Hard to believe, but my trip is almost over! After 86 days of travelling through 7 countries by bus & boat, starting in Mexico D.F. & heading down to Panama City, I have to catch a flight back to Europe in only 30 hours!
Once more at the Pacific side, I spent 2 relaxing days at the Boca Brava island. The daily rain made me skip Santa Catalina and head straight to Panama City where my panamanian friend Jenny and her family have been taking good care of me for some days. Panama City is very “chevere”, great for shopping & the perfect stop after all the Central American pueblitos before heading back to European reality.
After 7 GB of photos, my camera finally gave up & broke down right on top of the visitors center of the Panama Canal. Check out the definitely last Boca Brava & Panama pics of my good old Canon Ixus 500. Cu soon back in Europe! Besitos xxx
Only one more week for me in Central America - My friend Jenny joined me at the Caribbean islands of Bocas del Toro, the highlight of my Panama trip. By watertaxi or bus, you can easily visit a different beach or island every day.
Heading down once more to the Pacific side, I stopped in the very green Boquete. Winter has started here already so I am happy again about hostals with hot water. It rains every day now which is probably a good preparation for Europe.
Check out the photos of the islands of Bocas del Toro & Boquete. Last time photos of Caribbean palm trees, I promise.
Costa Rica is maybe rather touristy then other countries in Central America, but nowhere else you can visit that many great places. I have spent more than 2 weeks there and havent even seen half of all the tourist spots.
After leaving Nicoya peninsula, I headed to the little town La Fortuna, located on the east side of volcano Arenal (the lava goes down on the west side). I hiked up to the 70m-high Cataratas waterfalls, enjoyed natural hotsprings (basically sitting down in a river as hot as a bathtub) and, best of all, went on a night walk on volcano Arenal. Arenal is the most active volcano in Costa Rica, throwing out lava rocks constantly, so you have to watch the falling rocks from the edge of the danger zone, 1.5km farther. Beautiful.
After 1 night in San Jose I headed again to the Caribbean side, Tortuguero. In the middle of pure rain forrest you can only get there by boat, passing sandbanks with crocodiles. One of the most exciting moments of this trip I experienced during a night walk on the beach, looking for leatherback turtles which go there to lay there eggs. And I saw one - 156cm long (without the head, so actually taller than me) the turtle was just closing the whole where it had laid the eggs. I felt like watching a dinosaur, rather than a turtle, never seen anything like that!
Further east on the Caribbean side in Cahuita & Puerto Viejo de Talamanca, I enjoyed more white & black-sand beaches as well as another natural park with more palm trees to climb and tons of spider & howler monkeys. If you are not tired of Caribbean beaches & palm trees yet, check out my last photos of Costa Rica. Besos desde Bocas de Toro/Panama!
Time just passes by too quickly here - it has been almost 2 weeks since I passed the boarder to Costa Rica! I guess I should have planned better, Costa Rica is by far the most expensive country in Central America and I will still be here for a while, but there are just so many nice places to visit.
Not being American makes me feel exotic - 1.5 million (mostly American) visitors come to Costa Rica each year (population of only 4 million people), so I usually ask from which part of the States people are, rather than from which country =)
After one night in the main town Nicoya, I spent a couple of days at Playa Guiones - struggeling with a rented surfboard among 90% surfers from California who knew what they were doing. Afterwards I headed further south to the little beach town Samara, the perfect place to chill out for a few days. Together with Chris, Dan & Andy from Wisconsin, I then travelled to the small village Montezuma, another beach town with some nice but small water falls (we are at the end of dry season), and finally Monteverde where I went on a Canopy tour, bought some more coffee at a Coffee tour and walked through another cloud forrest.
Check out some pics of Nicoya & Monteverde.
I am not so sure about the highlights of this trip anymore, but Nicaragua is definitely one of them. After visiting the colonial cities in the west, I have spent some time in and around San Juan del Sur, close to the Costa Rican border.
First I took my first surfing lesson at Playa Madera, an appealing, quiet beach & Nicaraguan surf hot spot. It went actually all pretty well as long as my Dutch instructor was holding my long board. Once I was on my own on a shorter board, I really had a hard time standing up. Spending 1 night at Crazy Dave´s Hideout camp was quite an experience, even though I didn´t see him starting a fight or shooting at anything while I stayed there (he is known for that all across the area).
After 2 days I returned back to San Juan, luckily with all my luggage. People use to get mugged around Playa Maderas, so was a German couple I met in the middle of the day. Once more, Central American thieves are not always to efficient - they left the bag with everything inside in the woods after 2 unarmed locals followed them.
My next stop was Isla de Ometepe, a gorgeous island in the middle of Lago de Nicaragua. The island is nominated for the new natural wonders and you can really see why - formed by 2 volcanos with several black-sand beaches, Ometepe is still touristy small and absolutely safe. I hiked up the very muddy trail in order to see the little lagoon in the middle of the crater. 2 Americans disappeared here 3 years ago and couldn´t be found by local guides for 2 weeks, until their skeletons and backpacks were finally discovered. Since then you have to book a guide who leads up the volcano and through the fascinating cloud forrest.
The swimming hole Ojo de Agua and the beaches of Charco Verde are only some more nice spots on Ometepe. Check out my last pics of Nicaragua - my knees and legs have healed, so I am off now to my next surfing lesson at Playa Remanso before I am heading down to Costa Rica tomorrow. Pura vida!
