After a few days of early morning bus catching, we were hoping to sleep in but the traffic over the cobbled streets outside put a stop to that.

After breakfast we had a walk around the centro area and went to the Mayan archeological museum at the end of the park. It’s built inside what was the main barracks with the city walls so it was interesting to go on the roof and see the barricades and pillboxes.

Also from up there was access along the top of the fortification walls as well as an access ramp to get the cannons up and down! Campeche was the most attacked of all the Spanish colonial cities due to it’s isolation. As well as the city walls there are two hilltop forts to the north and south along the coast to bombard pirate ships before they made it to port.


In the evening were heard some festive noise out in the street and watched the most bizarre street procession we have ever seen. Giant insects and a spider walking down the street blowing smoke and fire to techno music. No idea what it was for but they were very impressive creations with realistic movement. The ants were running back and forth along the street chomping at onlookers and the Preying Mantis was higher than we were on the second story balcony!

11/11/08 Tuesday, Mexico
After two buses and a bit of waiting for the bus we made it to Campeche at 1530hrs.
Campeche has the feel of a Southern European city, cobblestone streets, old walls of the city, and a beautiful Cathedral. We are staying at the Monkey Hostel and it’s fab so far. It’s right on the park central and we have a balcony over-looking the street. Its very romantic.





Sarah skyping with Vanessa on the roof.

10/11/08 Lunes (Monday) Mexico
Well today we are on our way to Chichen Itza. So we wake up at 7am to pack (we found it easier to pack in the morning because if we pack the night before we end up repacking in the morning as you need various items in the night) breakfast was provided- pancakes and coffee (though with powered milk, but I shouldn’t kick the gift horse in the mouth. (Damo just informed me it is "look" but I guess you shouldn’t kick one either.)

Just like when Paul (Sydney neighbor) said “the boat is in their court”.

Anyway bought the last tickets on the first class bus to Chichen Itza.
So the bus system is much easier and more convenient than in Guatemala, I mean for one there is a waiting area. There is luxury class which must be pretty good as first class is fab, then there is first class which is a bit like a airplane with more leg room ( TV, toilet, CLEAN, allocated seating, seat belts, the driver wears a tie and cufflinks, check in baggage every thing except food and alcohol. Maybe that’s what luxury class offers!). And second class from what I can work out still looks like decent buses just no aircon or dunny and no check in baggage.

So we are currently on the bus and the driver keeps on swerving to miss pot-holes at least I think that’s what he is swerving. I can’t really see over the big comfy seats. I hope he is not swerving around people.

Well we arrived at Chichen Itza and caught a taxi to the neighbouring town of Piste for accommodation. The only accommodation at Chichen Itza is luxury. After finding a nice place we unpacked and headed for lunch and off to Chichen Itza,
Firstly there were loads and loads of people and heaps of buses, we bought tickets and headed in. In our guide book (2nd hand and only 4 yrs old) it stated that all the stalls of tacky merchandise were supposed to be in a confined market area but I guess after 4 yr its has changed as nearly every path was lined with stalls, “one dollar” was echoed as stall owner were attempting to get the cashed up capitalist tourists to buy cheap crap that was probably not even made in Mexico. There was one part of the path that was narrow and the “one dollar” became more of an aggressive term as we tried to quickly pass. And if you heaven forbid stopped to take a picture or admire the beauty of the Mayan architecture they would follow saying “ ONE DOLLAR, ONE DOLLAR, which one you like, special price for you”. Kinda like a scene out of a zombie movie.
Besides the ridiculous amount of stalls, which I think is either the fault of the tourists for buying the stuff and encouraging the behaviour or the government for letting so many stalls be present. I mean it was 15$ to get in, times that by thousands and I didn’t see any restoration going on, in fact paths were closed so you could not see all the monuments. Don’t get me wrong, I am happy we saw it, the engraving on the temples were beautiful but if I had to recommend between Tikal or Chichen Itza it would be Tikal for so many reasons.

After Chichen Itza we chilled out in Piste where we purchased a bottle of Mexican fermented Sugar-cane juice for $1.2, it was not too bad. Damo described it as watered down vodka. Off to Campeche tomorrow.

HEAPS MORE PHOTOS OF MEXICO SO FAR AND BELIZE.

AND GUATEMALA IF YOU MISSED THE LINK EARLIER...

Woke up to have the “free breakfast” of pancakes at 8am for breakfast in the communal kitchen area. Afterwards we walked down the main street and took a taxi to the Talum ruins a few kilometres north. These ruins are the only Mayan city on the coastline and it was quite spectacular with a couple of small towers on the top of the cliff overlooking the sea. The area was enclosed on three sides with a rock wall with steep cliffs along the sea coast completing the fourth side. One small bay on the coastline was accessible and this would have been the main route of trade for the city when it was inhabited.



