All worked out fine, and we hopped on our super long flight to 'Noi Zoiland'!!!!

Woooo!

written by  coopsandbets on December 7, 2010 from Wellington, New Zealand
from the travel blog: We are off to find the wizard!
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We then faced our first overnight bus across to the state of Chiapas. Our first stop here was to visit another Mayan ruins, Palenque. The temples were not as big as Tikal, but it was a lot more interesting as a lot more had been excavated so you can really see the details and understand a bit more. Unfortunately, there was a bit less wildlife, boo hoo! We decided to go off the beaten track and stay in the jungle near the ruins. It was a crazy little village (El Panchan) amongst the trees, filled with hobos/hippies and howler monkeys (they sound like dying dinosaurs when calling - it was a little terrifying!) What was more terrifying was finding a cockroach in our shack that night before bed. What ensued was mild panic as we both ran around the room with only a bin, a vase and a flower (used as a poking device) whilst moving all furniture in our path to capture the little bugger. Bets finally succeeded in doing this but needless to say we slept in our sleeping bag liners with them over our heads! We did enjoy a fun night in the jungle though with some entertainment from the crazy hippies playing music and fire dancing!

We really liked the town of San Cristobal de las Casas, which was also in the Chiapas. We had been warned but weren't totally prepared for the chilly, mountain conditions though, causing us to need actual jeans and jumpers rather than sweating it up bikini stylee. We saw A LOT of churches and cathedrals and visited artesian markets and had more of a culture injection by visiting a historical house/museum where an explorer and journalist couple had lived. The town was also filled with what appeared to be European hippies and we couldn't quite work out where they had come from! Despite having to wrap up super warm, we really enjoyed this cobbled streeted town.

Our second overnight bus took us back to the Yucatan to the town of Merida, which had been recommended and sounded good in the guidebook, but it wasn't our favourite place as it was a bit hectic and grimey! We spent the whole day with sleazy mexican men blowing kisses at us and we have never seen so many churches in our lives. The highlight was definitely the free breakfast (fruit, cereal, toast, omelettes, pancakes, etc) and the second tiny black kitten of our trip at the hostel.

We decided to spend our last few days in Central America on the island just off Cancun, called Isla Mujeres. We had a super fun time here, the hostel was really lively and we met lots of fun people. The best bit was our new found friend Baptiste, who was a 4 seater golf buggy that we hired with another English guy and ventured around the island on. We visited a turtle sanctuary that was half cute and half traumatising as there was a tank of literally hundreds of baby turtles all squirming all over each other and we couldnt work out if one or two were dead or not?!?! On the island there were some beautiful houses and resorts looking out onto rugged coastline...it was like a postcard! Bets also enjoyed a freshly caught and cooked whole fishy. Our island stay also included the night of doom. We are not sure if this is due to the lack of food and drink in the day, but we should of read the signs when after the first mojito with dinner laura says "well thats definitely gone to my head." Back at the hostel the night continued with chatting to our fellow travellers, a fairly unsuccessful game of spanish simpsons cluedo, music, dancing and bonfire on the beach and MANY more drinks. It can only be said that the next day was not fun. We wasted a whole day of potential sun tanning as we could not move from our beds and Coops could not make it 5 metres down the beach without having to stop and throw up behind a wheelie bin. Nice. The two day hangover has left her with some serious scars and alcohol still fills her with fear. But, we can safely say that we really enjoyed our time here and in Central America in general. Its gone by super quick and it feels bizarre to be moving on to the next place, but also exciting.

New Zealand here we come............

P.S if we were coming home now...you'd be REALLY impressed with our tans!

written by  coopsandbets on December 6, 2010 from Auckland, New Zealand
from the travel blog: We are off to find the wizard!
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Our first glimpse of paradise was in Placencia (a peninsula on the South coast) It was a really tiny little town, but with lots of charm. Most houses were wooden and on stilts looking out over the beach and we pretty much had a guest house all to ourselves and enjoyed our hammocks on the veranda (apart from the freaking giant, green, flying insects!) We were glad to catch this place in time because it seems like lots of Americans are going to swoop in to build themselves nice beachside holiday homes. Bad times! We got involved with the Creole cuisine (lots of yummy chicken, shrimp, fresh lobster, and coconut rice) and were determined to find some fresh coconut....so we enlisted the help of a local who climbed up and picked us some good uns and we can now say that we are expert coconut openers, well kind of. This resulted in a new found cocktail called crazy coconut float (coconut water, coconut rum, vanilla ice cream and ice), very delicious!!!

