Breezy Caribbean beach life

Roatan Island, Honduras

..

I hate the beach, I just don't fit in. Everybody there has tan skin and white teeth, I have white skin and tan teeth.
- Bill Hicks

From Copan, we made our way across Honduras via bus and boat to the small Caribbean island of Roatan. We both liked the idea of spending some time sitting on the white, sandy beaches, diving the local coral reefs and drinking cocktails while watching the sun set into the sea. Who wouldn't? We'd culled a few weeks from our time in Guatemala and maybe we could chop some from elsewhere if need be. Roatan is one of the cheapest places in the world to dive and for a while I had been toying with the idea of doing my PADI Divemaster course here. It would mean spending 4 weeks working and studying in a dive centre but I thought the change of pace would do me good. After being away from home for so long it gets very easy to take the leisurely lifestyle for granted. Getting up whenever we want and doing whatever we damn well please should be appreciated and I for one don't want to forget that. Anyway, that was the plan. It didn't take long to boot that ridiculous idea out of my head. We found ourselves a great apartment in the village of West End, the island's diving mecca. We had a comfortable bed, cable TV, our own kitchen and bathroom and the room was enormous, bigger than anything we'd been used to for a very long time. And best of all, our very own hammock looking out to sea. There was no way on earth I was going to drag my backside out of bed every morning to spend an entire month on a course. There was some serious relaxing to be done and a hammock that needed filling. It was a tough job but I was prepared to put in the hours. Never underestimate the burden of a life of idleness. Activities can be a constant distraction and concentration has to be maintained if one is to truly achieve nothing.

Our first night in our apartment was fantastic. It is difficult to describe the giddy thrill we experienced cooking our own dinner and sitting eating it in front of the TV, in our own room. It sounds a little ridiculous, but after eating out for practically every meal we have had for the last 9 months you really start to yearn for some of the comforts of home. Who'd have thought that making mashed potato and grabbing a beer out of the fridge could be so much fun? I didn't miss having to do the washing up though! One thing about going to a restaurant every night is that I haven't had to clean a plate for a very long time.

While we were waiting for our ferry on the mainland, I had checked our email at a little café on the dock and found out that some friends from Ireland would be arriving on Roatan the very next day. We had met Aiden and Susan in Puerto Madryn in Argentina last November and we have bumped into each other across South America half a dozen times in between. We met up with them the next day and it turned out that they also knew our next door neighbours, Fin and Anita, also from Ireland, as they had been on a jungle tour with them in Bolivia. It really is a small world. It was fantastic to be able to go out in the evening and have a drink with people we knew and chat about places we'd all been to and things we'd all seen and done. We've been vey lucky to meet some great people on our travels but usually we only ever see them for a few days and move on. The rest of the time it is just Cara and me (and I know for a fact she's getting a bit tired of listening to my inane bollocks 24 hours a day, 7 days a week) so we appreciated being somewhere we could spend time with other people.

As we had decided that we would probably spend a month on Roatan living the easy life there was no rush to start the diving, so the first week and a half was spent doing remarkably little. Entire mornings were consumed by the hammock and even lazier afternoons sitting on the beach until the sun set into the sea in front of us. There was a duty free shop in the town where we could buy bottles of Spanish rioja and Argentinian malbec for just a few dollars, and every afternoon an enormous man who couldn't smile sold lobster tails and huge prawns out of a coldbox on the back of his pickup truck. Most of the restaurants on Roatan are quite expensive, compared to what we have been used to, so we ate in the apartment most days. However, when we could have fresh lobster for dinner we weren't in any rush to get back to the mainland.

