Thursday, February 17, 2011
Smaller Towns > Cities
As we rounded a curve in the road coming down out of the mountains, nearing the end of a 7 hour bus ride from La Ceiba with the debit card finally back in its rightful spot in my money belt, the brown sprawling metropolis of Tegicigalpa came into view. The country's capital, weighing it at metro population of 1,324,000 did little to impress us. On our way from an unsuccessful attempt to find an open ATM that accepted Master Card (unforeseen hiccup) the sun set, causing a mass closing of nearly all street front businesses within 15 minutes. I guess crime is a big deal here, even our hotel room came equipped with bars on the small window facing the interior hallway. Fortunately there was one restaurant of sorts that braved the post sun down jitters. We were attracted to an old oil barrel on the sidewalk with a grill top cooking a wide variety of meats giving off pleasant aromas. At first it looked like a small place with three tables in a room behind the barrel grill, but we were ushered into a hidden doorway revealing a long corridor lined with small tables and another adjoining room with at least 10 more all filled with drinking Hondurans. The deal was, you choose how much to pay, 35 Limpiras and up, and you get a plate of meat with tortillas, salsa and lime. I only wish we had discovered this sort of place before.
Thursday, February 10, 2011
Travel itinerary: flores>tikal>flores>rio dulce> la cieba>utila>la cieba
After nearly two weeks, we are back--on the internet sharing our adventures that is. We left Flores soon after our last post, en route to Tikal national park, a Mayan ruin mecca about an hour and a half north of Santa Ellena. Like many of our national parks, Tikal is built up. before entering you pass a guarded check point and within the park there are three small hotels near the enterance, a few restraunts , a campgound and a visitor center with vendors selling soiveniers. In order to stay in line with our budget, we decided that none of these sleeping options were acceptable, so we hiked down a path into the woods in search of a campsite in our price range: free. from the vendor's maps of the park we chose a trail toward "el mirador" a lookout in the trees becuase of its close proximity to the main templed park. at the top of the mirador we were able to glimpse the tops of several pyramids poking out of the vast jungle scape--which got us eager. The climb to the top of the look out was three or four sections of very sketchy, and sligltly rotted at out places, wood ladders, topped with a platform that was far from level--we could only presume the make shift tree fort had been built a good thirty years or so ago when it was opened and named a world heritage site in the late 1970's. Precautions aside, the view was incredible, and being up that high put us out of bugs reach for a few minutes. After more searching and struggled deciphering of numerous spanish information signs providing facts about specific plants (of which were never pointed out or distinguished, a sign would simply exist off the path in the dense forrest warning not to touch "this" plant because of the ulcers it will cause to grow on your skin), we came across our campsite. At the end of an old road lay a rectangular concrete building with no markings, a ladder to the top, and a flat roof (it was a storage tank for water). Just right.
In the theme of adventure making and a tight budget, we quickly began our next mission to save money - sneak into the Tikal ruins via the jungle. the price of admission to the tikal ruins was exactly our daily budget. So at just after 6PM, as the sun was setting we took off into the woods armed with a single headlamp to guide our way. Our movements were incredibly slow, vines kept making their way around our backpacks and legs, and sweat poured off of us despite that the sun had set. Or first attempt lasted about a half hour, covered in sweat but confident that we were moving in the right direction we began to see and approach a large ominous shaddow , made our way to it, and were shocked to find that there was another identical concrete water tank...so confused our first pressumption was that we had found another.. you can do nothing but laugh when you realize that you have enacted a comedy cliche by literally hiking in a circle. and then we tried again.--(chris) I guess my NOLS skills don't work in the jungle, because after another half hour we ended up 100 meters down the road at the end of which we lay our camp to be. nothing to do but eat banana bread ration our dwindling water supplies sleep soaked in our sweet and pay the enterance fee leaving us with only enough money to get home, no food for the following day.
we woke early--(dante) me much earlier because i didn't have ear plugs to muffle the guttural roars of howler monkeys. we broke camp before the sun had risen--intent upon catching a sunrise from temple number four. we payed our fee. and entered the park--low hanging clouds and fog cropped our vision in the already dim light of the morning making our skin sticky in the high humidity--large and unidentifiable trees draped in vines that you could swing on and climb pressed up against the path--howler monkeys echoed throughout the jungle along with other less blarring birds and creatures and insects--added to the complete lack of any informational signs or maps reminded me(dante) of jurassic park. At the top of the temple we sat and watched the sun burn away fog and clouds and it sprinkled softly...are argentinian friend, facundo, was already hunkered down with his jacket hood pulled tight--he casually mentioned that the guards were letting people in early before the park "opened" for only 30 to 40 quetzals regardless if they already had a ticket or not...he also mentioned that you could climb the scaffolding to the top top of the temple to get a better view if you ignored the do not climb signs...
