Brasil - Rio de Janiero and the Costa Verde

I arrived in Rio de Janiero at about 430am and got the bus up to Copacabana Beach where I got a bit lost. It gave me plenty of time though to stare at the crazy old ladies with bad plastic surgery, walking their fluffy little dogs at the beach.  Also, there were also some crazy types jogging along the beach at this time.  Rio fashion currently seems to include white lacy school style knee socks pulled up high over whatever else you may be wearing.  All very strange for a poor bleary eyed Scot directly off a long overnight flight!

That evening, Sarah (Deloitte friend) pitched up with her ENORMOUS backpack (thankfully as I had lots to send home with her in due course!) and we headed straight out to the Copacabana Palace Hotel for a cheeky couple of Caipirinhas, the Brazilian national cocktail and theoretically made with Cachaca (ka-cha-sa), lime and sugar.  In reality, they're clearly made with either paint stripper, nail varnish remover or pure ethanol and are completely deadly!

View from Sugarloaf

The following few days were pretty action packed, entirely out of character for me and my laid back (read lazy) travelling, but Sarah was on holiday, so she did all sorts of handy organising and bullying me out of bed which is just what I needed.  Firstly we went up Sugarloaf mountain in two separate and very scary cable cars.  We were really lucky to have a lovely clear, hot, sunny day and had some great views out over the city, the sea, long long stretches of sandy beaches, and a real close-up of planes flying low over the city to the domestic airport.  That afternoon we spent a blissful day sunbathing on Copacabana Beach.

Graffiti in Santa Theresa

Cathedral

The next day we braved the metro and got ourselves into the city centre from where we caught a rickety old tram up the hill into the Santa Theresa area which is all old and arty and slightly bohemian.  After a coffee and pannini we walked all the way down the hill to visit the world's worst architecture in the form of the Cathedral.  It's an enourmous 60's cone of concrete and someone bright decided that, rather than some greenery or similar to break up the hard edges, the cathedral grounds should be given over to car parking.  Totally hideous.

Christ the Redeemer

And after that (told you it was hectic!) we got the bus up to another tram which took us all the way up the Corcovado hill to the massive deco(ish) sculpture of Christ the Redeemer.  It's a truly huge chunk of concrete, but so much better than the Cathedral lump of concrete, and we were lucky again with the weather so got some nice (if a little hazy) views out over the city.  That evening was spent out on the town, drinking in the streets of the Lapa district where we had some of the ethanol-based Caipirinhas in the streets before making it to bed (without even being mugged!) at a reasonable hour.

Rocinha favela with posh skyscrapers near the beach

Day three in Rio and Sarah booked us on a favela tour.  Favelas are illegal neighbourhoods that have grown up on the hillsides and can be really grim, but the more developed ones can have proper running water, electricity etc.  Again, the favelas tend to be run by gangsters, but lived in my ordinary, hard working, but poorly paid people.  I was a bit worried that going on a tour was a little rude, akin to staring at zoo animals, but the tour we booked on runs lots of different projects in the favela we visited and we were assured that we were more than welcome, and that we would be safe (I suspect a large part of our tour fee went to ensuring that nothing bad would happen!).

Baker in the favela

We visited the Rocinha favela, one of the largest and most developed in the city.  We started off getting on these crazy motorbike taxis at the bottom of the hill and we were whisked off up to the top which was a little terrifying - the road was steep and windy and there was a ton of traffic to swerve around.  Having survived that (no photos - not allowed at that part - gang rules) we spent a couple of hours walking downhill through various parts of the favela.  It was actually a really interesting tour, and the only real way that an outsider could possibly visit one of the neighbourhoods and I was really glad that we did it.

Samba school

Rio is famous for Sugarloaf, Christ, the beaches (mainly Copacabana & Ipanema), favelas etc, but also for its Carnival, a few days of extreme partying leading up to the start of Lent.  Part of this includes parades and Samba Schools.  So, we decided we really wanted to see a Samba School in action.  Avoiding a tour this time, Sarah, me and an Aussie, Rachel got ourselves in a taxi and went to the base of the Salguerio school knowing only that there was an event on and the doors opened at 10pm.  We arrived at about 10 past 10 and were pretty much the first in the door, partying starting quite late in Latin America.  However, a few Caipirinhas later and the place filled up and then became absolutely mobbed.  The schools prepare all year for carnival, and we happened to arrive on a night where our school was choosing its main singers for next year.  We were adopted by the supporters of one of the singers (luckily the first one up as it didn't all start till after midnight) and were given crazy bird and fruit hats and big flags to wave.  We were dragged up to the area in front of the stage while our guy was on and had to dance around like maniacs being showered the whole time with glitter bombs!

