Flavia & Gregory go LA

Here we go, back in London and guess what? It is raining...

After 11 months on the road, we both agree that we have spent enough time out there for now and that it is time to get back to normal life and live out of a wardrobe again, instead of a rucksack...

We know that, for some of our friends who followed this closely, this blog was like a virtual holiday and its end will inevitably leave a little bit of a gap but.. hey, we have run out of money!!Well, we hope that the blog has been informative as well as entertaining for all of those who have come across it. For us, it has been a great way to keep all our friends and family informed of our whereabouts as well as providing us with a written record of our amazing trip for years to come. A right pain to write up at times, but well worth the effort, especially in a few years when memory will start to fade... it has already started!!!!!

We do realise that we have been very priviledged to do this, and also very lucky once we were on the road – we have never had any real problems, never any losses or theft, never any real illnesses along the way - life has been really good to us! Yes, we would do this all again, yes it was the right thing to do and we are very happy we have done it. Of course, not all of our objectives were met, but many were. The two of us had many in common and others not quite, though generally we converged on the most important ones. That of travelling and see the Latin American continent was well met – we covered a lot of miles and saw most of the highlights in every country, even though at times time was tight and not enough for really getting to see it all. We both got to learn and practice Spanish, though of course it is not perfect for neither of us and we would like to do more. We got to spend more time together, in fact almost too much time, and this has meant many things. We certainly have come to know each other much better, good and bad sides. We have had a couple of major crisis along the way, but it seems that we have been able to overcome them, since we have decided to get married!! No timeframe yet, but we are hoping to have a nice wedding party at some point in the future. We got to meet A LOT of nice and interesting people, travellers and locals, however the friends we will keep contact with will be only a bunch - in effect, we did not really stay anywhere long enough to build endless life-long friendships... but a few we have! We have met extremely few horrible ones. Gregory has played a major role in meeting the people, both because of his nature but also because somehow he worked like a magnet out there, with people naturally being attracted to him and approaching him to start a conversation. There are not a lot of black people in Latin America, even less with strange hair and even in Colombia they could tell he was not a local... So, exactly like back home, he was doing all the chatting and entertaining and I was getting the stuff done, like organising the route and the details.
We did not practice any salsa at all, in fact we went dancing TWICE (!!) in the whole year!! We will have to leave this one for another holiday, or even home.

Out of interest, here are some STATS:

Length of travel: 11 months
Number of Countries visited: 20, of which 5 crossed only
Number of flights: 6
Number of boat rides: 20 or so
Number of buses taken: over 100

Costs per day per person:

Bolivia $26
Ecuador $30
Colombia $33
Nicaragua $36
Guatemala $37.5
Peru $38
Chile $45
Mexico $55
Costa Rica $61
Belize $76
Barbados $85
Rio de Janeiro at Carnival $85
Exodus trip $98 !!!!
Galapagos $360 !!!!!!!!!!!!!!

These costs include absolutely everything on a comfortable backpackers budget – we almost always had private rooms with bathroom, almost never cooked and we have always taken the maximum number of excursions available in any area, moving around pretty quickly, which always adds costs. Surprisingly, Exodus turned out to be one of the most expensive parts of our holiday, particularly if we think that we had to get up at ridiculous times most of the time and we had to shop and cook and clean the truck while planting and sleeping in tents at night!!!! With regards to Galapagos, we ended up choosing one of the most expensive cruises there – it can be done a little cheaper, not much - but we enjoyed it.


BESTS

Best Countries: really cannot say!!

Best Cities: Rio, Buenos Aires, Cartagena, Mexico City, Panama City

Best Activities and Experiences:

-Rio Carnival
-Fitz Roy National Park trek
-Jeep tour from Chile to Uyuni in Bolivia
-Inca trail
-Galapagos
-animal-spotting in Costa Rica

Best Hostals (not in order of preference):

Hostal Sonchek – San Pedro de Atacama, Chile
Casa Viena – Cartagena, Colombia
Auberge Inn – Quito, Ecuador
Turistas del Mundo, Cuenca Ecuador
Emville Guesthouse – Barbados
Llanganuco Lodge – Cordillera Blanca, Peru
Sleepers Sleep Cheaper – Monteverde, Costa Rica
Hostal Bambu – Canoa, Ecuador
Oasis – Granada, Nicaragua
El Hostal – Antigua, Guatemala

Best Foods:

