30 April, 2007: Matthew
I hadn't intended to stop so short yesterday... so I'm back now :) As I was saying, we are having a good time here, though the road to get here was long. That "long" portion was one thing that we were not so much looking forward to, but was necessary to complete this leg of our journey. Mostly it was just difficult to ride by so many wonderful places that we didn't have time to stop and explore. We were especially feeling this for Nicaragua, but keep telling ourselves that we will simply have to go back - when the opportunity shows itself.
The Stantons, our friends here in Panama, have been down here for coming on two years now. They are both school teachers and work in a nearby school. The handsome young Marek came along last October and has brought lots of laughs and entertainment to our visit so far. He certainly reflects his parents thus far in his laid back enjoyment of all company around. As you might notice in the pictures, he is a healthy little chunk and also enjoys plenty of attention from Panamanians in all directions, especially his irresistable cheeks that just beg to be touched!!
We are planning to leave here on Wednesday and start our way back up to Costa Rica. We have been convinced to stop over at least for a day in the Boquete area, which is the most western part of Panama and take in some of the beatiful jungle up there as well as the cloud forest which surrounds Vocan Baru. We then are going to make our way further north and west to the Nicoya Penensula in Costa Rica, where we plan to meet up with Andres on Sunday and spend the rest of the week with him before our journey takes us back to the US for a couple of weeks.
29 April, 2007: Matthew
Ok, so we have been a couple of days without an update... but we're still alive and well! We are staying with our friends Chris and Kalika, who have been taking good care of us and providing a very relaxing stay. The arrival here in Panama City was uneventful, though quite long.
25 April, 2007: Matthew
We arrived in San Jose this afternoon... a big city to be sure. Kind of just another uneventful travel day. We cruised around Liberia a little bit this morning before packing up our bags at the Hospedaje and moving on to the bus station. Once we arrived in San Jose we began our walk in search of a place for the night. It doesn´t take long to realize that street signs are a rarity here, and don´t neglect to notice that the odd numbered streets are to the east of town and even to the west. I must confess that we did some ¨mis-counting¨ of blocks before fully arriving at this fact... much less our hotel. Our place tonight is secure enough and clean enough... just sort of reminds us of those huge storage units that are usually in a down-town area and in years past served as some kind of manufacturing or industrial building, now sectioned off by plywood walls and lit with long florescent lights.
In our search for a hotel tonight Nina and I had an interesting experiece that we had not previously been familiar with. In the midst of disovering the fact about the odd and even numbered streets, we also found that there were two streets with the exact same name, one that heads at a diagonal south-east direction and the other straight east. Well, we were supposed to be on the one, but were on the other... and so ended up doing a little bit of back-tracking. Ok, so as we are recovering our location, we decided to check out a couple of hotels that we pass. They look a little dingy, but hey maybe they will have a good price, and besides, we're outta here early in the morning. The first one is fine, just a little bit higher than what we were hoping for, so we move on. Next, we walk up the long narrow stairwell off the street, and ring the doorbell so that the barred gate will open... Do you have a room? By the hour. Oh, ok, thanks... we moved on again.
24 de Abril, 2007: Nina
Well we are in Costa Rica today, what a short trip through Nicaragua! One of the few disapointments of our trip yet, but definitely a disapointment was the short time we had in Nicaragua. Sigh. We had a nice time in both Jinotega and Granada. Jinotega was a small town surrounded by mountains in the north west of the country. It was a bit out of our way because we had to take a 3 hour bus ride, from the main highway, on an unpaved road to get there. But, it was a great little town and we got to see a lot of beautiful topography. Granada is in the southern region and sits right on Lake Nicaragua. It is a colonial town with the usual tourist attractions and tourists themselves, but we really did not see many, compared to Antigua. I compare the city to Antigua because they were very similar in many respects but I liked Granada much better. Granted, we were there less than 24 hours but it was a very pleasant stay. The colonial buildings were in beautiful condition and the city seemed to have a nice atmosphere. I would go back sometime if I could. And, it makes a great base for all of the amazing places there are to explore in that southern part of the country. As we were leaving the area this morning, we drove for awhile alongside the mighty Lake Nicaragua. We looked out and saw the two towering volcanic islands, which sit in the middle of the lake, hazed through the distance. Waiting to be enjoyed and explored, but alas, we pass them by. Islands of Ometepe, we shall return!