Self portrait with Carmen Miranda style hat!

Paraty

The weather turned at this point and Rio was hidden in a fug of drizzle and haze so we got ourselves on a bus headed to Paraty, a small colonial town on the Costa Verde (green coast) south of Rio.  It was a really cute little town but had decided to really go for it with the upcoming independence day celebrations, so the centre of town was filled with a huge stage and food stalls etc and was absolutely packed at times.  But it was cold and wet which dampened the party atmosphere a little.

Drizzle in Ilha Grande

From there we bussed and sail-boated it out to the island of Ilha Grande where we spent another couple of days in chilly drizzle.  It was a nice wee island though.  Sarah made me go for a long walk up a steep hill in the rain (reminded me of my childhood) and we tried out some acai (ah-sigh-ee) which is a deep purple, semi frozen berry pulp, served topped with granola and honey.  The best part was the granola and honey, the acai being very very bland.  Interesting to give it a go though.

We gave up on the weather and decided to move on, catching a ferry and bus up to the world's second largest bus terminal in Sao Paulo. The bus terminal being the biggest attraction we could find in our guide books, we took ourself off on a night bus to the town of Puerto Iguazu on the Argentinian side of the Iguazu falls.  At this point I have to say that the bus was the most amazing bus I have so far travelled on.  It was a two storied affair with only three seats per row and the seats nearly fully reclined.  We were provided with pillows and blankets too.  It was proper bliss!

Guatemala (again)

27 August 2010

Antigua, Guatemala

We managed to get a bus straight through to Antigua, Guatemala although we got there very late and in the rain.  We hadn't booked anything and the hostel we were dropped at only had one bed so Lou and I had to split up and sleep in separate places.  It was quite a palaver dashing about in the rain, but after a cheeky wee beer everything was just fine.

Antigua, Guatemala

We started the day searching round town for a place that could take the both of us which turned out to be really easy (not quite sure why it was so hard the previous night) and then, after a hearty breakfast of nutella crepes, had a wander round the nice wee colonial town in the drizzle.  It's a really sweet little colonial town, all cobbled streets, whitewashed buildings and ruined churches (lots of earthquakes).

Did anyone else know about
Dad's secret former life
as a monk?!

In our few days there we discovered the delights of a cafe called the Bagel Barn, with their fab bagels, great coffee and movie nights, ate a whole loaf (a big one) of banana bread between us, walked around a lot in the pissing rain and I had my hair cut and dyed (to get rid of the tricolour of roots, red dye from carnaval and blonde stripes from the sun).

For our last night together, after a full 6 weeks of travelling, we went out to the poshest place in town for our tea.  It is a fantastic hotel in the grounds of a ruined monastery.  But, this being Guatemala, I think it only cost us about $70 or something, even with our bottle of fizzy prosecco.

The next morning I flew out from Guatemala City via San Salvador and Lima to Rio de Janeiro.  Amusingly, although Guatemala City airport is international and large, the power was off and they didn't seem to have backup generators.  The staff didn't seem too flustered so I can only guess it happens a lot.  We were checked in by phone and given handwritten boarding cards and baggage tags which was all a bit strange.  Despite all that, Taca seem to be quite a good airline: decent amounts of alcohol served with food, loads of legroom etc. and they're certainly better than the terrible Iberia who I crossed the Atlantic with.

Honduras

13 August 2010

After our mammoth and overcrowded speedboat ride we got off the boat in Puerto Cortez, Honduras to be mobbed by overcharging taxi drivers and find out that our passports had been collected by customs and taken off to the immigration centre in town which was a little unnerving.  We teamed up with a couple of Welsh doctors, Huw and Lowrie, and found ourselves a cheaper cab from the main road and headed off to get our passports back.  From there we bussed it in air-conditioned style up to another port town called La Ceiba and then got the ferry in the morning to the lovely Caribbean island of Utila where we spent the next couple of weeks.