Toward the end of the second week, we decided to finally put some effort in and do some diving. Aiden and Susan were diving with Reef Gliders dive centre so we signed up with them. As well as being one of the cheapest outfits in town they also turned out to be one of the friendliest. A local reef dive including equipment hire came in at less than twelve quid and the quality of the diving was excellent. The islands sit on the southern stretch of the Belize reef system, the second longest barrier reef in the world. And the coral is in fantastic condition, with enormous pinnacles, walls, gently sloping ledges and quiet sandy patches for the beginners. Visibility was always between 25 and 35 metres, which is pretty good no matter where you're diving. There are even a few decent wrecks too, and most of the dive sites are within 15 minutes of the dive centre so we were there and back in no time. For some bizarre reason, even though the reefs are thick and plentiful there are very few reef fish, and the bigger stuff was almost non-existent. It made quite a change from the Galapagos where there was no coral whatsoever but the ocean was thick with enormous schools of fish, sharks and rays. Still, overall it great quality diving and the best value of anywhere we've been to.

As we were staying for a while, we usually just did the one dive in the morning and spent the rest of the day sitting around on the beach. However, not all went according to plan. A couple of days before we started diving I picked up what I thought was a fairly inocuous insect bite while I was on the beach, and straight away it made it's presence felt. On our third day of diving it had swolen considerably and was spitting out all kinds of vile filth while I was underwater. After a few more days it was looking like some gory special effects from a slasher film and hurting like hell. We took a trip to see a doctor in one of the fancy resorts along the coast and he confirmed it was an insect bite that had become infected. He bandaged it up, loaded me with antibiotics and told me to keep out of the water for a week. Well done Mik. We sit on our arses for 2 weeks before diving and as soon as we start I get told I can't dive for another week. I was starting to think that if there was any chance of bollocksing things up for a while, I would take it! It was almost 2 months since I cracked a rib and I was only now able to sleep properly on that side. Now I had a mutant volcano wound on the back of my leg spitting out all kinds of nasty yellow goo every time I stood up. This was getting to be a habit. Even worse, I was supposed to stay off the beer until the pills had finished. What's a boy to do?

On the plus side, I could sit my lazy arse in my hammock all day and not have to go down to the beach. It always sounds like a good idea to sit on white sandy beaches and watch the hours drift away, but after a few weeks I was getting a little bit bored of it (yeah, poor you Mik!). The main reason is obviously because it's dull as dishwater, rotating under the blazing sun and marinading in your own sweat and suntan cream. But the other reason is that I do not tan. Ever. No matter what. Scientists have taken samples of my skin and subjected them to minute scrutiny in the hope of isolating the sun-reflecting properties and sythesizing a new and efficient sunscreen, but as yet they have been unsuccessful. It's not that I don't change colour. Clearly, being a pasty anglo-saxon I will go as beetroot red as the best of them during the 4 days annually that the sun makes its presence felt in England. But after 3 days, the redness is gone and replaced with the same green/grey tinge that frightens children and makes me look silly in anything other than a boilersuit and wolly hat. Not brown. Never. Cara, on the other hand, walks to the shop to buy a pint of milk and comes back a different colour. Usually dark brown. And usually that even, all over brown that makes blotchy, stripey, red-faced baboons like me physically angry. Now tell me that's fair. After a week the gammy leg cleared up and we were back under the water for some more great diving. After our first dive back, I stood on some sharp coral fragmets getting my kit off the boat and spent the next half hour picking shards out of the heel of my foot with a pair of tweezers. This was almost becoming a habit!

We had a great time on Roatan for a month, and even after that long we still didn't want to leave. After many months of being constantly on the move we both really appreciated being able to unpack and stay in one place for a while, cook for ourselves and even enjoy what for us was the rare treat of staying in and watching TV with a few cold beers every now and then. The people on the island were friendly and the climate was perfect, hot and sunny during the day and cool and breezy at night. We had a few tropical storms and the sandflies on the beach could be a problem if you didn't lather up in repellent, but that detracted little from our time there. And there aren't many places where you can spend a month on a Caribbean island on our budget. From Roatan we were to head off to Belize, where unfortunately more time must be spent on idyllic caribbean beaches. Let's see if I can accumulate some more injuries.

So, there you go. Not very entertaining to read but bloody enjoyable to experience.

