We have to get out of Central America. Click on this text to be able to vote for what you think we should do!

(polls)

Hey guys – just a quick suppliment to let you know that you should never decide that taking a bus for 4 days will be an “experience” that will allow you to see all the scenery and will be better than flying.  Pay the difference and fly. Really. Our bums will take months to recover. We are currently on day 3, having just arrived in San Jose in Costa Rica. Getting into bus stations in the evening in dodgy cities such as San Salvador or the slummy end of Managua is not much fun. When other tourists come up to you in the hotel and ask if they can walk to the shack next door to go and get some food with you, since 3 is safer, and they are scared of getting shot or mugged, it is not fun! Being woken up at all hours of the night, and then getting up yourself at 3.50 to get on a bus that is then 2 hours late, is not fun! Just get the plane! We still have some hope that the charter boat around the San Blas islands to get to South America will make the bus part of the journey worth while.  We will go to Panama City either tomorrow or the day after, depending on how we feel in the morning. It is a 17-20 hour bus ride, leaving at 12 lunchtime, and arriving at about 5 am apparently.  We are collecting some interesting passport stamps at least! And this evening, we even have a hotel with hot water! It is lovely! And it isn’t an electric shower so no fear of zapping any fingers that are too close to the shower head (as happened to Fab, who was trying to clean the unruly shower head in Antigua)! 

Hope all is going well there, and hope that your bums are in better shape than ours after the Easter celebrations 😉

Love,

Faboli (the bumless) xxx

We are alive! It was toasty warm up there on Pacaya, our boots have little rubber bubbles as proof, and yup, lava stone is sharp as glass! Amazingly though, neither of us got cut up too bad. The lava wasn’t really flowing when we were there, but we did see one huge big glowing rock, and people could toast marshmallows over it! We’ll upload pics of it as soon as possible. Luckily there weren’t too many people climbing up it, and we lost the guide by going a wee bit too fast, but soon joined up with another group of people who seemed to be going faster (and didn’t need a horse, or as the locals called it, a taxi naturista).  The first part of the hike was just up through the forest, and then you hit the lava flows, which are slightly difficult to negociate. We are glad to have hiking boots and not flip flops! We then made our way around the side of the volcano through the lava fields, seeing heat shimmering off different parts, and by mistake (we hadn’t read the blog comments) walking on smooth bits of lava that we thought looked like roads. We didn’t fall through, but we won’t do it again, promise!! It even had some creaky cracks in it too.. oooh. But those bits didn’t feel hot.. . Anyway, we started feeling the heat of the hot rock before too long, and slid down towards it. After a while of trying to take photos while perching rather precariously on loose lava rocks, Oli decided her feet were a bit hot. Fab just thought that it was because of the hike – he should know better that Oli’s feet never get hot though, and sure enough, our boots were starting to melt ever so slightly! Quite a cool souvenir 🙂 We didn’t take any specimens for Linda because it can bring baaad JuJu, and we didn’t fancy risking it. On the way down, night was starting to fall, and we could finally see, lit up against the night sky, exactly what the loud pops had been. The volcano had been periodically erupting every 5 to 10 minutes or so, and spitting lava out about 100 or so feet into the air (and we got it on camera!! though it is rather fuzzy…). This explained why we hadn’t been allowed to climb up to the crater. We then came down the volcano in the dark, safe and sound, and went back to our little tent and slept very soundly indeed!

