br />
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We arrived, found a hostel, found a Spanish school and quickly hurried into town to meet those trouble loving fiends, Matt and Rob. That was our downfall. We spent the night partying till late and myself and Ian had our first fight.<br />
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I say fight, he was trying to convince me that I should go into a puddle and I mearly disagreed. (There´s a picture of a similar scene underwater where Ian tried to flood my mask so I stole his fin, I´ll try get it up soon.)<br />
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Anyway, we shortly started our new Spanish course, was good fun, we even got to play with a Piñata which is epic! People around us were shocked to hear that neither of us had ever hit a Piñata before. We met up with Matt and Rob one last time before they had to head back to reality, which again caused scenes of shock and awe in Antigua.<br />
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Antigua is a really funky little town, its not very Guatemalan though. Think more European chic than third world. There are coffee shops, lovely restaurants, hip bars. We even got to visit a Macademia farm. (Macademia´s are my new favourite nut by the way.) Very hip city, not very true to life in Guatemala. For instance, Enrique Inglesias has a mansion there, its very impressive. Most Guatemalans live in small one room houses with corregated iron roofs. Most Guatemalans can´t afford the coffee or macademia nuts that grow in the area and they definately can´t afford to eat in the fancy steak houses. (We couldn´t afford the steak either, we´re saving up for Argentina.) But its a very very cool spot to visit and learn some Spanish.<br />
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On to Rio Dulce we said, so that´s where we went next. We got up at 3am to make sure we were in time for the bus which was due to leave at 4am.<br />
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After 4 hours on our shuttle bus, we swapped to a bigger bus with lots of French people. Its now about 8am, we have begun to notice the French are all over the bus. We arrived in Rio Dulce at around 11.30am, tired but happy to be on our way. We went dock to get a boat down the river to go to the Garifuna* town of Livingston. The French people somehow got into a loud fight with one of the locals over the cost of the boat. Now I´m not sure how it happened, something about the guy not believing it should be so expensive.<br />
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*Garifuna: very interesting carribean culture originating from slaves who rebelled so the English dumped them on Rotan island off Honduras. The Garifuna spread along the coast to the coastal town of Livignston and further afield.<br />
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The boat to Livingston was due to leave at 1.30pm, so we grabbed some lunch while we waited for the boat. We´re now pretty tired. The boat was supposed to take 2 hours, but the driver had to stop for gas and go back to the dock as one of the French had forgot their bag. An hour after we were supposed to leave we got on our way. Somehow there are only French people on the boat. Our nerves are wearing thin, sleep was a very long time ago and the French language has somehow begun to grate on our ears. At 5.30pm we arrived at our destination very hungry, very cranky and very tired. Somewhere on that 13 hour journey, we began to hate the French language. I apologise to all French people everywhere, I really do like you, its just my nerves were shot.<br />
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We spent a few days enjoying the view at Finca Tatin which is a hostel literally over the river. There are paths through the swamp to the rooms. It was very cool and that`s where Ian learned to walk on water. (See Facebook photos.) <br />
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From there we moved onto Honduras and as my computer is about to die I`ll save that for next time!Annahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12154757438270699170noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1583502981055218627.post-68410442053817162242010-08-04T20:05:00.000-07:002010-08-04T20:05:29.973-07:00Xela (like Shela) and other stories...It`s been a while, so I`m not sure where we left off. Somewhere around the lovely Semuc Champey.<br />
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What have we been doing? I`m not actually sure, but we`ve been very busy.<br />
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Once we left Semuc Champey, we headed off to the Biotopo del Quetzal. What is that you may ask yourself? Well, the Quetzal is the national bird of Guatemala, and the Guatemalans are really mad about this bird, so much so that their money is in fact called, Quetzales and has a picture of a Quetzal.<br />
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And why wouldn`t you love the Queztal, just look at it:<br />
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Unfotunately, no matter how much they love Quetzales in Guatemala, their habitat is being destroyed. Most Guatemalans never see a Quetzal in their whole lives. One of Ian´s Spanish teachers has been to the Quetzal reserve 15 times and never seen one, apparently he´s been trying to see one for 15 years.<br />
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We didn´t see any when we were at the Quetzal reserve, but we did have a lovely hike for a few hours. We were lucky enough to see two Quetzales in Tikal when we were there. Unfortunately, I didn´t appreciate how rare a Quetzal sighting is and I foolishly deleted the picture I had of one because it was pretty bad quality. Ah well, at least we were lucky enough to see them.<br />
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When we left the Quetzal reserve, we went on that memorably horrific bus journey to Huehuetenango. (See other post). And from there we headed off to Xela for our first week of Spanish lessons.<br />
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We were studing at a place called Casa Xelajiu. Although the host family we stayed with was lovely, and Maria is an excellent cook, the school wasn´t a great fit for us. More High School Musical than Lonely Planet backpacker hoang out. We ended up moving to a new school, Celas Maya and a new host family with the lovely Marisol.<br />
