Diving!

In a continued effort to advance my goal of becoming a Navy SEAL, Jason and I have undertaken our diving certification! We started on Monday with a bunch of classroom stuff, then moved to the pool, then back on tuesday for more classroom stuff, then out to the ocean for two dives and now we write our final exam in about 15 minutes, then its back out to the ocean for our final two dives. It took us a lot longer to get going on the whole diving front simply because we became exceedingly lethargic with each subsequent beach day. On sunday we decided to end our laziness by renting sea kayaks with Mike...we made it 1.57km (according to my GPS) before finding a pristine beach, at which point we collapsed and spent the rest of the day there. My birthday went off without a hitch! It was a smashing success by all accounts...or a smashed success, I can't remember much of it. After a wee bit too much partying we decided to take it easy sunday night, but unfortunately the town had other ideas. With the election results being finalized, the entire population of this little island, congregated outside our cabana and celebrated with every noise producing machine they could find. As Jason and I discussed, it actually sounded like they spent a few hours setting up stereos and jugglers and flame blowers outside our walls, then right at midnight they exploded into sound in one swift motion. Probably one of the most disorienting experiences either of us have encountered. Enough of that though! In other news, Ryan appeared out of virtually nowhere on Monday! I guess he had had enough of our "get your ass to the bay islands" emails that we were bombarding him with, so he decided to give it a go. Well its almost time for my exam so I better wrap this up! Jason and I will most likely go right on to our advanced diving certification right after we're done this one, so that will take us to the weekend...at which point we'll do some fun dives, then see where the current takes us from there! Adios! The one time I have a computer capable of uploading pictures and a camera to actually upload them with...I have no time! 2 outta 3 aint bad, but it still means no pictures...sorry!!

Paradise Found?

Have to keep this short because my time is limited here and the internet on this island isn't overly cheap! Bay Islands are incredible. Was a hassle getting here given that we had to make a huge detour for a washed out bridge and then board a cargo ship (the regular ferry broke down). I don't think I've ever seen so many people throwing up in such a short time. The thing was the pinnacle of motion sickness, Randy, you would have loved it. Luckily I avoided this messy fate by keeping my eyes on the horizon at all times...literally for an hour and forty minutes my eyes did not move, maybe on the way back I can charter some kind of helicopter. Utila, the island we're on, really is what you would picture when you think of paradise. White sand beaches, tiny little town lined with good food and bars. In honour of the american thanksgiving, one of the places put on a big dinner, so me, Jason and Adam (from Seattle) jumped on the opportunity of having turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes and gravy. It was a glorious event and the highlight of the day. We planned on starting dive school today...but then we got lazy and now it's been pushed to Monday. In the meantime we've just been hanging out at the beach and thinking of activities that would be great to do, but would interfere far too much with our beach sitting. The town of Utila itself is in a bit of a funny state though. There's an election on the 27th (*ahem*, not the only big event that day!) and the two parties seem neck and neck. One of the parties, led by the great Pepe (who's triumphant posters we see everywhere) is trying a sneaky move by boating people to Utila from the mainland to get them to vote for him. This is an underpopulated riding, so its a pretty tricky tactic and is not being greeted well by the other supporters. That being said, tensions are running a little high here so they've cut off all alchohol sales until the day after the election. In anticipation of this we spent an hour before dinner stockpiling our cabinets with rum for the coming celebration of my birthday on Sunday. Well thats that, any longer on the internet here and I'm going to have to cut my trip short by a few months. Hasta Luega!

The lack of pictures is bugging me too, it's really ruining my ability to properly brag, but the internet here is just soooo slow. Ill have a picture day soon and repopulate my latest entries with pics! A thousand more apologies.

Honduras!

Wasn´t actually expecting to update this for a while, but Jason just lost his bank card so we had to make an internet pit stop! My last two days in Livingston were pretty easy going. I basically just read the entire time while sitting on the hotel roof, drinking rum and cokes, life is tough on the carribean...

