an easy way for friends and family to keep up with life on the dark continent or wherever we end up...
Back up and running...
Apologies to everyone it's been over A YEAR since I updated this thing and there's been plenty happening in the mean time...
so a belated MERRY CHRISTMAS and HAPPY NEW YEAR, HAPPY BIRTHDAY etc to everyone!!!!!!!!
I've literally just put a whole YEAR's stuff up but I think only the latest blogs show on the screen to start with, so if you go over <== there on the left side, there's an archive where you can find all the old ones. There's a few at the start of 08 in Nigeria, Zanzibar in May 08, then our move the US, Canada in Sept 08, Cuba in Jan 09 and Guatemala and Mexico in Easter 09, enjoy...
J&G 2 Jun '09
After a rather nice relax at the sleepy little airport in Flores - I almost felt sorry for waking up the customs and immigration people to allow the six (including us) to get on the plane and leave sunny Guatemala - we had a bumpy ride through the tropical clouds to Cancun. It reminded me a little too much of flying through the wet season in Africa - everyone was praying as we landed...
Anyway, we picked up a car and hit the road to chichen itza to start our whirl wind road trip around the Yucatan peninsula to check out mayan ruins and eat Tacos!! It was good to get on the toll road as there were absolutely no cars a we knocked the drive down in no time... The only hitch was that the local farmers had taken to clearing the adjacent jungle by fire, which seemed to be everywhere without any visible regulation - driving whilst finger-crossing and praying - not so much fun
Enough of all that, we were on a mission to check out some Mayan stuff on the advice of my sister, George and I had no idea about any of it before we went, so here's an explanation for those who care. This nation geographic article is also really good. -full of great pics and maps etc
Anyway, without going into all the detail - the town was great fun and the ruins absolutely awesome - we had to get there first thing in the morning to avoid getting sun stroke / dehydration again as it was freekin hot, but also empty (tourists seem to be lazy and only get there at lunchtime...) So of all the 400 billion photos we took (seriously..) here's a few snaps
CHICHEN ITZA (27 photos)
The ceynote at Chichen Itza... (where they used to both get their drinking water and sacrifice people - maybe that's why they died out...)
[click on image to enlarge]
After sucessfully avoiding the great herds of tourists that sweep across these parts of Mexico, we had to finally bite the bullet as we hit the so called "mayan riviera" - the carribean coast of Quintaroo famous for the likes of Cancun and Playa Del Carmen...
Back on the road again, we spent the best part of a day driving from Merida back towards the coast and to Tulum. Had a great lunch in a small place we stumbled in to in Valladolid - almost died from eating the wrong chilli... long story
TULUM (11 photos)
Here's a few pics at the hotel - Om Tulum - by the beach...
if you want a place to take a spa, be seen and be supposedly eco-touritsy on an overdeveloped beach, then I recommend Tulum. If, however, you actually want to relax and not see another tourist for days - then you're in the wrong place...
One of the most fun things we did was hire a couple of snorkels and a beach bum and drive around the area doing some cave diving at dos ojos, sea-turtle diving at Akumal and then some reef work later. Very cruisy day - I think at the end, we left our guy at a bar somewhere with the gear and headed back into town for some awesome fish tacos...oooh yeahh
Unfortunately, we didn't have cameras whilst doing all this underwater work, but it was so cool the guy who was showing us around emailed me a few he had...
(you're not allowed to kill the mozzies, coz that's what the bats that live in the caves eat)
We didn't know it at the time, but apparently the hundreds of ceynotes (all linked by miles of under ground rivers and caverns) are the result of a massive meteor impact - the one that killed all the dinosaurs (or so they say) - quite cool. Check it out here.
I know that this blog thingy puts all this stuff up in reverse date order or whatever, so I've put these up backwards so you can scroll down and it looks kinda right...(maybe)
Anyway while we were back in Oz earlier in the year for my dad's funeral, we created a cunning plan with my sister Sarah to explore Guatemala and Mexico looking for Mayan ruins and whathaveyou... George and I had no idea about any of it and had never been so organised for a trip ever (thank you Sarah...)
Sarah had a few weeks off so she flew over to Houston, then we all went down to Guatemala for Easter, then up to Mexico for a week, before chillin in H-town for further week...
As holy week (semana santa) seems to be the busiest time of the year, we used the old colonial capital of Antigua Guatemala as a base and took a bunch of trips around the place...
Antigua Town (21 photos)
Before the festivities of Holy Week kicked off in earnest, we decided to take the hour bus ride over to Pacaya volcano - one of the apparently many live volcanoes in central america...
It all seemed like a good idea at the time - "let's climb a volcano" - it was only after half an hour of trudging up the side of this thing in the afternoon heat (Sarah was smart enough to hire a horse...) that I was rethinking the whole thing. Whilst the hike almost killed us - it was heaps of fun (though the freshly set lava was actually almost glass-like and really sharp so you couldn't lean on it without cutting yourself, and our shoes melted a bit from standing too long near the hot stuff). It was also a great chance to use the word "magma" a lot
Sitting on the lava field at sunset - absolutely beautiful
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PACAYA VOLCANO (29 photos)
Here's a bunch of photos (too many to choose from) - you'll see at the end, that as we were about to start to climb back down, a nearby volcano - the aptly named "fuego" - erupted!! I shit you not, a huge plume of smoke shot miles into the air - it looked pretty cool (glad we were miles away from it though...)
[click on image to enlarge]