The park was pretty incredible. The majority of the ruins were pyramid shaped temples, designated numerically. They were all a greenish and grey becuase of their exposure to the environment-- when first built they were ivory white. each temple had large steps leading toward a room located at the very top of the structure. every tourist, including chris and i complained of the large steps and were baffled as to why mayans (of short stature) would build steps that they would have had to pratically crawl up? Facundo mentioned that at the parthanon-- steps were built not for humans to walk up but for gods. they presumed that if the gods were to enter a building that they would need larger steps to fit thier immortal statures. perhaps that was the same frame of thought that the mayans were building within too... We spent the day exploring as thouroughly as possible the entire park minus one ruin that was 20 kilometers away. i(dante) was disapointed by the lack of details on the buildings, each one had been methodically chewed and rubbed by the jungle so that all of them had large portions recently restored(some were still in the process of). additionaly every thing of cultural value had been removed from the park either by the "studying" archeologists or plunderes-- what the park did offer in return to the visitors were plaster castings of unidentified reliefs but that had of course been mercilessly attacked by visitors intent on leaving behind their own historic markings or adamante to bring back (what they perhaps thought to be authentic) parts of tikal to thier friends and or families. all that remained were large abstract stone structures unidentified in their purpose that each tourist religiously climbed sweating and grumbling as they went about it (to be fair these stairs were steep. A few people fell down temple number one and died, now a rope around the temple prevents ascents)... once on top everyone took their trophy shots smiled complimented the enormity of the structure and people watched the odd balls while basking in the sun. it was glaringly clear why we should have payed the 30 dollars for the tour guides...the park had no infastructure indicating any historical or cultural context of the structures what so ever. around three we headed back to Flores via micro bus, ate at our favorite taco stand for the third meal (we had four meals in the town) and prepared to head toward our second country, honduras.
From santa elana (the city that bridged flores) we got a direct bus to Rio Dulce not wanting to go any further because of the dangers of staying in san pedro sula. Rio Dulce was a small town at the east end of lake izabel, the largest lake in Guatemala, followed by a river flowing to the ocean, which it was named after. In a fashion well practiced from our New Zealand days we found a park underneath the main thourough way, a bridge over the river, with suitable spots to throw our hammocks and sleep. we utilized the lit common area of a hostel nearby to read and email, and retired early intent on a 530 wake up the following day.
bussing to La Ceiba, a costal city on the north shore of Honduras, thrid largest in the country, was an all day affair, filled with lots of busses and not nearly enough food or water. After getting up early we walked to the back side of the bridge and soon flagged down a bus going towards Puerto Barrios-- it stopped at Entre Rios and we caught another bus to the guatemala honduras border. From there we walked to the nearst town and caught a large american school bus to Puerto Cortes. We exited the chicken bus in the station with our bags, and were quickly escorted toward a bus going to our next desitnation, San Pedro Sula. The guy directing us took our bags, put them in the back, locked it up and usherd us onto the bus, and asked us to pay the fare, 100L (20L =1$) each he said. Our previous bus had taken us furhter for less than half that price. Too high, i (chris) responded, and eventually got it down to 60 which still felt like too much. Later on we were able to deduce that he didn't own the bus like he had told us but was working as a hype man trying to convince tourists to pay outlandish prices, give a cut equal to what the normal driver charges and then keep the remainder. it is a nusance to us consumers who have been coddled into set market prices to have to negotiate our clearing point...i(dante) remember leanring that the market clearing point was where demand met supply but only in theory-- back home the dollar menu was the dollar menu, here we were meeting that economic cog face to face and on a daily basis-- certainly not convient for us travelers banking on third world costs but certainly equitable for the locals who were trying to scrape their capitalist making. We made it to San Pedro Sula, the economic capitol of the country, and got our last bus of the day, a 3 hour direct to La Ceiba. The driver of this bus drove with authority not in the left lane or the right lane but in the middle honking and swerving in to the path of least resistance usually at the last moment and some times off the road if slowing down was the only other alternative--kind of how broom sticks and magical cars work in harry potter. we Ate some food at a rest stop at 3pm, payed more than the 100 limpiras individually for our first meal of the day (rip off but no man to yell at and bargain down, we were back in a corporate store in an environment of economic compliance) , and refilled our water bottle that we had rationed out down to drops having started with less than 1/4 L per person from the morning.
