Merry Christmas!

We wanted to wish all of you a very, though belated, Merry Christmas! We have been kept busy at the hostel preparing and recovering from it's annual Christmas feast. There were around 70 people in total and it was kind of a hectic day or two of preparation. Graham and I slaved away in a hot kitchen baking brownies and banana cakes for the occasion...and Graham was selfless enough to be the official taste tester. It was very generous of him. However, we agree that the desserts were the best part, so it was worth the sweat. The dinner went well and it was one big buffet-style affair with a variety of meats from pork to lamb, lots of vegetarian main dishes like eggplant lasagna and vegetarian Shepard's Pie, roasted vegetables, bread and salads. And then the desserts of course, of which there were no leftovers. So although there was no snow or presents, there was a great deal of food.

We are hoping to jump into more tours with the start of the new year. Although I have been a bit out of comission lately, Graham has been leading volcano boarding tours on Cerro Negro and is becoming quite the accomplished boarder (although to be fair, it is not rocket science - you sit on a piece of wood and slide down the slope). He also earned his first tip the other day, which makes him kind of a big deal, according to him. So, we will continue to help lead the volcano boarding tours, but in January hope to begin some of the one day and overnight tours. Some of these will include whale watching, high altitude coffee and cigar plantation tours, climbing the nearby volcanoes, camping and trekking in a cloud forest and boating through a protected mangrove estuary. We'll see what comes with the new year, but we are looking forward to it.

As always, we love hearing from everyone and hope that Christmas in the states was great. Oh and we finally uploaded more of our photos from our travels from Guatemala to El Salvador to Nicaragua and then from our month long tour within Nicaragua. So click here to check them out. Happy New Years in advance from both of us!

El Salvador and Nicaragua

We would like to apologize for the infrequency of our blog posts, but having been on the move so much and with such inconsistent internet (and electricity) and pricey internet, we have been unable to post. We also have not posted any new pictures. We probably will not post any new pictures until we return to Leon in a week or two as it would take hours to get them online with the speed of service down here. So we just wanted to apologize and say we are still alive.

From Guatemala we went to El Salvador to visit Britsy´s friends. We had a fantastic time seeing their pueblo and the neighboring pueblos. The Sensentes were far too kind, feeding us and showing us their country.

From El Salvador we went direct to Leon, Nicaragua. We spent a couple days meeting the owners of Bigfoot and Green Pathways and seeing the city. From there, we have spent the last two weeks touring Nicaragua. Working our way down the coast, we have hit the main tourist spots of the country. Now we are headed down the Rio San Juan, the border between Nicaragua and Costa Rica, to the Caribbean side. Depending on how far up the Caribbean coast we get, we will probably spend another week or two making our way back to Leon, where we will settle down and begin working.

Again, we will blog more later about our adventures, but for now things have been great and we hope you are all doing well.

Markets, Flying and death to all spiders!

Hola,
We are back in Antigua, after a little over a week of traveling through the Guatemalan Highlands. A week ago Sunday, we traveled to Chichicastenango (Chichi for short), which is about an hour and a half north of Antigua. There, every Thursday and Sunday, Chichi hosts the largest market in Guatemala. They sell everything from fresh produce, mixed with a lot of flies and bees, to shoes, to carved masks and jewelry, along with everything else in between. As it is the low season, we have become accustomed to vendors hanging on our every move. In Chichi, this was particularly intense, especially as the day wore on. We spoke to a couple vendors who told us that they hadn´t sold a single thing all day. Among the vendors who buy ¨store¨space or stalls, there are many women who wander the maze of streets offering hand sewn table covers, scarves, tapestries and the like. At the end of the day as people started to become desperate, one older woman took a keen liking toward Britsy. With the help of my egging on, Britsy was soon being draped in various garments that the lady thought looked nice on Brits. I laughed, took pictures, and asked the woman to put more and more things on Brits. Although this was pretty funny, what was not funny was how this woman had spent, we were told by another vendor, probably around a month to two months sewing these pieces. As we had no space for them we continually said no to her attempts to sell. She started by offering them for just over $30 USD and after about 30 minutes she was down to between $3-4 USD. So she was willing to sell something that took her a month to make for 3 dollars. We tried to explain to her that it was worth more than that but that we didn´t have space for it, but she was that desperate. Unfortunately this seems to be common in many areas of Guatemala.

Most of the tourists buses dropped people off in the morning and picked them up in the afternoon to return to Antigua. We decided to spend the night in Chichi and we were glad we did. At night, all the tourists were gone and the market turned into a bunch of food stalls and a general hang out area for locals as people dismantled their stalls. There was music blaring and people chatting...and then the two gringos, the giant and the blonde, sitting and observing. Although to be fair, I think we are observed more than we observe. We think because of our height and hair color we have become somewhat of a local attraction or freak show as Britsy says. I keep telling Britsy its the gun show that people are gawking at, but she just glares at me. But in seriousness, it was fun to see the real side of Chichi, that it seems few tourists stay to see.

