24 December – Quito – Christmas Eve Party
Well, here’s an interesting story….After all of the dramas with busses and taxis, we finally figure where to spend new years eve and came across a great offer. The hostel we were staying in was owned by a very nice gentleman by the name Pierre (aka Dodgy Pierre – more on that later). He had organized with us and other carefully selected travelers staying at the Hostel, all to pitch in $10 and invited us to his lovely apartment a few blocks away, for a home cooked turkey, nibbles and as much as we wanted to drink. I must say, he really laid it on for us with lots of dips and crackers and all the other usual stuff. He also had Rum, Vodka, Red Johnny Walker and plenty of wine for us to help ourselves to. One point to mention about the “carefully selected travelers”. He invited mainly guys to this VIP party as Pierre is gay and was looking for some good time fun.
Well, the party started to get interesting when he pulled out all of these drinking games where strangely enough, he was the “Judge” and he had final say on who had to drink. So the boys got drunker and drunker and Pierre was having more and more fun flirting with the boys (yes including Nick)…….needless to say the boys were onto his moves and a good time was had by all. The boys finally drew the line when the next game suggested was going to be twister….
25 December – Quito – Prison Visit – Christmas Party
Sitting around the hostel watching TV and feeling pretty bored and decided that four of us would go to the Quito prison where a large number of expats were being held on drug related charges. We loaded up with lots of presents like phone cards, chocolate, toiletries, etc and caught a cab down. The place was mayhem, first off we were searched about three times (the can of Christmas beer didn’t survive the searches) and then our passports were held by the guards. We were given stamps on our arms presumably so they could differentiate between inmates and visitors. Walking in was a very scary experience as you mingle freely with the prisoners and can talk to anyone. A Czech guy who was with us found a Czech inmate who had not had a visitor for the whole four years he had been in there. He was so excited he apparently babbled for the first three minutes before he could even talk coherently. Visited a few different expats in various parts of the prison and saw their cells and talked about conditions on the inside. Was very relieved to finally get out into daylight again. One of the guys didn’t surface for a while and turned out he’d stayed back to have a “smoke” with one of the inmates.
Astounding things that came out of our visit
- prisoners having to buy their cells for $250, or for $2,000 you could get a cell on millionaires row, if they couldn’t afford it they slept in the corridors
- prisoners running businesses from there cell ie restaurant, tattoo parlour, even a night club
- guards who would smuggle anything in even firearms, drugs could be purchased cheaper than street prices.
- visiting night was Saturday when prisoners could have wives and girlfriends stay the night
- failed escape attempts were punished with an extra month added to your sentence, or they shoot you
- one prisoner escaped by stealing the volleyball net and using it as a ladder
- one guys cell mate dug a tunnel and 29 escaped, 12 were shot, 8 were recaptured, and the remainder made it. One escapee rang the prison from Colombia to say he was having a beer for them.
- many of the prisoners have cell phones and run their own bank/telecom business
- a drug smuggler received a 14 year sentence while a contract killer who killed a policeman got a 6 year sentence….mmmmm….. let me think about this one..
- prisoners who had completed their sentence still in jail because their paperwork had not been processed a year later.
Still feel very ambivalent as to whether it was a good idea to visit the prison, making it an attraction seems a bit odd. After we left we found that two weeks previously there had been a prison riot and all the visitors had been held hostage for a couple of nights.
26 December – Quito – San Jose – Adios South America
Well time to finish up in South America and head for the airport, a little disappointed that we couldn’t make it to Galapagos islands but will have to save it for another trip. Didn’t think much of San Jose (or most of the big cities we saw in South/Central America) but they were in the middle of a big festival/rodeo and had cowboys on horses charging around the streets. That night had the first McDonalds (or any other fast food) in about four months!!!
27/28/29 December – San Jose – Playa Tamarindo
Time to leave San Jose and head off to our chosen New Years destination, a supposedly popular beach in northern Costa Rica. Got to the bus station and it was complete chaos, all the buses were full and major backlogs, finally managed to get onto the next bus by buying a local special – the standing ticket – oh well we figure it’s only five hours, how bad can it be, quickly staked out a spot in the rear stairwell so wasn’t too uncomfortable, all those hours of bus experience are finally paying off.
Playa Tamarindo was nice but nothing flash, it was funny watching all the wanna-be surfers trying to learn on swells that couldn’t have topped 20cm…we were lucky to get the last room in a cheap hotel as everywhere was going mental before new years. Spent the next couple of days on the beach working on our tans and sussing out bars for new years.
