Mexico - Tulum, Palenque, Yaxchilan & Bonampak

23 July 2010

Tulum

We met up again with Scott from LA and the three of us got the bus from Playa del Carmen to the Tulum ruins which are a great set of ruins on the coast.  The site is pretty much a square with massive defensive walls around three sides and the sea on the fourth side.  It was absolutely overrun with people which was quite a surprise as none of the other sites had been particularly busy.  There were some really cool temples and some great carvings, mainly of the "Descending Man" which is possibly though to be homage to the bee which was apparently revered.

Tulum

The Descending Man (Tulum)

Corner or a building at Tulum - would have been amazing when painted

From there the three of us got the night bus up to Palenque, an enormous site much further inland.  Scott (being from the US) was a massive chicken about travelling around Mexico on a bus in the night and hardly slept, but it was fine!

False arches at Palenque

At the Palenque ruins we got a guide which was nice as he explained quite a lot about the construction of the stone false arches which created the ceilings of all rooms.  Each side of the arch will stand independently, but it means they can't really span much of a distance and the maximum room width was therefore about 2m.  It made for some dark small spaces.  Scott found a small clay head in the rubble up the side of one temple and I got in a major huff with him when he refused to put it back or give it in to the museum.  And the guide suggested he keep it too.  I was raging.  So that evening we all drank a large amount of Mezcal (cactus spirit of which tequila is a fancy subset) with chilli salt.  Particularly fun as Lou didn't know what Mezcal was up until that point!

Palenque grand plaza

Carving at Palenque

Scott then finally decided he'd had enough of us and left and Lou and I had a chilled couple of days in Palenque town getting my backpack fixed (again!) and doing laundry etc.

We arranged a tour down to Flores in Guatemala through our hostel which managed to get us to where they said they would take us, but didn't tell us anything along the way so we kept arriving in places with all the wrong stuff and no idea what we were supposed to be doing.

The first stop was at a site called Yaxchilan which involved a trip on a longboat down the river that borders that part of Guatemala & Mexico.  We had no idea where we were being sent (we'd already changed buses a few times by this point) so had our full daypacks (computer etc) to carry, but no bugspray so we were eaten alive.  This didn't improve our moods!

Roofcomb at Yaxchilan

Yaxchilan was a nice wee site though.  You had to enter the main square by walking through pitch black, bat filled tunnels under one temple which was pretty cool.  The howler monkeys were really going for it (we thought the noise they were making was fake for a while as it was so strange) and there was a nice assortment of wee temples and ball courts and the like.  There was also a massive temple with a huge roofcomb on it at the top of a very high, steep hill. Despite the cloying heat and heavy packs we climbed up there for amazing views out over the jungle.

Stela at Bonampak

After lunch we were driven off in a taxi to a site called Bonampak which is famous for its murals.  Lou and I took a leisurely stroll around all the carved stelae and the buildings to finish at the temple with the murals only to find that they'd been closed for the day (our fantastic tour company having failed to mention this).  Lou was in such a huff, refusing to even look through the mesh doors at the murals, that the guards took pity on us and opened the three rooms just for us.  They were absolutely amazing, vividly colourful stucco murals covering all the surface of three smallish rooms.  The style was similar to Egyptian paintings with people in profile.

Murals at Bonampak

We stayed a night in the jungle where the local Lacandon people (recognisable by their long hair, fringes and white smocks - male & female) were having some sort of religious ceremony (complete with Coca-cola to burp out the bad spirits) followed by a massive knees up.  It was quite cross-cultural with some people in Lacandon dress & some in western dress, indigenous religion crossed with catholic, and a pinata (papier mache shape filled with sweeties, hung up and beaten with a baseball bat by someone wearing a blindfold till it bursts and the sweeties fall out) to finish.

The morning had a moment of excitement when I noticed a 3" scorpion on the front of my shorts.  Luckily a local came and swiped it off me and then killed it.