I did end up doing the tour up the Rio Dulce, not once but twice! Most people only do it once, but given that I had to go up the river at least once to see the stuff, then back down to Livingston in order to meet up with Jas, I had no choice. The first time was alright, basically just took a boat down a wide jungle river, saw some sulphur vents and a lot of vultures, but other than that there was nothing too eventful. Had some pizza in Rio Dulce, the town, then headed back for my return trip. Since the others in the boat hadn´t done the tour, they wanted the full deal, so I loaded up some Weezer, sat back and enjoyed the ride. For some reason the guide decided to take umpteen times longer to do the return trip and it sent me on some real ups and downs. I made mental notes of my anguish in accordance to the different Weezer albums:

1st Album (Blue Album): This is great, nice day out, good tunes, on the carribean in Guatemala...life is good.

2nd Album (Green Album): Why is this guy taking so long? My first tour was already done at this point and we´re not even a fraction of the way through this one. Maybe he doesn´t realize that I have very important things planned for tonight, like finishing my book and organizing a winning strategy to beat my palm pilot at chess.

3rd Album (Pinkerton): I hate my tour guide, and all the French Canadians on my boat because they´re having so much fun seeing stuff slowly. Any slower than this and it would cause some kind of cosmic singularity that would actually send us back in time.

4th Album (Make Believe): Man I´m a whiner, Im on a river boat in Guatemala with 300 albums at my disposal, who cares if we´re slow and I don´t understand a word anyone says. Life is good.

And such goes another day in my strange world. Anyhow, Jason arrived early this morning at 11, actually not that early, given that ever since the jungle trip Ive been unable to sleep in past 6:30am. We decided instead of staying in Livingston, we would make a mad dash for Honduras and get as close to the Bay Islands as possible. Boat to Puerto Barrius, Colectivo (minibus) to the Honduran border, another bus to Puerto Cortes (now in Honduras) then another minibus to San Pedro. We tried to get right to La Ciela (the departure for Bay Island ferries) but were thrwarted by a lack of bus drivers, so here we are in San Pedro Sula. Look it up on the internet, you probably won´t find much more than a strange picture of a very dirty city surrounding a church. I love lonely planet´s advice for this city, ´Dont stay here´, awesome. Our hotel was surprised that someone actually wanted to rent a room out for an entire night, but it is quite clean. Ate some pizza and lasagna and everything was going fine until Jason just lost his bank card. By tomorrow afternoon we should be sipping rum and cokes on Utila (One of the bay islands) and looking at dive shops for our certification. Rumour has it that the internet is quite expensive there, so there may be a shortage of blog updates, but who knows. Thats it for now, Adios!

Pictures! Again...no pictures, didn´t expect to be stopping by the internet so didn´t bring my camera, a thousand apologies.

Back To Guatemala!

