Month: July 2018

We decided to get a Collectivo to Oaxaca because it was much cheaper than a coach and also a lot shorter journey, the Collectivos can go though the mountains on the small roads where as the coaches have a much longer journey around them. So after an 8 hour journey full of twisty roads and sitting with my knees around my ears we arrived/fell out of the Collectivo about 6 pm, after regaining use of my legs we made our way to the hostel. We had a few drinks on the roof top bar, which felt like a risky activity as the stairs up were made of old pallets and swayed in the breeze, but our bravery was rewarded as we met some nice people at the bar, and then when they headed out clubbing we fell into bed.

The next day we headed out into Oaxaca to explore the city. After checking out the cool architecture of the city and various churches and markets we decided to head into the museum of culture ($70 MX / £2.85) to have a look around. Looking was pretty much all we could do as everything was in Spanish and our reading skills are limited to mostly menus and age 7 vocabulary, were not so hot on precolonial anthropology.

After the museum we decided to head to a Mexican restaurant which specialises in Oaxacan food, we had the meal of the day- a starter of a really tasty tortilla soup – because God forbid we have one meal not containing a tortilla, chicken, rice and salad main and rice pudding for dinner, accompanied by a super sweet drink which we weren’t fans of.

After lunch we walked around the city a bit more and came across a Mezcal festival, we paid $50 MX (£2) each for entry and expected it to just be about the process of making the alcohol but it was actually a fair with lots of different companies giving out tasters of their mezcal products, we saw some guys we had chatted to the previous night there and we spent the afternoon tasting different shots and cocktails. We definitely got our £2 worth! Although the payback for the vendors was trying to shock you with unexpectedly strong shots or drinks with crickets in. They seemed disappointed Grace and I weren’t grossed out by insects and then proceeded to pretend to try and put crickets in our mouths until we called their bluff and just ate a cricket, after that they went off in a disappointing huff and left us alone. Once we had our fill of Mezcal we stopped to watch a show of the traditional dances of Oaxca which was very entertaining, they had these giant papier-mâché heads and torsos of a male and female in traditional clothing, the person in the male one had little spacial awareness and kept smacking the papier-mâché head into things which in our drunken state we found hilarious and even in my non-drunk state now is still pretty funny. The rest of the evening we spent walking around Oaxca. We had arrived at the tail end of a festival and every night the streets were armed with people, street entertainers and singers on a big stage. Then after all that fun, we headed to bed.

The next day we decided to head to Mounte Alban, which despite the name is not actually a mountain but a collection of Zapotec ruins on top of a hill, despite not being Mayan ruins there were still a lot of steps, which gave us a stunning view over Oaxaca and the site. We also became a bit of a tourist attraction our selves when a Mexican mother and daughter requested photos with us as we were white and blonde, or that is at least what I hope was going on, otherwise we just obnoxiously ruined a nice family’s photo. In the evening we again had a wonder around Oaxaca city, I had been moaning at George (my brother) about eating tacos again – apparently he’s as sick of me moaning about them – so he said he would treat us to a fancy (i.e. non-taco meal). We went to this posh Italian place and really pushed the boat out, we had wine, seafood pasta and a chocolate brownie for desert and George generously footed the expensive bill at the cost of £6 per person.

The next day we divided to go to Hierve el Agua, an area that used to be a waterfall, the water has now dried up leaving a petrified waterfall and two large natural pools of water formed from the eroded water path and the few small streams that still flow there. The views and pool were amazing, it felt like we were on top of the world, looking down, but by far the most unusual part of the day was the journey to and from Hierve el Agua, we had to take a 2 hour local bus to a small village and then in the village we had to get a modified pick up truck for the last hour of the journey, it was basically some seats fitted into the bed of a small pick up truck with a cover over it. We started with 6 of us in the back, 3 on each bench, then another 2 people got on the bench, then another two were added on stools in the centre between benches, then another two fit laying down in a small alcove above the drivers cabin and then two more hanging onto the back of the van. Every time the driver stopped we thought there was no possible way he could fit more people in but he did, I’m just glad we made it there before anyone else needed a lift! We also paid the gringo tax of $50 MX (£2) per person and locals paid $5 MX (20p) but I didn’t feel too robbed and it was a nice ride apart from trying not to fall into people’s laps, at one point we even overtook some cool looking cattle.