Utilla is a Small island off of the north shore of Honduras, a 1.25 hour boat ride from La Ceiba. the boat is better known as the Vomit Commet, which was aptly named as Dante discovered about 1 hour into the voyage. Initially The plan was to meet up with some friends from Lake Atitlan, Morgan and Bryan, explore for a few days and then keep moving. 9 days later I (chris) am writing this having just gotten back to the mainland. Utilla and the Bay Islands are renowned for diving: visiblity is great and the water is warm and in the upcoming season whale sharks are easily found and enjoyed. By the end of our first day we had our dive books open and were learning about negative buoyancy and what to do in a squeeze. the Following days were marked by early mornings and boat rides, being submerged for forty five minutes up to 50 ft deep, the sensation that your ears might be hemoraging, trying to pee without peeing on or taking off the wet suit, jellyfish stings, salt water in the eyes, and pushing the limits of what you can do while scuba diving without the DMTs(dive masters in training) pulling you out. Our dive center\homebase had a joint hostel, bar, dive school, dock, trees full of hammocks and an active volleyball court that provided rooms and hot water for people in dive classes at no extra costs to the class--oh and dave a boat captain and dive master who was intent in turning any casual drinking situation in to an eventful binge drinking sesh at what ever cost. In total we logged 6 dives all around the island with 7 other travelers from class, hailing from all around the world, well actually from western europe and north america. as of february 5th both of us became dive certafied with flying colors. chris got a perfect so diego our dive teacher handed him a beer.
Diving is a magical sport ( rich persons hobby, our text books had lessons on how to properly purchase equipment and reminded us of the multitude of alternative courses we would love to take and made sure we wouldn't forget to fill our air exclusively at certafied resorts ), weightlessness, fish, coral, ship wrecks, warm water (carribean diving) and chill people in trunks and bikinis. the following day After finishing our course We rented kayaks and paddled through a man made canal cut through the sulfuric swamp to the eastern side of utila (remote of all tourists, excluding us (chris and i and two others who had moved in to our four person dorm, who against the rentors warnings went there anyway) and snorkeled around and enjoyed the sun on a small island we found. I (chris) enjoyed it less so, because it turns out that the doxycycline (malaria medicine) i had just started taking again causes increased skin sensitivity to sun, resulting in whole body sunburns, regardless of the fact that i had spf 70'd my face followed up by two more whole body cycles of spf 30 and 20 through out the day-- not so fun. Aloe vera to the rescue.
This is being written as we wait for my(chris) debit card to come back from Utilla which i inconveniently forgot this morning as we rushed out the door to hop on the 620 boat. If all goes according to plan it will arive with the capitan around 4 and we will head out for real. UPDATE* Chirs is on his way now to get the debit card and we'll be leaving tomorrow super early (3 am) to catch up on the days lost so i just added and editted the post, UPDATE* chris just got back a little wet and hungry and said that the captain doesn't have it...tomorrow perhaps we will escape the city!
much love,
dante and chris
In the theme of adventure making and a tight budget, we quickly began our next mission to save money - sneak into the Tikal ruins via the jungle. the price of admission to the tikal ruins was exactly our daily budget. So at just after 6PM, as the sun was setting we took off into the woods armed with a single headlamp to guide our way. Our movements were incredibly slow, vines kept making their way around our backpacks and legs, and sweat poured off of us despite that the sun had set. Or first attempt lasted about a half hour, covered in sweat but confident that we were moving in the right direction we began to see and approach a large ominous shaddow , made our way to it, and were shocked to find that there was another identical concrete water tank...so confused our first pressumption was that we had found another.. you can do nothing but laugh when you realize that you have enacted a comedy cliche by literally hiking in a circle. and then we tried again.--(chris) I guess my NOLS skills don't work in the jungle, because after another half hour we ended up 100 meters down the road at the end of which we lay our camp to be. nothing to do but eat banana bread ration our dwindling water supplies sleep soaked in our sweet and pay the enterance fee leaving us with only enough money to get home, no food for the following day.