We were accosted upon arrival by representatives of various dive shops, but we'd been recommended a couple so went with the rep for Utila Dive Centre.  You're treated like royalty for the first day - bussed up to the free hostel and then down to the dive shop to book your diving.  From then on you have to start paying for stuff and they don't drive you anywhere!

Utila

Utila Town is really small with just one road along the shore and one road heading back towards the hill.  The roads are completely crammed both sides with bars, shops and houses and those on the shore side are built out over the water.  This means you can have a lovely drink on a deck over the water, but also means that there is no beach in town.  Luckily our hostel had a swimming pool so we spent most of our time when not at the dive shop there.

Me and Lou in a rather glam pool for a hostel

Mostly we just did a lot of diving; I recertified as Advanced Open Water (my original certification from Thailand in 2001 having been lost in the mail) and Louisa did her Rescue Diver course.  By all accounts my class was a little more relaxed than hers - she having been threatened by her aged Tennessee ex-law enforcement tutor that he would make her cry on the course which she duly did!

The diving was reasonable, but certainly not brilliant.  I saw lots of fish, soft corals (not v colourful though), some turtles, eels, devil rays etc.

My main memories of Utila though are unrelated to the dive shop -cinnamon rolls for breakfast, lunch and tea, heavy drinking at a variety of bars on decks over the water, an amazing bar built like a treehouse and lavishly decorated, some great pizza at our hostel, crazy Aussie and American guys we hung out with, a pool party at the hostel, and some great breakfasts at a really old beautiful house.  We had a really really great time there.

But we eventually had to leave so we went by boat and bus and another bus up to the town of Copan on the western edge of Honduras, really near the Guatemalan border.  Amusingly we arrived in the evening and got a little lost walking up from the bus station, so Lou stopped to ask this woman standing in a doorway for directions.  It was only the following day, walking back down that road again that we realised that the nice lady was a prostitute.

View of the countryside around Copan

Copan is home to Honduras' only major Mayan site and we headed up there the following day on tuk-tuks (motorised rickshaws) for a wee wander around. Everything was going so well, we'd met some Americans to share the cost of a tour guide with and had a lovely walk around the site, when it simultaneously started to rain and massive groups of schoolboys descended upon the site.

It's just a fact of life in this part of the world that as a girl you're going to be harassed pretty much non stop.  If you're a gringo girl then it's even worse. So I'm very much used to guys shouting pervy things at me when I walk down the street and I can shrug most of it off.  But the schoolboys were pretty bad - they were taking pictures of me and Lou and blatantly ogling and hissing at us. Lou shouted "un poco respecto" at them which means "a little respect" but they paid no attention.

We escaped off to the site museum which was one of the best presented museums I've been to on this trip. It was lovely and open and airy and there was a full scale mock up of the Rosalila temple which was discovered by archaeologists tunnelling under one of the massive temples on site.  Afterwards we went to a bird sanctuary (in the pouring rain) which was quite fun.

And from Copan we commenced the final leg of our trip together, off to Antigua in Guatemala.

Belize (part 2)

8 August 2010

After weeks spent on the Mayan Riviera and the coast of Belize we thought we'd head inland and do something other than water-based activities, only to fail miserably as we went caving and then tubing!

We ended up in a wee town called San Ignacio near the western edge of the country.  Belize is so little, and English speaking that it's really easy to get around. And the Belizean dollar is pegged at exactly 50c so even the maths is easy.

Entrance to the ATM caves

You can see the evil in its eye

We first went to the Actun Tunichil Muknal (ATM) caves which was just amazing.  We hiked and waded about 45 mins through the jungle and across rivers to get to the cave entrance.  I had slipped on the walk in so went to wash my hands in the river at the cave only to be promptly bitten really hard on the finger.  I pulled my hand out of the water in shock and very briefly the culprit, an eel, hung off my finger.  It was really big and fearsome looking as well!  There was quite a lot of blood, but the tour agency cleaned it up really well and sorted me out with a massive bandage, but it was (and still is - I think there's perhaps something still in one of the cuts) really sore. But onwards.....

