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

Sunday, April 19, 2009

Mexico - Chichen Itza

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...)

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Saturday, April 18, 2009

Mexico - Uxmal & Kabah

After Chichen Itza, we headed on down the road to the bustling provincial capital of Merida. Luckily all the streets are one way in the middle of town as there's a LOT of cars, buses and other miscellaneous things on the road here - at least everything was (generally) heading in the same direction. I think our time in Nigeria helped as it allowed fitting the car into impossibly small spaces feel more normal...

Again, we had a great time and were still suffering the effects of way too much time outside sweating and baking under the Mexican sun, but still managed to take a bunch of photos as we continued through the countryside down to the Mayan sites at Uxmal and Kabah.

Here's a few...

UXMAL (20 photos)



As these places are so bloody big, we took a few panoramas as well. Enjoy...

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A few more miles down the road, the site of Kabah is less visited but also less re-built by archaeologists so it was more of trek through old school ruins - great fun.

KABAH (16 photos)

Friday, April 17, 2009

Mexico - Tulum

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.

Sunday, April 12, 2009

Antigua Guatemala

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)

Saturday, April 11, 2009

Pacaya Volcano

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[click to enlarge]


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...)

Friday, April 10, 2009

Holy Week - Antigua Guatemala

So this was the reason that we were in this part of the world - Semana Santa!! In fact that's why every hotel in town was bursting to the seams with both foreign tourists and locals...

One of the legacies the Spanish conquistadors left (apart from small pox, coffee and rum) was Catholicism - and not just the go to mass once a week Catholicism, this stuff's old school with the whole hellfire and damnation and "let's re-enact the Crucifixion"...

Each church in the district has it's own set of "floats" which set off around town at all hours, filling the town with huge processions. The celebration begins on Ash Wednesday and reaches its climax on Good Friday. The processions consist of big floats, or 'andas', bearing statues of Christ with a cross, that are carried by hundreds of purple-robed men. A float with the Virgin Mary Follows by women dressed in black clothing. The processions move slowly through. Antigua cobblestone streets, the feet of the bearers cushioned in the sawdust carpets, which are destroyed as the procession passes over.

As a show of devotion, wealth and just good community spirit, families and groups of people slave throughout the night to make Alfombras or "carpets" out of flowers or fruits or intricate coloured saw-dust designs. These were absolutely AMAZING and it was such a pity that they were destroyed. But no sooner had the procession passed and the cleanup crew scoped them up with a back-hoe, the families were out again re-building another one for the next procession...


ALFOMBRAS (67 photos)



The Holy Week parades are definitely something to behold. These floats must weigh tonnes - yet they are carried around town for up to 14hrs per parade (with as many as four parades a day - some starting at 4:00am)

The full "stations of the cross" are demonstrated for all to see, as the\y start with Romans coming out (some on horses) then Jesus carrying the cross, then after his "death" Jesus appears in a plastic coffin, then finally he's resurrected... all backed by dirge-like brass band music (and men carrying generators for the night parades...)

It's impossible to describe and we took hundreds of photos, so here's a few

PARADES (97 photos)




STREET HAWKERS (25 photos)



We also managed a few videos, yo can here the heavy brass band music and the chocking clouds of incense as well as the slow sway of the heavy floats...



Thursday, April 9, 2009

Chichicastenango Markets

Every week up in the mountains around Guatemala, provincial centres host market days where traders, farmers and artisans from the surrounding villages come to sell their produce and resupply for their families.

We took a bus up to probably the most famous of the lot - Chichicastenango. Whilst some dispute that it has become too touristy here, with Holy Week in full swing and plenty of amazing textiles on display it was hard to agree...

Granted, the prices quoted were absolutely ludicrous (though plenty of people were paying them) But a bit of old school Nigerian haggling would wear any one down after ten minutes so we walked away with some amazing hand woven rugs for $25 a piece. We actually ended up having to pop down to the markets in Antigua a buy two extra suitcases so we could get all this stuff home!! Props to George and Sarah for propping up the Guatemalan economy...

CHICHI MARKETS (19 photos)


Wednesday, April 8, 2009

Antigua - Women's weaving co-op

Gail, the kiwi expat that owned the hotel where we were staying had been helping a women's weaving co-operative in a nearby village and had organised a couple of utes to take us out to have a look and learn about the local Mayan culture and see the weavers in action.

It was really quite amazing that this group of women had got their act together and were making real money selling their crafts and textiles in town and by allowing groups to come and visit. The were terribly cute, as everyone in Guatemala is about 4ft tall (seriously ALL midgets) and they showed us how to weave, make baskets and grind maize etc.

Interestingly they were also interested in how we do things (in particular how to get into the US) - but I couldn't help thinking about all the illegals around Texas where we live and how many of them are exploited and that whilst poor, their life in rural Guatemala may be a better choice..

WEAVING CO-OP (23 Photos)

Tuesday, April 7, 2009

Tikal

After a hectic few days of what seemed like no stop parade viewing, we got up way too early to catch a little plane up into the jungle at Tikal - one of the largest Mayan sites discovered.
National Geographic have a cool website about the Mayans here, and there's info about Tikal here.

It's really hard to describe places like this, you literally walk for miles thought the jungle and there's these MASSIVE structures appearing from nowhere - it's like you're in an Indiana Jones movie - absolutely amazing.

Unfortunately it was so hot I got a little sun stroky and had to collapse in the shower, but this place was definitely worth it - you could spend days here exploring all the nooks a crannies. Though tonnes of people visit, it's so bloody big you barely even notice.

For those of you who are super keen-eyed little nerdy werdys you may recognise this place as the location of the rebel base in star wars (minus the space ships etc) - and no I didn't know that until our guide Carlos told me (he and George Lucas go waaay back apparently)

TIKAL (24 photos)




The main plaza at Tikal (Temples 1 and 2)
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The folk at CyArk have awesome 360 panoramas here definitely worth a look