Sorry for the long post but we had a busy time in Oaxaca, hopefully update you on Mexico City soon.

Lots of love,

Alice x

P.S. I mostly wrote this at 5 am in the cold sat in Mexico City bus station, so I’m sorry if it’s blabbering on a bit but I’m too tired to proof read it. Hopefully this video of Grace pulling a parrot will make up for my laziness.

So we’ve probably spent to much time in Puerto Escondido doing not much apart from sitting on a beach relaxing which doesn’t make for an interesting blog but does make me happy so screw you lot!

We decided to stay a few extra days as we have space in our schedule to use up. Our next stop is Oaxaca which is a city inland and apparently it’s going to get up to 40°C next week so we aren’t in a hurry to rush into that. We did decide to move hostels though so we were close to a different beach, probably a good job as the night before we left grace dropped a litre bottle of water on the guy sleeping in the bunk bellow, which made him scream and me and Grace had to try not to laugh and pretend to not know what happened. The new hostel is lovely and also has a pool which we appreciate in the heat.

On Friday we signed up for a ‘1 on 1’ surf session with the Mexican surfing champion, but to be honest he could of been anyone as were not big on surfing celebrities. The ‘1 on 1’ session cost $600MX (£24) per person and ended up being a group of 6 of us. We were taken to a beach a 20 minute drive from the hostel which had large waves and no-one else about, we were shown the basics of how to stand up on a board and then sent into the water.

It’s safe to say I wasn’t a natural. My first mistake was putting sun cream on the front of my legs, every time I’d finally get on the board I’d soon slide back off, the instructor did mention not to cream the front of your legs….just after watching me do it for 5 minutes. My second mistake was being too tall for the board, to balance the board so that it doesn’t wobble too much on the waves, you have to get right to the back, in my case so much so that your feet hang off the edge of the board, which is fine until you need to use said feet to stand and have no surface to stand on. The instructor took my ineptitude as a personal slight and kept encouraging me with useful tips as ‘Just stand up’, ‘don’t think about it just be good’ and my personal favourite ‘you just have to try’ all good points which I obviously hadn’t thought of or been trying to do until he pointed out the error of my ways. I did manage lots of crouches on the board and even stood up for a brief nanosecond before face planting the water. I seemed to spend more time paddling back in against the waves and trying to stay on the board than I did actually surfing. For me it was less surfing and more fighting a wooden board and trying not to drown, at one point I fell off the board and it hit me in the back if the head causing me to gasp and breath in lots of sea water, as soon as I reached the surface three big waves hit one after another and I couldn’t get to the surface, I honestly thought I might drown. Luckily the instructor saw and raced over to save…the board, but once he had taken that back in it made it easier to for me to swim in against the current. Despite all of my complaining I actually did really enjoy Surfing! I think if I went again I would be a bit chooser with instructors and get a bigger board, but I can see why people like it, although it’s knackering it’s so much fun, especially when you’re riding a wave.

Yesterday we decided to just have a chill day, we needed to get laundry done and get money out so we did that and then had some falafel for lunch at our new favourite restaurant here (which we may or may not have eaten at every day…were sick of tacos Okay, don’t judge!) And after just went to the beach.

Today we went shopping for swim wear as I’ve lost weight and my bikini is now too baggy and keeps falling down when ever I jump in water, which happens more often than you would think, I’m still a little kid around water. We ended up both buying what I refer to as a DIY bikini, basically two strips of fabric which you can tie various ways to make different shave bikini tops or bottoms. I left the shop slightly concerned it would be one of those items that looked great when a sales person was around but was almost impossible to do yourself, but as Grace was treating me as a late birthday gift I went for it, at least it would be adjustable if I lost more weight and hopefully we can change styles to avoid than lined too much.

We headed to the beach in our new bikinis and had an afternoon sunbathing, at 4pm we decided to walk to the next beach along to see if we could take part on a local conservation project releasing baby turtles into the sea but after an long scorching, sweaty walk it turned out no turtles had hatched that day so we headed home again. Hopefully we will be able to go again tomorrow with more luck.

Keep you updated.

Lots of love,

Alice x

P.s. here’s an action shot of me getting hit by a wave while sunbathing that grace decides to take rather than warn me. Hope you enjoy it as much as she did.

