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!
Send a Compliment

---

comment on this...

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!
Send a Compliment

---

2 comments...

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!
Send a Compliment

---

comment on this...