Beef, king crab and wine in Argentina
Quinoa soups in Bolivia
Ceviche, fish and aji’ in Peru
Patacones in Ecuador
Zapote milkshake in Colombia
Pepperpot in Guyana
Lobster omelette in Belize
Chicken fajitas, tacos and spicy sauce in Mexico

WORSTS

Worst experience: having Kim Booth as trip leader on the Exodus truck

Worst food: cuy (guinea pig) in Ecuador

Worst Hostals:

La Casona in Caraz, Peru
Nuestro Hotel, Caracas
Tower Bridge Hostel, Puerto Escondido Mexico

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Any regrets? Not really. Possibly, if we had the chance to do it again, we would not book two months on a overland tour – far too tiring and expensive. In Belize, we would not take a Raggmuffin tour down to Placencia, but rather day snorkelling trips. We also would not pay loads of money to spend New Year’s in Puerto Escondido, in fact we would not go there at all!! Other than that, we had a bloody great time and things went really smoothly.

Finally, we would like to thank first of all Mark, Gregory’s boss, for letting him take a year out, which has meant that we felt much more comfortable with doing this before we actually booked it, and during the journey itself, knowing that we were coming back to some sort of routine and income.
We would also like to thank Sarah and Matt for renting our house and keeping Grace with them the whole time without locking her in the shed, like they probably felt like doing at times... Having the house and cat in good hands has also contributed to our general peace of mind while we were out there.

Our very last picture..

Back home with our parcels...

Mexico City is massive with large concrete expanses and buildings blackened by the pollution, at least in the very centre. There are 20 million people living here, without the feeling of being squashed in when you are walking on the street, but there is always a volume of people moving around, where ever you go. When we got here from Oaxaca (7hours) we decided to take the usual taxi to the hotel we were staying at since it usually cost 25-30 pesos in all the other cities in Mexico we visited. At the bus terminal we decided to ask the price at the “secure taxi” office and was told it was 60 pesos. We thought this too expensive and thought it would be cheaper outside of the station. Outside the station there were lots of taxis and the two drivers we asked quoted 150 pesos!! With this information we quickly back tracked into the terminal at the “secure taxi office”, bought our tickets and queue up with all the locals (always a good sign anyways). The good news about the secure taxi office is that once you have bought your fare (by zone) you do not have to spend any extra money, only if you want to leave a tip or if you have excess baggage. Everyone else is a shark! Also, apparently you have to be quite careful with street taxis as a lot of robberies do occur. So we picked right in the end and got to our chosen hotel, Hotel Isabel, very smoothly. Hotel Isabel is three blocks from the zocalo and quite a strange place. It is colonial with high ceilings and very gloomy rooms, but very clean, comfortable and inexpensive.

Ice rink view from the Grand Hotel, Mexico City

Herbie Taxi... lots like it in the City

El Palacio de Bellas Artes

On Sunday we treated ourselves to a buffet breakfast in the Grand Hotel of Mexico City, up on the terrace overlooking the central square. We pigged out so much that we did not eat for the rest of the day!! We then walked around for hours between the shops, which is probably the main activity we will do here until we leave on Wednesday. The central area feels a little bit like Hong Kong (well, never been there, but that’s how it feels) with shops selling massive quantities of stuff, either detail or wholesale, including artesania and wonderful patisseries. It is a little sad to see all this hats and nice crafts piled up in heaps like industrial products – nothing like seeing it at the market with the local lot trying to make a few pennies. We discovered a very good place where to eat which seems like the local chain restaurant – it produced gourmet dishes at fair prices and still very traditional fair is served – only problem is that last night we found out it belongs to Wal Mart!!! That is so sad, to really like a place and then find out that the biggest American food company owns it! Almost wanted to cry from the disappointment.
On January 6th Mexicans celebrate the Epiphany it’s a big deal here with more gifts for children, heavy shopping and a special round cake called “Rosca de Reyes”. All the main shops close early so there is nothing open for tourists, by late evening.

Yesterday we went to Teotihuacan about 50km outside of Mexico City , which had the biggest pre-hispanic civilization . The original site was about 20 sq Km, the existing site is about 2km including the pyramid of the sun (3rd biggest pyramid in the world at 70 meters high and a huge base) and the pyramid of the moon. The Aztecs nobles used to spend time there because they believed that the spirits of the gods were there. To get there its best to take the trolley-bus (2 pesos) to central north terminal, then there is a bus going there every 15 minutes for another 35 pesos (single ticket). The journey from central north takes about 1 hour.

