Open Water Divers

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.

The only little problem here are the mosquitoes and sand flies, which literally are just eating us - we tried everything: OFF (Insect repellent), OFF Cream, Baby oil, baby oil with camphor - we still have hundreds of bites.

Tomorrow we'll leave back for the mainland, and then we'll continue on to Guatemala... we're still figuring out bus connections etc...

More photos of our dives are here

Honduras Map

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.

Tomorrow we're heading to the Bay Islands in the Carribean, probably to Utila.

The Paris of Maya cities

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.

On the following day, we visited the archaeological park, an impressive settlement of the Maya civilization, and a museum created to preserve some of the very elaborated Maya sculptures, facades and altars found in the area. There are two archaeological sites: the main one, where the rulers lived and public ceremonies used to take place (a site of pyramid-like structures, temples, and public areas), and the other one, where the middle class lived, called “Las Sepulturas”. The working-class Mayas, and slaves, lived in the surrounding mountains, and little is left of their constructions, as they didn’t live in stone houses.

Esteli and Ocotal

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.

We are really sad to say good-bye to Nicaragua.

León and the Pacific coast

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.

Ruben Darío, the famed national poet, is buried in its Cathedral, which is the biggest in Central America. León counts with many churches to visit, and with revolutionary murals.

On the 30th of September, a colourful procession took place, which carried the statue of San Jerónimo from Sutiaba back to the cathedral.

We also visited Las Peñitas, a beach nearby León, on the Pacific coast. We spent two days reading and playing cards as it was raining almost all the time :-)

Masaya and Managua

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.


Masaya is also the name of a nearby volcano, still active. The National Park Volcán Masaya has another volcano, Nindirí. Both volcanoes together comprise 5 craters.
After a one-hour hike uphill, you arrive at Plaza de Oviedo, from where you have an excellent view over the active crater of Nindirí.

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.

Michele: Thanks for this pleasant weekend and for your hospitality, including the hot shower, which was the first one in a long time for us!!!

Photos from Nicaragua - part 2

The photos from Nicaragua are accessible here (part 1) and here (part 2).

Map of Nicaragua

Colonial gem with mango trees in Parque Central: Granada

The oldest colonial city in the Americas still in existence today, Granada (population 80 000) is colourful, and very pretty.

Somebody had told us about the NGO "La Esperanza", which makes many efforts to improve education in the poorer areas around Granada. With them, we visited one of the schools they support, and went for an interesting walk through the poor neighbourhood of "La Prusia". Only about 30% of Nicaraguans finish the 6 years of primary school - helping out their family in the fields or on the market often has a higher priority than going to school. During rainfall especially, it is often difficult for them to get to the schools, and even the teachers sometimes just don't turn up - understandable considering the wage of a teacher turns around 100 US$ per month.

The following day we did an excursion to (and had a pleasant swim in) nearby Laguna de Apoyo, a lake up to 200m deep inside the crater of an extinct volcano.

A week on Ometepe

We spend a week on this island which goes at its own pace. Few people wear watches here. Although small, travelling by bus between towns can take up to 2 hours as the roads are poor and mostly unpaved. Facilities are very basic - some villages don't yet have electricity, and a torch is essential at night to find your way. The pulperías (little shops) generally sell only a handful of items, like tomatoes, eggs, pasta, flour, rice, and shampoo.

Then there is also the legend of "Charco Verde" (the green pond), in which the devil lives. In the past (up to until the 1980's), people have been transformed into animals here, and locals can assure you that they regularly used to meet speaking cows and horses when they were children, recognising the voices of people who have disappeared recently. Many people don't believe it and think it's only a legend, but it is true, firmly believe others.

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).

Photos from Costa Rica

Photos from Costa Rica have been added.

Have had enough of tours - off to Nicaragua

Costa Rica is very beautiful but very touristy. Many US-Americans spend their vacation there. All over the place you can book tours. While it's sometimes convenient to just book a tour, relax, and follow the guide, it has been annoying us rather a lot the last few days that it is sometimes difficult to do anything independently, by yourself, without booking a tour. Even public Tourist Information offices sometimes refuse to give advise about how to get somewhere on your own.

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.

Lava and Ziplines

The most active volcano in Costa Rica is Arenal. During the day you don´t see much, but at night we could observe the lava flowing down the mountain. 3 hours further by Jeep-Boat-Jeep, in Monteverde, we finally went on one of these "Canopy Tours" that we had been seeing all over Costa Rica. Every village seems to have one, but here they are supposed to be bigger, better, faster. A series of steel cables that you hang on to with a pulley, and zip down through the jungle, or across a valley. Some of them were rather high up and hundreds of metres long. The whole tour was rounded off with a nice "tarzan swing".

