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...

Back in London! remains copyright of the author Flav-Greg, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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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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Mexico City remains copyright of the author Flav-Greg, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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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!!!!

Oaxaca City and around remains copyright of the author Flav-Greg, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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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

New Year in Puerto Escondido remains copyright of the author Flav-Greg, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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We stayed at Hotel Jovel
[/ihttp://www.mundochiapas.com/hotelposadajovel/] in the nice part of the building, which costs more than the hostel part but is much much better, with a lovely colonial garden and room furniture. The family owners there were really nice and welcoming, and invited us to join them for food and drinks many times. S Cristobal is set at 2,100 m above see level, which makes the nights quite cold. Fortunately we had a good hotel bed with blankets and duvet and we also had Gregory's trekking water bottle, which is termic, so we had a hot water bottle to warm the bed up and make the whole experience of going to bed bearable... The cold made it feel like it even more like Xmas. The town was nicely decorated with Xmas lights and trees etc, packed with people and in real holiday mood. Xmas obviously did not stop business in any way, as we found out that all travel agencies were open and you could book trips every day, including Xmas day!! The supermarket was open on Xmas day too, which is quite strange for a Catholic country. We decided to take the 25th "off" anyways, i. e. stay in town, not go on any excursion and enjoy the day in tranquillity. We had in fact a great Xmas day, wandering around the streets and the churches and checking out the artesania markets.

On the 24th we went on a half day trip to the local villages, Zicantan and S Juan Chamula. S Cristobal is in Chiapas, the most indigenous part of Mexico - as a matter of fact, it looks and feels more like Guatemala than Mexico. These villages were very very indigenous, particularly S Juan Chamula, which is self-governed and where they even have their own police. The people there don´t want to be photographed at all and Gregory got thrown tomatoes and even stones on two separate occasions for trying to take a panoramic shot of the town and the market!! They have a special church in the village and photography is prohibited inside: if you are caught taking a picture, the fine is of $500!!!! Despite the temptation, we didn't try to take any in there...

The mighty church

Cemetery-coloured crosses signify occupant of grave

These ladies were good friends of our guide, crazy Carlito, and possibly the only two souls in town not to be bothered about photography...

My mighty zoom comes in handy once again...

Chillies on sale at the local market... notice the woman in the background on the left, she is throwing a tomato at Gregory..!!!

This is a link to an interesting report about S Juan Chamula, quite accurate - the part about the Coca Cola is all true by the way:

http://www.forteantimes.com/features/fortean_traveller/253/san_juan_chamula_mexico_a_church_out_of_time.html

On the 26th we went to the Cañon del Sumidero, which is a deep canyon where a river flows for some 43 km. You take a boat and they travel you up and down the canyon, pointing out crocodiles and monkeys and other points of interest like rock formations. At the highest point, its cliffs are 900 meters above sea level, which looked quite impressive from the little boat we were on.

Cañon del Sumidero

They call this one the Xmas tree, in perfect season..

The Xmas tree from below

On the 27th we took a longer trip to the Lagos de Montebello, which lasted almost 12 hours and included a stop at the Cuevas de San Cristobal and the waterfalls of El Chiflon.
The caves were not very interesting or special, and even less when, at entering them, we were accompanied by a young children who were put to work there as guides and whom could not be understood at all, due to their far too young voices and the subsequent echo in the cave. The lakes were nice, though we had to visit them in a bit of the rush. There are 59 of them, all with different colors and shapes, and the trip included a visit to 6. They are located on the border with Guatemala, so perhaps 200+ km away from San Cristobal, which makes it a fairly long journey from where we started.

Finally, we went to El Chiflon waterfall, which is a gorgeous waterfall which flows into a light emerald green river where it is possible to bathe, though the current is extremely strong. We got there fairly late and had no time to bathe nowhere, but it was fine.

When we got back from the Montebello trip, we had about one hour and then we hopped on a night bus to Puerto Escondido, our next stop for New Year's. It took 12 hours and at 10 am we were checked in at our most expensive accomodation yet, and disappointed.
To cut the story short, Puerto Escondido is on the Pacific and quite popular at New Year's. Since we had decided not to leave it to chance to get there and not find somewhere nice to stay, we decided to book ahead. We emailed a lot of places and everybody was full, apart from one place where they had one last "bungalow" left, at the Tower Bridge Hostel. At $100 a night (5 times the normal price, due to highest season...), we thought about it for a bit and then decided that it was worth the money, given the website and the circumstances. Well well... will leave the moan for the next time!!

San Cristobal de las Casas and around remains copyright of the author Flav-Greg, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Flavia and Gregory wish you all a Happy Xmas and a Happy new year from San Cristobal, Mexico. We will be here till the 27th and it is bloody cold!!!! like Europe

Buon Natale a tutti

Feliz Navidad a todos

Flavia Y Gregory

A truly zapatista nativity set (nevermind Gregory thinking they were ninjas warriors....)

Happy Christmas everybody! Feliz Navidad! remains copyright of the author Flav-Greg, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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In Palenque we decided to stay in El Panchan, a cluster of accomodation and restaurants a couple of kilometers from the ruins. According to the Lonely Planet, El Panchan is the epicentre of Palenque's alternative scene and home to a Bohemian bunch of Mexicans and foreigners including a number of archaeologists and anthropologists. Well, it is all true. The place is really nice, in fact, with different places offering cabana-style accomodation all situated around a centre area with tables and chairs where people can choose from a couple of restaurants. We picked Margarita & Ed, a really nice and clean place. The 'bohemian' residents are well visible and there is live music every night, as well as drums and fire dancing. Also a few travel agencies and an Internet cafe', making it practically perfect for any traveller. Last night the place was so packed that there were no tables left. We ended up sharing the table with two innocent-looking older American ladies and soon after with a strange fellow from Norway as well, who simply turned up and started to speak to Gregory. People do this quite often, to just look at Gregory and start talking to him. It turned out that the strange fellow was indeed strange - Gregory and he spoke about astronomy for a good half an hour, till we gathered from here and there that he was some sort of acupuncturist with a business in San Marco La Laguna in Guatemala, and into scientology and other strange things. Then, when the restaurant we were in just stopped making pizzas (it was 11 pm) and after having been sitting there for a good couple of hours, he left us to go to the other restaurant to eat pizza. Doh?? Soon after he left, the two ladies started complaining to the waiter that their cocktails contained no alcohol and were given a complimentary drink: by then they had started a heavy discussion around the Maya, with one stating that the Maya kings were all about power and were using their knowledge for their own personal power, and the other lady insisting that it was not the case whatsoever, they really all believed in all the gods and the sun and they were out for the people etc. When we asked one of them if she was an archeologist or astronomer or what, she replied that she was into 'Maya studies', specifically 'archeoastronomy'.... The restaurant shut and we were practically thrown out, so the discussion came to a quiet end.

The ancient Maya city of Palenque, with its jungle setting and many well-preserved temples, is one of the best ever. We went in at opening time again, 8 am, however, unlike Chichen Itza, most guided tours here start at this time, so we did not gain much advantage in terms of crowds. Overall, however, there were no real crowds and people were well distributed around the site without making it feel too packed. It was a fairly clouded day, which apparently was a very good thing, since the sun here is very strong and the place hot and humid. We heard the howler monkeys all around us, but saw none. In total we managed to spend another four hours of wandering time here, going up and down the temple staircases and finally visiting the nearby museum, which stocks finds from the site including an incredible, huge stone sarcophagus belonging to Pakal, the most important ruler of Palenque. Pakal lived to the then-incredible age of 80!
Palenque flourished during what is known as the Classic period (about AD 250 to 900) and was abandoned in 900 AD, after which time it was quickly overgrown by the jungle and discovered again in 1746. In 1831 the European Count of Waldeck went and lived up in one of the temples for two years!! The ruins are still very much in place, but the humid environment of the jungle is a real issue around their conservation, with much of the marginal temples covered in green moss and mould.
Just like Chichen Itza, though less spectacularly, like our American friend explained to us last night, all the Palenque temples are aligned around solstices and equinoxes and the stars in general. We did not take a guide here or in Chichen Itza and so maybe we have missed some bits and pieces. Generally, we have gone into the ruins wandering around and enjoying the place, taking pictures according to estethics and not other important astronomic or so factors.... But we have done a bit of basic reading in the guide and we now know a little more than before. For example, the Maya were not so gruesome like it appeared back in Chichen Itza. They certainly did not practice a lot of sacrifices during the Classical period, when they were flourishing, but they did so in the post-Classical one, when they were declining and were being taken over by other civilizations. Chichen Itza in particular was the product of both the Maya and the Toltec people, where lots more human sacrifices took place (nothing much noticed in Palenque to this respect) and where the feathered serpent god - Kukulcan - was introduced by the Toltecs, who were really bloody. From there it went even worse, with the Aztecs taking over power in Mexico in the 14th century and sacrificing their prisoners right left and centre, where they had warrior gods who 'demanded' a diet of hearts of the sacrificed captives. The Aztecs believed that they lived in the fifth world, whose four predecessors had been destroyed by the death of the sun and humanity. So their human sacrifices were designed to keep the sun alive!!! Apocalypto by Mel Gibson is meant to describe the Aztec, not the Maya.
What is interesting is that the most credible theory about their disappearance says that they declined due to over-population and a general over-exploitation of their resources, as well as a prolonged draught...

