The Roaming Midget

20-23 November, 3 December 2009, Ushuaia

2012-01-01T18:15:00.000Z

As I write this, it's almost 2012. So happy new year to anyone who reads this at the right time.

Also something interesting I noticed: in the shower at home, there is a half-used bottle of conditioner I brought back with me from Russia in 2008. Not only that, there is still a little bit left in the last bottle of showergel (lux) that I had in my last few weeks in South America in 2009.

Anyway, back to the trip.

Dog walking at the Martial Glacier (he was with people)

Amazon - seen from the plane to Buenos Aires

After a very untouristy day in Buenos Aires (a lie in, followed by a visit to the coeliac shop in Palermo (which I think is now this place, buying an adaptor to stick SD cards in USB slots, talking to Andrew on skype and then packing for Ushuaia), I got up for a 5.40 flight to Ushuaia. That was a little bit more dramatic that I'd hoped for - a big thunderstorm in BA meant we were delayed. The lightening lit up the entire sky and there was lots of rain - probably not the best to fly through. We did eventually leave, flying via Calafate (so the berry does word - I did return, albeit briefly and to the airport run way only). Beside me on the plane was a Peruvian gnostic who had a go at converting me. I didn't realise what he was talking about until he came out with Dios, and then he got started into gnosticism. I didn't understand half of what he was telling me, probably just as well.

Ushuaia

Sea Gull, Ushuaia

The first day in Ushuaia wasn't overly exciting - I sorted out all the admin type things I needed to do before heading to Antarctica. I went into the place I booked the trip through to get clothes (wellies, waterproof trousers, a coat) and also went shopping for other warm things - thermals, gloves, scarves, that type of thing. Big business in Ushuaia for that type of stuff - everything is available, though not really at the cheapest of prices. I also found a book to read (Ciudad de las bestias by Isabel Allende) before wandering by the seafront for a bit and admiring the mountains. All very pretty but cold, especially to someone coming from Central America. In the evening I talked to Andrew on skype with his damaged computer - worked fine for that, once you used symbols on open office to type the letters/numbers on the right hand side of the keyboard. Finally I went to bed - 4 guys and one girl - got to love mixed dorms (and it got worse, I ended up with all guys - smelly and noisy when I came back from Antarctica. Additionally they all went to bed early [5 men in bed before 10???] so I had to pack in the hall before leaving Ushuaia. At least the ear plugs can deal with the noise. The other night in Ushuaia, I had accommodation in the Drake hotel as part of the Antarctica trip package).

Taking pictures here is popular with the Argentinians - the end of Ruta #3

Tierra del Fuego National Park

Tierra del Fuego National Park - the name of mountaineers killed in the area are on the walls of the church

While in Ushuaia, I did two day trips, one each end of the Antarctica trip. I went to Tierra del Fuego National Park and the Martial Glacier. Before Antarctica, I spent a day in the national park, which is a really nice place to walk around. I spent the time in the Bahia Lapataia area seeing lots of beaver dams (they have caused a lot of problems in the area), sea birds, geese and lots of rabbits (I was initially excited to find a rabbit on the Laguna Verde trail, but then it turned out there were rabbits everywhere).

Some of the beaver damage perhaps

The wildlife highlight was seeing a magellanic woodpecker - a bit of luck as I was on Sendero Turbal, following a peat bog trail when I lost the path (but not myself, I did know where I was). Having lost the path, I went back to the road and it was on the way back that I saw the woodpecker.

Magellanic woodpecker

Tierra del Fuego National Park

I walked a little of Hito XXIV - the walk to the Chilean border, but I didn't have time to walk all the way so I just headed back to the lake and spent some time there before heading back to Ushuaia on the 6pm bus back.

Tierra del Fuego National Park

After Antarctica, I went to the Martial Glacier for the afternoon. It was very pretty out there, nice snow, nice walking (a dog was having lots of fun running around in the snow) but it just wasn't Antarctica - anything snowy paled in comparison to that. Additionally, I couldn't actually find the glacier because there was too much snow. Still, there are far worse ways to spend an afternoon.

Martial Glacier - there somewhere under all the snow

Pachamama (?) at the Martial Glacier

Other than that, I spent my time in Ushuaia getting ready for Antarctica or dealing with the return (ie doing laundry), keeping in touch with Andrew on skype on his sort of working little computer (he was doing job interviews back in Ireland) and meeting up with Andrea from Los Cedros and her travel companion Daphne from Sligo - we all went out for a meal.

Looking down at the Beagle Channel from the Martial Glacier

What I did each day:

20 Nov: admin day around Buenos Aires
21 Nov: flew to Ushuaia, walked around the town, sorted out clothes etc for Antarctica
22 Nov: Tierra del Fuego National Park; picked up gear for Antarctica
23 Nov: washed and dried clothes, talked to Andrew, sorted out photos, got on boat to Antarctica
3 Dec: arrived back into Ushuaia. Went to Martial Glacier. Met Andrea and Daphne

Rabbit at Tierra del Fuego National Park

Picture on a campervan from France I saw at Tierra del Fuego National Park

16-19 November 2009, Poas region and Alajuela

2011-12-25T18:49:00.000Z

At the Poas crater

We arrived in the Poas region just as it was getting dark so first order of business was to find some accomodation - we ended up in a basic cold cabin in Jaulares in Fraijanes. However, there were plenty of warm blankets and the people there were friendly enough (then again, no-one else was staying so I think they were happy to see us). We ate there, played cards and went to sleep.

We had an early start - 8am - to get to the Poas National Park for our last bit of volcano viewing. There are a number of craters here - for the main one, you can go all the way to the edge of the crater and look down into it, and see geyser eruptions (Wikipedia claims that you can also see lava eruptions). There are a couple of other inactive craters including the Botos crater which includes a lake. All sounds very nice, what's the catch? Well, the problem with Poas is that you can go there, but see nothing in the main crater due to it being shrouded in mist. This was the main reason behind our early start - get in there early and hope that mist hadn't settled. To begin with, things looked positive - nice blue sky all round. But soon enough we were driving into the mist and by the time we reached the national park and walked to the crater, it was all mist.

The Poas crater - it is there somewhere

Laguna Botas

We waited for a while at the crater along with many other tourists, wistfully hoping to catch a glimpse of something, but the mists stubbornly hung there, refusing to budge. So we went off for a walk around the park, walking to Laguna Botas. However that wasn't any better - also very misty. We did see a rabbit and a very curious squirrel on the way there though, so it wasn't all bad. And then, we caught a glimpse of blue sky so we high-tailed it back to the main crater.

I think the squirrel was hoping for some food

It was still completely white. We stayed anyway, watched some small birds fly around and looked out into the white. Then, we saw something. Initially we thought we might have been imagining it, but if we were, it was a shared hallucination between us and lots of other tourists. So, finally at 11, the mist started thinning out a little and we got glimpses of the Poas crater.

The mist lifting

We were happy with even that much, but then the mists lifted completely and we saw the crater, with fumarole, in its full glory. For a full hour we got to look down at it - and it's impressive, photos don't really do it justice.

Poas crater

Near the crater

We were also very relieved not to be part of a bus tour group. A large group were standing at the misty crater hoping to see something. Just as the mists started to clear, the guide was trying to get them back on the bus. They resisted, saw the clear crater for perhaps a minute or so, before he did manage to get them moving.

As the mists started to roll in again, we headed back to Laguna Botas and saw it as well - a picturesque lake in an inactive volcano crater.

Laguna Botas

After that, we went to the tourist shop in the park. This being our last stop, we decided to do some souvenir shopping for Andrew to take back to Ireland. This included four magnetic frogs (soft cuddly toys with magnets in their hands/feet) and one WFC. There is a picture of me with them all which I should include here sometime.

On the way back to our accomodation, we ate in Poas. I note this mainly because the restaurant staff had heard of gluten before and so I didn't need to go through my trigo/avena/cebada/centeno spiel. Made a nice change.

Wednesday was our last day together. We didn't have that much planned - firstly we dropped the car off near the airport (we were leaving really early the next day so had arranged to drop the car off the day before). The place were we had to go was near a crazy junction and no signs whatsoever, so it wasn't the easiest to find. We spent the day in Alajuela, staying in Alajuela backpackers. This wasn't our first choice - it was a very stark room with only a bed and a high pricetag ($48/night) but we couldn't find anything better. And, at least, we got a lift to the airport as part of the price. We looked around Alajuela itself; it wasn't the most interesting so we gave up, packed and went out for a last Mexican meal together before getting an early night as we had to leave for the airport at 5 (although the Alajuela backpacker guy tried to persuade us that we actually needed to leave at 4 - mainly because he already had arranged transport for someone else at 4 and was hoping to make a bit of extra money. I'm not against saving fuel by doubling up, but there's a big difference between getting up in time to leave at 4 and at 5. One hour of sleep).

Alajuela

Alajuela - the street is fairly ugly but the light is nice

Thursday morning my world fell apart. Why you ask, because Andrew was leaving? No, because my little computer wouldn't turn on. Or rather, it would turn out, but the screen appeared dead. We went to the airport, checked in and rather than staring lovingly into each other's eyes before parting for a month, we sat there with our little computers trying to see could we get mine working. Andrew had his out for a laugh and decided that he'd try turning his on and remarkably - after refusing to work for a few weeks, it did turn on. Mind you it wasn't working properly - a lot of the keys didn't seem to work, but with a split second decision to make - Andrew's plane was leaving shortly, we swapped computers. He took mine home and I kept his.

Alajuela

We said goodbye at the gate for Andrew's plane. While I was looking forward to Antarctica and all that, it was really quite hard to say goodbye to Andrew and also to comprehend that our time travelling together had come to an end. We seemed to have so much time ahead of us back in February but suddenly it was all over. Good memories though.

My flight to Argentina went via Panama. Near me a dollybird sat painting her nails on the plane (she was stopped), then she proceeded to chat all the way to Panama to the bemused guy sitting beside her - he couldn't get a word in edgewise. She obviously saw something in him though (perhaps the only person who would listen to her) as she gave him her phone number.

Alajuela wasn't that interesting but it did have a couple of amusing signs

At Panama airport [after negotiating the seriously long toilet queues], I bought a new camera [canon SX120] - I didn't want to run the risk of going to Antarctica and having my camera break like happened to Andrew. In the end I had three cameras - my own [which sometimes worked, sometimes didn't], Andrew's [which wouldn't focus properly half the time] and the new one.

Another one of those signs in Alajuela

On the plane to Buenos Aires, I had three seats to myself so it was all very civilised. I got to see the Amazon from the window and took some pictures. Toilets continued to be a bit of an issue for people - after watching a film, a number of people got up to go to the toilets, but the air hosts, their trolleys blocking the toilets, refused to move and I noticed quite a few people doing jigs.

Jelly thing with fairly sickly sweet milky cream stuff in the middle that we got in Alajuela. The stuff in the middle was like stuff that we found on some guava/crema things in Ecuador.

I reached Buenos Aires in the night and what a difference a few months makes. When I first arrived in February, the place felt a bit wild and a little scary. However having got back into the travelling mode, BA felt extremely civilised - compared to some places we'd been it, it is. I took a bus, then a taxi to my hostel [Palermo], sent emails to say I'd arrived, then climbed into my top bunk and fell asleep.

Poas crater

Laguna Botas

What I did each day:
Mon 16 Nov: drove to Poas region, stayed in Fraijanes
Tue 17 Nov: Volcan Poas. Souvenir shopping
Wed 18 Nov: Alajuela
Thu 19 Nov: plane to BA via Panama

12-16 November, 2009 Monteverde, Arenal Volcano

2011-12-17T20:47:00.000Z

Thursday dawned. We had made one last check on the turtle situation (see previous post) but still no sign of the ladies. So we said good bye to Nosara and headed to Santa Elena and Monte Verde. There were a few more dreadful roads to negotiate before we finally hit (literally) some decent paving and had a smoother ride thereafter.Until we hit some dreadful roads near Monte Verde and the bumping started again.

We took this video from the car as we drove along some of the bad roads near Monte Verde.

After leaving Nosara, we drove across Puente la Amistad and stopped to have a look. An old guy approached Andrew looking for money while a younger man offered me empanadas. Once he found out we spoke a bit of Spanish he was happy to talk away (setting empanadas at the bridge is probably not the most interesting of jobs). This was quite useful since he warned us about police radar checks 4km ahead. Sure enough as we drove (slowly) past, the police were out, dealing with the driver of a car they'd pulled over.

Puente la Amistad

In Santa Elena, after finding a place to stay, we went to the Ranario there to look at the frogs. Once there, it became apparent almost immediately why we hadn't had much luck in finding frogs in the wild - most are tiny and nocturnal. They are also extremely cute. We did a tour round the Ranario which was necessary because we wouldn't have had a hope of finding the frogs without someone showing us where they were. However, we were able to return there later that night with the same tickets and wander round ourselves with torches. Being night, the frogs were much more active and far easier to see.

Rana

Frogs galore

We went to Monteverde the next day. This is a beautiful cloud forest and a highlight of many people's trips to Costa Rica. To be honest, it wasn't for us, but then unlike most people we had spent a month in Los Cedros in Ecuador so we were very familiar with cloud forests, their plants and animals (and the difficulty of seeing animals therein). So for us, it wasn't a big deal - nice but not a highlight. But if it's the only cloud forest you can see, then it is worth a visit (but prepare for hoards of other tourists)

Monteverde national park

Monteverde National park

Monteverde

This bridge shook quite a bit as we crossed it

The weather was good there, very little rain but not too hot so a good day for walking and seeing out over the landscape - from the continental divide, we could see the Nicoya peninsula. We did see a few animals - a few birds including perhaps the xylophone bird (that's not its proper name but its song sounds like a xylophone) which was a small blue/grey insignificant looking bird. We didn't see any quetzals though allegedly one was spotted that morning (according to some english guy we met, though he kept calling it a kestral). On one of the quieter walks we found some WFCs (white faced capuchins).

Monteverde

Looking out from the Continental Divide at Monteverde

Santa Elena was a nice enough place to stay - our hostel had towel animals and a kitchen in which we could cook - always a bonus in Central America. Its main attraction is being close to Monteverde. We actually ended up meeting the French people who had snorkelled with us at Isla Tortuga beside Curu.

A towel elephant - Santa Elena hostel

Our next stop was near La Fortuna, where we went to stay in Essence Arenal, a really nice hostel with a great view of the Arenal volcano. This volcano is quite active - a couple of days before we arrived at our hostel, they'd seen lava running down the side of the volcano. So we were really looking forward to see it. Unfortunately it was fairly wet the day we travelled there so you couldn't see far any direction.

On the way there, after a spell of good roads we did hit some bad roads near Tilaran, to the turn-off to El Castillo. It felt like being back in Co. Cavan. There were loads of potholes in the tarred road, and just like Cavan, white circles were painted round the potholes rather than fixing them. We wondered if a load of hot volcanic rocks had dropped on the road. In places the road had collapsed so again, rather than fixing it, they painted "ceda" (yield) on the road, or one lane only (una mano solo) or peligro. Is this the cheap council way of dealing with road issues (ie Cavan) or locals frustrated with nothing being done about their roads?

The road on the way to La Fortuna.

We did one of the walks in the hostel environs after the rain seemed to have stopped - down the hill to the river and back up again which took us through trees and rainforest. We saw some hummingbirds and noisy parrots, but the rain came back and we got very wet, even with raingear.