We finally reached Puerto Escondido on the coast! What was already a 12 hour overnight coach became even longer when about 2 hours away from our destination the coach had to stop, there was a protest going on and the road had been blocked by a barricade of four big lorries. Apparently there had been a local government official killed by the police and locals were rightly not happy about it. After 4 hours of waiting in 35°C in a coach car park we decided to try and make our way past on foot. We got a taxi to the barrier and walked through and then tried to figure out how to make the rest of the two hour trip. The local taxi drivers were having the time of their lives and were charging ridiculous amounts to take us there the lowest offer was about $2000 MX (£80) per person. Luckily we saw a local bus and in broken Spanish explained where we were going and he told us he could drop us at a bus station about an hour away so we jumped on and hoped we’d managed to understand and explain correctly and wouldn’t end up in the middle of nowhere. To the credit of the Mexican people though, in any place we’ve visited all you have to do is look white, or gringo as they call it, and appear lost and many locals will come over and try and help you or find someone who speaks English for you, so we easily found the correct bus and got to our new hostel 18 hours after leaving the previous one, and it ended up costing us $200 MX (£8) not $2000 MX (£80).

We were knackered after arriving at the hostel but there were free salsa lessons in the evening that we didn’t want to miss so we had a quick lunch and took a nap until the evening. The salsa class was so much fun, although I’ve never felt so white and British in my life, I have to shake my hips like that?! In public?! While sober?! Safe to say we aren’t naturals but it’s actually not that hard, we learnt three variations and even a basic spin. We then had to get a partner which took me back to a primary school disco, with all the guys stood on one side of the room and women on the other, but after a free round of shots we all maned up, quite literally, and got in pairs. The dancing was a lot of fun although how salsa got invented in such hot climates I will never understand, it was 30°C and very humid without any breeze and in a room of 40 people dancing, it got very hot and not one person had a dry piece of clothing by the end. The Latino people there seemed very comfortable with it and kept putting their arms around us while chatting, which almost made me and Grace gag and quickly move away in sweaty shame! As an apology for our obvious discomfort one guy offered us some cerviche he had made from a fish he caught that morning, so we gave it a try and it was actually really good. Although he didn’t know what fish it was so if we get really sick later well know it was from trying mystery fish from some guy’s bag…

Today we decided to check out the local beach which was about a 20 minute walk away, it was beautiful there and the sea was like bath water but there was absolutely no shade unless you paid to sit in a restaurant, so we got tacos for lunch…again. They’re always the cheapest thing on the menu but are usually just corn tortillas, which I can no longer stand, and meat, safe to say I’m sick of tacos. We sat in the restaurant from 3-5 pm until it was cool enough to ascend the 200 steps to the beach and complete the 20 minute uphill walk to the hostel. In San Cristobel we were freezing cold and couldn’t wait to get here, now were here we’re longing for the cool of San Cristobel!

When we got back we booked a 2 hour surfing lesson for tomorrow and decided to cook dinner for ourselves to save money and hopefully eat a bit healthier, the food here is so greasy and 90% carbs. But it ended up costing us twice the price of eating out and was a bit shit, as they seem to sweeten everything here even tomato puree and cheese! (And don’t get me started on our quest for unsweetened bread!)

Anyway I’m rambling on and we have to be up early for surfing! I’ll keep you updated on how it goes.

Lots of Love,

Alice x

On Sunday we got on a shuttle to take us back to Mexico from Guatemala, the journey took 11 hours in total, including a very anxious wait at the Guatemalan border when our shuttle left and assured us someone would be there to pick us up in 10 minutes, 2 hours later another shuttle arrived and we eventually got to San Cristobal on Sunday evening.

San Cristobal is a colonial town a few hours from the Mexico – Guatemala border, it has a similar look and feel to Antigua but is much more busy with tourists, Mexican and foreign.

On Monday we decided to go on a free walking tour of the town, it took us around various parts of the city and showed us different churches and view points of the town, we also got to go to various restaurants and bars and try traditional food and drink, soups, juices, tamales, molies and posh alcohol. Not that it’s fancy it’s just called posh and is an alcohol made from corn and sugar cane. We also visited a market and our guide explained that each little town around San Cristobal specialises in different crafts, leather, metal work, pottery, amber etc. And how San Cristobal acts as a hub for all these places to sell their goods.

