All,
well I did go back to Isla Mujeres...after a couple of days in Tulum where I have possibly seen some of the most beautiful beaches but very much a place I would consider for a honey moon, I decided against all backpackes' rules to backtrack...
Nice feeling though getting back to a place: no need to ask for directions, bargain for prices, find your way through unknown streets.
And at Pocnas everything as I had left it: Matias, the cute Argentinian from reception and my favourite dj at night at the beach bar, Victor, the event organiser after every girl that walked through the door, Nancy, the always smiling cook, Roberto "Chaparrito", the Mexican musician who had just returned from Germany where the first sentence he had learned was "Wo kann ich Grass kaufen" ...and even the dogs: Guera (Blondie) the real boss at Pocna's, Mexico my favourite, Kimba always after tiny Chihuahua Chiquilina and Pepito protecting her...
I also was lucky enough to meet a special guy: for those already running ahead with their imagination, no romance there I'm afraid, just some very good company...
Still many Israelis in Isla, so many that even the Mexican beach volley boys learned a few useful words like the numbers, what's the score, (the ball) is on the line, etc. Well Hebrew is definitively a useful language for backpacking especially if travelling in India, SE Asia, Central and South America. One guy told me that a man in India asked him if Israel was as big as China due to the number of travellers visiting his country...
The Israelis only to be shortly outnumbered by German university students on a quick break with Condor offer flights at 99 Euro one way at the end of September...
My second home on this trip, the island is a safe travellers oasis and a break from some heartbreaking scenes of poverty.
I took my chance to leave my second home on a day of rain. "See you next week" Victor said to me, but this time I went all the way to Belize to be sure not to return...quite excited as to my first time in a black country. Just across the border I spent my first night in Corozal.. Looking for I place to eat I didn’t manage to find anything but Chinese restaurants...a guy a met some time ago told me that the Belizean citizen have a kind of privileged access to the US so the government in need of some cash decided to sell some passports and the Chinese bought them so they got a Chinese minority...The Chinese control all restaurant and supermarkets and are not an unusual sight in Belize...
Finally Caye Caulker on the Belizean reef: a couple of sandy streets and 'go slow' signs everywhere.
As anywhere in Central America it doesn't take long until a single woman gets company: a rasta guy, beer in one hand, he told me he had 19 brothers and sisters, they all left the island, he stayed, has never worked, drinks beer and enjoys life...
As you slowly walk through Caye Caulker you may be overtaken by a slow cyclist, a deep black voice saying 'Hello beautiful', that's Caye Caulker.
That was Belize, a short stay, a big hole in the budget but worth it.
Onto Guatemala, most Central American travellers favourite country. Yes, definitively Central America, right after the border the road becomes a dirt road, images of poverty that reminded me of Bolivia. Tikal, a major Mayan site, is a very touristic place, people try to rip you off and I didn't think the locals were too friendly, a bit the same feeling as getting to Siem Reap in Cambodia...
Although I was really looking forward to Tikal, a combination of rain that had now been going on for a while, tiredness and great expectations made the experience not quite what I expected. Don't get me wrong though: the nature is amazing, set deep in the forest, spider monkeys in the trees holding onto the branches with their tail and looking through leaves, loud howler monkeys in the distance and soo many hard working ants carrying pieces of leaves on their busy 'roads'.
Due to the rain there was neither sunset nor sunrise but some impressive mist lifting up from the forest in the early morning.
Rio Dulce is one of the safest places in the world for boats, packed with sailing boats hiding from hurricanes and sailing on the lake Izabal instead. Some people end up staying here for years...the ride to the sea on the Rio Dulce is beautiful and Livingston an interesting Garifuna town, more Belizean than Guatemalean, but still very mixed. At this time news from the devastion brought to the country by hurricane Stan were becoming more evident and these people who themselves have very little were collecting rice, sugar, clothes, water, etc. to send to the south of the country.