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After one week of school and before we moved to our new school, we decided to take a break, relax and get away from it all by hiking Central America`s highest volcano. At 4, 220m above sea level and just on the border with Mexico, Tajamulco is a pretty tough climb. Its not the actual path that´s difficult, most of it is paved path and some walking though forest. What´s phsically heart wrenching is the altitude. You can walk for ten minutes and after a fifteen minute break, you still can´t catch your breath.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Path up to Tajamulco</td></tr>
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We set off on a bright Sat afternoon with our guide Juan, a German girl Maria and a French girl Julia. It took us four hours and three buses to get to the base of the volcano. We stayed with a local family sleeping on the concrete floor in the basement of their shop. Ian was absolutely in his element, Bear Grylls eat your heart out. Ian O´Gorman, Man of The Wild is about to come to a volcano near you. Anyway, the accommodations were basic at best. The toilet has to be seen to be believed.<br />
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I´m shamelessly stealing the German girl´s photo because I can´t get my own photo on this. You get the idea.<br />
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Anyway, we were supposed to start the climb at 12 midnight, but it was lashing rain so we couldn´t leave. We waited until 3am and then we set off on our merry way. From the get go it was tough. I was eating an apple as we set off, but I had to disgard it pretty quickly since eating, walking and breathing was too much. You can really only walk and breath or sit and eat. Any more than that and breathing becomes impossible. It was tough, even when you were standing still you could feel your heart going nintey and you were just trying to catch your breath.<br />
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Although it was hard, myself Ian and Juan seemed to be a good bit ahead of the two girls a fair bit of the way. After an hour and a half the French girl couldn´t go up any further so we rather chivilrously left her behind on the volcano in the middle of the night to descend alone. The poor girl had pretty bad altitude sickness. She got sick and then went to sleep on the volcano for a few hours before heading back down when it got bright again the next morning. In retrospect, leaving her on her own probably wasn´t the most sensible thing to do, but her friend and the guide seemed to be ok with it so it didn´t seem like a problem at the time.<br />
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Anyway, onwards and upwards we struggled until the German girl started to fade. Again we fearlessly abandoned a poor girl to the fates (although this time we left the casualty in the capable hands of the guide) and we continued on our merry way to the top of the volcano.<br />
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We were officially Central America´s highest huggers. (Sick, I know). You could see all the way to Mexico and the Pacific Ocean. We missed the sunrise because of all the delays, but the feeling of finally getting to the top was pretty satisfying nonetheless. The views were really impressive.<br />
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Well the descent wasn´t nearly as bad, but the next day we had to go and meet our new family and we were officially dead to the world! I´m pretty sure I said two words to the poor Bean an ti the first day which were Hola! and Buenas Noches! I can´t remember the last time I was that tired. Ian wasn´t much better.<br />
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Settled into our new house, we met the absolutely lovely Tom who shared the house with us. Tom was at the same language school and is probably one of the most instantly likeable people I´ve ever met. He´s just outrageously postive and chirpy. Lovely man. Anyway, Tom introduced us to fun things like the local Guatemalan Hot Chocolate and the Salsa night in the nearby salsa school.<br />
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Our new school, Celas Maya is without a doubt a brilliant Spanish school. You sit around a garden, learning spanish one on one, and your teacher makes a language plan completely tailored to you level of spanish. Myself and Julio (my new Spanish teacher) got on like a house of fire. We had a great laugh. But one of the best things about Celas Maya is the wonderful people we met there. From ex-army service Matt from California who´s undoubtedly the biggest Mujerzuela in the village and travelling Guatemala with his Mum. To English Rob, with his umbrella, James Bond accent and ever exciting career in International development, Rob was a pretty interesting guy. We may have called him Charles in the beginning because we couldn´t remember his name and he sounded so much like Prince Charles. (Sorry Rob!)<br />
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Anyway, Xela was full of characters, kareoke and craic!<br />
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After our second week of Spanish classes, we realised that the only way of chilling after 25 instense hours of Spanish classes, is by climbing a volcano. So up we went on a full moon to Volcan Santa Maria. From the top of Santa Maria, you get a perfect view of the smaller yet active volcano Santiaguito exploding.<br />
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The climb was phsically harder, but becuase the altitude wasn´t nearly as bad, myself and Ian were well able for it. There was a big group of us and our good friend, Mujerzuela Matt was there too and he unfortunately had a bit of a mishap.<br />
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Matt, being ex-army and full of ´Let me tell you about a little place called Iraq´, was eager to get to the top first. He even took off his tshirt to make himself more aerodynamic. (For which he was duely dubbed ´Tits´). Anyway, when he started to fall a little bit behind myself and Ian, Ian may have suggested that he might like me to carry him. Being beaten to the top by a girl was not going to go down well with Matt. In an effort to cut a corner, he cut a corner, slipped and dislocated his shoulder.<br />
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It wasn´t one bit funny to be honest. We were 15 mins from the top of the volcano, in the pitch black with a fairly well built (therefore heavy) guy with a disloacted shoulder. Carrying him down wasn´t really looking that appealing. Fortunatley for Matt, this time we didn´t leave anyone behind. It just so happened that Dr. Sam from an ER in Chicago (I´m not kidding) was there to save the day. With the coolness of a cat, Sam said ´Its alright, I´m just going to take your arm and do this and, oh yes its back in now. God I´ve never done that before!´<br />
