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| Going out of Belize city |
After having my foot cut on a shell in Belize, and having been resting for 5 days I decided to head at Guatemala; even if my foot wasn’t totally recovered I could wear my hiking boots and barely walk which was good enough to travel again!
In a day I did all my way through Belize, letting me guess this country was very different from what I had seen in Caye Caulker and from Mexico but I hadn’t enough time to stop anywhere as I was chasing Martin in Guatemala! I arrived in the afternoon in Flores, an Island in the middle of a lake, linked to the land with a bridge. Very small and pretty you can walk around in 40 minutes, even being a cripple, enjoy the nice cobblestone streets, colonial buildings and very touristy atmosphere. From there, the next day I took a bus to Tikal, some huge Mayan ruins in the middle of the jungle 70 km North of Flores to camp and be ready to go at the dawn. Starting early, just when they open the gate definitely worth it, for the first hour at least you avoid the tourist flow, multiply your chances of seeing wildlife, and the foggy atmosphere make the site even more mystic.
As I was going to the main square of the site, I saw oscillated turkeys, spider monkeys, going up on one of the main pyramids I was surrounded by parrots, in a big cacophony, saw a Toucan going as a rocket with his beak right in the front of me. The very steep stairs taking you on top of these pyramids make it very impressive, climbing on top of one bring you to this beautiful view of the jungle with erecting temples. Wandering in the trails you cross these fascinating leaf-cutter ants able to strip a tree of its leafs in a day to grow the mushrooms they eat, these gangs of “racoons” sniffing around with their tail up, or maybe hear these terrifying howler monkeys!
Tourists are very present, but you can always escape from the mass and enjoy the sight of an overgrown pyramid listening the sounds of the jungle. After this intense morning walking about 10km in Tikal, I went back to Flores where I had to remove my stitches and see how to meet again with Martin in Antigua. Regarding my stitches, it wasn’t such a big deal to do it, I just had to stop by the health center, however it certainly has been the most painful part of my injury (which wasn’t actually too bad)!
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| Tikal Toucan |
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| Tikal |
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| Spider Monkey |
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| "Racoons" |
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| Antigua streets |
At night I took my way to Antigua, on an overloaded night bus, stopping in Guatemala ciudad and transferring via a shuttle to Antigua where I met and joined “team France”, that is Martin and 2 fellows he met in Tikal while I was resting in my hammock in Belize, François from Québec and Cédric from France. I found them not in the best shape ever as it was 8AM and they had a pretty intense party the night before but it was cool to hang out in the rooftop of the Hostel with them, drying my scar in the sun, having coffee, beer...
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| Volcan Pacaya |
After that Martin and I went to the market, mostly to eat, and I purchase a wonderful pair of flip flop to leave my foot breath and dry more than in my hiking boots! On my way there when I was waiting Martin which was cowardly shaving his moustache, I randomly crossed Markus, a friend who I rode a bit in Baja California with and did all his way in the same time I did, but on a bike. He was pretty surprised when I said him I came from Tikal the night before although it took him about 2 weeks to come on his bike! In the afternoon we took a tour to go to the Volcano Pacaya, about an hour and a half from Antigua, to hike to the basis of the crater. This volcano is still active and had a huge lavas fields a few years ago, and on the pictures when we booked the tour, but unfortunately we didn’t get to see that... It was still a great spot, good view on other volcanoes, lunar landscapes, we experienced volcano heated sauna (sort of...), cooked quesadillas in the volcano oven, saw an amazing sunset... I was pretty glad I tried to hike up there, then I knew my foot was okay and that with my hiking boots I could do more or less everything I wanted!
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| Volcan Pacaya |
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| Volcan Pacaya
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| Volcano cooked quesadilla |
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| Antigua |
At night we went in a few bars in Antigua after warming up with Guatemalan rum in the hostel, it was good fun, we even got to see the Pink Floyd in live, or maybe not, but at least to listen them. For some friends who came back a little earlier (Aussie/Kiwi/Israeli team (AKI team)) the way back has been pretty intense as one of them had a gun pointed at his head after peeing on a doorway, but he even didn’t realize, he kept walking without paying attention! It just goes to show the later you go back the safer you are! Or just don’t pee in doorway in Guatemala!
The next day we were leaving to Lago Atitlan, a few hours West from Antigua, but before that I had an hour and so to visit the city. Colorful, sunny, flowery, half ruined churches and buildings, cobble stone street, monasteries, volcanoes surrounded, this city is very enjoyable, beautiful, quiet, but I just barely had the opportunity to feel what it is!