Our mission to see the volcano continued the next day - we got up for dawn (5.30), hoping the clouds might have gone. No such luck so we went back to bed. That day we went to Arenal National Park to walk so we could at least be close to the volcano. With remarkably good timing, we were at a viewing point the one time the clouds lifted enough to see a bit of the volcano: green slopes as well as the barren rocky part with all the volcano debris from recent eruptions. I thought there might have been a very quiet rumble, but who knows. Nearby an American woman on a tour loudly asked if you could see the lava through the clouds on a cloudy night...

The best view we had of Arenal volcano

We walked back along the forest trail, with the rain having started again (rainy season in Costa Rica...). Three or four toucans flew by after a white breasted bird (another toucan? - didn't get a good enough look at it).

Coati - looking for our food

After that we drove to a nearby mirador point. Although the rain had stopped, we only barely saw the outline of the volcano at the bottom. We had a picnic lunch there, hoping to see more of the volcano, but the rain returned and absolutely poured down. We had to wait in the shelter for a while before we could get back to the car. However, it wasn't all a waste of time, a white nosed coati (pizote) came up to investigate us, sniffing around and looking for food. He was obviously very used to people and taking food from them, but not quite at the level of taking the bar I was eating from my hand (unlike some others I could mention).

Part of Andrew's picnic lunch - he's eating a tomato

The hostel we stayed at described itself as a boutique hostel and it was very nice. Hot tub with a view of the volcano (when there are no clouds that is) that they had running one night. Nice food and demo cooking as part of the deal. The chef there was like an American vegetarian chef version of Cathal, cooking up nice food and doing a cooking lesson as part of the dinner preparations. On the first night he showed us how to make pasta and has the guests (2 couples, one from Belgium, the other from Italy) making their own pasta - Andrew and I didn't join in as there wasn't a lot of room and we both had made pasta before (also I wasn't too keen to make any seeing as I wouldn't be eating it anyway). The second night was an Indian night and naan breads were the cooking demo/tryout. Andrew joined in on that. The pasta portion the first night was a bit small for Andrew (but, in fairness, the poor chef had eight extra people turn up unexpectedly for dinner so he was under pressure). I did well with my aubergine parmeggiano. The second day was really good foodwise: pancakes [omelette for me] for breakfast, potato salad for lunch and Indian food for dinner. Tasty.

Coati near the hot springs at Tabacon

The next morning, we had planned to leave for our last stopping point (Poas region). I'd like to say that the clouds cleared and we saw the volcano, complete with rumbles and lava but sadly that wasn't the case. We did wait round till 11 (Andrew called home to sort out people to meet him at the airport) but the clouds hung around stubbornly. So we headed to the nearby hotsprings. There's a really expensive hot spring place called Tabacon, but it's possible to sit in the same warm river for free (park outside Tabacon, opposite the yellow gate. Walk to the bridge on the same side, where there is a steep path down. Walk down this and you get to the warm river). We didn't get in, but looked around and saw another coati wandering by the side of the road.

This is some random place we stopped at on the road, possibly in search of toilets. I can't remember it at all

"In God we trust". I'd rather the driver was trustworthy. (Seen as we drove towards Alajuela)

Then we passed through La Fortuna itself (not very exciting, designed to help tourists part with their money), Quesada (very hard to get out of - there is a one way system and no signs. We went into a shopping centre looking for toilets and then drive round in circles until we finally spotted a hard-to-see sign for where we wanted to go). In Zarcera, we stopped to look at topiary art (reading this two years later, I couldn't remember what topiary art was - it's sculpted hedges) and passed a metal church in Grecia which looked in much better condition than the one we saw in Chile back in Arica (I think).

Topiary art, Zarcera

What I did each day:

Thu 12 Nov: left Nosara for Santa Elena/Monteverde. Ranario during afternoon and evening
Fri 13 Nov: Monteverde National Park
Sat 14 Nov: Wet drive to La Fortuna. Walked in the rain. Pasta demo in evening
Sun 15 Nov: Arenal National Park. Picnic with coati at mirador.
Mon 16 Nov: drive to Alajuela, hot springs and topiary art on the way

6 - 11 November 2009, Samara and Nosara

2011-12-10T18:30:00.000Z

Nicoya peninsula, Costa Rica

Our next stop was Samara, back on the Nicoya peninsula, a bit north of Montezuma. This rather bizarre path of Montezuma to Curu to Liberia and back to Samara makes sense when I explain that we were hoping to catch an Olive Ridley sea turtle arribada at Ostional wildlife refuge. To quote this website,

After an undetertimined waiting time, close to the last quarter of the moon cycle, the "arribada" will begin.At first a few hundred turtles will come out onto the beach, followed by a steady stream of animals for the next three to seven days.

The turtles come in to lay their eggs and this is what they will do, no matter who is on the beach. According to this website, the largest arribada to date in Ostional (November 1995) saw an estimated 500,000 female turtles coming to shore.

Not surprisingly, this was something we wanted to see, so we decided to head close to Ostional at the right time of month - and thus the side trip to Liberia and then back again. We didn't go straight to Ostional - an arribada isn't guaranteed - depends what the turtles are feeling like, not to mention how they are handling all the environmental challenges being thrown at them by human activity, so it was recommended to contact the people as Ostional to see if an arribada had started before heading there. So we headed to Samara, somewhere relatively close with some things to do (ie snorkelling according to various websites).

The end of the beach at Samara

Pirate ship?

There was another reason to head to Samara - back when we went to Russia, we got business visas as we needed multiple entry visas for greater than a month. As part of our "business" application, the company who arranged it listed the places we were going to visit. Samara was one of them, but of course we never went anywhere near it. But finally, over a year later we were heading to Samara - it was obviously meant to be.

We bused from Liberia to Nicoya and then onto Samara from there. The Samara bus driver had us board the bus at the back door "because we had luggage". I suspect the real reason was that by entering (and exiting through the back) we didn't pass the optical sensor on his bus, meaning that as far as the bus authorities were concerned, we'd never travelled on the bus. I'm only guessing of course, but I wouldn't be surprised if our bus fare ended up in his back pocket. Not that it really matters - we got there, Andrew found us accomodation - Posada Matilori. This was a really great place to stay - nice rooms, fully equipped kitchen with washing machine, really nice owners (I've just looked at Trip Advisor and it sounds like it's still a nice place to stay).

Sunset at Posada Matilori - these trees are the ones the howlers moved into

7 November was my birthday so we decided to do our favourite activity - snorkelling - after having a lie-in. However, we were a bit let down in that regard - close to the beach shore the water was extremely murky with little visibility. Andrew swam out a long way and hit a less-murky spot with some fish, but the rain started after he swam back in. It poured; luckily we were in a shelter to wait it out but there was no point going back in the water after that. It rained again heavily in the evening, so we weren't going to go out again. In any case, after several weeks of having to eat out, being in a hostel with a kitchen was a big novelty, so a home-cooked dinner was a far bigger treat than a meal in a restaurant. We also had the hostel to ourselves that evening as the other guests (Spanish) had gone off to see turtles on Playa Camaronal despite the rain. Andrew braved the rain to buy us food, we had baked potatoes with our vegetables (and meat for him) and he even managed to find me a small bottle of Baileys for my birthday.

Sepia beach, Samara

We didn't end up doing very much in Samara in any case. Between the rainy weather and the poor snorkelling, there wasn't all that much to do. We called Ostional each morning to see if there was any news about the arribada, but always it was in the negative. We did some boogie boarding on the beach near the hostel and wandered along the beach. We did try snorkelling again, but we had to swim out a very long way and the visibility there was even poorer than when Andrew had swam that way before. The other end of the beach was even worse so we just sat in the sun on the beach and watched cute crabs run in and out of the burrows before heading back when more rain came. Boogie boarding again was also planned but got cancelled due to a thunderstorm and torrential rain (and a powercut - our room was pitch black).

Samara beach at sunset

Other than lots of rain, Samara had a roaming population of howler monkeys. They moved into the trees near us on Sunday evening and raised the roof with noise on the Monday morning.

Looking over the Nosara reserve

On Tuesday we went to Puerto Carrillo, again looking for snorkelling but there was lots of surf there so we just looked around. And concluded that turtles or no turtles, it was time to call it a day in Samara. We decided we'd head up to Nosara for a day or two in case the ladies decided to appear, and then head onwards. However, this region is a bit difficult to get around by public transport so we needed to sort out a rental car, which we did that afternoon. A greasy politician type in Economy car rental wanted to send us out with no car insurance (who needs insurance?) so we didn't take him up on that offer; we ended up with Alamo instead, taking the car for the rest of our stay in Costa Rica.

Howlers, Nosara reserve

Finally we ate out that night rather than cook - bit of a mistake: small portions and a fruit drink that tasted of jugo de cana and not of fruit. Next time stick to the home cooking!

Sunset near Nosara

We headed to Nosara on Wednesday (despite sleeping poorly the night before, I don't know about Andrew, but I was too hungry to sleep) and immediately saw why having a car is almost essential here rather than a luxury: Nosara is extremely spread out and would have been challenging without a car. We found an internet cafe with an attached hostel for $25. Added bonuses were a coati on the balcony who liked smelling shoes and a friendly cat.

Sunset near Nosara

We spent the afternoon at the private Nosara reserve at the Lagarta Lodge Hotel. We walked around there for a few hours, seeing lots of howler monkeys up close, crabs, lizards and more coatis. We also saw a beautiful sunset at the beach before heading back to the hostel for dinner.

Crab near Samara

What I did each day:

Fri 6 November: bus to Samara, baked potatoes in evening
Sat 7 November: attempt at snorkelling, pouring rain so had dinner in
Sun 8 November: lazy morning, rainy lunch, boogie boarded in evening
Mon 9 November: noisy howlers, tried snorkelling again, torrential rain and powercut in evening
Tue 10 November: Puerto Carrillo, trip organising afternoon
Wed 11 November: Nosara - the Nosara reserve and sunset at the beach.

3 - 6 November 2009, Liberia, Rincon de la Vieja and Playa Ocotal

2011-12-03T20:00:00.000Z

Rincon de la Vieja and Playa Ocotal


Boiling mud pool, Rincon de la Vieja NP

Our next stop was Liberia, close to Rincon de la Vieja National Park (see also this link, which is located here). Rincon de la Vieja, itself, is the largest volcano in the northwest of the country and is surrounded by a volcanic complex of other vents and thermal mud pools including the volcancito. A little baby volcano? We definitely had to go and see that.

Andrew's new shoes

My new shoes - waterproof!

So we got up at 5am and left Curu to get the bus to the Paquera ferry. The boys at the Curu gate assured us that the bus had already gone but they were reading the timetable wrong (they were looking at the departure time fron Montezuma). So we stayed at the bus stop, only for the bus to go past without stopping. Alarms went, so we booked a taxi via said boys at gate to Curu. However the taxi didn't turn up, despite our boys phoning him up again after we'd been waiting a while. Then, however, the bus did come along and stop and we got on (we'd been waiting maybe 40 mins for the taxi driver by this stage, and it turned out the earlier bus was a workers bus, taking people to their jobs).

We took the lancha across to Punta Arenas - not as comfortable as the ferry but we did end up close to the bus station and after dodging the taxi drivers as we went to the station, we ended up on the bus to Liberia. That's a journey I will always remember because I drank too much getting on the bus and squirming doesn't really describe how I was feeling. It got to the stage where we were going to have to get off the bus and wait for the next one, but fortunately we pulled into Cañas bus station and I persuaded the bus driver to let me run into the toilet.

Another lizard (Rincon de la Vieja NP)

The rest of the journey passed without incident and once in Liberia, we headed to Hotel Guanacaste. This had really bad reviews on hostelworld with the advice being to not reserve a room, but rather turn up, look at the offered room first and make sure it's okay. We did that and had no problems. We did however have lunch there where a strange man offered to buy us a drink, gave us his phone number to call if we had any questions, talked on his mobile phone the entire time we were in the restaurant/pub but started talking in english after smiling at me and saying something in Spanish.

Boiling mud in action

Liberia was a big town, not particularly exciting. However, it wasn't the worst place we stayed in and even better, had some good shoe shops. Andrew needed new runners badly and my walking shoes were getting old - not in immediate need of replacement, but with the heels worn away on the inside. I was most likely going to need new shoes before the trip was over. So with 4 November not being a great day weather-wise, we went shoe shopping round Liberia. We looked the night before (I spotted some hiking boots), then that day I went and bought them. The buying experience was a bit ridiculous though - there were about 6 shop workers standing around watching me try on the hiking boots (after they gave me the laces that is, they store them without), walking round the shop in the boots, then buying the boots. Andrew had an easier experience - he found a Payless branch and bought some runners in there with a lot less hassle.

Boiling water pool

Fumarole

Other than that, we bought food in a supermarket, wandered around the town centre, saw a blocky church and had dinner in a restaurant in the evening of the 4th with Manuel the waiter who was extremely chatty and put extra sugar in my lemonade (I had requested it sin azucar) while Andrew had thai sauce (ie tomato salsa).

On the way to volvancito

We'd found transport to Rincon for November 5, but the weather forecast was dreadful (constant rain) so we didn't sign up for it. When November 5 dawned, the weather forecast had changed to showers - too late to go on the bus, so we hired a car and drove there instead. We did the volcano loop there so we saw lots of boiling mudpools, fumaroles, boiling water and the volcancito. I think we both were expecting a cute little volcanic crater but instead we found a boiling mudpool. Nothing against mudpools, but not quite the image that volcancito conjured.

Volcancito

We also walked by fig trees and found some monkeys who decided to give me a shower by shaking the tree (in total monkeys threw things at me [Guatemala], stole my food [Cahuita], shook water on me [here] and tried to go to the toilet on me [still to come]). The park also has waterfalls and lakes; we'd planned to do another walk to a waterfall, but it started raining heavily. We went back to the car to sit it out, but after an hour it was still teeming down so we gave up and went to drier Liberia for dinner.

On Friday morning, we got up for a dawn raid snorkel to Playa Ocotal, to get the maximum benefit out of our car. There was good snorkelling down at the south end of the beach (the north end was a bit too wavy). We saw quite a lot of different fish - beakies (needle fish?) at the lower levels, zebras, blue spotty fish, a big odd looking puffy fish (we found one dead on a beach somewhere - Samara?). Then it was back to Liberia and the onward journey to our next destination, Samara.

What I did each day:

Tue 3 Nov: Curu to Liberia
Wed 4 Nov: around Liberia - bad weather
Thu 5 Nov: Rincon de la Vieja
Fri 6 Nov: Playa Ocotal for snorkelling. Bus to Samara.

30 October to 2 November 2009, Curu Wildlife Reserve, Nicoya Peninsula

2011-11-26T15:48:00.001Z

A note before we begin:

Okay so now it's 2011. For my birthday, Andrew gave me a published version of my blog - but of course it comes to an abrupt end - at 29/10/09. That's a shame and it was the final push to start me working again on finishing this. Maybe the odd person reads this, but at the end of the day, this is a diary for my benefit so I can remember the fantastic year I had in 2009. The main person missing out by not finishing it is me. So time to stop that and continue on (luckily I have notes written of the travels so I haven't forgotten everything...). One good thing: google blogging tools have improved a lot in the last year and a half.