Our guide also explained to us about the tensions and history between the indigenous Mayan population in the area and the colonialist government and how the various Mayan groups bound together to take control of San Cristobal in the 90s until an agreement to more rights for local people lead to a somewhat peaceful resolution, although natives still feel sidelined by the government.

The walk lasted about 4 hours and afterwards we went back to the market to try and buy some jumpers. San Cristobal is elevated 2200 m high so in the evenings it gets very cold here. We found some jumpers but they were expensive and itchy and as we’re off to the beach next we decided to save money and be cold for one extra night. Something we regretted later on, but we ended up going to a wine bar with some people from our hostel as they had been the previous night and said it was nice and also they had outdoor heaters, so it wasn’t too bad in the end.

Today we booked our bus tickets to Puerto Escondido by the coast, we were going to go to some local villages by horse this afternoon but it was expensive and we both feel a bit knackered after all the late nights and early mornings, so we’ve just had a chill day reading and sunbathing in the hostel.

Keep you updated on what we’re up to next.

Lots of love,

Alice x

We had heard from a pair of American travellers about a Mayan cooking class in San Pedro that they really recommend so we decided to give it a go. It was run by a woman in her 30’s called Annetta, she met us at 9 am by the dock and we walked with her up the steep streets away from the tourist trap by the lake and into the local market. While we were there she brought all the ingredients fresh for the meal we were going to make, she explained to us that most of the locals don’t speak English or Spanish, just native Mayan dialects so encouraged us to ask her any questions we had about the food or people we saw while in the market.

She showed us all the different types of bananas  and avocados they have, and explained we normally only get one kind of tough skinned avocado in the UK as it is the only one that travels without bruising easily, she also brought dragon fruit for us to try along with other ingredients needed for the meal we were making. We had noticed in Mexico and Guatemala that sometimes tortillas are a grey colour and she explained this is just because they use grey coloured corn, and in Guatemala they have white red and grey corn but only white and grey are used for cooking as the red corn is considered sacred and is only used in Mayan ceremonies. We also noted how nice it was that no plastic bags were used in the market, apparently this was a new thing, they had recently been banned with a fine of 1500Q (£150) for using one, which is pretty hefty as the average weekly wage in the area is ~40Q (£4). Apparently there used to be plastic bags everywhere in the streets which got swept into the lake every time it rained and as the lake is effectively just a valley filled with rain water they just stay in the lake, so a big effort was made to stop the pollution. We also asked her why throughout Guatemala women seem to wear traditional dress while men rarely do, apparently it is due to the civil war in Guatemala, the men used to be recruited and would kill men from opposing areas that were distinguishable by the slight variations in traditional clothing so they changed to wearing western clothes that are imported cheaply second hand from the US.

After we had all of our ingredients we headed back to Annetta’s kitchen, a large room with two open sides looking out over the lake. The meal prep wasn’t exactly a cooking class as we didn’t all cook our own meal from start to finish but instead was more like communal cooking where we all had different tasks overlooked by Annetta. Some people got to cut the exotic fruits and vegetables and some people were shown how to peel an avocado with out a knife but I of course got the very exotic task of peeling and chopping potatoes, then carrots and then beans. We did all however get a go at making tortillas (which is much harder than it looks!), potato and herb pancake type things and also a tamale type dish of mashed potatoes and vegetables wrapped in banana leaves and steamed. We ate these with rice and a type of chicken and vegetable stew and for desert we had fried plantains covered in a sauce made from blended chillies and chocolate.

The food was nice and while we ate Annetta told us stories about her life, how she taught herself English at 7 by learning phrases from tourists and how when her mother got sick she became the head of the house aged 8 and how she married a man who cheated on her, (which is apparently very common in Guatemala as woman are seen as subservient to men) and when she tried to leave him was told she was just lucky he was a good husband and didn’t beat her, which he later went in to do and when she chose to divorce him her family disowned her, then when she tried to get a job rather than go back to her husband her society disowned her for disrespecting her husband. She eventually became successful and her family, community and husband wanted back into her life, she told us how she forgave them and tried to change the community’s view on women supporting them selves and had opened a weaving co-op where local women could make and sell there goods. After we had finished our meal she took us down to the weavers co-op shop and showed us the different types of cotton that grow in Guatemala and how the colour of the plants flower indicated the colour of cotton, how they cleaned the cotton and turned it into thread and how they got a wide range of colours from natural dyes such as beetroot and barks. It was a very interesting and informative day and Annetta seemed like one bad-arse woman!

