Blog entry, February 5th 2004
Trip Start
Oct 17, 2003
1
6
34
Trip End
May 22, 2004
Utila,
Bay Islands,
Honduras
Wednesday, February 4, 2004
The first two weeks in January I spent in Costa Rica. First a couple of days in Jaco, then some more in Dominical. Both are places on the pacific coast and I was mostly hanging out at the beach. While Jaco was a very US-tourist-place, Dominical was a small, quiet village visited mostly by surfer's. I'm going there again with my girlfriend for the next two weeks.
In mid-january I flew to Cancun, Mexico, to meet my friend Heidi, who I know from language school in Samara. To get a cheaper planeticket I flew via Havanna, Cuba, and stayed there for one night! Didn't see much of the city though, the only thing I did was ride a taxi from the airport to the hotel and back. At least I got to buy a shirt of the Cuban National Baseball Team...
Well, Cancun was a pretty uninviting place itself. It's designed for tourists from the USA, so you feel more like being in Miami or Las Vegas. Heidi and me chose to go to an island called Isla Mujeres, which is about 30 minutes outside Cancun. That place was much nicer, with white-sand beaches and blue-green waters.
Three nights later we moved on to a city called Valladolid. For two days we visited Maya ruins (Chichen Itza, Ek-Balaam) and a cenote. That's a cave with a pool of water and it was refreshing to swim in the cristal-clear and cold water, surrounded by stalagmites. The ruins were cool too, up to 32m high pyramids. It was a pretty steep climb up and my heart beat a bit faster than usual while looking around from the top.
Then we changed location again and ended up in Playa del Carmen. We stayed there for four nights, partying pretty heavily on three nights. It was the perfect spot for that, having kind of an European flair (like Rhodes, Cyprus or Gran Canaria). The clubs were right at the beach, I mean something like five meters from the shore... During that time I also made food by myself for the first time in about three months... Even though it was very cool there, we had a schedule to keep up with, so we moved on to Chetumal, near the Belizean border with Mexico. We visited the ruins of Tulum on the way; not very impressive, but in a nice, quiet setting right over some cliffs. Unfortunately we had to stop over in Chetumal, in a really crappy, jail-cell like room, but already the next day we took a bus to Belize City.
I recommend you never to spend a night in that town, believe me!! That was the worst I've seen ever, dirty and very dangerous people around, even in daylight! We met a cool girl from England called Georgina on the way and with her we dislocated to an island (or key) called Caye Caulker. We spent two nights there, going for a very cool snorkelling trip one afternoon. Besides lots of fish and corals we also saw (or snorkelled with) a couple of nursesharks and tons of stingrays! That was a great experience and now I'm more positive of taking a diving course later during my trip.
Next stop was San Ignacio, close to the Guatemalan border with Belize, where we went on a short canoetrip in a very very dark cave... They had some human skulls there, because it was used as a cemetary by the Mayas ages ago. Following our schedule didn't leave us much time there either, thus we headed to a village called Santa Elena in Guatemala, close to the famous ruins of Tikal. Exactly these we visited the next day and that was the coolest place I've been to so far!! The temples rise out of real jungle (rainforest), up to 70m high and the views/athmosphere is spectacular! You can hear monkeys howl almost constantly and there aren't too many tourists to bother you, so you kinda feel like being in another time/world. Oh yeah, that was by the way on Superbowl-Sunday and I didn't miss the game, of course!!
The second morning (or better night) in a row we got up at four to catch a bus, this time to Copan, Honduras. Well, first we waited one hour at the busstop, coz it left at six (and not at five as we thought), then we were stuck in a very hot bus (no open windows) with three morons driving (whole thing lasted more than eight hours!!). That sucked big time and after two hours more in another bus, plus a bordercrossing, we finally arrived at our destination. Luckily Copan Ruinas is a very relaxed spot and we got the chance to get some sleep that night!! The next day we spend at the ruins and two Maya museums. Ok, ruins are cool, but five of them in only two weeks is definitely enough!! Now I really need a break from all this and hopefully I'll get it during the next two weeks at the beach in Costa Rica.
Anyway, I'm writing this email from Utila (Bay Islands) on the Caribbean coast of Honduras. I came here for one night with Heidi. Tomorrow our paths will part, coz I've gotta get to Guatemala City and then to San Jose on Saturday. But I'll be back here maybe at the end of March to take a diving course and finish my travels in Central America.
As I mentioned before I'll go to CR for two weeks and then I'll probably go to Peru, Bolivia and Chile. I'll try to go on the Inca-trail and visit Machu Pichu. Then to the salt lakes in Bolivia and crossing over towards Chile and the Andes. After I'll go back to CR, Nicaragua and Honduras, before flying to the US and Canada at the beginning of April (for three months).
