End of the Road

Finally we have arrived back at the great Pacific. We came to the village of Monterrico, on the coast of Guatemala, and got a hotel right on the beach. The sand is black from the abudance of volcanoes, and very, very hot. The water is warm, the surf rough, and we enjoyed getting battered by monstrous waves breaking right on the beach. I witnessed the sunrise one day on a boat in the surrounding mangrove swamps, and on another out in the ocean itself. How nice to unwind and relax in such a place! The only bad thing was the animal attack... I was walking out through the shallow water near shore when something like a knife sliced across my heel. I examined my foot on shore to find a tiny bleeding horizontal slit. Afterwards my foot continued to thob painfully with a dull ache for hours, leading me to believe that there was some sort of venom involved. Later, after the pain had died down, we found a sea snake washed up on the beach. I don't know if this was the culprit, but if so I feel glad to be alive, because they're some of the most poisonous critters in the ocean ().We have come back full circle to where we began, El Salvador. Our final night we got a room in downtown San Salvador, agasint all the warnings of our guidebooks to the contrary. To further spite them, we went out well past dark, which apparently results in robbery, rape and/or death. Our real concern however was getting out of the country the next day. We had very little money left and there was a hefty exit fee. Problem is, none of the ATMs would accept our cards. I saw my uncle off at 5am the next morning and hoped he would not still be stuck at the airport when I arrived later. I imagined the life we would lead if we couldn't pay the departure tax and were forced to remain trapped in this country forever. Stomach always churning. Forever having to throw toilet paper in a wastebasket instead of down the toilet. Eating numberless cheap tacos (okay, so maybe it would be a good thing in a way...). Fortunately I got to the airport later that afternoon and found out the fee was much less than we had been led to believe. My uncle had made it safely on his flight. I got on mine and soon was back on US soil in good ol' Houston, Texas. My predominant feeling was a sense of wonder at how big, clean, and efficient everything was. I caught my connecting flight to Atlanta and arrived wearing shorts and a T-shirt to 30-degree weather. Vacation is over. Welcome home.

Real Live Volcanoes!

For as long as I can remember I have had one goal in life - well, many, but one in particular - to see into the heart of a volcano. Not just any old dead volcano, or even a crater with steam coming out of it, but to actually stare down into a pit of fire and smoke. As you can probably guess by this prelude, I can finally mark one more goal off my list and rest a little more content. From Coban we came to Antigua. Within a few hours the landscape outside the bus window changed from lush, temperate mountains to sparse, arid desert. Antigua is probably the most famous town in Guatemala, maybe even Central America, and for good resaon. Its colonial image has been preserved, from crumbling churches to cobblestone streets - there aren't even any trafic lights! As such, it is also infested with tourists, and its attendant crime. Our first night in town John had his shoes out on a ledge between our window and its iron-bar grating. Around 11 at night the proprietor woke us up and informed him that she had just got him shoes back from a robber who had snatched them!But onto the volcano. John opted out of the uphill climb, but I eagerly boarded a bus at 6am and set out for the tiny village of San Francisco at the base of Volcan Pacaya. The first hour we climbed through jungle, with the occasional spectacular view of valleys below, dotted with villages and surrounded by mountains and other (inactive) volcanoes. Then we emerged out onto the lower flank of the volcano's cone, covered with plants sparsely spread over the rich volcanic soil. Soon this growth was swallowed up by hard black rock, remnants of the most recent lava flow (I believe 2004, but they happen all the time, this being one of the world's most active volcanoes). From there the trail curved straight up the steep cone. With every step you would slide a half a step back. The wind howled, and smoke rose in thick plumes out of the summit above us. Finally we reached the top, and it was like stepping into another world. Rocks stained yellow and red jutted up like needles, out of which sulphuric gas bellowed and swept into our lungs; there were a stench and sound of coughing on every side. At the very top two demonic holes lurked, the wind and gas howling as it swirled up from them in shimmering waves of heat. I tried to peer over the smaller and suddenly felt as if I was punched in the face with a hand of fire and my nostrils stabbed with needles. Then the guide took me to the side of the bigger hole, and when the smoke momentarily parted, peering down, I could see the dull red of magma below. My goal was fulfilled.Now we are in Panajachel, another tourist town on the shores of Lake Atitlan. This has earned the reputation of being the most beautiful lake in the world, and with verdant green cliffs and three volcanoes surrounding its shimmering turquoise waters, I'm not one to argue. There are a number of Mayan villages surrounding it, and most of the Mayan people still wear traditional clothing, weaves of fabulous colors. In Panajachel however there are more hippies than Mayans, so the atmosphere is a bit Disneylandish at times. Still, one can't help but love being in a place as beautiful as this.