Here are some of our favourite pics.

All this architecture was carried out without the use of the wheel, metal tools or pack animals. The temples were originally painted red with blue and yellow stucco details.

Today we took a day trip to some spectacular water attractions: Misol-ha, a 35 meter waterfall which frankly did not impress us; Aguas de Santa Clara, a beautiful turquoise river with a suicidal swing bridge which is crumbling apart and which Gregory refused to pass, fearing that the wood would give way under his weight; and finally Agua Azul, an amazing site of white waterfalls thundering into turquoise pools a little bit like in Semuc Champey, but with much more force. The current is quite strong and it is not possible to bathe in all the pools or in all areas of the pools - nevertheless bathing is really pleasant, especially given the strength of the sun and the outside temperature in a jungle setting.

Aguas de Santa Clara Photos

Agua Azul, almost more spectacular than Semuc!

Palenque remains copyright of the author Flav-Greg, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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We got to Chichen Itza in the afternoon in time for the evening Light and Sound Show, the plan being to go to the show and then get into the ruins at opening time in the morning before the crowds arrive.
Chichen Itza is one of the most impressive archaeological areas of the world and is now one of the new seven wonders of the world, like Macchu Picchu. Since we saw what happens to Macchu Picchu after 10 am, we planned to be at the entrance first thing, and that was such a smart move! There was hardly anybody there, three cars in the car park, and no scorching sun! Chichen Itza is truly beautiful, we really enjoyed it and ended up spending over 4 hours wandering around. Unfortunately it is not possible to climb any of the temples, but once you see the number of people that trod the grounds every the day, you must admit it is an essential measure to safeguard the temple existence.
The site contains many fine stone buildings in various states of preservation; the buildings were formerly used as temples, palaces, stages, markets, baths, and ballcourts. Dominating the center of Chichén is the Temple of Kukulcan, often referred to as "El Castillo" (the castle). This step pyramid is a reflection of the Maya calendar: four stairways, each with 91 steps and a platform at the top, making a total of 365, equivalent to the number of days in a calendar year. There are snake heads at the bottoms of the main stair set, as the wind god was part snake, part bird. On the two equinoxes, the sides of the pyramid cast shadows along those stairs and it looks like a snake is slowly climbing down from heaven to earth. Thousands of people visit the site each equinox to watch this - at the Light and Sound show they reproduce the effect and it really looks like the snakes is descending!!
The Maya were quite smart, really. It was the Maya that elaborated the concept of zero. They were great mathematicians and astronomers. One of the Mayan's greatest achievements is their incredibly precise calendar, which was the most precise known to mankind until NASA worked on one in the 20th century!! The Mayans built their structures to align precisely with the sky, and they realized that on August 13, 3114 BC, there had been a perfect alignment in the sky of the milky way, Orion's belt, and the Pleides, whatever that is. They therefore fixed that precise date as the origin of human life, and many buildings align with the sky as it was back then. It was only recently that modern day astronomers realized why the buildings are aligned the way they are, which is just crazy, is it not??!
They were also very bloody people. They used to sacrifice human life like nothing, they even beheaded the losers of their ball games!! Can you imagine the pressure of playing a game knowing that, if you lose, they are going to behead you??

A few good pics here >

Temple of Kukulcan, it is only us here, urrah!!!

The Platform of Skulls was dedicated to the glory of military conquest and ritual sacrifice. It was here that prisoners heads as well as those of other sacrificial victims were displayed for all the inhabitants to view. The decoration served as a reminder of the aggression of the military chiefs and as a terrifying warning to anyone who might attack the city.

Coinciding with the arrival of the crowds, the paths of Chichen Itza transform themselves into a massive artesania stall market with beautiful arts and crafts. We managed to only buy a couple of magnets, aren't we good!!!

Once we came back from the ruins, we took a bus to Merida, in the north-west Yucatan, with the idea of spending the night here and then continue to Palenque in the morning. Except that when we got to Merida we found out that all buses to Palenque are fully booked! OOpps. So we have booked ourselves onto a night bus to Villahermosa, 2 hours away from Palenque, where we should be able to get at some point tomorrow.

Chichen Itza' remains copyright of the author Flav-Greg, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Anyways. While exploring the beach, we came across a nice Italian place called La vita e' bella. Essentially a posh expensive place that however offers three cabañas in the back yard with shared bathroom at the bargain price of $42. I had a moan about the current cabaña we had and the owner, Silvia, offered us one of the cheap rooms for the same price at Zanzil Kin - so the next day we moved over to the new accomodation. It was different - the restaurant completely different style, very different prices, no billiard, very quiet, hardly any people around, and sunbeds on the beach!! We spent a day and a half swimming (Gregory) and floating (Flavia) in the turquoise swimming-pool-like gorgeous sea before us and had a really nice time - Olga apparently dissolved up in the skies and the sun came out in full the day we moved. Inbetween we also walked up to visit the Tulum Maya ruins, which are famous for their stunning setting on the sea. There were quite a lot of tourists, but it was nice to walk around nevertheless.

Today we came back into town (3 km inland from the beach) and, after checking out four overpriced places, we checked into Hotel Cocos2000, at $27 with bathroom, a/c and TV! What a jump in comfort! We actually do not need the a/c, the nights have been quite chilly and tonight we are spending most of the evening at the Internet Caf, so we won't need the TV either, but hey, we have it all! In the afternoon we booked a tour with Cenotes Control to the local cenote called Dos Ojos, apparently one of the most popular. It was the cheapest deal we could find, at $30, with prices varying between $30 and $50 for essentially the same tour. Prices here are so crazy that you really have to shop around hard - even for burning DVDs you have places charging $7 and then nextdoor someone else will charge you $3. And, generally speaking, the approach is quite rough - the people do not seem to care a great deal about your custom, you often get semi-cold below-average food, etc. But the natural beauty of this place is something else!
Anyways, back to the cenote. A cenote is a type of freshwater-filled sinkhole typically found in the Yucatán Peninsula and some nearby Caribbean islands. Cenote water is often very clear, as the water comes from rain water infiltrating slowly through the ground, and therefore contains very little suspended matter. The groundwater flow rate within a cenote is usually very slow at velocities ranging from 1 to 1000 meters per year. In many cases, cenotes are collapsed sections of roof over an underlying cave system. Around the Riviera Maya there are hundreds of cenotes, all attracting large numbers of cave divers and, the few that can be snorkelled, snorkellers. Cenote Dos Ojos can be snorkelled as well as dived, and this is where we went. We got a wet suit included in the deal, which turned out really useful, since the water was quite cold and we spent a good hour in there. Essentially, you swim through an open cave and you see lots of rock formations below and above you, plus the divers at the bottom of the cave - the divers can enter parts that snorkellers cannot, clearly. But you still see quite a lot from up above, including the bat cave, which you reach by snorkelling through a very low ceiling of less than half a meter. We took a lot of pictures with our new super underwater camera, however the environment is quite dark, so very few came out. This is a link to the website of our tour company, which offers a few pics to give the idea of what we are talking about:

http://www.cenotes-control.com/es/galerie/cenotes-uw

And these are our fab pics for Tulum....

