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Chris Pagett

26 Blog Entries
1 Trip
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Trips:

Chris and Em's Adventure

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A few problems getting here...

Antigua Guatemala, Guatemala

We had a few problems getting to Antigua. The day started great with boating it to Panajchel and heading to the nature reserve. Our bus left at 4pm so we had a lot of time to kill. Finally it was 4pm. We were boarding our small 10 passenger van and were off. The driver put the van into first and a horrible grinding sound came from the transmission. He tried again and got it going. Ok he probably just didn´t put it properly into gear. We´re driving through the city leaving town and almost everytime he shifts gears more horrible sounds come from the transmission. This isn´t good. Em´s sitting a couple rows back from me and I give her a worried look. We made it out of town and the driver had to turn right, up a very steep switchback. He slowed down got it into first gear and more earpeircing sounds. He must have tried to get the van into gear and up the hill 15 times before he succumbed to the fact that the van was not going to make it. Disappointment, smiles and sighs of relief came over the van as we went back into town. We were happy knowing that we would not be in the middle of nowhere went the van eventually broke down. Those smiles faded when we found out that another van would be around to take us in 30 minutes, then it was 50 minutes then it was 1 hour then 2 hours. Finally a new van arrived just after 7pm. Three hours after we got on the first van. I felt really bad for one guy who have tickets to a concert that night. As we turned up the switchback that had previously stalled our trip (no pun intended) half the people in the van gave a cheer to the driver. We did finally make it to Antigua around 9:30pm found a hotel pretty quickly and got a bite to eat.
I wouldn´t be a trip if everything worked out perfectly. Right?

permalink written by   Chris Pagett on March 6, 2009 from Antigua Guatemala, Guatemala
from the travel blog: Chris and Em's Adventure
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We´ve Left Panajachel

Santiago Atitlan, Guatemala

Panajachel was good but Santiago was great. We were there for three days. Emily used to teach english there and stayed with a local family during that time. Emily let them know we were coming and they opened their place to us. Marissa took care of us the whole time. A great room, breakfast, lunch and dinner every day, except for the night we took her and her son Jessie. Marrisa is in her twenties and her son is 5 year old. She has a great place and lives with her husband and son, her in laws and her four brothers and sisters. It´s a full house yet there are still three more rooms available for other people. She wants to teach spanish to people from Canada or the States while giving room and board as addition as income. It would be a great opportunity of someone to learn spanish and become ingrained in the culture for a few months in a beautiful community.
Through out our time there we mostly relaxed. We played cards at night and was in bed early. We did have a couple adventures though.
Sanitago had a major mudslide two years ago and it´s said that at least one person died from every family on the island. We went on a walk and checked out the damage. Em says the town look completely different and there is a lot of construction going on albeit it is going very slow due to the poverty and lack of funding from the government. Em also started to sponser a child in the city right after the mudslide. Her name is Julia and she is 14 years old, her dad had died when she very young and her mom died saving the kids during the mudslide. Em arranged to meet her on Thursday outside a restaurant in Santiago. To our suprise her whole family showed up. Her siblings, cousins, and her Aunt and Uncle who took her in after her mom died. We had ice cream, Julia was very quite but her Aunt told us all about the day of the slide and her mother´s death among a lot of other things. We then were invited to see where they live. We caught a Tuk Tuk ( a local taxi) about 5 minutes out of the town to a camp of displaced families from the slide. After seeing their two 4x6 ft rooms that 6 or 7 people share It really makes thankful for what you have. Julia´s aunt thanked God for this shelter after the mudslide destroyed their homes. We sat and talked some more at there place and told us more about their life, her husband makes 25Q per day that´s less than $5 CDN! It was all very sad and humbling. As we left Julia gave both Em and me a present, I was given a little beaded angel keychain since they had found out I did not belong to a church and Em a beaded rooster keychain. What an experience.

We also got to watch all the school children and youth sports teams parade through the city on Friday. I was cool to see all the different colours of the school flags, uniforms and of course all the cute kids.

We headed back to Panajchel on Friday afternoon, payed another 25Q each to take a boat across the lake, and headed to a nature reserve where we saw monkeys hanging out in trees, a butterfly exibit and a waterfall that would be amazing in the rainy season but a little lame this time if year.