The course finished about 3 and some girls we met on it suggested we went to their hostel bar after, it was a cheap bar and you could jump straight from the bar into the lake, they also had an inflatable in the water and people were taking it in turns to sit on one end while someone jumped on the other launching them into the air. It was a really fun afternoon and we ended up going out, which seems to happen a lot these days, but it’s just so much fun going out here it’s a mix of locals and tourists, young and old, salsa and Latino club music and everyone is so friendly and dancing with each other it’s a lot of fun and like nowhere I’ve ever been out before. It’s was also very strange as around the lake they close everything down by midnight so people start going into clubs at 8 pm, leave at 12 am and have a good night’s sleep, I don’t see why we can’t do that in the UK to be honest!

We got to sleep at 1 am and were up at 5 am to catch a shuttle from the other side of the lake back to San Cristobal in Mexico, an 11 hour trip in a small shuttle on 4 hours sleep. It was a very long day to say the least but we’ve made it here!

I’ll keep you updated as to what we get up to.

Lots of love,

Alice x

Ps. We’re in the attic of the hostel which has huge windows; look at my view from bed!

We decided to head to Lake Atitlan for my birthday because the lake itself looks beautiful and San Pedro, we were told, was a lively town that would be nice for a meal and drinks in the evening. We had a three hour shuttle ride from Antigua to get to the lake, the last 30 minutes of which was spent on winding roads down the volcanoes surrounding Lake Atitlan. The views were breathtaking, I felt like I was in a painting. However after a small taxi boat across the lake to San Pedro we realised it was less than picturesque.

San Pedro is the worst kind of tourist trap, it’s one step up from a shanty town except with added tattoo parlours, blaring music and people trying to sell tat, everything is crammed in and made out of any spare material and you feel like sitting down may lead to catching an STD. Our hostel felt more like a building site, although at least it was clean, other travellers seemed to agree that it was less than pleasant and some even cut their losses and paid for a second hostel in another lake town. Travellers who had swam in the beautiful lake also advised us not to do the same, apparently it contains parasites and nasty bacteria and makes you sick, also local tap-water is drawn from the lake so best not to shower while here. Happy Birthday me!

So as you can imagine I was not optimistic about my birthday, but I awoke to lots of lovely Facebook messages and cards from family that Grace had been carrying with her for the last month, which cheered me up. We decided to avoid the lake and San Pedro and check out another town on another part of the lake which we heard was nice and that had a pretty pool bar and decided to take a hike there.

The hike started in San Marcos and began as a road that slowly turned into rubble and then a dirt path, and climbed higher and higher until it finally was a tiny path cutting across the steep volcano side. I would like to complain more about how steep it was and how scared I was but there were locals planting crops up the steep sides and several carrying huge bales of sticks and some even carrying several large rocks across the thin path, making us look like wimps sweating away when all we had to carry were our backpacks containing water and swimming stuff.

The hike was actually a lot of fun and turned out to be one of the most enjoyable things we’ve done so far, the views where breathtaking and the trail switched between high and low points (although it was very annoying to spend 10 minutes puffing up a really steep uphill part only to head straight down again as soon as you got to the top) and changed between roads to tiny side of volcano paths to climbing rocky edges and river beds. We also didn’t see any other tourists and each village we passed through there were lots of young children trying to ask us questions in Spanish or shouting any English words they knew, it was very cute! The trail was supposed to take about 3 hours but we made it in 2, although we did have jelly legs by the end, whether that was all the rock climbing or just the fear of heights I don’t know! We found the pool bar alongside the water’s edge and stopped for 2 hours for lunch, cocktails and a swim. Grace even managed, with the help of Google translate, to get me a chocolate brownie with a candle in, all in all a lovely afternoon!