Bisous,

Faboli-Hotfeet  (no longer stinky-foot Emma!! hehehe)

We are coming to the end of the most religious celebration we have ever been in, and a very fascinating (and tiring) week! We had seen some of the preparations when we last wrote, but since there have been floats with religious figures being prepared and carried around town just about every day. Before each of them everyone pours out into the streets and families & businesses spend painstaking hours creating the sawdust or flower carpets to line the streets.  The detail in some of them is breathtaking! After that the processions pass through the streets, some starting as early as 4:30 in the morning with full crowds and going on until 2 am sometimes! Olivia was very surprised by the full crowds, and decided that next time she would not go out in her pyjamas! They switch bearers every 10 minutes or so. There are floats that take up to 80 or 100 people to carry them, and it looks rather complicated as not everyone is the same size. Some people seem to have to carry it bent double while others are on their tippy toes trying to do their bit of “dolore”! People swinging incense completely smoke out the street, allowing the floats to suddenly poke through the clouds as we peer through stinging eyes!  There are also children’s processions, where they have wee little children who come up to our knees carrying “mini jesus” floats, and make it about a block with their parents huddling around them trying to help out (and make sure they don’t get crushed by his holiness).  As the floats are so big, they risk to get tangled up in the telegraph & electricity wires above the streets, so there are cloaked people with long wooden “holy Jesus sticks” that push up the wires to avoid any problems! The processions pass over the beautiful carpets, leaving them utterly destroyed, after which the clean-up crew, who bring up the end of the procession, quickly sweep them into the garbage truck. It has been beautiful seeing everyone in the town coming together though to celebrate, and neighbours working together, despite the fact that the whole celebration must cost quite a lot!

We have been sleeping in our tent now at the end of the garden for the week, and that has been going pretty well. Its actually quieter down there than in the hotel, which seems to be slightly overrun with families with tons of kids – loud kids – over which the parents do not even attempt to exercise any control. There have been a few evil looks going around when the tents seemed to be used for goal posts (either that or the kids really can’t aim), but happily today they all seem to have disappeared back to where they came from (Honduras apparently). So now we might be able to get in the bathroom within 3 hours in the morning! Luxury! We are not alone in our camping, and there is a good friendly atmosphere at the hotel so we have been spending some time relaxing there inbetween processions.

Tomorrow we have booked a hike up Pacaya, starting at 2pm and returning after dark, which is an active volcano not too far from here. We shall take pics of course, and let you know just how scary an active volcano is! You will of course be able to track us all the way up and down (if all goes well.. heheh couldn’t resist), and we will do our next update once our fingers have healed from the cuts and burns!

After that, on Tuesday we have booked a 4 day bus ride on the Tika bus to get to Panama. We stop off for the first night in San Salvador, and depending on how we feel may spend a day or 2 there. Once we get to Panama, we will try to get a charter boat for 4 days or so (there are heaps there) to Columbia, where we have booked a 2 week training trip with the FARQ. LOL. We will actually go to Bogota and do some research about a trek that is supposed to be incredible in the mountains around there (heaps safer than here, surprisingly..)

Quite honestly we haven’t really been doing much here in Antigua, besides all the holy Jesus stuff.  Fab has had his quota for the year. We even spent about 45 minutes sitting in a church. It is still standing and the hand of God has not struck us down (yet – knock on wood).

Now we are off to buy marshmallows for the hike tomorrow (yes we get that close to the lava)! I know you are jealous Linda!! hehe

Hope you enjoy the pics! We really are trying to send you some sun and warmth!! We are melting over here!! And send Fab some snow please, if he gets any blonder he will be albino (of which, strangely enough, there are heaps here…)!

Bisous,

Faboli xxx

Hello again!

We stayed for 3 wonderful nights in the Finca Tatin, a jungle hotel along the Rio Dulce, between a town of the same name and Livingston. It is a super place! We saw one of their little bungalow cabanas, complete with a batroom made out of natural stones piled on top of eachother, a thatched roof, and its own flora and fauna, and decided to splurge a little (160 Quetzales a night – about 20 dollars)… we spent 3 days there just relaxing and catching up on sleep after the rather broken sleep we had been having in Flores.  The nights in the jungle were filled with all the proper sounds that we had hoped and failed to hear in El Pachan, by Palenque, and were so dark that you couldn’t see your hand when it was right in front of your face.  There were good mosquito (or total anti fauna nets) around the bed too, which meant that neither of us got bitten the whole time we were there, and also that the little scorpion we found on the first day couldn’t get in 🙂 When we asked about the dangers of scorpion stings, we were told that it would just make us a bit crazy, a bit wobbly, like being completely drunk, for about a day – and they said we could try it if we wanted, but we decided that being stuck in the jungle with only boat access to the “real” world might not be the best place to start experimenting! We also found a dead leaf insect, a praying mantis (live, with head) and a stick insect.  Oli thought until this moment that there were no spiders, and Fab has just told her that he found a huge one on the floor the first night, and thought it best not to tell her until now.  She is now considering all possibilities of where the spider may have gone, and if it might jump out of her backpack at any moment… gaaaaah! (Fab laughs loudly beside squeamish Oli).