From there we were taken back to the river and carried downstream this time to the Guatemalan border post and on to Flores.....

Mexico - Mayan Riviera

16 July 2010

And then my friend Louisa arrived....

I went to pick her up from Cancun airport in the pouring rain (not a great start to her hols) and took her back to the hostel for rooftop cocktails and food (the rain had abated by that point).

Chichen Itza

The next day we went on a great tour, first to Chichen Itza, a Mayan site and apparently one of the new "great wonders of the world" though I suspect it was chosen more for its proximity to Cancun airport as it wasn't the best of the Mayan sites we ended up seeing.  Nevertheless, it was pretty impressive, with a massive (reconstructed) temple and a huge (reconstructed) ball court.

Me & Lou in a cenote

From there we were driven off to a cenote which is a sinkhole in the limestone rock that is full of freshwater.  It was pretty impressive and the water was crystal clear and quite cool.

Ek Balam

And there to Ek Balam (Black Jaguar), another Mayan site, but this one much, much cooler than Chichen Itza because it's only recently been opened up, is mostly unexcavated, and is totally un-reconstructed (such bad archaeology).  It was a series of buildings round a main square, surrounded by jungle and a series of small hills which were the un-excavated temples.  We climbed a couple of the temples and the views of the jungle all around were amazing.


After a busy day we thought we'd treat ourselves to a day at the beach. Cancun town is actually quite nice, but there is a stretch of offshore beach which is known at the hotel zone and is basically hell on earth - all fancy american hotels, expensive malls and chain restaurants.  We (me, Lou and our new American friend Scott) took ourselves down to the Hilton and confidently walked through the lobby, past the restaurant and pool and out onto "their" stretch of beach.  It was all going so well until the winds picked up and the rain came pouring down!  So we spent the rest of the day at the aquarium and eating in terrible american chain restaurants!

The following day Lou and I got the ferry over to a lovely wee island called Isla Mujeres (Women's island) off the coast of Cancun.  We had a lovely day just chilling on the beach, enjoying the luxury of having cold beer and nice food brought to us.

Bull sharks in a boat at the dock

The next day was one of the best days of my trip.  We were up early with a bunch of other people from our hostel (Scott, Joe & Nisha and Matt, the german bodybuilder) and were picked up and taken to the docks to pick our boat which took us on a whale shark hunt!!  It took us a couple of hours in pretty heavy seas to get out there but we found a massive pod of whale sharks, each up to 45 ft long.

Whale Shark

It was really amazing.  And we were lucky enough to get in the water with them (snorkelling, life jacket on so we couldn't dive beneath them) which was fantastic.  We would be dropped in the water beside one and watch it swim past only to turn around and see another massive mouth heading towards us.  They feed on plankton & fish eggs and are therefore completely harmless, but quite a sight.

Hopefully the video below plays properly so you can see what they look like.

The day was rounded off with a bit of larking around in waist deep warm water, drinking beer and eating prawn ceviche.

We then moved onto the island of Cozumel (bumping into Geordie Rachel & German Matt on the ferry) and had a couple of days of diving which were pretty nice.  Two of the dives were drift dives on top of a reef, but the current was so strong we were whizzing by at such a pace it was hard to see things and even harder to stop and take a proper look.  We did see lots of fish and a turtle though so that was good. On the second dive Lou and I were doing our safety stop at 5m and I looked over and noticed a torch being flashed at us, turns out it was our group miles away as we'd drifted off.  There was quite a comedy moment where we realised there was no way we'd be able to swim back to them, but we were able to swim to the line our divemaster had sent up so that worked out ok in the end!  The other two dives were much more rewarding with really cool coral formations (see photo left) and some cool swim throughs (swimming through tunnels in the reef) in which was saw barracuda just hanging out in the water like missiles and a crab so large the legs looked like a human ribcage.  The water is about 30C here which means we're diving in our bikinis which is fantastic (I HATE wetsuits!).