... enter Matthew:
The differences that are noticed between countries often just as you cross the boarder are very interesting. In our case, they often have to do with the modes of transport, and then as we continue on, find some subtle and some obvious differences in food, speech paterns, social behavior (especially towards travelers), etc.
We rarely saw a roof rack on a bus or van in Honduras, which was the polar opposite to Guatemala - often to our dimay as we are often with our sort of large backpacks. The roads in Honduras were suddenly paved and as a whole far better than Guatemala or Nicaragua. Folks in Guatemala are all about saying ´´buen provecho´´ - digest well, when a person is eating. This goes for the people that you are at the table with as well as nearly anyone passing by if eating at a street stand. In Honduras ´´adios´´ is a common greeting if only in passing in addition to being a farewell, as opposed to buenos dias, buenas tardes, etc. in many other places. Especially in the north, Nicaragua is very rocky and I enjoyed seeing many many stone wall fences for seperating any field, house, yard... also a great deal of the time ´´living fences´´ are used in Nicaragua. This is when small, fast growing trees are planted all along the fence line, and the barbed wire is laced between them. Hey, if the roots take well, there is promise of a good fence post for quite a few years!! We saw a lot of horses still at work in the hills of Honduras, and then in the cities quite commonly in Nicaragua - pulling both carts with people, or firewood, loads of dirt, sand, etc. In many ways Honduras seemed far more ´´advanced´´ than Guatemala in terms of fast food influence, supermarkets and a general feel of westernization. Nicaragua took somewhat of a step backwards in this respect, but not much, and largely we have felt that the modernization has become more noticable the further south we go. Mastercard needs to get in gear throughout Central America though, we are in a nearly endless battle to find an ATM where we can pull money!!! Friendlyness of people that you meet on the street or buses has been great across the board, although we found people in Guatemala to really seem the most helpful and eager to help you find your way. As I have only been in Costa Rica for about 8 hours or so, I don´t have too many comments yet. Except that it is EXPENSIVE!! haha. Nina and I paid $12 for dinner tonight, which is more than twice what we are used to paying in most other places we have been. Ok, I´ll have to continue my observations.
23 de Abril, 2007: Nina
I only have a few minutes to write, but I wanted to give a quick update. We arrived in Nicaragua yesterday, we had to stop just an hour or so short of the border the night before last, but we got in to Nicaragua early yesterday morning. A tiny hold up at the border... a visa issue. We were under the impression, as we had been told, that Guate, Honduras, and Nica, all share a border agreement and a US citizen has 90 days total in the three countries before renewing traveling visa. Well, we still aren`t sure what the real situation is but we think it could be only 60 days. 60 days for us happens on Thursday, and thus the border guard had an issue with us entering the country 4 days before our visa expires! BUT, he gave us a pass, and made us promise to leave by Thursday morning! Which, thankfuly, was our plan anyways. We were needing to leave Nica by Wednesday in order to make it to Chris and Kalika´s by Friday night. Whew.