Teeth marks!

We suited up in our bikinis, board shorts, trainers, helmet and head torch and then had to get into the same river that contained the evil eel and swim into the mouth of the cave.  This was the point where we found out swimming in trainers isn't nearly as easy as swimming with fins!

Looking glam!

We swam, clambered on rocks and climbed small waterfalls for the next hour or so, getting about 500m into the cave system.  At this point our guide pointed to a massive rock, probably about 15ft high and instructed us to climb it.  From there we had to step across a gap and climb onto some flowstone which was still very steep but much easier to climb.

At the top we removed our shoes (but left on our socks to protect the rock from our sweat) and climbed into this amazing cavern that was full of Mayan relics.  There were 14 skeletons in there, of which we probably saw 5 or 6 and lots of pottery.  And absolutely none of it was protected - there were no barriers or marked paths or lighting.  A human long bone at the site was smashed up and it turns out that's because a tourist dropped a camera on it.

Archaeologists have studied the site in detail, but have only removed about 2% of the artefacts (things that are easy to remove and valuable like obsidian blades etc) but have left the rest as some of it is calcified into the rock, but more importantly, there is no museum in Belize that would be able to satisfactorily protect the artefacts as well as the cave does.

The "highlight" of the tour was a skeleton of a young woman which was completely calcified into the rock and therefore sparkled. She's known as the crystal maiden.  I don't take pictures of mummies or skeletons so I'm afraid you'll have to google her or use your imagination!  Lou and I were very much in two minds about the site being open.  Obviously we felt very privileged to visit it but we can't help but feel that visitors are going to do irreparable damage. We went back out the same way we came in, racing through the jungle as twilight approached.

Amazing formations in the main cavern

The following day (because we just hadn't had enough of being soaking all day!) we went cave tubing which, unsurprisingly, involves sitting in an inner tube and floating down a river that goes through some caves.  The caves weren't nearly as impressive as the ATM caves, but it was fun nonetheless.  Another highlight of San Ignacio was this amazing restaurant we found which served us up ginger rum shrimp which we confusingly had with mashed potato as we were all missing mash so much and fed up with rice!!  Sadly the beer in Belize, Belliken, isn't up to much.

From there we went, with our new friend Kim, down on the bus to Placencia on the coast, primarily as we'd heard you could catch the ferry to Honduras from there.  Lou and I had a nice day sitting on the beach, trying to get over our stinky colds while Kim went diving.  Later that day I was asking about the boat (it only goes once a week) only to find there were engine problems and the only solution was to head up to another town and catch another ferry from there.  So, in the morning, we piled onto a bus back north to the town of Dangriga.  The bus driver, just for fun, was playing Dolly Parton's xmas album at full volume, at 7am.  He was cracking up.  The rest of us were less amused!

In Dangriga we found our "ferry" which was even smaller than the ferry to Caye Caulker and massively overloaded given the problems with the boat from Placencia.  Border control came down to the boat to stamp us out of Belize and we got going only an hour or two too late.  The boat took about 3 hours (I was seated on the floor the whole way!) and took us all the way to Puerto Cortez in Honduras......

Also, please have a look at Louisa's blog.  She writes so much better than me and has some different photos too.

Ferry to Honduras

Guatemala & Belize (part 1)

30 July 2010

We arrived in Flores, Guatemala, in the pouring rain and with no hostel booked.  Lou and I must have been talking too loudly about our plans (for me to go up to Los Amigos hostel whilst Lou waited with the bags) as a really annoying French couple decided to do the same so there was a bit of a comedy race where me and the French guy raced for the hostel.  Luckily I won (through stealth and planning, despite his speed and complete rudeness in talking over me when I was trying to book) and Lou and I got ourselves a nice wee private room at the hostel!  The hostel was an interesting wee place.  The bathrooms and showers were pretty manky, but the bar had great veggie food in huge portions, and there was a big telly which was used only for showing documentaries which was really nice.