Zanzin Kil

Our cabaña

La vita e' bella

Tulum ruins

Cenote Dos Ojos

Tomorrow we are heading for Chichen Itza and then a quick stop in Merida for one night. After that, we have 3 nights in Palenque (more ruins) and then San Cristobal de las Casas for Christmas. Then it will be Puerto Escondido for New Year and then a precipitating way up to Mexico City for the end of our travels.

Tulum remains copyright of the author Flav-Greg, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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These are a couple of pics of Placencia and its pretty painted houses

This was a meter-long barracuda, they call barracudas the 'dogs of the sea', look at those teeth!

We departed Belize from Placencia on a 14 hour, 3 bus jaunt up the road to Mexico. We decided to visit the picturesque village of Mahahual on the Yucatán Peninsula which, according to the lonely planet, is less touristy than say Cancun. Mahahual is described as the Caribean Mexico with lovely sandy beaches, where many of the big cruisers frequent with loads of tourists due to its beautiful coral reefs (extending from Belize) and turquoise waters.
That was until 4 months ago, when Hurricane Dean visited the village.
When we arrived 8 o'clock at night looking for a place to stay, we got the the idea that there was lots of construction going on, but did not think much of it at the time. There were giant artificial sand dunes on the way into town and many signs in Spanish that said "men working - sorry for the disturbance” but, when we got off the bus in the dark, we did not really get a sense of what was happening. In the morning now, when we walked up on the roof of our hotel to meet the morning sun and looked out, in the distance all we could see was destruction of the mangroves with bits of houses and cars in between it!! You did think that the locals were doing a bad job of keeping the area tidy until you heard what happened.

Hurricane Dean visited the village at force 5.5, with 300 kph winds for a couple of hours back in August. Fortunately, the locals were given 5 days notice and all vacated the area before the hurricane hit, so no-one was killed, but the wind and the subsequent sea action eroded 2 meters of coastline and killed the mangroves for miles around a good half a kilometer in and all the sand from the local area and beaches disappeared. The local workmen were collecting the sand from the neighbourhood and were stocking it in the sand dunes in order to rebuild the beach. The government is restoring the aqueducts, electricity and power infrastructure, but the locals ( 8000) are responsible for all the rest. What you can see in village is the people that made enough money from tourism in the past re-constructing their businesses, and the people with little money and no insurance against disaster, living in tents or makeshift debris from the aftermath.

4 months on, the locals seemed to quite leisurly accept what has happened to them and are trying to rebuild a better Mahahual than before and count themselves lucky. In the local newspapers at the moment there is talk of the possibility of Hurricane Olga (late in the season) visiting in 4 days time , but is unlikely. We are moving up the road to Tulum, which was not affected by the hurricane in any way. Tulum will be the new base for a few days in order to visit a couple of places in Mexico.

In Mahahual we stayed in “El Profe” hotel, which is in the centre of town and the cheapest at $27 a night. There is another finished place in town at the moment, Posada Pachamama, which is slightly more expensive at $36 a night and very nice and down to the fine details. Other than that, at the moment in the current rebuilding you will have to walk pretty far (1 to 3km) to look at the rest of the open other places. Curiously, we took a taxi down the road and saw a sign for the Luna de Plata that said 'open', except that there was nothing standing apart from the sign!!!!

The peace and tranquity that is Mahahual

The view inland, turning 180 degrees...

Destruction 1

Destruction 2 - view from our hotel

Destruction 3

Into Mexico: first stop Mahahual remains copyright of the author Flav-Greg, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Overall, we found that the trip was definitely overpriced for the value it offered, no doubt about it. The boat was old and dirty, the drinks and snack choice on board very limited, and the snorkelling opportunities somehow shrank to less than one hour per day, which is not really what we went on the tour for. And perhaps worse of all, the coral reef was not as good as we had imagined it to be!!! It was not that colourful and there was not that much fish either, unbelievable!!!!! The famous Belize coral reef!! The Australians were particularly disappointed, clearly. We managed to take some pics of the underwater world - though we also bulk deleted a whole bunch by mistake, probably the best ones...

The reef underneath

The reef from the boat

Rendezvous Caye

Patrick, our spearfisher specialist crew

The big shell is called conch and is currently in season, like lobster

Kevin, one of our 3 crew members

Raggamuffin Belize remains copyright of the author Flav-Greg, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Tikal is the largest of the ancient ruined cities of the Maya civilization. It is located in the El Petén department of Guatemala, in the north of the country, in the jungle.
History:
Tikal was one of the major cultural and population centers of the Maya civilization. Though monumental architecture at the site dates to the 4th century BC, Tikal reached its apogee during the Classic Period, ca. 200 AD to 850 AD, during which time the site dominated the Maya region politically, economically, and militarily while interacting with areas throughout Mesoamerica, such as central Mexican center of Teotihuacan - which we are visiting as our very last spot of our journey, sigh sigh... Following the end of the Late Classic Period, no new major monuments were built at Tikal and there is evidence that elite palaces were burned. These events were coupled with a gradual population decline, culminating with the site’s abandonment by the end of the 10th century. It is not really known how it all ended, theories mention either some major social upheaval or maybe an earthquake.
The ruins lie on lowland rainforest. Conspicuous trees at the Tikal park include gigantic ceiba, the sacred tree of the Maya, tropical cedar and mahogany. Regarding the fauna, agouti, coatis, gray fox, spider monkeys, howler monkeys, Harpy Eagles, toucans and green parrots can be seen there regularly, and in fact we saw them all apart from the harpy eagle, which is a pretty rare bird these days. Lots of monkeys everywhere, really nice. I was here before and cannot recollect seeing or hearing a single monkey, which is pretty strange. Is it the memory or I just did not take any notice?

We went into the park in the afternoon and then again at 6 in the morning, when a coat of fog wrapped everything. So we went back to bed for a couple of hours and then into the park again - minus Gregory, who was not feeling too well and stayed back at the hotel playing chess...mmm...

Here are some pics:

Tomorrow we are off to Belize. We are going straight to Caye Caulker, the backpackers spot, from where we should be boarding a Raggamuffin snorkelling cruise of about three days.

Maya ruins: Tikal remains copyright of the author Flav-Greg, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Semuc Champey is a truly fantastic place. It is basically a set of limestone pools positioned in staircase fashion with a river running below them underground: the pools are filled with mountain spring water and vary between emerald green and turquoise. A swimmers paradise! The wis hhole area is very beautiful and the journey to the pools alone is worth doing in itself. There are various caves around here and the typical trip, organised by the hostel, includes a visit to the water-filled K’ANBA caves, a quick tubing session down the river, an 8-meter jump from a bridge, and finally a walk up to the mirador for a panoramic view of the pools and then a splash inside them. This is exactly what we did, except that I skipped all the parts that involved jumping off from any sort of high point into the water. I had done a similar trip into water-filled caves here in Guatemala the last time, near Poptun. Very challenging and adrenaline-filled, the last trip still brings dark memories of when I had to jump into the water in the dark while trying to avoid underlying rocks. So this time I decided that there was absolutely no need to put myself under any kind of similar pressure and that I could enjoy the whole thing quite successfully without jumping anywhere. Gregory, to compensate, did all the jumps that he could possibly do.

This is the site official website, which provides some more pictures of the area:

http://www.semucchampey.com/index.html

El Retiro Hostel

Semuc Champey from above

Semuc Champey from below

Someone is having hesitations about jumping...

Semuc Champey remains copyright of the author Flav-Greg, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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On Sunday we took the shuttle to Lake Atitlan. Prices for shuttles have come down from the time I was here, or the price of the public buses have gone up - one of the two - so it does not make a lot of economic sense to travel on Guatemala's famous chicken buses. Chicken buses are beautifully colourful, noisy, vibrant buses, and people transport all sort stuff on them, including small animals - from there their name. They are not as elaborate as the ones in Panama City, but they are still exceptionally beautiful. Once on the lake we took the lancha to S Pedro La Laguna, where Adi was waiting for us. We checked in at his hotel - Hotel Tepepul Kaan - a really nice little hostel incredibly quiet for the location in the very centre of S Pedro.