So we are pretty bumbed that we only have these few days in Nicaragua. We are in a pretty cool town in the mountains right now and would love to stay longer and explore the area but we are needing to leave in an hour or so and head south. There are some pretty cool islands in Lake Nicaragua that seem absolutely amazing from what I have read... but I don´t know if we will be able to visit them at all. We could definitely spend several more weeks here if we had the time... Oh well, I guess we will just have to return some day! I feel like everything is going by so fast now that we are traveling more and have these plans to be places. Our plane ticket back to the states is only 3 weeks away... :(
20 de Abril, 2007: Nina
Sorry it has been awhile since I have written, Matthew has been hogging the webpage! Just kidding. Well our week in La Esperanza is coming to a close tomorrow morning. It has been... interesting. Jason, if you are reading this, let me give you due credit for being right when you said something to the effect of there existing schools and people who teach Spanish down here but have no idea how to teach it and half the time are not correct. Because, that pretty much sums up our experience with these two women whom we spent the last week ...uh.. studying. Now really it hasn't been too bad, because we had only agreed to 10 hours of class spread out over the week, and also, it was fairly inexpensive (for language school). But, we now have a fuller appreciation for highly trained and professional teachers, and organized, reputable, and established schools, like Celas Maya. My experience actually got a little better the last two days, and Matthew was looking on the bright side so even he was able to get something out of his classes... when he wasn't correcting his teacher and pulling out notes from Celas Maya to try to prove his points. We both had occasions with our teachers when we were teaching them grammer about their own language. Wow. Well, now we know! On a more positive note, they were two very nice women and at least we were able to practice speaking Spanish more than usual... although my most common phrase was "I dont understand" due in part to my teacher's lack of pronuciation skills!
So we had heard about a little forest of Bonzai trees that was around this town somewhere, so yesterday we decided to find it. We asked directions and were pretty confident about the general direction we were heading. As we walked further and further, we would ask people whom we encountered on the way, if we were heading in the correct direction for the dwarf forest. They all affirmed our direction. We had walked a couple of miles and were pretty sure we had gone far enough, but we just didn't see anything that resembled an area of bonzai trees. In addidtion, there was a Y in the road and of course we didn't know which way to go. We seemed to be in the middle of nowhere and there were no people around to ask. We were also very tired, especially me because I wasnt feeling very well, and we only had a limited amound of time left before we had to make the long walk back before class. We walked to the top of a little plateau to look around.
All we could see was vast land of trees and strange white earth and rock. We walked back down from the plateau with no further idea of where to look. We hated giving up but after wandering around some more, we simply headed back home with no encounter of the bonzai forest. Luckily we hitched a ride almost the entire way back home which saved us a good hour and a half of walking. When I told my teacher that afternoon, about our little adventure, she seemed to think that we were very very close to where the forest should be. So, this morning we decided to give it another shot, and get an earlier start. We came to the same place we had been the day before, but this time went down one of the roads that we had not been the day before. It lead us nowhere except by a ravine filled with garbage... the village dump I guess. What it was doing this far away I had no idea, they certainly dont mind throwing garbage in their streets, parks, streams, or anywhere really. Anyways, that is another topic for another time. So, we turned around and tried yet another road leading to nowhere. Only this road lead us to someone. There was a man working in his field and so we asked him where the forest of bonzai trees were. He pointed to the plateau where we had been the day before! He said he would show us... or so we gathered by his body language. We actually could hardly make out a word he said. He took us to the very place we had been the day before, only the day before we were about 20 meters from where the actual trees were and couldnt distinguish them from little bushes from our vantage point. Haha! I asked him how old the trees were, a thousand years? More, he said. (That was one thing we were able to understand.) Wow, very impressive. Well, when I told my teacher about that this afternoon she laughed and said they were no more than 70 years old!! Haha.. 70 years is a long time for those tiny little trees, and impressive in itself, but far from one thousand!! Haha..
Ok, I am pretty tired... we still have to pack tonight and clean the kitchen from our dinner. We made a really really good curry tonight. They always turn out different depending on the types of vegetables we use and the different things with which we experiment. For example, we tried one with pineapple and actual coconut water from real cocnuts one time. This time we used the usual canned coconut milk (which is much thicker) put raisins in the rice, and added the rest of our honey to the curry! It gave it a little sweetness which I like in curries. We had good veggies too.. zuccini, broccoli, cauliflower, carrot, onion, garlic, and baby potatoes.