Anyway, creepy-crawlies aside, we spend a day of hardcore kayaking going upstream (to put it lightly – it was more like up a huge big effing tidal river) to the Biotopos – a nature reserve with a Maya village in it, complete with restaurant where we stopped for a much needed leg of chicken and fries/chips and tortillas.  The chickens running around us didn’t seem to mind so much, although one started up a rather pained cockadoodledoo at one point. It didn’t put us off one bit.  On the way back we encountered relatively big waves for a kayak, and probably spent as much time bailing as we did paddling. We even had to throw out a dead fish or 2!

Apparently at this time of year there isn’t much rain in the area (though you could have fooled us one night…) and as a result the salt water comes up the river. This is deadly for the fish, which die, float to the top, and bloat quite impressively when they swim a bit too far towards the big blue. This also meant that the water in Finca Tatin, pumped straight from the river, was salt water. The cold salt water showers were enough for us after 3 days, so we paid for a hot salty one, and then departed the next day. The bill was quite high enough (salee 😉 ) after the 3 nights, so it was high time to move on to Antigua, via Livingston.

If you are in the area, don’t bother with Livingston. We were shown a cheap hostel by a Rasta and an Hispanic guy. The latter didn’t ask for anything, the prior when we bumped into him later needed something from the goodness of our hearts because he did something for us, so we had to do something for him… and that was pretty typical for the whole town. Everyone was out to make a buck or 2 from us, either by asking for it or just trying to grab bottles of fizzy drinks out of our hands (about 4 small children on each of us, until an older one beat them off…). You give something and the whole town would more or less descend on you until you have nothing left. Naturally though, everyone was very friendly. After getting about 1 hour of sleep in the least comfortable bed yet, in a hostel full of aging stoners and one severly messed up cat who ate bones off the kitchen floor, we got a boat out of there (through the pelicans) to Puerto Barrios and then got on a bus to Antigua (via Guatemala City – 2 hours there was enough), where we have been since.

Antigua is very clean, very pretty – rather like San Cristobal but without the wannabe hippies in SUVs. It is also holy Jesus central at the moment as it is the Semana Santa – Holy Week. Tomorrow 80 men will carry a massive wooden float around town with Jesus and his cross on it. They change over every 10 minutes or so for 12 to 14 hours, which probably give most of the guys in town their chance to bear the burden.  Yesterday was the kids version – slightly smaller floats carried by slightly smaller people. We went into a church too which is very dramatic at this time of year. The models of Jesus are very bloody indeed, and the DJ plays a recording of a man with a deep Hollywood voice who talks a lot about “mucho dolor”. We didn’t get much more than that, but the mood lightling and thunder claps (or was it whip lashes?) over the scene of Pilate sentencing Jesus was very gothic! There was also a great display of fruit and vegetables around a beautiful coloured sawdust carpet.  Last night funeral marches played in the square, and the festivities are supposed to get quite elaborate at the end of next week! We have worked out a deal to camp in the garden of the hotel we are staying in at the moment, to avoid the problem of the prices for rooms tripling and worse, so that we will be able to experience Semana Santa properly and without going too far over our budget.

After that, we will probably head straight to South America, since the trekking around here is too dangerous to do without armed guards, so we are working out the best way to get down there.  We will keep you posted on the possibilities, but right now the internet is about to be switched off, so we must go!

