TravelStream™ news feed for member chris74 on TravelPod's free travel blogs service http://www.travelpod.com/syndication/rss/chris74 en-us Copyright ©2010 TravelPod.com Wed, 17 Jun 2009 09:10:07 -0400 http://www.travelpod.com http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/chris74/past_travels/1245242829/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/chris74/past_travels/1245242829/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/chris74/past_travels/1245242829/tpod.html Wed, 17 Jun 2009 09:10:07 -0400 Travels since birth

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Luxor, Nile River Valley, Egypt


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Abu Simbel, Egypt


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Aswan, Nile River Valley, Egypt


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Cairo, Egypt


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Pathos, Cyprus


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Auckland, New Zealand

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]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/chris74/a_year_off/1170961200/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/chris74/a_year_off/1170961200/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/chris74/a_year_off/1170961200/tpod.html Tue, 26 Jun 2007 10:55:31 -0400 A quick trip around the globe. 29,000 miles, 365 days, a dozen or so countries and the odd beer or two....

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San Pedro, Guatemala

After a quick game of "How many people can you fit in a minibus" we were on our way to Panajachel. The driver had managed to get five people into our row so I spent most of the journey hanging out of the window as this was the only space I had. It did help the journey pass as I got to play dodge the traffic whenever a car passed or overtook too closely. Two hours later we arrived at Panajachel. I´d managed to dodge the other cars so I counted this as a victory.

My original plan was to stay in Panajachel for the night but everybody had advised me to head straight to San Pedro as it was only 20 minutes away. So a bumpy 20 minute boat ride later I was in the small lakeside village of San Pedro. Five minutes later I had five locals offering me hotels, kayaks, horses and "smokes". It was going to be one of those places.

As it turned out, it wasn't too bad. The most aggressive touts where the little old women selling banana bread. They at least kept breakfast covered.

I fought my way through the touts, found a guesthouse, then went for a wander around the town. Almost immediately I bumped into a bunch of people from the hostel in Tulum. The rest of the night was spent catching up and swapping stories.

San Pedro is a small village on Lake Atitlan. The lake is made from a collapsed volcano and kind of looks like Australia from above. This makes Panajachel into Cairns and San Pedro into Perth. There´s also a volcano behind San Pedro. It is possible to climb it but you need to take a few armed guards to fend off any bandits. I´ve already climbed one volcano so I´ve got a good excuse for skipping this one.

The next day we hired some kayaks and paddled over to San Marcos on the other side of the lake. The next day I was much more sensible and I took the boat to Santiago.

I eventually bit the bullet and signed up for a week of Spanish lessons so I can now add bad Spanish to the list of languages I manage to massacre. I can now say what my name is, how old I am and that I would like a small beer. Although why anybody would ask for a small beer beats me.

Mike (English guy from Tulum) reappeared for the second weekend so we went for a few drinks. At some point we thought it would be a good idea to try the "six long island ice teas from 8 to 10pm and get one free" challenge. This turned out to be not such a good idea. We didn't realise that the drinks actually contained four shots not two. This fact did not make walking home any easier. Especially for the people who had to carry me!

Surprisingly I was up at 7am and feeling fine (not so good at 11am). And now everybody in town seems to know who we are. Especially the banana bread women who now laugh at me every time I walk by. In any event, Mike and I have managed to secure immortality as we now have our picture up on the wall of a pub in the middle of the Guatemalan highlands with eight other people who have previously thought the challenge was a good idea. How many people can say that?

After around ten days in San Pedro it is time to move on. I jumped on a shuttle bus to Antigua this morning and have just booked a bus to Rio Dulce for tomorrow. I passed on the 4am bus but I will be heading to the Caribbean coast at 7am tomorrow. Hopefully...
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/chris74/a_year_off/1181854800/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/chris74/a_year_off/1181854800/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/chris74/a_year_off/1181854800/tpod.html Thu, 14 Jun 2007 17:20:00 -0400 A quick trip around the globe. 29,000 miles, 365 days, a dozen or so countries and the odd beer or two....