And now back to the travels:

Our next stop was the Curu Wildlife Reserve, located here. This is a privately owned nature reserve on a bigger farm. We arranged to spend a few days there, getting breakfast and dinner as part of the package (with no car, no cooking facilities and the town a distance away, it was really the only option for us).

The beach at the reserve

Some of the walking trails - we never did get to try the Killer

Getting to and from Curu with heavy rucksacks is a bit of an ordeal. The bus stops close by on the main road (or did in 2009!) but after that it's another 2km to the actual refugio which is a long way to go when your rucksack weights more than it should (in fairness we did have to bring some food with us for lunches). Luckily enough, a lot of animals came out to say hello on our walk in so that distracted somewhat from the crushing weight on our shoulders. We saw WFCs (aka white faced capuchins), howler monkeys (think back to us spending a month in Los Cedros searching for howlers and then we came to Costa Rica and they were everywhere) and coatis that were very racoon-like. In the middle of all this, there was also a shrine to St Francis.

WFCs in the evening

On our other wanderings around the main residential area of the refugio we saw similar animals as well as some spider monkeys in a reserve - they were all former pets and really seemed quite sad. They contrasted quite sharply with the WFCs jumping round the trees, full of energy. We saw logs with eyes (during the day and night) - i.e. crocodiles, lots of crabs on the beach that quickly found holes when we made a sound as well as lots of bats that flew around us as we walked by night. A female deer got very friendly with Andrew (what is it with him and that type of animal? The goats in Ust Bergezin near Lake Baikal in Russia also had a big thing for him. Actually there were goats at the farm in Curu too, and they seemed happy enough to be close to him too. And in Russia tradition, there was a dog there too [another cabaka] who was very friendly).

One of the rescued spider monkeys

A log with eyes

We did some of the walks around the rufuge - the Quesera 5 km walk to the beach (heard birds but didn't actually see any, nor many animals though we did see some deer). We swam on the beach, but there wasn't any fish life to see when snorkelling), the Toledo peninsula walk (not very exciting), then onto Finca de Monos and the Laguna walk where we did see the usual suspects in the animal world. However this walk came to an extremely soggy end - it started raining but we didn't make it back to our rustic cabin before it started pouring so we got absolutely soaked. The type of wet where you take your shoes off and empty the water out of them. In fact, Andrew had to give up on his runners - they'd been teetering on the brink for quite a while, but that last downpour just about killed them. My walking shoes weren't much better. They recovered from the rain but the heels were missing all fabric and padding so they were also on their last legs. Anyway, back to Curu, it rained for the rest of the day so it was a complete washout.

Quesera Beach

The beach beside the cabins was an interesting place to visit - it had the burrowing crabs I mentioned above as well as hermit crabs as well as some solidifed bubbling mud. One of the days on the beach (after the snorkelling trip), we had a beautiful sunset - a moonlit pink sky. It was like being on another planet. Unfortunately my camera was broken so I'll just have to remember that one.

Sunset at the beach - the night before the sunset I talk about in the text [camera still worked!]

Also on our list of things to do was a snorkelling trop to Isla Tortuga nearby. There were four of us on the trip, Andrew and I elected to snorkel as much as possible, while the other pair did a mixture of snorkelling and hanging round the beach on the island. Sadly, the snorkelling (that day at least) was nothing compared to Mexico. There were some fish but the visibility was very poor for the first half hour. It did improve after that and we did see a few interesting things: a huge silver and blue fish swimming quickly past, an eel snaking along while, from the boat on the way back to Curu, we saw a white ray leap high out of there water. Didn't know they did that! Other fish jumped, but the ray is the one we remember, no surprises there.

Andrew's friend

Foodwise we had the staples - dinners of rice, beans and vegetables. The first night was all vegetables so Andrew asked for some meat the second night. The meat appeared but mixed in with the beans (I ate some of the beans anyway, I was hungry). Similar issues with breakfast - we didn't make ourselves properly understood and there was no bread on the first day so had to request bread for Andrew the next day. Can't really blame the people though - a pescatarian coeliac is a very contrary creature to feed. Finally this was where we spent Hallowe'en so in honour of the day, we ate some nuts.

Yet another lizard photo

This rather large spider was in our cabin [it's dead]

Coati digging for food

Hermit crabs

What I did each day:

Fri 30 October: went to Curu by bus. Walked around our cabin and saw lots of animals.
Sat 31 October: Quesera walk to beach. Meaty beans. Walked around beach and laneway at night - crabs and bats.
Sun 1 November: Isla Tortuga snorkelling trip, long beach walk in afternoon
Mon 2 November: Toledo peninsula walk. Finca de monos and Laguna walk. Rained for rest of the day.

25 -29 October 2009, Montezuma via San Jose

2010-04-02T21:52:00.008+01:00

Finally here it is - the rest of the 2009 travels blog write up starts now.

After something of a soaking in Panama, we decided enough was enough and headed back to Costa Rica. Next stop Montezuma on the Nicoya Peninsula. However, we first had to physically get there which meant crossing the Panama - Costa Rica border, staying a night in San Jose, leaving very early from the very dodgy Coca Cola bus station, getting to Punta Arenas, then taking a ferry across to the peninsula and onto Montezuma from there. Sounds painful? Well it didn't end up being too bad.

A woodpecker friend - he visited a tree near our room in Montezuma most days

Things actually started out very promising. We left Boquete early in the morning to get to David for 8 when we thought a bus was leaving for San Jose. There were some anxious moments when the bus didn't actually leave till 7 (and not 6.40) and then crawled at a snail's pace through Boquete. But it picked up a bit of speed outside the town and we reached David in plenty of time to find the Tracopa bus to San Jose. Bought tickets, got on the bus and to Andrew's delight there was a seat with great legroom. We settled in for the most comfortable bus ride in a long time - Costa Rican buses are fairly dreadful when it comes to comfort, probably because most of the tourists are American and they hire cars.

Andrew enjoying his legroom

We reached the border 50 minutes after leaving David and it was crazy. Flashbacks to Russian borders came to me. We had to get off the bus on the Panama side with all our bags, put the bags in the middle of the floor in a room and then stand to one side. Some official looks around, then says okay, then tells us to put the bags on some tables for Panamanian officials to look at them. For us the look was only cursory, presumably because we were gringos. The official was more interested in knowing whether we were from Northern or Southern Ireland.

An interesting flower near Montezuma - even more interesting when we spotted the little lizard snacking on it

Immigation was extremely slow - only one person who spent a lot of time filling in forms for some people - perhaps a Sunday thing. The Costa Rican side was a bit more efficient, but the immigration woman did some maintenance on her stamping thing which meant that our passport stamps were saturated in ink and didn't dry for ages. We resorted to dabbing them with paper.

Fig tree on the road from Montezuma to Cabuya

The customs check involved us being herded into a large cage where the only way out was past a custom official dying to get their hands on your bag, presumably to check for illegal cheap electronics imported from Panama. Again they weren't interested in us, my official casually stuck his hand in the top of my bag, Andrew was simply asked if he had shopping. All that mattered were our forms.

Montezuma

Back onto the bus and we got a bit of a shock. The previously almost empty bus was now full of people including people sitting in our seats. The girl sitting in my seat pretended not to speak English when we told her she was in our seats and had even taken our guidebook (left to claim our seats) and was sitting on my bottle of water. She did eventually give the book back after producing her ticket with the seat number on it - people buying the ticket at the border were allocated seat numbers so despite being on the bus first we lost our seats. Actually I think there were seats saved for us at the front but someone else sat on them so we ended up sitting apart, in very cramped leg room conditions.

Above: Pachamama like stone pile near Montezuma

Below: iguana in the grass, Montezuma to Cabuya road

Still it worked out well enough in the end for us. Andrew had a long Spanish conversation with the guy sitting beside him who took out a pet iguana at one point (the "I don't speak English girl" started giving out at that point, saying he took it from the wild and it was cruel and he should set it free. Actually he had bought it from a market where people go to buy iguanas to eat). At San Jose, the guy brought us from the bus station we arrived at to Coca Cola bus station, warned us about particular streets in the area being particularly bad places to be in the evening (drug dealers on this street, no lights on this one, etc), and saw us to our hotel before heading on his way.

So Coca Cola bus station. Well the area is nasty - we went out, found out about bus times and had a quick bite to eat at the station soda, then went back to the hotel for the night and didn't emerge out again. In that hotel, the mattresses were rubber (which tells you a bit about the area) but we put our blankets under our sheet and avoided waking up in pools of sweat that way. The only reason we stayed in that area is that the Montezuma bus (a direct bus, including the ferry ride) left from there at 6 in the morning (bus times for this service vary if the ferry times change so they need to be checked. Also the bus we got goes to Cobano, but you can buy a ticket to Montezuma, you just change buses in Cobano) so we needed to be nearby.

Montezuma area

6am bus to Cobano the next morning, we reached Punta Arenas at 8.30, an hour's crossing on the ferry at 9, back onto the bus to Cobano where we discovered the roads are no longer quite as bad as the guide books suggest. 30 more minutes and we were in Montezuma. Andrew found us accomodation (Pargo Feliz beside Cocolores restaurant for $25/night which was good value in Montezuma).

Raptor at Cabuya

We spent three and a half days in Montezuma walking around, watching animals, taking it easy. We went waterfall hunting on Monday afternoon and walked along the river for a bit but didn't go all the way to the waterfall as we didn't have the right footwear for the walk, not to mention needing to cross a full fast flowing river a few times. Walking back by the road we saw some more white faced capuchins including one mother and a very tiny baby.
Is it a howler monkey? Well he's not moving, high in the trees and his private bits are white. It's a howler

Bit more colourful than the grey squirrels that have taken over the Irish countryside.

Another day we went to Cabuya, the next town along 7km away. Along the way we saw a squirrel eating coconut, iguanas, lots of birds, howler monekys and had a picnic breakfast on the beach. Off Cabuya is Cemetary Island - an island which has, surprise surprise, a graveyard on it. At low tide you can walk out along a causeway. As well as being a nice place to visit there was also supposed to be good snorkelling. The causeway is true enough. The island is nice and interesting to visit. The snorkelling however is not so good. The water was very shallow so it really was impossible to swim and there wasn't much to see anyway. On the mainland beside the island is a fish processing place so lots of pelicans and raptors (have I mentioned these before - all thoughout Central America we saw a lot of these on their north-south migration journey) were hanging around looking for food. Overall it was a nice day, only problem was our taxi never turned up to pick us up in the evening. The Panaderia people phoned him up for us and he said he genuinely forgot and gave us a free ride home (we offered him half the money but he said no).

The Causeway to Cemetary Island, Cabuya

Grave on Cemetary Island

We headed north from Montezuma - if you go far enough there is supposed to be a waterfall falling off a cliff onto the beach, but we didn't have time to go that far. Also we hit a lot of very muddy horsetrails. But we did see mantled howler monkeys, more WFCs (white faced capuchins) and Andrew swam.

Beach north of Montezuma

North of Montezuma

Other than that we spent some time relaxing on the beach, watching waves and the sun set in the evening. We enjoyed some nice meals at the Sano Banana and Cocolores (the restaurant beside us, very nice).

What I did each day:
Sun 25 October: Boquete-David-San Jose. Survived staying near Coca Cola station
Mon 26 October: bus from San Jose to Montezuma. Went for walk along river towards waterfall
Tue 27 October: walked to Cabuya and out to Cemetary Island
Wed 28 October: north along the beach from Montezuma
Thu 29 October: relaxed on the beach

What´s coming up

2009-12-04T09:44:00.001Z

Sorry, no further updates of my travels are available and probably won´t be for a few weeks. What will be published at some stage is:

Costa Rica - Nicoya Peninsula, Rincon de la Vieja, Arenal, Poas - a tale of failed snorkelling, rain and uncooperative turtles
Antarctica (!!) Just back from there - what an amazing place. I even saw 4 emperor penguins.

The main reason for the blogging fall of this time is a pair of sick computers. My wonderful little computer, trusty and reliable all year died the morning we left Costa Rica. For a laugh Andrew turned his dead computer on and lo and behold Lazarus had risen from the dead, albeit in a somewhat stroke affected condition. I.e. for the last two weeks the computer has turned on, connected to the internet but a load of the keys don´t work so typing, copying anything is difficult while the internet browser is a bit hit and miss. I need to use internet cafes and there´s a limit to the amount of time I want to spend in them.

So the last couple of months will get posted at some point, just may take a little while

Panama, 19-25 October

2009-11-20T14:40:00.010Z

A tale of border crossings and rain

We went to Panama and we didn't see the canal. That's probably a bit like going to Egypt and not seeing the pyramids. Yet people do just that (yes, C, talking about you). Panama is a small though long country so we stayed close to the Costa Rican border visiting Bocas del Toro and the Chiriqui Highlands.

Buying fuel Bocas style - a petrol station for boats

Bocas del Toro (Bocas) are a group of islands in the Caribbean sea, popular with travellers for beaches, snorkelling, kayaking and that type of thing. Seemed like a good place to visit for a couple of days so we got a bus to the border town of Sixaola, left Costa Rica, walked across the old banana bridge to Panama and through immigration. It all went smoothly for me, though they did demand proof of a ticket out of Panama. I gave them my Costa Rican flight to Buenos Aires and that seemed to satisfy them. No such luck for Andrew with his ticket from San Jose to Ireland – he was frogmarched to buy a useless $11 bus ticket from the border to San Jose before he got his stamp. Strictly speaking the ticket isn't useless, allegedly the bus does run and it is valid for a year, but we didn't plan to leave from that border so we were not going to use it. Why was my ticket accepted? Well my ticket is via Panama so it says Panama – Buenos Aires on it and that met the requirements.

A red frog on Red Frog beach - these little fellows are tiny

From the border we took a taxi to Almirante. We did end up on the expensive one that they herd gringos onto, but we had bargained the price down a bit before getting on it. That delivered us to Taxi 25 who went across to Bocas. We had planned to stay on Bastimentos (following our normal preference for small places) but it was 5 by the time we arrived so it seemed easier to stay on Bocas. We found a hotel, dropped our stuff and went looking for food and there, were successful.

At this time of the year the raptors are on the move southwards for summer. We saw many of them all over Central America - like these ones outside a restaurant in Bocas.

We found the Tropical markets – an odd name for some very fancy shops in which we found nice Chilean wine, blue cheese, smoked ham and other goodies we didn't buy. We then found an Indian restaurant nearby which, while a bit more pricey than we're used to ($32US for drinks, food, service charge) had really nice tasty food. Kept us happy anyway. We would have eaten there all three nights we spent on the islands except it was closed on the third night.

Red Frog Beach - but there were no topless women, I checked.

We visited Red Frog Beach one day, planning to walk along the coast and find lots of red frogs. We took a water taxi over, arranging to be picked up 5 hours later. We got to the beach and found that walking was not going to be good given the muck on the road (and, as we later read, safer not to do it; people on Thorntree were writing about being robbed while on that walk), while finding red frogs was impossible. In the end we sat and slept on the beach, while we met some local kids who had some red frogs and seemed happy enough to show us in exchange for some water and the use of my binoculars for a few minutes (they wanted sweets too but accepted my “no” when I said we had none). Somehow the time passed by quickly enough, though it did start to rain at 4 and eventually poured so we left a bit early on the Red Frog Express (you have to pay $3 to enter the beach but for that you do get round trip transport to the beach from the dock which is good because it is not a 5 minute walk from the dock as our guide book told us, more like a 5 min muddy drive), and found our taxi guy there early – fine by us, we didn't like the rain.

