After a few days in gigantic Mexico City (link to photos below), we are now in Oaxaca to escape from the smog and celebrate Christmas in a quieter and more relaxed place.+-+18.jpg) Mexico - Part 1: Chiapas |
 Guatemala - Part 5: Flores & Tikal |
 Belize (Caye Caulker) |
 Mexico - Part 2: The Yucatán |
For a whole week already, we have now been traveling together with 3 other people we had met in Chiapas: Ebel and Marissa from Groeningen, Holland, and Michael from Hambourg, Germany. We decided to celebrate Saint Nicholas by giving a present to each other, draw-a-name-out-of-the-hat-fashion, and had a nice evening together. In Holland they celebrate it on the 5th, in Belgium and Luxembourg on the 6th, and in Belize we waited until the 7th due to Charlie's stomach problems.
We are on a small island named Caye Caulker (islands not big enough to deserve the name "Island" are called "cays" here), a short hop away from the same coral reef on which we had been diving in Honduras, second in the world in terms of length, after the Great Barrier Reef in Australia. There are some golf carts and bicycles here, but no roads - just some white sandy paths. Charlie hasn't been wearing any sandals or shoes now for 3 days, and we are kindly reminded by the street signs (and also by the friendly locals) to please "Walk Slow". 
Yesterday we had an amazing day of snorkeling - we went out by a reggae-playing 
After a bus-journey and a very interesting 40 minute-ride by canoe across Río Usumacinta we were back in Guatemala, greeted by a very friendly, but corrupt, border guy charging us 40 Quetzales for the pleasure of his entry stamp (no receipt, of course). 4 hours later we were in Flores, a peninsula on Lake Izabal, 70 minutes away from Tikal. After the busy last week, our plan for the first day was to do nothing, and that's what we did. 
Refreshed, the next morning it was time to get up at 4am to catch the shuttle bus to Tikal - The site is in the middle of the jungle, and the reason why we came so early is that there is more wildlife to be spotted around sunrise time. The effort to fight the desire to ignore the alarm clock in the morning was rewarded quickly: During the first hour of our guided tour, we saw a crocodile, monkeys, a couple of coatis, many beautiful toucans and other birds.
Tikal is named the New York of Maya cities due to its high-rise pyramids rising out above the already very tall trees in the jungle. Some astonishing views can be had over the endless jungle from the top of these temples. We learned even more impressive stories and facts about the ancient Maya culture from our knowledgeable guide, but felt like we'd had enough ruins now to deserve some relaxing time in the Carribean for a few days, which is why we headed further North-East to Belize.
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We knew that our first visit to Mexico would be a short one, because our plan was to visit only the region of Chiapas, and then travel east through the jungle back to Guatemala before heading to Belize and finally back to Mexico to see the Yucatan peninsula.+-+5.jpg)
For our week in Chiapas, we had a rather busy programme. Using the beautiful and lively colonial city of San Cristóbal de las Casas as a base, we headed out into the surrounding fur-wearing Tzotzil Maya village of San Juan Chamula, where we tried the sacred sugarcane aguardiente named posh. Inside of the church we could observe a very special ceremony - the church has no chairs, only a floor full of needles from local pine trees, hundreds or thousands of candles, and Maya families sitting on the floor praying and pouring soft drinks and posh over the candles. +-+31.jpg)
We took a boat ride through the crocodile-filled river on the bottom of the Sumidero Canyon, and on the following day left for the famous Maya ruins of Palenque, stopping on the way for some beautiful scenery around the "Agua Azul" and "Misol-Ha" waterfalls.
After being impressed by Palenque's high-rise temples and pyramids (very different from the lower constructions we had seen in Copán Ruinas, Honduras), we spent the night in a cabaña in the middle of the jungle, getting woken up by the roaring sound of the howler monkeys, ready to go back to Guatemala.
We visited the sacred (for the Maya communities) volcano lake of Chicabal, and went to see the bright yellow painted church in the village of San Andrés Xecul, for which our Guatemalan friend Minor was our excellent guide. In this village we also saw the figure of San Simón a.k.a. Maximón.
We passed our last few days in Guatemala back at Lago Atitlán, where we first spent a couple of days in Panajachel, enjoying the hospitality of Fernando and Germán, two Argentinian friends which we met in Xela, and the last day in Santa Cruz La Laguna at Isla Verde. The view over the lake from the little cabaña we had there was amazing, as is the truly beautiful garden of the property, but unfortunately we didn't get much sleep as during the night a family of rather loud mice tried to eat their way through the walls and roof. The pretty large spiders invading our room via the splits in the wooden floor didn't help either. So although we spent a relaxing day at Isla Verde (siesta in the hammock included), it was not exactly the way we imagined our last night in Guatemala, for which we splashed out a little more than in the usual cheap hostels.
Our last weekend break consisted of two little day trips, the first of which was a visit to Fuentes Georginas, very hot hot-springs with supposedly health-giving properties in a picturesque tropical setting. We didn't spend much time in the water (it was simply too hot to stay inside for more than five minutes at a time) but nonetheless arrived back in Xela really relaxed.