Thanks for the messages!

Take care,

Faboli xxx

Hola amigos!

Thanks for all your messages! We are still feeling very fit and well!

Our last few days in Palenque went well, and we were even there for a local celebration of some sort. All of a sudden all the streets were totally empty, and lots of noise was coming from the town square.  We wandered up to take a look and were treated to traditional dancing and music.  They even were doing a machette dance which involved the men hitting two machette blades together in places that could easily lead to very dire accidents if practiced by an amateur! Luckily the blades, which increased in size over the course of the evening, were sheathed again without any incident! It was lovely to see people in national dress and also to see the whole town turning out to enjoy the spectactle. It was a great atmosphere and being there was like being part of a small, hot, friendly village.

The next day we made it on our tour to Agua Azul and Misol Ha. Both are very beautiful. Misol Ha is one big waterfall that you can climb behind, and Agua Azul, where we spent a lot longer, is a series of smaller falls and pools that you can swim in (which we did). From the look of some people’s bums, it would have been very painful to go over the waterfalls though! And the only Crocs we saw were on people’s feet 😉

So as we said, we headed out to Guatemala from Palenque. The original plan was to get several collectivos (mini bus type taxi service) to the border with Guatemala, then get a boat for about 4 hours down the river, then get another bus/collectivo this side. This, although far more adventurous & off the beaten track, would have been a lot more expensive than the luxury package deals that were on offer for just 300 pesos each. We therefore put our explorer hats away again, and settled for the cheaper way. However, we are not in Kansas anymore, and the luxury was somewhat adventurous after all. At least, it has taken several days to get our backs and bottoms into shape again… We got picked up at our hotel at 6 am, and our backpacks were thrown on top of the little mini van, and tied down with rope. We then leapt into the front with the driver (Olivia seems to be experiencing some motion sickness with the crazy drivers on mountain roads, and finds that when she can pretend to brake in the front of the bus, it helps…) and zoomed off to pick up other passengers. We were almost done with this when Oli discovered that she had forgotten her necklace at the hotel.  Needless to say, our Spanish swear word vocabulary increased rapidly during the next 15 minutes, but nevertheless, the driver returned us to our hotel. Necklace, of course, was nowhere in sight (it turned up later that night in Olivia’s bag, in a safe place, of course…). We then returned to our route at breakneck speed, and zoomed towards Frontera Corazal – the river. We had to officially leave Mexico before getting on the boat, and produce the papers that we received on entering Mexico. This is where the driver totally fell in love with Olivia, as she announced to him that said papers were in her bag, which was tied down to the roof of the van (another safe place, but at least they were found quickly). He had to climb up again to the roof, undo most of the bags (Oli’s was put on first) and throw it down to her. We don’t need to add that it wasn’t put back on the roof afterwards, but Fab had to find room for it under his knees.. it wasn’t far though to the river, and as soon as our passports were stamped, we drove down there. The boat trip went smoothly – little wooden boats with a motor on the back ferried us up the river to the entry point into Guatemala. We didn’t see any crocs, but we did see a dead floating something that might have once been a cow.  Vultures were happily getting their meal to go… float through style 🙂 On the Guatemala side, we filled out a form, drove a bit further in the second bus of the day, and then stuffed 5 USD in our passports, handed them all to the guide on the bus to “speed up the process”. Visa formalities were dealt with in about 45 minutes, as opposed to the usual 2 hours. We spent this time chatting and watching a dog eat chicks that had just hatched.. or that one may have been a duckling, we didn’t have time to check.  After that we all piled back into the bus and drove the most slowly that we have ever been driven since we left home. This was due to the lack of road. The first 3 and a half hours were down a dirt track. A very long dirt track. The final hour was paved, which is a complete and utter luxury. You have no idea how lucky your bums have it over there on paved roads that make no noise. Even those of you on cobbled streets have it lucky! Despite all that though, we finally arrived in Flores, Guatemala, without too much to complain about. Once we had shaken and showered all of the dust off of ourselves, we had time to wander around the island, and enjoy being upright as we looked at one of the most spectacular sunsets we’ve seen yet.