Mik

Heading into Honduras

Copan Ruinas, Honduras

The night before leaving Guatemala Mik revealed a hidden talent. Equiped with a pair of latex gloves, a brush and a tube dye he very sucessfully managed to dye my hair for me. Brave man hey! Being the poor, unemployed girl that I am, and having ended up with bleached hair last time I entered a salon in South America, I decided to leave roots behind and go au natrelle. So, I am now as close to natural colour as a packet could get me and I have to say it's really quite dark. May take a while to get used to! Mik will be taking appointments upon our return!

Anyways, a few hours later, 3.30am to be precise, we set off for Honduras and the town of Copan Ruinas. This town is just across the border and took us about 7 hours to reach. We had booked seats on a posh bus as the small tourist mini vans had a habit of being targeted by armed robbers! Nice hey.

After our comfy bus ride we found ourselves in the small town of Copan Ruinas, Copan for short. We had come here as just outside of the the town are some Mayan ruins, which, I had been assured, were completely different to those we had just visited in Tikal. Wouldn't want to overload on ruins now would we!! As we walked through the main square in search of a hotel we noticed that all the guys were wearing white stetsons and cowboy boots, shirts undone to the belt. Hummm, if only they hadn't been short slightly rounded Hondurans! Our arrival in Copan coincided with their annual town festival. This entailed everyone heading to the main square of an evening in their best clothes to see what entertainment was being provided. We saw musicians, beauty parades, and small children singing. It all made for a happy atmosphere and we enjoyed our short stay here.

We spent a day visiting the ruins having walked there from town, passing rodeos and cock fights on the way (all part of the town festivities). The ruins at this site are smaller in scale than those at Tikal but more intricate with many hieroglyphs on columns depicting events of the time. The site at the moment is still relatively small in terms of what has been uncovered, however a total of 4509 structures have been found in the area over the years which indicates that up to 20,000 people lived here, a figure only reached again in the 1980's. Quite mad when you think they lay hidden for so many years.

The site was fairly quiet so we had a slow wander round, found a shaded spot for lunch and enjoyed the wildlife we found here. There were scarlet macaws hanging around everywhere and would let you get up quite close.

We only stayed 2 nights but managed to once again pick a hotel which on the second night became overrun with American teenagers on some organised tour. When ready to go out that evening for dinner we opened our door to find that they were all camped out in every spare bit of communal space the hotel had to offer and were saying their prayers. We swiftly closed the door and tried not to snigger too loudly. It's not the praying bit, it's just the way they do it. They like everyone to know about it, it really makes you think that some Americans assume they have to be able to 'do some good' when they come to these 'poor, less developed countries'. Anyway, having composed ourselves we waited for a pause in their prayer and tried to tiptoe through the group as quickly as possible. They left early the next morning. I know this because I was awoken by shouts of "Have you'll handed in your keys?' and "Right lets say a prayer before we set off on our journey" As they were only going as far as the town square I wasn't entirely sure it was necessary.

We jumped on our posh coach again and headed for the Caribbean coast.

Cara

Drop the fruit, lady, and step away from the bag!

Tikal, Guatemala

Utterly exhausted by the relentless pace of our extended holiday and the daunting lifestyle we struggle to cope with everyday, Cara and I decided we needed some beach time to kick back and relax for a while. I'm sure you can all sympathize. We thought we should head over to Honduras and have a few weeks on a Caribbean island for some sun, scuba and shellfish. The downside of this was we needed to chop a couple of weeks of our planned time in Guatemala, but we still wanted to see Tikal, the famous ruins in the north close to the border with Belize. We compromised and booked a quick, whistle-stop tour with a local agent in Antigua.