The second one - Sunday - was a journey to the famous (and therefore very touristy) indigenous market town of Chichicastenango, in the Quiché area. Thursday and Sunday are market days, and the village, chaotic but full with beautiful textiles and artesanía, gets as colourful as any village could possibly get. Incense is burnt in front of the simple but beautiful 16th-century church, giving the tiny square in front of it a mystical atmosphere. It was in this mystical atmosphere that one of those "how small is the world?"-experiences happened: Tere bumped into Belen Calzadilla's (a friend from Oviedo) family: her brother Alfonso, who is living in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, and Mari Carmen, their mother.
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The experience with the children is being very rewarding. Although they lack basic discipline and sometimes are hyperactive, they are very cute and love to hug us. We are mostly working on afternoons and have made some fun activities with the kids.
This Saturday we went on an excursion to a community a couple of hours outside Xela, called "Loma Linda" (pretty hill). This is a collection of little farms who until recently were relying exclusively on coffee production, and are now trying to diversify their economy by attempting to attract tourism. As a promotional launch, we (together with 40 other travellers and residents) were invited to discover their community. 
For the "tourism committee", it was the first time they saw a tourist bus enter their village, and you could feel a very special emotional mix of nervousness, pride, and hospitality in the air. They truly made sincere efforts of making us all feel like at home, and give a good impression of their community.
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| Photo by Andreas |
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We rented kayaks and went for a little paddle around the lake, which in some sense reminded us of the lakes in Switzerland - but then again, at the same time being in Guatemala is something like the very opposite of being in Switzerland...
Our first stop in Guatemala was Antigua - a very beautiful colonial city - but so touristy you could be almost anywhere in the world. We felt like we saw more tourists in Antigua than in the first two months of our trip combined. 
A very active volcano - Pacaya - is about one hour away from Antigua. We didn't lose the opportunity to climb it and inspect the lava from close-by. It was pretty amazing, we literally had to watch our step to make sure we don't step inside this "liquid fire".
We have now spent a good week here on the small island of Utila. We did our PADI Open Water Diver certification, something like the driving license for diving, and are now allowed to go diving anywhere in the world for up to 18 metres deep. The course took 4 full days and was a lot of fun, the underwater world here is just spectacular (it's the second-biggest coral reef in the world), and it's just a really new feeling to breathe under water and move around in a 3-dimensional way. 
Even though we've had pretty bad weather - a tropical storm got in yesterday, and brought us a lot of rain over the last few days - the past week has maybe been the one we have enjoyed most so far. The island is very tranquilo (everybody lives in the same town, and the town basically has only 2 streets), and safe. It's very pleasant to be able to go out even after dark, without worrying about being robbed. 
More photos of our dives are here
The internet connection is too slow here in Copán to upload any photos (the third batch of Nicaragua photos will come later), so here's a little map of Honduras instead.
After 15 hours and 7 bus changes we arrived to Copán Ruinas exhausted. The reason why we travelled so far is that we wanted to avoid having to spend the night in Tegucigalpa or San Pedro Sula, which are two huge ugly scary cities. 
The last destination in Nicaragua was Estelí, in the mountainous northern part of the country, a region of tobacco and coffee plantations. We visited the Cathedral, the “Martyrs and Heroes” museum, run by mothers of the fallen revolutionaries, and a small cigar factory. We spent our last night in this wonderful country in a little town called Ocotal, close to the border with Honduras.
León is (besides Granada) the other beautiful colonial city in Nicaragua, politically very progressive, with a rich history, especially regarding the Sandinista Revolution. The entire city fought against Somoza’s dictature when the revolution took off in 1979.
On the 30th of September, a colourful procession took place, which carried the statue of San Jerónimo from Sutiaba back to the cathedral.
We spent two nights in Masaya, the town between Granada and Managua, mostly known for its artesanía market, the ideal place for buying souvenirs. On Thursday night, we saw a performance of folk dances from all over Nicaragua. The spectacle was colourful, with live music and good local ambiance.
On Saturday, Michele Lombardini, a friend from Brussels who has been living in Managua for a while, came to pick up us in Masaya and we visited the capital with him. Managua was destroyed in 1972 by a devastating earthquake, which very few buildings survived. It has never really been rebuilt properly, and looks like a disorganised suburb. So the few places worth seeing can be visited by car in a couple of hours. We had an excellent dinner with Michele and his friends, and went to an open-air bar with very good live music afterwards.
We climbed up the active Concepción volcano, from where we had wonderful views over Lago Nicaragua (8000+ sq. km - almost 4 times the size of Luxembourg), all the way to Granada and the Mombacho volcano, and back towards Costa Rica. For the last 3 nights, we stayed at the very basic but extremely welcoming Italian-owned ecological farm El Zopilote, went swimming in the "Ojo de Agua" (Eye of the Water), a natural swimming pool, did a lot of walking, went horse-back riding, and got some great views of both volcanoes (Concepción and Maderas).
Because these tours are starting to weigh a little bit on our budget, we decided to leave Costa Rica behind us, and move on to Nicaragua. We are now on the island of Ometepe, which consists of 2 volcanoes joined together, in the middle of enormous Lago Nicaragua. We will probably hang around here for a few days, and take in the laid-back atmosphere of this beautiful island.