Me (L) and Lou at about 18m

After all this diving we decided we really should do some more, but diving with a difference.  Cenotes are sinkholes in the limestone bedrock which have filled up with freshwater.  During the last ice age the caverns and caves were dry(ish) and so lots of stalacmites and stalactites were formed.  These have since flooded, creating some amazing diving.  We went (sadly suited up in not one, but 2 wetsuits each) with a local nutter (albeit very professional nutter) called Gerardo to a place called Dos Ojos.  The diving was absolutely amazing; the water is fresh and visibility is about 200m - it's so clear that it feels like you're flying or in space when you're diving.  And you're diving through the caves and round the formations and it's just amazing.  When your bubbles get stuck on the roof of a fully flooded cave they look like puddles of oil.  Gerardo told us when we came up to the surface in the middle of one dive that there were crocs in the water, but that they only liked blondes. During the next section of dive he had us all line up on the edge of this huge boulder and then had us all look down at the same time, only for him to shine his light on a plastic croc eating a blonde barbie.  Oh, the hilarity!!

Nicaragua (again)

16 June 2010

Leon Cathedral

After another epic day on a bus I ended up back in Granada again, enjoying the delights of a really nice hostel, the fantastic breakfasts at Kathy's and the banana-nut-choc-chip muffins at Euro Cafe.  I stayed a couple of days then bussed it up to Leon which was just as hot as Granda but not really quite as attractive.  I then bussed it up to a wee town in the hills (chosen because I thought the hills would be cooler - I was wrong!) called Esteli where I had booked some Spanish classes.

The town was a lot less touristy which was really nice in some ways, but meant it was very hard to find food other than the fried meat on the street.

My Spanish classes were exceedingly frustrating as the teacher didn't really know much about the grammar and didn't speak enough English (nor I enough Spanish) for me to be able to communicate my questions to him. It was a really bad week topped off by a horrible 36 hour bout of food poisoning at the end.

Leon

The highlight was a tour to a cigar factory midweek.  Nicaragua produces cigars which apparently do measure up to the Cuban standard.  The leaves are fermented in big stacks for a while (the smell is a little intense!) before being sorted, rolled and then finished.  It's quite a skilled job.  And the wee store room we went into to marvel at all the different types apparently contained about $6m retail value of cigars.  No wonder they had an ocelot in a cage out front!

Having decided that I couldn't afford to go up to the states to visit everyone I wanted to see so decided to treat myself and booked flights out to the Corn Islands on the caribbean coast of Nicaragua.  I flew out from Managua on a medium sized jet (a little bit of a surprise as they'd weighed all the passengers so I figured it must be a really small plane!), first stopping at Bluefields on the coast and then landing in Big Corn Island.  I had met an American father/daughter Sam and Morgan at the airport and the three of us plus some others got a taxi over to the dock where we loaded up onto a boat for the half our ride over glassy seas to Little Corn Island.  It's very much the Caribbean on the islands - most people speak English and with a caribbean accent and the way of life is laid back.

The view from my balcony - tough times!

It was really lovely on Little Corn.  There are no roads, just muddy paths to walk along and you can cross the island in about 10mins as it's really tiny.

I had planned to do a bit of diving on the islands, but the weather wasn't right in the first few days for the dive I really wanted to do (caves), and then the night dive I booked was cancelled for me by one of the divers after I had a few beers with him at lunchtime celebrating Canada Day (happily he then bought me another beer!)  I eventually managed to do a couple of dives near to the island which were really lovely and chilled out.  We saw lots of nurse sharks amongst other bits and bobs.  And then a group of us went out on my last day to Blowing Rocks which is a pinnacle in the middle of nowhere.  The diving was really great with quite a few reef sharks and lots of rocks etc which made it quite dramatic.
It was a really nice place and I wish I'd booked my return flight for a much later date as I would have loved to stay longer.

But, onwards again, on the boat, on the plane and back to Managua, stopping only to slip in some vanilla icecream in a shop and get it all over myself and my backpack!