Water and Rock

I promise not to complain any more about the rain, for the simple fact that nothing can top our most recent drenching. On the bus ride south to Coban, it poured heavily the entire time, and despite the canvas wrapped around our rooftop bags, they got soaked thoroughly. So we're just learning to be wet now. At least it's very cool, actually cold, since we're up in the mountains. Although there is always a sense of oncoming death as the bus flies through fog and rain down windy mountain roads overlooking vast jungle-shrouded panaromas, the bus rides around here are amazing and some of the highlights of our trip. Today we went to two incredible places. The first was Semuc Champey. It's basically a limestone bridge 300 m long and covered by a series of cascading pools and waterfalls. The overhanging cliffs and jungle and the shimmering pools of emerald and blue make for some fantastic swimming.Most amazing of all is the fact that a river flows right through the rock underneath these placid pools; it cuts in at the top in the most frightening display of water and fury that I have ever seen, vanishes into a foaming chasm, and reemerges turbulently further down. We also went to some nearby caves, which looked like a chapel of flowing water and ice inside with all the stalagmites and stalagtites, which dripped with water and sparkled with quartz. Deep below our path you could hear the roar of a mighty subterranean river, and beyond the few lighted rooms we went through most of the cave is unexplored. Unfortunately it was all too soon time to catch the bus back.

Our $100 Dollar Belizean Day

After about four days of effort, we made it to Belize. The sea was so choppy that on the boat ride there my skull, teeth, and spine hurt from repeated compression - at one point I was flying a foot or more into the air at each bump and actually screamed out "Stop!" They did, for a moment, until the sadistic captain ordered the boat back to full speed. We arrive in Dagriga and took a bus to Belize City. All the music on the radio had been remade into Reggae; the whole country seems very Carribean. Quite clean too, relatively speaking, since the locals here don't through their trash out of bus windows like in certain other countries we've visited. We almost couldn't make it to Belize City because the roads were flooded from all the recent rain. Arriving there, we discovered that the islands we were heading to were practically shut down as well, with the bad weather expected to continue all week! Our hotel cost $60 USD, verus the normal $2 or $3 we had been paying in Honduras. It didn't take us long to decide to say goodbye to Belize. We left the next day, and to top it all off, they made us pay another $20 USD at the border just to get out of this crummy country! All in all our one full rainy day in Belize cost about $100 USD.

Guatemala is, thankfully, much cheaper and drier. Although it rained the first night we got in, ever since it's been cool and pleasant. We are in the town of Flores, which is on an island in a lake connected to the mainland by bridge. It's quite quaint and charming, and a good base to explore the nearby Mayan ruins of Tikal. Tikal is like the Disneyland of ruins; massive pyramids stretching to the sky in the midst of dense tropical rainforest. They even filmed "Star Wars" here! We hired a guide who was very informative (although he wisely abstained from climbing the steep steps up each pyramied), even pulling tarantulas from the ground with pieces of grass. We also saw toucans, snakes, and leaf-cutter ants. Needless to say we got a lot of good excercise hiking up and down all those steps and through the jungle. Now we are heading south, and it only seems to get better. Can't be worse than Belize, right?

Beach Bums

So many cities, so little time. Actually that's a lie - we have nothing but time, heaps of it, but unfortunately most of it is wasted on the actual "travelling" part of travelling. Case in point: We have been waiting for over three days now to get to Belize. You might think there would be regular traffic between Honduras and Belize but we have discovered, much to our chagrin, that almost none exists. We left La Ceiba and spent a day in Tela, proclaimed to have "the best beach in Cental America." Well, I guess if you consider trash on the beach, open sewers emptying into the water, and robberies at night by machete as unpleasant than you might disagree, but we found it quite nice actually. From Tela we went to the second largest city in the country, San Pedro Sula. For a big city it was quite nice, modern and lively, and we were able to find Chinese food and a movie in English. At this point we were ready to head to Belize, but it was just Saturday and the one boat in the country leaves on Mondays only. We considered heading back into Guatemala and finding a boat there but that involved a whole day of busses, so we decided to wait it out in Omoa, a tiny, pleasant beach town. We hiked in the jungle up a river to a waterfall, hung out at the beach, and spent the majority of the time in our room, since it poured rain almost unceasingly. Both of our guide books had led us to believe that this was the dry season, but not so, the crafty Dutch provider of our hotel informed us (she charged us a combined $18 USD for laundry!).
Okay, so finally, this morning (Monday), we braved the rain and set out for the port city of Puerto Cortes. We arrive around 8 and found the one and only boat to Belize under a bridge and paid a lot of money for a ticket. Then they shuttled all of us over to immigrations to get our passports stamped, but immigrations said no, the weather is too bad for you to go. So we went back to the boat, waited for some sun, and returned to immigrations (this time with eleven of us in the back of a Toyota pick-up, a common sight here but for which we nonetheless got pulled over by the police and ticketed/bribed). We got our stamps and then returned to the boat to wait a few more hours, and finally a little after noon, they told us that we would not be going after all. Apparently despite the now sunny sky we were not allowed to leave the port. Tomorrow morning, weather permitting. Fine, so we'll just go through Guatemala and find a boat there. Oops, too late, the immigration people took our passports and left with them before we knew the situation, so we're in this until the end. Perhaps the only bright point to this woeful tale was that they said we could sleep on the boat. Immediately afterwards we met a member from the local church, which we had tracked down on Sunday, and over lunch he lent us a nearby unoccupied house of his. It's filty, and there's no furniture or sheets on the soiled mattress, but it's free! Really a small miracle. So yes, despite the arduors of travelling, we pass through yet another storm victorious. And God willing, we'll make it to Belize tomorrow!

