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CA Travels Day 12 – Mexican Beach 29 August, 2010
Some wildlife at the ruins
How to make Egg In A Cup
- Put 2 eggs in a cup
- Microwave for 1 minute
- Tip upside down onto a plate
- Eat it
Enjoying the beach.
Later on we went out for dinner. We watched some football between a Mexican team and Brazilian team. Derek yelled “YES!” when a goal went in one time, and the little Mexican waiter nearly shit himself. We wasn’t unlike Manuel from Fawlty Towers, it was hilarious.
CA Travels Day 11 - To Mexico! 26 August, 2010
We jumped on our boat at 7am and embarked on our journey to Tulum, in Mexico. Between boat and bus, it’s about seven hours of travelling. We checked into the hostel mid-afternoon and spent some time showering and relaxing after the long journey.
An unrelated picture of me and
Claire doing the Crab Dance,
just after we saw a crab.
Annie had the best quesadilla of her life, accidentally! She went out for a coffee, and said to the waiter "Quisiera un café", which means "I´d like a coffee", but the waiter heard "Quesadilla y un café". When he turned up with the food she decided not to go through the pain of arguing it out in Spanish, and ate the meal in the cafe on her own.
Annie didn’t eat when we went for dinner in Tulum town later on. I didn’t have much either, taking gazpacho soup because it would be the kindest to my bad guts. Getting involved with spicy Mexican food could last another day.
CA Travels Day 10 - Another Chill 22 August, 2010
Still in Caye Caulker, and back down to a group of six since Bert left for Vietnam, we decided to take one more day of relaxation before moving on. We hung out at the hostel with Guinness-the-dog-with-the-bollocks, and made a guacamole salsa thing for lunch. We made a pretty good job of it.
Oscar and Annie reading the menu
Everyone went down to the beach bar, and me and Claire said we'd catch them up in 15 minutes. We fell asleep for about three hours and woke up when everyone got back! We'd sampled most of the restaurants on the island by now, so we picked our favourite one and went for a last meal. Oscar told us he couldn't come on the next part of the trip with us sadly, so I made plans along with Claire, Anna, Annie and Derek to travel by sea to Tulum, Mexico, the next day.
From now on during the trip, if anyone suddenly wanders off without people noticing, that's called the 'Smoke Bomb', or just 'Doing a Derek': He has an amazing ability to disappear, and then just as we notice he'll reappear with a line like 'hey guys I found the internet cafe'. It's pretty funny. We had one last beer on the roof with Oscar, and said bye to him. Hopefully we'll meet him again some day, cool guy.
CA Travels Day 9 - Snorkelling 22 August, 2010
A Turtle, photo from Anna’s Camera.
We got up pretty early and went down to the dock for a day of snorkelling. We met our boat captain Jerry and Coconut Harry who'd take us into the water. We sailed for an hour to the first spot of three, and jumped in with flippers and masks. Unfortunately I didn't get on well with snorkelling and soon went back to the boat to cough out the sea water, but the other guys saw manatees, turtles, and all sorts of fish and coral. On the way to the second spot we ate watermelon and pineapple for energy, and did a much needed sun cream top-up.
At the second spot there were loads of sharks and rays in the water, although fairly harmless to humans. I vetoed, but the others jumped in and said it was amazing. The photos from Anna's underwater camera will say it all. Lunch was some meaty fish sandwiches and icy water, and we sailed to the last stop. This time it was to see turtles and coral caves, and loads of varieties of colourful fish.
Drinking is fun!
We sailed back in the hot sun for about two hours, getting drunk on rum punch and hearing Coconut's seafaring stories. I was disappointed that I missed out on the wildlife, but it was still an awesome day of sailing the Caribbean in the hot sun.
We kept the drinking going into the night, playing guitar and telling riddles to each other. Some Dutch guys joined in with our riddling in a restaurant and got us with some awesome ones, so expect to be puzzled by The Land Of No ID or Chinese Finger Counting next time we meet. The night finished with just me and Oscar polishing off a bottle of rum on the roof of the hostel, taking advantage of a rare day when we didn't have to be up early!
CA Travels Day 8 - A Chill 22 August, 2010
Claire modelling orange juice
We'd intended to go snorkeling on the Saturday, but we slept a bit too long following the night before and didn't get places on the trip in time. We took a day to relax instead. We bought fresh orange juice from a man on the street with a fruit stand. It was the best juice any of us had ever had! An hour earlier it had been inside an orange and now it was icy cold. We looked at an art stall with loads of work from local painters, and bought lemon meringue pie from a woman on the street who made about six big cakes every day.
In between that kind of thing we were all just laying around in hammocks and chatting to strangers. There was also a dog called Guinness who always had his balls on display. I took a macro photo of them on Annie's camera.
CA Travels Day 7 - Caye Caulker 18 August, 2010
Setting off at 4am again was a bit of a bitch, but I managed to sleep for most of the six hour journey be Belize City, it was much needed! Belize is really laid back. It’s English speaking with typically Caribbean accent. Everyone we’ve spoken to so far has been really friendly, and I feel like I´m back in control now that I don’t have to rely on my broken Spanish, and my girlfriend to communicate.
