27/09/04- 28/09/04 Palenque

This town is described in the guidebook as the MacDonalds of towns because it is set up to encourage the tourist to leave as soon as they have been to the nearby Mayan Ruins. I can see why. The ruins themselves are spectacular and the nearby waterfalls of Agua Azul and Misol-Ha were just beautiful.

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After a grueling day sightseeing we then subjected Libby and Andy to their first overnight bus and what an adventure that wasn't.

No, Palenque wasn't great but was just a stopover town for the ruins- the ruins were great and in the picture above it doesn't look real- as if it was made up in your furtive Advanced Dungeons & Dragons® minds- I have 180 gold pieces and am left with 23 hit points but experience points gained are high and I can now cast a spell of... wait a minute- everyone is dressed in costumes and you find yourself in a candle lit room and to the west there is a door that leads you to a proper leisure pursuit oh dear.

Bus driver on overnight bus turned on the stereo really loud at 3:10AM and everyone in the bus would have rushed him groggily except that we knew that it was keeping him awake and us alive so he lived to drive another day- and we lived another day like zombies.

25/09/04- 27/09/04 San Cristobal de Las Casas, México

We crossed our last border without a hitch and even managed to hold up a bus (not in the butch cassidy sense) to San Christobal so that we didn't have to wait six hours at the border for the next bus. After yet another 15 hour journey we arrived in San Christobal half starved as none of us had eaten. After a very odd sandwich the boys managed to find a rather lovely apartment with a proper log fire. For some reason I really wasn't expecting México to be cold, but it was. So we spent the rest of the evening toasting bread and marshmellows on the fire. I managed to stop them from singing those irritating camp fire songs though.

The next day we had a proper look around the town and although we found the Mayan museam of medicine, with the rather too graphic video of a mayan woman giving birth, we didn't make it to the villiage just outside of the town where they worship Coca Cola.

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San Cristobal is a beautiful city and we were there for the PRI party campaign in the main square and we had no idea what there policies were but they put on a good show and sent paper hot air balloons with suggested voting practices up into the night sky, each powered by a flaming petrol soaked ring heating up the air inside, like a little UFO to sway the voters except those who find that the balloon has landed on their thatched roofs and set it ablaze (of which there are many) or on the canvas of their convertable Audi TTs (of which there are none). Out of interest, México is the first country in ages that I have seen Italian cars, albeit Fiats.

That video of that Mayan woman giving birth in a filthy hovel of a house with chicken feathers flying everywhere (I presume she allowed herself to be filmed as part deposit for the Audi TT) also showed the examination of the placenta and its subsequent burial inside the house and then the prostrate new mother (who looked about 13) would have a cock waved over her -if the child was a girl then the midwife would wave a hen instead to stop it from having nightmares because that will work. Just he wait until he realises what a pit he lives in and what a flash car his mum has.

24/09/04- 25/09/04 Quezaltenango

Otherwise affectionately known as Xela by the locals, but it isn't pronounced how you would think. Stopped overnight here in order to break up the journey to México and found it to be a rather pleasing little place, with some lovely buildings. We were only here for a very short time so it is difficult to comment on it too much but I would just say that the guys who work as conductors on the buses are some of the hardest working people I think I have ever seen.



At the bus terminal we saw Guatemala's latest pop sensation, Bolsos Gordos del Pollo, on the way to their gig in Chichicastenango.

Fiona is right (as usual)- we didn't do anything here

20/09/04- 24/09/04 Lake Atitlan

Spent the first night in Panajachel on the shore of Lake Atitlan which is a rather tatty place full of artisan market stalls all selling exactly the same tat. So we decided to have a wander down to the lakeshore and then spent the rest of the evening getting drunk and listening to Andy and Roger beatbox their way through numerous rounds of cards.

Very picturesque and cloudy
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The following morning we got up inconcievably early (around 11am) to face a very choppy 30 minutes speedboat ride and managed to have a delicious breakfast, find a hotel, sort out a couple of treats for the upcoming days and then promptly fell back into bed in order to sleep through our hangovers.

Rawhide indeed


Whilst we were here Roger and I had our first experience of horseriding which was fantastic but left poor Roger a little saddle sore. It is definately the best way to explore the surrounding countryside which was lovely with some beautiful views over the lake and the horses were just lovely. The following day Andy and Libby had us up even earlier to go kayaking around the lake which again was a first for me. That was also good fun but harder work.

San Pedro is a strange place but very friendly and relaxed. Most of the town is set up specifically for tourists but many of the villages around are much more traditional.

Strike a pose
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Being in San Pedro was like being at a festival- everyone there is off their heads.

People speak Mayan in San Pedro and we were told that if you walk to the next village you can get stabbed, next door to the grocery shop, opposite where you can have your hair done in a big bouffant.

Extra

We are in San Pedro in Guatemala and I have just found a site marginally more insteresting than this blog.

http://www.pembers.freeserve.co.uk/Teletext/Photographs.html

18/09/04- 20/09/04 Antigua, Guatemala

Another week, another country! Antigua is a very pretty city but seems a little too set up for the tourist, very twee, but one of the funniest fiestas that we have sen on our travels so far with the locals dressed up in costumes for some very Lame-O dancing around the main square.