The following couple of days and nights were mainly spent on buses - 36 hours worth of travel in just 48 hours.  The first day was from Managua to El Salvador via Honduras, staying the night in San Salvador, and the second day was up to Guatemala City, a change of bus and up to Tapachula in Mexico at which point I changed to a night bus to San Cristobal in Mexico.  The buses were mainly ok apart from the one in Mexico as it was air-conditioned to freezing point and the Mexicans do love their speed bumps.

I stayed in San Cristobal for a couple of days and then got a 20 hour night bus to Cancun.  Cancun was where granny advised me to get to a doctor (which I did, only to be diagnosed with exhaustion and got two shots in the bum for my troubles!) and where I hung out in air conditioned malls waiting for Louisa to arrive........

Costa Rica - Rancho Mastatal

5th June 2010

So, not sure if I mentioned, but wee Vikki, Drew and Jordan (all from previous post) met on a Ranch in Costa Rica called Rancho Mastatal, located, unsurpisingly, in the village of Mastatal about 3 hours south of San Jose. Given that they'd been banging on about the place for ages, and I didn't have any particular itinerary, I joined Vikki as she went back to start her internship.

The journey from Granada took us a good couple of days starting with an un-airconditioned Ticabus down to San Jose where we hung out (behind the security of sheet-metal gates at our hostel - not the best capital city) for a couple of days in the pouring rain, and then to Puriscal on a normal coach style bus and then finally to Mastatal on a chicken bus.

Chicken buses are named for their "bring anything on board" policy. In this case there were no chickens, but there was a twin tub washing machine, a strimmer, some boxes of barbed wire and an awful lot of animal feed, all piled onto the back of a retired American school bus (the yellow kind from movies). Vikki and I, with our usual British "oh no, you first" politeness ended up throwing our backpacks on after all the aforementioned items and therefore didn't manage to get seats which was super-fun!

After a while we did manage to get seats only for some old dude, drinking mooonshine from a Coke bottle stuffed down his trousers, to start bothering us. The rest of the bus was in fits of laughter as he kept touching me on the head and shoulder and trying to get me to do complicated handshakes. Sadly it wasn't really appropriate for me to demonstrate my Spanish by telling him to bugger off as it would have been really impolite given the communities are really small and everyone knows each other.

We finally arrived in the evening, just in time to haul our bags to Tiburon's house (more on Tiburon later) and head back up to the ranch house for our tea.

The Ranch is run by Tim and Robin and their 2 year-old daughter Sole (short for Soledad) who are American and ex Peace Corp. They've had the Ranch about 8 years and in that time have built numerous buildings from wattle, daub and lime render, started their farm (goats, tons of chickens, pond awaiting tilapia, veggie gardens) and contributed massively to the local community in terms of employment, community projects and loans/grants amongst other things. It's a really amazing place. It's run pretty much like I would imagine a commune to be, with communal meals, communal living and everyone contributing to the running of the place. But there's not too much hippy nonsense which suited me just fine!! You can see more about the place on their website.

Tiburon's house belongs (not surprisingly) to a guy called Tiburon who hails from the US. Tiburon means "shark" in Spanish and relates to a run in he had with a bull shark in Belize 20+ years ago.
Tiburon survived the attack with an impressive gouge and some pretty cool teeth marks in his arm. He's affiliated with the ranch and therefore his house is generally looked after in his absence by

someone that would otherwise be living at the ranch. Luckily for me, that person is Vikki as it's fabulous.

The house is absolutely amazing, built with no doors and minimal walls over two floors with amazing views out over the football field to La Cangreha (the crab) peak.

After excelling myself on the first evening by spilling one of the liquid pork-fat-and-palm-oil homemade candles all over the dining table, I settled into a great week of foods, friends and hands that smelled of cow shit!

The first morning I got my official tour of the ranch from Vikki and then Vikki, Anne (US) and I cleaned Tiburon's house top to bottom as he was due home soon. Turns out I can actually clean, I just choose not to most of the time!