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| On the way to Lago Atitlan |
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| Team France |
Lago Atitlan is known as to be one of the most beautiful places in the world, and I have to say that Yes, it’s beautiful, and Yes more than many other places but maybe it’s too much to go that far! Well, arrived there and after an intense bargaining session, team France and AKI team where ready to settle in our hotel, right by the lake for 2€ each with private room! Over there we haven’t done much, hung out in the 4 different bars of San Pedro within the one just by the hotel with a very generous, funny, crazy, drunk owner, but over all a very good person, took a boat to the other side of the lake in San Marcos, went around had wine and back. Most of the people here come to learn Spanish, or to enjoy the spirituality of the site, do yoga... and as we were not there for any of these reasons I kind of find it a little boring sometimes.
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| Chichi Market |
A part from that we went on Sunday to one of the biggest and most bustling market in Central America, in Chichicastenango and well, many things happening, very beautiful, but one more time I have to say that it’s a little too much to say that... I have to remember that the Lonely planet tend to overwhelm you a little bit and make every single place the best place in the world, and a must to see, etc. After all it was fun, we did some pretty good deal, bargain for any single object in the market, even the ones we didn’t wanted, listen to the canon shots, for Guadalupe virgin certainly, and took our way back at the beginning of the afternoon. The most exciting part of the market was probably on the way there, when we were going up the steep, windy, gravel road, passing a truck, the bus hit its mirror. After that the driver was going particularly fast, almost jumping the famous and numerous topes (speed bumps) till we get to an intersection with a few houses and a car came head to head with us, the truck which was actually chasing us came behind so no other choice than stopping! The driver went out to talk with the help of Cédric he apparently needed, they started to argue and the other guys pulled out their gun, but nothing else happened, and the truck had nothing by the way! As you can see guns are very present in Guatemala, many people have it, every store, bank, have a security guard with huge shotgun, and we have even seen a men picking up empty glass bottles with a massive gun!
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| Security guard for empty bottles |
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| Church in Chichi |
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| Lago Atitlan from Indian Nose |
The next night we went up “the Indian nose” at 4AM to watch the sunrise on the lake surrounded by volcanoes, it was a bit hard to wake up and get to the top although it was only a 40 minutes hike but it was really worth it! We had a good noodles and coffee breakfast with a stunning view of the lake, a volcano erupting in the horizon, pink sky, fog embracing the mountains, I could almost say it was amazing.
To end the Lago Atitlan chapter, another good story, the last night a local girl came at the hotel to ask us if her friend was here, and she actually was, with another of our friends then she ran into the room, and kicked her friend in the head shouting that she wanted her keys back and blablabla, well everything ended up good and we didn’t really understand what was the story about these keys!
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| Ready for breakfast |
To stay with the superlatives our last destination in Guatemala was to hike up the highest volcano in Central America, the Tajumulco at 4200m which we after all had to change with the Santa Maria as there wasn’t any trip planned there on our schedule... Starting from Xela, we left with a volunteer foreigner organization funding local education project which had lots of equipment to “lend”. However we were not that satisfied with them, they charged us more because of late notice to join the trip, then they wanted to charge us more for the gear after saying us everything was included in the price and that we could not have discount if we don’t borrow anything, and in addition the guides were Americans!
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| Trying to drink rum |
Well I didn’t like them very much, and it’s a little frustrating afterwards to see you could have done it by yourself and that it would have been more fun. Here is the GPS track if you want to do it by yourself in the future:
http://www.mapmyrun.com/routes/view/79455511, it’s easy to find, and there is no risk to be attacked there apparently. So we went up this volcano that we couldn’t see, the whole top was in the clouds, it wasn’t too bad, but we could definitely feel the elevation as the top is at almost 3800m and the toxins we accumulated the days before (you know Guatemalan food is very rich and fat!). Getting to the top was satisfying but we couldn’t see more, just clouds around and guessing a beautiful view. We had some sips of rum up there which make our heart beat at 200 a minute so we decided to stay sober, watch the beauty of the clouds enjoy our pasta try to stay warm and run to bed as the sky wasn’t clearing up at night. This was very unfortunate as the Volcano Santa Maria is dominating the Santiaguito, one of the 10 most active volcanoes in the world (ouf we still have done something the most...!) and supposedly you can see the lavas in the crater at night. I woke up every 2 hours to check out the sky, but nothing happened at night, too foggy... just hearing eruption every 30 minutes and seeing flash lightning through the tent and diffused through the fog, actually sometimes it was a little bit worrying.