Tikal

Coati / Jungle badger

Wild turkeys

We took a day off (from being on active holidays!) and the following day set off for the massive Mayan site of Tikal at the ungodly hour of 430am.  We arrived at around dawn and spent about 6 hours walking round the enormous site.  It's a stunning place with huge temples, some uncovered and some with trees growing out of them, surrounded by jungle.  We saw tons of animals too including Coatis (aka Jungle Badgers according to Lou), a grey fox, some orange-breasted falcons and some Toucans and tons and tons of monkeys swinging through the trees. 

Temple

Toucan

I cried off climbing one of the temples using vertigo as a perfectly valid excuse, but sweated up to the top of one of them for amazing views of the jungle with the temple tops poking out above the trees.  It must have been an amazing sight in its day when the entire area would have been cleared.

Lou and I also walked a couple of kilometers into the jungle all on our own to visit the Temple of the Inscriptions which I found to be quite an unnerving experience - I like to have people around!

After just a couple of days in Guatemala, the following day we got a bus all the way to Belize City, the old capital of Belize.  Belize gained its independence from Britain quite late, in only 1981 and therefore the country is mainly English speaking, there's still quite a British military presence there (to defend Belize against Guatemala which believes Belize to be their territory) and the people seem very pro-UK which is quite a change from the rest of the world!!

Lou and I have been compiling a list of people who need a good slap (we were trying to collate a list of actors that we liked and found it easier to list people we disliked!) and expanded our hate group that day to include French People after sitting on a bus with 20 of them!  Other categories of people in our hate group are: white people with dreadlocks; people wearing deck shoes whilst not on a boat; and men with ridiculous facial hair.  Suggestions are welcome!  (Don't hate us though - it's just for fun.)

Caye Caulker

At the end of this awful bus trip we got ourselves straight on the ferry (large bathtub with outboard motor attached) off to Caye* Caulker which is a lovely little strip of sand in the caribbean. *pronounced "key"

Caye Caulker

Upon arrival it was my turn to stay with the luggage and Lou's turn to race around the island to find us beds before anyone else!  We ended up staying in a place on the beach that was recommended to us, but turned out to be an airless concrete bunker with a random assortment of unwell (for various reasons!) backpackers in our room, so the next day we moved to a much nicer hotel with a lovely view of the cemetery!

The Blue Hole

After another day off from tiring sightseeing activities we went out for a dive on the Blue Hole.  Famous for being some kind of diving mecca we were faintly disappointed upon reaching this amazing, perfectly circular sinkhole in the sea only to see very little from the boat as the reef that defines the border is underwater and not all that visible unless you're in the air.  However, it was an experience to dive it, as we descended very quickly indeed to 42m or so, swam around some stalatites and then spent about 20mins or so ascending as at this depth your body absorbs quite a bit of the nitrogen in the air you're breathing and you've got to let it leach out again.  The increased nitrogen can also make you a little drunk or "narked" and, given Lou was thinking of her grandparents wallpaper whilst diving, we have decided she perhaps was a little narked!

We did two other dives that day which were much more interesting, and were also dropped off on Half Moon Caye for a wee stroll around a look at the frigate and red-footed boobies which nest there.  And the lunch was fantastic, so it was a good day all round.

Me!

We then proceeded to spend most of the rest of our time on the island eating at a lovely cafe for breakfast, snacking on numerous cinammon rolls throughout the day, and drinking the terribly-named, but very tasty cocktail called a "panty-ripper".  Made of coconut rum and pineapple juice it's really lovely, but Lou and I couldn't bring ourselves to ask for it by name!  We also were advised (damn you Lee!) to try a Lizard Juice up at the Lizard Lounge bar which was a flouro green coloured concotion containing about 15 different types of rum as far as we could tell!

Lou with Lizard juice

We ran into Jo & Nisha (from UK & US respectively) again in Caye Caulker and tagged along on a snorkelling trip they were going on.  It was a really great day with some lovely snorkelling (saw manatees, sting rays and nurse sharks amongst lots of other things), real sailing (with motor off and everything) and lots of rum punch and prawn ceviche to snack on.  I had always thought that prawn ceviche was made with boiled prawns, but I was wrong.  It really is just raw prawns marinated in lime juice until they've gone white.  And it's really really lovely.

Manatees

Self portrait underwater

Our snorkel boat in the rain

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.....