S Pedro is quite a peculiar place. It is the hippie capital of Guatemala - and maybe of the whole of Latin America - you see the weirdest people walking around, most with long, uncombed hair and very few teeth in their mouth. Not really pretty sights to be honest, and quite effective to put you off drugs forever... Nevertheless, the place is pleasant, there are lots of nice cosy venues where to have excellent cheap food and enjoy life.
We didnt really do much there apart from eating and drinking - food is about half price than back in Antigua. The town is full of places that will show movies for free, plus facilities to download music and films, so you can keep quite busy just doing that. The best places we found were D-Noz and their super nachos dish, by the jetty, Buddha, a moldy place that dishes out fantastic thai food and where on Mondays a really good blues band plays live, and Shanti Shanti, another little rudimentary restaurant with very good breakfasts and falafels.
Apart from pigging out, one day we managed to go hiking on a section of the lake, walking along the path that joins the villages from Santa Cruz to San Marcos. That took a few hours and was enjoyable and worthwhile.

Today we are back in Antigua for one night, in the morning we are off to Lanquin to see the famous Semuc Champeys limestone pools and caves, which is about 8 hours north of here, on the way to Tikal. Tikal will be our last stop in Guatemala.

Here it is, the most typical Atitlan pic..

The path and views from Santa Cruz to San Marco

Mural in S Juan

Lake Atitlan remains copyright of the author Flav-Greg, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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I couldnt wait to get to Antigua, this is where I have first learnt Spanish and have a lot of nice memories. I had lost contact with Teresa, my teacher, a good while back, so I was really full of hope to go and see if I could find her again. And I did!! She was there, exactly the same, and her mum and 4 sons. I was almost in tears from the joy! The funny thing that happened was that we reserved a hostel online before getting to Antigua, El Hostal. When we got there, I realised this hostel was in the same road as my old school. So we are walking down the road looking for the hostel, when I spot the school building from a few steps away: I am just there telling Gregory how that was my old school, when I realise that the school IS the hostel we have booked!!! The school relocated across the road and the building got adapted into a hostel. WOW, did not expect that. But actually an excellent choice, we have now been here for almost a week and have really enjoyed it. It is really quiet, super clean and we have, Wi-fi in our room, which means access to the Internet as we please, from our bed. This is a luxury we have not had for a long time.

Beautiful Antigua

Gregory having Spanish lessons with my old teacher in my old school... in our hostel!!!

El Hostal

The other day I managed to convince Gregory to go and see Volcan Pacaya, which I climbed the last time I was here. Things have changed quite a lot since then though... four years ago we went all the way to the smoking crater, it was really hard because the last 100 meters or so you climb the cone and the cone is made of soft dark sand. This time, things were completely different. Pacaya is one of Guatemalas three active volcanos and is pretty active, so active that it was like climbing a different volcano altogether! We walked uphill for about one hour until we got to a viewpoint from where we could see the lower crater spewing lava and a black dry lava field underneath us, very similar to the one we had seen on Santiago island in Galapagos - EXCEPT that things here were a lot more live than in Galapagos. We walked down to the lava field and crossed it to get at the very feet of the hot lava, walking on a lava bed that, while it looks dry and old, it is actually very recent and still hot and glowing just a meter or so below. We had to hop from one lava rock to the other for 300-400 meters to the point where the current lava river flows. In fact, we did not go all the way, we starting feeling rather uncomfortable with the heat coming to us from ahead and below and felt that we did not actually need to get all the way right up to the flowing lava. Most people did, but frankly it looked INSANE. We only had one guide for about 30 people and no guidelines were given as to how close you could get, people were all over the place and on top of it all you only had one hour to get there and back before it got pitch black. The lava rock is very sharp and uneven, all you need is to jump badly and there you are. You could even fall into a glowing crack and catch fire... It was an awesome experience but potentially quite hazardous, and we are obviously chickens.

Yesterday we went to Chichicastenango market, the most famous market in Guatemala, some 2.5 long hours from Antigua. It was a nice day and we manged to only spend a handful of dollars on a hammoc and a couple of other trinkets, which will cost an arm and a leg to send from here, as usual. This time it seemed that the indigenas were less bothered about being photographed and we could get quite a few shots, especially Gregory seems to have no problems at all.

Tortillas...yummm!

La Antigua Guatemala remains copyright of the author Flav-Greg, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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The next day was 4.30 a start to the airport for the Corn Islands. The plane was a small 15-seater just a little bit bigger than the mosquito plane we took to the waterfalls in Guyana, still a bit spooky, especially when the pilot decided to open the newspaper wide and read it while flying over Nicaragua....
The Corn Islands are two islands 70 kilometers off the Caribbean Coast, in front of the coastal town of Bluefields. These two islands offer the opportunity to see the Caribbean side of Nicaragua in a beautiful and mostly unexplored environment. Big Corn and Little Corn are both quite small and quite different from each other - the former has an asphalted road with plenty of taxis driving around it, while on Little Corn there are no cars at all and it is generally much less developed - you can walk it north to south in about 30 minutes, if you don´t get lost.
Once we got to Big Corn, we went straight to the jetty to catch the 10 am panga to Little Corn. The panga ride from Big Corn to Little Corn was an experience in itself, best described as powerboat racing. There had been strong winds and rain constantly for the past 2 weeks or so, so the sea was particularly rough ... While the guy at the front of the boat stood holding on to some ropes to look out for other boats, the guy at the back had his finger on a high speed engine. Every time he cut the power you knew that you were about to hit a big wave and that the panga would fly for a few seconds to then come crashing down HARD on the bit of 2X4 you were sitting on... It was real fun, like being on the rides. Less fun for Gregory, who was not sitting on the life jacket like most of the other passengers and who took some really hard blows where it hurts. Most of the passengers got soaked, if not all, but it was a really good laugh. Every now and then a negative thought would pass, like, erm, what if the panga breaks into two when coming crushing down?? Never mind losing all of your stuff, the real problem is that it would be a sharks´ feast.... but it did not split into two and we got there and back quite safely, if soaked.

From Granada we had booked an economy cabin over the internet at US-run Casa Iguana. Casa Iguana is a nice place, only problem being that it is overpriced. We booked an economy cabin for $25 without bathroom, since the ones with bathroom were a staggering $55. The place looked nice and particularly the dining/social area was really pleasant, however our cabin was very basic and we still had to go walking 50 yards to toilets & shower. On top of it all, it is located on a cliff away from the beach under some shady trees home to many lovely insects. After the first night of a few long trips to the loo, we decided that Elsa' s place at $12 for a cabin with bathroom ON the beach was a much better choice. So, despite having had a real fun night at Casa Iguana playing cards all evening after a very nice dinner with very nice people, and despite the running water we had there, we decided to move to Elsa's, owned locally and with no running water but much more appealing. The other thing that annoyed us about Casa Iguana is that they sent us a taxi to pick us up on Big Corn without telling us, and the friendly taxi driver charges us three times the normal fare!!! Elvis - do not get in his taxi if you ever bump into him.

While Gregory quite liked the islands, I was quite disappointed. When I think Caribbean island surrounded by coral reefs, I think of a nice island where you can snorkel and enjoy the sea. But that was not what we found on Corn this round!!! While all the regular ‘Caribbean’ features are present, such as turquoise water, white beaches, green palm trees and stunning reefs and marine life, the weather was a disaster. We had heard that it had been raining etc, but never really took into consideration the factor WIND. It was very very windy and the sea was choppy to say the least, so the beaches were covered in algae and rubbish and snorkelling was not really much of an option. Even those who dived were complaining of poor visibility. We later found out from the locals that the time to visit when the sea is calm is between March and May - don' t bother to come here at any other time if you are looking at swimming peacefully in the sea... Gregory still managed to do some snorkelling and test out his new underwater camera, but only got some 40 mostly brown-looking pictures which were quickly erased...