We leave early tomorrow for Nicaragua... should be 6 hours or so if connections go well. We'll see.....
19 April, 2007: Matthew
So we have been very much enjoying the little apartment this week. Though the dishes and kitchen tools are few, we have been taking full advantage of our private kitchen... which afforded me the opportunity to cook up a big pot of black beans, that we FINALLY got through. Don't get me wrong, they were good - loaded with garlic and onions, but I sort of got carried away and just made too much. Anyway, it has been nice.
Classes have been good, although a very different experience than what we had at Celas Maya. The teachers are very nice, but it has become quite obvious to us how well trained the instuctors at Celas Maya were. For me, it has been best to just focus on the conversational side of learning and basically using my time with my teacher as a platform to practice what I have learned in a technical sense, though much more actual practice is necessary for the conversation to be anywhere near fluid.
We are somewhat sad about how quickly we will have to rush through Nicaragua next week, but are looking forward to being able to spend some time with Chris and Kalika once we make it to Panama.
18 April, 2007: Matthew
Ok, so to pick up where I left off yesterday... the ATM worked and we were able to get some cash, whew! Also, they had some icy fruit smoothy treats at this little cafe, and so with all this mad cash in hand we splurged and found great refreshment in the drinks. Much to our delight, having walked all the way to this cafe with our special littel ATM, we were only about a block away from the bus terminal which led to La Esperanza, which is the destination we were trying to accomplish by nightfall.
Our experience has been best with the old delapedated "blue bird" american school buses for long distance travel. This is for several reasons that we know of, and the rest just seems irronic. The reasons that we know of are: They are the cheapest. Nina sometimes experiences motion sickness, but has been spared of this in the old school buses thus far. Our theory is that they bump and rattle around so distinctly that much attention is required just to stay in your seat. So, I guess the real means of avoiding motion sickness is preoccupation. And lastly, there is generally a better space to throw the backpacks, whether it is in the back through the emergency exit or up on the roof rack. Which, by the way, the guys who take money on the buses also manage putting the luggage on top of the bus, and it is to be noted here that the bus never waits for them to secure the load prior to taking off, but rather these guys climb up on top, and often once the bus is at full speed they climb down the ladder in the back of the bus and re-enter through the rear emergency exit. We first observed this by the shadows cast in an early moring bus ride and then noticing that the guy working the bus suddenly appeared in the back of the bus.
Ok, so having said all that, we were left with only about 20 minutes before we were told the last bus for the evening was departing for La Esperanza and it was one of the Mercedes touring buses. Not our first choice, but we thought that we should catch it in order to secure our destination for the night.
The ride was great, we boarded the bus early enough that we had choice of seats and I chose one next to a wide open window. We were expecting the ride to be about 2 hrs. and so we just sat back and relaxed. Once we are just over the one hour mark, we arrive in a town and the guy across the isle says that we are in La Esperanza, and also I saw a sign welcoming us. These become critical facts to remember as the evening wears on.
We march into town and are looking for a couple of the hotels that are mentioned in "the book" (lonely planet, central america on a shoestring) but are not really finding anythting. Also, this was described as a "hillside town" that has only two real streets running parallel, and supposedly they are so obvious that street names are not even used... what we are finding is a town plopped in the middle of a valley and plenty of streets, traffic, and people. Not to mention that we are not finding any of the other landmarks that we expected. Ok, fine, let's just find a place to park for the night and we will figure it all out in the morning. We find a place that sort of resembles a name that is mentioned in our book, and though we are sort of discouraged that it costs almost twice what we were hoping to pay, we settle for the night.
Next morning is Sunday, and our first plan of action is to cruise the town to find a more satisfactory place to stay for what could be the whole week if school works out. We spend almost two hours walking around looking and inquiring about prices of places to stay and finally secure another place that has a kitchen available. We had decided to get a room with the private bathroom, just because that is nice to have, but also because it had a hot shower. The catch is that we find out AFTER agreeing and paying for the room that water is not running in the building currently... but hopefully it will be back on by the evening.