We decided to continue around the lake hiking to the next town after lunch but unfortunately even though it’s my birthday my body didn’t want to give me a break. As you may or may not know, I have Crohn’s disease, which is where my body attacks itself, especially the digestive system, so whenever you get stressed or ill the body goes into overdrive and in my case this means I vomit a lot. So after out lovely meal in this fancy pool bar I had to rush to the bathroom to throw up (the staff probably thought I was the fattest bulimic they had ever seen) which was annoying and made me feel super weak, but on the plus side my birthday cake and lunch was pretty much calorie free! So after that we decided to just head home on a water taxi.

Back at the hostel we met up with some friends we had made in the previous hostel who also ended up here and spent a nice evening playing cards and discussing the difference in the US and UK political systems, they had been on a cooking course all day so we decided to do that too the next day on their recommendation.

I’ll let you know how it goes.

Lots of love,

Alice x

On Monday we didn’t get up to much, unfortunately Moctezuma’s revenge caught up with me and I suddenly wasn’t feeling up to much adventure or travelling far from a working toilet. I decided to try and starve it out which worked quite well at the time but ended up not so good in the long run.

In the evening but we ended up going out to a brewery with a rooftop bar and then onto a kind of square of bars where each bar specialised in a certain type of alcohol. I wasn’t planing on drinking but it was ladies night and I got 3 free drinks, it would have been rude to waste an opportunity like that, after the free drinks the price for ladies drinks were 5Q (50p). You can guess how well that ended, especially as it was done on an empty stomach. I ended up getting to sleep about 2 am and was up at 5:30 am for a volcano hike up Pacaya.

The hike up the volcano was 2 and a bit hours, it was an uphill struggle, especially hung over and having not eaten in about 20 hours! So near the end I gave up and got a horse and spent the last part of the ride up trying not to throw up and also debating if making a horse carry my fat arse up a bloody steep hike counted as animal abuse. It was a really cool ride though and I got to chat to the back up guide in my broken Spanish about the volcano and the plants on it. She told me how it had erupted 4 weeks ago with a small river of lava which had solidified but was still warm and she also showed me these really cold leaves that were dripping with water, apparently people on the mountains use them to drink from when it’s dry and to store cheese for weeks at a time as they keep it moist.

Luckily for my horse we reached the top quite quickly after that, and I would like to say the view was worth climbing hung over for, but unfortunately it was thick fog at the top! We did roast some marshmallows though after a steep decline down to the lava through this sand like ash, which actually resulted in near death experiences for a few people in the group! Getting back up from the lava was even more of a struggle and I emerged covered in ash. The way down was much more fun although more of a work out of the leg muscles holding us up from rolling down the steep path.

We got back and had a nap before heading out to the local party hostel where me and Grace discovered a hidden talent for beer pong, although we still got a last minute defeat, it was good fun there although we did feel like extras in an American frat movie.

The next morning we dragged everyone we knew in the hostel to watch the England game and covered them in red crosses made of lip liner. Which led to a funny sight for the locals when 19 minutes into the match we made a mad dash running 3 blocks to another bar after the TV signal dropped in the one we were in.

It’s still to soon to discuss the match, but afterwards we spent a while consoling lots of drunk English lads. We headed to someone we’d met’s hostel and got lots of free shots and abuse about it not coming home. We were given the chance to reclaim glory in many drinking games, beer pong, killer pool and donkey ping pong. All of which we lost, by bigger and bigger margins the more we drank.

We moved onto another hostel bar, this one had a roulette wheel on the wall where you could win free beers, shots and other cool stuff or have to jump naked into the pool, do chilli shots or body shots on the bar etc. It was good fun and the whole bar was joining in, we won some free drinks and also had to do some of the forfeits which I won’t disclose (Hi Mum). After 6 hours drinking we headed home and were asleep by 10 pm.

Just writing this on the shuttle to Lake Atitlan out last stop in Guatemala before we head back into Mexico. Hopefully it will be a lovely place to spend my birthday tomorrow!

Keep you updated.