That said, during our stay on Little Corn we met lots of nice fellow travellers and the setting on the beach at Elsa's was really pleasant. We also managed to walk around a little, going all the way around the north end and almost getting lost. We went hoping to find calmer waters but no luck, it was just all the same, big waves and rubbish everywhere. The island is notorious for getting people lost at night, and indeed a young couple did end up spending the night in the jungle after their torch batteries run out...Gregory bumped into them the next morning all covered in mud and asked them what happened...

We left Little Corn back to Big Corn for a day with Lina, a nice Portuguese girl who was staying also at Elsa's. The hope was to find calmer waters...what a mistake!! It was worse than Little Corn, and without the nice beach setting of Elsa's. We drove around to three different hotels till we decided to stop at Best View, which was practically abandoned, though still about functioning. Only and fortunate guests there, we had a TV in the room, so we spent most of our time watching the X Files as there was an all-day special on Sci Fi that day. We also managed to go and console ourselves with some lobster dinner and a lunch with run down, the local fish specialty of coconut milk and boiled roots and plaintain.

On Friday evening we were back at Jardin de Italia, where this time there were a lot of people on the street and the restaurants were open around the hostel. Lesbia explained that as it was Friday and people just got paid, they were out having a nice time. It reminded us of old little England...small world isnt it. On Saturday we took the 5 am Ticabus to Guatemala, which is where we are now at last!!

The only way to Fly......

boyz chillin with Lone

Girls just Chillin......

Mans best friend followed us all round the island

Our cute cabin cleaner

little corn crew assembled......

De famous national dish- RUNDOWN

a view from casa iguana's

a view from Elsa place

have you ever seen your crab so blue......oooh!

greg-flav and Misses Corn islands 2017

Corn Islands remains copyright of the author Flav-Greg, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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The first trip we planned was to the Laguna de Apoyo, organised by Oasis. A mini bus took us from the hotel a hour up a bumpy road to the laguna at a place called The Craters Edge http://www.craters-edge.com/. A really nice setting with some nice facilities. The lake is a really huge crater which acts as a water reserve and really nice to swim in, although the water can get a little rough. Fortunately there were no bull sharks in there, unlike Lake of Nicaragua. Apparently, Lake of Nicaragua was once full of bull sharks migrated in there from the Carribean - then in the Somoza´s years they were almost run to extinction by overfishing for fins, so that these days they are very rarely spotted. The day trip to Laguna de Apoyo was really peaceful and tranquil and we enjoyed every minute - Gregory swimming for hours and working on his kayaking skills, while Flavia spent the whole day reading on the hammock.

The next day we booked a 5-in-1 trip with WOW Tours http://www.wowtoursnicaragua.com which included visiting the fortaleza Coyotepe, a fort originally built by the Spanish that Somoza turned into a political prison where many political opponents were tortured and killed. Then we drove up to Volcan Masaya followed by the Market in Masaya town, followed by the picturesque town of Catarina and San Juan del Oriente with their pottery and garden centres and splendid lagoon viewpoint.
The prison was a particularly gruesome place, modern and totally concrete, but still had the feeling of a 15th century chamber of torture linked more to the Torquemada than to anything modern. It is said that on the last days of the civil war with Contras and Sandinistas, by the time the Sandinistas got to the prison the guards had killed all the political prisoners in the jail.

Coyotepe prison

Volcan Masaya is an active volcano. At the craters edge, on the day we visited it seemed to be spurting out steam instead of the sulphuric and acidic mix of gas and vapour. The crater is accessible by car - you park right next to the active crater and can literally look down inside it, 200 m below. There are actually 5 craters around the site, but the rest are inactive. At the car park you are advised to to face your car in the right direction for a quick get away in case it erupts, while the leaflets they hand out at the visitor´s entrance also suggest to use the vehicles as shelter in case it starts blowing out big rocks...

Masaya market is the usual mix of artesan products and restaurants, though the bits on sale did not quite catch Flavia´s attention, for once!!! Especially good are the low cost good quality hammocks of all descriptions. The knitted ones are particularly good, but we decided not to buy any so not to have to carry them around all the way to Guatemala and Mexico. Hopefully we can buy a couple there.

The town of Catarina is really nice and seems to be where Nicaraguans frequent for a day out The road to Catarina is interesting because you see lots of children and adults with spades and tools who are busy filling in the pot holes in the road - then they stand aside and want you to pay them for fixing the road that the government has no money for. At the very top of the town you have a spectacular view of the Laguna de Apoyo >>>

S Juan del Oriente has really great pottery of all descriptions - very hard not to buy anything.

Today, after three nights here, we finally had the chance to walk around Granada itself and take a look at the beautiful architecture. We actually didn´t walk around a great deal, as we kept bumping into people and chatting for ages. We started the day at Kathy´s Waffle House, possibly the best place in town where to have breakfast. There we met a Canadian couple and stayed for ages. As we left, we then bumped into Aidey, a British-US chap who we met back in Canoa, Ecuador, at the fabulous Bambu hostal. In a nutshell, we walked very little and only saw the central area of Granada, but still managed to get a good few pics together >>>

This is the best hamburger we have ever eaten in our lives - it costs $5 and it can be ordered at Zoom Bar in Granada.

This evening we are moving on to Managua (only an hour away). Tomorrow morning we have a 6.30 am flight to Corn Islands, where we will stay till Friday. We are planning to go to Little Corn, which is the smaller island, nice and remote and with no internet access.
In Managua we will be staying at the Jardin de Italia hotel.

Granada, Laguna de Apoyo & Masaya remains copyright of the author Flav-Greg, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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We spent 3 nights on Ometepe island - the maximum allowed by our by now incredibly tight schedule, though we could have easily spent a few more... Ometepe is a volcanic island made up of two volcanos, Concepcion and Maderas. The former is the highest and stripped of vegetation by lava flow and altitude, the latter is covered with dense cloud forest and its top is filled with a lake. We decided not to hike to either of them - this is a hot place and climbing up volcanos at high temperatures did not quite appeal to us that much. We went straight to the Maderas sector - 30 or so km which took us almost 3 hours by local bus - and stayed at the Monkey Island Hostel for the first two nights. This is a small place run by Señor Jacinto and his family near Merida - we felt good being there because this was a genuine family business run by nice people, really cheap ($8 a night for both, private room with bathroom), and nice and tranquil in nice surroundings. They have a small monkey on site which unfortunately they keep chained to a tree because it is a nuisance if let free - it likes to pick fruit and all food that can be found... surprise surprise. So the poor monkey sits there and hugs anybody who goes near and gets really cuddly and never wants you to leave. Really heart-breaking. At least they treat it ok and give it plenty of room by chaining it to a steel cable that runs between two trees, giving a lot more space than otherwise. But still, chained-up monkeys are not really the type of sight that we like to see, are they. Especially when the island is absolutely rife with monkeys - any small walk into the green will reveal some and also they can be heard howling all over the island (they are howler monkeys). A particularly bad story was the one of the close-y Monkey Island (Isla Congo). As per Jacinto, it appears that some tourism minister has decided to attract tourists to Merida and the Hacienda Merida by putting 12 monkeys on this small island, where there is hardly any food for them. So they survive by eating leaves and insects and they hate the rest of the world. If you decide to kayak to the island and desembark there, the monkeys will attack you and bite and scratch you to bits. We had read some blogs about these nasty monkeys but not many people seem to know why they are like this and that someone has purposedly put them there.

Anyways! Apart from the horrible predicament of some of the local monkeys on Ometepe, the island is actually a really nice place. It is extremely lush with an amazing agricultural output, owing to its fertile volcanic soil. We went to visit Finca Magdalena on Maderas, which is an organic farm producing organic coffee, where the Sandinistas used to operate. Today it is run by a cooperativa of 24 families and offers rustic accomodation to tourists. We visited the coffee production there and had a nice long afternoon, walking back to our accomodation along the main and only road. Transport on the island is really difficult, buses are not frequent and the road is soo bad that it is almost quicker to walk it than sitting on the bus... But of course we tried to sit on the bus whenever we saw one.
On the way to Finca Magdalena Gregory managed to lose his wallet. After spending a good half an hour looking for it in the streets, we assumed that he must have left in on the bus in the morning. Later on in the day, while walking back home, we bumped into the same bus that we took in the morning and, when Gregory approached the driver asking if he had found the wallet, there he pulled it out! So we got the wallet back along with all its contents. Quite amazing.