Pyramid of the sun

Pyramid of the moon

Quetzalpoptl

view of Greg at the bottom of the Pyramid of the sun

view of Flavia at the Top of the Pyramid of the sun

view in the museum

For our last day and a half in Mexico and our whole trip, we will be going out to dinner with Pablo and Regina (local Mexico City residents) this evening.
Tomorrow we will take the City Turibus tour in the morning, then get back in time to go to the airport - destination London arriving on January 10th. We are going to stay with Yvonne (Gregory's mum) till the 20th, then go to Italy until February 1st, when we are getting our house back.

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As we entered Oaxaca City into the 2nd class bus terminal with a 1st class bus (it is not so simple as we thought: in 2nd class you will find that there are buses actually categorised as 1st class - these still cost sometimes half of the 1st class buses you take from 1st class terminals and are still very good quality) we were not impressed at all: Oaxaca looked like a horrible huge rubbish dump. Fortunately, after walking a few streets into the city centre, the whole picture changed and we found ourselves in a very nice, colonial and vibrant city. Very different from San Cristobal, with much bigger churches and higher buildings, but still very pleasant, if maybe a little too trafficked.

We spent my birthday walking around town and enjoying the festive atmosphere, closing with a nice dinner at La Olla. Oaxaca is well known for its interesting and varied cuisine and many cooking courses are given here, including at La Olla - we wanted to take one for a few hours, but it is still high season and it was fully booked.

Some pics of Oaxaca:

Santo Domingo church

Chapulinas - grasshoppers - they are eaten on their own spiced with chilly and lemon, or added to local dishes...

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HIERVE EL AGUA TOUR

The day before yesterday we went on one of those all-inclusive tours that take you to a number of places all in one tour: we left at 10 in the morning and managed to get back at 8 in the evening, tired but quite happy. They took us first to see El Tule, which is the widest tree in the world, though not the tallest. It has a circumference of 58 meters and needs 5,000 litres of water a day!!! Its age is unknown with estimates ranging between 1,200 and 3,000 years. Here below is a very poor picture of it, it is quite difficult to take because it does not fit into the camera view and the church yard where it stands is gated...

El Tule

We then went to Teotitlan del Valle, a famous weaving village where beautiful woolen blankets and rugs are produced. We were shown how the wool is produced and how the local ancient knowledge of basic chemistry provides hundreds of shades of dyes, using nut shells and the bugs that live in cactuses, amongst others, as the ingredients to make the colours, combining them with lemon and herbs etc to change the shades.

Out third stop was at Hierve El Agua, one of the most unusual "waterfalls" in the world. Hierve el Agua is a petrified waterfall of calcium carbonate and magnesium. Contrary to its name, which means "the water boils", it is actually a natural warm spring where escaping air effervesces through the mineral deposits, creating the illusion of boiling water. The result of thousands of years of this mineralized water flowing over the cliff has produced a spectacular fall that seems frozen in time. Around the site a couple of pools have been carved out of the mineral rock.

The pictures are spectacular but in effect the place is really small and not really inviting for a swim (pretty cold):

From Hierve El Agua we went to visit the Mitla ruins, which date mostly from two to three centuries before the Spanish conquest. Mitla was one of the most important Zapotec religious centres, again with priests removing hearts in human sacrifices like the Aztecs. Thankfully we saw nothing illustrating this terrible habit, instead mainly nice "mosaics" of carved stone at the top of their temples:

Finally, we went to visit a mezcal factory and seller.

Mezcal is considered by many people as the most authentic of all the Mexican distilled spirits because, unlike Tequila, which is often exported in bulk, Mezcal can only be exported in bottle and never in bulk, so it’s always properly controlled and authentic. Mezcal is made from the maguey plant - Agave family of succulents, not to be confused with the cactus family, which looks like a pineapple plant. While tequila is distilled in the northern state of Jalisco from the blue agave plant, Mezcal is distilled in the South near the Gulf of Mexico, in and around the state of Oaxaca.
As an interesting side-note, in some species of Maguey plant an ‘innoque worm’ makes its home. The worm known as the ‘gusano’ is really a grub or larva of the ‘night-butterfly’ which originates from a small egg left by the butterfly on a Maguey leaf. The larvas are put into some of the bottles of Mezcal and people chew them while drinking the alcohol! Yakk! This red worm is collected from June to September from the heart of the Agave plant. The collecting is very hard and difficult as the worm must not be damaged in any way, otherwise the Mezcal would become cloudy. The worms sell from 20 to 40 US cents per worm! so, with anything up to a normal 200 - 500 per affected plant, it’s easy to see how lucrative worm collecting is. Actually, there is a shortage of worms (much prized also in the local restaurants for cooking in Oaxaqueno recipes), since the ‘infecting’ of the Agave is a natural process which cannot be artificially enhanced. While in the past the bottles of mezcal were full of worms, nowadays they only contain 2 or 3 at the most.