30 December – Playa Tamarindo – San Juan Del Sur – Border crossing from hell
Wasn’t overly impressed with Playa Tamarindo so made the brave call to bail and head on up to Nicaragua to see what we could find. Getting up to the border was pretty easy and everything was going pretty smoothly until we hit the border. Talk about huge queues, we ended up standing in the sun for four hours inching along in queue just for the privilege of leaving Costa Rica, luckily the Nicaraguan side was a lot more organized and we got through in under ten minutes, just in time to catch a bus to San Juan Del Sur.
Nicaragua was a real surprise, initially we thought we would be speeding through there but the people were really friendly and the landscapes and beaches were nice. Could have quite easily spent more time here than we did, particularly in Granada.
Made a few friends on the bus and headed over to a cool little hostel called Casa Ora. The place was pumping and lots of people were getting set for new years……including Nick. We decided to get to know the other travelers staying at the hostel and join them all for the big New Years. Only one problem, Nick was having a jolly old time, one drink led to another….and another….and yet another (I think you get the picture) and as it happened, the New Years party came 1 day early for him as he was pretty wobbly (and ill) on the way home, which I have to mention that his lovely wife had to carry him most of the way home. The funniest part of the night was the fact that Nick didn’t feel like listening to the wise advise from his darling caring wife that night, so when she offered to help him into the hammock outside (as he was too ill to let sleep with 10 other poor travelers in the dorm), he decided that the nice looking hard floor boards on the deck was the place to lay his throbbing head. Rest assured, the next day, Trina was to blame for “making” Nick sleep on the hard ground. Man so much for the “thanks for looking after me babe”!
31 December – San Juan Del Sur – New Years, Yard glasses
Well as you can imagine, the morning after was pretty non eventful but I guess Nick would say otherwise: That morning was quite scary for him as he woke up from the same hard floor boards that he insisted sleeping on which just happened to be right beside the dining table where everybody was already eating breakfast so he woke up a little confused wondering where the heck he was and then looking up at the staring faces of the new friends we had made the previous night….mmmm
Nicks punishment for the previous nights events was having him clean up the nice little patches of messes he left from the previous night. Enough said I think….hehe
That night for new years the same group of us decided to head to a big beach party, it was $8 for all you could drink beer and rum served in half yard glasses!!! Needless to say it took me (Nick) a long time to warm up after last nights shenanigans. Trina was having a good time dancing on the stages set up. We were real nana’s and went home at only 1:30am.
1 January – La Flor – Turtles everywhere
Woke up the next morning in pretty good shape, not bad for new years. Started talking to an English girl who had a car and was heading down the coast to a turtle sanctuary to spend the night on the beach and hopefully watch the turtles come in to lay eggs and baby turtles hatch.
The turtle sanctuary was really well set up with guards patrolling the beach to prevent egg poaching (a big problem). We set up camp right on the edge of the vegetation and beach (more on that later) and met up with a few other friends who had turned up. Back at the ranger station they had a bucket full of little baby turtles that had hatched during the day and were being held for their own safety from predators until they could be released that night. They were so damn cute, when they hatch they are to big for their turtle-shell and everything sticks out, they waddle with a funny spastic motion that moves them surprisingly quickly. The first thing we did was take the bucket down to beach and release all the little babies at a nesting ground. Off course all the female turtles immediately headed in the wrong direction. We had a great time babysitting our turtles and making sure they made it into the surf alright. There were lots of other people floating around being complete idiots like trying to dig up nests, shining bright lights, and other stuff to mess up the turtles. Trina turned into the Turtle Police telling people off and protecting the little turtles. During the night more and more turtles hatched and surfaced out of the sand. Then at about 3am we had a real treat when a mother turtle came up the beach and started laying its eggs, looked like hard work.
2/3 January – San Juan Del Sur – Mucking around, swimming, and stuff
This morning we woke up to find turtles still hatching and loads of birds circling and starting to pick them off. We had to race and collect the ones that were hatching and put them in the bucket to be released that night. We started packing up our stuff where we slept (on the very edge of the beach) when suddenly a baby turtle popped up right where I had been sleeping, poor little guy, what a way to start life!!!!
From there we headed back into San Juan and chilled out for the next couple of days swimming, mucking around and stuff. Enough said, only funny thing worth mentioning was Trina and the Parrot, Trina found a parrot at one of the restaurants and started bombarding it with all the usual lines…Hello, Polly want a cracker, etc, etc….she finally gave up in disgust and walked away only to have the parrot call out Hola, hola, HOLA. Of course it was a Spanish parrot and couldn’t understand English.