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We were pretty glad he told us he´d never relocated a shoulder after the fact. Anyway, Matt was more or less right as rain and to his credit, he continued to the top and got there not last. Which given what he´d just been through was impressive. Matt, you´re an impressive fool.<br />
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The view from the top was spectacular, and this time we didn´t miss the sunset either! We were all pretty chuffed with ourselves given the climb that we´d had.<br />
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You can see some pictures on the picassa album <a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/mellamarie/TheWorldIsDifferentWhenYouReHoldingHands#">here</a> if you haven´t already seen them.<br />
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That´s about it, we did some other cool things in Xela like visit natural Saunas where the steam literally comes out of the ground. All down the side of the road, all you see is the hillside next to you smouldering. We also visited an artisanal pottery where they showed us around someone´s house that doubles over as a pottery factory. One side of the room is the bedroom, the rest is full of moulds and half finished pots awaiting decoration.<br />
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We took salsa classes (I did, Ian sat that one out). We visited Central America´s first christian church. We generally had a brilliant time. Anyone looking to learn Spanish on the cheap, Celas Maya in Xela Guatemala is probably the best place to do it.<br />
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Anyway, that´s all for now. You can look forward to hearing all about Lago de Atitlan and the nicest hotel I think I´ve ever stayed in on the next post.<br />
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Hope you´re all planning your visits soon!<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div>Annahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12154757438270699170noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1583502981055218627.post-19021625246649634552010-07-21T17:39:00.000-07:002010-07-21T17:39:27.173-07:00Semuc Champey, Guatemala. Probably the Best Place in the World.¡Hola Guapos!<div><br />
</div><div>(Our new found Spanish is coming along nicely for the most part.)</div><div><br />
</div><div>On to our recent trips, where have we been? Who have we met? What have the so called "Hand Holders" been up to? All will be revealed.</div><div><br />
</div><div>When we left you last, we were leaving fair Flores:</div><div><br />
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</div><div> for Lanquin: </div><div><br />
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</div><div>and Semuc Champey. </div><div><br />
</div><div>We originally went to Coban with the intention of staying a few days and generally checking out that provinces´ capital. When we got to Coban, the map in the Lonely Planet was wrong, the hostel we had picked out no longer existed and the next one down the list was closed because it was Sunday. We stayed one night in Coban.</div><div><br />
</div><div>Immediately we pushed on off to the wonderful Lanquin where we stayed at the always entertaining ´El Retiro´. Basically, Lanquin is the last town before Semuc Champey and the road turns to a dirt track about 10km from the town of Lanquin itself. What you get in El Retiro is a green hillside with a few cabana´s nestled around the place and a river running through the bottom of the property. A rope hangs across the river so that when you get bored of lounging in hammocks or too hot sitting in the sun, you simply hold onto the rope and get into the river. You NEVER let go of the rope, or you´ll drift down the river a long way before you´ll be able to find any way out because of the current. A few words to the wise: <b>don´t let go of the rope</b>.</div><div><br />
</div><div>The other fun thing to do in Lanquin is go visit the Gruttas di Lanquin (Caves of Lanquin) at around 5pm in the evening. The day myself and Ian went, it was raining so there was no one else there. No tours, no groups, just us and Cave Keeper Marco. (Personally, I like to call him Cave Master Marco.)</div><div><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://serturista.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/lanquin1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://serturista.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/lanquin1.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div><br />
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</div><div>Anyway, the cave is this about 200mt deep and its huge. The stalactite and stalagmite formations are hugely impressive. That´s not really why you go to visit this cave though. At 6.30pm when the sun goes down, you can re-enact that famous scene from Batman. Millions of bats come flooding out of the cave when the sun goes down every night. So there we were at 6pm waiting for the sun to go down when Cave Master Marco comes over to check on us (he´s carrying the standard shotgun that everyone in Guatemala carries.) Anyway, Marco takes pity on us and decides to act as tour guide for us, he heads off to turn off the lights in the cave and takes us just into the mouth of the cave and we sit down. You can kind of feel a bit of a breeze, but its dark so you´re not 100% sure where its coming from, its probably just standard cave breeze. No, its not. Turn on your torch and there are millions of bats flying past your face. </div><div><br />
</div><div>At this point, I would suggest no sudden movements or shrieking. Bats see with their hearing, so if you´re hoping around the place, echo positioning will be inaccurate and they will fly into you. Stay still and move slowly and they won´t come too near you. It was actually really impressive when we turned on our torches because moths and bugs would fly toward the light and the bats would swoop down quite close to eat the bugs.</div><div><br />
</div><div>Anyway, El Retiro is a pretty cool place, if not a little buggy. There was a lovely American couple staying in the loft above our dorms. We were just hanging on the hammocks one evening when we see them coming down with your standard ´cup and paper insect trapping device´. Turns out they had a scorpion living in the thatch of the roof. I said that was pretty impressive since we´d only caught a cockroach in our room, to which the girl replied, ´Oh there are hundreds of cockroaches in the thatch up there, its alive. I don´t mind the cockroaches, but I just couldn´t sleep with the scorpion up there.´ The next morning it turned out that a pair of German lads staying in the loft on the other side of the Americans found a tarantuala in their room. That´s when I realised, I am a high maintenance girl. I can´t sleep with cockroaches in the room. I slept in my mosquito net that night.</div><div><br />