Some of the beautiful coral we saw on our snorkelling trip - unfortunately it was a cloudy day so the colours in the photo do not do it justice

We went on a snorkel tour the next day, or so we thought. Actually it was a beach and snorkel tour – we were brought to Cayo Zapatillas but to sit on the beach there, not to snorkel. It was an overcast day and neither us nor the other couple on the tour were interested in sitting on a beach, especially when you have to pay $10 for the privilege (national park entrance) so we got the boat driver to just bring us to the snorkelling spots. Apparently there is good snorkelling round the Zapatillas but he didn't know about it so he just brought us to the Coral Garden near Crawl Caye and Hospital Point. The owner at Jampam (who we did the tour with) later claimed that he could have organised a specific snorkel tour for us - if true he needs to tell his staff better since we turned up specifically asking for snorkelling. So my advice is: if you only want to snorkel, pin them down on whether the trip involves any beach time or lunch by the water time.

The coral near Crawl Caye is spectacular - the most impressive I have ever seen. Beautiful colours - reds, greens, blues - all arranged in little forests. The fish there are not so good and to make matters worse the water was full of jellyfish when we first got in. They are very beautiful to watch but they do tend to distract you from looking at the pretty coral since you are concentrating on dodging nasty stinging coral.

The jellyfish

Hospital Point is not so exciting coral wise but had a reasonable number of fish, which we spent quite a while looking at. There were also a large number of sea urchins, including one with a perfect pentagon made up of 5 white dots.

Toilets Almirante style - I don't think swimming in this water would be a good idea

We left Bocas by water taxi, bound for David. At Almirante, the gringo hunters were out in force, taking our bags off the boat to try to coerce us onto their bus to the bus station. Someone grabbed Andrew's bag (and by this stage Andrew's bag was barely holding it together, there's one fragile strap left) which upset him a lot since the guy didn't ask if he could, just grabbed it. I had got out on the other side and I only had to contend with a 12 year old boy - I saw him grab someone else's bag so yelled at him when he went near mine - though my main concern was that he was going to lift it by the closing straps and they might break or the bag would fall in the water. Anyway after that run-in, we were huffy with the gringo hunters and decided to walk the 10 minutes to the bus station despite the heat (and despite the fact that 10 minutes turned into 30 minutes). But we made it and the bus to David left just after we got on.

The best view we had of Boquete

The weather forecast for the Chiriqui Highlands wasn't great, and sure enough, as we crossed the continental divide we hit rain, and lots of it. We decided to go to Boquete for a couple of days and move onto Cerro Punto (our intended destination) if the rain let up.

Well all I can say is that we should have given the Chiriqui Highlands a miss altogether (and Andrew could have used his $11 bus ticket) - we got absolutely soaked in Boquete. We went to do a walk round the Boquete hills; it started raining so we turned back. The rain only got worse and we got absolutely drenched. A taxi driver drove past us at one point. Normally these guys beep at you hoping to lure you into their taxi (gringos are good because you can charge them more), but he took one look at us, put his foot on the accelerator and sped past. Didn't want drowned rats like us in his taxi. We found out later that 15cm of rain fell in that one day (the amount of rain that has fallen in Ireland from mid July until that point in October), while the heaviest rainfall occurred when we were walking.

Andrew after all the rain

It rained most of the time we were in Boquete. We did get out of the door once or twice but saw nothing exciting, while the volcano was never out of the clouds. To add insult to injury, the walk we were doing when we got soaked wasn't particularly interesting. Boquete has been built up and developed a lot in the last few years (i.e. lots of rich Americans have moved in) and what was a nice countryside meander is now a fairly uninteresting walk along roads, particularly when views of the surrounding hills are completely obscured by heavy rain clouds.

Andrew's shoes after all the rain - they were drenched

The one good thing about Boquete was our accomodation (in Boquete Highlands real estate - we had a double room, with bathroom and a kitchenette on wheels (!) as well as wifi) so we were able to cook for ourselves which made a nice change. The bad thing of the area being taken over by retiring Americans meant that the supermarket was well stocked and we cooked ourselves Mexican.

Entering Panama was interesting, leaving Panama was even more so. We got a bus at 7 to get to David for an 8.30 bus to San Jose. For a while the bus driver drove at a snail's pace and we were worried we wouldn't get to David before lunch. However we speeded up outside of Boquete and we made it on time to get on the Tracopa bus. Now this was shaping up to be a good journey - we got seats at a wheelchair space which meant lots of leg room for Andrew - he was very happy.

The border was crazy - a bit Russian even. On the Panama side we had to get off the bus with all our bags, go into a room and put them in the middle of the floor, then stand along the sides of the room. We stood like that for about 5 secs, then next thing we know, we have to put our bags on the tables for Panamanians to look at. Why I have no idea - our searcher only gave our bags a cursory search. He just asked us where we were from (and then whether we were from north or south Ireland).

Immigation out of Panama was very slow. Perhaps because it was a Sunday there was only one person processing all of us. And each person was standing there for a few minutes. The Costa Rican side was quicker but the woman there was doing maintenance on her stamp machine thingie meaning that our stamps were full of ink and didn't dry for ages. We were then herded into a large metal cage to have our bags checked by customs but again it wasn't much of a search. They were happy enough with getting our forms and checking that we hadn't bought a lot of electronic goods.

Then it was back onto the bus and the discovery that while we may have been first on the bus, the David boarders were definitely second class passengers. People buying tickets at the border got issued with seat numbers - so a European girl ended up sitting on my seats and pretended not to speak English when we asked for it back (she had also taken our guide book which we had left on the seats and was sitting on my bottle of water, though we did get them back). So we had to accept the inevitable and sit on the seats left, cramped seats, not beside each other. Poor Andrew.

Andrew and his bried experience of good leg room in Costa Rica/Panama

However one good thing was that Andrew was sitting beside a friendly chatty guy so he got to practice his spanish a bit. The guy had a pet green iguana - european girl started giving out to him for having it and that he shouldn't have taken it from the wild and was very snooty about it all. While I agree with those sentiments the full story of this iguana is that he bought it at a market where people go to buy iguanas to eat.

What I did each day:

Mon 19 Oct: travelled to Bocas
Tue 20 Oct: Red Frog Beach
Wed 21 Oct: snorkelling at Coral Garden, Crawl Caye and Hospital Point
Thu 22 Oct: Travelled to Boquete
Fri 23 Oct: walked around Boquete, got soaking wet
Sat 24 Oct: Boquete, rained most of day
Sun 25 Oct: travelled to San Jose

Blogging hiatus, 5 November 2009

2009-11-06T02:15:00.004Z

Just letting you know that I probably won't be updating my blog until 19 November and after. Why? Well the end is nigh. As unbelievable as it is to me (travelling from February to the end of year - so much time, it will be forever...) Andrew and I have less than two weeks travelling together.

So of course we want to spend as much time together and therefore not spend time writing blogs. Lovey dovey stuff. Well, no actually. Since Maximon killed Andrew's computer, we have been engaged in an ongoing, sometimes violent tug of war over my computer so finding the time to write the finished article, sort out photos and getting everything uploaded is just hard. So it will just have to wait until my computer is all mine again!

So until then, ciao.

Caribbean Coast, Costa Rica, 12 –18 October

2009-10-20T04:26:00.016+01:00

An early flight from Guatemala City got us into San Jose before 9. An early flight in business class I might add. Somehow when we booked online we got offered business class as the cheapest fare so we had priority check-in and fancy business class food, not that either of us were in a particularly good state to appreciate the food. In addition my gluten free meal consisted of a fruit platter (fine), a gluten containing yoghurt and a breadroll, while Andrew got the rather odd combination of chicken with waffles and chocolate sauce.

One of the things prohibited at Cahuita bus station

The curse of Maximon continued to follow us (well Andrew) as his computer died completely once we left Guatemala.

River turtle taking a break in Tortuguero

Spider, Tortuguero

Anyway, the early arrival into Costa Rica meant that we were able to travel to Tortuguero on the Caribbean coast that day rather than waste a day in San Jose. So we took the 10.30 bus to Cariari from Gran Caribe bus station, a 3pm bus to Pavona (had 2.5 hr wait in Cariari where we bought food and replaced my camera case, last seen falling over a cliff on Lake Atitlan), then a Clic Clic boat to Tortuguero itself.

Odd looking bird (night bird?), Tortuguero

Tortuguero is a waterside town, accessible only by water in a canal/lagoon area in the north east of the country. On one side are the canals, on the other the open sea. There is a national park there, preserving the habitat of animals such as spider and howler monkeys, birds and most importantly, sea turtles who use the beach as a nesting ground. The main attraction there is a night time turtle tour to see the turtles coming in from the sea, watch them laying their eggs and then returning to sea.

Cayman, Tortuguero

We did this tour of course, though it was a very disorganised affair with people milling around in the dark, with a few guides trying to keep track of their groups using red torches (white lights would disturb the turtles). We did “see” a turtle coming in from the sea, but on the cloudy night, there was no moonlight so occasionally I thought I made out a shape but that was as far as it got. A few minutes later we saw the same turtle return to sea (she decided not to lay eggs that night) – this time with a red light on her so we could actually watch.

Hermit crab, Cahuita. Lots of hermit crabs there and usually in more traditional housing (eg shells, many of them in very fetching green ones). But this crab was quite happy in its plastic lid.

Another cute crab from Cahuita - there is a video of one of these below doing some home renovations

Finally, we saw a huge green back turtle (about 150kg apparently = 3 x Grainne) laying eggs. With our groups in relays, we got to watch her deposit eggs (they lay about 80-120 in one go), then start to cover up the eggs. Quite fascinating. Then the “two hour tour” was over in 40 mins since we had seen all three stages of egg laying. I have mixed feelings about that – it would have been nice to see more, but on the other hand, these are wild animals that need conserving so the least amount of annoyance the better. It probably does strike a good balance between conservation and bothering the animals – the tourists bring revenue to Tortuguero so the people are motivated to protect the turtles, while as few turtles are bothered in the egg laying process as possible.

Howler monkeys at Cahuita

The entrance fee into Tortuguero is $10; we had thought about spending a couple of days there, but with a steep entrance fee and very limited walking (a nice loop trail through the forest is mostly closed so there's really only a beach walk (Sendero El Jaguar) to do which isn't as interesting animal wise, we crammed all our activities into one day – walking in the morning (saw spider monkeys, spiders, lizards), then did a paddle boat tour in the afternoon with a guide (he paddled). There we saw more monkeys (spider, howler, white faced capuchin), caymans, lots of birds (kingfishers, herons, snake birds), jumping fish, river turtles sunning themselves on logs. It was a far better trip than a motor boat, but another good option might be to hire kayaks and go yourself.

River crossing in Cahuita national park

Iguana in a tree, Cahuita

The next day we caught a boat to Moin ($20, it rained the whole time so we got cold and wet), then paid $10 for a shuttle to Cahuita (had been going to get the public bus, but we were wet and our bags were wet so sometimes you're willing to pay a bit extra for a quick transfer.

Yellow viper, Cahuita. This picture is 24x zoomed - these things are small and hard to spot - to the eye it looked like a yellow fruit. Only by taking a picture could we really see it was a viper. A guide with a nearby group pointed it out.

We spent the next few days in Cahuita, spending two full days in the park and bits of two other days in there. It was a good place for wildlife spotting, with monkeys, lizards, snakes, caymans, crabs, birds, sloths, cuttlefish (now that's a weird creature). Rather than continue writing a narrative on what we saw, I'll let the pictures speak for themselves.

Some white faced capuchin monkeys. This group was hanging around the picnic table at Punta Cahuita hoping to get some food.

The baby is so cute that I had to iinclude these pictures and video

Mother and child

"These are our bags, keep away!"

We stayed quite a while at Punta Cahuita on our first full day in the park, doing a bit of snorkelling off the beach (right beside the shore; the current was too strong to swim out very far) where we saw quite a few of the tropical fish, and even three cuttlefish, odd creatures that they are. Most of the time, the white faced capuchins were wandering around. Andrew attempted to eat some bread at one point, only to be swarmed by two males and one mother and baby looking for food. He quickly put the food away and dismissed all thoughts of eating our banana. I got quite hungry and eventually all the monkeys disappeared. I had a good look round for a few minutes, didn't see any so decided it was safe to eat and got out a sesame seed bar from my bag. Big mistake. The next thing I know, one of the monkeys comes running towards me, not at all afraid of me. He then climbs up my sarong (which I am wearing dress style) and grabs the bar from my hand. He then runs away, climbs a tree and munches on the bar, throwing the wrapper down for me to throw in the bin.

Another day around Punta Cahuita, we saw a coati and a racoon family - mother and four cubs (or whatever baby racoons are called).

Another mother and child

Then there was sloth hunting. Cahuita is known for having lots of sloths so we were quite excited at the thoughts of seeing them. Unfortunately sloth spotting is not easy and the first day we had no luck. On the second day, Andrew spotted something odd in a tree. The photo below is 24x magnification. To me it looks like a hairy loaf of bread (but with claws if you look closely enough), but it's actually a sloth high up in the trees.

The next photo is also a sloth, also a high level of magnification. We began to see why it was hard to find sloths - they are high up in trees, they don't move, they are well camoflaged. You have to look for hairy trees (not many of these but good chance they are a sloth) or gnarly bits of trees (usually just gnarly bits of tree, but occasionally a sloth).

The hairy tree variety of sloth

The gnarly tree type of sloth - but look closely and on the right of the sloth you will see little legs - it's a mother sloth with a baby sleeping on her.

While we (well Andrew) managed to spot a few sloths, we found others from paying attention to other people looking at things. We struck gold when we found a group looking at the mother and baby sloth above. They moved on quite quickly, but we stayed to look at the family for a bit longer and believe it or not, the mother sloth moved, stretched out her hand, yawned and gave us a good view of herself and the baby.

Mother and baby sloth

It's a hard tiring life being a sloth

There's not much that could top our sloth sighting but I'll close the account with some interesting crab behaviour. Cahuita was full of crabs, being a seashore national park. In some places the ground would appear to move as you walked along as little crabs would run into their burrows to hide from such big creatures. If you stopped moving and stayed quiet they would eventually peep out of their burrows again, only to hide once you made the slightest tremour.

A few crabs were living in holes in the sand near the first river crossing. One crab was engaged in a bit of house clearing - as you can see from the video below, it repeatedly emerged from its burrow, threw out a ball of sand, then went inside, presumably to do more clearing. This is a common crab activity, lots of crab burrows have little mountains of sand balls beside them.

Home renovations

What I did each day:

Mon 12 Oct: flight to San Jose, travelled to Tortuguero
Tues 13 Oct: Tortuguero National Park - walk in morning, boat trip in afternoon, turtle tour at night
Wed 14 Oct: boat to Moin, bus to Cahuita, walk in national park at sunset, good time for animal spotting
Thurs 15 Oct: Day in Cahuita NP, monkey stole sesame seed bar
Fri 16 Oct: day in Cahuita NP starting at 6am. Sloth day
Sat 17 Oct: rest day, beaches on other side of Cahuita
Sun 18 Oct: Cahuita NP in afternoon

Guatemala, 28 September - 11 October

2009-10-11T23:47:00.013+01:00

I hear good things about Guatemala

If I had to count the number of times other travellers said that to me... It wasn't just that comment that sent us to Guatemala. Tikal seemed like a fitting way to finish off our Mayan ruins experience, Aldous Huxley waxed enthusiastically about Lake Atitlan, we'd heard about a volcano where you could get close to lava to burn and well why not give it a try?