Our next hardship was having to hop on the water taxi over to the beautiful island of Caye Caulker (just off the Belize coast). This was slightly more tourist-y but we wanted to come to do some snorkling on the Belize barrier reef. (We shall move quickly on from the near stay at a bed bug infested hostel!) We had an amazing day out on the 'Ragga Queen' sail boat and once again were forced to eat yummy food (FYI shrimp ceviche is a must-try!) and drink yet more rum punch...jeez! The highlight of the day, was shark and ray alley and guess what...there were lots of stingrays and SHARKS!!! These were not quite as scary as we had feared as they were reef sharks and actually had quite cute faces, but we did have to be very brave every time we got in the water! Very excitingly we got to touch the sharks tummy (Coops' squeal as she did so frightened everyone else!!) and the rays fin, making sure we didn't get Steve Irwin'd at the same time!! Bets also sneakily touched a sea turtle that everyone else was admiring from afar! There were oodles of other pretty fishes and coral for us to see. We returned slightly pink in places from our day in the sun, but very happy.

More drinking was done (this time daiquiris) at the local reggae bar, with swings for seats and the barman insisting on teaching us tricks and then giving us 40% proof rum (wow!) and then we had a good boogy too....trying to stay away from the local perve who had decided to latch on to us! (And if one more person asks us "sisters...you two sisters?!?!" we will scream!)

Our holiday in a holiday sadly had to come to an end when we waved goodbye to paradise and headed back to the mainland to cross the border to Mehico!!

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

written by  coopsandbets on October 13, 2010 from San Cristobal, Mexico
from the travel blog: We are off to find the wizard!
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The border crossing we mentioned was slightly scary, after getting the 4am chicken bus (filled with limes) from Leon we were thrown out at what can only be described as a slum with a million rickshaw drivers hassling us to get a ride with them. So we literally crossed the border into Honduras by means of a little man peddling his legs off with another running alongside to make sure we stayed upright!!! It was definitely a moment to remember. Especially when we came across some Honduran police and they stopped us and waved their guns around for a little while, before letting us go past!

The first town that we found ourselves dumped in had absolutely no other tourists so we found ourselves sat in a motel eating some of the lovely local delicacies (errr...fried chicken and chips) watching some amazing american cable tv (cougar town, the good wife, the american office, jay leno.....don't judge us, we've been without english/american contact for a while now!!!)

We did get to see some amazing caves that we explored all by ourselves, which was pretty scary! We kept freaking each other out by saying "what would happen if we got trapped in here?! Would anybody find us?!?" It was ok though...we had bat friends to look after us.

We also went to the quaint, cobble-streeted town of Copan Ruinas which was lovely to wander round and we had some delicious coffee from the nearby coffee plantation...yum yum! The hostel we stayed in here was really crazy fun, with teddy bears pinned to the walls and each of the beds named after famous people (ours was ken and barbie...oh yeh!) but it was quite fun because there were some other fun travellers there and so we had a night out with them. The claims of the main bar in town having funky music with a dj were slightly exaggerated, but we enjoyed our cheapo mojitos none the less and also met some LA lifeguards (yes they are real life baywatch people, how exciting!)

We decided to hold off visiting the ruins here as we are awaiting bigger and better things in Guatemala and Mejico!

When trying to book a bus onto Guatemala we were told "computer says no" so found the much more comfortable alternative of a shuttle which we shared with our new found lifeguard friends and a possibly German girl who Letty managed to insult by assuming she couldn't understand English....whoops. Lots of dodgy biscuits, crisps, icecreams, sweets and yet again, yes you guessed it, ham sandwiches later we arrived into the beautiful town of Antigua, Guatemala just as the sun was setting....