Mike and I spent another two days lazying around Placencia before heading off to Punta Gorda saturday morning. A tropical storm, which was then upgraded to a hurricane hit us Thursday and destroyed any chances of future good weather for the time being. We hunkered down in our little cabana for friday night with the odd look outside to see the 50mph winds throwing stuff around the beach. Took a mini ferry through the managroves (picture the florida everglades...) on saturday morning, then grabbed a 2 hour bus ride down to Punta Gorda. We had been hoping to hit the Garafuna Settlement day celebration, but we were a day late. Although we arrived on the right day, and the entire country was celebrating on this day, the one town that decides to celebrate the night before is Punta Gorda. Screw it, we celebrated it ourselves with two other travellers (a guy from France and a guy from Sacremento). After more than enough Belikins (dont worry Jacky, I had one for you..and then another, and then one for pretty much everyone else I know), we wandered back to our hostel where we were kept awake most of the night by what sounded like a dying dog. Following that an army marched through the hostel and right past our, at least it sounded like an army based on what I could hear from my bed. After investigating both incidents in the morning, all I could find was a very lively dog parked outside my window and no signs of an army. We hoped on a boat to Puerto Barrios (back to Guatemala) and upon arriving, I parted ways with Mike (who we hope to meet back up with in the Bay Islands of Honduras in about a week). It was interesting navigating this town without a map or any information and every small accomplishment seemed like a tremendous victory. Trying to get a boat to Livingston I was told by two guys that boats didnt go there on Sundays, then offering me places to stay until tomorrow. How odd..I could have sworn they ran every day. Found the ticket booth and sure enough there was a boat leaving in an hour, looked behind me and the two swindlers were walking away in defeat. Unfortunately the boat was more money than I had on me, so I asked where to find a bank. No banks are open...Sunday, came the reply, but he would be willing to convert some of my lovely american money right there on the spot, for only a small comission. Lies! ATMs are always open...so after getting broken directions for an hour, and missing the first boat, I found a beautiful ATM on the other side of town. It may not seem like much, but it was quite the accomplishment at the time. Got to Livingston, grabbed a room and will basically just putter around this town until Jasons arrival on monday or tuesday. Might do a river tour tomorrow to eat up some time, we shall see. Adios!

No pictures, this computer has no USB port....booo

Placencia

Was up early Monday morning and hit the road to Belize. Trip took about 6-7 hours and I stopped in Belize City just long enough to hop on a bus to Dangriga. 3-4 hour chicken bus ride later, arrived in Dangriga. The people of Belize look much, act and speak much differently than what I've grown used to over the last month. Much darker skinned, they speak..a form of english, although I can rarely understand it (even their signs are printed in their crazy dialect with things like, "Don litta mon, use yo hed!") and they all seem extremely friendly and laid back. I ran into Mike (you may remember him from such previous adventures as "The Palenque waterfall tour" and "The night we got really drunk in San Cristobal") after about an hour of being in town, we grabbed a twin room together and spent one night in Dangriga. Not much to do there, so the next morning we headed down south to Placencia. Placencia is essentially a Caye, but with a long sandbar that reaches to the main land, so our little chicken bus could maneouver its way out there. Tiny little town of only 500 people, but a decent amount of travellers, beachside bars and restaurants. We thought we'd catch the Garifuna festival on the 19th here, but unfortunately this town doesnt overly celebrate it. We had plans to do some deep sea fishing tomorrow, but as Mike JUST told me, he looked into it and its $300 USD...so scratch that idea. Maybe we can find some cheaper place. The main activities of the place include, lying on the beach and talking about doing stuff, but not actually doing it. The rum here is extremely cheap and my head is still spinning from last night's festivities. We woke up fairly early and decided to test ourselves by running down to the far point of the bay, then swimming back. The running went fine, but a quarter of the way through the swim I found that I had inadvertantly wandered into a small jellyfish community. They greeted me warmly with their stinging whips across my back and around my right leg and I made a hasty retreat to shore. FYI, pissing on your jelly fish wounds doesn't work...that's the last time I believe something I saw on a sitcom, but when in that amount of pain I was willing to try anything. We'll probably stay here until Saturday or so, giving me lots of time to catch up on my journal and reading, then head down to Punta Gorda and then onto Livingston to meet up with Jas.

Picture! The view from just outside our place, taken at around sundown. Although the ocean looks serene...beneath its crystal blue surfaces lie the dreaded Jelly lords and their evil minions just waiting for stupid Canadian kids to cross their domain.

Mud, Mosquitos and Mayans

"So...aside from the whole, 'running out of food thing'...you guys would recommend me right??"