Why It's Called a Rainforest

After a night in a crummy hotel room back in "civilization" I awoke to puring rain. It looked as if a hurricane had landed right on the city of La Ceiba. Not wanting to stay in this particular room all day we braved the rain and set out towards the Jungle River Lodge. This is a place in nearby Pico Bonito National Park, a rainforest/cloudforest depending on what elevation you're at I guess. They promised a free night with one of their tours and that was good enough for cheap backpackers like us! But as we soon found out it was raining much too hard for any busses to make it out there. Nor would any person in their right mind want to be out there at the moment.We had to take a taxi and I think they were mighty surpised when we pulled up - apparently they had evacuated everyone else out that morning. We had the place to ourselves, along with a dog, a cat, and two parrots that could only say "hello." The lodge is right on a the Rio Cangrejal and I have never seen a more intense spectacle. The rain-swollen waters had choked and then flooded the channel, resulting in rapids too frightening to even look at. The water had risen over twenty feet; when we saw the river this morning I didn't even recognize it! We hiked a few miles in the rain the first day and got soaked. Today we did a canopy tour, where you climb up a hill and hook into one of many steel cable "zip-lines". You're about fourty feet up in the tree-tops, and slide down a cable at up to 50 mph. Feels a bit like being a monkey! The weather finally improved, more guests arrived, and we took off for the beach town of Tela. Now I´m hoping to finally see some sun.

Paradise Found

Well, it's been a few days since I've posted. This is because I've been without electricity, running water, a toilet, and floors. In other words, I've been living in tropical paradise.

To make what is in itself an epic adventure short, from Copan Ruinas we took a bus to San Pedro Sula, then to La Ceiba and finally to Nueva Armenia. The latter is a small coastal village and we had no map, just the name of an island and the promise that there was a man who could take us there. Well wouldn't you know it but we happened to sit right by a relative of his on the bus ride there! She also rented rooms and cooked dinner, so we spent the night and made ample use of our mosquito nets for the first time. At 4am we were awoken and carried over the open ocean in a tiny motorized canoe. As the sun rose we arrived at the tiny island of Cayo Chachahuate, crescent shaped and not more than one-hundred yards long. It is home to a Garifuna village (African/Caribbean Indian mix), and all palm trees, wooden huts with palm-leaf thatched roofs, and sand floors. No electricity, no running water, and no toilet (well, except the world's biggest toilet, namely the ocean). Surrounded by crystal-clear waters and the second largest barrier reef in the world, the snorkelling is phenomenal. It's actually one of thirteen keys and two larger islands that make up the National Martine Monument of Cayos Cochinos. The best part is that these islands are virtually unknown and ignored by tourists. It's completely authentic; never have I felt more a part of real island life. We played with the kids, ate home-cooked meals of freshly caught lobster and fish, and when a massive storm arrived we helped the locals haul the boats up on shore.I could also go on and on about the coral reefs and all the fish we saw but what's the point? You get the picture. The one drawback was the thousands upon thousand of jellyfish inhabiting the waters. I mean, there were literal walls of them! This distracted from the snorkelling a bit (except for one day when they had been blown away by the storm), but eventually we began to swim straight through the masses and endure the stings. One day we swam all the way to the main island, site of the one and only small resort here, and had to cross over a mile of open ocean, which took more than two hours. Once at the island we had to cross over to the other side and on the way up a dry creek bed passed within inches of a pink boa hanging from a branch. I thought it was part of the plant at first and nearly put my hand on it! Besides these many adventures my favorite thing perhaps was simply relaxing in the hammock with a book, or contemplating the unparalled sunsets or super-abundant night sky; in general just enjoying the slow pace of island life.

We left this morning and are back in La Ceiba. I have never disliked cities more.