We were picked up from our hotel at 4am and ferried to the airport in Guatemala City. I say airport, but it was really just a small hangar on the opposite side of the runway from the main terminal. We were only to be away for 2 days, so we only had hand luggage. This was lucky as the airline had a baggage limit of 14 ounces. At check-in we were asked if we were carrying any firearms, ammunition or explosives. We said no, and thereby completed the security measures for our airline. There was no x-ray machine, metal detector or stern faced security personnel frisking us for concealed fruit. To be fair, none were necessary. What potential plane hijacker could possibly have bluffed their way past the clever and subtle questions at check-in.
"Do you have any firearms in your luggage, sir?"
"Yes I have an AK-47 in my bag and a...damn, no, no. I mean I'm a tupperware salesman from Peru. Shit, caught out again". See, no chance.

We sat ourselves down in the little room and stared blankly at the huge plasma screen on the wall, along with the rest of the semi-catatonic passengers. It really was a very impressive TV. It looked to be worth about 3 metal detectors and an x-ray conveyor. Unfortunately it was tuned in to the Discovery channel and we were treated to CCTV footage of Columbine high school students having their chests blown open by shotgun toting maniacs. Classy bit of scheduling from the Discovery people, I thought! I helped myself to a cup of coffee from the urn in the corner. I have no idea what it tasted like as the first sip of the molten lava seared all the taste buds from the inside of my mouth and blew smoke out of my ears. I drained my cup and helped myself to another. Excruciating pain is nothing when weighed against the need for caffeine at 5.30 in the morning. 5.30am is an ugly time of day, and I like it less each time I see it, which seems to be happening too often at the moment.

Just as the sun began to make its presence felt on the horizon, we were ushered out of the hangar to the plane. It was a twin propeller Fokker from about 1935 and looked smaller than the minibus that drove us to the airport. I could see a mechanic sitting on the wing with a tube of superglue and a torn up cornflakes box and it didn't make me feel any better. Once we were all strapped in to our folding garden chairs, the young flight attendant entertained us with her speed reading skills by reading aloud an entire novel in 47 seconds. At that speed, we obviously couldn't work out a bloody word she was saying and tourists and locals alike asked each other which language she was speaking. It was only at the end of her recital when she held up an oxygen mask that we realised she was giving us the pre-flight safety instructions. Apparently, if the plane were to unexpectedly embed itself into the side of a mountain like a 400mph javelin, we should all read the booklet under our seat and follow the correct evacuation procedures. Either that or she was reading out her shopping list for a laugh. None of us had the faintest idea, really. The plane taxied to the runway and started to crawl along at a snails pace for what seemed like forever. Suddenly, the throttle opened and we lurched down the last few yards or tarmac. The pilot pulled the plane into the air by sheer wrist power alone and seconds later the runway fell away and we could see the city a few hundred feet below us at the bottom of a big cliff. I imagined the co-pilot handing over his $20 to the captain after losing the bet to see how little runway he could use and still get the plane off the ground. I'm glad the captain won, otherwise some poor unsuspecting Guatemalan would have been wearing a Fokker out of the back of his skull that morning.

An hour later, we landed at Santa Elena airport, about 60km from the Tikal ruins. Bizarrely, our bags were checked by security staff as we got off the airplane. I noticed this airport didn't have a big plasma TV so that might explain it. I passed through without any troubles but Cara was caught red-handed with a contraband banana in her bag. The security guy was furious that she was trying to smuggle illegal fruit into his airport and was ready to drag Cara out back to the waiting firing squad until we pointed out that we were on an internal flight and hadn't broken any international banana importation regulations. He slipped the offending banana into his lunchbox and told us to get out of his airport.

We were put into another minibus with an American family who would be on the same tour as us, and ferried off to our hotel inside the Tikal national park. The family, a young girl in Guatemala to study Spanish, her mother, granddad and grandma, seemed to have faulty volume dials and could only communicate in shouts. It's quite funny listening to someone trying to whisper at a volume I can only achieve after catching my scrotum on a rusty nail. They were a very pleasant bunch though, so we didn't mind. Grandpa was fantastic. He sounded exactly like Robert Mitchum and even looked a bit like him. He had retired after spending 25 years as a Californian homicide cop and he was huge with hands like bunches of bananas (I don't know how he got them past security at the airport). I could have listened to his stories all day, which was fortunate as he could have told his stories all day.