we woke early--(dante) me much earlier because i didn't have ear plugs to muffle the guttural roars of howler monkeys. we broke camp before the sun had risen--intent upon catching a sunrise from temple number four. we payed our fee. and entered the park--low hanging clouds and fog cropped our vision in the already dim light of the morning making our skin sticky in the high humidity--large and unidentifiable trees draped in vines that you could swing on and climb pressed up against the path--howler monkeys echoed throughout the jungle along with other less blarring birds and creatures and insects--added to the complete lack of any informational signs or maps reminded me(dante) of jurassic park. At the top of the temple we sat and watched the sun burn away fog and clouds and it sprinkled softly...are argentinian friend, facundo, was already hunkered down with his jacket hood pulled tight--he casually mentioned that the guards were letting people in early before the park "opened" for only 30 to 40 quetzals regardless if they already had a ticket or not...he also mentioned that you could climb the scaffolding to the top top of the temple to get a better view if you ignored the do not climb signs...
The park was pretty incredible. The majority of the ruins were pyramid shaped temples, designated numerically. They were all a greenish and grey becuase of their exposure to the environment-- when first built they were ivory white. each temple had large steps leading toward a room located at the very top of the structure. every tourist, including chris and i complained of the large steps and were baffled as to why mayans (of short stature) would build steps that they would have had to pratically crawl up? Facundo mentioned that at the parthanon-- steps were built not for humans to walk up but for gods. they presumed that if the gods were to enter a building that they would need larger steps to fit thier immortal statures. perhaps that was the same frame of thought that the mayans were building within too... We spent the day exploring as thouroughly as possible the entire park minus one ruin that was 20 kilometers away. i(dante) was disapointed by the lack of details on the buildings, each one had been methodically chewed and rubbed by the jungle so that all of them had large portions recently restored(some were still in the process of). additionaly every thing of cultural value had been removed from the park either by the "studying" archeologists or plunderes-- what the park did offer in return to the visitors were plaster castings of unidentified reliefs but that had of course been mercilessly attacked by visitors intent on leaving behind their own historic markings or adamante to bring back (what they perhaps thought to be authentic) parts of tikal to thier friends and or families. all that remained were large abstract stone structures unidentified in their purpose that each tourist religiously climbed sweating and grumbling as they went about it (to be fair these stairs were steep. A few people fell down temple number one and died, now a rope around the temple prevents ascents)... once on top everyone took their trophy shots smiled complimented the enormity of the structure and people watched the odd balls while basking in the sun. it was glaringly clear why we should have payed the 30 dollars for the tour guides...the park had no infastructure indicating any historical or cultural context of the structures what so ever. around three we headed back to Flores via micro bus, ate at our favorite taco stand for the third meal (we had four meals in the town) and prepared to head toward our second country, honduras.
From santa elana (the city that bridged flores) we got a direct bus to Rio Dulce not wanting to go any further because of the dangers of staying in san pedro sula. Rio Dulce was a small town at the east end of lake izabel, the largest lake in Guatemala, followed by a river flowing to the ocean, which it was named after. In a fashion well practiced from our New Zealand days we found a park underneath the main thourough way, a bridge over the river, with suitable spots to throw our hammocks and sleep. we utilized the lit common area of a hostel nearby to read and email, and retired early intent on a 530 wake up the following day.