Oscar, Claire, Derek, and me...
Caye Cauker is Beautiful.
We got off the bus at 11:15 and onto the water taxi at noon. That’s where we are now, speed across the Caribbean Sea towards the small island of Caye Cauker. Apparently it only has golf buggies and not cars, so that’ll be interesting. I guess I’ll finish this later...
(2 days pass...)
Caye Caulker is wicked! It´s a proper Caribbean holiday island, with blue skies and hot sun from the sun rising to the sun setting over the ocean. The motto of the island is ‘Slow Down’, and that’s well reflected by the reggae music drifting out of people’s windows and the way waiters seem to flippantly scrub appetizers and drinks off the restaurant bill to keep people happy. The day was spent swimming in the Caribbean Sea at a beach bar at the end of the island. The entire island is tiny, maybe a mile long and 200 paces wide, so we keep bumping into the same people, which is kinda nice.
One of my DIY postcards
The reason the last few days have been so busy travelling is so we could meet Claire and Anna´s friend from home, Bert. We made friends with another Canadian guy, Derek, too, so now there´s seven of us enjoying the sun together: Me, Claire, Anna, Annie, Bert, Oscar and Derek. We all got dinner together and I got the first whole lobster I´ve ever had, and it was massive, and I loved it. Later on we went to a small club with a sand floor for drinks and dodgy music from DJ Roy. I met a guy from Middlesbrough there, from Normanby in fact where I’m from. We knew loads of the same people who I went to school with. Mental!
CA Travels Day 6 - Mayan Temples 18 August, 2010
Me and Claire introduce
you to a temple
When we got back to the hostel we spent the day drinking cocktails, sleeping in hammocks and playing with the resident kitten. Claire loved that kitten, maybe too much. We started making our plans to head to Belize too, and a guy we met at the Los Amigos hostel called Oscar is gonna go with us. The now party of five went into Flores town for dinner, and just as we finished some kind of mega storm started. It was pretty average by northern Guatemalan standards, but it´s the most intense one I´ve witnessed. The lightening filled the whole sky long before we heard the thunder, and there was flashes maybe every two or three seconds for about 15 minutes. Incredible! I was deliriously knackered by 10pm, and got to bed right after dinner, because tokorrow would be another 4am start.
CA Travels Day 5 - Hippy Hostel 13 August, 2010
Our hostel
Wednesday was a pretty uneventful day. We spent nine hour on a sweaty minibus to get to Flores, and checked into the recommended hostel.
The hostel is friendly, relaxing and very hippy-ish. Swinging in hammocks, listening to raggae music, and drinking pineapple smoothies was a good way to wind down after the journey. My only gripe is that they only do vegetarian food, which I find offensive as a dedicated meatetarian. We slept early because the next day was a 4am start.
Me and Claire got a room with two double beds, that is, we were sharing with another couple! Saying good night and turning out the light was a little strange.
CA Travels Day 4 - Caves And Pools 13 August, 2010
The day started with the hostel breakfast of pancakes, fruit, granola, and wasps. After fighting them for our food we headed to Semuc Champey. The ‘bus’ ride was interesting, about a dozen of us stood up in the back of a pick-up truck and wound around the mountains for 40 minutes.
Annie and Claire in the caves
When we arrived, we started our first little adventure for the day, which was a guided tour through some watery caves. The group of about 20 of us in swimming gear climbed, waded and swam for about an hour and a half in the dark. To light the way, we each had a candle which was very easy to extinguish when swimming, or climbing through a gushing waterfall. The guide put us all to shame with his diving and swimming through dark waters. Especially impressive given the sharp rocks - everyone left with cuts and bruises but him. I did a piss in the cave.
After that we walked alongside a river for ten minutes, stopping along the way to have a go on the biggest rope swing I’ve ever seen. I belly flopped off the swing from about three metres up! Graceful. Further upstream we jumped into inner tubes and floated back to the starting point. I did a piss in the river.
When we´d had lunch we set off for the main attraction, which was the Semuc Champey pools. It was like a series of small waterfalls connected by deep lagoon-ey pools. We spent an hour or two swimming, chilling, and jumping down the waterfalls and then went back to the hostel in/on the truck. I watched some leaf cutter ants cut leaves for a while, had a beer and went to bed.
CA Travels Day 3 - Tubes 11 August, 2010
We're in Lanquin because it's near Semuc Champey, but that trip was fully booked so more on that later. Instead we went tubing down the river.
Tubing
When we arrived we jumped off the truck, and took our inner tubes down to the river edge. We got in the river, and started floating slowly down back towards the hostel. It was ultimately relaxing, and lasted for about forty minutes. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention so far that we're a group of four travellers - that's Claire, her friend Anna from Uni, and a girl called Annie that they met some weeks ago. She's nice, we're a good travelling team.
Once again, the image is a token one lifted from Google Images. Imagine my face instead of the ginger kid or something, and that's almost exactly what it looked like.
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