All by myself now… After a quick stay in Honduras capital Tegucigalpa, I made my way to Nicaragua. Or - the country where you can do pretty much anything, like VOLCANO BOARDING. Staying in the really nice city Leon, I took the chance and went on a volcano boarding tour. Right, active volcano, next to Leon, no lava though. After walking up the volcano, we had to listen to some instructions as volcano boarding is not as easy as it seems. Basically, you sit on a board, dressed like a Dutch clown (orange suits and glasses for the protection) and try not to break hard with your feet, otherwise you fall. Speed record is 68km/h, I surely didnt break that one as I fell twice. And - you should keep your mouth shut and avoid to scream, otherwise you end up like me with a mouth full of volcano stones.
Next stop was Granada, the oldest colonial city in Central America, really pretty. Granada is right next to Lago de Nicaragua and surrounded by volcanos. I went on a tour to the Isletas, about 350 tiny islands right in front of the city, the results from a volcano eruption 10000 years ago. Most of these islands are for sale, starting from 25.000 US up to 250.000 US. One of them is the home of 5 spider monkeys where all the touri boats stop by. So did we. While having a stop at a nearby island later on, I swam to Monkey Island and visited the monkeys again, sitting in front of them in the shallow water while we were staring at each other and became friends.
Check out the photos of Leon & Granada - I am actually already 2 steps ahead, now in San Juan after 2 days of surfing at Playa Maderas, heading to Isla de Ometepe now. I will upload more fotos the next time. Cheers!
It has been already more than a week that we made it to Honduras, still the Carribean side. It is the first country where I am having troubles with the local Spanish accent, although it does not really matter as many people prefer to speak in English anyways.
We stayed one night in the small beach town Tela where people dont seem to be used to tourists that much as they stared at us as if we were the first pale tourists they have ever seen. I guess most tourists have a nice tan by the time they get here but we are still working on that.
Afterwards we went on to La Ceiba which is the third biggest and supposedly the party town of Honduras. You probably need to know where to party because we didnt see too many people on the streets after 8h (Saturday evening!). After a guy told us that we had ended up in a bad area, we decided to postpone the partying and get some sleep before our white-water-rafting trip the next trip. Rafting was really cool even though at first we had to pray all together which was a bit scary. Unfortunately, we feel like we cannot rely on people here as much as in the last countries - after the rafting our tour guy was supposed to take us back to town, but instead he just asked another driver to give us a ride until the next intersection where he wanted to kick us out. Waiting for a taxi in bikini and beach towel didnt seem to appealing to us, so we insisted on staying on the bus until the driver gave up and drove us back to the city (it didnt even take him 10 minutes).
Back in town, we decided to not longer in La Ceiba and took the next ferry to one of the Bay Islands - Utila. Important to know - if you are not (yet) into scuba diving, dont go there. It is all about diving!!! And thats how we have spent our last week - scuba diving, talking about diving, studying how to dive and getting up early in order to head out with the diving boat at 7:30h. Awesome!
More beaches, palm trees and people in diving suits - here.
Eventually, we made our way to Belize! Once crossing the border, everything changed immediately - different language (English), race (we look even more pale now), Reggae music everywhere and tourist stuff 5 times more expensive than in Guatemala.
We decided not to stay in Belize City and took the water taxi from there to Caye Caulker which is a tiny island with 1300 inhabitants, 2 roads and a lot of diving and snorkeling shops. And thats what we did there - as I have postponed my diving certificate to Honduras, supposedly one of the cheapest places worldwide, I went on a snorkeling trip, watching sharks, turtles and sting rays swimming next to me, while Betti did the Blue Hole dive (44 meters!).
After we got used to bumping into the same people all the time, waking up with Reggae music and being greeted by everybody, we went on to Placencia. This peninsula with 900 people has some great beaches with a lot of palm trees and hardly any people. Nice!
Tomorrow we are taking the ferry to Honduras which I am very much looking forward to. If you don’t mind those power point presentations full of palm trees, check out the Belize fotos. Cheers!
Betti and I are still enjoying Guatemala, longer than we had actually planned. In the south of Guatemala, travelling by chicken bus was really easy. We hopped on one of the buses (actually people dragged us to there). When changing the bus we didnt have to ask anybody nor wait at all. People inmediately screamed the name of the town we were heading to and threw our backpacks on top of the next bus (that is where you keep your luggage here). At the beginning, we were concerned that our backpacks would fall off or get stolen, but so far there were no major incidents. One time we had to stop cause the engine broke down, another time we lost luggage (not ours) and had to go back, but people are used to these things. We are still impressed by the drivers assistants who are climbing onto the bus while it is driving in order to arrange the luggage and then suddenly enter the bus from the back door again.
In the north of Guatemala, where we are now, travelling is a bit more difficult. Since we decided against hitchhiking and due to Easter, we are still stuck in Flores, at lago Peten Itza. Luckily we still have all our luggage. While sitting on the stairs of our hostal (2€/night) yesterday morning, a young guy grabbed Bettis daypack from behind and ran away. Fortunately, the guy was just too dumb - he fell before reaching his friend who was already waiting for him on a motorbike at the next street corner. Before we could catch him (and beat him up), he let the daypack fall and escaped.
Another short night, tomorrow at 5h we are heading out to Belize City, 7h ride. I hope by then I have gotten rid of my mosquito spray allergy. Relec extra strong - not so good on your eyes. I guess I overdid it yesterday, but I was just too scared of the mosquitos when we spent last night only in hammocks (no more tents available) in order to do the early Tikal tour at 4:45h. Check out some photos of Antigua around Eastern & volcano Pacaya (lava!) as well as Flores & Tikal.
On our trip to Guatemala we first passed Panajachel which is a very nice but touristy town next to Lago Atitlan and 3 volcanos. More info with the photos.
Taking the chicken bus, we made our way to Quetzaltenango or as for the locals just Xela. Very impressive was not only our visit in the small neighbour town Zunil (no public garbage collection!) but especially our volcano hike with a great view on the most active volcano here - and we saw the eruption! Check it out here.