Hmmm, where to begin. Overall it was a great trip, definitely a once in a lifetime experience and we met some great guys, would I do it a second time though, never. The above quote was made by the 'middle man', the guy who took us to the isolated starting town, bought all the food, arranged everything with the guide etc, then picked us back up. We didn't actually run out of food until the very last day, although we came quite close by the 5th day. For the 5th day we ate leftovers from the previous night's dinner for breakfast, and had noodles with a little sauce for the 4th time. Heres how the whole trip broke down:

Day 1: ~20km of hiking, got there late and hiked through mud that ranged from your ankles to your knees, very tiring, very wet, very dirty, very frustrating. Due to our late departure and the necessity of making it to the camp, we hiked the last hour or so in the pitch black with nothing but mine and Jason's headlamps to point out the muddy path. The headlamps created a freaky atmosphere though, as you would look out into the surrounding jungle you could see literally hundreds of little tiny sparkling spider eyes staring back at you, quite comforting!

Day 2: ~32km of hiking, pretty brutal day, fast paced, lots of mud, but we reached El Mirador and it was worth it.

Day 3: Toured El Mirador, climbed the two highest and oldest temples in the Mayan world, our guide knew everything pretty much so it was awesome. Unlike the other sites, Tikal, Palenque etc, theres nobody out there, so you can pretty much do as you please, could climb up all the temples, handle the artifacts, whatever!

Day 4: ~15km of hiking, good hike, fast paced, relatively dry, made it to Ncbae, another neighbouring mayan city. Went into some tunnels and our guide once again gave us the full package, almost too much to see.

Day 5: ~40km of hiking, long day, wading through jungle swamps and pools, made it back to one of the starting camps in time to meet another group who had attempted El Mirador but failed. Unfortunately, instead of being able to gloat, we merily...borrowed their food for breakfast and dinner!

Day 6: ~12km, extremely muddy, really didnt care though due to it being the homestretch, just wanted the pain to end. Finally made it back to town and proceeded to drink mucho cervezas while waiting for our late middle man guy.

The jungle wasnt totally what I expected. Ive mentioned the mud already, but really its the thing that just won't leave my mind, that and the bugs. There werent a lot of points that you could simply stop moving due to the constant presence of bugs. Although I was better off than most (with jason and Martin taking the brunt of the mosquito fury) it was still a constant annoyance and a flurry of bites, ranging from mosquitos to flies to fire ants (those being my least favourite). I saw bigger spiders than I ever knew existed, the two worst being the huge furry black guy we found last night in our camp and the monstrous weird crab spiders that we found while looking through a mayan tomb, Im not sure how big across they were, probably 7 inches or so, needless to say I was extremely calm and relaxed around them...The monkeys were great, saw them quite a bit, swinging around through the trees and watching us, at times they seemed to be plotting something but it was impossible to tell, we had hoped to see a Jaguar but no luck. Our guide, Alex, was awesome. Kid was 18 and hopes to be an archeologist one day, something that I dont think will be a problem for him. Always in a good mood, very informative (from what I could pick up through my cracked spanish translation!) and just all around a great guy. We ended up going with 3 other guys, Chris, Dave and Martin. We had been with them all back in the San Cristobal hostel, but really got to know them during the 6 days. Great guys and Im glad they were with us to lighten up the trip. Anyhow, Im too tired to keep going on about it (we've been going to bed at 7pm every night and getting up at 4ish!), so I'll let you use your imagination to fill in any blanks, just picture ~115km of trails, lots of ruins, lots of mud, lots of bugs and constantly damp and dirty clothes with 6 out of place but stubborn gringos mixed in and you'll get the idea, Adios!

Pictures! Really didnt turn out that well, and after looking at them, im actually pretty dissapointed, but oh well! First shot is up one of the bigger temples, the really tall ones all look pretty similar to that, very cool how they just pop out of the jungle. Second one is what our feet and legs looked like the entire time, thats not even that muddy actually, just a regular shot!

Guatemala

Arggg had another entry typed out and ready to roll...but then the computer froze...so that sucked! Anyhow...