Flores itself is very very small, but pretty. We did nothing the day after arriving, but the second day we went back to a place we had found where we could rent canoes, and took one out from 11 to about 5. Olivia’s knees are pink now (read that as red) as she forgot to put the sun screen on in time – but we had a great time paddling out to the other side of the mainland to go to the beach, exploring amongst the reeds and then beaching the canoe and climbing up to an unexcavated Maya site. It was a very pleasant day, and was wrapped up with a big meal washed down with a couple of beers & mojitos 🙂

Today, we got up for the “early morning special” tour to Tikal. It leaves at 4.30, gets to Tikal at 6 in order to be able to see the monkeys, spiders and other wildlife. When we got there, we were introduced to Juanita, a huge red bummed tarantula. We didn’t let her crawl on us though. We followed the tour around for a few hours, and then decided to stay on in the park to explore some more. Olivia was trying to overcome her vertigo on the lost world temple (Mundo Perdido) or Temple V, we can’t remember which one it was (if you google it, it is the one with really steep wooden ladders going up the side, up 7 mini platforms), but after 2 separate attempts and a bit of a foul mood, she gave up just 13 or so steps (1 platform down) from the top… apparently though according to Fab the view was not worth the utter fear though (and it gave him vertigo so its probably all for the best that Oli didn’t quite make it). We both went up temple 2 and the view from that was much better 🙂

Now, Fab has just been for a cool off in the lake, and we have bought tickets to Rio Dulce, where we will try to go and stay in the forest and maybe go to Livingston for some Carribean vibes.  The hotel we are looking at is this one  http://www.fincatatin.centroamerica.com/

Apparently we can see manatees in the lake (Lago de Izabal) too, so we will try to rent canoes and snorkel gear.

We will let you know how it goes and what we are up to! Glad to have your messages and updates from your side and are happy to see more people travelling around with us through the blog!

Take care! We are off to pack and have an early night after our very early morning!

Faboli xxx

Just a quick post to say that we are both back on our feet again and are managing to get away from the bathroom for extended periods of time! Oli will be off the antibiotics after tomorrow too, and we are both back to eating Mexican food!!

Heading off to Misol Ha and Agua Azul in a moment, then to Guatemala tomorrow! Will keep you posted!

Faboli xxx

Hello everyone!

Sorry for the delay in posting anything. We were in San Cristobal for quite a while, but didn’t have as much to report! The town is very pretty – quite westernised with restaurants ranging from Italian to Lebanese , fully vegetarian, american fast food joints, etc lining the clean  – well, actually varnished – streets. Not quite sure why they varnish them, but they do look shiny and new!!

We wandered quietly around the town as planned, with our hangovers from that infamous mescal night, and went back to the glorious market where you can by any kind of fresh produce you desire. A woman with 5 chickens – 2 under each arm and one cradled in our arms bustled past us. Olivia thought they were dead until one blinked at her. If a chicken could look worried, it did! And that was the lucky right-way-up chicken. We bought our first veggie meal – everything necessary for guacamole and enough fruit to fill a grocery cart- for next to nothing and went back to the hotel to make it up and pig out in front of a TV (we hadn’t watched TV in ages). All went to plan until about  2 am when Olivia started bowing to the porcelaine God… then a little later it had worked through a bit further for both of us. To cut a long story short, we both got our first bout of “Turista”. Anything to get the complete travelling experience!! Since it didn’t go away for ages, we went to the doc. Fab is now finishing off antibiotics and Oli has just finished her drugs, so please keep your fingers crossed that it is all over. The doctor said that raw onion can have a bacteria in it, and it was probably that that made us ill, so we are avoiding it like the plague now.