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Monte Alban, Mexico

Add later - just photos for now
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/chris74/a_year_off/1180972860/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/chris74/a_year_off/1180972860/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/chris74/a_year_off/1180972860/tpod.html Wed, 13 Jun 2007 19:09:46 -0400 A quick trip around the globe. 29,000 miles, 365 days, a dozen or so countries and the odd beer or two....

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Quetzaltenango, Guatemala

I made a quick stop in Antigua where I managed to win a six pack in the hostel musical chairs compitition despite being molested by a labrador. I also managed to win a bottle of rum in the blow up a ballon, burst it and run around a chair competetion. Although this victory was due to some blatent cheating on the part of our team.

I then jumped on a shuttle to Panajachel on Lake Atitlan. This was to split my journey up between here and Quetzaltenango. Quetzaltenango is more commonly known by it´s Mayan name of Xela (Shay-La). Mainly beacause there´s a lot of Mayan people here and also because Quetzaltenango is too much of a mouthfull.

In order to get to Quetzaltengo I decided to splash out and get a minibus shuttle. When the minibus turned up I was the only passenger. Great, I thought, I can stretch out and relax. Wrong. Because the minibus was minus ten passengers and their backpacks it was unusually light. This allowed the driver to gun it around every corner despite the hairpin bends and long drops over the sides of the mountains. Not to mention that visibility was severely reduced due to the mountain fog and the wet roads thanks to the afternoon shower. Even the stray dogs were in on the act. For some reason they had decided to sit in the middle of the road and create their own chicanes.

Half an hour later we reached the Pan-American highway. I thought the end of the winding mountain roads would make the journey a little less harrowing. Not so. It was only now that the driver put on his seat beat. I thought this might be a bad sign and I was right. He then started to drive with the extra speed that the major highway allowed him. Apart from a few near head on misses with a chicken bus and a semi trailer the journey was without incident. The driver did slow down for some of the downhill sections after he almost lost it after the back end flipped out when it his some residue from a previous mud slide. I´ve got to give the driver credit, he did a 2.5 hour journey in 1.5 hours. Not bad.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/chris74/a_year_off/1181242800/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/chris74/a_year_off/1181242800/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/chris74/a_year_off/1181242800/tpod.html Wed, 13 Jun 2007 15:52:17 -0400 A quick trip around the globe. 29,000 miles, 365 days, a dozen or so countries and the odd beer or two....

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San Cristobal de Las Casas, Mexico

San Cristobal de las Casas is a small colonial village in the Chiapas region of Mexico. San Cristobal has the usual mix of cobblestone streets, ornate churches and tree-filled plazas.

Chiapas has a large indigenous population. In fact, one in four people are from an indigenous group. However, these groups tend to live on the worst land and suffer from high levels of poverty. The Zapatista movement grew in the 90s to fight for democratic change and indigenous rights and even managed to invade and occupy San Cristobal for a short while. The Mexican army soon kicked them out.

The Zapatista's are still around but have a more political direction. Although the army still has a large presence in the area.

The large indigenous population means that there are lots of Mayan villages in the area to visit. The two most popular are Chamula and Zinacantán.

We weren't allowed to take photos in Chamula but we were allowed into the main church to see how the locals worship. One of the strangest part of these Mayan's culture is how Christianity has been incorporated into their lives. The locals go to a "church" that contains images of Christian saints, but although the Mayan's are praying to these saints they're not really practising Christianity but their own Mayan religion through the Christian images. It didn't really make sense to me either.

Even the church is weird. There are no pews. Instead the worshippers place pine needles on the floor, kneel down and light twenty to thirty candles - usually of different colours but only because "the different colours look nice". They even give offerings of Fanta and Coke. Apparently this is because the fizzy drinks make them burp and they believe burping is really the release of evil spirits. I guess Pepsi missed out on that aspect of their advertising campaign.
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