To get the details out of the way so I can continue with my pointless ramble, let me fill you in on Tikal (or copy it straight out of my guidebook to be more accurate). Tikal is an ancient Mayan city in northeast Guatemala, founded in the 8th century BC and occupied until around 1000AD. It was one of the most prosperous cities of the Mayan civilization, with wealth built on the manufacture and export of flint tools and weapons quarried in abundance from the surrounding area (although ironically, if you try and buy a new flint for your cigarette lighter nowadays they just look at you like you're an idiot, at least in my experience). At the height of its wealth and influence in the 7th and 8th centuries AD, Tikal boasted a population of nearly 100,000 and the city covered over 30 square km. You could get pizza delivered until well after midnight and the postmen didn't dip your mail in a puddle before pushing it through the letterbox (or maybe I read those hieroglyphs wrong). As Mayan culture declined the city was abandoned and eventually reclaimed by the surrounding jungle. Many of the pyramids and structures are still completely covered and look for all the world like an innocent hill amongst the trees and vines. Some of the larger structures have now been excavated and it is these you can see when you visit the ruins.

According to most history books, Tikal was a "lost" city until its recent rediscovery. Of course, as with all historical sites in the Americas, this means found by a rich, white fella. The locals who knew it was there all along don't count, not being rich or white (this reminds me of our Spanish teacher in Bolivia, who had been taught at school that Columbus discovered the Americas, ignoring the double whammy that he had never stepped foot on the continent and that her ancestors had already been there for 10,000 years. Curious, no?). Now, the ruins are a spectacular sight, with enormous pyramids rising up out of the thick jungle, and they also offer a great chance to see some of the local wildlife, being in a protected national park. Anyway, enough of the boring history and back to my charming anecdotes about monkeys.

We arrived at the hotel and ditched our bags in reception. It was still just after 8am and we couldn't check in 'til after lunch. No problem, our guide Julio told us. We would have a 4 hour tour around the ruins, come back for lunch and the rest of the day was free to spend as we wished. Cara perked up at this news as the hotel had a big swimming pool and plenty of sun loungers. Robert Mitchum asked where he could get a cold beer. Grandma Mitchum put on her best leopard print cardigan over her shell suit and we were ready to go. We spent the next four and a half hours wandering around the huge temple complexes and climbing the various pyramids, Julio filling us in on the details of what everything was and when it was built, in between singing Beatles tunes and practicing his American slang with Grandpa Mitchum. Every time we climbed a pyramid, Robert Mitchum sat himself down at the bottom and bought a beer from one of the vendors dotted around the site. On top of all the architectural sites, Tikal also has some great wildlife inhabiting the jungle that was all around us. We watched parrots, toucans and woodpeckers up in the trees and at one point we had to dodge rocks that had been hurled down the side of a half buried pyramid by a small furry thing which looks like the bastard offspring of a squirrel and an aardvark. Apparently they are called white-nosed coatis. We heard a group of spider monkeys up in the trees who sounded like they were arguing over whose turn it was to throw fruit at the tourists, so we went over to investigate. They appeared overhead, bouncing up and down in the branches, and I took a few steps back to give them some room. The last time I stood underneath a group of monkeys they tried to piss on my head and I wasn't eager to repeat the experience, at least not without my hat.