The following few days involved lots of cooking (burning batches of Vikki's granola as the oven runs really hot), making mango bread (the challenge in the kitchen when I was there was to inventively use up the baskets upon baskets of mangos in the scullery!), cooking breakfast at 530 am for the ranch, making Biscotti, turning piles of Bokashi (fermented chicken manure), making jam from red hibiscus leaves (using tapadulce, a liquid cane sugar), making glasses from old glass beer, soft drink and wine bottles and making daub from 1 part cowshit, 1 part clay and 3 parts gravel, mixed with bare feet, and shaped into bricks with bare hands (hence the lovely scent I carried for a few days!)

There was also a reasonable amount of eating, drinking (rum with frozen cubes of pineapple in - mmmmm) hanging out at the bar and gossiping wildly (the ranch seems to inspire unusual behaviour!) Adam (US) treated us to a dance recital (Beyonce's Single Ladies) and concert (Flight of the Conchords mostly) and we spent a vast amount of time escorting Vikki home past the bar full of enthusiastic locals.

Tiburon was kind enough on our day off to take a bunch of us up into the national park and up to a beautiful set of waterfalls. We climbed up the first half of the waterfall to a flat area and just hung out, sitting in the spray and lying in the water which was really refreshing. We ate that evening at the Soda, a kind of corner shop, and were treated to the entertainment of the owner's puppy and cat having an all out fight. The cat won!

The following evening's entertainment was provided by an incredibly drunk Costa Rican biologist, visiting the area, storming into the ranch house and refusing to leave. He was persuaded into the front garden where he promptly fell into a swale which was funny. He was then picked up by the menfolk and removed from the property! Never a dull moment at the ranch!

I met some really lovely people at the ranch in addition to those mentioned above: Ashley and her daughter Courtney, a really sweet girl called Morgan, Carolyn and Tyler who know all about the ranch and all the new interns who I hope are having a great time as we speak. (Apologies to anyone I've forgotten - I'm useless.)

I left the ranch with Tiburon (on his way to pick up his students) and Adam (on his way home) and made it back to Granada in Nicaragua the same day.

Nicaragua

18 May 2010

After finally recovering from the hell that was Volcan Baru in Panama, I got myself on a bus up to San Jose in Costa Rica where I stayed in the weirdest hostel ever (it was close to the bus terminal). I'd been told that Costa Rica was expensive and full of American tourists and businesses so I figured I'd give the country a miss, just taking the time to step out and indulge at one of the American fast food restaurants!! So the next morning I got the 730am bus out of there up to Nicaragua. Another splendiferous bus ride with a breakdown lasting a mere 1 1/2 hours and resulting in the aircon being shut off for the rest of the journey (actually a blessing as you normally have to dress warmer on a bus than if you were staying at Fountainhall Road in winter).

Some kindly Americans lent me their Lonely Planet whilst we were waiting for the border formalities to be concluded so I was able to figure out how to get to Granada that night rather than suffer the hell of going to Managua which apparently isn't in the top 10 capital cities in the world. I met a Czech girl, Katka, when I got off the bus and we shared a taxi up to Granada together and then she took me out to meet some of her couchsurfing friends in the evening which was really nice.

Granada is a really beautiful town with lots of colonial buildings set around a central square with quite a smart cathedral. Around the town there are plenty of churches that could be described as being in a state of faded splendour, plus a large convent (with really cool indigenous rock statues of men with monkeys and alligators on their heads) and a massive old market. It's really, really hot though and oppresively humid so really hard to sleep at night and even harder to bother to do anything during the day (not that I really need an excuse!). And it rains. A lot.

On one of the days I was doing nothing I found myself at the bar in the hostel drinking a few of the Margaritas which were conveniently on 2 for 1. I was just talking to Katka when this crusty old Guatemalan guy, who lives at the hostel making jewellery, showed up. We asked him nicely a couple of times to go away (and I mean nicely - we weren't rude or loud and noone else noticed so it wasn't embarrassing for him). He took this badly and punched me in the face! An English guy noticed something going on and turned around and thought something had happened to Katka as she looked so shocked! He didn't really hit me that hard and I only ended up with a slight graze to my chin, so all ok!