Next course of action is to try to narrow down the location of the spanish teachers co-op that we are hoping to participate in come Monday. So, we have the name of the area written down and some confusing vauge directions that I gathered on the phone in Siguatepeque. Folks were being nice enough to help us find what we were looking for, if not too confused by a foreigner asking them about some random spanish school. From my phone directions we manage to get within what we believe is half a block or so of where we are supposed to be, but still are getting no solid clues as to which door to knock on. We see another internet cafe and at Nina's encouragement decide to retrieve the phone number from our room and try to give the co-op a call again and at least have a definatel location nailed down for Monday. I volunteered Nina for the call since I had made the last one, and she was a star. She talks with a guy on the other end who agrees to meet us in front of the local middle school and show us where to go. Wow, we're making progress!!
We are shown to Clelia's house, who is the coordinator for the co-op and she chats with us for a while and we find much reliefe in being able to actually discuss details about studying and she even had a small apartment adjacent to her house vacating the next morning which she offered to us for half the cost that we were paying at our hotel!!! Whahoo, we were so excited. This continued to be exciting as the water in the shower at the hotel never did come back on, much less was it hot, haha.
17 April, 2007: Matthew
Leaving Los Naranjos was consistent with our previous experience with the bus system in this area, and we waited along the main road for at least a half hour before seeing a bus roll by that would take us up to Pena Blanca, only about 10 minutes away, where we could continue our journey to La Esperanza. Well, we were not able to find any information indicating that there was an ATM or much of any place in La Esperanza that would be able help us obtain money, so we decided that we would stop over in Siguatepeque on the way and exchange travelers checks if that was our only route. We have been saving the travelers checks for a situation where we really couldn't use an ATM, so it has been a last option always.
We wake up from a bobbling rest on the bus just in time to ask the driver if we indeed were at the Siguatepeque stop and hop off the bus. It was about a 2 km walk into town where we had somewhat of a shot at finding a bank or ATM, and as usual when disembarking a bus, we were being swarmed wiht taxi drivers wanting to take us anywhere. Well, that is always an expensive option and basically never one that we take, so we begin the walk into town. The day is pretty hot, and we are trying to decipher the map in our book as to which way the central plaza might be situated and plan our course. Also, we need to make a call to the teacher's co-op here in La Esperanza to confirm both the existence of this group in addition to finding out an address or SOMETHING more that will help direct us on getting together with them. We find an internet place that also has a telephone and I lose at rock-paper-scissors and make the call. I managed to at least get some general directions to the lady's house who organizes the language co-op, and so we consider that good information. Ok, so now the cash.
There was a bank right across the street, but since it was Saturday afternoon the main part of the bank was closed, but no matter we need teh ATM anyway. However, we find that just as many places in Guatemala and now in Honduras only Visa is accepted at the ATM's, we need to find our very special ATM which will service Mastercard... we walk around a bit more and the second bank that we come to has the same problem. We decide that our best shot is to try to find a small business that will be willing to exchange some of our travelers checks, and quickly learn of a hotel near the park that should be able to do this for us. Once we get there, and finally convince the guy at the desk that we do NOT want a room, but are needing to exchange some travelers checks for cash, he simply shakes his head. Ah man!! What are we supposed to do now, we are down to like 200 Limpiras (about $12) Well, fortunately there was a gal in the waiting room there hanging out or something turns out to be a smart, and probably the most helpful passerby that we have encountered yet. She begins explaining to us where another bank in town is, and also that there are a couple of new ATM sites as well. We carefully explain that the machine MUST service Mastercard or it is of no use to us. So, she pulls out the phone book from the office and starts making calls to find out who has an ATM that will work for us!!! She manages to find a place and writes down the name for us. Fortunately I had seen a couple of the landmarks that she was mentioning on our way into town, so we ademently thank her and move on to the bus stop so that we can head to our ATM.
