We have already made it to Guatemala - the driver sort of scared me, telling me I couldnt leave the country without my tourist ticket (that I lost in Mexico City…). I think he knew somebody at the border, at least thats what he told me, so I only ended up paying 24 Dollars to got my passport stamped. Check out the pics of our last station in Mexico - San Cristobal de las Casas & some nice waterfalls and Maya ruins near Palenque.

If it seems that we are online quite a lot - that is right! There are plenty of internet cafes, at least in the tourist spots we are. The main reason is that Bettis Orbitz flights were rescheduled so she just had to spend 2 hours on the phone in order to get it fixed. She ended up paying 200 Quetzales (thats the currency in Guatemala) which is about 3 times as much as we spend for our hotel per night ;o)

Right now we are staying around Lago de Atitlan with a great view on 3 volcanos. Tomorrow we are heading out to Quetzaltenango where we are looking forward to climbing the highest peak (volcano) of Central Amercia! Hope you are all doing good. Besitos desde Panajachel!

After leaving the capital, we spent 2 nights in Oaxaca. A lot of people had told us that this was their favorite place in Mexico. It took us 6 hours to get there, passing by a lot of huge cactus along the road and enjoying being the only foreigners on the bus.

The center of Oaxaca has the charm of a nice quiet village, but we quickly figured out that we were definitely not the only tourists in town. While having dinner at the main square (”Zocalo” like in every town here), we were surrounded by policemen and children selling chewing gum. Pl. Catalunya in Bcn seemed like an undiscovered destination in comparison. Anyways, the Zocalo was one of the prettiest squares we have ever seen. Walking through the narrow clean streets, we were having a rough time not to take pictures of the low houses, every one a different color.

We missed out on Monte Alban, unfortunately, which is supposedly the most interesting archeological site in the area. Nevertheless, we spent our 2nd day on a tour that took us to several interesting places: “El Tule” - 2000 year old and 500 tons, this is the wides tree in the world which requires 5000l of water daily in order to remain a tourist attraction. Carpet factory “Teotitlan” where they showed us on Bettis hand that they only used natural colors that last 40 years (the hand is still brown, red and yellow). “Mitla” the 2nd important site, old! The highlight was probably “Hierve El Agua”, 2 petrified waterfalls next to some pools integrated in the hill, very pretty & worth to take your swim suit with you (we didnt know). Our last stop was a Mezcal factory (like Tequila). While we stuck to our 6 free chupitos, all Mexican tourists ended up buying bottles of Mezcal and started all at once to introduce themselves to us, telling us how happy they were that we showed so much interest in their country… Fotos here.

According to Lonely Planet, Mexico is the only country on our tour where it is safe to take night buses so we decided to take the 12h night bus to San Cristobal de las Casa where we arrived this morning. Next time more about San Cristobal, Palenque, Agua Azul and crossing the border to Guatemala which will be especially interesting as I have lost my entrance ticket that I need in order to leave the country again. Cheers!

Yeah, we made our way to Mexico. Not as quick as I had hoped though - I had to take a connection flight in Atlanta, but due to some thunderstorm we had had to go in circles for 1.5 hours before getting clearance to land. Comment of our pilot after the third circle: “That runs very well with the fuel that we have”.

Mexico City was our first stop on the trip. We only had one day for sightseeing, but overall our first impression was what we had expected from it - lots of traffic, dust, and it was just huge! Check out some pics of Mexico City.

As we are about to get kicked out of the internet cafe, I will try to write a bit more the next time from San Cristobal de las Casas. Greetings from Oaxaca!!!

Hi Leute,

Eventually, I managed to set up my travel blog, as always last minute! Tuesday morning I am heading out to Mexico City where I will start my 3-months-trip all across Central America.

I will try to provide updates as often as possible, depending on the availability of Central American internet cafes. If you want to get automatic email notifications whenever I update my blog and aren’t subscribed yet, you can quickly sign up with your email address (no worries, you will be able to sign off any time in case you are too annoyed of my stories about mosquitos, volcano hikes & jungle trips).

Have a good time while I’m not around & I hope to hear from you all via email or blog comments!