Following Chichi, we took a 15 passenger van with 23 people in it to Panajachel, a town on Lake Atitlan. We had communicated with a really cool guy about doing some paragliding and we got to meet him in person. After about an hour long conversation with him, I (Britsy) finally realized that I had thought that we were going to go hang gliding, which is surprisingly, quite different from paragliding. Oh well. Whatever sport we did (paragliding), it was awesome. Graham went on our first outing and due to poor winds (and maybe too much weight in the passenger seat), their flight was short. For the next couple days, we visited some of the other towns around the lake and then returned to Pana for round two of paragliding.

This time, I went first and although I was super excited about it, I almost threw up all over myself while flying. We had really good winds, so shortly after taking off, we got to start doing aerials - basically doing spinning turns in the air. That didn´t sit super well with me apparently. But it was awesome anyways. Graham also did a lot of aerials and was manly enough not to feel sick afterwards. We would definitely do it again.

Link to our company - Green Pathways

Hey there everyone,
The ecotourism company, Green Pathways, that we will be working for has a brand new website. There are details about the various tours that we will be leading, providing info about where, length of trip and activities included. We were really excited to read about them, so go to the site if you have a chance. Click here to check it out.

Regards from Antigua

Hello All,

We have settled in nicely in Antigua, Guatemala. We arrived here nearly four days ago and are having a hard time leaving. It is a rich colonial town, in the highlands of Guatemala. Beyond the numerous cafe´s, restaurants, bookshops, and jewelry shops around the town, the Highland location lends itself to cool days and chilly nights...a welcome relief from the overwhelming heat of the rest of Central America. This is probably the most touristy town of Guatemala, but we can see why. There is also a movie theater here that we have been to a couple times now. It is free entry, but then you order either food or drinks to watch the movie. It makes for a cheap movie when all you are drinking is coffee and hot chocolate.

While in Antigua, we took a tour of a nearby volcano called, Pacaya. It is a very active volcano. After about a 3 kilometer hike through Highland forest, we arrived about midway up the cinder slope of the volcano. A couple hundred meters above us we could see lava oozing from the side of the cone. Our guide led us first over 10 year old lava, and then two week old lava, and finally to one to two day old lava. Walking over the newer lava was tricky as it was more prone to breaking and emanated serious heat. When cracked, the rock lava was steamy white on the inside. There were several moments of discussion between the guides as to which way was best to traverse. We just stood there watching them kick pieces of dried lava, watch the steam come out, and then look at each other and shrug their shoulders. To say we were completely confident in their expeditionary skills might be an exaggeration, but we had no other choice, so we trekked on after them. They led us up to the lava flow, where we stood five to ten feet from the lava as it made a path down the volcano. We snapped pictures while others roasted marshmallows in the lava. It was quite and experience and one we are pretty sure you could only have in the liabilityless Central America.

Before coming to Antigua and following our last post, we had journeyed through western Belize and northern Guatemala. In the Belizean town of San Ignacio, we took a tour of the ATM cave. The cave has been left as a natural museum of sorts, with untouched Mayan artifacts still resting in their original places. The cave was used by the Mayans for sacrifices. We had to swim into the cave and then wade through water chest deep at points to get back to the sacrificial chamber. In this huge chamber, the Mayans did all sorts of offerings. In the front of the chamber, there are hundreds of pots scattered throughout. As we made our way deeper into the chamber, the Mayans began sacrificing more. Eventually we came upon human sacrifices. We saw piles of human bones, skull and all, lying in the original place where they were sacrificed. In the furthest back room of the chamber, there is a full skeleton lying on her back, arms and legs splayed out. It was startling how intact the skeleton was, from fingers to toes. As you considered what had happened here over a thousand years ago, it made you feel somewhat uneasy...but then again it was pretty cool, in a morbid way.

We then crossed the Guatemalan border and stayed in a small town called El Remate. Here, we splurged for an air conditioned room with an attached bathroom. We were living the high life. From here we caught a shuttle up to Tikal, the largest Mayan city. The numerous temples and structures were incredible. Set deep in the tropical jungle, it took sometimes 20 minutes to walk between temples. The paths wound through some of the densest jungle we have ever seen. To imagine creating a city here was incredible. But then we were told that when Tikal was a thriving city, they used the trees to burn and make mortar from the ash. Consequently, there were no trees in the city grounds, they had all been cleared. You can see from our pictures that now, over a thousand years later, the trees are back and it is hard to imagine deforesting the entire jungle with only stone tools. But all in all, Tikal was incredible.

From El Remate, we went south to Semuc Champey. It is a National Park, created around limestone pools. It was higher in the mountains that Tikal, so was somewhat cooler. The pools were a beautiful turquoise and blue. We spent a day swimming in these, and then the next day we spent jumping off a 10 meter bridge into the river as well as swinging from a rope swing into the cool water. This ended emphatically when Britsy kicked a log mid swing unfortunately injuring her foot. But now we can kind of laugh about it...or at least I can.