Then we took off by bus to Antigua. By the way to take a bus to Antigua only cost us 30Q each.




permalink written by   Chris Pagett on March 3, 2009 from Santiago Atitlan, Guatemala
from the travel blog: Chris and Em's Adventure
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Took a boat across the lake

San Pedro La Laguna, Guatemala

Took a little side trip here on Monday, Em was under the weather so I had to figure it out myself. I caught a boat from the shore for 25 Quetzales or around $5CDN, it is a little more expensive than it use to be according to Em but everything is a little more expensive around here since the mudslides 2 years ago plus you have to factor in the gringo tax. The locals only pay 15Q for the boat ride.
San Pedro is a cool island with populated by locals and people who came to visit and liked it so much they never left. It is a hippy culture there, very laid back with a lot of people locals and non-locals selling jewelery. I was asked if I wanted to buy weed three times in the three hours I was there "Ämigo, weed...ganja? is the best" I didn´t get any. It´s grow extensivly on the island.
I ended up walking around a lot then sat and had a beer, read my travel book and finally figured out the complex Mayan calender system. It´s been bugging me since Merida.
Caught a book back to Panajachel for another 25 Quetzales and 25 minutes later I was across the lake.

permalink written by   Chris Pagett on March 2, 2009 from San Pedro La Laguna, Guatemala
from the travel blog: Chris and Em's Adventure
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Guatemala is stunningly beautiful

Panajachel, Guatemala

We are now in Guatemala! Getting across the border was much easier than I though. They just scanned are passport, stamped it and we were done. Not even an entrance fee. The bus ride was long, we left San Cristobal de Las Casas at 730am and arrived in Panajachel at 5pm. The bus ride was extremely unconfortable. The trip winds through the mountains so you´re constantly going left then right, as well the road has a lot of elevation changes so you come across many speed bumps suffice to say it is almost impossible to sleep. I fell asleep a couple times only to be awakened by my head hitting the window that it was resting on.
Panajachel is a cool little town on Lago de Atilian. There are lake tours that take you to all the different towns around the lake. It is very touristy and more expensive than it´s neighbouring towns. The hotel we stayed at was nice but dogs and roosters awoke us at 730am. The bed was better than most but it seems in Central America they do not value the comfort of a pillow. Every pillow so far on the trip has been very uncomfortable. I have severe neck pain every morning. I think if I was to do it again I might consider bringing my own but that would take up a lot of space, be awkward to carry and get dirty. Maybe a small one? maybe one that inflates? I don´t know.
I having a great time though and if bad pillow is all I have to complain about then I take it.
Having a hard time downloading pic here, so don´t expect to see any for awhile

permalink written by   Chris Pagett on March 1, 2009 from Panajachel, Guatemala
from the travel blog: Chris and Em's Adventure
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3 Days in San Crisobal de Las Casas

San Cristobal de Las Casas, Mexico

This was our third day in San Cristobal de Las Casas. Population is around 100,000. It´s a cool city, literally and figurativly. It has a very distinct arts culture here with a somewhat progressive attitude about the environment, at least that what I got from the hostel I was staying in. It is the only Mexican city so far that has a wine culture, it has a lot of hippies with the dreads, jewlery making and selling, street performers performing in the evening in the main square and cool bars playing live music. We went to a bar last night called Revolution. The second band played a wide range of music, from jazz mixed with tradition mexican bango to what sounded like a Tom Waits influnced sound. It´s also a very laid back place with tourism it´s number one money maker. as for the literal part, It is cold at night. At an altitude of 2100m high in the mountains the temp. drops rapidly at night and is just above freezing by 2am, however during the day it rebounds and by 10am it´s at least 20 degree´s.
History lesson: This region has had some tough times in the last 20 years. In 1994 the Zapatist revolution took place here. This is a group who was fighting for the rights the indiginous Mayan people who are among the poorest. They fought the Mexican government and succeeded in getting the worlds attention which has influnced the Mexican Government into making reforms in the region, though they haven´t done enough and the fight continues.
Just past the main sqaure is a market where you can buy many different types of clothing, toys and jewerly, mostly all handmade by Mayan people who live in the towns and villages around the city.
Today Em and I went for a trip to a few different places. We went to two ecological parks. One with huge under ground caverns and the other we hiked 250 metre up the Silent Volcano to an elevation of 2350m and a distance of 2 km. The latter was tiring and boring, but the caverns were amazing. We then hit a couple of little towns Chamula and Zinacantan only 10 km from the city. These little town have a population of around 60,000 people each. I enjoyed walking around Chamula. It has a beautiful church as does every Mexican town and city and a bustling fresh friut and vegetable market. We only drove around Zinacantan but it was getting late and there wasn´t much action.
Tomorrow we are off to Guatemala at 7:00am we will arrive in Panajachel around 4:30 in the afternoon. It´s going to be a long day.

permalink written by   Chris Pagett on February 28, 2009 from San Cristobal de Las Casas, Mexico
from the travel blog: Chris and Em's Adventure
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The Mayan´s were amazing people

Palenque, Mexico


Palenque from our hotel
We made it to Palenque with a little sleep on the bus and got a hotel across the street. Most of the hotel have cost around 200-250 Pesoes or $17-$20 Canadian.