We did manage to do some sight seeing though, taking a boat through the Sumidero canyons and being ferried left and right to be shown crocodiles, vultures and monkeys (oh my!). We’re not sure how the guide knew where the crocs where, but it was great to see them up close!

We also went to the Maya medicine museum and found out how to give birth mayan style. It involves a lot of waving around of the chicken (alive) and coke and pepsi bottles… Oli has decided not to have babies in a Mayan villiage.

On a similar note, the women there walk around quite often in traditional dress, which is a heavy black long haired sheeps wool skirt, gathered together at the waist and held on with a big material belt. Some of the younger ones wear the shorter wool version, with a bit of shiny bling bling thread woven in and high heels 🙂 This is usually all topped off by a satin enbroidered blouse. It looked rather warm!!

We also did a hike (short hike) through the cloud rain forest, which was very beautiful and allowed us to see different species of flora and fauna, as well as contributing (through the entrance fee) to the preservation of a little bit of Mexico. There is so much trash here, no recycling, and most of the smaller villages don’t even have a waste disposal system. this means that all of the magic coke bottles end up in a ditch or a river somewhere. No one thinks twice about chucking bottles out of the window. Even if there is a bin around, kids just throw the bottles towards the river. It is such a shame and the countryside is horribly polluted because of it. Apart from that, trees in the reservation are cut down illegally for locals to use as fire wood. Apparently there is little way of educating them otherwise at the moment, but something needs to be done. Awareness & sustainable development need to be introduced soon!

We left San Cristobal the day before yesterday to come to Palenque, and instead of stopping in Palenque town we hopped on a collectivo (mini bus) to El Pachan. This is supposed to be a place where you can stay in the jungle. So we arrived, and thought it seemed a bit strange. It isn’t actually a villiage, it is more of a wannabe hippy resort camp, where you can stay in cabins for a small fortune and get your pseudo jungle experience. We slung up our hammocks in the only place where you could (a platform in the middle of this resort), and realised that this had nothing to do with being in the jungle. We were not going to hear the sounds of the wildlife, or spot any wildlife, or be able to walk anywhere, as we were in the middle of a resort.  A resort with live amplified music in 2 different restaurants, side by side, competing with eachother, until about 3 am.  One frog did try to croak louder, but failed. By the time the party goers had gone off to their cabins, the sun was coming up so those trying to sleep in hammocks got very little shut-eye, and awoke heavily disappointed with our fraudulent jungle experience. We met a woman who had been there for 2 whole years, 10 years previously. She was coming back for a visit and to consider moving back, and was so upset by what it had become that she was close to tears. Apparently where we had our hammocks used to be a temple, and now was little more than a few rotting boards. She also left first thing in the morning.

We are now staying in Palenque town, in Posade San Vincente, which is clean, has a big ceiling fan, and delivers the promised hot and cold water (alternately, when you turn on the hot shower.) Its actually quite refreshing though. Neither of us could really take a hot shower in this weather.

Today we went to the ruins, which are spectacular. There is not much “ruined” about them. They must be the best of the 3 archeological sites we have been to. You can climb most of the pyramids and go inside some of them. We also did a bit of a jungle walk, which was very very sticky and hot but wonderful. We climbed into a tomb that we found (which a huge spider and a very big moth had found too) and decided that there is so much to see that we will have to go back the day after tomorrow, after a visit to Agua Azul and Misol Ha (waterfalls).

We hope you all enjoy the pictures! Keep the comments coming everyone, it is lovely to hear from you!

Faboli xxx

San Cristobal was another long long bus ride –  12 hours again! The bus wasn’t quite as comfortable, which is why you didn’t get any more news yesterday! We just lay our heads down for a second and all of a sudden it was about 3 or 4 hours later 🙂

Oaxaca was a great little town, very beautiful and with a great community, where everyone seems to get together in the square most nights and the kids play with balloons that can be bought on the square. We stuck around there in the hostel Tangu-Yuu for a few nights, and met some great people during our stay.  We travelled to the petrified waterfall with Chris, riding on the local busses and then in the official transport – the back of a pick up truck… (not hitchhiking this time, we actually had to pay for it, and haggle for it…). It is formed from all the mineral deposits from the water that bubbles up. The water tastes pretty salty – either from the tourist sweat or hopefully from the minerals in it  – and it doesn’t smell like sulfur or feet or anything, so we had a quick swim after walking around the area. We’ve never seen anything like that before, so were very glad to make it there! Its called Hierve del Agua in Spanish if you want to look it up!