Tomorrow we will bus up to the largest market in Guatemala, called Chichicastenango. We will spend a day there, and then go to Lake Atitlan. Here, we are planning on going paragliding. The lake is beautiful, surrounded by towering volcanoes. It should be a great place to fly around.

We have enjoyed hearing from everyone, so please let us know how you are doing. We trust you are all enjoying fall as much as we are missing it. The seasonless climate does have some drawbacks...although I doubt we will be complaining in January.

Regards,

Graham and Britsy

New Snapfish Account

The reason that there are only three photos on the blog is surprisingly not totally due to laziness on our part...I swear. Due to generally very slow internet connections in this part of the world, it takes a ridiculous amount of time to upload photos to the blog directly. So, we created an album on Snapfish with a ton of our photos that you can view. So click here to check out our page. If you don´t currently have a Snapfish account, you will have to create one to view the photos, but don´t worry, it´s painless. Thanks for looking!

September 13th, 2009

After more than ten days, Britsy and I have finally sat down to make a blog entry. We are currently in San Ignacio, Belize, having arrived this morning. Originally, we flew into Cancun, Mexico, where we spent two days and three nights. Cancun was more or less forgetable. Although the beaches are pretty nice, the city itself is dirty and the vendors and restaurant owners hung on our shirt sleeves. We did take a ferry ride over to Isla Mujeres (it is believed that pirates stored their women here, thus the name Womens' Island). The one benefit of Cancun was the convenience of a large supermarket right by us, and the air conditioning in our hostel room. We have since learned that air conditioning is a luxury that few have down here. Other than upscale hotels, nowhere has a/c. All restaurants, markets, and everything else, including our hostel rooms are either fan or breeze cooled. It is unbelievably hot down here, so it has been tough adjusting. But a couple heat rashes and a lot of baby powder later, we are feeling more comfortable...kinda.

After Cancun, we went to Chichen Itza, a large Mayan ruins site in the middle of the Yucatan. It was pretty cool, although the heat was blazing and the vendors hovered nearer than the bugs. From here we went to Tulum, where there are Mayan ruins on the beach cliffs, and water more turquoise than the rings that Britsy gaulks over at all the market places. We spent two days in Tulum lying on the beach, as our burnt shoulders would attest. We would have stayed longer had our hostel not been so...cheap.

Traveling into Belize was interesting. First, the buses in Belize are either chicken buses, or old school buses. Either way they have no a/c and the seats are all missing about half of their stitches. Leaving Mexico we were told it would cost twenty pesos each, wich is about $1.5 US dollars. At the border, a guy in just an Air Jordan shirt told us that it was $200 pesos. As we had budgeted just enough to get out, we did not have that much, so we had to pay US$20 which works out to about $260 pesos. We are pretty confident we got ripped badly, but there was nothing we could do and we were happy to be out of Mexico.

Belize has been fantastic. The people are great, as they actually are happy and are not trying to scam you, and the land in beautiful. In Orange Walk, we took a guided tour to Lamanai, an ancient Mayan site. The tour started and ended with a one hour boat trip down a river, through a dense jungle. The site itself is set deep in the jungle amidst monkeys, crocs, and various birds. The guide on the tour was extremely cool. He was once a high school teacher and now had been guiding for around 10 years. He was very knowledgeable and made us concerned that we would be terrible guides, not knowing anything about anything. Good thing our clients won't know anything either.

From Orange Walk, we took a bus and a water taxi to Caye Caulker, where we planned on spending two days on the island. Five days later, we finally forced ourselves to leave. The tiny key island was practically paradise. The hostel was right on the water and the second biggest reef (largest living reef) in the world was only a short boat ride off shore. We snorkled two days, one of which was on a sail boat. We saw beautiful coral, sting rays, sharks, octopus, hundreds of fish, and huge turtles. It was really cool. The other days we spent lounging in hammocks and kayaking around the island. It was pretty nice.

Today, we bused across the country to San Ignacio, right on the western border of Belize and Guatemala. We will go on a tour of ATM cave, where there are 1500 year old human skeletons, untouched. You have to swim into the cave and wade through water. Eventually you walk over dry ground, where the archealogical sites are. Everyone we have talked to says this is the best tour they have taken, so we are excited.

Soon we will cross into Guatemala which we have heard also from other travelers is fantastic. For anyone who would like to follow our travels, in Guatemala we will go to Tikal, Semuc Champey, Antigua, Lake Atitlan, and Sipacate. Guatemala will be a change as in Belize everyone speaks english, but I guess that is a good thing for us. Speaking of which, it has been really cool to hear the Belizeans speak a combination of Spanish and Creole. It sounds really cool, but is completely impossible to understand. Even their english can be tough to understand because out of habit they mix in some Creole. Fortunately, I speak a bit of Creole myself. I have found that by adding A's and Mon's to the ends of sentences, it helps people to understand me better. Britsy says that I sound idiotic and is glad that in truth I don't do it in public. But I am trying to teach Britsy how to speak it.

Well, we hope that everyone is doing well and we enjoy getting emails from everyone. We will try to blog more often, but we are lazy and internet can be scarce.

Good day Mon!

G & B