Here are the cut plant cores

Gregory eating his first gusano

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MONTE ALBAN RUINS

Yesterday we went up to visit the Monte Alban ruins, which are only 20 mins away from Oaxaca. Monte Alban was a Zapotec capital. The site is very neat and compact. We only stayed less than an hour though, possibly we have had enough of ruins for a while now...!!

Today we are off to Mexico City, the last 7 hours on a bus for a while.

5 days left!!!!

Puerto Escondido, like Gregory said at one point, should have remained escondido (hidden)...!!
Frankly, we did not like it that much. Surely the accomodation we got did not help in this regard, but objectively from the point of view of the place itself, well, we have seen much better places in our travels, enough not to have chosen to go there, had we known beforehand.
The town is a common seaside Mexican town, hot and humid, while the beach is just not worth it, unless you surf. There are a few beaches around town, all with dark sand like it is the norm on the Pacific side of things, and pretty mediocre to say it nicely. The town beach is inside the port and full of boats, while the surfers beach, Playa Zicatela, is a long stretch of beach with strong undertows and a perennial red flag which warns non-surfers that entering the water means risking their lives. Along it, lots of hotels and restaurants and, when we were there, masses of people. There is also another small beach called Playa Carrizalillo, which is found inside of a bay and is therefore ok for swimming. Playa Carrizalillo was about 20 mins walk away from our hostel; we went there on the 31st for the last dip of the year and it was fairly nice, though the water near the shore was covered with some floating white matter as well as the oil from the many boats that go up and down taking people for rides.

For New Years Eve we took a taxi down to the Zicatela beach and had a nice dinner in the sand at candle light. We then bought a cheap horrible fizzy bottle of something very sweet and had a toast on the beach, with the fireworks going off and bonfires around us. Then someone set fire to an abandoned straw hut and the fire brigade was called... We finally ended up in a beach bar for a decent drink and there we met a nice couple from Mexico City, Mario and Regina, whom we will visit in a couple of days. At the same time, a really weird American girl started talking to us. She soon introduced us to her dad, an even weirder person who looked like he had just come out of one of those American movies, with a leather hat and funny clothing.. well, in no time this guy was behind Gregory and somehow hugged him and passed a knife around his neck, only with the blade around the other way. That was scary, but we both kept cool and sneaked off into a taxi as quickly as we could.

In Puerto Escondido we did not actually do much. The whole idea was to spend some relaxing time in the hostel which, when we booked it, looked like a nice place with lots of entertainment available, including swimming-pool, pool table, table tennis and lots of leafy vegetation to make it really nice and cosy. Kitchen was available too, with me dreaming of cooking some nice fish.... This is the website for the Tower Hill Hostel - never go there:

http://www.puertobungalows.com/

This is NOT what we got!!! The overall layout of the place is indeed really nice, however we never got any of the bungalows shown in the website. We got a unit with a bedroom with incorporated bathroom and no walls separating them, and a small lounge with a sofa and TV. The kitchen was outside and honestly, not fit to cook anything in it but hot water for coffee, preferably served in your own cup. The guy that owns and runs it is a British fellow with clearly no sense of cleanliness whatsoever. The place was dirty, the swimming-pool was not fit for swimming in and things were so deteriorated and run down that I was in tears for the disappointment!!! The worse part was that we had paid for all of the nights in advance - since it is so high season etc - and there was no way we could back out of it. It must be said that the atmosphere was good, despite everything. The same filthy guy, Steve, was also quite friendly and easy -going, really, so we had some fun playing pool and enjoying the music with the others. Not that we could have done much else...
Eventually we decided to leave a day early, despite having paid for it, as I did not have any intention of waking up in that place on the day of my birthday!! So we checked out on the 1st of January and took a bus to Oaxaca, 7 hours straight. In Oaxaca we checked into a nice place, Hotel Catarina, which was of a high standard for our budget, but a must as we needed to recover from the Tower Bridge.

A view of nicely packed Playa Principal:

Playa Zicatela