Woke up early in Palenque on Sunday and made the 10 hour perilious trip to Flores, Guatemala, crossing potholes, dirty rivers and banana saleswomen! The people in Guatemala seem much more friendly and happy to see us and have the added bonus of not trying to sell us their posessions every 8 seconds! This morning we woke up early (4:30am..ugh) and hopped on the bus to Tikal. Tikal as a city was apparently about 10x the size of Palenque, and after seeing it, that sounds about true. It looks like your classic Indiana Jones ruin site. Huge pyramids and towers poke their heads out of the mist covered canopy while spider monkeys play in the branches surrounding you. The spider monkeys strange cousins, the Howler monkeys are another story though. These things create a sound which is quite terrifying. I cant imagine what the first western explorers felt when they heard these guys echo through the jungle. It sounds like a chorus of lions of steroids and most of the time you cant see them so its as if the jungle itself is just kind of screaming at you. We figured if they were dangerous, it would take them hours to eat their way through the hordes of German tourists, so we were in a safe situation.

Tomorrow we begin our 6 day jungle expedition! There were a few selling points for us, but basically it came down to:

Travel to ancient, nearly undiscovered and rarely visited ruins.
We would have a pack mule.
We dont have to wash or even change our clothes for 6 whole days of sweat and mud!

Sold! Although I envision us running from headhunters and swinging through caves while accompanied by an army of elephants, donkeys, sherpas and those old british soldiers, I figure reality is more along the lines of, the three of us, 2 guatemalan guides and their donkey and these two other guys who also signed up. Regardless, it should be pretty exciting. We saw our first wild tarantula today, it was easy to miss him because at first we thought it was just a giant black cat, but then upon closer inspection, he revealed his identity. Im assuming that this was a city dwelling spider, and the variation that we´ll find in the jungle will be much smaller....right? Anyhow, upon returning from our expedition I leave the following morning for Belize but will hopefully get a blog update in before I hop on the bus! Thats all for now I suppose, Adios and Ill be thinking of you when Im fighting off the anaconda which has just swallowed Ryan.

Pictures! or lack thereof....

this computer sucks and its sooo slow, pictures of our river crossing boat and Tikal shall have to wait!

Palenque

Had one more night out on the town in San Cristobal, then it was off to Palenque on Thursday morning. Thursday night we ran into Mike and Angus (I know its not spelled Angus, its actually Aonghus or something crazy...but damnit man that will have to do!) both from the San Cristobal hostel. Friday we took a waterfall tour with Mike and saw some pretty amazing scenery, including the waterfall featured in Predator which Arnold jumps off. Found a tree to jump off and managed to entertain a small crowd of locals and tourists for a good 20 minutes with our daredevil antics, then retreated to a little restaurant where I polished off a record 14 quesadillas (we had no change so we had to keep eating until the bill came to 100 pesos!). Which brings me to one major irritation with Mexico in general, the complete lack of cambio! Cambio being spanish for change. Everywhere we go, 'Senor, Cambio?', 'No, amigo..'. No where has change, huge restaurants with 80 people eating at them, have no change, and when we do find a place with change it quickly becomes a race to see who can change their largest bills for the precious cambio, enough about that though. Today we hit up the Palenque ruins (great suggestion Grandmom!). Huge temples and pyramids which are tucked away in the jungle with an orchestra of monkeys keeping up the background noise. Very cool place and definitely the best ruins Ive ever seen, we'll see if the legendary ruins of Tikal can top them! Leave for Guatemala tomorrow morning at 6am, should get in to Flores around 4pm, then we're going to try to bust it right to Tikal from there. Looks like after Flores we'll all be going our seperate ways! Ryan wants to learn spanish for a while, and Jason has already seen Belize and wants to check out some things in Western Guatemala, and Im quite content with travelling over to the Carribean and working my way down Belize, the rough plan would see Jason and I meeting back up in a week or so in Livingston (Guatemala), not sure where we'd see Ry again. But as always, things could change before then, so who really knows!