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| Sunrise from Santa Maria Volcano |
The morning was way better, we were above the clouds before the sunrise, seeing just a few volcanoes over it and later it cleared up pretty well and we’ve been able to see the whole valley, the chain of volcanoes, the Santiaguito a thousand meters under us. It even did us a few great eruptions with ashes clouds going higher than us it was impressive, but not as bad as when you just hear the sound! The way down was nice and easy, we got to Xela around noon, showered, packed everything and run to the bus station to try to go out from Guatemala before the night and the next day in Zipolite (in Oaxaca beaches) for a party.
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| Morning eruption |
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| El Santiaguito |
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| Leaving the mountaintop |
That far in Guatemala we were only using the easy way to travel, taking shuttle from travel agencies which just carry tourists, pick you up at your hotel and drop you off at the next one; which is not making you feel like you’re really in the country, you go from one touristy place to the other travelling just with tourists... It’s about 5 to 10 times more expensive and less fun so we wanted at least to experience once the chicken buses before leaving, even if most of people say you it’s not safe at all and they are very often attacked! Then we’ve been confronted to the mess of the “bus stations” everybody wanting to take you in his bus even if that’s not where you want to go, the unreliability of the bus driver, schedule, but we made it on time just for the night, to the boarder after 3 buses and 5 hours to go through 100km. The ride was very beautiful, mountains, canyons, jungle and gold mines and coca fields according to my Jehovah’s witness neighbour in the bus with who I had interesting discussion (because I said him I was catholic and sort of read the bible so I skip the religious discussion)! Arriving to the boarder you need to cross it walking for 5 minutes, going through the immigration looks optional and between the 2 immigration offices, it’s a very weird area. Boarder town are always a very strange mix, hookers side by side with policeman and militaries, lots of beggars, people wanting you to change money with huge wads of bills in their hands, and to repeat the refrain lots of guns. After all we went through without any problem, hopped on a taxi motorcycle to get to the bus and made it on time to catch the night bus in Tapachula to arrive the next morning in Zipolite. Guatemala was a nice country, but I didn’t stay there long enough to really feel the country, really be in contact with local people or end up in very random non touristy places. Being there I felt very funneled on the tourist flow and it’s hard to get off the tracks, people of travel agencies take such a good care of tourists, but sometimes you don’t feel that free. This might be justified by the apparent insecurity prevailing in the country and they don’t want anything to happen to tourists...
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| Birthday bar in Zipolite |
Being back in Oaxaca beaches was good, but hot, very hot, probably the warmest place I’ve been in this travel which didn’t encourage us to have much activity! The plan was just to take some sun before going back in our respective non sunny places, meet again with a member of team France, and celebrate the birthday of one of his friends. Just getting there I realized it wasn’t the best place for me as they left lots of sand in the beach (silly idea...) and my foot was still a little open so I could not walk in the sand, swim, or even wear flip flops...
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| Zipolite beach |
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| Zipolite waves and red flag |
After all it was okay, and anyway, swimming is pretty dangerous there, in 2 days, not being 100% of the time in the beach, we’ve seen 2 persons rescued so I was feeling safer drinking beers in the beach! When we got there we rested a bit and started looking for Cedric which wasn’t that difficult, we just had to find the most bustling bar, and he was behind. After that, as planned we devoted our time to hold the bars, sleep, eat and chill on the beach.
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| Oaxaca Market |
We still managed to leave on time to get to Oaxaca where I had to pick up my bike at Christian and Marina’s place, a Swiss-Mexican couple who welcomed us one more time with very good food. We just spent a few hours in Oaxaca bought and ate some
Mole and other few stuff and hopped on another night bus to Mexico. The last 2 days I spent there went very fast, I had to deal with my bike box, buying a few more stuff to bring back, etc.
We also went to the museum of Anthropology, very interesting one, and to end the trip, to see Lucha libre (Mexican wrestling) in Arena Mexico which was lots of fun and impressive to see these fatties do a back flip from 2 meters high and fall on the other or in the ground!
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| Last moments at the airport |
The wrestling finished, we went at the airport by subway with all my mess, about 70kg to wait almost all night my flight. I got in Vancouver last Wednesday the customs kept me a bit to question me, I might have been suspicious with all my boxes, but I had good stories for them to let me come into Canada. Now I found back some cold, but also a house I can stay more than 3 nights in, shower every day, cook, which is actually pretty nice too! I’ll be here for 3 month, taking advantage of the mountains, the snow and so and will go back in France by late June! Hope you get to that point, the last weeks where pretty busy!
Bye!
Raf