Unfortunately, the first place where the ATM would be was only for Visa, so we were left walking again in search of the restaurant that was described to us that had the Mastercard ATM. We are both getting pretty tired and have been hauling our backpacks with us of course throughout all of this searching... the roads here are VERY dusty and Nina is having problems with her contacts as well. But to shorten the description of the misery of this portion of the search I'll just say that we did fianlly arrive at the plaza with the ATM and by God's grace not only did the ATM service Mastercard, but it even worked!!
I'm out of time for now, so I will have to continue this story later which includes our finding a bus for the final leg or our journey for the day to La Esperanza... and then finding our language co-op... hasta luego.
16 April, 2007: Matthew
After a couple of night's at Roli's in Omoa, we moved on further south near Lago de Yojoa, specifically a little area called Los Naranjos. Wow, what a treat the D&D Brewery was! We had read a brief description of it in our Lonely Planet guide book, and then found some slightly more specific information as to how to get there while in Omoa... a wonderful time slightly ''off the beaten path''. Of course neither of us were expecting to find a craft brewery in our travels, but the owner and opperator, Robert Dale, is from Oregon of all places, and so we were able to get a little time with a fellow Northwesterner!
In addition to the great beer and delicious food at D&D, this area, Lake Yajoa, is a bird watchers paradise. Nina and I are not typically really big on the bird watching thing, you would understand especially if you hear Nina's tramatic childhood experience of Seagulls flying overhead, but when droped in a tropical paradise where rare and beatuful birds such as the Quetzal live, a new side of us comes out. As we were spending our first night and morning at D&D other guests and Robert Dale were telling us about some of the wonderful places to see near by. The biggest conflict was that in order for us to take part in a day trip up to the cloud forest or see the waterfall and the lake, we would need to stay at least an extra day in addition to what we had originally planned. The risk of this was making earlier contact with the teacher's co-op for Spanish classes down here in La Esperanza. But, we decided to just make a go of it, and work things out as they came at us... So, we then gathered some details from a neighbor who knew a guy who lived in a little town called Los Andes at the base of the Santa Barbara Cloud Forest. (about 8 miles from where we were staying).
We planned for catching the first bus heading that way the next morning in hopes of finding Marcos in Los Andes to help guide us around the Cloud Forest in search of the Quetzal, Tucans, and other amazing birds that live in this area. As could be expected this turned into quite the adventure, as per usual when going to unknown places on minimal directions... but within a reasonable time we were knocking on the door of Marcos' house and greeted by his amazingly friendly family, including 10 kids and others who were probably aunts and grandmother, etc... We had arrived as early as possible with travel, but Marcos had already gone up to the mountain to work in the garden for the day, so one of his sons, Nerri, took us on the first section of our hike up to help us find Marcos. Nerri was showing us many of the different plants as we went along and their particular uses. Also, he let us stop by a natrual water spring to top off our water bottle as we had not quite known the elevations that we would be climbing and needing water!! Also, he has quite a keen ear and eye for the birds of the area, and managed to find a few of the emerald green and blue Quetzal tail feathers on the forest floor.
Finally we reached the field where Marcos raises beans, corn and other vegetables for the family. Just as we could expect from our encounter with the rest of the family Marcos gave us a very warm welcome and proceded to show us some wild blackberries for a snack. It was a wonderful experience to see the forest and to be shown the plants and animals by someone who knows them so well just from having spent his whole life there. We found Marcos' spanish a little bit tough to understand as a combination of having some slightly different pronunciations from his ''mountain spanish'' and his not having any teeth. But, we were able to get a great deal of what he was showing and telling us as well!