Pictures!
Listening to the canucks vs wild game in San Cristobal via cknw.com
Shot of Palenque from the top of the tallest ruin
Agua Azul, one of the 3 areas that we went to on the waterfall tour, great swimming!

San Cristobal Pt 2

At some point between tequila shots on Halloween night we decided to join Mike (guy we went drinking with from London) on this tour of these little villages. I didnt really remember any of this until my alarm went off at 8 in the morning (somehow I had managed to set it without my own knowledge), crowning a wonderful 4 hour sleep...needless to say the four of us (me, jas, ry, mike) were all extremely hungover, but managed to walk down to the square and look for this tour. Good thing we did! The tour guide was a local guy and seemed to have endless knowledge about the area and it's inhabitants. We visited two Coca-Cola Mayan villages up in the mountains and luckily our tour landed right in the middle of the Day of the Dead ceremonies. The graveyard and church around the town were full of stumbling locals who were sharing the day with their dead relatives who they called out with the help of the church bells. Once they've arrived (the spirits), everyone goes over to the their graves and essentially gets completely gassed from this locally brewed alcohol called Posh (which, in an attempt to get some of the fur of the dog that bit me I tried...not bad, very strong). We then went up to one of the Mayordomo´s (religious leaders of the town) houses and sat in there while they went through about 15 tons of incense and another 25 litres of posh each. At seemingly random times, the mayordomo would give the code word, and a flurry of explosions would echo through the streets as his minions unleashed their 6 peso fireworks into the sky, loud...so...loud. The whole town was really interesting in that, when the spaniards came and brought the church along, for some reason the shipment of John the Baptist statues piled up in this area. So, as time went on, the locals began to worship these statues above all else and now they dont really care about jesus or anything else, they're just obsessed with john the baptist. The sheep is now incredibly sacred to them (all the statues show John holding a sheep) and there seemed to be an endless supply of sheep wandering around. They´ve kept their own traditions though and we were told that the catholic church loves the idea of these people sacrificing chickens in front of the virgin mary (simple healing principle: grab a chicken, transfer your problems to it, kill it, boom, no more problems!) By far, the strangest thing is the Coke. Somewhere in their belief system is the idea that burping gets rid of the sins of your soul, this used to be accomplished using Posh, but now its mainly done with coke (and some pepsi). EVERYTHING in this village has Coca-Cola printed on it. The houses with coke murals contain coke umbrellas which keep the trillion cases of coke in the shade while people sitting on coke chairs sip coke and guys ride by on motorcycles covered with coke symbols. The guy in charge of distributing coke to the region has a monopoly and owns the biggest house in town (his only rivals for square footage are the pepsi brothers, who also own relatively huge houses and drive land rovers). Next stop on the tour was the neighbouring town. Didnt stay as long in this one, but it was equally cool. The tour guide has a deal with some local families to let them earn extra cash, and he brings us into their mud brick home. 9 people (Mom, Dad, 7 boys) slept in this tiny little one room house. The mom made us all traditional tortillas and tostados using black corn (day of the dead only!), pumpkin seed powder, black beans and this kind of sweet potato thing. They were quite delicious and I wolfed down five of these things (minus the beans!) and still could have eaten another dozen. From there our last stop was the local church, where two poor guys have the 'honourable' duty of ringing the church bells from 6am to 6pm for all the days of the celebration. Watching these guys for 5 minutes had me clenching my teeth in boredom, not sure if it was an honour or some substitute for a jail sentence.

I didnt get to take many pictures as the locals believe that a snippet of their soul is taken with each picture. Although many of them could be offered a few pesos in exchange for a snapshot, I guess the going price for a soul these days is quite low. I did get the odd picture though, but this computer is having issues with my card reader, so they'll have to wait!

Bought out tickets for Palenque and hit the road at 11am tomorrow morning, San Cristobal is cool but we're all definitely looking forward to moving on!

Adios!