The Resturant we ate Lunch
After sleeping in today we headed for lunch then to the Mayan ruins. We had a terific tour guide named Artero. He really liked us because we were young and very interested. We are here during the low season so there were not very many people there and we got some great pictures and a good deal on the tour.


Mayan Ruins

Were in the Jungle Baby!!
The ruins are in the middle of the Jungle. They were really only discovered 50 years ago by British archoligists who had to brave Malaria and of course the predators of the jungle (Jaguars and Boa Constrictors among others). They say that Palenque was like the lost city of Atlantis since it had been abondoned in 900 AD and the jungle grew over most of the ruins since then. They are now unearthing many ruins but still statalite images show over 2000 smaller pryamids surrounding the main Pryamid.

Mayan ruins covered by the jungle


Skull minus the Jade Eyes

I can´t really tell you much more about the ruins you´ll just have to look at the pictures. I´ll eventully be putting descriptions on the pictures.

That´s Emily

permalink written by   Chris Pagett on February 25, 2009 from Palenque, Mexico
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Bad luck. Should have checked first.

Campeche, Mexico

This morning we thought we would get an early start but not to early. We left the hotel at 9am went and got breakfast and made it to the bus station by 9:45 fully expecting a 7 hour bus trip to Palenque. Turns out the bus left at 8:30am and there wasn´t another one until 9pm. What to do? We were not going to spend another day in Merida so We got a ticket to Campeche.
Campeche, on the East coast bordering the Gulf of Mexico, was beuatiful. It is what you think of when you picture small Mexican cities with very colourful Stone buildings. It has a population of 300,000 and a bloody history with pirates. At one time because of the constant looting by pirates the city erected walls to defend the city.

Defense

They have since been torn down but the Stone was still used for buildings and other walls that flank the city centre. The city is also a Unesco world heritage site. Both Em and I were happy we went to Campeche.

We didn´t stay overnight though. we though it would be best to get to Palenque that night so we didn´t miss a day. We got the first bus at 10pm and arrived in Palenque at 4am.

permalink written by   Chris Pagett on February 24, 2009 from Campeche, Mexico
from the travel blog: Chris and Em's Adventure
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My Birthday Dinner

Merida, Mexico


Joe Cool
Em took me to a nice little restaurant a couple hours after the tour. There was a live band and a nice atmosphere with a table looking out onto the street. The food was great but to much for us to finish. We basically had a huge plate of meat with different sauces some onion and lettuce which we wrapped with tortillas.

Beautiful

permalink written by   Chris Pagett on February 23, 2009 from Merida, Mexico
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Last day in Merida

Merida, Mexico

Today was Em´s B-day. It was a pretty low key day. We had planned on going to Progresso but found out from these travellers we had met at our hotel from Chile that is wasn´t worth the trip. We took their advice. They gave us an alternate plan to go check out the Cenotes (big holes created by meteores that are filled with crystal clear water) but we were worried about not being able to find them. We plan on going snorkling in them on our way back to the Yauctan. At night we went for Salbutes (Shredded Turkey with lettuce, tomato onion and Guacamole on a fried tortilla) her new favorite dish and we then took in another night at Carnaval.

All in all I enjoyed Merida but both Em and I agreed we spend one to many days there.


permalink written by   Chris Pagett on February 23, 2009 from Merida, Mexico
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Day tour to Celestun

Celestun, Mexico


Wading Flamigos
On Sunday we embarked on a tour to Celestun. A little place on the East Coast that is famous for the migration of flamingos. They come to the shallow waters of this area to feed. They are a different kind of bird to watch and seeing them take flight is cool but after awhile they get boring.

Taking off

Celestun is about 200 km from Merida, it was a 1h 45min bus ride. Once there we got on to a small power boat where we went down this inlet to see the flamingos. We stayed there watching them for a about 5-10 minutes then were taken to this cool canal inbetween Mangroove trees.

Mangrove canal
This was cool. The driver of the boat sped through this narrow passage into the canal( a little scary but excilerating). We then docked and walked through a maze of fresh water springs, one of which you could swim. We were told there are over 150 different spieces of fish through these springs and in the salt water confines of the inlet. Did I mention there are also Crocodiles in the inlet? I didn´t see any though.
We then board the boat which took us back to the mainland where we were treated to a great lunch of a salad or shrimp/octopus cocktail for an appeitizer and fried or bread white fish for our entree.
After lunch we lay on the beach for about an hour before we had to board the bus back to Merida. The Gulf of Mexico is nothing like the Caribbean. The water there was brown and murky. I put on the snorkling gear but couldn´t even see my hand in front of my face. I stayed in there for 5 minutes, it was pretty gross.
All and all the tour was worth it.

permalink written by   Chris Pagett on February 22, 2009 from Celestun, Mexico
from the travel blog: Chris and Em's Adventure
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