</div><div>Semuc Champey is probably the best place we´ve been so far. It is absolutely spectacular. We stayed in a hotel/hostel that´s right at the gate to the National Park (called El Portal for anyone planning to visit.) The drive from Semuc Champey is pretty hard core. It takes about an hour to go 9km. Most of the road is dirt/mud track and at times there are two concrete strips that the truck can get its tires on. (Oh yes, you get there in the back of a pick up truck.) There´s a bridge across the Rio Choban that has sleepers missing, just big gaping holes in the bridge. Makes the National Road Safety Authority look like Nanny State extreme. </div><div><br />
</div><div>Once you get there though, its spectacular. We headed off to do a candlelight cave tour. Romantic it a´int. </div><div><br />
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</div><div>We turn up to the entrance of the cave and the guy takes us up to the cave with two candles, one for each of us. The guide had a headtorch. We wade through the water into the darkness with only our candles for light. Now at this point, I should probably remind you, water and candles don´t work well together, being in a cave doesn´t improve the situation at all. We swam through the cave, desperately trying to keep the candles above the water level. We climbed up a waterfall with only a rope. In the age old war of candle vs. waterfall, waterfall wins. No light, no safety precautions whatsoever. You HAVE to climb up that waterfall and once you start you have to keep going because the only way back is up. </div><div><br />
</div><div>At one point the guide says sit here, hold on here and jump through this hole. ´How deep is it?´you may ask yourself, you may even ask your guide. ´Just jump! Oh and don´t go to the right, stay left´. This warning comes as an afterthought and doesn´t really instill confidence. But you jump through the hole into water never going right. You´re candle is now defiantely dead and you have to make the rest of you´re way out of the cave using only the guide´s headlamp for light. (His headlight isn´t waterproof either in case you´re wondering.)</div><div><br />
</div><div>Public Safety does not exist in Guatemala. </div><div><br />
</div><div>Anyway, the other cool thing in Semuc Champey is the limestone bridge. Basically you go for an hour long hike up to a viewing point. The hike is difficulty: difficult. When you get down the other side you see something like this:</div><div><br />
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And you go swimming in this:</div><div><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.hostallosvolcanes.com/galleries/guategallery/hostallosvolcanes-semuc-champey.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://www.hostallosvolcanes.com/galleries/guategallery/hostallosvolcanes-semuc-champey.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div><br />
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</div><div>There are little fish that eat the dead skin off you´re feet. Its a little weird, but I´ve been told its a ridiculously expensive beauty treatment. Who knew? Its a bit weird, but swimming in the crystal clear fresh water surrounded by humming birds and jungle is just awesome. Absolutely awesome. Awe inspiring. (Took me a good ten minutes to come up with a word that described it.) </div><div><br />
</div><div>Needless to say, we loved Semuc Champey. We even got a chance to break out Catch Phrase! There was an Australian couple, a pair of English girls and an another Oz. We had an epic game of Catch Phrase which was interrupted only by the staff catching a dragon fly to show us the local tarantula. (They used the dragon fly as bait to get the big hairy spider to come out of its hole.) </div><div><br />
</div><div>Next post will detail our attempt at learning Spanish and our trip up Central America´s highest volcano. The trip up the volcano requires photos, so I´ll do all that at a later date.</div><div><br />
</div><div>Over and out, hope you´re all jealous and planning trips to come visit us! </div><div><br />
</div><div>Remember: This could be you! </div>Annahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12154757438270699170noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1583502981055218627.post-71516830160269064202010-07-12T12:28:00.000-07:002010-07-12T12:28:51.713-07:00Best bus journey in Guatemala.I`ll get Ian to do an abbreviated version and I`ll do a proper blog post with all the fun stuff we`ve been doing, but this deserves a post to itself straight away.<br />
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I want to tell you about our more recent bus trip which took us from Coban to Huehuetenanengo if you fancy looking it up on maps. (You should find Google maps conveniently located at the bottom of the blog for such a purpose.)<br />
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To the point, myself and Ian spent €7.50 on buses yesterday. We travelled 150km in 9 hours which took us 4 buses. The average speed to go anywhere in Guatemala seems to be about 20k an hour if that!<br />
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This bus journey will be the yardstick for all future bus journeys.<br />
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The bus: this was a Toyota hiace (smallish one) designed to take maybe 12 people inside. There were 25 people inside with more on top. We could literally hear the side panals of the bus creaking under the pressure and you could feel the supports giving way. Buses in Guatemala seem to be kind of semi-privatised with the result being, they will never turn down a fare. Which means you can always get a lift! Another result is that buses tend to kind of race each other so that they`ll get the next fare, so overtaking other buses on a corner is just so commonplace you start not to notice it after a while.<br />
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We were very cramped, I had a nice young fellow fall asleep on my shoulder. (Guatemalans can sleep anywhere.) I sat on one arse cheek for a solid 4 and half hours. Ian`s knee was level with his shoulder the whole trip and he kept on banging his head against a spike sticking out of the side of the bus.<br />