Lots of love,

Alice x

We loaded into the overnight bus from Flores at 9 pm, we didn’t get much sleep as the driver kept ‘bibbing’ other cars and randomly turning the lights on inside the coach, so we were pretty tired when we reached Guatemala City at 5 am. From there, we were loaded into a smaller bus and were driven to Antigua, we reached the hostel about 7 am, but check in wasn’t until 2 pm so after they let us leave our bags in a locker we headed out to get some breakfast. Along with our bacon and eggs, we received a recommendation to visit a spot on top of a high hill that overlooks the whole of Antigua, so off we headed. The weather is a bit cooler here 28°C rather than 32°C and it is also less humid which is lovely. The walk was really pleasant, it wasn’t too much of a climb and the view was absolutely beautiful!

When we first got to the top about 9 am it was peaceful and quiet and really enjoyable, but by 10 am we could hear a loud bunch of Americans on their way up, they were obviously a Christian group and decided to bring the word of God to unsuspecting sightseers, eventually breaking out into song. Unfortunately for us they didn’t know any of the British primary-school classics like ‘give my oil in my lamp’ or ‘he’s got the whole world in his hands’ and we thought requesting Wonderwall may be a step to far, so we decided to climb down and explore the rest of the town.

Antigua is full of beautiful buildings and cobbled streets, it was once the colonial capital of Guatemala, built by the Spanish and used until an earthquake destroyed the area, but it’s been rebuilt in much the same style and is lovely to walk around.

In all we had walked about 7 miles on very little sleep so we headed back to our hostel and had a sit down until we could check in at 2 pm. Once checked in we went in search of some lunch/dinner. One of the staff suggested a local restaurant called Rincon Tipico and it was delicious! We ordered a chicken and potatoes dish, for Q300 (£3) we got a quarter of a chicken a tonne of potatoes some salad, some tortillas and a weird glass of rice milk, the chicken and potatoes were cooked to perfection over a huge fire and the salad and dressing were great, honestly one of the tastiest meals I’ve ever had, except the rice milk, which tasted like icing in liquid form.

After that we picked up some shopping in a supermarket so we can do a bit of cooking for ourselves as we will be here for a few nights, I’m getting a bit sick of tortillas!

Tomorrow we’re going to see a monastery and attempt a few hikes up a volcano, hopefully this one isn’t active!

Keep you updated.

Lots of love,

Alice x

The boarder crossing from Belize to Guatemala was a lot less stressful than our last crossing. We got a stamp, paid a clearly laid out and standard fee (£15 per person) and crossed into Guatemala. It was pretty uneventful apart from the lady in front of us, who was taking a turkey across the border in a tied up bag, the turkey had a hole for its head and was quite content watching the crossing procedure. That was until the woman dumped the bag on the floor to get her passport, then all hell broke loose and it was like watching the turkey version of Dancing on Ice as the bird tried and failed to regain footing in a rolling bag.

After that excitement the rest of the day was just a long journey to our hostel in Flores. Once the bus dropped us off we were guilt-tripped into going into the bus company’s shop to check out their prices for trips to Tikal. We had already decided we wouldn’t buy them there and would check prices elsewhere, but our indifference to their sales pitch was taken as us driving a hard bargain and they followed us out of the shop and offered us a reduced price with an English guide and hostel pick up thrown in so we agreed to pay $100 GTQ (£10) per person for the hour drive and an all day guide.

We got picked up at 4:30 am and got the park at about 6 am, we were again lucky that either because its the off-season, the recent eruption has scared off travellers or just because we got there so early, that the park was really quiet. Our guide was quite interesting, he had originally grown up in Tikal before locals were re-homed once it became a national park. He showed us lots of birds, insects and plants special to the region, we saw woodpeckers, monkeys, jumping spiders and at one point he stuck some grass down a hole in a log and pulled out a tarantula! Which we all got to stroke and the bravest amounts us got to hold (after reassurance they aren’t deadly!). We were also shown different herbs and plants along the way, one plant stank like chicken soup with too much pepper and garlic, I thought the guide was joking at first and that the smell must be coming from a café until I picked up a flower, it reeked. We also tried some of a plant that tasted a bit like mixed herbs, although I have no idea what it was.

The ruins them selves are very impressive and as always have about a billion steps to get to the top (temples are up to 70 m high). The main square had 4 structures to represent the 4 seasons and each of them had a different number of steps to represent days of the calendars and then these steps are set into layers that represent moon cycles and on and on it goes. There is just so much detail in these huge buildings it makes them even more impressive, they were built in such a way that the sun hits them in a certain way during the solstice, and in the mornings shadows of the buildings look like a snake making its way to the ground. One section is designed so that when you clap it echos back sounding like a Tolkien (a bird indigenous to the region). The complexity of these huge buildings is just crazy, and it’s even more mind blowing when you think that it was done over a thousand years ago!