On our second day we decided to walk down to the lake to take a glimpse of Monkey Island - except that we were intercepted by some dogs and Gregory came running back down the path, with a scary worried face clutching a very thick stick in his hands... so we retreated and never actually made it to see this infamous islet. From Monkey Island we went to famous Charco Verde, probably the best spot and best hotel on the island. We were lucky enough to get the last available room and really enjoyed our short stay there. The hotel is inside a reserve with a looping trail - a beautiful spot with a calm beach, kayaks, monkeys nearby and lots of birds. We spent ages trying to take a good picture of one of the urracas, blue parrot-like birds with a long tail that are very very shy and fly away as soon as they spot you looking at them. They are all over the island and also probably Central America, but extremely elusive.
Charco Verde was one of the highlights on Ometepe - definitely recommended if anybody is thinking of going there, but best booked in advance.

We left Charco Verde yesterday morning and got to Granada at around midday. We are staying at the Oasis Hostel, which is acclaimed by everybody as one of the best hostels in Central America. Our first impression was quite disappointing - most rooms are dark and windowless - but other than that it is quite cosy.

PS: A real great find in Nicaragua has been the ESKIMO ice cream that they make worth trying for sure !!!!!

The boat to Ometepe

Volcan Concepcion

Monkey Island Hostel

Flavia and Chico

Finca Magdalena

Mono Congo (howler monkey) around Finca Magdalena

Charco Verde lakeside

Charco Verde ecological reserve

Lago de Nicaragua / Ometepe remains copyright of the author Flav-Greg, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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San Juan del Sur is a nice little village on the Pacific sea, very touristy. It seems that it is changing pretty quickly and getting really commercial. For us, it is retains a certain flaire - it looks fairly Caribbean/colonial. People sit on their rocking chairs outside and the houses are nice and colourful. The beach itself is not really for bathing, it is large and built up and hosts lots of boats of various types. As we got here, we thought we would stay just one night, but then today we got up at 4:30 to go and see the turtles and got back quite tired. The hotel we are staying at El Puerto is very comfortable and so...there was no question really about hanging around a bit longer.

Our turtle expedition was great. We are in the middle of a arribada, which is the Spanish for mass egg-laying. Literally thousands of olive ridley turtles (smaller type than the leatherback, they only reach 75 cm) come to shore about 6 or 8 times per season, between July and December, to lay the eggs. They come in thousands and then inbetween the arribadas you only see one or two per night. And we got here in the middle of one!! Last night there were over 1,000, we were told, there was hardly any space to walk!!! We however decided to book the morning tour because that meant that we could take pictures and also we would stop at another beach for swimming. We went with Hotel Casa Oro and that is the way to do it, if anybody currently in Nicaragua is thinking of taking a tour. There are other places offering transport to the beach, but at Casa Oro they are actively involved in turtle conservation and so this is the best place where to take your money. Plus they are a really nice caring family.
Anyways! When we got to the beach at 6 am there were about 30-50 turtles coming and going. Far from the thousand in the night but still quite a lot more than we have ever seen!!! We spent a couple of hours there and then we drove to Coco beach for a swim, which was quite good fun with the big waves. Gregory managed to lose his second pair of swimming goggles and so now he is in trouble, because they don´t sell them around here. So far he has managed to lose 2 pairs of goggles and two swimming costumes, not bad hey?!

Here are the precious pics:

This baby turtle was being kept at the rangers house and it is not a olive ridley. The next olive ridley hatchlings are due this month but not quite ready yet

Coco Beach

Into Nicaragua: San Juan del Sur remains copyright of the author Flav-Greg, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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For our last spot in Costa Rica, we decided to go and see the beaches, just so to have a more complete picture of the country. The aim was to go to Playa Grande to stay overnight and see the turtles, and then move up to Playa Conchal the next day - this having the reputation of being the most beautiful beach in Costa Rica.

Playa Grande has been part of the Parque Nacional Marino Las Baulas since 1991, when the government finally decided to protect the leatherback turtles that come to nest here. Having a national park here prevents FRONT beach development and ensures that one of the most important leatherback nesting areas in the world is preserved for future generations. Set back from the beach there is actually quite a lot of development for a national park - and more to come, seen the number of lots for sale that we saw everywhere - however not right on the beach, which ensures that lights are kept to a minimum. Lights disorientate the turtles and put them off coming back to lay their eggs - turtles tend to return to lay at the beach where they were born, so if they don´t, this impacts on them a great deal. This is why no lights are allowed on the beach, apart from the infra-red that the park rangers.

The leatherback is critically endangered from over-hunting, a lack of protected nesting sites and plastic bags, which look too similar to their main food, jelly fish. In an effort to protect the decreasing population of turtles, park rangers on Playa Grande collect the eggs daily and incubate them to increase the chances of survival. Normally, only 1 out 1,000 turtles make it to adulthood!!!! The problem is, even when they are incubated, sea turtles must hatch on the beach and enter the water by themselves, otherwise memory imprinting does not occur and they will never return to their birthplace to nest.

At Playa Grande you can book turtle-egg-laying sessions for $16, which all goes to support the conservation effort. Tourists go to the office to register for a place and are told at what time the nesting is going to occur for that night, depending on the tide. The turtles nest at high tide because they are very heavy and it is hard to hike up to the beach.... For us the time was set between 6 and 10 pm - during this period you go back to the office and sit there waiting around till a turtles shows up. At this point the rangers come to get you and they lead you to the turtle, which can be looked at only from behind and cannot be touched. We were lucky - like we have been for a while - and at 7 pm a 1.3 m leatherback turtle weighing 320 kg showed up. It is not like there are millions of this turtles coming to nest there, it is only between 50 and 400 each year between October and March, so I think we were really lucky. Leatherbacks are the largest sea turtle of all, they are huge. We were able to see her deposit the eggs in the meter-deep hole and then cover them all up (futile work since the rangers were going to dig them all up again...). The whole process takes 1-2 hours - to dig out the hole, drop the eggs and cover it up. So we had two groups of 15 tourists all standing there taking turns to look at this giant turtles depositing her eggs. They cannot see very well but I am sure they must notice all these people moving behind them... not sure how conservational this is, but I guess they must have figured out that it does not bother the animals to the point of not coming back. Quite a surreal experience for a human though!

Ah yes! The curious thing is that you only pay the National Park if you actually manage to see a turtle, otherwise you just book again for the next night. This means that you sit around waiting and, as soon as a turtle comes to shore, all tourists queue up to pay the fee and then run to watch the egg laying!! Crazy but very just.

The next day - after seeing the type of beach Playa Grande is now in the rainy season - we decided not to go to visit Playa Conchal, which on top of things could only be reached by an expensive taxi ride. We decided to walk back to Tamarindo instead along the length of Playa Grande, which took the whole of an hour as we were looking for sand dollars, which unfortunately were all broken. At the river estuary which separates Playa Grande from Tamarindo (big built up seaside resort) we boarded a small motor boat to cross the river and then negotiated a river tour with the boat owner to go and see the mangrove swamps, behind the lure of crocodiles, monkeys etc. The river trip was excellent until we desembarked to go ´looking for monkeys´. We were wearing shorts and T´shirts and I had flip flops on... Ever tried to walk in the mangrove swamps?? Well. You should NOT go there with short sleeves or flip flops. The ground is very soft and muddy, I was slipping all over the place and it is not like there is a path there, you have to walk through vegetation some of which has got big thorns. And of course it is full of mosquitos, some carrying dengue!!!!! We ventured in for about 20 mins and our guide actually led us very quickly to some howling monkeys, which we looked at for about 3 minutes till we decided to quickly retire back to the boat, myself covered in mud from the flipping of the flip flops which kept getting stuck into the mud, whenever I did not lose them along the way. Arghh!! I was really furious with the guide for not saying we were going to walk through this place and lie about the mosquitos - he said there were none when I asked!! Ok, that was probably a stupid question to ask - are there mosquitos in the swamps... - but saying no was not too brilliant either. Later it was a good laugh but at the time I guarantee it wasn´t. Plus we could be incubating dengue as we speak!!!