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The Road: this wasn`t really a road for the first 4 and half hours of the trip. It was a dirt path that was mostly washed away in places. The rain had cut gullys about a foot deep into parts of the road. You haven`t seen a pothole until you`ve seen the ones in Guatemala. Less of a pot hole and more of a small sinkhole in the ground.<br />
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There were landslides dotted along the route which are really only cleared if they block both lanes, other than that you just kind of have to drive around it. We were stopped for a good ten fifteen minutes at one point while we waited for a JCB to clear half the road so we could get through.<br />
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At one point we realised we were driving on a mining track which was hairpin bends on a mud track. (I might remind you, no four wheel drive on this bus.) There was a sheer cliff drop down either side of the road, we were driving along a ridge of mud really. It was pretty intimidating. <br />
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The lonely planet recommends this journey because of the spectacular breathtaking views. We drove through cloud quite a bit, so couldn`t really see where you were going, not to mind the view for the most part. Although, what we did see was beautiful.<br />
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I`d recommend the journey for a little perspective - Bus Eireann isn`t really all that bad.<br />
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All that said, we`ve both agreed that it was the best and most terrifying journey ever. Anyone going to Guatemala, you need to take this bus.Annahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12154757438270699170noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1583502981055218627.post-19612481947550682872010-07-04T17:40:00.000-07:002010-07-04T18:10:15.907-07:00Ian´s Holiday...So we left it so long to update the blog that although Ian was supposed to do the next blog, we had to half it. The next problem is that Ian is apparently unable or incapable of writing a blog post. Useless. (His blog post was 4 lines long and far too factual to be interesting.) He fully accepts this description by the way. He tried to pull the excuse that a picture is worth a thousand words. Although, as I type, he´s backseat blogging telling me what to write. Git.<br />
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If I remember correctly, the last post left us at the lovely beach at Mozunte. Well we went to visit the Mexican National Turtle Sanctury which was lovely. Never seen so many Turtles in one place before. Our time in Mozunte was limited by the fact that there was no ATM there, so we were reduced to one meal a day and the cheapest accommodation available.<br />
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Moving on from Mozunte we headed to San Cristobal della Casas which was brilliant. We went on a tour of the Suimero Canyon which was class! Although we submitted for the first time and went on an organised tour we were trying to do a few things, make friends and save money. Firstly, there was no way to do it on your own cheaper and secondly at this point, we´d only spoken to each other the whole time because we were too lazy in the beginning and too poor in Mozunte to make friends. The Canyon itself was really impressive. For those who´ve seen the George du Verdon or other such interesting Canyons, its like that only with crocdiles, iguanas, pelicans and jungle. Oh and a HUGE waterfall that they call the christmas tree because it vaguely resembles said christmas tree. The Canyon was class. Ian says that Donal is a git for skipping it. The Crocodiles were at least ten foot or 3.33 metres or 1.5 Fergals at an estimate. (Can you see Ian´s backseat blogging coming into effect?) The Crocdiles were like something out of jurrassic park and when they looked straight at me all I could think of was that age old wisdom ´Never Smile at a Crocodile.´<br />
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Next we took a bus to Palanque and stayed in the very fabulous Maya Bell resort. All staff there were top of their class in charm school. (Ian feels at this point I should warn you that I was being sarcastic and that the staff were largely unhelpful and irritating. Ian has now upgraded unhelpful to as useless as TP at the weekend. For those of you not in acquantance with TP, the translation according to Ian is useless beyond belief.) Maya Bell was pretty cool though, its the closest accommodation to the Ruins at Palanque and its in the Jungle. You can hear howler monkeys at night (which should really be called growler monkeys) and there were toads hopping around at night and humming birds zipping around during the day. I´m not sure if I´ve mentioned the size of the butterlies and months around here, but they are actually small brids. Palanque is alive with bugs.<br />
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Anyway, we visited the ruins which were the best we´d seen that far we decided. We lost at least a litre of water in pure sweat. The heat was something else. But the ruins are fantastic, covered in jungle with people all around just there to keep the jungle at bay by pruning and general gardening. We also made our first friends in Palanque, a German couple (Mario and Tina). We had drinks with them one evening and would end up meeting them a little while later in Tulum, but thats another story.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_UKdqHvWG_yY/TDEre7Q8B8I/AAAAAAAAAHM/nncDcAPEJBU/s1600/DSCF3310%5B1%5D" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_UKdqHvWG_yY/TDEre7Q8B8I/AAAAAAAAAHM/nncDcAPEJBU/s320/DSCF3310%5B1%5D" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"> Palanque</div><br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div>The other thing we did while in Palanque was visit the waterfalls at Mizol Ha and Agua Azul. Mizol Ha is cool because you go right behind the waterfall and climb into a cave at the back. Agua Azul is class because its just cascading waterfalls that you can swim in. We found a rope tied to a tree and spent two hours perfecting our swing. I got it after the full two hours, Ian took a little longer. We did happen to meet Tom Cruise´s teeth there. There was this guy, we figured he must be well known in Mexico because he had his own photographer and teeth that Tom Cruise would sue for. We made another friend, Xavier, he was French Canadian, but we haven´t run into him since, so I´m not sure if he still is at the rope swing. He apparently thinks that Quebec should be its own country though.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_UKdqHvWG_yY/TDEsrIjJeiI/AAAAAAAAAHU/G7v7U-hcJOs/s1600/DSCF3326%5B1%5D" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_UKdqHvWG_yY/TDEsrIjJeiI/AAAAAAAAAHU/G7v7U-hcJOs/s320/DSCF3326%5B1%5D" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;">Agua Azul</div><br />