4 January – San Juan Del Sur – Grenada – The Best Hostel In The World
Finally escaped the clutches of San Juan Del Sur and caught the chicken bus up to Grenada, all the chicken buses in central America are ex American school buses that you see in the movies, most of them are ancient. We arrived to find the best hostel we have found in all our travels. It is called Hostel Oasis and has free internet, swimming pool, hammocks, huge video library, and a really cool common area. We were set. Feeling a bit burnt out so didn’t really look around Grenada too much.
5 January – Grenada – Chillin
Couldn’t resist the hostel so spent another day chilling out next to the pool and catching up on our internet. Still can’t be bothered sight seeing in Grenada.
6 January – Grenada – Masaya – Menagua – Hammock Paradise
Figured we have to kick on as time is running out. Chicken bussed up to Masaya, a popular spot for picking up local crafts and home to a number of hammock workshops. By now we are complete suckers for hammocks and walk out with not one but three hammocks!!! We bought a three-man hammock, a two-man hammock, and a lazy boy chair hammock, all for under 20 pounds. No idea where we can stick them in the apartment but that is NOT THE POINT. They also weigh about as much as both our packs which could be interesting. From here we caught yet another bus into the capital of Menagua.
7 January – Menagua – Tegugacelipa
By now we have decided that capital cities are just not worth the time, most of them have been rubbish and these two were no exception. Caught the flash tourist bus between Nicaragua and Honduras, it made a big difference in border crossings, even if they did stuff up forgot to get us tourist cards, which was going to cause us grief when it came time to leave Honduras.
8 January – 14 January – Tegugacelpa – Rotain
Let me paint a picture: Palm trees with beautiful open aired bars and restaurants on the beach front which just happens to have the whitest of white sand and crystal clear blue water lapping around our toes with a cold beer in our hands on a tropical blue sky day. This is the island life on Roatan. Oh yeah, did I mention that this place has the cheapest diving trips in the world? MAN, WE ARE THERE!
And we couldn’t get there fast enough so we decided to fly as the flights were going pretty cheap. So from Tegugacelpa to the Bay Islands here we come!
We had such a great time here on Roatan – much of it was diving so have decided to write up all of one week in one go.
We arrived and dropped our stuff off at Chillies Hostel and immediately scouted all of the dive shops to sort out some dive days. Within the hour we were gearing up for our first dive, merely a few hours after arriving.
All our dives were pretty amazing and only cost $15 per dive including all gear, air, dive master to navigate to make the most of our dives and the boat to transport us to the dive sites. Three of our dives we saw turtles, as they were commonly sited in this area – on two of the dives we spotted three turtles per dive!
Also 3 amazing shipwreck dives which we were able to penetrate from the bottom floor and swim through. One ship wreck we swam into the first floor cabins and swam through all of the stairwells, until we exited the top floor of this huge wreck! We also had a very friendly moray eel that liked to swim with the divers and we were even able to touch and pull on his tail without him getting mad! He also loves to check out the divers masks so he looked pretty intimidating considering he was about 2.5 meters long!
One of our highlights on the dive days was after one particular dive we were all boarding the boat and taking our gear off when a local came up to us in his boat and pointed out dolphins coming right our way. We all jumped back into the water (Nick with his fins and mask in hand) and watched them swim only centimeters under us!
Diving was not the only thing on our agenda here on Roatan. As mentioned above, many restaurants and bars needed to be explored and with our new found friends we met while diving were only too happy to join us! So yes – there was a bit of partying during our visit on the Island!
Finished off our last days diving in Rotain with a return to the shipwreck we dived on day 2. Once again a very cool wreck with lots of very tight swim throughs. Was feeling pretty congested, having trouble equalizing and a big storm is blowing in so have decided to call it quits on diving and head off to see the rest of Honduras.
The storm had well and truly arrived in, many of the dive boats couldn’t make it in over the reef because it was too rough and had to be bussed from Coxan Hole (very appropriately named)
That night figured since it was our last night better make it a big one. Headed on down to the black pearl for a crazy night, caught up with all the dive crew from Salva Vida, the crazy Canadians, Seattle John, and a few other odds and sods. Turned into a very messy night with all sorts of madness. Left about 2am and it was pelting down, virtually swam home!!!!