Gran Plaza, Tikal

Why not indeed? Well there are the bad things about Guatemala, a country where a nasty civil war only came to an end in 1996, the scars of which still mark the land. There is tremendous poverty there and while people have food to eat, they fill up on cheap maize tortillas and get insufficient nourishment. The north-west of the country is currently drought-stricken leading the president to declare a state of calamity (though parliament vetoed this, and we certainly got rained on a lot).

Water fountain, Antigua

Then there is the issue of the ridiculous number of people going around casually waving guns. Guatemala is a country where people take the law into their own hands – if someone robs you, you kill them. Back in 2000, 2001 or so, there was a lot of gun robberies against tourists. The tourist industry realised this was a bad idea so now many men with guns (probably the same people who were holding up tourists with guns back then) are employed to walk round, with their guns, and protect the tourists. Well I'd much rather have the person with the gun on my side but it is still disconcerting to see someone wandering round your campsite, rifle in hand and not in uniform.

Then coming back to the poverty – people see “rich” tourists come in and naturally want some money off them. Completely understandable but it does mean that you have to fend people off all the time, from touts to women and children selling handcrafts and taxi and tuc-tuc drivers looking to get you on board. It's a little bit like travelling in India and some people aren't fazed by this but me, well I'd rather be left alone and not have to dodge touts (you end up paying their commission – in one case a 50Q bus ticket would have been 80Q – 60% commission, very nice), and say “no gracias” all the time.

The shadow of a cloud, Flores at sunset

Then there are the crazy drivers. Think of everything you shouldn't do when driving – well they do it in Guatemala. Coming up to a corner – great place to overtake. Overtaking four or five vehicles in one go on a bendy road – normal day's driving. Driving the wrong way on the side of the road – why not. Speeding and other crazy driving – all part of the fun. I am actually surprised that we were not involved in a crash at any point in our travels. Russian drivers were bad, but Guatemalan drivers are in a league of their own.

Saying that we are glad we went to Guatemala – there were a number of high points that made the visit worthwhile so let's leave the bad stuff behind and move onto the good.

Oscellated turkey, Tikal

Our first highlight was Tikal – our last Mayan ruin and definitely the best. Tikal doesn't have the magnificent carvings of the Puuc style Uxmal, but it more than compensates in its setting. Majestic pyramids rising up above the jungle, inhabited by lots of birds including toucans and oscellated turkeys, howler and spider monkeys, coatis (a member of the racoon family) and lots of leaf cutter ants. We saw all of these at various stages, in particular around the Gran Plaza where we watched a family of spider monkeys swing through the trees, a coati finding, killing and eating a tarantula (the attached video shows this), a turkey, coati and spider monkey all sharing the same tree, a spider monkey throwing sticks at me to try to scare me away and lots of oscellated turkeys mooching around. Essentially Tikal was a great park for wildlife and in between wildlife spotting, we looked at some impressive Mayan ruins.

Spider monkey, Tikal

We climbed several of the pyramids, II on the first evening (we went into the park at 3.30 meaning that our ticket was valid the next day and overnighted at Jaguar Inn and spent the next day there too) and IV and V the next day. Climbing V was an ordeal – you go up a lot of almost vertical ladders which is not a lot of fun when you have a fear of heights (like me, though I note my fear is very rational – I am only scared when I can fall and I definitely could have fallen off those ladders except at all times I was clinging on for dear life). But the view from V overlooking the ruins was really worthwhile; we also saw some spider monkeys swinging from the trees and a silly tourist getting bitten when she tried to pet a coati (remember these things kill tarantulas, you don't want to mess with them). IV is a long way away, but much easier to climb (stairs rather than ladders) and if you are there on your own like we were, you can sit overlooking the jungle, see the tops of pyramid temples rising above the jungle, watch monkeys and toucans in the distance and just take in the atmosphere of the place.

Temple V at Tikal - those steps are nearly vertical so a long scary climb up

Coati killing a tarantula, Gran Plaza, Tikal

Before going into Tikal we thought we should try to stay near people for safety reasons. We realised that would be impossible once we got there: Tikal is a huge place and there was hardly anyone there (the combined effects of low season and global recession). However, we didn't have any problems, probably because a lot of people walk round with guns patrolling the park (“keep the tourists safe”). It was very disconcerting to buy tickets at the entrance where the very helpful security men were showing us maps and guidebooks and any other information they had while casually waving their guns around.

Spider monkey, Tikal

For us the other big highlight was going to visit the Pacaya volcano, an active one, near Antigua. Guatemala, being a developing country, doesn't take the same approach to safety that say, the EU or Australia does. Basically, in Guatemala, you are responsible for yourself. The upside of this is that you can go and visit Pacaya and be taken to recent lava flows, walk across said lava flows (which are still hot – I was walking around hoping that the rubber burning smell was not coming from my shoes) and get up close to molten lava. So close that you can roast (or burn) marshmallows on it. For us it was a special trip and well worth the trip to Guatemala.

Me, nice and warm beside some lava

Pacaya is another place with men with guns though we didn't actually see any guns on our trip. I believe that tours are sometimes taken up with a guide and security guard (with gun, probably the same guy who was holding up tourists 10 years ago on Pacaya) but we just had a guide. However we passed a number of men with walky talkies and I suspect that guns were secreted somewhere. Still it makes Pacaya a pretty safe place which is good – just a shame that guns are needed for this.

Andrew toasting (or burning) marshmallows on lava

We spent a few days relaxing at Finca Ixobel and enjoying some of the best food we have had all year. Breakfast and lunch are nothing special but dinner was excellent – salads, several vegetables, a carbohydrate, meat dish, veggie dish and an all you can eat option. Great food (apart from one night where the menu was pasta, vegetables in batter, main veggie dish in batter – all I could eat was salad and three maiz tortillas they found somewhere; I was really hungry). The only downside about it was a man with gun casually walking around, and a large number of US army boys who were there for the first couple of nights.

Relaxing at Finca Ixobel (above); below the laguna at the Finca with the odd pyramid mountain behind

We visited the famous Lake Atitlan. It is beautiful – a large lake ringed by volcanos (the lake itself is a collapsed caldera). However we didn't like Panajachel – too many people hassling us; it was difficult to just enjoy the lake. We did escape to Casa del Mundo for a night where we could and did appreciate the lake a bit better.

Lake Atitlan - those mountains are both volcanos

We went over to Santiago Atitlan for a few hours (the less said about the boat trip there the better; the lake gets quite rough round midday, put a crazy Guatemalan driver in a boat and you get a crazy bus driver bouncing all over the lake and slamming violently into the water. I think Andrew and I ended up with minor concussion from the amount of bashing our brain was getting. Andrew ended up sick that evening – we think food poisoning but we are not ruling out a bad case of seasickness). The reason for this was to see Maximon, a cigar smoking rum drinking bully god (no-one is quite sure of where he comes from, but probably a blend of an old Mayan god and the Spanish and Christianity). When you visit Maximon you give him cigars and cigarettes to smoke, feed him rum or give him money to stay on the good side of him so he leaves you alone.

In the house of Maximon allegedly

The guide books tell you that the house of Maximon moves each year so you need to pay people at the dock to take you there. They say it costs Q5 – we were told Q50 and only got it down to Q20. Even then we reckon we were taken to a Maximon con job house – it was Maximon and he was smoking cigarettes while a man chain smoked cigars and a woman in a weird headdress chanted – but given the lack of people we reckon they set it up to get money off tourists, rather than it being a genuine Maximon visited by the locals. We found it all very amusing and played along, though Andrew in particular was laughing a bit. Big mistake – Maximon punished him severely. As of this writing date (18 Oct) Andrew has:

got food poisoning that day (which reoccurred several days later, at which point he gave it to me)
his full shampoo bottled exploded in his bag making quite a mess
his computer completely died once we left Guatemala (his battery went on the blink just after we arrived in Guatemala)
his watch (bought in Flores to replace the one bartered with an old guy in Mexico) fogged up on the plane to Costa Rica and died. It briefly resurrected, died again, now working again.

Moral of the story:don't mess with Maximon.

Odd sunset at Flores

Other than that, we wandered round Flores (near Tikal) for a few hours, spent some time in Antigua where we visited the old Capuchin convent (complete with nun models including a “dead” one in a crypt – spooky but not as scary as the dead nun paintings in Arequipa, Peru), went to see the grave of Hermano Pedro, the local candidate for sainthood, the Merced and central park.

The arch on Calle 5, Antigua

We spent as little time as possible in Guatemala city but more than we had intended. We caught a Fuente del Norte bus to GC from Poptun (where Finca Ixobel is) so that we would arrive in daylight. Unfortunately the bus ran late so it was getting dark as we arrived and to make matters worse, the bus driver threw us off the bus in Zona 1 rather than at the office so we were left looking a bit lost with all our bags in scary Guatemala City. Actually Zona 1 didn't look quite as bad as we had expected but we were still very relieved when a taxi driver stopped for us and agreed to take us to Antigua (we had thought about getting a chicken bus, but not in the dark and not when we weren't exactly sure where we were). We returned to Guatemala city the evening before we left but stayed in Guatefriends Hostal near the airport and did not venture out.

What I did each day:

Mon 28 Sep: bus to Flores with minibusload of seasoned travellers. Went out for dinner a few times with them. Looked round Flores, nuclear sunset.
Tues 29 Sep: went to Tikal before lunch and into park at 3.30. Lots of animals at Gran Plaza (spider monkeys, coatis, turkeys).
Wed 30 Sep: up early but raining so didn't go into jungle to listen to animals. Into Tikal at 6am. Lots more animals – spider and howler monkeys, tarantula killing coati, turkeys, leafcutter ants. Climbed various pyramids
Thurs 1 Oct: bus to Poptun and Finca Ixobel entrace (Q30 on Fuente del Norte). Relaxed and enjoyed good food
Fri 2 Oct: Finca Ixobel
Sat 3 Oct: Finca Ixobel
Sun 4 Oct: Finca Ixobel
Mon 5 Oct: went to Antigua – GC on laterunning Fuente del Norte, then taxi to Antigua. Stayed Hostel 5, very nice friendly owner.
Tues 6 Oct: Volcan Pacaya tour
Wed 7 Oct: bus to Panajachel, went to Santiago Atitlan to see Maximon
Thurs 8 Oct: Lake Atitlan (Casa del Mundo)
Fri 9 Oct: Lake Atitlan in morning, bus back to Antigua
Sat 10 Oct: both sick,just wified
Sun 11 Oct: Antigua – Capuchin convent, Hermano Pedro's tomb etc. Shuttle bus to Guatefriends Hostal beside airport

Belize, 22-27 September

2009-10-10T18:44:00.007+01:00

Belize, formerly known as British Honduras is a small, often forgotten country of Central America, an oddity in that it is an English speaking area surrounded by Spanish speakers. Its culture is more reminiscent of a Caribbean Island than that of Central America and in fact, in going there, it felt very odd to catch a bus to a “Caribbean Island”.

The view from our balcony (Costa Maya, near the Split)

The guide books suggest there are lots of nice nature things in Belize as well as a few Mayan ruins. But with Tikal and Costa Rica ahead of us, we decided to chill out for a few days on an island and do some more snorkelling. So we got up ridiculously early, caught the 6am San Juan bus from Chetumal to Belize City, crossed the road from where we got dropped off and into the Caye Caulker water taxi association offices to get a ferry to Caye Caulker. That road crossing was the only time we spent outside in Belize City which suited us just fine. When people from Belize City talk about feeling unsafe there, there probably is a problem.

The ocean at sunset

Caye Caulker is a small, 8km long narrow island beside a barrier reef (second biggest in the world apparently). A hurricane in 1961 split the island into two, the south end is the developed end (with Front st being the tourist haven, but step onto Back St and it looks like you are in a shanty town) while the north is full of trees and a few fancy houses. It is much smaller than Ambergris Caye/San Pedro, a more popular destination. But this suited us fine – we like small, relaxed places, we stayed in Costa Maya right beside the Split and just enjoyed life at Caribbean pace for a few days.

Crab climbing through a fence as it ran away from us

We did one organised snorkelling trip while there – the standard one day trip with Raggamuffin Cruises to the Hol Chan Marine Reserve, Shark and Ray Alley and the Coral Gardens. We did see various interesting animals – lots of fish and coral of course, but also a turtle, some nurse sharks (I was first off the boat into shark infested water – but that's not as dramatic as it sounds since nurse sharks are gentle bottom feeders and no danger), a sting ray far down on the ocean floor and a large eagle ray which swam under Andrew and I. However, we ended up with a lot less time in the water than promised (we were told 3 hours of snorkelling and only got 1 hr 40 mins) and were continually herded along, made to spend a lot of time in one area watching people free dive while over two hours were wasted sailing back so we could drink rum punch. Okay the rum punch was nice enough, but we would have preferred more snorkelling time. We were happy to see the animals but were in no mood to do another organised trip.

Fish in the coral garden

An eagle ray swam underneath us

We did go snorkelling ourselves around the Split which was quite interesting. Allegedly the occasional shark or crocodile swims by in this channel between the two halves of Caye Caulker but (fortunately?) we saw no sign of them. We did see lots of fish swimming in the shade of the mangrove roots north of the split, a new environment for fish watching. On the south side there is a lot of concrete debris in the water – presumably whatever got washed away by the 1961 hurricane – and this has attracted a lot of fish. Some transparent ones went around grazing the bottom, while a little black fish was like a dog, defending its rock for all it was worth. We first noticeda nibble on our ankles when we stood in a certain area, then noticed that this little fish (about 10cm if that) would come charging at us if we got too close to a particular rock. It was quite entertaining watching it chase away fish and human. A lot of aggression in a very small package.

Fish among the mangrove roots at the split

The little "dog" defending its rock at the Split

There were also some very large fish around one of the days – perhaps a metre in length, while a scary large prehistoric looking fish lurked under a concrete bar, opening and closing its ferocious mouth seeking food. A few starfish were around, the little yellow zebra fish and some of the other larger fish we'd seen in Isla Mujeres. There was a large school of silver fish and always lots of beakies – the sword fish – swimming at the surface.

At the Split - visibility is generally quite poor round there - a pity as there's lots of fish

Other than that, we did beach things like watch sunset, wander along the beaches, eat food and go out at night. A bar there had a trivia quiz which we attempted twice. It was quite frustrating actually. The questions were designed to be hard for Americans which means they were worldwide questions rather than American specific which made it a lot easier for us. Both times, we were leading the quiz at the end of the four rounds (four rounds of 3 questions, with 1, 3 or 5 points each – you chose which points to assign to which question), but the final round was always a sports question and you could bet up to 10 points on it. Not knowing the answer either time we had no hope in maintaining our winning ways. Never mind – the first quiz would have been good to win (money off the bartab, so with the two Americans we had joined forces with we could all have had a free drink), but the second quiz had a jug of beer or rum punch as the prize. Didn't particularly appeal, especially with an early start the next day to get to Guatemala.