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We spent one night at Maya Bell in a hammock in a hammock shelter. Now this was definately interesting, you may remember me mentioning that Maya Bell is alive with bugs everywhere. To counteract this, it seemed like a good idea to light a fire so the smoke would keep them away, so we picked a hammock shelter with a fireplace. As Ian lit the fire, a big scorpian popped out of the fireplace scaring the shit out of the both of us as it scuttled off into the dark. Needless to say neither of us slept particularly well that night.<br />
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After Palanque we stopped in our last stop in Mexico which was Tulum. Having talked to loads of people, diving the Cenotes was one of the big things that we should do while in Mexico. The Cenotes are these huge underwater cave systems. We did two dives, one in the Gran Cenote and the other in the Temple of Doom Centoe (not as scary as it sounds although we did have to jump about 3 metres fully kitted up into the water which I found a little intimidating.) We dived with Xibalba dive centre if anyone is interested in doing it, I´d definately recommend them. The guy who was our guide, Ricky, was German with 250 dives in these Cenotes and was working to further explore the underwater cave system. These guys really know their shit. Also he did things like tell us about the Mot Mot which is a brightly coloured bird that likes to hang out by the Cenotes and he also gave us a lift back to our hostel since it was pissing rain. The Cenotes themselves are breathtaking. Its a spectacular dive with not much life but amazing stalactites and staligmites. The light coming from the cavern mouth lit up the Cenotes with a kind of a weird glow that was just brilliant. I was a little nervous on the first dive (I don´t really like caves) but by the second dive I was having brilliant craic. Also the second site had these Heloclines that were just brilliant. (I´d put in the exact definition of a helocline if I could remember it correctly, but it was basically warm salt water sitting under cold fresh water, but its very cool.) The Helocline was cool because there was a green glow to the water above and a blue tint below with 150m visibility and water temperature of 27 degrees. (Warmer than an Irish heatwave¡) If you fancy a peek, check out this video- <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJe1hevMDr0">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJe1hevMDr0</a><br />
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We also went to the beach at Tulum where Ian got some pretty nasty sun rash (Ian doesn´t get sun burn.)<br />
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After this we said farewell to the lovely Mexico and hello to Belize. We were having a bit of a discussion about how to get to Belize because we didn´t want to arrive in Belize city at night as by all reports, its pretty dangerous. We found the bus station (a market place) and the Belize city bound bus (an old American schoolbus stop sign still entact). The driver informed us that the bus was due to leave at 3.30pm, which was in 15 mins, so we ran to the shop to get a bottle of water for the 6 hour bus journey and hopped straight onto the bus. By 3.45 I knew in my heart and soul that the bus was leaving and 4.30. I asked the driver when the bus was leaving and if we had time to get a sandwich, ´Yeah Yeah, the bus leaves at 3.30 Belize´. Well, we got our sandwhich anyway. <br />
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Anyway, after some poor swedish girls (Ian likes to call one of them the girl with the dragon tattoo) nearly got stuck at the border having entered Mexico illegally via Tijuana, we all ended up in Belize city well after dark at 8pm Belize. We picked a hostel from the guidebook and got a taxi there. Sounds like an easy thing to do, but not in Belize city with 10 taxi men opening emergency doors of the bus and surrounding us and shouting at us. The taxi driver told us Belize city was not a dangerous place, that we could walk around whenever we wanted and that there was no troubles, ´You betta Belize it¡´ His words not mine. I might also point out that the inside door handles were few and far between). The receptionist at the hostel set us straight. Ian - where´s good to eat around here? Receptionist - You sure you want to go outside? By that stage we kind of figured out that everything the guidebook said about Belize city was true and then some. From the patio of the hostel we stood playing ´how many rats can you see from where you´re standing´. Ian won with 25. On our way (en masse) to the restaurant, we played rat or crab, a game where you have to figure out if the scuttling thing is a rat or a crab. I won, it was a crab.<br />
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Next morning first thing we headed straight for Caye Caulker which is one of the coolest and most laid back places we´ve been so far in my opinion. Ian seems to agree, in his backseat blogging, he added ´laid back cos its not as cool as Palanque´. Anyway, the cheapest thing to eat in Caye Caulker was lobster, which I defiantely had. Ian went for the shrimp, apparently the lobster wasn´t to his taste. Caye Caulker is the ultimate carribean creole hang out. Hammocks everywhere. The locals sit at the beach bar from 10am getting hammered by 1pm drinking Guiness. If you´re to believe the locals Guiness is actually brewed in Holland, they know how to make good beer in Holland apparently. We weren´t going to argue since we´d just seen someone break a beer bottle in anger ten minutes before hand.<br />
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There´s a place called ´Wish Willies´ where all the food is 18$ Belize, which is 9$ US, lobster included and all you can drink. We ate there twice it was so good! And Willie is a very nice man. The conversation tends to go like this with Willie - Willie - What you wanna eat? Us - What you got? Willie - We got lobster, shrimp, crab, chicken, you want lobster? Us - One shrimp and one lobster please. Willie - Ya mon. Willie sits on a hammock for 20 minutes before finally moving towards the kitchen, fag in mouth. Hilarious.<br />