Unfortunately being a Sunday and within coach trip distance of Cancun, the place was inundated with tour groups. After having a look through we escaped through the south exit and walked along the Talum beach which was lined with Cabanas. The accommodation along this strip is primarily Cabanas, wooden cabins with thatched roof and sand floors.



After a couple of kilometres walk along the beach we rejoined the road inland and caught a taxi back to the town.

You fulfill all my weeshes with your Taco-flavoured keeses.

The theme song for Mexico is “Taco-flavoured kisses” from South Park.

We have arrived in Mexico, enroute to Talum on the coast south of Cancun. We have just changed buses on the Mexico side of the border after a 3.5 hour trip from Belize City in a mini-bus. For the next leg we are now in a luxury coach with air-con and tv screens and a toilet! They even ‘checked in’ our luggage when they loaded the underside of the bus by attaching a destination tag and giving us a corresponding ticket. Very organised!

Now it looks like they are going to put on a movie…

Well the movie never eventuated. Apart from the screen at the front of the bus there were two more screens which folded down from the console with a loud beep-beep-beep further down the bus. They came down and back up several times over the next 3 hours. Perhaps the DVD player wasn’t working?

We arrived at Tulum at 7.15pm. We need to start factoring in a 50% increase in travel time over what we are told by the agents who sell the tickets! Our trip with a 10.30am start from Belize City in an ’express’ bus and two 3 hour legs somehow took almost 9 hours.

Taco-taco, burrito, burrito….

From the bus station we enquired at a couple of places before arriving at Casa Del Sol where we stayed the night. It’s quite nice for a hostel. Couple of big dorms and many smaller rooms around a large communal kitchen area and a huge open rooftop with hammocks.


www.casadelsolhostels.com

Saturday 8/11
Currently on a bus slowly travelling north out of Belize City through some road-works. Belize had lots of rain and flooding about 3 weeks ago so I think they are replacing some drains under the road. Lots of water lying about and flooded areas.

The past week we have been staying on Caye Caulker which is an island, 45 minutes boat trip from Belize City.

Last Monday morning we again had a very early rise and took the 5.30am bus from Flores all the way through to Belize City. It was an uneventful 5 hour trip broken only by the border control which was just a matter of getting off the bus, showing our passport to the Guatemala desk and paying an exit tax. (They deliberately charged us twice the amount it was supposed to be) and then walking to the Belize desk and showing our passport again. Then it was back to the bus. We waited a little while for some passengers who were from a country that required visas and hadn’t got them before the bus driver said “let’s go, they can get the next bus” and we were off again.

Arriving in Belize City we alighted outside the boat terminal and got tickets out to the island. There are a couple of islands with towns and accommodation. Ambergris Caye has the town of San Pedro which sounded quite large and commercial, the smaller Caye Caulker sounded nicer so we took the boat there. Waiting for the bus back in Flores we had met Ryan and Kate, also from Australia and arriving at Caye Caulker we took a shared room in Tina’s Hostel which was right on the beach close to the Jetty.


Sarah and I went for a walk and made enquiries at a couple of dive shops and I booked in to do the Open Water dive course with “Frenchie’s Diving” which was 10 minutes walk up the beach.


Caye Caulker is just gorgeous. It is everything you imagine a Caribbean island paradise to be. Warm but not too hot. The streets are sand and the vehicles people drive around in are electric Golf Buggies with sand tyres. From Tina’s Hostel it was a 3 metre walk across the sand to the warm water of the Caribbean sea and they had a wooden deck just off the beach with a few hammocks. I didn’t make use of the deck as our room was on the second floor with hammocks outside. The water was very calm as well due to the coral reef a short way offshore. You could just see the waves breaking over it on the horizon.



Belize is very different to Guatemala. It’s known as the most expensive country in Central America but the trade off is it’s a lot cleaner, less crime and they have better maintained roads! Official language is English but Spanish and Creole is commonly spoken too. Thanks to being a Commonwealth nation, Queen Elizabeth II is on all the currency and she is head of state with the country being a Constitutional Monarchy, same as Australia.


We all went out for dinner and Ryan and Kate were very keen to get Lobster which wasn’t a problem as every single restaurant and even the street stalls were offering it. We decided to try a street stall called “Jolly Rodger’s” which had two barbequed Lobster tails with Garlic Butter and mash, 3 rum drinks and “free” dessert for $20bz (10USD). Sounded like a good deal but Kate and Ryan’s Lobster Tails were a bit tough and our chicken was char-grilled to a crisp. Jolly Roger wasn’t very jolly either.

Next morning (Tuesday) I rocked up at Frenchie’s Diving to start my PADI diving course. Day one is be bored out of your mind watching a 5 hour DVD. I had been given the large manual to study the afternoon before and told to read the first three chapters but hadn’t quite got all my reading done. (Too much drinking rum in hammocks to be done!) After watching section 1, another girl (Lori from Canada) who was going to be doing the course arrive so I took a break while she watched section 1 and then we watched the remainder for the rest of the day. Lot of information to take in but very excited to do the diving. Can’t wait for tomorrow.