Get down on it


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That dancing thing was horrible- I felt so embarrased for them as it was really unrehearsed and at one point the monkey dancing:



got a bit violent- one of them was a little kid as well. The magic is gone when:
a. you see them getting changed just stage left
b. it's godawful.

I can't remember the point of the lactating fountain thing.

Antigua is a very pleasant old buildingy place with lots of ruins of churches and cathedrals. Went to have a look at a monastry and that was a ruin as well. As was our hotel room which stank. Moan moan moan you'd think I had to go to work.



To get to the hill as you can see in the picture above you are supposed to ask a tourist police officer to go with you but we didn't because we're real toughs and Fiona had bought a semi automatic rifle off some Russian and has been packing ever since- in fact we don't even need our cashpoint cards to get money out any more. There's a travelling tip that isn't in the Lonely Planet guide.

16/09/04- 18/09/04 Copan Ruinas

For our first foray into the Mayan civilisation we headed to the Honduran town of Copan Ruinas on the border with Guatamala. It proved to be a interesting place and to make it more so we decided that we would all adopt a glorious Mayan leader from Copan and compare the extravagance of each leaders temples, alter and the like. I, understandably, got the leader known affectionally as Butz Chan whilst Roger chose to adopt the leader "mat head". Turns out that mine was a lovely leader and his was pants. Anyway very beautiful place and the town is also really lovely. Recommended.



In the picture above the ruins look like the steps of a fairly modern municipal building and with most municipal building (well, around where I grew up) there are a couple of yobs hanging around it.

One things they Mayans did in this site (and many other sites) was play a funny game of football (as in a variation of football, as opposed to being crap at it) after which the losing team would have to give one of their players up to be sacrificed by the winning team. And then they would all get into a big bubble bath together, decapitated player and all. This was obviously before they had Mister Matey- in fact the Spanish for bubble bath is jugo del perdedor- literally Loser's Juice.

13/09/04- 16/09/04 La Ceiba

Despite all four of us having horrible hangovers we made up in time for the early morning boat back to the mainland and even spent the rest of the day checking out tour operators around the area.

Yesterday we took a very leisurely trip by train and then boat into the jungle in order to see a spot of wildlife, we managed to catch a glimpse of a manatee, a few howler monkeys, loads of birds and thousands of bugs, but no crocodiles. It was very beautiful and, as we were the only boat on the river, really peaceful, but having been completely spoilt by seeing so much wildlife under the water it was a little disappointing, but not that surprising, that we didn't see as much from above.

Today we have just come back from white water rafting, which was really good fun and not as dangerous as I was lead to believe, according to the guide we managed a class 5 rapid, which is quite fast. We all got soaked but not submerged which is nice.

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We travel in style- this was the train we took to go to the Manatee reserve where they were so reserved they made no appearance at all.

This is a picture of us just before we went sky diving for the last time:






And that was me being dragged away by a concerned reader of this blog who thinks there are too many pictures of me in it. If you tilt your monitor 90 degrees clockwise the picture will slide down and you can see who it is.

I´ll tell you what though- that white water rafting was really too easy- it was about 5% checking out the rapid bits and going throught them (not too bad) and 98% drifting down river through spectacular scenery- can't complain though. Oh the extra 3% is because the raft guide man is allergic to stings and was stung by a wasp just before the big rapid so it's to compensate for swelling/ worry.

I'll tell you something else- every shop imaginable in La Ceiba has a armed guard outside it- from burger bars to tour operators. Also Selfridges if you can imagine that there- they'd have three at least though.

04/09/04- 13/09/04 Utila, Bay Islands, Honduras

After an uneventful couple of hours in Managua we got the early morning bus to Honduras, the rest of that day was spent travelling through north Nicaragua and the whole of Honduras in order to get to La Ceiba so that we could board the early morning ferry on the 4th. So we arrived in Ulita, one of the Bay Islands, absolutely exhausted.

After a brief stop for a bit to eat we found a place to teach us scuba diving and a place to stay. The rest of the day we had homework to prepare for the course, which we did on the beach so it wasn't too bad. The course was absolutely terrifying but also absolutely fabulous, even in the shallow waters we have had seen stingrays and barracuda's. Unfortunately we often had to do this without a mask or regulator (the bit you put in your mouth so that you can get air) in order to simulate what we should do if they came off/out when we were underwater. We have all managed to pass the course and are proper scuba divers now, Andy has decided to go one better and get his advanced open water.

During our diving we saw a turtle, an eagle ray, manta ray, barracuda, trumpet fish, frog fish, butterfly fish, porcupine fish, french, queen and gray angelfish, squirelfish, unsidedown jellyfish, spooted drum fish and thousands more. It is great.

Our last day here we decided to risk the tropical storm that was brewing for a dive with the four of us, as it was the first time Libby and I had been down to 30meters we had to do various tests at the bottom which we sort of passed though the consensious was that Libs got a bit "Narc´d", so to celebrate our success we decided to get hideously drunk that evening and then, rather than face anyone again, leave town.

It's a hard knock life for us
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Yummy yummy yummy I´ve got fish in my tummy


On average it would take 6 people to get me back on the boat, easier to harpoon me


How spoddy do we look!



Gary is our leader


The next day on the ferry and I promise Libby and Andy were much worse



Notice that I wearing the same t-shirt as on the day before- we got all our washing done that evening- so organised.