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We had our first drinking session in Caye Caulker with our new friends, the two Toms and these other four Irish lands. The lads kept 24hour possession of the hammocks on the pier outside our first hostel. Local Belize rum is 10$ US, a good deal for 40% rum. Well we kept the lads company for awhile on the 24hour vigil of the hammocks. Pretty hilarious, I expect we´ll run into the two Tom´s again in Honduras. Big Tom is doing a Divemaster there. Tommy will probably have headed home since he came here on a one way ticket with 350euros in his pocket.<br />
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We also met the lovely Alex and James. The soundest couple you´ll ever meet. James was diving the blue hole, he had 15 dives and an open water qualification. He told us that for some of the people on the boat it was their first time diving and the dive was down to 42m. Shocking. We hung out alot on the beach with Alex and James and snorkelled quite a bit. We had to jump into the water any time we dried off, it was just too hot. Absolutely brilliant craic though. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_UKdqHvWG_yY/TDEt7LiB4-I/AAAAAAAAAHc/whGOEfEd1EA/s1600/DSCF3333%5B1%5D" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_UKdqHvWG_yY/TDEt7LiB4-I/AAAAAAAAAHc/whGOEfEd1EA/s320/DSCF3333%5B1%5D" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;">Caye Caulker</div><br />
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After a few days in Caye Caulker, it was too expensive to stay so we got the bus to Flores, Guatemala. Flores is a town on an island in a lake connected to land by a bridge. It is beautiful, constant lightening. No rain, just lightening. From Flores we got up at 4.30am and took a tour to Tikal. It was by far the best of the ruins we´ve visited, and we´re both agreed to that. The guide´s name was Ceasar, and apparently he´s quite well known, (littleceasarstours). Anyway, Ceasar had perfect English and stopped to show us, howler monkeys, spider monkeys and baby, toucans, mot mots, locusts and funky turkeys. He also showed us a tree who´s leaves you chew and its good for all kinds of things from teeth to tummy upsets. Ceasar also produced from unkown places a big hairy tarantuala. Yes I held it, no Ian did not. (In his defence, he was trying not to be sick at the time.) Tikal itself is surrounded by jungle and is really impressive. The tallest building is about 70m high. You´ve to climb a stairs thats more like a ladder to get to the top.<br />
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After that we also visited a set of caves near Flores. Full of cool stalactites and mites. We got a tuk tuk there and back with Carlos the tuk tuk driver. What a man. I think Ian wanted to try and buy his tuk tuk off him.<br />
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Anyway, we´ve now left Flores and are in Coban. Nothing much to report as yet except that the chapter in the lonely planet describing Coban lists non-existant hostels and the map is wrong.<br />
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Apologies for the delay in the blog, I blame Ian. I will never trust the blog to him again.Annahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12154757438270699170noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1583502981055218627.post-32005869433954411612010-06-17T09:38:00.000-07:002010-06-17T09:38:52.417-07:00My News...So, after Ian pointed out that I actually haven´t mentioned what we´ve been doing at all, I decided to update on actual news. Time for my favourite part of the day, ´My News´.<br />
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Day 1 - Go to Mexico<br />
Very uneventful, mostly full of airports and jumbo jets (Ian was obviously exicted about the jumbo jet). Some time spent queing in the wrong queue, but very little really.<br />
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Actual Day 1 - Mexico City<br />
My how stories of danger on the metro and dirty city is over exaggerated in the case of Mexico. Its actually very clean, the metro is pretty safe and its a ridicuously friendly city. The amount of times we got lost and people helped us. On one occasion, I just stood and looked lost and a nice man pointed us in the right direction. What a lovely place.<br />
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So when we arrived in Mexico city we went off to see the Archeological museum, which has the world´s largest single weight supporting pillar in the world or so I´m told. Its actually very cool, we pretty much spent the day walking around the city, visiting markets and all kinds of stuff. I wanted to take pictures of the markets they were so bright and colourful, but they frown on that sort of thing so no dice. Everything from the pinatas to the flowers were brilliant. Althought, the meat market was actually a little intimidating, we ate vegetarian that night.<br />
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Day two we went out to the main square to watch MExico vs. South Africa, what a match! Well, more like what a crowd. The world´s second largest sqaure (after Moscow) was packed to absolute capacity to watch the match on a very very big screen. Everytime Mexico scored (which technically was once, but there were two goals disallowed) there were huge blasts of confetti all over the place! It was mental craic. <br />
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Day three, we made our way out to Teotichuam, (which if I ever get the pictures up on Picassa or anything you´ll see how cool it is). Its absolutely breathtaking. Really impressive, huge, brilliant and many more positive adjectives. Its particularly good doing it on your own on public transport (about 13 quid in total) as opposed to doing a tour to see it, which would have been more like 30.<br />
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Day after Teotichuan we went off to Oaxaca, what a nice town! We were wrecked by the time we got in, it was a 6 hour bus and the journey was class. It went through everything from Mexico city´s slums through really green areas, through mountains. At some point, I thoguht we were in a spaghetti western. It was brilliant.<br />
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Our first day in Oaxaca we did some modest exploring of the city and went off to Monte Alban. Which is really good. On the top of a very high mountain (its about 63m above the town which is about 2000m above sea level - warning this last bit may not be accurate or true). Nevertheless, Monte Alban was very impressive.<br />