Lots of love xxxxxxxxx

written by  coopsandbets on October 7, 2010 from Placencia, Belize
from the travel blog: We are off to find the wizard!
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Antigua was quite a tourist hub. We had a fun night out in a little bar where they all seemed to congregate, where tequila shots may have been forced upon us! :-S
There was however a dark side, in the shape of a sleeping bag thief. They sprung whilst we were out in town and we can't work out if they were a fellow traveller or a freaky local who decided they needed a comfy (expensive!) sleeping bag of Coops' to make their own! The next thing to go was Bets' bra, which clearly a laundry woman decided she liked the look of, as it sadly never returned from our washing! And then to top it off Lettys small ring was also swiped from our bedside table! Damn them!

Our next stop was Coban for the pupose of visiting Semuc Chempey. This was an amazing set of rainwater pools that were turquoise blue, with a boisterous muddy river flowing underneath. We had a really fun guide who took us, a nice Aussie girl and adorable Canadian man through the pools; diving, jumping and sometimes sliding between them all (we won't mention that the really pants weather made it slightly less appealing). We also visited some more caves in a nearby town called Lanquin; where we befriended more bats. The nice people who were on our tour (including an Israeli couple) took us out for a meal that night at the 'best restaurant in town' which happened to be at our hostel. There was much excitement over the mouth watering desert selection. Coops had difficulty containing her joy and even moreso making her decision on what to have! Good times!

We had then planned a fairly pleasant and straight forward journey to the next town - Flores! HOWEVER - this did not go to plan! Due to the immense amount of rain, we were once again told 'computer says no' when trying to leave Coban. After going back and forth to the bus station we decided to wing it without really knowing where the bus was headed. After 10 minutes we were forced to stop, get out and walk as there was a demonstration blocking the road. Clearly strikes in Guatemala only last til 12pm; as just as we were walking through they started peacefully clearing up. We thought that this might be the reason for the earlier confusion but how very wrong we were. It turns out that at a lot of points along the road we had to travel, the rivers had overflowed. So we spent the next 6 hours having frequent intervals where we had to get out of one bus and clamber aboard some make-shift raft that was then half carried, half floated across to the other side. We were terrified that our backpacks would not survive, especially when one man decided to carry both of them on his head! Our faces were truly a picture of sheer terror and this didnt go away when we also had to cross again with our leggings rolled up, being laughed at by locals. Or the time we had to walk over a single plank of wood whilst others were marching towards us in the other direction! You will pleased to hear that we made it through in one piece and we now look upon this as an amusing dinner-party story!

We eventually made it to Flores, which was a cute town (on an island in a lake). From here we visited Tikal (famous mayan ruins). The temples and pyramids were amazing, and we exhausted ourselves trying to climb them. Tikal is set in a jungle so lots of animal sightings were had. We saw: howler and spider monkeys, toucans, more agoutis and coatis, a miniature guatemalan squirrel, a giant colourful bird (we don't know what it is!) and most horrendously a tarantula. Well Letty saw the devil's creature but Coops, at this point, was standing a safe distance away and banned Letty from taking any photos!

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

written by  coopsandbets on October 7, 2010 from Caye Caulker, Belize
from the travel blog: We are off to find the wizard!
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Granada was the first of our colonial towns and was definitely an exciting change of scenery. Our first venture around town was filled with lots of photo opportunities of the beautiful buildings, every single house painted a different bright colour. The main square had horse drawn (cant really call them) carriages with some slightly sad looking horses, which made Bets feel bad. We also made ourselves want to cry by venturing into some of the lush hotels that surrounded the plaza. They had beautiful courtyards and swimming pools which we were close to jumping into with our clothes on! We got very excited when we found a cute cafe (with book shop on the side) and completely forgot that we werent supposed to be drinking tap water when we both ordered an iced coffee. Bets felt the consequences the next day...eek!! Endeavours to find the supermarket were slightly unsuccessful (as we made our way through the bussling, market street as darkness approached) so we were forced to eat out and were severely disappointed. We ended up in some American sports bar near to our hostel...the only redeeming factor was the fact that we were entertained by a drunken American couple but Coops food was essentially kfc and Bets had a "baguette" in a burger bun.