15 January – Rotain – La Ceiba – La Entrada – Which Copan????
Woke up at 6am feeling very very rough and stumbled down to where we had agreed to meet John. Arrived at the airport to find no planes were flying out due to the bad weather, eventually around lunch time planes started flying and we got to La Ceiba. Pretty boring day until we got to San Pedro Sula and jumped on the most decrepit chicken bus yet. Bits were falling off it, doors wouldn’t close, and the engine sounded stuffed. Needless to say the driver thought he was in the Formula 1 and caned it as we headed to Copan. What we hadn’t realized is that there are actually three Copans in Honduras and we were heading for the wrong one!! Luckily a local guy picked up that we didn’t have a clue and told us when to jump the bus at the intersection for Copan Ruinas….so there we were at about 10pm in the middle of nowhere trying to hail cabs. The first cab that pulled up the driver had a semi-automatic shotgun sitting on his lap…..needless to say we gave up on that idea and checked into a hotel down the road.
16 January – La Entrada – Copan Ruinas
Caught the early bus to Copan Ruinas and found a cool place to hang out for the night and then headed off with John (our friend from Roatan) to check out the ruins. Not sure what we expected but they were pretty cool. Definitely not the best we had seen but they were on the way…so what the heck.
17 January – Copan Ruinas – Antigua – Scummy Guides!!!
From here we said goodbye to John (after hunting him down cos he’d skipped out without paying his hotel bill and the staff wanted us to pay up) and caught the shuttle to Antigua. This was meant to be a luxury service with a guide to assist with border crossing formalities. Now we knew that when we entered Honduras the bus company had not given us the right tourist card so we figured we were going to be in for some hassle leaving. Anyway the guide starts going off on a big rave how its going to cost us lots of money to fix the problem and finally said about US$70per person would fix it. We told him no way and sent him in to negotiate with his buddies at the border and he comes back all smiles and says he has it down to $30per person. At this point I was about ready to give in and pay when Trina decides that she is going to go in and negotiate directly. Anyway after a bit of too-ing and fro-ing she comes back and turns out we only need to pay $3 to the border guards. Looks like the guide was trying to stiff us and so we abused him and so he ran off. From there it was a fairly uneventful trip through Guatemala until we arrived in Antigua.
18/19 January – Antigua – Chilling Out
Spent the next couple of days just chilling out in Antigua, catching up on emails and planning the last couple of weeks activities.
20 January – Antigua – Semuc Chanpey – Caves & Candles
Very very early morning start (4am) to catch a bus from Guatemala up to Coban. From there we jumped on a chicken bus for the trek into Semuc Champey. Despite what the guidebook said it turned out there was a very cool hostel right next to the Semuc Champey park called Las Marias. The Semuc Champey area is incredibly beautiful and luckily still pretty unspoilt and off the beaten track. The river water is a beautiful turquoise color and the countryside is rugged.
Wandered up the road to the park where our guide met us for a bit of caving. For the next two hours we swam through a series of caverns holding a candle to light our way. Climbed up waterfalls and jumped 4 metres into an underground pool.
21 January – Semuc Champey – Lagoons & Bats
That morning the sun was shining so went up to the Semuc Champey park region. The river has basically dug a tunnel under a huge slab of limestone for about 300m. On top is a whole series of beautiful shallow lagoons. So you swim in these pools while under your feet a huge river rushes.
That night we talked one of the guys in the hostel to take us down to Lanquin to a cave where thousands of bats nest. At sunset they all come out in a huge rush and you can sit in the mouth of the cave and watch thousands of little bats stream out only centimeters above your head.
22 January – Semuc Champey - Cobam – Flores – (Another) Bus Ride From Hell
Well we had already stayed longer than planned so once again jumped on the bus back to Cobam heading towards Flores and Tikal. What is with this place and early mornings, had to get up at 5am (again). All was going fine until we got to Cobam where they jammed us into a mini van with half the population of Guatemala, ended up wedged in there for five hours with the full weight of two guys leaning on me from the seat in front of me. Needless to say it just about qualifies as our worst ever bus journey. Flores itself is cool and is built on an island in the middle of the lake connected by a causeway. Fantastic sitting on a raft having a beer watching the sun go down.
23 January – Flores – Tikal – Antigua – Mayan Ruins
Yet another early bus to arrive at Tikal just after sunrise. Tikal now qualifies as my most spectacular ruin. It is still heavily covered in jungle and so you have these spectacular 60m pyramids and temples rising out of the bush. This is where parts of the very first Star Wars was filmed. You can climb most of the temples and look out across the jungle. By the time we had finished touring the ruins the sun was well and truly up and the tourist buses were arriving in droves.
That night we booked the luxury bus to take us back to Guatemala City and Antigua. Finally the bus that turned up was actually the same as the one on the brochure and we traveled back to Gutemala City in 5 star comfort.
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