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We then decided that we should leave Oaxaca because we really really really wanted to go to the beach. So after talking to some people, (very few really) we picked Mozunte. So we got a night bus here. Its 264km from Oaxaca and took about 9 hours on a night bus. The drive was pretty much hairpin bends the whole way. Also, the general rule of thumb seems to be that if there´s something in front of you, you should overtake it. This rule doesn´t change if you´re a bus coming up to a corner. I was kind of glad that it was dark.<br />
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So now we´re in Monzunte, tine seaside town that´s just beautiful. Its been lashing rain, but its still really warm. The sea is the temperature of a warm bath, its about when you know you should get out because it will get cold, but its still warm. Its amazing! The hostel is costing us about 3.50 each a night and we have a bed, garden furniture, concrete floor. I´m a little worried about turning lights ona nd off as the wiring looks well dodge. No running water in the toilets, and shower is a hose. Standard really. But its on the beach, and we walk right into the sea. Oh and in the sea, the waves are at least a foot taller than Ian, these generate what we like to call, the washing machine effect. You get absolutely creamed. Its brilliant!<br />
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Unfortunately there´s no ATM here so strict budget and we have to leave tomorrow. We´re planning on heading to San Cristobel for 2 nights then Palenque for 3 nights and we´ll hopefully be spending next weekend in Tulum and diving the Cenotes there.<br />
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And thats it so far.Annahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12154757438270699170noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1583502981055218627.post-74453271863820082572010-06-15T13:57:00.000-07:002010-06-15T13:57:45.347-07:00Some Things We´ve Learned in Mexico So Far...1. Garlic tablets don´t stop or slow mosquitos from biting you, deet and mosquito nets do.<br />
2. That Mystery Green sauce is NOT Guacamole, its spicey to fuck!<br />
3. Mexico City is not the den of thieves its made out to be, they really like their streets clean and their metro cheap.<br />
4. Football is a big deal.<br />
5. No one speaks English, we don´t speak Spanish. (I like to try to learn a phrase a day).<br />
6. Deet is God´s gift to man.<br />
7. Metro doors stay open for total of 3 seconds. If you miss them, you must wait.<br />
8. Traffic lights are guidelines, lanes are optional. (This optional also applies to one way streets, just because its supposed to be a one way street, your bus driver may feel its a quicker route and go down it the wrong way.)<br />
9. Best way to find the local bus stop, look for the mass of people waiting. Best way to find which direction you´re looking for, have a strict policy of asking every bus driver if he´s going your way.<br />
10. Mexico only opens after 11am.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_UKdqHvWG_yY/TBfoXkoKasI/AAAAAAAAAG0/PCEd8GKDjlc/s1600/SAM_0094.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_UKdqHvWG_yY/TBfoXkoKasI/AAAAAAAAAG0/PCEd8GKDjlc/s320/SAM_0094.JPG" /></a></div>Monte Alban, Very Cool.Annahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12154757438270699170noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1583502981055218627.post-41499757426568488772010-06-08T14:59:00.000-07:002010-06-08T14:59:52.305-07:00Last SupperWhen you take the plunge and decide to upheave yourself by quitting jobs, masters and all that to go travelling, you think 'Brilliant!' The phrase 'year long holiday' gets thrown about and you start to think about a year of Summer ahead. <br />
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Then its time to go and you go to say bye to everyone. Up till this point you've forgotten that there are people you'll miss and it gets a little sad. Its probably just a fly in your eye, you're definately not crying. <br />
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Then you remind yourself of the year long Summer ahead and you cheer up as you go to board your plane. <br />
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Right now, excited and nervous. Wish us luck. <br />
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(If anybody wants to get in on the 'How long will they last before someone gets murded' pool, talk to my mum.)Annahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12154757438270699170noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1583502981055218627.post-37661386853539913722010-04-29T00:40:00.000-07:002010-04-29T00:40:26.542-07:00Google PosseYes I am 'monetizing' my blog and yes I am also tracking you with Analytics. (Please feel free to look it up guys.)<br />
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I hope you're happy Google.Annahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12154757438270699170noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1583502981055218627.post-91515412136554167472010-04-14T00:37:00.001-07:002010-04-14T00:37:20.837-07:00Leaving the Google Bubble behind.<div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-IE" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-IE;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 9;"> </span>12/04/2010<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-IE" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-IE;">Dear Orlaith,<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-IE" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-IE;">I’d like to thank you for all the support you’ve given me over the last year and a half. Working for Google has been an amazingly positive and challenging experience and it was made better by the direction you’ve given me. I always felt that you kept an eye on my career and you encouraged me to perform at the next level.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-IE" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-IE;">Unfortunately, I’ve decided to resign my position and leave Google to teach and travel in Central and South America for a year. My last day at Google will be Friday the 21<sup>st</sup> May 2010.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-IE" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-IE;">I’m sorry to be leaving the UK/IRL AdOps team and I wish you all the very best in the future.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-IE" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-IE;">Regards,<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-IE" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-IE;">Anna.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
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</div>Annahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12154757438270699170noreply@blogger.com0