Adventure Dispatches
Internal Flights are Serum for the Soul
We´re in Livingston, Guatemala today, our final stop before boarding a boat and plane tomorrow to move in the Belize cayes. This is our last week and we´re hurrying things along a bit to get some more honeymoon relaxing time in on the beach.
Normally, bussing it across a country is half the adventure. It puts you up close with the real color of a country, its culture, people and landscape. But other times you just need to take it easy.
Date: March 6th, 2007 |
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Adventure Travel and Malaria - Netting the Problem
As I mentioned in this post, there’s some debate out there on the importance of taking a anti-malarial drug for travels in endemic areas. As I said, we opted to go with Chloroquine and a mosquito net for this jaunt through Central America. Of course, if you are going to haul around that net and some Permethrin to add to the repellent effect, it’s good to actually USE it, as I recently discovered in El Salvador.
Date: March 4th, 2007 |
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Dispatch: Update from El Salvador
Sorry for the radio silence on this end kiddies. We´ve been in El Salvador since Saturday and internet access, along with tourist infrastructure in general, is very thin on the ground here. Strange, El Salvador is the most industrialized of the Central American nations, with top-notch highways and a Pizza Hut on every corner, but it´s much tougher to find a tourist from out of town than a Whopper. In fact, with the exception of a handful of folks on the bus with us from Guatemala City, we have yet to meet or see another foreigner here in the past …
Date: February 28th, 2007 |
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Photos: Tikal
Continuing on with the photo follow-up to our adventures so far. Here’s a look at the Mayan ruins of Tikal in the wilds of Peten, Guatemala.
We arrived at 7 a.m. off of a packed mini-van of other tourists from the town of Flores. The first several hundred meters of trails with in the park wind through thick jungle and past some non-descript piles of rubble that remain from some of this civilization’s smaller buildings. Then the trail bends and a gap in the forest lets in a bit more light and reveals this first peek at one of the half-dozen or so ten-story temples that stretch to the top of the forest canopy…
(Photos by Johanna DeBiase)
Date: February 21st, 2007 |
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Get on the bus… again
As I mentioned in this post before I left, due to some oddities in our itinerary for Central American Honeymoon Challenge ‘07, we had just four days to get from Cancun to our Honeymoon suite in Antigua, Guatemala, where we’ll be spending a week. In between Cancun and Antigua lie far more amazing sights than we could ever dream of making it to in four days. We’ve kinda gotta a thing for Mayan ruins, and there’s literally hundreds in between the two tourist meccas. We decided to settle on the serene beach temples at Tulum in Mexico, and the grandaddy, Tikal.
Date: February 17th, 2007 |
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Rant: Topless in Maya Country
Traveling in any coastal area in Central America provides ample opportunity to see the odd juxtaposition of local men sweating out the heat in smart trousers and a shirt, often long sleeved and tucked in neatly, strolling past legions of topless tanning female Europeans.
Now, it has occured to me that the original locals, the Maya, were probably topless on these beaches for hundreds of years. Some may have even been topless while observing the countless human sacrifices that took place here during that civilzation. I suppose that since most of the topless Europeans here today are of a relatively hygienic sort, it’s safe to say that by rejecting a reasonable amount of apparel, they share the least gruesome of the aforementioned Maya traditions.
Date: March 5th, 2007 |
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Dispatch: Surfing the El Salvadoran Coast
At a bus station in downtown Guatemala City, you´re likely to see at least a handful of scruffy and skinny guys with a small backpack and a 6-foot surfboard comprising their luggage. Guatemala City is a few good hours from the beach and Guatemala´s beaches aren´t known for their surfing. But it is known as a jumping-off point to reach the more highly coveted breaks here in El Salvador, whose Pacific Coast may have some of the last widely-undiscovered waves on the continent.
Date: March 1st, 2007 |
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Jo (and Eric) Versus the Volcano
Earlier this week, Tuesday´s agenda included a short little jaunt up the Pacaya Volcano in southern Guatemala. It´s one of the easier climbs of the few dozen volcanoes that dot Guatemala´s highlands, and just a short 90-minute bus ride from here in Antigua. Its active status also allows for some great face time with flowing lava and chance to find out what those new hiking boots I bought before the trip are really made of…
Date: February 23rd, 2007 |
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Photos: Tulum
As promised, finally got to a working USB port to extricate some shots from the journey so far.
All photo credits, like this shot of the main temple to the right, go to mi esposa, Johanna DeBiase.
Date: February 21st, 2007 |
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Guatemala: Home of the Hearty
I’ve been here in Guatemala a little less than two days, but I can already tell you one thing: These people are tough. Not just for making it through 30 years of civil war to see the other side, but in lighter ways. Before my trip, I posted a link to a LA Times article about the Mayan ruins of El Mirador, a massive, still partially unearthed system of temples that predates most of the other civilizations around here and could be even bigger.
Date: February 16th, 2007 |
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