Our hope was to see the Quetzal as this is a very special bird to Central America, however, this beautiful but shy and elusive bird has been reported to often only be found about once in every five guided expeditions. This of course added greatly to our excitement when we were led by Marcos off the trail following the subtle calls and movements of the Quetzal! There, there, is that it, up on that branch!!?!?! Yeah, we see it! I was able to catch a couple pictures, although my little point and shoot camera does not do our experience justice. Also as we were on our way back off the mountain we were also able to catch sight of a couple of Green Tucans calling back and forth to eachother. We were hiking around on the mountain for a total of about 6 hours, and were pretty dog tired by the end of the day... We found that buses are not nearly as frequent in this more rural area as we are more used to nearer the cities, but we were fortunate and managed to get home for free with some addtional walking and the curtosy of a couple of pick-ups driving by!!
10 April, 2007: Matthew
We´re in Omoa, Honduras right now, staying at a pretty cool little hotel near the beach. We had a great day hike to the nearby river which has some wonderful waterfalls, and very refreshing water! Tomorrow we head a little further south to the lake as mentioned in Our Plan, we are hoping to be there for probably two nights before going on to La Esperanza. Ok, time on the computer is coming to a close... more later.
8 April, 2007: Matthew
Note a few brief updates in Our Plan if you're interested....
7 April, 2007: Matthew
Before we move on too much further I wanted to throw in some more details about Tikal. As Nina mentioned briefly before, Tikal was somewhat on the high side of our budget (mostly just travel to get there), and also the crowds could nearly be described as emence. However, we did our part to hit the off-times and started out our time there about 4:00pm the same afternoon that we arrived. This was good because the park entrance fee is good for the next day as well if purchased after 3:00pm. This was also great because most people had already left the park and also as the evening drew nearer the animal sounds of the jungle begin picking up significanly as well.
We wanted to see at least one of the temples before time to get out for the night, so we headed for Temple V as it is one of the closer and taller temples. However, since we were just getting to know our way around we wound up running by the Acropolis and Grand Plaza first. It is so amazing to think of how ancient these structures are, and as many other ancient buildings/accomplishments around the world, it baffles the mind how all of these huge stones were build up to impressive heights in the days before cranes and modern equipment. Very impressive.
Finally we did make it to Temple V and climbed to the top. This is one of the classic views of the Tikal ruins which can be found in many books (and around here, postcards) and was amazing to see with my own eyes. Before descending we were able to spot a couple pairs of green parrots and several Howler Monkeys in the distance, but not too far away either.
The next morning we entered the park as they were opening the gates at 6:00am. The sun had already broke the horizon, but we wanted to get to Temple IV which is the furthest west of the temples and has a east facing view, which is the reason that the "sunrise tour" can be taken for a premium park entrance fee at 4:45am!! On our way there we ran into Gunther, a German guy that we had met up with at Finca Ixabel the night before, and we learned that he also had entered the park the night before, but was so enthralled with the sunset and the jungle sounds that he opted to just stay the night in the park and listen the the wildlife! Sounds fun, but is awarded a security escort out of the park if caught! By the time we made it to Temple IV the sun was well on its way high into the sky, but the view was great. It was really nice as well that we had already seen some of the other areas of Tikal because we could recognize the different Temples in their placements... kind of like when we camped out at Eagle Point at Yosemite this summer, and we were able to see all of the places that we had hiked around the valley in the previous several days. Another amazingly beautiful place. I took a short video with my camera of the view and sounds, I'll have to figure out how to post that on the page.
Tomorrow is Easter. As Nina described below, we were able to find a place to spend the remainder of "Semana Santa", or Holy Week which will conclude tomorrow. By God's grace we have been able to have a nice place to stay this week as most of the hotels are FULL and even at our place there have been some people permitted to do one night camp-outs on the patio. So, we will enjoy the Easter celebration here in Livingston and have an early start on the departing ferry (5am) Monday morning. I'm closing here for now.
5 de abril, 2007: nina
So Rio Dulce isn't as sweet as it sounds. We were glad to get out of that town. The night spent there definitely hit a "low" for hotel accomodations. But let me back up a few days...