The next day we made our way (with the help of a friendly nun!) to a market in Masaya. Lots of handicrafts, souvenirs and some local tat! We allowed ourselves a few treats, both of us deliberating for ages on what colour hairband to get!! After a quick lunch from a barbeque in the main square we were pointed in all different directions to find a bus to Lago (lagoon) del Apoyo. We have found this a lot.....even though the locals are trying to be helpful, quite often they dont really know what theyre talking about!! This may have something to do with the language barrier! As usual we were thrown off the chicken bus at the top of the lake and had to walk downhill for about 45 minutes to reach it....when we got there we werent even sure we had the right place, because the beach was fairly questionable! However the view was stunning and the water crystal clear. Even though we had bikinis at the ready, we only managed a quick paddle and stopped for a drink, which Bets managed to through all over herself due to being zonked out from the heat and mugginess. The journey back was a nightmare as it was a sunday evening and the buses had stopped running...so we ended up forking out for a taxi (again!) Another extremely disappointing meal was had in the main square that night, where we thought theyd accidentally given us childrens portions. We havent managed to find any really tasty food as a lot seems to be fried, american stylee (The US influence is a lot more noticeable than we were expecting). Weve been trying to be "economical" by having endless ham sandwiches with crisps to liven it up a little...two weeks on and we didnt realise you could actually hate a piece of meat!!

We took a tour around the isletas (little islands) of the nearby lake with a fairly useless guide, who quite happily told us he doesnt speak much english....helpful! The islands are really cute..some tiny with a family living in a shack and others massive with wealthy nicaraguans owning their holiday homes here (the ex president Samosa had one!). The highlight, once again, was animal related as one of the islands creatively named monkey island was home to 4 monkeys who came right up to the boat as we approached and we were actually a little bit scared...do monkeys have rabies?!?

Then we went up to Leon, another impressive colonial town but much less restored. We stayed in one of the happening hostels, with some real traveller types! We befriended some of the many Germans that seem to be travelling here, through the use of the tiny communal kitchen. We decided that we could finally allow ourselves the luxury of a day of rest, in the form of sunbathing! Once again, wed been informed by some helpful locals (?!?) that the beach at Las Penitas was beautiful. After a long excited bus journey we arrived to find the beach completely deserted and the (kind of) grey sand frigging boiling! We set up camp only to be perved on by some local guys who came out of nowhere so decided to quickly move on and placed ourselves in front of a hostel for safety! (Mums...be proud). The waves were huge and rough but we were so hot and covered in sand that we had to brave them. Bets managed this with the well practiced trick of diving head on into the wave. Unfortunately Coops didnt know about this! She took two steps in and mild panic set in. When the wave hit her, her little pegs couldnt take the force and she got totally wiped out! This would of been ok...had it not been for the subsequent two other waves that then went over her head with Bets shouting from a distance "watch out!!!" She appeared after a full salt water nasal flush looking confused, disorientated and slightly traumatised. As a result...she is still picking sand out of her hair!!! It was hilarious though! The long anticipated icecream had to wait until we returned to town and we shotgunned the only 2 hammocks in the hostel to munch down on them....good times!! We cooked a slightly interesting version of a spanish tortilla...we really need to get to grips with cooking in hostels!

This finished off our adventures in Nicaragua and we were then going to be moving quickly on to Honduras....

Granada was the first of our colonial towns and was definitely an exciting change of scenery. Our first venture around town was filled with lots of photo opportunities of the beautiful buildings, every single house painted a different bright colour. The main square had horse drawn (cant really call them) carriages with some slightly sad looking horses, which made Bets feel bad. We also made ourselves want to cry by venturing into some of the lush hotels that surrounded the plaza. They had beautiful courtyards and swimming pools which we were close to jumping into with our clothes on! We got very excited when we found a cute cafe (with book shop on the side) and completely forgot that we werent supposed to be drinking tap water when we both ordered an iced coffee. Bets felt the consequences the next day...eek!! Endeavours to find the supermarket were slightly unsuccessful (as we made our way through the bussling, market street as darkness approached) so we were forced to eat out and were severely disappointed. We ended up in some American sports bar near to our hostel...the only redeeming factor was the fact that we were entertained by a drunken American couple but Coops food was essentially kfc and Bets had a "baguette" in a burger bun.

