At the end of March I left our Mexican nest to travel
through Central America for 2 months. I had an amazing time and thoroughly
enjoyed myself and thought I’d better update you all on some of my ridiculous
activities and experiences. Unfortunately my underwater camera decided not to
be waterproof one day, and filled up with a good load of salt water, therefore
until I go to the camera shop and they miraculously fix it, all my photos are
as good as lost.
Guatemala is the most beautiful country I’ve seen, the land
is volcanic rock and incredible shapes and views. I liked to think that the
fires I kept seeing were vents from the volcanoes (almost definitely were crops
burning, but I can dream).
My most spectacular experience was visiting Semuc Champey,
the natural pools and caves in Lanquin. Semuc Champey means ‘how does it hide?’
as this is the point where the river resurfaces from underground into a series
of descending natural pools, all clear and blue, with little slides and
waterfalls and overhanging caves to play in. After slip-sliding and scrabbling
around we made our way to the Kam’Ba cave (‘Candle’ cave), which involves, as
the name suggests, clambering, swimming and injuring ourselves in in the darkness,
carrying candles. This was lots of fun, fairly bizarre, and then terrifying,
but no one got seriously injured, which was impressive seeing as at the end we
had to drop ourselves through a hole comprised of many rocks jutting out at
perfect head level. Moreover, one girl there couldn’t swim!
I also visited some huge ruins in Guatemala. We left at
4:30am so as to see the sunrise from the ruins. Turns out the sun rises at
around 5:30, and of course the park didn’t open till 6am, so no sunrise for us.
We did however see all sorts of crazy animals, including a non-poisonous
tarantula which was placed on several people’s tongues for photos, and amazing
views from all the tops of the pyramids.
Nicaragua was probably my favourite country I visited, aided
by it also being the cheapest. The people are really friendly (though do also
lie a lot to try to get money from you, which is sad), the country is beautiful
and I met some amazing people.
In León I went volcano boarding, which involves hiking up a
black, gravelly volcano on a boiling hot day with a wooden board strapped to
your back, then sitting on said board and tobogganing back down. We saw, and
stood in, sulphur air vents, and from the highest point you could see the flow
of the lava from the last eruption 10 years ago or so (the volcano is actually
meant to have erupted recently and didn’t, so is expected to any time now). We
all ended up absolutely covered in black ash and soot and had a hilarious time.
My favourite place in Nicaragua was the island Ometepe, in
Lake Nicaragua, which is two volcanoes and in the lake there are the only fresh
water sharks, which is cool (they are massive and dangerous but have been
fished to near extinction so you never see them). There are howler monkeys everywhere,
everyone is friendly and it’s beautifully quiet all the time. One day my
Alaskan friend and I went on an accidental 7 hour bike ride around the smaller
volcano (no paved roads and my bike breaking considerably added to the time) to
a natural spring pool. Yes, I did fall over, but not off the bike so that’s
better. We narrowly avoided getting electrocuted by climbing through someone’s
property whilst their guard dogs chased us. However, I did then see for the
first time chicken’s roosting in a tree, which was pretty cool.
My most vivid memory of Nicaragua though is a small beach ‘town’
called El Ostional, south of the big beach-party area San Juan del Sur. ‘A
small beach town which meets all your tourist needs’ is what we had read, what
we discovered was a shut town, with one place to stay, one place to eat, one
shop with one bottle of rum and one pair of flip-flops vaguely my size (I
desperately needed flip-flops, these ugly, massive blue things became my pride
and joy). However, what they did have, which none of us expected, were turtles.
We then had the painful but amazing experience of witnessing sea turtles
hulking around, whilst horrible men with horrible torches stole all their eggs
to sell.
In Costa Rica I stayed on a cocoa farm for just over a
month, making chocolate, whacking things with a machete and being generally
dirty and sweaty. It was an amazing time and I really enjoyed it, the vast
majority of employees were girls, and we all just had such a great time
together; I have never chatted so much in my life. We hiked and waded over a
river to the cocoa tree orchard, where we climbed trees and machete-d down the
cocoa pods, and got bitten by ants (and me by some kind of flesh eating disease
bug thing). Then we roasted, shelled and ground up the cocoa (R. Kelly featuring
greatly in the latter). Then we made chocolate of many flavours, only seriously
ruining it once.
We lived along the one road from a little town (one shop,
one bar which was the centre of Mastatal life),
and enjoyed our Saturday night trip to the bar, which involved a 20
minute walk, the first party being through a cow and horse field, then past the
one street light whilst being noisy to scare away snakes. However, one weekend
we were treated to a dance; all the locals from the neighbouring villages dress
up, bring all their family and dance the night away. There was a mind-blowing
combination in the centre of the dancefloor of a bubble machine, a smoke
machine, and lasers, and we all had a brilliant evening salsa-ing away.
I took several interesting modes of transport, and regularly
had the thought ‘I haven’t laughed this much in ages’. I rode in the back of
cattle trucks, an electrical works van and old American school buses which are
used for public transport (called Chicken Buses). I really enjoyed my time,
though I do have to say, I am happy to be home. I only got very angry at
Central America when people weren’t queuing properly.
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