So we left Antigua on Saturday, successfully found our way through Guatemala City and got on the correct bus heading north to El Peten. We had planned to stay in Rio Dulce that night, as a halfway point between Guate and the Tikal Ruins, but after being on the bus for a hot, sticky, 6 hours you begin to feel accustomed to it and we decided to crank out a few more hours and stay that night near Poptun, at a random farm and eco lodge called Finca de Ixobel. It turned out to be a very good decision, although it was our first encounter with the difficulties of accomodations during Semana Santa, the Holy week of Easter. They had two hammocks available for us to use, sharing a little bungalow with a Guatemalan family on vaction. We had a wonderful meal, shower, and our first night in the hammocks was actually pretty comfortable. We left after breakfast the next morning, got caught in a downpour in the back of a pickup truck, and continued our way to Tikal. 3 busses and the pickup truck later, we arrived in Tikal. Those bus trips reminded us that we were back in tourist zone, they were very expensive (by our standards!), and even though we were riding the same busses that the locals were riding, they refused to give us the local price. Normaly we are charged the same as everyone else, but in the "tourist zone" as we called it, they operate a bit differently. Oh well. Tikal proved to be as amazing as you could imagine. It was incredible climbing on ruins that are thousands of years old. The contrast of the ancient civilization in the midst of the jungle was captivating. We saw so many different types of birds, including Tucans! We saw monkeys for the first time being here as well. We slept in hammocks again, and spent two nights up there. Tuesday we traveled back to Rio Dulce and spent the night in a hotel that is not even worth writing about. Lets just say we were glad we had all of our Hepatitis shots! No, just kidding Moms, it wasn't that bad.
So there are two ways to get to Livingston. One is by taking a lancha, motorboat, from the town Rio Dulce, down the river Rio Dulce, to Livingston (the tourist route) and the other is by taking two busses to Puerto Barrios (1.2 hours) and taking the ferry (1.5 hours) to Livingston (the cheap route). Guess which way we went. Yep, the ferry ride was quite nice. :) So you may be wondering whats the deal with Livingston and why did we have to go there. Ok, well at some point when we were in Tikal I believe, we concluded that it was going to be extremely difficult to travel and find accomodations the closer it came to Easter weekend. So we thought the best thing to do, and just about our only option, was to find some place to simply "wait out" the remainder of Semana Santa, and then continue traveling again after Easter. We were close to conluding our time in Guatemala, and ready to move on to Honduras, except that we had wanted to visit this place Livingston, before we left Guate. Well it just so happens that a lot of Guatemalans think Livingston is a cool place too, and they go there for Semana Santa. We knew this already but there was not much to be done and we decided to go for it and try our luck at finding accomodations. We arrived in the little Carribean town late in the morning and left the ferry dock in search of a hotel. We first tried hotels that were listed in our Lonely Planet guide, which by the way, has become a very good friend! The first hotel- no room. The second hotel, one room but it was about 3 times as much as what we had budgeted. Not that it was a really nice room or anything, but all the hotels double their prices during this week because they simply can. We decided to continue looking. Third hotel- no rooms, fourth hotel- no rooms. Fifth hotel- one room but this one was 4 times our budget! Oh great... what have we done! Keep in mind that we are on the coast now and it is hot and humid.
Now we are just relaxing and enjoying being in one place for 5 days. I will write more about this little town later, it has a large population of Garifuna people, and is very different from the rest of Guatemala. But for now, I must go, I have been writing for a long time. Just know that we are very happy in our little place here and life is good...
3 de Abril, 2007: Nina
Its a new month! We just got back from Tikal and are in a little river city called Rio Dulce. We are here for the night before moving further on to Livingston, at the mouth of the River Dulce where it opens to the Carribean Sea. It is supposed to be a cool place, with many different cultures of people represented there. Tikal was great, but we didn´t stay as long as we had thought, due to the cost and the crowds. We had plenty of time to see and climb the ruins though. I will write more later because this computer is incredibley slow and costly. Hasta Livingston....