So fingers crossed...

Playa Grande - this is the beach where the turtles make their nests

Pics from the river trip

Mangroves

Today we have crossed into Nicaragua and currently we are staying at the El Puerto hotel in San Juan del Sur. Tomorrow morning at 5 am we are going to see more egg-laying turtles, but a different breed.

Playa Grande remains copyright of the author Flav-Greg, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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So the weather has been pretty miserable with daily rain, and when we got to the park, the volcano could not be seen at all. In fact, they have shut the crater access off because of mud slides and other dangers. It is almost 2,000 m high and therefore a hike uphill of 8 steep km, which probably we would have not done even if the weather had been good.
We hiked around the Sector de las Pailas instead, the cauldron circuit, which was absolutely stunning.

The land here is very alive (Rincon de la Vieja last erupted in 1991) and the hike takes you through hot springs, surphur pools, bubbling mud pots and lots of fumaroles. The north-eastern part of the trail goes through dense forest with beautiful huge ficus trees and LOTS OF ANIMALS. We came across a large group of white-faced monkeys with babies which stayed around for ages - in fact, after about an hour of intense observation, we were the ones to leave the scene! Then we saw a large rodent of which we cannot remember the name, a beautiful white squirrel with a black line on the back, a smaller group of capuchin monkeys and... the coatis. The coatis turned up just as we were setting up our picnic, as they do. As soon as we spotted one coming towards us, we started taking out the cameras, not knowing that the coati had a plan... Before we realised what it was doing, it had been on the table and grabbed hold of our big packet of cheese and ran off!! After about 5 minutes it came back, at which point we started to feed it bread to ensure it would not get the rest of the food (we had 2 packages of cheese, luckily). Notices in the park warn not to feed the animals, but quite frankly we had no choice. Either we fed them, or we could have not had any food ourselves... they are quite ravenous and have big teeth and claws. Later we heard stories from the rangers saying that some tourists got scratched up and needed stitching for trying to retrieve the food back from the coatis!!

We almost forgot: in this park live the most vicious sand flies we have ever come across!

ANGOLO ITALIANO

Questi angoli italiani si sono quasi estinti perche`purtroppo non riesco a starci dietro! Ci spostiamo abbastanza rapidamente (specialmente ora che ci mancano soltanto poco piu`di due mesi) e scaricare le foto, selezionarle, caricarle e scrivere il blog richiede tempo - forse un paio di ore per capitolo? Dura quando si rientra stanchi da un giro e poi il giorno dopo si riparte subito... e la nostra stagionatura certo non aiuta...
Comunque!
Il parco nazionale `L`angolo della vecchia` e`un parco bellissimo. Una parte include fumarole e pozze di fango ribollente, l`altra una foresta tropicale asciutta con alberi vecchissimi e molto molto scenici. E in mezzo agli alberi e`pieno di scimmie! Abbiamo incontrato un gruppo grande di scimmie dalla faccia bianca, bellissime, all`inizio facevano le boccacce (cercando di spaventarci e farci andare via, immagino) poi si sono rilassate e sono venute anche abbastanza vicino. Poi abbiamo avuto un incontro con dei coatis (non credo ci sia un nome in italiano) che sono delle specie di procioni con il naso appuntito quasi piatto per annusare il terreno, molto carini e famelici. Uno ci ha fregato il pacchetto di formaggio e se l `e`filata!! poi e`tornato e per timore che si fregasse pure l`altro gli abbiamo dato mezzo pacchetto di pane. Tra un po`me lo strappava dalle mani!! Mazza questi animali selvatici...

insomma una giornata megagalattica, paesaggi nuovi e interessanti, ponticelli di tronco di albero, sentieri bellissimi, e le scimmie e i coatis a completare il quadro!

la costa rica e`davvero un paese ricco di animali, ne abbiamo visti piu`qui che in tutto il viaggio messo insieme (a parte le galapagos, chiaro). sono solo circa 30 anni che il governo ha preso la direzione dei parchi nazionali e dell`eco turismo, pero`pare che l`abbiano fatto in tempo prima che distruggessero tutto. I costaricani sono generalmente carini e gentili ed e`chiaro che prendono il turismo molto seriamente. Raccomandiamo una visita da queste parti a coloro che non sanno dove fare le prossime ferie! Magari combinata con il Nicaragua, che ancora non abbiamo visto ma che essendo qua attaccato dovrebbe avere anche lui parecchie scimmie e coccodrilli da offrire.

Ecco le foto:

Parque Nacional Rincon de la Vieja remains copyright of the author Flav-Greg, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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The hostel

We got to Santa Elena at around midday but, as the bumpy ride and the overwhelming scenery indeed overwhelmed us, we felt too tired to start another tour straight away. So we took the afternoon out to have a look around and try to choose what activities to do - this place really reminds you of Disneyland - just the stuff is real. There are butterfly farms, humming bird farms, reptile and frog farms, insect farms, bat farms, a number of canopy/zip lines, hanging bridges, you name it. Oh yes, and the cloud forest reserves!! These are the Santa Elena reserve and the more famous Monteverde reserve, which is the main reason people actually come here, though in the end they all probably end up all sort of other stuff.

RANARIUM

The first place we decided to visit was the Ranarium , a fairly large place that turned out to be absolutely amazing. They have some 30 species of frogs on show, one more stunning than the other. On the way in, in the corridor, we came across a non-resident orange-kneed tarantula, another amazingly beautiful local creature, of which we managed to take a few good pics. Here is one:

Unfortunately, the frogs cannot be photographed with flash as otherwise they go blind, so we have very few and very blurred pics of those. We were allowed to flash them out on our first tour, which gave us great joy and satisfaction but that now makes us feel really guilty... Anyways! The amazing frogs. You have frogs that rely on camouflage and try to remain as low-key as possible (leaf frogs, usually green with some other striking feature, who are active at night) and others, such as the poison dart frogs, that try their best to stand out . This is a defense strategy that entails advertising a frogs toxicity with bright colours > i. e. do not touch me!! So you have glass frogs, hour glass frogs, milk frogs, bull frogs, gaudy leaf frogs (the front cover frogs of all) they are so perfect and gorgeous that they look like they are fake.

Below are a couple of our photo attempts...

Leaf frog at night, active

Leaf frog during the day, sleeping - yes, we went back to see them again...

This website has some nice pics that give an idea of what sort of frogs we are talking about >
http://www.waterfallgardens.com/lapaz-frogs.htmlhttp://www.waterfallgardens.com/lapaz-frogs.html

SANTA ELENA RESERVE

We decided to visit the Santa Elena reserve as opposed to the Monteverde one mainly because the former is much less visited, something like 10 times less. Monteverde is private and gets a lot of money and scores of people go up and down it every day, while Santa Elena is managed by the local High School and is less touristy and wilder. So we thought we could spread the money better and also have a better chance to see animals by going to Santa Elena. But we were wrong regarding the animals: our guide informed us that there are very few animals around: we are in the rainy season and there is little food around and they tend to stay at lower altitudes.. The only animal that we saw was a resident peccary ( like a small wild boar) which introduced himself by sticking his head between my knees while we were standing chatting... I thought it was a dog, till I looked down and got a real fright, which immediately turned into concern about the new colour of my trousers...Peccaries are not exactly the cleanest of forest animals.
So we spent the morning walking around in the beautiful cloud forest with the guide showing us tiny flowers and plants with his very powerful telescope. Quite interesting, especially since we could take pictures via the telescope which made it specially good fun.
So it was a good visit but we felt somehow disappointed not to see any monkeys or sloths. Later on the same day we booked a night walk at the Ecology Sanctuary - a place where there are banana and coffee plantations and therefore lots of food for animals - but even there we saw relatively little. We saw a sloth on a tree, a couple of orange-kneed tarantulas nests, a few insects and that was all. Maybe all a trap to make money out of tourists? We will never know, the forest is not a zoo and so each trip is different. Nevertheless, going into the woods at night is quite an awesome experience in itself.

One of our best telescope shots..

Just outside the reserve entrance lots of water feeders were attracting dozens of humming birds of many kinds. We spent about one hour looking at them - the big ones seem a lot more concerned about humans than the little ones.