When we had finished the tour we headed back to the hotel for lunch, after which Cara made a beeline straight for the pool and I sat outside our room watching families of monkeys swinging their way through the canopy and screeching at each other for whatever monkey misdemeanors they were perpetrating. After a while, Cara and I decided to head back into the ruins so we stocked up on water and mozzy spray and set off. We wandered around some of the places we hadn't visited that morning and enjoyed the peace and quiet as most people had buggered off by this time. As the sun started to get low in the sky, we wanted to head over to the Lost World Pyramid as we had heard this was the best place to see the sunset. I had left the map back at the hotel so we had only our memory to find our way around. I spotted a narrow track through the jungle and told Cara it was a shortcut to where we wanted to go. With the immortal words "trust me, I know exactly where we are" we set off up the path. 20 minutes later we were hopelessly lost. The sun was by now very low and the canopy floor was getting quite dark. We heard some unsettling growling noises and for once it wasn't my stomach. We picked up the pace and set off down another track that we hoped would lead us back to the main path. We scrambled under fallen trees and over rivers of busy leaf cutter ants. After finding ourselves in several temple complexes we had never seen before, we finally made it back to the main path. The exact same path we had left 30 minutes earlier, in fact.
"Right," I said," now I know exactly where we are".
But I'd blown my chance. It was painfully obvious to both of us that I couldn't find my way out of an empty barn even if it had a 10 foot sign over the door that said "This way out of the barn". Cara took charge and headed off in what she thought was the right direction. 2 minutes later we were at the foot of the pyramid we'd been searching for. Nobody likes a clever dick, Cara!

We climbed the pyramid and watched the sun setting over the jungle. Enormous pyramids and temples jutted out of the canopy in every direction and were lit up by the deep orange glow of the sun. Parrots and toucans flew across the treetops below us and brachiating spider monkeys swung from tree to tree looking for a pasty white guy to piss on. It was a special romantic moment just for me, Cara and the 20 birdwatchers from Oregon who had set up their tripods beside us. They whispered loudly to each other about what rare treat they had just photographed and bragged about the size of their zoom lenses. Their guide told us all he could recognize any bird just by it's silhouette and jumped up and down excitedly whenever he spotted something new.
"HEY BIRDERS, BIRDERS, COME AND CHECK THIS OUT" he would squeal, "I'VE GOT A LESSER SPOTTED, GREATER CRESTED GHOST WHARBLER" or words to that effect.
"THAT'S A SPARROW!" one of his colleagues would correct him.
"OH, YEAH. SORRY BIRDERS, MY MISTAKE". And so it went on.

Once the sun was well and truly gone we climbed down the pyramid, or inched down slowly with eyes closed if you're Cara, and headed out of the ruins. After a few minutes it was pitch black and all we had was a small head torch to show us the way. Every now and then I would confidently claim that we should turn right or left down various paths. But my days as Compass Mik were well and truly over and Cara just kept going down the path she thought would lead us out. I would have argued a bit more but she had the torch and was clearly calling all the shots. It was at this point that we slipped into another dimension where the dinosaurs still ruled the earth. It was the only reason I could think of to explain the hideous growls and roars that echoed around us. The air was filled the deafening sound of a T-Rex and I don't mean Marc Bolan singing about the children of the revolution. We soon located the culprits up in the tree canopy, a group of male howler monkeys singing their songs of love and devotion to any female within 30 miles. The male howler monkey has a hollow, bony box in his throat that he uses to amplify his calls, but I never expected it to sound like this. How could something so loud come out of an animal the size of a rolled up sleeping bag? It was just like what I imagine a 75 foot lizard would sound like if he tried to castrate himself with a couple of house bricks. Only louder. We watched them for a few minutes as a full moon was rising into a cloudless sky and the jungle was lit up by a bright, silvery light. By the time we made it back to the hotel we were exhausted and hungry enough to scrape the meat off a couple of house bricks we'd found in the jungle. A park guide tried to sell us on the idea of taking another tour of the ruins to see the sunrise the next morning. As neither of us could face another 3.30am start, we decided against it and we felt even better the next morning when we dragged ourselves out of bed to see a cloudy, grey sky. Chalk one up for the lazy English gits.

Our trip back to Antigua that afternoon was fairly uneventful, although it did appear to be my turn to fall foul of the humourless airport security. They confiscated my can of mosquito repellent fearing I might use it to fashion a crude flameflower and hijack the plane.
"Take me to Guatemala City or I'll singe your eyebrows off!"
The exact same thing happened to me in the Galapagos Islands, but for some reason on both occasions it was on the return flight. I'm still trying to figure that one out.