Afterwards, Chris had to head on to San Cristobal (if you are reading this Chris, let us know if you made the bus and if you are still in San Cristobal!) and the next day we decided to head out to Monte Alban. The archeological site is great – we almost had the place to ourselves which made a real change from Teotihuacan, and we spent the day wandering around there with our mouths wide open, oohing and aahing a lot. We also hopped over the wall at the back, and walked “off the beaten track” to a site that we spotted that hadn’t been restored yet. It was fascinating to see what the places look like before they are rebuilt. Its easy to see how they can be overlooked in the jungle! (we are now dreaming of discovering a new site, of course, indiana jones style…).

The day after we thought we would get a bit more adventurous, and rather than just wandering around town, we got some tips from the local camping store and headed up the mountain. We almost got the directions right, as you can see by the fact that we were only about 200m away from the path at most times. As we were beating our way through the bushes and cacti though, we didn’t get to the top (we were running out of water and it is damn hot here). We still preferred to walk on the small trails though. There were some interesting plants and it felt very “real”. We found the path after a while and walked down that, which didn’t take too long at all. Its tough work though hiking in this heat!

The following day we decided that we would get the night bus to San Cristobal – about 40 CHF each for 12 hours of almost sleep. The bus driver was a bit of a pain – at 3 am he suddenly turned all the lights on and announced that we had 30 minutes to go get some food, stretch our legs, etc. Olivia took this opportunity to let the devil inside come out, and after uttering many words that should not be written here, she stomped about growling at anyone who came close (well, only Fabrice tried to, and he soon beat a hasty retreat…). Moods improved though, as always, and we made it to San Cristobal, rather tired, but happy to be here.

In San Cristobal we were accosted by a guy at the bus station with flyers from his hostel (Planet Hostel), which is a bit too young for us (girls screaming at eachother in the wee hours of the morning, etc) so we are heading to the cheaper hotel that is just down the road. 180 pesos (about 15 CHF) for a double room with bathroom, which isn’t bad at all, and hopefully it should be quieter!

Today we will probably just walk around town, as we sampled quite a bit of Mezcal last night with a couple of the guys in the hostel (we actually cooked last night for the 4 of us after a walk around the local market – pseudo-italian food, which made a great change to tacos and burritos!) Its cheaper to eat from the street vendors though, but it was lovely to be able to cook again!

So, we shall nurse our slightly sore heads today and then plan out our next activities in this area. Apparently there are some great sights to see on the way to Palenque, including canyons with crocodiles and a church in an indigenous villiage where they enhance their spirituality with fizzy drinks and chicken sacrifice. Taking photos damages the saints though, so we’ll just have to describe it to you if we make it there!

Hope all is going well back there! We didn’t feel the earthquake at all, although the guys we met who were in Porto Escondida said that the sea level suddenly dropped dramatically, and the beach was evacuated because of the tsunami warnings. No tsunami ever turned up though…

The photos are slowly uploading now, so hopefully soon you will have some more of our adventures to look at!

Take care, gros bisous,

Faboli xxx

Hello again!

We had a great few days in Oaxaca – from petrified waterfalls to monte alban to a hike through the bush (and yes we were about 200 m off the track, on a small trail, ducking and dodging through branches!). We just got off the night bus from Oaxaca to San Cristobal and are in a hostel with free high speed internet and free breakfast (which has just been served), so there will be a longer update later! All is going well though! Off for some grub now 🙂

Hasta luego amigos!

Faboli