There were also sacrificial altars scattered about, we asked if it was seen as a privilege to be sacrificed or if someone was chosen as a victim when the Gods were not happy and, apparently, it was considered an honour. They would have not only have been chosen from birth to be sacrificed later in life but the parents would also purposely get pregnant at certain times so the chosen one would be the correct age to be sacrificed for specific events! It’s still not know why the city was abandoned, it was left deserted for 500 years before the Spanish came to the region, by then it was so overgrown it went unnoticed. Only whispers of the city where known until in 1853, when a Guatemalan man collecting gum from the rubber trees noticed the ruins and alerted a newspaper and the site gained interest and was investigated. Even today it takes a team of 30 to daily remove vegetation off of the buildings to stop them being reclaimed by the jungle, our guide told us to uncover a temple takes a team of 20 about 7 years and around 2 million pounds!

After 5 hours of walking around, the park started to get busy so we headed home grabbed some lunch (burritos and a drink for £3?! Don’t mind if I do.) and plan our next stop. Tonight we’ll be getting the night bus at 9 pm to arrive in Antigua tomorrow morning around 8 am.

As always I’ll keep you all updated.

Lots of love,

Alice x

Hey everyone,

Yesterday we made the crossing into Belize from Mexico. The journey wasn’t too bad except getting ripped off at the Mexican exit boarder, we were charged $30 USD (£23) per person in ‘taxes’. I’d already heard this was a scam they try and did as advised – printed off our plane tickets summary, where it showed we had payed for the taxes already in our ticket. We advised the groups in front of us to argue the point and show their tickets too. After a heated argument the first group to do this were allowed to leave without paying, the next group were let in only paying half but by the time it got to us they pretended they couldn’t read English and we were told pay or don’t cross, so we ended up paying. Some groups behind us hid their money and said they didn’t have enough and they just took whatever petty cash they had and let them through. The whole thing was very frustrating and left a bad after-taste of Mexico in our mouth which is a shame as so far we have had nothing but amazing memories in Mexico.

I had expected Belize to be very similar to Mexico, but as soon as we crossed the boarder it was completely different, the houses, the nature, the people. There is much more of a Carribbean feel here, the people all speak English as a first language which made it a lot easier to get directions to an ATM and find our hostel.

After a short stop at Belize city, we caught a speed boat ferry to the island of Caye Caulker and got a golf cart (the main method of transport on the island) to our hostel. It was a bit more basic than we’ve had so far, built with off cuts of wood and metal with a very DIY feel to it, and no air-con, which is probably something we’re going to have to get used to.

After we checked in we went for food in a little shack next door which was delicious! We watched the women make everything from scratch, even the tortillas and asked them 101 questions as they spoke English. They were telling us about the difference between certain dishes and how what we think of as Mexican food in the west is more like Belizian food, as in the west we have rice and beans with our burritos, which is a Carribbean influence, in Mexico it tends to just be meat and sauces.

This afternoon Grace went diving and me and Alyssa went for a walk around the island, the island was split in two by a hurricane a few years back so we could only walk around one half which took us a few hours, including a sit and relax on a jetty we found. We saw a few cool things like how the adverts here are all hand painted and that for scaffolding they just use propped up bits of wood, we also had a chat with a guy selling tamales (or as he put it “hooott taaammmaaales”) and bought some Banana bread which was delicious.

Everything is much more expensive here, we got rolls, cheese, crisps and two drinks for the journey to Guatemala tomorrow and it cost us $50 BZ (£20) so we’re glad we’re not stopping for a long time! So tomorrow we will be getting a coach from Belize City to Flores in Guatemala and we will be in Guatemala for a while. Keep you updated.

Lots of love,

Alice x

Update: Last night there was a tropical storm here which was slightly terrifying in our little hut with holes cut out for windows! It was shaking the whole hut and lighting up every time there was lightning. But we made it through and are currently sat waiting for a bus to Flores Guatemala eating some street cake and chatting to the woman who sold it about university grants in London for her son.