A nurse shark at Shark Ray alley on our snorkelling trip

The local people are generally quite relaxed. We did get pounced on in a gentle way when we arrived – people wanted to bring us to accommodation, probably for a commission. They gave up on us eventually though one guy might have thought he was getting something when we went into the Blue Wave Guest House (his recommendation), not knowing that I'd been in touch with them beforehand. In the end they were expensive compared to other similar places, wouldn't bring their price down so we stayed in the cabanas at Costa Maya which we liked a lot.

Me and my fishy friend (a shark sucker fish)

A few rasta boys walk around. Eventually they did offer us dope, magic mushrooms, whatever. We said no thanks and that was the end of it. The Caribbean way of talking to women seemed to be around – the security men at the bank wanted to know how my husband or boyfriend could let me come all the way to Belize on my own but seemed quite happy when I told them Andrew was back in our accommodation, asleep. Same thing happened another day, I went out to buy food while he dozed (he's much better at sleeping than I am) and the rasta talking to me was quite happy that the normal order was in force when I said I was out getting food for a sleeping Andrew. Finally walking back from the Split in my swimming gear one guy made a comment about my “lovely powerful legs”. What could I do but laugh?

Weird crab spotted during our snorkelling trip

What I did each day

Tue 22 Sep: 6am bus to Belize City, then 9am taxi to Caye Caulker. Rested that evening after all travelling.
Wed 23 Sep: snorkel trip to Hol Chan marine reserve
Thu 24 Sep: bad weather, wind and rain but kept mossies away. Went for walk when rain stopped. Rasta boys offered us dope and magic mushrooms
Fri 25 Sep: snorkelled at Split. Triva quiz in evening
Sat 26 Sep: snorkelled at Split – best day of fish watching including the dog. Pier for sunset with a heron.
Sun 27 Sep: more snorkelling at Split but poor visibility. Trivia quiz in evening.

Yucatan Peninsula, 7-21 September. Part IV - all the rest

2009-10-10T15:20:00.008+01:00

Independence Day in Chetumal

We treated ourselves to a nice hotel when we went to Uxmal – Villa Arquelogica beside the ruins. It meant we were there for the light show (Chaac, Chaac), got in first thing in the morning when it is cooler and were able to come back to the hotel at lunchtime to cool down with a refreshing swim in the pool. The food is good there too.
Dinner time in Merida (it's refried beans, not dogfood) with Squirt (fizzy grapefruit drink) for a squirt

Traditional dancing at Merida

We spent quite a while in Mérida – we took time out of travelling to plan our Central America adventure. While there we went to the Mayan museum there – mainly to see the cosmetically deformed skulls and pointed teeth. They were quite interesting and the rest of the museum wasn't too bad either. It had a display on Mayan maths (they knew about zero) and the calendar which we found particularly interesting.

Local TV in Merida

Mérida was an odd place – known as the white city because it is very clean. They like to be cultured. One day there was a performance of traditional dancing, singing of various forms and even a poet. We thought it was a special show at the time, but found out later that it is a weekly event, and part of a larger range of weekly events. Still, perhaps it was a little special as Mérida local TV was out covering it. Or maybe local TV is just desparate for stories – they were out in the main park our first evening there – a dressed up well muscled presenter with beer bellied, sloppily dressed camera and sound men, interviewing good looking girls. Sunday was an all day party with food selling, music, people dancing on the streets. We went down in the evening but a huge thunderstorm forced us and many others to take refuge in the Cathedral along with Cristo de las Ampollas (Christ of the Blisters) – a Jesus carved from a tree struck by lightening but left unmarked. The statue was placed in a church which itself burned down, leaving only a slightly blistered Jesus standing. Now it's venerated in Mérida cathedral.

Busy junction in Merida

We saw this sign at the Dzitnup cenotes (I have rotated it, it was upside down). Jesus Christ and Randy Island? Not sure what it all means.

We had some very random encounters with people there. Firstly a Mayan man told us about the traditional dancing performance and where to buy Mayan souvenirs, noting that Mayan people are all small like me, but then walked off, not looking for anything. An old guy came up and started talking about the price of guayaberas (traditional men's shirts) – how they were such fine work and therefore expensive but “Irish linen, best in world” then walked off. Finally, in the park, a young man came up to us wanting to practice his English as he was working in the tourist industry. Unfortunately he didn't really have much grasp of English – had just rote learned two presentations and gave them to us. I was wondering where he was going when he said he could see from Andrew's face that he was really considerate of me, but then he launched into a Jesus spiel but we cut him short on that one (in Spanish so there could be no doubt). He then moved onto his second spiel, Mexican Independence Day, but his English was so bad we had real trouble following it.

Mexican Independence Day celebrations, Valladolid

One of the few places I am normal sized - in a crowd of Mayan women

We spent Mexican Independence Day (16 Sep) in Valladolid and more to the point that was where we were on 15 Sep when the Grito was performed around 11. The Grito (scream) happened in 1810 when curate Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla rang his church bell at Dolores and called people to rise up for Mexican Independence. It wasn't achieved for quite some time, but each year the Grito is performed in every town square. With Mexican flags, rattlers and drums for sale from the morning, we expected the place to go crazy. At 9.30 there was singing and dancing performances while just before 11 the local big wigs got introduced, La señorita de la independencia got crowned (a younger girl was crowned too, no idea why), they went up to the town hall balcony, saluted as the flag appeared. The mayor did the Grito, but the Viva Mexico Viva shouts at the end were relatively muted. The mayor rang the bell, fireworks went off but the crowd was very sedate. Nobody went crazy, our ear drums were in no danger. Not enough Irish blood but more to the point, not enough alcohol – the Maya don't drink all that much it seems. The crowd got a bit livelier afterwards when a band started to play but we cleared out – one of the speakers felt like it was going at the resonant frequency of my ear drums and Andrew's heart so just in case of ruptures we got away from the front of the stage.

Countdown to the Bicentennial of Independence Day (1810-2010) in Chetumal

Our final stopover in Mexico was the border town of Chetumal. We arrived there in the evening, left at 6 the next morning and that was enough. Not a huge amount there. Now it's a nice enough town, the sea front is pretty while the lighting and decorations for Independence day was dazzling and there's supposed to be a nice museum somewhere, but it didn't compare with cenotes and turtles.

Storm clouds in Merida

Chutumal

What I did each day:

Mon 7 Sep: posted stuff to Ireland, then Cancun->Merida ->Uxmal to stay in Villa Arquelogica
Tues 8 Sep: Uxmal, ruins in morning and afternoon, swimming pool at lunch, sound and light show at night
Wed 9 Sep:Back to Merida, cathedral, Cristo de las Ampollas, lots of weird encounters with people and lots of noisy birds in the central park
Thu 10 Sep: Planning and blogging day
Fri 11 Sep: Mayan museum, chloroquine symptoms of painful knee
Sat 12 Sep: Trip planning
Sun 13 Sep: Trip planning, Sunday street festival in Merida, lightening and rain storm so took refuge in cathedral
Mon 14 Sep: day trip with car to Dzibilchaltun, Progreso, Chicxulub Puerto and Pueblo, Uaymitun Tower, Laguna Rosada. Flamingos, crabs, other birds
Tue 15 Sep: walked to bus station, bus to Valladolid. Zaci cenote, Grito for Independence Day eve
Wed 16 Sep: Dzitnup cenotes – X-keken and Samula, black lub fish
Thu 17 Sep: Chichen Itza, lots of German groups, not many Americans. Andrew exchanged his watch
Fri 18 Sep: bus to Tulum, Tulum Pueblo (town) not very exciting.
Sat 19 Sep: Tulum ruins in morning, hired car in afternoon and went to Gran Cenote for snorkelling – cave stuff, fish and turtles
Sun 20 Sep: bad weather, rain all morning so couldn't go to Sian Ka'an. Dos Ojos cenote for more cave snorkelling. visited laguna at Pina Suarez – full of locals out for day
Mon 21 Sep: dawn raid to go to Akumal Bay for snorkelling with turtles for about 3 hours. Caught bus to Chetumal.

Yucatan peninsula, 7-21 September. Part III: Turtles, flamingos and dinosaurs

2009-10-10T05:50:00.005+01:00

Turtles ahoy

While we had our car round Tulum, we drove up to Akumal Bay to go snorkelling with turtles. This was a dawn raid – and both of us hate getting up early, but we dragged our carcases out of bed to get a few hours snorkelling in before leaving our car back.

Akumal Bay

Akumal Bay is about 30km or so north of Tulum and has turtles living close to shore. We hoped to perhaps see one or maybe two at a squeeze so we were completely unprepared for our first turtle sighting about 5 minutes after we left the beach to swim out. It only got better after that. There were probably about 5 different large turtles swimming around – some differences being size and fish friends (one had a little fish friend, only about 7 or 8 cm long, swimming beside its head on the left side all the time; another turtle had fish nuisances – two long yellow sucker fish, one on its shell and one moving between its head and flippers. From a distance it looked like the turtle had dreadlocks). We spent over an hour slowly swimming around, stopping to watch a turtle for a while, feeding on the sea grass, before moving on and finding another one grazing away. As well as turtles we saw various fish including the beakies – swordfish really, and even an eagle ray.

A turtle with some unwanted hangers on - yellow sucker fish

There are snorkel tours that take people out to find turtles but based on our experiences they are not worth it – you can easily find turtles yourself. In fact we went out for a second stint of turtle watching and again were successful at finding the turtles. There was a guided tour out at the same time and all the guide seemed to do was look around to see where we were and swim over to us dragging his tour group behind him to bash into and swim over us and scare the turtles away.

Dinosaurs and flamingos

The Chicxulub picture

Laguna Rosada

We hired a car for a day trip round Merida – again we got a good deal, only 450 pesos for the day. As well as seeing Dzibilchaltun we drove north to Prospero which has an incredibly long pier (6km I believe) due to the shallowness of the water. From there we drove through Chicxulub Puerto (port). Later in the day we went to Chicxulub Pueblo (village) and took pictures beside the Chicxulub sign. Surely there's potential for tourism there through a dinosaur park or something, but there was no dinosaur memorabilia at all. Just two gringos taking photos of a sign with locals going by wondering what on earth we were doing.

The flamingo on the right, in particular, seems to be in some convoluted yoga pose though I think it might be the way it sleeps.

The one armed crabs

I like flamingos and had considered going to Celestún to flamingo spot but the flamingo boat tours are relatively expensive. After reading about a flamingo lookout tower at Uaymitun and noticing that there were lagoons up there, and in particular a lagoon called Laguna Rosada, it seemed like a good candidate for flamingo spotting. And it was. There was a bit of a false start when, west of Prospero we stopped to look at some flamingos only to find that they were plastic – but we cheered up when we noticed the real thing in the distance. At the lagunas themselves and, in particular, the road south to Chicxulub Pueblo we saw lots of the pink feathered creatures – feeding, stirring up the lake bottom with their feet, sleeping with their necks all tangled up, fighting. It was a good flamingo spotting day. At Uaymitun tower we saw some in the distance, but closer up with the assistance of binoculars we could see pelicans, comorants and other sea birds. Around Laguna Rosada we saw lots of weird little one-claw crabs attempting to cross the roads. Not the best thing to do with cars around.

Laguna Rosada at sunset

Yucatan Peninsula, 7-21 September. Part II - Cenotes

2009-10-07T06:26:00.007+01:00

Samula cenote at Dzitnup

The Yucatan peninsula is riddled with cenotes which vary from sink holes like the ones at Dzibilchaltun and Chichen Itza to ones which look more like flooded caves. Of the cenotes at the ruins, the Dzibilichaltun cenote is a better illustration of what a cenote is as the Chichen Itza ones are deep and obscured by vegetation). We didn't swim in the Dzibilchaltun cenote as the water was quite murky but we did stick our feet in only to be met by hordes of fish descending and eating us. Well not exactly, but for me one fish was quite fond of sucking at my toes, while when Andrew stuck his feet in, they got really excited and quite a few of them started sucking on his feet. I have no idea what they were after but my toenails were very clean afterwards.

Fish feeding quite happily on Andrew

Cenote at Dzibilchaltun (above and below)

We hired a car in the Tulum area (for 20 euro a day/400 pesos why wouldn't you?) and used it to visit a couple of these – the Gran Cenote and Dos Ojos (two eyes). Dos Ojos is part of a large water system with two main water bodies, the two eyes. One is a large semi crescent pool of water, the other is smaller, flooded cave. Most people do a snorkel tour there where you go around with flashlights and look at the caves. We decided not to bother – we had our own snorkel gear and reckoned we'd see enough in the caves we could get at that way. And it was certainly interesting swimming along ut feeling like we were flying over a cave and looking at the stalactites and occasional stalagmites and one column, severed in the middle. There were a few fish, particularly in the smaller Ojo but the main attraction was cave features.

Dos Ojos cenote

Gran Cenote, the first one we visited to snorkel, was a combination of cave, lots of bats and fish and ... turtles! We spent the afternoon there, swimming between the different sections of water and enjoying looking at fish and using the underwater camera for photography. To begin with, there were quite a lot of people there, but they all disappeared around 4. We were back in the water then, Andrew found a big fish [perhaps 25 cm], I went looking for it and just as I found it, I see a turtle up ahead of me. I hadn't expected that, but in the end we saw three different turtles swimming around and one of the workers there told me there are lots of turtles in the entire water system (like Dos Ojos, Gran Cenote is connected in a massive system of caves and underwater lakes and rivers).

Fish at Gran Cenote. Unfortunately we didn't have the camera when the turtles appeared

We saw a few other cenotes around Valladolid – Cenote Zaci in the town itself and the more interesting ones at Dzitnup – underground caverns with a small hole in the roof (Samula had a tree growing through the hole) and nice cool water for swimming in around all the cave stuff. In places the water is very deep – just as well because someone fell through the hole in the roof of X-keken cenote but rose out of the water in one piece.

One of the Chichen Itza cenotes

Yucatan Peninsula, 7-21 September. Part I - Mayan ruins

2009-10-04T04:51:00.012+01:00

The Yucatan peninsula in Mexico is well known for a number of things: resorts like Cancun, Mayan ruins, water sports and if you're a dinosaur ghost, the meteor that nabbed you 65 million years ago crashed into the earth just off the current coastline and is named for a nearby village – Chicxulub.

Iguana catching the sun, Uxmal

Puuc style carvings at Uxmal

The last post covered the Cancun area – though of course we spent as little time as possible in Cancun, preferring the more relaxed Isla Mujeres. This one, in four parts, covers our experiences on the mainland.

At Dzibilchaltun

The ruins

Well there's a lot on the peninsula so we certainly weren't going to visit all of them and even not all of the major ones. We picked Uxmal, Dzibilchaltun (try staying that in a hurry; to say it ignore the D and put the stress on the last syllable), Chichen Itza and Tulum.

The Uxmal ruins

Nunnery, Uxmal

The Oval Pyramid, Uxmal

Uxmal, a UNESCO world heritage site, is a curious mixture of beautifully restored ruins with partially restored and completely untouched ruins peering out of the jungle. Walking round the central regions you can't help but be impressed by the grandeur of the large oval shaped Pyramid of the Sorcerer, while the Nunnery is an impressive area and cute little carved turtles adorn the aptly named House of the Turtles. But continue walking out past the pyramid beside the turtle place and soon you are into semi-wild jungle and you start to feel a bit like Indiana Jones, stumbling through the jungle in search of ancient lost treasures.