Once back in Antigua, we bought a couple of bus tickets to Copan in Honduras. We were politely asked to be ready at our hotel to be picked up the next morning at 3.30am. What the hell is wrong with these people?

Mik

p.s. I have to admit I pinched the monkey photo off the internet. The buggers wouldn't stay still long enough

No sting in this tale

Lago Atitlan, Guatemala

We had another beautiful example of Cara's infallible haggling skills on arrival in Panajachal. After spotting a skirt on a stall that she quite fancied adding to her already burgeoning collection, Cara asked the price and was told 120 Quetzales. She immediately held up the skirt and donned her wiliest "I wonder what the plural of octopus is?" expression. The price on the skirt fell instantly. Next we had 110, then 100, then 90, 80, 75, 70 and all the way down to 60. Cara said nothing. The skirt seller looked like a broken women. Unfortunately, I wasn't faring too well either. Instead of fixing her blank look off into next Tuesday as she usually did, Cara had decided to level it at me. I could feel my resolve evaporate in a second. I looked at the stall holder and said "120 Quetzales, no make that 150. Okay 200. 300. Please, I'll give you 500 Quetzales for the skirt if you'll just stop her staring at me like that!". See, she's not a woman to be trifled with. And that's not just because she doesn't eat trifle.

Mik

Lago de Atitlan is in the highlands of Guatemala and is a stunning site. It is formed from a caldera, a collapsed volcanic cone filled with blue waters, edged by 3 volcanoes. My friend Anna had spent many months of her travels here and had recommended a place to stay which she called her favourite place on earth. We had high hopes. And we weren't disappointed.

La Casa del Mundo is an amazing hotel built right on the cliff side on the lake with magnificent views of the surrounding volcanoes. It is very pricey by Guatemalan standards and so we took the cheapest room they had. It was still one of the nicest we have had on our travels and even had a new and firm mattress and crisp sheets. Made a nice change! We stayed for just three nights as they were full the rest of the time. We spent our time there chilling in hammocks, sunbathing on the verandas overlooking the lake and eating good food. As there was nothing else around, dinner was served in the hotel 'family style' which meant all guests sat at the same big table. It was nice to chat to people but I have to say that we were there at the same time as some of the most miserable and rude people we have encountered so far. It amazes me how someone can sit next to someone else in that environment and totally ignore them, to the point of turning their back on them. Weird. Mik claims he hadn't farted so we don't know why the woman wouldn't at least acknowledge his presence. (She was intimidated by my latent manliness - Mik)

One night wasn't quite as peaceful as a stomach bug kept me awake. The following day it kept me in bed, apart from trips to the toilet or bin, depending which end it was affecting at the time! Nice! Typically this was the first time in a long time that we didn't have a private bathroom. So all the other guests got to share my misery. Still I can think of worse places to be ill. Nice views, nice room and a very comfy bed. Until.....


Lying there feeling sorry for myself I felt something touch my leg. I assumed it was one of the flies I had seen in the room. I lifted the covers to help it escape only to discover that it was in fact a frigging scorpion walking on my thigh!!! As you can imagine my first thoughts weren't 'oh thank goodness the scorpions round here aren't poisonous', but more like 'MIKKKK come and get this thing away from me'. I jumped out of bed shouting for Mik. Seeing the look on my face I think he realised fairly quickly that I hadn't merely been sick again and wanted some sympathy. The scorpion had of course made it's escape by this point and after Mik turned the room upside down we still couldn't find it. He did however find a spider and asked if I was sure it wasn't that I had seen. Charming. I assured him I knew what a big, disgusting scorpion looked like. By this stage I was desperate to lie down again and so had no choice but to go back into the room, having thoroughly checked the bedding! I wasn't having a good day.