bussing to La Ceiba, a costal city on the north shore of Honduras, thrid largest in the country, was an all day affair, filled with lots of busses and not nearly enough food or water. After getting up early we walked to the back side of the bridge and soon flagged down a bus going towards Puerto Barrios-- it stopped at Entre Rios and we caught another bus to the guatemala honduras border. From there we walked to the nearst town and caught a large american school bus to Puerto Cortes. We exited the chicken bus in the station with our bags, and were quickly escorted toward a bus going to our next desitnation, San Pedro Sula. The guy directing us took our bags, put them in the back, locked it up and usherd us onto the bus, and asked us to pay the fare, 100L (20L =1$) each he said. Our previous bus had taken us furhter for less than half that price. Too high, i (chris) responded, and eventually got it down to 60 which still felt like too much. Later on we were able to deduce that he didn't own the bus like he had told us but was working as a hype man trying to convince tourists to pay outlandish prices, give a cut equal to what the normal driver charges and then keep the remainder. it is a nusance to us consumers who have been coddled into set market prices to have to negotiate our clearing point...i(dante) remember leanring that the market clearing point was where demand met supply but only in theory-- back home the dollar menu was the dollar menu, here we were meeting that economic cog face to face and on a daily basis-- certainly not convient for us travelers banking on third world costs but certainly equitable for the locals who were trying to scrape their capitalist making. We made it to San Pedro Sula, the economic capitol of the country, and got our last bus of the day, a 3 hour direct to La Ceiba. The driver of this bus drove with authority not in the left lane or the right lane but in the middle honking and swerving in to the path of least resistance usually at the last moment and some times off the road if slowing down was the only other alternative--kind of how broom sticks and magical cars work in harry potter. we Ate some food at a rest stop at 3pm, payed more than the 100 limpiras individually for our first meal of the day (rip off but no man to yell at and bargain down, we were back in a corporate store in an environment of economic compliance) , and refilled our water bottle that we had rationed out down to drops having started with less than 1/4 L per person from the morning.
Utilla is a Small island off of the north shore of Honduras, a 1.25 hour boat ride from La Ceiba. the boat is better known as the Vomit Commet, which was aptly named as Dante discovered about 1 hour into the voyage. Initially The plan was to meet up with some friends from Lake Atitlan, Morgan and Bryan, explore for a few days and then keep moving. 9 days later I (chris) am writing this having just gotten back to the mainland. Utilla and the Bay Islands are renowned for diving: visiblity is great and the water is warm and in the upcoming season whale sharks are easily found and enjoyed. By the end of our first day we had our dive books open and were learning about negative buoyancy and what to do in a squeeze. the Following days were marked by early mornings and boat rides, being submerged for forty five minutes up to 50 ft deep, the sensation that your ears might be hemoraging, trying to pee without peeing on or taking off the wet suit, jellyfish stings, salt water in the eyes, and pushing the limits of what you can do while scuba diving without the DMTs(dive masters in training) pulling you out. Our dive center\homebase had a joint hostel, bar, dive school, dock, trees full of hammocks and an active volleyball court that provided rooms and hot water for people in dive classes at no extra costs to the class--oh and dave a boat captain and dive master who was intent in turning any casual drinking situation in to an eventful binge drinking sesh at what ever cost. In total we logged 6 dives all around the island with 7 other travelers from class, hailing from all around the world, well actually from western europe and north america. as of february 5th both of us became dive certafied with flying colors. chris got a perfect so diego our dive teacher handed him a beer.
Diving is a magical sport ( rich persons hobby, our text books had lessons on how to properly purchase equipment and reminded us of the multitude of alternative courses we would love to take and made sure we wouldn't forget to fill our air exclusively at certafied resorts ), weightlessness, fish, coral, ship wrecks, warm water (carribean diving) and chill people in trunks and bikinis. the following day After finishing our course We rented kayaks and paddled through a man made canal cut through the sulfuric swamp to the eastern side of utila (remote of all tourists, excluding us (chris and i and two others who had moved in to our four person dorm, who against the rentors warnings went there anyway) and snorkeled around and enjoyed the sun on a small island we found. I (chris) enjoyed it less so, because it turns out that the doxycycline (malaria medicine) i had just started taking again causes increased skin sensitivity to sun, resulting in whole body sunburns, regardless of the fact that i had spf 70'd my face followed up by two more whole body cycles of spf 30 and 20 through out the day-- not so fun. Aloe vera to the rescue.
This is being written as we wait for my(chris) debit card to come back from Utilla which i inconveniently forgot this morning as we rushed out the door to hop on the 620 boat. If all goes according to plan it will arive with the capitan around 4 and we will head out for real. UPDATE* Chirs is on his way now to get the debit card and we'll be leaving tomorrow super early (3 am) to catch up on the days lost so i just added and editted the post, UPDATE* chris just got back a little wet and hungry and said that the captain doesn't have it...tomorrow perhaps we will escape the city!
much love,
dante and chris
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