JEWELS OF THE RAINFOREST EXHIBITION

On our last day we went to see the world's largest private insect collection at Selvatura - by world famous entomologist Dr. Richard Whitten. Thousands of insects, butterflies and other incredible specimens from all over the world, all collected in one huge room and displayed like an art collection. WOW!

While we were there, we also visited the reptile and amphibian live collection - more snakes and frogs and a very curious lizard that they call Jesus Christ Lizard because it is so fast that it runs on water!!!!

The Whitten collection

After lunch we took a bus to Liberia, more north-west, from where we are going to visit another National Park and the beach.

Arenal to Eco-Disneyland, erm... Monteverde remains copyright of the author Flav-Greg, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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The coatis

Then they took us to the Arenal Observation Lodge, which is a posh hotel with an observatory and sismograph where the view of the volcano is really excellent. There we stayed till it got dark and were lucky to see a good bit of lava coming out and hear all the spitting and spewing. From there we then got taken to the thermal baths, which were quite good - probably the best ones we have tried in our lives!

Volcán Arenal (1,633 meters) is a picture-perfect cone. It's also Costa Rica's most active volcano and probably on every tourist's itinerary. Arenal was sacred to pre-Columbian tribes (it is easy to imagine sacrifices tossed into the inferno), but it slumbered peacefully throughout the colonial era. On 29 July 1968, it was awakened from its long sleep by a fateful earthquake. The massive explosion that resulted wiped out the villages of Tabacón and Pueblo Nuevo, whose entire populations perished. The blast was felt as far away as Colorado.
Today it is regarded as one of the world's most active volcanoes. Its lava flows pretty much constantly and eruptions, though relatively mild, are continuous.

Arenal by day (the white smoke is smoke, not clouds!)

Arenal by night

The next day we moved on to Monteverde, the most famous cloud forest in Costa Rica. We bought a transport package known as minibus-boat-minibus which entails being transferred from La Fortuna to a boat, crossing Lake Arenal and then continuing by minibus to Monteverde through a very rough road and stunning scenery.

The Arenal surroundings on the way to Monteverde

Baldi hotsprings
[img=http://www.travellerspoint.com/photos/69298/baldi_springs_1.jpg

Volcán Arenal and the Baldi hot springs remains copyright of the author Flav-Greg, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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The same day we arrived, we decided to book an excursion with Expediciones Tropicales, which is one of the big agencies here. The idea was to stay a couple of days and visit the Volcan Poas, a coffee finca and other bits and pieces, however, when we started reading about this 4 in 1 combo tour where they take you to see the volcano and 3 other sights all in one day, we thought it may be worth investing some money and save a precious day or two. So we booked the $80 a head all day trip, which would have included a visit to the volcano, the La Paz Waterfall Gardens, arts and crafts shop and coffee plantation visit. Well, the program turned out to be a little different and absolutely worth every penny. First thing we went to see the volcano, which must be seen in the morning before the clouds roll in. The weather was terrible and we honestly thought there was no point walking up to the viewpoint - we did anyways and surprise surprise, the clouds were everywhere but above the crater!!! So we managed to get a good look at this active volcano and its huge crater filled with milky turquoise broiling water with the smell of rotten eggs. Quite impressive. On the way back, from the minibus the driver spotted a sloth hanging from a telephone cable, so we all got off and started taking pictures till the sloth realised that he was at the centre of the attention and slowly moved back into the trees. From the volcano we were taken for breakfast to a restaurant with beautiful landscaped gardens and lake. After that, we visited the La Paz waterfall and then from there it was a two-hour drive to the Sarapiqui river, where we were put onto a boat to ´look for caimans´. The boat trip was completely unexpected and worthwhile: we saw a number of caimans and American crocodiles, a few large iguanas, spider monkeys, another sleeping sloth and a few birds. The boat took us to a private area where they had a serpentario, a ranario and a mariposario and where, after visiting all three, we had lunch. While the butterfly farm was fairly pathetic, they had a good few interesting snakes but above all the frogs! They had the frogs in a net garden rather than under glass, which made it so much nicer to look at and photograph them. Tiny red poison dart frogs and black and green dart frogs - there are no golden frogs in Costa Rica - they are highly toxic and absolutely gorgeous. Then it started pouring down but by then it was time to head back to San Jose. Absolutely great day, amazing what money can buy....

So far, our impression of Costa Rica is very positive. It is all true, the country is fully geared up for tourism - the excursion today and the countless ministry of tourism posters in our simple hostel proves that they are extremely serious about it. ´More than a country, a commitment to the world´ - how strong is that!!!
Everywhere there are signs of properties with butterfly farms, trout farms, coffee tasting, canopy lines. Yes, it is very touristy, but no wonder! It is an impressively LUSH country, a country of volcanos, rainforests, cloud forests, abundant wildlife and beaches. The Costa Rican Nation has 185 years of independent life and democracy and is known worldwide for its political stability, in sharp contrast to the brutal conflicts and poverty that have affected most of the rest of Central America. It also has no standing army since 1948 - a smart country that has focused its interest and resources to the development of education, health and environmental sustainability and awareness. Our guide today mentioned that 100% of the energy in Costa Rica is renewable, the majority coming from idroelectrical plants, then wind, then thermic and finally biomass. Now, that deserves a lot of respect!!

VOLCAN POAS

La Paz waterfall

Starting our Sarapiqui safari

The most talked-about snake in Central America, the fer-de-lance, much feared for its aggressiveness and lethal venom.

Black and green dart frog

Blue-jeans dart frog - this one must have washed them too much... most of these frogs have really noticeable dark blue legs and waist, quite funny

SLOTH on the Wire

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Anyways! Apart from camera fixing and camera shopping, while here we went to visit the Canal at the Miraflores Locks. It was interesting to see how it operates, lowering these huge ships through the locks, and visiting the museum etc. Since 1999 the Canal is administered entirely by Panama - the US has pulled out - and now they are looking at expanding it because ships nowadays are a lot larger than back in 1914, when it started to operate. Can you believe that? Something like that excavated and built a century ago.

Today we went to walk around the San Felipe area, which is meant to be the old colonial part of the city, and this was pretty disppointing. It is really old and decrepit - not much colonial about it, certainly nothing like Cartagena - but they seem to be restoring it pretty seriously, given that most of the buildings were under scaffoldings. It seems that Panama has had a real injection of money lately and they are building and restoring the place like crazy. They also seem to have some real aggressive plans to attract foreign capital and investment, with already an increasing number of retirees from the US who are investing in bed & breakfasts and small hotels all over the country. These immigrants, together with the many others and especially Colombians, have caused a surge in the real estate market and construction industry. Panama even has ´residency programs´to attract foreign capital, like the ´Retiree Visa´, the ´Reforestation investor´, etc, depending on how much one earns or invests you can get different sets of benefits.

A small note for backpackers who would like to leave their luggage at the hotel for a few hours then collect the luggage later and take the night bus to another destination. We stayed at the Hotel Aqua Marina in 5 de Mayo and we wanted to check out at 3pm (normal there) and put our luggage in deposit. The manager does not have a deposito and will not take responsibility for anyone luggage which means that you may have to pay for another night into a cheaper hotel and not use it or do as we did go and play pool for hours followed by the internet to use up the time, carrying our luggage with us. The hotels in Plaza 5 de mayo are not really geared for backpackers, no tourist information whatsoever , the plus side is already written above.

From what we can see and read in 3 days, Panama in general is one of Central Americas best kept secrets, you have nice people, big city life, unspoilt rain forests to explore and beaches, and its quite cheap.

Tonight we are taking a bus to San Jose in Costa Rica - 15 hours in total - it should be a pretty good bus, especially if we go by the standard of the bus station... the biggest, most modern and spotless bus terminal we have ever come across!!

The fish market in Panama City is not to be missed!

Lunching at the fish market restaurant with David and Evelyn from our boat voyage

The Panama Canal at the Miraflores Locks

View from the Casco Viejo, old town

Local artesania and Kuna molas - we have bought enough!

One of the famous ´red devils´of Panama - awesome and truly beautiful

Panama City remains copyright of the author Flav-Greg, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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