The next day we made our way (with the help of a friendly nun!) to a market in Masaya. Lots of handicrafts, souvenirs and some local tat! We allowed ourselves a few treats, both of us deliberating for ages on what colour hairband to get!! After a quick lunch from a barbeque in the main square we were pointed in all different directions to find a bus to Lago (lagoon) del Apoyo. We have found this a lot.....even though the locals are trying to be helpful, quite often they dont really know what theyre talking about!! This may have something to do with the language barrier! As usual we were thrown off the chicken bus at the top of the lake and had to walk downhill for about 45 minutes to reach it....when we got there we werent even sure we had the right place, because the beach was fairly questionable! However the view was stunning and the water crystal clear. Even though we had bikinis at the ready, we only managed a quick paddle and stopped for a drink, which Bets managed to through all over herself due to being zonked out from the heat and mugginess. The journey back was a nightmare as it was a sunday evening and the buses had stopped running...so we ended up forking out for a taxi (again!) Another extremely disappointing meal was had in the main square that night, where we thought theyd accidentally given us childrens portions. We havent managed to find any really tasty food as a lot seems to be fried, american stylee (The US influence is a lot more noticeable than we were expecting). Weve been trying to be "economical" by having endless ham sandwiches with crisps to liven it up a little...two weeks on and we didnt realise you could actually hate a piece of meat!!

We took a tour around the isletas (little islands) of the nearby lake with a fairly useless guide, who quite happily told us he doesnt speak much english....helpful! The islands are really cute..some tiny with a family living in a shack and others massive with wealthy nicaraguans owning their holiday homes here (the ex president Samosa had one!). The highlight, once again, was animal related as one of the islands creatively named monkey island was home to 4 monkeys who came right up to the boat as we approached and we were actually a little bit scared...do monkeys have rabies?!?

Then we went up to Leon, another impressive colonial town but much less restored. We stayed in one of the happening hostels, with some real traveller types! We befriended some of the many Germans that seem to be travelling here, through the use of the tiny communal kitchen. We decided that we could finally allow ourselves the luxury of a day of rest, in the form of sunbathing! Once again, wed been informed by some helpful locals (?!?) that the beach at Las Penitas was beautiful. After a long excited bus journey we arrived to find the beach completely deserted and the (kind of) grey sand frigging boiling! We set up camp only to be perved on by some local guys who came out of nowhere so decided to quickly move on and placed ourselves in front of a hostel for safety! (Mums...be proud). The waves were huge and rough but we were so hot and covered in sand that we had to brave them. Bets managed this with the well practiced trick of diving head on into the wave. Unfortunately Coops didnt know about this! She took two steps in and mild panic set in. When the wave hit her, her little pegs couldnt take the force and she got totally wiped out! This would of been ok...had it not been for the subsequent two other waves that then went over her head with Bets shouting from a distance "watch out!!!" She appeared after a full salt water nasal flush looking confused, disorientated and slightly traumatised. As a result...she is still picking sand out of her hair!!! It was hilarious though! The long anticipated icecream had to wait until we returned to town and we shotgunned the only 2 hammocks in the hostel to munch down on them....good times!! We cooked a slightly interesting version of a spanish tortilla...we really need to get to grips with cooking in hostels!

This finished off our adventures in Nicaragua and we were then going to be moving quickly on to Honduras....