Day two of the course we learned how to put together the scuba equipment, attach the regulator to the air tank and check it was working, then we went out on a boat to just inside the reef to do our “enclosed” dives. These would typically be in a swimming pool so it was much better to do them out in the ocean. We did some exercises in shallow water to make sure we could remove and replace the breathing hose underwater and switch to our buddy’s spare hose if we ran out of air. Removing our facemask and replacing it and clearing the water. All fairly easy to do. After almost an hour underwater we took a “surface interval” lunch break and then went on a shallow dive along some coral for another 40 minutes. Highlight was seeing a large pair of Eagle Rays being followed by a school of fish.

Day three we went on another two dives and practiced our techniques again before doing the “exam”. There were 50 multiple choice questions. I got one wrong. I don’t think it’s possible to fail the theory part of the PADI course because anything you do get wrong you just sign that you have discussed the questions you got wrong with your trainer. “Put Another Dollar In” is what the PADI acronym stands for according to our dive instructor Hillary.
Have completed that, I am now PADI certified which means I can go scuba diving elsewhere on our journey. Galapagos Islands next perhaps!

Next day we had another two dives and now that we were qualified our trainer ditched us and we were with a group of 4 other qualified divers. We went out in the boat for about an hour south of Caye Caulker and dove in much deeper water. Went down to about 25 metres and saw heaps of fish. Lots of coral and plants and at one stage we had three dolphins come and investigate us!


After two nights at Tina’s hostel we had moved accommodation to a hotel further up the beach near Frenchie’s. We were sharing a room with two double beds with Ryan and Kate but now had a private bathroom for the same price we were paying at Tina’s. Also no BED-BUGS! None of us got bitten but Kate had found a couple in the room the morning we left.

The last evening on Caye Caulker we watched the sunset from “the split” which is the northern end of the island. So called because that’s where Hurrican Harriet split the island in two in 1961. What is now “North Island” has a lot less inhabitants than the south.

Sarah: So what did I do while Damo was learning how to dive you are asking yourself? Well not much. After the let down of Monterrico, Caye Caulker was just what I needed, it was paradise. The fabulous thing that we worked out is, it’s so much nicer to cook and you save heaps of money if a kitchen is provided.
Belize is much more expensive than Guatemala, but we stayed under budget as I was cooking all the time. We made breakfast, lunch and dinner and only ate out twice in the week. So I guess I spent a proportion of my day walking around buying food to cook for my hungry scuba diving man. I spent the rest of the time reading. I read two books and got started on the third.
One thing I did find annoying about the island was some on the locals would call out comments from their stalls and since I was mostly walking around by myself, I was a target and I did look like a bit of a dag in my large black and white hibiscus hat (it was the best one I could find since I lost the orange hat Beau gave me (who was given it by his pilgrim priest) and long sleave green shirt (avoiding the sun). Most of the other tourists were walking around in bikinis and sarongs. I got comments like “you want some company” and “I got a special place in my heart for you”.

Woke up early again. *sigh*

The alarm clock was set for 3.30am for a 5am pickup outside the hotel but we woke at 2.30am when Julie rang us on the mobile! Lovely to hear from you Julie. Jill & Alex and Beau had rung the afternoon before so it was nice to talk with family.

Reason we were getting up early of this day was that we were taking the bus to the ruins of Tikal, a once great Mayan city abandoned around 850AD located an hour and a half drive from Flores. Bus picked us up first as we were the closest hotel to the Island’s causeway, then travelled around the island picking up more passengers. Off into the dark for the drive and most people went back to sleep.

When we arrived at Tikal we were able to get a welcome coffee at a shop before we got our entry tickets and headed into the park. We had a guide called Cesar who was very entertaining and had lots of wild ‘conspiracy’ theories about everything. Told us about the city as we first walked through thick rainforest then emerged in a clearing with a restored temple which was a pair of pyramids 20 metres high. We climbed the stairs to the top and admired the view before walking through more jungle with Spider Monkeys swinging through the trees above to another temple which we first saw the top of protruding up high above the jungle canopy. This temple hadn’t been restored and was basically a tree covered mountain with only the top of the temple visible around 40 metres high. There was a wooden stairway climbing the side to the top which we of course went up. It was very impressive up top but unfortunately the morning was a bit misty and we couldn’t see the nearby temples.
We spent another couple of hours going through the main temple buildings and saw Toucans in the trees as well as more monkeys as some funny looking badger like creatures.
The temples and structures were pretty amazing. Incredible to think there was a large city of people living there from around 2000BC until 800 years ago. The jungle has done a good job of reclaiming the area.

At 12.30pm we took a return bus back to Flores.