I didn't manage to move out of the hostel in the morning as I was a little hungover from the additional Margaritas imbibed due to shock, but I moved the following day only to bump into the kindly book-lending Americans I met at the border.

And on to the next weird experience of my time in Granada: The kindly Americans (Jordan & Drew), plus their Geordie friend (Vikki) and I were just hanging out at the hostel drinking a few beers when we were approached by this nutter of a Texan called Russell (think cowboy boots, wifebeater, massive texan belt buckle, mirrored sunglasses over a black eye). We got into various discussions with Russell including gun control (or lack thereof) and other sensitive topics and then took ourselves off for food, only for Russell to turn up at the restaurant telling us how he'd amusingly hired some street kids to follow us and they'd misunderstood and were all poised to beat us up until he managed to stop them at the last minute! After Russell smoking weed at the table and a local man appearing in the girls' bathroom when I went for a pee we retired to our hostel which has the advantage of a locked gate!

The next day a whole bunch of us (not Russell!) took a boat down to the island of Ometepe. The island comprises two massive volcanoes, one of which is still active, rising out of Lake Nicaragua. The island is really beautiful (as seems to generally be the case everywhere so far in Nicaragua) and the people so, so friendly. We stayed at a great hostel run by a great guy Mario and his family (including son Achilles - great name!).

We managed to haul ourselves out of bed late one morning and take the bus up the road to a place called Ojo de Agua which was a freshwater swimming hole (on an island in a freshwater lake!) which was really really lovely. The water was cool but not cold and completely clear and we had a lovely time just being stupid, learning how to make ashtrays out of drinks cans and taking pics with my underwater camera (see kodakgallery/facebook).

The buses on the island are great - they're either beat up large minibuses or beat up american school buses. And the roads are unpaved. So there's no snoozing off on the journeys!

And then someone (not me!) had the bright idea to climb the active Volcan Concepcion so off we trotted at 7am one morning in crazy heat and at quite a pace. It was very much a long walk up a steep hill and so I quit after a while. I like to think it's because of my bad knee and the knowledge that I was slowing anyone down, but it's more probably because I'm lazy and unfit!

The others didn't make it to the top in the end as there was too much sulphur blowing down the volcano in their faces, so I felt better about my afternoon in a hammock whilst they were all sweating their guts out!

We kind of tried to leave the hostel in order to go to another place on the island, but Mario invited us to his wife's birthday party which coincided with national Ladies' Day so how could we refuse?! It was a really great party with loads of food and rum and all the ladies going slightly mental on the dancing front! Jordan and Drew were particularly popular with the crowd of girls!

Finally we moved out of the town and went round to the other side of the island to a hostel with a beach where we spent a relaxing couple of days. Defying the threat of bullsharks in the lake Vikki swam out to a smaller island whilst the rest of us loitered in the jacuzzi-hot shallows. Some other Americans turned up one day and set up a slackline which all the local kids took to like pros.

We spent our final night on the island in a town called Matagalpa where we caught some locals spying into our rooms from the street which was unnerving.

Back in Granada the boys made us spend the next couple of evenings watching sporting fixtures in bars. And me and Vikki spent the days shopping at the second hand stores for clothes and at the Laguna de Apoyo which is a vast crater lake in the jungle and another stunning place to spend some time (see pics).

And then it was time for the boys to head up to the big city to pick up their friend who was flying in, and for me and Vikki to get the bus down to Costa Rica so I could visit the Ranch that she and the guys had been living on for the last few months (they talked about the place endlessly so I thought I'd better go see for myself.)

Panama

3 May 2010

So I got a little bored of the buses and decided to move a little more quickly, so shelled out (paid 4 times - damned internet!) for a flight up to Panama City from Quito in Ecuador.