Turtlespotting in Tortuguero

Something like a mini-Amazon, this town and National Park can only be reached by boat. After 3 hours by boat through many canals and rivers we arrived from Limón to the little village of Tortuguero. In the evening we saw a 100+KG heavy sea turtle lay about a hundred eggs (ping-pong-ball-sized) at the beach, and bury them under the sand, and then make its way back to the waves, obviously very exhausted. The next morning we went on a wildlife canoe tour and saw many birds, some iguanas, a sloth, a couple of caimans, and many monkeys.

Hammocking it Carribean Style in Costa Rica

After a beautiful boat ride from Bocas back to the mainland, we crossed the bridge over the river between Panama and Costa Rica, zig-zagging between the many holes in the bridge, easily big enough for a backpacker to fall through them down into the river.

In the Carribean beach town of Puerto Viejo de Talamanca, we slept for 4 nights in a hammock in Rocking J´s Hostel. One day, we rented a bike and cycled to some nearby beaches, another day, we made an excursion to nearby National Park Cahuita, where we saw (and heard) howler monkeys and sloths.

Photos from Panama - Part 2

New photos from Panama are now available here.

First time in the Caribbean

Bocas del Toro is a colourful town of wooden houses on the main island (Isla Colón) of this archipelago. On the opposite side of this island, there is a beach full of starfish, giving the beach its name: 'Starfish beach'. You can literally find, observe, and touch dozens of beautiful prisbee-sized starfish in all colours here.

The second day we made a snorkeling tour: the first stop was in the Dolphin Bay, where we saw these beautiful animals (even if from rather far away), followed by Cayo Crawl and Hospital point (two places for snorkeling) and finally to the Red Frog Beach on Isla Bastimentos. The experience was really good, it’s more or less exactly how we had imagined the Caribbean Islands.

The third day was the best one: we went to Cayo Zapatilla sur, a little isolated islands where the snorkeling was really good (Charlie convinced Tere swim out quite far out to look at all the fish and crawls overcame her fear! A lot of jellyfish over there and the idea to be bitten by a fish…I’m afraid!). (Charlie: This is the first time I've done any proper snorkeling, and I was really really impressed by all the things you can see. I had no idea that you could see so much of the fascinating underwater world by just looking through a mask only 10cm below water surface.

We said goodbye to Panama by visiting 'Wizard Beach' during the day, followed by Thai dinner and a party night in Carenero Island (Aqua Lounge): When the party was coming to an end, people started to jump into the water. Soon everybody did the same, and we swam in the middle of the Caribbean Sea at 2.00 AM!!! With clothes ;-)

In search of a legendary bird

Some days ago, still in Chiriqui we walked "El Sendero de los Quetzales", one of the most popular trails through the jungle, in the natural park Volcan Baru. The trail runs 8km between Cerro Punta and Boquete. It was quite muddy and we had to cross a river and had to stumble over some trees that had fallen because of the rain.

Unfortunately we didn’t see any of the legendary "Resplendent Quetzal"s. However, parts of the trail lead us through impressive jungle. Even if at the time it felt like a pain sometimes because of the mud, looking back now we think it was a really nice trek.

Update from Bocas

A day later than promised (yesterday Sunday the Internet cafes were all shut here), we have now finally updated the blog. Note that the three new posts were written already a few days ago, in Boquete. We are now already further north, and in a couple of days are heading for Costa Rica.

We have now also uploaded some photos to Flickr:

• Boston (15-18th August)
  
• Panama Part 1 (19-28th August: Panama City, Panama Canal, El Valle de Anton, Boquete)

When it’s raining, it’s raining

Some lines about the weather… Although in the Northern Hemisphere, the current season (rain season, running from May/June until November/December) is referred to by Panameños as “winter”. The mornings are normally sunny and hot, and around midday the rain suddenly starts. On lucky days, this is quickly followed by sunshine, but sometimes it doesn’t stop raining until dawn.

This rainfall can get very heavy – the other day we got caught up in one of those sudden showers, and before we even realized it (within a matter of minutes or even seconds) we were already totally soaked up to and including the underwear. The good thing about the rain though is that it cools the atmosphere down – in these humid regions, it can be a relief to see the rain drop the temperatures from 30+ to 20 something Celsius.