About an hour later the scorpion showed up again, luckily he was on the wall and so I got the chance to prove to Mik I hadn't been seeing things. He then very bravely managed to get it into a glass where he examined it for quite some time! I just wanted it out of my way! Later that evening as I turned over to go to sleep I had to exclaim again as right in front of my face was another strange looking spider. For heavens sake. Despite it being such a beautiful place I couldn't say that I was going to be sad to get away from the creepy crawlies!

We stayed around the beautiful the lake for another few days. Took a boat tour across the lake and visited some of the other towns, some of which you could only get to by boat. One of the towns, San Marcos, has become renowned for it's 'spiritual vibe' and as such many meditation centres have developed. This attracts those people looking for spiritual enlightenment or those who wish to get in touch with their karma, darma and to find their higher intelligence. Needless to say we stayed precisely 10 mins.

Having read the guide books and checked out the internet about Guatemala and the place we would be visiting we had a good picture of how to behave, i.e no skimpy tops and short skirts and no going bare chested, and that was all just for Mik! Anyways what you also learn is that tourists are the target of theft and it is therefore wise to be aware of where you are, who is around you and what valuables you have on show. So when Mik and I decided to head to one of the most famous markets in a town called Chichinestango we took nothing. No bag, just some cash on a front pocket. What amazed me was the other tourists sharing our minibus. They all had big day bags, unlocked, with expensive cameras, big flash watches and 2 of them had even brought their ipods (it was a 1 hour journey!) I don't know if they don't read or hear the same things we do or if they just don't think it will happen to them but you can't help but wonder just why so many robberies occur here. The people are poor and foreigners come into their country flashing their valuables. You work it out. We have been lucky so far, fingers crossed. Maybe that is because we are more cautious than most, or maybe there are just enough others around who actively show what they have taking the heat off of us?? I'd like to report that nothing was lost but unfortunately a Dutch couple had a wallet stolen out of a back pocket in the crowded market.......! Cash and credit cards gone. I guess some people have to learn the hard way.

We had a lovely time by the lake but stayed a couple of days too long. I have realised, to my surprise, that I am actually not very good at doing nothing unless I am lounging around and the sun is beating down on me! We have days where we are in a town where there might not be much to see and I get bored quite quickly! Mik on the other hand has exams in doing nothing and excels at it. This may be because being an intelligent chap he likes to read books which he can learn from, whereas I tend to read something a little lighter - entertaining but they'll never qualify as my specialised subject on Mastermind! So with this in mind we packed our bags and headed off to do something more entertaining!

Cara

Guatemala : Home of the pump-action shotgun

Antigua, Guatemala

From Ecuador we flew to Guatemala in Central America. From the airport we drove to a town called Antigua. It is not the same as the Antigua in the Caribbean. It is an old town and it is very nice. The streets are cobbled and when you drove down them in a car it made your head wobble. Most of the people in Antigua are American and they have very loud voices. I don't know why. The weather was nice, but sometimes it rained. When we were in Antigua we climbed up a volcano. It was a very big volcano and took us hours to get to the top. The volcano had lava coming out of a big hole at the top. Lava is rock that is red and very hot. There was gas coming out aswell and it was very smelly. When we came down the volcano we had to run because it was very slippy and I kept falling over and when we finished I had pebbles between my toes and up my bottom.

In Antigua we ate lots of tacos, which are like butties but don't have any bread in them. They have meat in them and then you put lots of chili sauce in them. It was very hot and made fire come out of my nose. On Sunday there was a big procession and lots of people carried big tables in the town square. One had a big Jesus on it and he had light bulbs on his dress, and so did his cross. Lots of people were dressed as Romans but I don’t think they crucified anybody. Some men stand around with pump-action shotguns and they point them at you if you look at them funny. There are 2 pump-action shotguns for every person in Antigua. I counted them. We bought some books in Antigua because I was reading the same book for the fourth time. It was a good book but I know how it ends now. Cara bought some postcards. Then we left on a bus to see a lake.

Mik