Panama City was really hot and humid, but also really quite beautiful. The old section of the city is called Casco Viejo and is full of run down colonial mansions, the presidential palace and my hostel. There are also the ruins of the original city, Panama Viejo which was sacked by a Welsh pirate, Henry Morgan, and the new, modern bit of the city with skyscrapers all lit up at night.

In keeping with my degree subject, and because I know Grandad wouldn't be able to bear the disappointment if I didn't go, I headed out to the Miraflores Locks on the Panama Canal.

Everyone except Grandad should skip to the next paragraph at this point..... I stayed to watch a massive boat being raised up 12m or so from the Pacific to the Miraflores Lake, watched a presentation on the canal, then visited the museum, only to round off the excitement watching some boats being lowered from the lake to the pacific!!

I met an Aussie girl who had met up with some English friends in the hostel, so I went off with them on a very cold overnight bus to Bocas del Toro, an island group on the caribbean side of Panama at the west end of the country. We rented a house that was built out over the caribbean, but the toilet flushed straight into the water so we didn't do any swimming from our deck! The next few days were much like Montanita, with lots of hanging out, indulging in the fact we had a TV, eating and drinking far too much. The bars were either built out over the water or were a water taxi ride away. Most had "swimming pools" which were where they'd built out some decking over the water. Evenings always ended with everyone stripping off and jumping into the sea which was a little bit mental!

I tired of the heat, humidity, and drinking after a few days so I got the bus up into the mountains to a lovely town called Boquete which is just really chilled out with good food, no nightlife, a really nice climate and stunning scenery. I took some more spanish classes, then the evil pair that are Kirsty and Pat from London talked me into hiking Volcan Baru, the highest point in Panama.

The views to both the Pacific and Caribbean oceans are only clear at dawn so you either hike up during the day and camp or you hike up at night to arrive at dawn. We chose the latter and started hiking at 1130pm with headtorches. It was a relentless uphill 13.5km with at least a gain in altitute of 1,000m to reach the summit of 3,475m at dawn. We could see to both the caribbean and pacific oceans so it was pretty amazing. It took us another 5 hours to hike back down in daylight, and it made me so glad we hiked up at night as there's no way I would have forced myself to climb the damn thing had I seen the incline! I think I'm on course to lose a toenail after all that fun!

A few days of recovery and I bussed through Costa Rica up to Granada in Nicaragua......

Last bit of Ecuador

18 April 2010

The lovely Paul from Texas, and I, headed off to the bus terminal to get the bus up to the beach town of Montanita. We checked into our hostel (with Shelley from Canada we'd met on the bus) and went out for a wee stroll only to bump into Sarah and Megan almost immediately. The following 5 days consisted of eating, drinking far too much and hanging out at the beach under the shade of umbrellas as it was so hot. But I did start to pick up a bit of a tan which was a bonus.

The town consisted of a few roads of restaurants and bars alongside the lovely pacific beach. They had dug up the road to lay a new one, and it was raining a lot, so most mornings were spent negotiating massive muddy puddles which meant we were pretty much filthy the whole time!

The town wasn't nearly as debauched as people make it out to be, but it's certainly fun! Best drinks were Passion Locos made by a lovely man called Pedro in Cocktail Alley. Ingredients are Pisco, Vodka, Rum, Passionfruit and Sugar. And I wondered why I woke up with blank spots in my memory!!

I headed back to Guayaquil and to the mall to pick up my repaired camera, but they'd lost it so they gave me a new one which was nice! Back to the bus terminal and got the bus up to Cuenca for a couple of nights and then on to Banos when La Casa Verde (the best hostel in the world!) was open for business again.

Spent about a week at La Casa Verde recovering from Galapagos and Montanita and generally getting organised. Highlights included backing up all my photos and posting them home, getting laundry done and eating cheese-based food at the Swiss place in town!

And so on to central america....