Jungle ruins at Uxmal

Top of the Oval Pyramid, Uxmal

Iguana, Uxmal

As you may guess we liked Uxmal a lot – lots of buildings, lots of interesting carvings on the buildings (it is Puuc style which favoured intricate carvings) while pretending to be Indy was fun too. Also good was the fact that hardly any people were at the ruins. For the first couple of hours, there were only six people walking around and even in the middle of the day (it's crazy but the tour buses all bring people to visit these ruins in the hottest part of the day) there were never more than about 20 people. There were no souvenir hawkers around the ruins, rather there were lots of iguanas sunning themselves and doing their curious head bobbing, push-up male displays of aggression with no physical contact to decide who could have the best spot.

Ball court, Uxmal. Looking at it, I wondered if it inspired Joanne Rowling a little when she came up with quidditch.

Chaac masks, Uxmal

The House of the Pigeons in the jungle, Uxmal

Mayan skull and crossbones? Uxmal

For us Uxmal was much better than Chichen Itza . The Castillo pyramid is impressive there though much to our disappointment we couldn't climb it, either inside or out. In fact that was true of just about everything in Chichen Itza – everything was roped off (unlike Uxmal which was much more accessible). The thousand columns area was nice to look at and the ball court was built on a very grand scale – the Mayan ball game involved moving a rubber ball with shoulders and hips with many points given for getting it through a stone hoop on a wall. The winning captain had the honour of being decapitated though I wonder if historians got the words for winner and loser mixed up – decapitation doesn't seem like much of a prize to me. But Chichen Itza was quite busy, both with tourists, but much worse, with souvenir hawkers offering rubbishy souvenirs every 10 metres or so or even worse, banging drums or blowing whistles to encourage you to buy these instruments. It completely destroyed the atmosphere of the place. The only noise that should be allowed is people clapping in front of the pyramids – you get an interesting echo if you stand in the right place; in Chichen Itza it is supposed to be a quetzal sound.

El Castillo, Chichen Itza

My pet El Castillo pyramid, Chichen Itza

Some of the 1000 columns, Chichen Itza

There was a silver lining though. At one stage an old guy comes up to us offering the usual rubbish which we politely declined. He then noticed Andrew's watch. Rewind a bit to provide the necessary background – Andrew bought a cheap watch in Buenos Aires at the start of our trip. Andrew being Andrew, the watch had a fairly hard life and by this stage, the watch was barely clinging onto its strap and resetting the time regularly. The old man wanted Andrew's watch and wanted to change it for some of his crappy souvenirs. We told him that the watch was rubbish but he misintepreted it and offered us three crappy souvenirs, not two. In the end Andrew gave him the watch in exchange for one Chaac Muul souvenir. I just wonder when it reset itself next.

Observatory, Chichen Itza

Skulls, Chichen Itza

Both places have tacky sound and light shows – recordings of Mayan legends with lighting on the buildings but other than you get a chance to be around the ruins at night, it's really not that exciting. We only went to the Uxmal one which is supposed to be the best one and I nearly fell asleep during it. Thankfully we hadn't paid the extra money for the English translation – we understand enough Spanish to know that it was just snippets of myths and legends (and given how little they know about the Maya, they probably made these up). At one point they were talking about Chaac, the rain god (his mask features a lot around Uxmal which is no surprise; with no rivers, rain was very important in the Yucatan) and they had recordings of people doing an incantation to Chaac “Chaac! Chaac! Venga la lluvia! Venga la lluvia!” (May the rain come). Over and over again until some English people behind us started joining in. Chaac, Chaac...

Sound and Light Show, Uxmal

The other two ruins we visited are on a much smaller scale, particularly Tulum, and we visited both for specific reasons. Dzibilchaltun has a cenote – more about that in the cenote section.

The House of the Seven Dolls, Dzibilchaltun (both pictures)

The ruins themselves has some interesting features – the House of the Seven Dolls is the iconic building, so called because of the seven simple dolls found there. It is aligned east/west so the rising and setting suns shine through the doors at the equinoxes (nice enough but not quite engineering on the Newgrange level). A long sacbe (sacred road) connects this building to the rest of the site – platforms and interestingly a church, dating back to the 16^th century, indicating that Dzibilchaltun was occupied when the Spanish invaders arrived.

The Tulum ruins by the sea

Finally, the Tulum ruins are the least impressive and smallest of the ruins we visited – but they have an amazing setting, right beside the Caribbean Sea, with palm trees all around. You can even swim there to cool down while visiting. They also have lots of iguanas and I like iguanas.

Little green lizard, Uxmal

Flower at Uxmal

Isla Mujeres, 2 - 6 September

2009-09-26T18:48:00.007+01:00

After a night in Cancun (which was quite a culture shock after Cuba – from a time warp with product shortages to the glitz of package holiday land), our first meal in Mexico (Indian), seeing a well stocked supermarket for the first time in over a week, we took the bus and ferry to Isla Mujeres for a few days of a resort holiday (but not package - all independently arranged!)

Isla Mujeres - Caribbean Island here we come

I was surprised to find that such a holiday is quite enjoyable. Now, while touristy, Isla Mujeres is no Cancun – no high rise hotels – and is just much lower key. There are nice relaxed beaches to visit, snorkelling within easy reach, restaurants (including one where the chef was very well acquainted with coeliac diet – really surprised me) and two for one cocktails. Not a bad place to spend a few days having a holiday from travelling and with the two for one cocktails, not a bad place to spend Andrew's 34^th birthday.

Playa Norte - the beach on our doorstep

Enjoying the 2 for 1 cocktails on his 34 th birthday

Iguana enjoying the sun at our hotel

We went snorkelling a couple of times (including Andrew's birthday) both at the same place – Club del Playa at Garrafon de Castillo which is a much cheaper place to snorkel than the neighbouring Garrafon reserve and there are lots of colourful fish as well as the odd large parrot fish, silver fish and medium sized silver fish with long narrow pointed mouth full of teeth. We had bought a waterproof case for cameras (see www.dryfoto.com – it only cost us $18US compared to the exhorbitant amounts you pay for a camera specific case and it works really well) so Andrew had lots of fun with underwater photography. I had a go too, but I have always been appalling at Garryowens (what we call taking photos when you can't see what exactly your camera is pointing at because your view screen is broken or because you're in the water with sun shining and you just can't see the screen) so the less said about my efforts the better.

Snorkeller extrodinaire

Peeping out of the coral is one scary prehistoric looking fishie

The lads just hanging out

At one stage people were feeding the fish with bread in the water – I swam nearby to have a look and it was really good too watching all the fish, until one decided my finger looked at food and bit me. Andrew got a video of it – the biting fish is the one that swims away with the huge grin on its face. Andrew didn't escape entirely, he brushed up against a rock at one point and got badly stung by some sea stinging plant.

Grainne 0, Fish 1

Another one of our fish friends - until one of them bit me.

Sea urchin

We did find a lot of chancers on Isla Mujeres – taxi drivers adding 10 or 20 pesos onto prices while when we went snorkelling the second time, the guy tried to charge us 20 pesos more for our equipment hire – saying it was 30 pesos each and not the 20 we had been charged two days earlier. We argued of course and then he offered the original price but for 2 hour hire and not all day. Again I protested so finally he conceded and gave us the gear at the original price. I think his problems was that we only rented the mask and snorkel and not the life jacket and flippers too (since we weren't swimming very far at any point) which was all fine – on our first day the guy at the front desk told us it was 20 each for the three bits of equipment and he decided to chance his arm with a pair of gringos. He tried to get back into our good books later, looking at Andrew's photos and telling him to come back the next day and take more pictures somewhere else (we didn't).

Sunset at the Southern end of the island (near the Temple of Ixchel)

Isla Mujeres (Women Island) refers to the large numbers of clay female idols found here by the Spaniards in 1518 while the island contains the only known Mayan shrine to a female deity, Ixchel. This shrine (not that there's much left of it) is at the southern end of the island, close to where we snorkelled so we went there after the first day of snorkelling. Sadly this area was allowed to be bought by the Garrafon resort people so you now have to pay to get in (I don't believe the locals were very happy about it) and has been further ruined by some dreadful, garish modern scultpures (apparently the entrance fee goes towards maintaining these scultpures – yikes, they should be removed). Fortunately there are walks along the sea rocks which bring you out of sight of the eyesores, as well as let you walk past rock faces which must have once been coral reets. Quite interesting.

Frigatebird and pelican at the southern end of the island

We celebrated Andrew's birthday in the evening by going to a fancy looking Thai restaurant. Big mistake – nouvelle cuisine type of place, but not that good, so we came away hungry,me to the extent that I ordered more food later in the evening. Rather more successful were the two for one cocktails – we ended up with three each.

The turtle farm catches turtles for breeding, protects the hatchlings and releases them when they are large enough to have a good survival chance

There is a turtle farm on the island – a breeding followed by release into the wild programme, not a human feeding farm. Lots of cute little baby turtles as well as a few very frustrated adult turtles who have been caught to breed. There were also sea horses, clown fish, lobsters to be seen while in an enclosed area in the sea there are some very large turtles and a whale shark.

Look at me, look at me, I'm a cute baby turtle

Nemo has ended up at the turtle place...

Mexico is a Catholic country and the church has a rather prominent Mary statue on top of it. Been a while since I've had weird Catholic stuff on the blog and this is sort of weird.

Top of Isla Mujeres church

Apart from that we spent our days doing easy walks, afternoon and sunset swims (watch the sunset while swimming), sitting on our balcony, sleeping, some cocktails in the evening (lots of screaming orgasms... baileys, kahlua and something else, about the only one we found with much kick to it), listening to the wandering musicians (one was far more interesting for his ability to uncannily mimic a yapping dog than for his singing skills) and generally just taking it easy. It made a nice change. Andrew did propose to me one day while we were having a sunset swim ... that we go and have a cocktail or two that night.

What I did each day:

Tues 1 Sep: arrived into Cancun from Cuba. Indian food. Tax work till late.
Wed 2 Sep: bus and ferry to Isla Mujeres, evening swim.
Thurs 3 Sep: Andrew turned 34. Snorkelled at Garrafon de Castillo, went to Ixchel temple at southern point. Back for dinner and cocktails. I did sing happy birthday.
Fri 4 Sep: easy day, walked to little island with Avalon resort and talked to security guard there for ages. She got us in to see the resort. Sunset swim. More cocktails.
Sat 5 Sep: snorkelled at same place again, lots of fish again. Dinner, no cocktails.
Sun 6 Sep: Turtle farm, goodbye cocktails

Cuba, 23 August to 1 September

2009-09-23T02:54:00.005+01:00

At the end of this article I've included something I put together for Lonely Planet Thorntree on practical things we had to deal with in Cuba. If you're a future traveller to Cuba and you've found this article on a google search, maybe it will be helpful to you. Good luck. The rest describes my experiences while there in 2009.

Cuba and strong opinions go together – whether that be strong opinions pro or con the regime there, about its music, dancing, its attractions, or about the amount of time you spend there (either “Cuba is a hole, let me out” or “8 days – how can you only spend 8 days there”) and where you go. Just look at the Lonely Planet Thorntree forum on Cuba – it's fairly active, though part of that reason are all the unknowns – money: will my bank card work there, where can I get the tourist card, can I survive the food there etc etc.

Near Parque Central - more old cars

Well we went to Cuba for 8 days, found it long enough, survived the food, found money, saw some nice places and learned some interesting things.

We've now been travelling for quite a while so we weren't bothered about seeing every building, or every cave, or every tourist attraction in the places where we've been. Compared to places we've been, it was relatively expensive. So we just relaxed, wandered round, appreciated the old buildings, the slow way of life, the old cars sharing the roads with the bicycles and the horse and carts, and listened to some of the music.

El Morro fort, Havana

Our first stop was Havana, where we stayed in Vedado, an old part of town (though newer than Old Havana of course), built in the latter half of the 19^th century with some notabe planning – straight streets intersect each other in perfect 100m blocks, with grand colonial buildings on them. It's a pleasant part of town, away from the bustle of Old Havana, and a stone's throw from the Malecón (the sea front walk into Old Havana, though that's a long walk – pleasant in the evening when locals gather to sit on the wall and chat and watch the sun set, but if you brave the heat of the day, you can watch young men doing backflip dives into the water).

Tank used to repel the Bay of Pigs invasion. The local street dogs like to go there for a bit of shade - early in the day they sleep under it.

In Old Havana, we wandered around the streets with all the old colonial buildings in various states of repair and disrepair (while the US embargo is still in place, European and other money has helped restore some parts of Habana Vieja since it was declared a UNESCO world heritage city). We stood on O'Reilly Street where a sign in Spanish, English and Irish (!!! yes Irish) declares solidarity of the two island nations, admired some of the forts, the old streets with their grand old buildings, the Capitol Building (a replica of the American version), the Plaza del Armas (which was rather serene and seemed to be lacking men screaming at each other in animated discussions over baseball [I've read about this] but then baseball season hasn't started yet – see comments below on baseball), the Parque Central. Nearby this we could see the Bacardi building (with bat) and children playing with homemade skateboards. We looked at the Granma boat (the one which Castro returned to Cuba in 1956 with a band of revolutionaries to start the business end of the revolution) as well as its honour guard of Soviet tanks and other military hardware, some of which was used in the Bay of Pigs invasion .

Sraid Ui Reachallaigh, one of the main streets in old Havana (Habana vieja)

Granma is housed beside the Museum of the Revolution which is the one museum we wanted to see – a museum with a difference where we can see the history while those who won the revolution are still in power. It's certainly written in a very good guys/bad guys type of way. Makes you wonder what the American version would be like and what the real story actually is – somewhere in the middle or more to one side? Che Guevara is a highly revered character – martyred for the cause and didn't live long enough to be in power during the various crises I suppose, so he could always be admired without later actions diminishing his appeal. Rather interestingly in the museum they have busts of various influential people and Abraham Lincoln is in there. A bit more expected is the corner of the idiots featuring Batista, the ruler Castro deposed as well as Ronald Reagon and George Bush (picture below).

Plaza de la Revolucion

Another day we walked down Avenida los Presidentes which has statues of a number of leftists Latin American presidents and leaders including Salvador Allende, the Chilean president ousted by Pinochet back in 1973. We finished up in Plaza de la Revolucion, a main administrative centre of the Cuban government and from where the May 1 speech is given to the people. It also has a huge image of Che on one of the buildings as well as a monument to Jose Marti, the father of socialist thinking in Cuba who lived at the end of the 19^th century. One of the things the American Navy did to upset the Cubans before the revolution was to treat this statue disrespectfully – climb up on it and have their photos taken on it. We saw this “how dare they” picture in a few museums.

Statue at the San Francisco monastery

Other things about Havana – Habana viejo again, just walking through the old streets like Plaza vieja, Calle Mercederes, past the San Francisco monastery (which has a fairly disturbing statue – a monk with his arms round a nearly naked boy. I'm sure it's meant to represent the good brothers bringing Christianity to the poor lost native people, but given recent discoveries about the behaviour of some of these so called men of god, it has much worse connotations to me), Calle Obispo and O'Reilly. The Malecon was always nice at sunset – I got chased by musicans demanding a photo while another guy yelled “lady photo” to me so I took his photo then walked on. Riding a coco taxi (the Cuban version of a tuktuk, presumably called Coco because they look like a coconut shell), all from Meath as most of them has a HZN registration (before 1987 all cars registered in Meath contained either ZN or AI in their registration plate).