Quirigua next, a Mayan site with stelae up to 10 meters on banana land, a visit to a Del Monte plantation and factory, people work for 10 dollars a day, a good job they say, always smiling and interested in new faces.
A bit more than a week in Antigua, the loveliest of colonial towns with many hidden gardens and corners, cobble stone streets and pretty houses. Many travellers stay here for a while learning Spanish on intensive one to one classes in lovely garden settings.
I stayed at Chofo's house on reccomendation of a girl I met in Isla. A lovely guy, Chofo has a couple of rooms in his house he rents mainly to long term guests (soo many Dutch Sapnish students and volunteering workers) and provides 3 meals a day. He let me sleep after breakfast time and skip lunch but I really enjoyed knowing I had my fixed time and would get food at home. Like many poor countries I have visited here as well there are many volunteering associations but still so many desperate people with nothing to loose. Antigua like the rest of Guatemala is not safe, it actually is very dangerous, you constantly have to watch yourself and your belonging, a country difficult to travel alone. Most tours and city walks are done escorted by the police, but it remains one of the richest country in terms of indigenous culture. In Antigua being a tourist centre you can buy many handcrafts and traditional weaving of the different indigenous tribes inhabiting mainly the lake Atitlan area at that time unreacheable as severly hit by the hurricane.
Another border crossing into Honduras, Copan ruinas a pretty little town near the ruins. Big stelae and amazing hieroglyphs, the escalinata de los hierogliphycos an open book of the story of the rulers of Copan, immense, impressive, much still remains to be understood.
I did a walk through the deforested but still beautiful surrounding hills and saw some peasant families living on big lands owned by few rich people. They work but don't own the land, they own nothing, they can live on it on almost collapsing houses made of wood sticks. They will never be free, neither will their children be, belonging to the land or tied to who owns it.
My other destination in Honduras were the bay Islands, the cheapest place in the world to do the PADI diving course. More gringos here than Hundureans, prices in dollars. I had to get there by plane as the ferry was under repair following hurricane Wilma. I actually held the plane up as there was something in my hand luggage: batteries, too many he said, not dangerous he said just too many... Anyway once on bord I put my hand luggage on top of the pile of checked in luggage: was my Swiss Army knife in my big backpack not a riskier item in the cabin than too many batteries, I wonder...
The crossing to Nicaragua: at least 20 tricycle taxi drivers around me trying to grab my luggage and putting it onto their tricycle shouting at me "Pick one" and not calming down or leaving me alone until I choosed one. The usual money changers, taking any currency this time, dollars, pesos, quetzales, lempiras, cordobas, colones...trying to rip me off by tiping 0.805 instead of 0.85 as exchange rate in the calculator. Nicaragua, a country of stunning beauty and incredible poverty: lakes and volcanoes, 70% of the population living in poverty of which half in extreme poverty, high rates of analfabetism. The dirtiest countries I have seen, the rubbish goes anywhere best out of the window, road are littered with plastic.
Poverty is not that apparent in the cities, although there are many street children and beggars, but no ones seems undernourished. I met a lady who works for an organisation dealing with rural development and she told me that peasant are often left with nothing to eat as the rainy season destroys the harvest.
On the other hand people are very friendly and chatty, even the young ranger at the Parque Nacional Volcan Masaya could talk for ages...Nicaraguans look at tourism as a resource and they have much to offer: from the top of the cathedral in Leon you can see 10 volcanoes of the cordillera de los Marimbios, active and dormant, more now here in Granada and Ometepe lake (shame most lakes are polluted). Granada, Leon's eternal rival (so that they had to choose a place in the middle as the country's capital city, Managua) is probably the place where most tourists go: everyting the tourist may need or want including pricey hotels and resaturants are to be found here.
Guess that's it on catching up for today just one more thing: it looks like I have a date for my return to Europe: 17th December, but there still are many places I could get stuck into...
And this time some pictures that go with the stories above, I have added to the Mexican Album and created a Belizean and Guatemalean one:
Lots of love
Jasmina