We arrived in San Jose now over a week ago to be greeted by prostitutes on the drive from the airport to the hostel! Nice! Was not all bad though as the hostel was nice and fed us delicious pancakes for breakfast! Nyum nyum! We didnt stay long in San Jose as essentially it has little to offer apart from the crazy food market where we had Casados (a traditional dish) and lovely national theatre where we found out how Costa Ricans used to dress to go to the theatre.....really educational!!!! :-S

We soon moved onto Alajuela where we went to a Butterfly farm where we both turned into little children squealing "ooo look at this one, look at this one!" A newly hatched butterfly actually climbed on our hands as it seemed dazed and confused...it was very exciting!!! We also went to a national park to look at Volcan Poas (a non active volcano crater) however when we got there we were greeted by a sea of white clouds and therefore could see sweet FA! This gave us rage until after waiting patiently for ages it slightly cleared and we managed to get a glimpse (ish!) but we did see another crater lagoon which was beautiful and had turquoise water!!

On our travels on some questionable bus journeys (including some super narrow deathly mountain roads!) we have been able to admire some of the amazing Costa Rican scenery - lush green hills, gushing rivers, rows upon rows of coffee plantations and brightly coloured houses alongside corrugated iron roofed shacks!

We thought we needed to embrace the outdoors by embarking on a small hike from La Fortuna, our next destination. We enquired about the standard tourist packages, but thought "oh no no no" we can use our own initiative and do it alone! It turns out the 6km "hike" up and down (!!!) the extinct volcano Cerro Chatto was something of a nightmare! After the first 5 minutes in the midday sun we soon realised this was not going to be so much fun! We thought upon entering the rainforest the shade would make the experience somewhat more enjoyable, however when we began to climb over tree roots on the near vertical path (if you can call it that) the banterous team spirit started to dwindle! This was marginally interrupted by Lauras over-excited sighting of a monkey/sloths tail swinging from a tree...as cameras were quickly grabbed from bags some stinky Germans waltzed up and shattered the illusion by announcing it was a merely a leaf and then just bogged off, leaving us very disheartened! The jungle seemed to go on forever with no sight of the top and we started to lose the will when our clothes were soaked, beads were rolling down our faces and mud covered our hands and knees! After what seemed like hours we reached the top only to be greeted by a pants view point and feeling a little sick. We then had a further climb down to the lagoon in the crater, being rained on and going down on our bums made us question "Why god! WHHHY!" We returned to our hostel feeling like Zombies and aware that the aching limbs were going to come thick and fast!

The blow was softened by a fun evening with some new hostel friends from the Cayman Islands (no we didn´t know where they were either!) and a game of guess the song (don´t ask!) We also made a visit to a super tall (we curently cannot remember exact measurements) waterfall and attempted to swim in the breath-takingly cold pool at the bottom! This only lasted a few minutes as we kept getting pushed back towards the rocks. So instead we found a nice calm spot where we chilled on the rocks in the sunshine and could dip our toes.

We then journeyed on lots of pubic buses to Liberia (attempts of speaking spanish ensued with Laura realising she remembered shockingly little of her gcse spanish lessons with Miss.Hernandez and Letty coming to the rescue as some sort of bilingual saviour!) The hostel was a little questionable, but the friendly peruvian owner (and the big comfy hammocks) made up for it! Strict demands were made when considering our next visit to a national park, that it must be "flat". So we headed off on a nature trail at Parque Nacional Rincon de la Vieja. We took this very slowly as any sudden movements were proving too much as we still ached. We spent the entire circuit with necks strained looking up at the trees for a sight of any of the array of wildlife we had been told so much about. Our excitement was clear when we first saw some Coatis (racoon type cute animal) and some weird giant orange rat look-a-likes that we found out were called "agouti"! We saw some natural hot springs, mud pots, waterfalls and what they called a mini volcano (!?!) After some fellow walkers told us they had seen some monkeys we were very disappointed we had missed out. But whilst quietly eating lunch Letty spied some monkeying around out the corner of her eye! We were VERY excited and our cameras have now been filled!

Unfortunately we are now sitting with some horrendously itchy "mountain-mosquito" bites! Aaaaagh! (we are hoping they dont carry any sort of diseases we don´t know about!!!)

Costa Rica - DONE!

Today we arrived in Granada, Nicaragua...more to follow on the next episode...!

xxxx

written by  coopsandbets on September 18, 2010 from Granada, Nicaragua
from the travel blog: We are off to find the wizard!
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