Sunset from the Malecon (sea front)

As for baseball, well for quite some time the US treated Cuba as a playground and one of the things they brought with them was baseball (beisbal in Spanish I think). Well Castro and pals kicked out the Yankees but baseball remains the national sport in Cuba and everywhere you go there are baseball pitches. It is one of the things to do in Cuba – but unlike us you have to be there when baseball season is in swing.

Musicians at the Malecon, Havana

We spent three days in Viñales, a rural town west of Havana, set in a lovely valley where limestone mounds with steep sides, called mogotes, rise above the red-clayed valley – so red that it looks like parts of Australia. There we stayed at a great casa with loads of fresh, home-cooked food and friendly owners who talked to us about Cuban life.

Landscape near Viñales

We did quite a bit of walking round Viñales – we tried and failed to find a path to the Mural de la Prehistoria (well we did find it eventually in hindsight, but at the time we rejected the idea of walking on it because there was a lot of “fango” (mud) and huge water puddles on it. We asked some women about the path and they were screwing their face up in concern going “hay mucho fango” - that was the day we added fango to our vocabulary), but had more success walking out our road – Adela Azcuy norte. We stayed towards the end of the paved section, so 20 m from our door, we were on unpaved red clay road in the country side and not long afterwards, we were right beside mogotes. Down that road we saw a few oxen, including one man ploughing with an ox, while at another farm there were all kinds of animals – horses, pigs, chickens, turkeys, dogs. Further on we saw cattle with cattle egrets standing nearby as well as buzzards (at least that's what we think they were).

Red soil near Viñales - almost could be Australia

Also near us on that road was an organic farm selling fruit and some other products (cigars) and a cave with free access (Cabeza la Vaca – the Cow's head) which was actually a tunnel through the cave. We bought some bananas (fruit at last!) and visited the cave for ages. It was nice and cool and pleasant to sit in there overlooking the Viñales countryside. Quite a few birds lived in the cave and flew in and out past us. When we left, a plaintive goat baa drifted across the field to us – it sounded like a goat was stuck in a cave so I imagine the farm owners had to go looking for it.

Getting the food the easy way at Viñales - let the pig do all the hard work digging

One day we did the Viñales bus tour – a hop-on hop-off bus that runs hourly (with a break at lunch time). For $5CUC it takes you round some of the main tourist attractions at Viñales – such as Cueva del Indio and the Mural de la Prehistoria and a few other places, restaurants, hotels and miradors with an English speaking guide. We jumped on it the day we tried to walk to the Mural and firstly went to Cueva del Indio (Indian cave) where we spent about half an hour looking round the cave (you are free to wander by yourself) and we found cats in the cave. One was friendly so I said hello. The other was territorial and got all angry when my friend jumped up beside him so I suspect my friend was a temporary visitor to the cave. The trip finishes with a boat trip on a river that flows through the cave.

The first of a few frog photos - this fellow joined us for drinks one night in Viñales

We also went out to the Mural de la Prehistoria – apparently Fidel Castro visited Viñales once and commissioned this mural – showing dinosaurs, snails and other creatures and allegedly the evolution of humans, though all we have are two human figures. Bit of grafitti really on the side of a mogote. We could take pictures from a distance, but any closer meant paying and it really didn't look that exciting so we decided to walk in the area until our bus returned. Then it looked like it was going to rain (I'll talk about rain later) so we went to a nearby camping ground with swimming pool (and loud music – very tacky) to ask how much entrance was. The guy there then tried to sell us a tour to see the Aquaticas – families following the Santeria religion (we think) living up in the mogote. The price started to drop, but not knowing anything about the trip, the guy's desparation to sell it to us (were they going to try to rob us?) and expecting rain sometime soon, we weren't particularly keen so left walking. Next thing we know someone else has followed us, opens up a conversion with the dreaded words “what country are you from?”. He then tried to sell us the Aquatica tour (despite the fact that he'd been sitting beside the campsite guard so knew we weren't interested), then started walking with us to act as a tour guide. We stopped to bring this to a head – we didn't want a tour guide and told him so. At this point he started demanding money and got quite nasty about it, but eventually we proved more stubborn and he left. On our way back to the bus, we saw him sitting by the campsite entrance, perhaps looking for someone else to annoy.

The latest fashion in hair accessories (it did jump there itself, another day a similar little one jumped onto my arm)

Apart from that hassle, we liked Viñales. We had some interesting rain storms there – on our first day, we were about to go out when we had a look at the dark grey clouds rolling around up above and stayed inside. About five minutes later it started to pour rain and it really did pour. Our road became a river very quickly. One consequence of the rain is that the frogs all came out to play – each night we sat outside and sipped mojtos (our casa owner made really good mojitos – there was a visitor's guest book with comments on mojitos and I'm glad there was because we probably wouldn't have tried them otherwise) and watched frogs hopping nearby. One little one hopped onto my arm and my hair, while I considered kissing another one to see if it would turn into a prince (but out of consideration for Andrew I didn't!).

Yet another froggie friend during an evening rainstorm

Our third destination in Cuba was Trinidad – a UNESCO heritage city and well deserving of it – the centre is definitely picture postcard material. There we walked around the historic old town and visited the San Francisco convent, now the home of the Museum de la lucha contra bandidos (museum of the struggle against bandits etc after the end of the revolution). This contained a lot of detail (including army and enemy movements on maps) of the various battles against the insurgents as well as a Russian car (with Russian writing – gorkovski abto) used in the fight and a “pirate' ship used by the other side. Also present were many familiar Revolution pictures such as two of the female revolutionaries in jail, Castro and co being released, the American Navy disrespecting the Jose Marti statue etc. Also in the convent was a bell tower which you could climb and look out over the city. We stayed up there for quite a while.

View over Trinidad

The other thing we did in Trinidad was to go out at night and listen to the music in the music places in the centre. We started with some Buena Vista social club sounding stuff, before moving onto Palenque de Congo (or something like that) where a group was performing African singing and dancing which we really liked – great powerful singing, but the dancing was something else. One dance, possibly about drink and smoke possessing people and making them act crazy had all the dancers acting completely possessed at the end.We saw that group twice because we liked them so much.

Idiot's corner in the Museum of the Revolution in Havana, from left to right, George W Bush, Ronald Reagon and Batista

Cuba wasn't all about seeing things, it was also about seeing how people live. We enjoyed staying in the Casas, though it was obvious that the Casa owners have a bit more than many Cubans. Still, in our Trinidad Casa, the grandmother spends a lot of time each day cleaning the rice – going through the rice one grain at a time pulling out the chaff. I usually travel with rice so I gave her most of what I had so that she could take a day off. In Viñales, Bernaldo, our host, showed us the ration book that all Cubans have. It is part of the social support system and entitles each family to a certain amount of the staples – rice, beans, bread etc at cheap prices. Many shops only sell this type of food, so a number of times when Andrew tried to buy bread he was refused. In Havana, we stayed across the road from a market – the first day we went there and found lots of food as long as you wanted green bananas, guavas, potatoes or grapes. There was hardly anything else. When we returned to Havana, the grapes were gone so you were limited to three options.

Trinidad

We had to queue a couple of times and found out how the queue system works – you ask “who is the last (Qué es el último)?” and then you know who you follow. In Trinidad a deaf guy tried to persuade Andrew to give him his Dublin football jersey. But he was very good natured about it and even though Andrew couldn't be parted from his Arnotts jersey, the guy still insisted on giving us a $3 peso moneda nacional Che Guevara note. Another day in Trinidad, someone else asked Andrew for his runners (they can't have looked too closely at them as only in the most dire of situations could anyone want Andrew's runners and especially after a few days of walking in red mud around Viñales). No-one wanted my stuff – I'm going to believe that's because it was too small.

This is a photo of a photo of Che in his motorcycle diary days

We had the most hassle in Trinidad – people continually asking “what country are you from?” (and again thinking we said Holland) and then trying to sell us something or take us to a palador or ask for money. But every so and often we were surprised – the deaf guy insisted on giving us Che, while somewhere else a woman walked by, said “Hola” and just kept on walking. We walked by teenagers dancing in the street outside their houses one evening. At the bus station, I scared myself by nearly standing on what looked like an exposed electrical wire, but is actually a barrier held up by station staff to keep casa hawkers back from the bus to let the tourists get off in peace. In Viñales, we got off the bus, only to have casa pictures waved in our face immediately. As for us we booked our Havana casa via hostelworld (though ended up staying elsewhere because our casa had a major water/sewarage problem). The grandmother running it was a lovely friendly person – she even gave us a couple of cigars as a present when we left – good ones. All we gave her was a bunch of flowers. Our Viñales casa was a friend of our Havana casa grandmother, while the Viñales people booked us a place in Trinidad (so we were met off the bus in both places with a sign with our name on it) and it turned out that they knew the Habana grandmother since we were entrusted with some money to give to her (she was buying something for the Trinidad grandmother). But it worked to our advantage – we stayed in nice casas, the Viñales and Trinidad casas had good food and it was easy.

I cannot overemphasize just how nice it was to get good food at our casas. Food in Cuba is generally awful – fried in animal fat with so much oil that pimples start sprouting pimples. Getting vegetarian good is difficult – a bowl of chickpeas might sound vegetarian (and the waitress says it is) but not when it has been cooked in animal fat with lumps of meat. Even if you can find kitchen access, that is unlikely to solve your problems since you won't be able to buy the food to cook. So if you're going to Cuba and your casa offers food, seriously consider eating it and negotiate with the casa people to have the food cooked the way you want it.

That was Cuba – certainly an interesting life and a place stuck in a time warp with the old cars and all the old bicycles, horse and carts used in transport, animals roaming the streets and the fields, and an entire town coming out of their homes because they've heard the local panaderia has cake for sale and they're going to get it because who knows when it will next be on offer.

What I did each day:

Sun 23 Aug: arrived late into Habana, waved through customs (more interested in seeing what the locals had from Costa Rica), talked to Casa grandmother for a bit.
Mon 24 Aug: Habana Libre hotel, Vedado and Malecón. Forts and Granma memorial. O'Reilly St with Irish on it
Tues 25 Aug: Avenida los presidentes, Plaza de la Revolución, Jose Martí Memorial, Museo de la Revolución, wandered around Habana Viejo.
Wed 25 Aug: went to Viñales. Walked towards Hotel la Ermita. Poured rain in afternoon. Frogs.
Thurs 27 Aug: tried to walk to Mural de la Prehistoria. Ended up on tourist bus. Cueva los Indios and the mural. Evening walk down our road.
Fri 28 Aug: Cueva Cabeza la Vaca near where we were staying, walked further down our road. Lots of rain in evening. More frogs
Sat 29 Aug: early bus to Trinidad. In afternoon walked round Trinidad, listened to music in centre
Sun 30 Aug: San Francisco Convent (now Museo de la lucha contra bandidos), walked around churches on hills. Music in evening again
Mon 31 Aug: early bus to Havana. Big hug from Abuela when we got back, wandered roundmore of Vedado, Malecón for last sunset.
Tues 1 Sep: tried to do tour of cigar factory but they claimed they never did tours (bad info in tour book). Flight to Cancun and to another world altogether – package holiday land.

Some practical information on visiting Cuba

Here's a brief report on our recent Cuban trip - I'm sure all information is already on TT already, but perhaps someone will find this helpful. We make no claims to be Cuban experts - it was our first visit and a brief one at that.

The situation
Two Irish, travelling from Ecuador via Costa Rica to Cuba in late August

Visas/tourist card
We had planned to travel to Cuba earlier in the year. Not getting a lot of clear information on the tourist card, we asked the Cuban embassy in Chile what to do. Big mistake. They wanted us to get a visa and were going to charge us $60US each for the privilege of getting it (one day turnaround). Fortunately we didn't have the money with us and our plans changed. Especially since the so-called "visa" is just a tourist card filled in by embassy staff as I have since been told.

So we ended up buying the tourist card from our airline (TACA) in Costa Rica. $15US, sold at the boarding gate (you are not allowed onto the plane without one, or a visa), only information required is passport no etc,no accommodation details.

Immigration/Customs
Easy. "welcome to our country" from immigration. Customs didn't even look at us, or take our customs forms (which we were unsure of how to fill in since we were handed something in Spanish that seemed to suggest we didn't need to declare personal use electronic equipment like laptops which goes against what I've read in some places). Our customs experience might be unusual though - we were on a very late flight into Havana and they were more interested in searching the local people for banned electronics or drugs I think.

Getting money
We're not American so bit easier for us. We exchanged Euros, I cashed a few US$ travellers cheques (these don't attract the 10% penalty that cash does) and I used an Australian ANZ visa card to do a cash advance over the counter in a bank in Viñales.

However we needed to have backup plans - our original plan was to use our cards at the ATM in the airport. It wasn't working so we ended up changing euros in the cadeca there. The airport ATMs were not working either on 1 September so it makes me wonder if they are frequently out of action.

Accommodation
We booked a Casa Particular in Havana via hostelworld.com. After that we visited Viñales and Trinidad and just stayed in casas that our previous host recommended. All three knew each other. The two recommended places were very good with good food. Happy to provide details of these three casas - just email me.

Food
This was not easy. My boyfriend and I have inherited a few bad genes from our parents so while we're young, we have a number of dietary issues.

High cholesterol/low fat diets: good luck to you! Cuban food is invariably fried in lots of oil, usually animal fat and is so greasy you get pimples on your pimples. It is not good.

Coeliac (gluten free) diet: probably a bit easier to manage with rice and beans being staple foods though it does mean that you can't eat the allegedly good and cheap cuban pizzas

Vegetarian diet: cubans don't get vegetarianism at all. We ordered chickpeas and asked if they were vegetarian. The waitress said yes. I pressed a bit further and she admitted they were cooked in animal fat. My boyfriend got them for himself and they contained lumps of meat.

Our solution: accept that food will be fattier than you like. If your casa particular offers food, then usually the food there will be far better than what you get in any restaurant, and better value too. You can also negotiate cooking styles. Certainly our casas provided very good food, particularly the Vinales one which provided good food and lots of it. They cooked in vegetable oil and even gave me rice for breakfast. In Havana, we got some moneda nacional and got fruit at a nearby market while my boyfriend bought lots of bread.

Buying food in shops
Easy if you go to a CUC shop. If you go to moneda nacional places, you may end up going to places that only sell to Cubans under a ration book-like system - they get staples (bread, rice, beans etc) at cost or low price. These shops will not sell to foreigners. I have since been told that these shops sometimes have a board outside advertising stuff that is for general sale.

Getting around
We went with Viazul from Havana to Vinales and Trinidad to Havana. Habanatur in Vinales had a direct bus to Trinidad for $40 CUC.

Speaking Spanish helps. We are not fluent by any means but we know enough for travelling and talking to people for a bit. But a lot of people were travelling with no spanish so not mandatory.

Hassle
Very little in Havana. A little bit in Vinales near the Mural de la Prehistoria and a lot more in Trinidad. We learned to dread the question (always in English) "from what country". but just when we were starting to get cynical about Trinidad people, a woman walks by us and simply says "hola" and walks off on her way.

Time in Cuba
We had 8 full days - 3 in Vinales, 2 in Trinidad, the rest in Habana. That was enough for us. We have been travelling since February so our aim was not to see everything in Cuba, but simply to get a feel for what life in Cuba is like right now. 8 days was enough for us.