ChrisJenTravel.com – Honeymoon Trek

Relieved and thrilled to be getting back to our baby boy (Morgan), our family and friends. The plane descended into Orlando and Dad Schroeder picked us up. Like a favorite memory, we hit up a restaurant with him – the floor covered in peanut shells like a Warhol painting. Relieved to once again have iced tea….I gulped down 3 glasses – my favorite part of any day. The time was precious and like dejavu – we had just been on the dock, saying goodbye. Chris and I headed out late – a big, black and hairy magnet force pulled us towards Jacksonville Beach. Long, late night drives weren’t anything new. We had just finished driving over 6,000 miles and another 180 was just the icing on the cake. Morgan wasn’t an option, we would see him before we slept, smell his smell, rub his ears and belly and kiss his wet nose. Counting down the minutes as we got on JTB toward the beaches, 20….18….12….6…..3…. I began to cry. We just wanted a big lick in the face from Morgan. We wanted his 100lb/12 year old frame nestled in between us.

The homecoming was great. Morgan, however, was a bit confused. He ran around excited and probably thought that he was dreaming. In one way, he acted as if we had never left, then he began to put on a show saying with his movements, “look at me play…remember how cute and I am, remember that I play a good game of fetch – don’t leave”. Next he became highly confused over whom to follow: my dad or Chris. I looked at Chris and could tell his heart had just broken into a million pieces.
Chris took him behind closed doors, had a one-on-one with him and before you knew it, Morgan was his shadow once again. This trip home would be short (5 weeks), and we were determined to take him everywhere with us…the car, the beach, the store, to Mamaw’s and to anyone’s house that we were invited to. The rule was if we went, Morgan went….if Morgan wasn’t welcome, we wouldn’t go.

Home was like cookies and milk after an upsetting day of 3rd grade. The temperature was perfect, the flavor and smell perfected. So many little things that we took for granted, from ice cubes to bath tubs. We took full advantage of the little things. I took a couple 4 hour long showers complete with hot water and better than any spa one could imagine. Chris developed an addiction for wireless internet (not to update the site, but to get caught up on every Lost episode of the season). Read the rest of this entry »

Our last night in Nicaragua we were exhausted and excited to grab dinner and bring it back to watch something on the 10 or so TV channels. Instead, we got back and the power was out – half of the night. We weren’t astonished, just tired. We had to continually knock on the owner’s bedroom door to find out when they would be through with our laundry…each time being berated by a disheveled slob who was grossly eating a feast in her bed. We woke up at 5:00am with dry laundry and literally dragged our 2 tons of junk around the corner to the bus station – taking breaks every 10 steps because of the enormous weight.

We caught a bus from Nicaragua to Costa Rica ($12 each). It was a nice AC bus, the AC just lacked freon and well, power. So, the toasty ride started at 5:30am and ended about 8 hours later. The border crossings were pretty easy. To depart Nicaragua, we stopped at the border crossing and waited outside of the bus as customs officials went through a stack of passports that had been collected when we boarded. Easy. Chris even tried his luck with a quesio-quesio (tortilla made with nasty homemade cheese and covered in a similar cream) – he couldn’t quite get it down. Then, we got to the Costa Rican border. It would have been easy, if we were simple travelers like everyone else. But, when entering, they have to search your bags and well it took us a long while to figure that out after going through customs, plus we had something like 9 bags. We had to drag our boards and bags into a long line and then haul them back before the bus departed.

Of course, the long board ended up getting a solid ding in the nose, but other than that, we had successfully transferred to the land of easy….Costa Rica, a place that we both had been, a place where we felt comfortable and could relax. Chris woke up in enough time to realize that we were nearing our stop. The bus abruptly stopped and we got out at a gas station in Liberia. On the curb, with no idea where to go, we hauled our enormous amount of luggage across the street Read the rest of this entry »

After being in El Salvador and Honduras, driving into Nicaragua felt like going home. Although it is the second-poorest country in the hemisphere, we’d heard nothing but good things about the people and many of our friends have already bought property to build their retirement homes there. As soon as we crossed the border, the country’s economic woes were apparent in the roads. The Panamerican Highway, yes that road that goes from Alaska to the tip of South America, is nothing more than a pothole- riddled unpaved street in northern Nicaragua. This slowed us down quite a bit but it eventually cleared up about 100 miles south and we made our way to Leon.

Leon is one of the three major cities in Nicaragua along with Managua, the capitol, and Granada, the classic Spanish colonial town. It is the liberal and cultural capital of the country. Although it is a bit rougher around the edges than some of the other colonial towns we visited, it is very charming with a huge 16^th century cathedral. We stayed in Bigfoot Hostel for $4 a night each and feasted on cheap American/Central American fusion food. We also got some valuable information from the Aussie owner, Darren, about a little-known surfcamp on the coast further north. This was just what we were looking for so we set out after just two days in Leon. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve heard Honduras has some amazing areas – the ruins at Copan, mountainous small villages, and of course, the Bay Islands which are world renowned for diving and fishing. However, we crossed the country on the Western edge which basically consists of a border crossing, followed by 70 uneventful miles on the Pan-American, then another border crossing. But in the interest of making this side of their country memorable, or maybe just to punish those quickly skirting through the country, Honduras makes their border crossings as miserable as humanly possible. Stories of waiting 5 to 6 hours for paperwork processing are common, as are the tales of being scammed.

We knew we were close to the border when a pack of young men came rushing up to the car, then sprinted down the street alongside. Each one was competing for our attention in the hopes that we would pick them to help process our border paperwork for a tip. We had given a nice guy $5 to help with the confusion at the El Salvadorean crossing and concluded it was well worth it, so we thought nothing of doing the same for Honduras, which is notorious for having more paperwork. We picked the one who spoke the best English and, with him standing on our bumper hanging on, we proceeded on, ready to do battle. Read the rest of this entry »

Well, a few of you are wondering where we (or at least our entries) disappeared to. We were going along strong through El Salvador, updating at least once a week, then somehow we picked up a bug in our computer which sllloooooooowwwwwed everything down and made it impossible to get on the web. We eventually got over this and decided to just go to the internet cafes and type our entries all at once. However, then we found out that the site that hosts our page, Bootsnall, was the victim of some hacking and more than a month’s worth of entries were lost.
After this we decided to just have a vacation for the last month of the Central America leg of the trip and update everyone in person or at a later date. So, here we are, back in Florida, getting ready to set off on the next leg – California, Hawaii, Southeast Asia, Australia, New Zealand on 11/28. We’ve managed to see most of our friends and family while we’ve been back and we sure miss home, but I can tell you we’re nowhere near ready to go back to work yet! I’ll try to update the end of the Central America leg as best as I can remember. It was amazing in all, so it shouldn’t be too hard.

Chris: Our mothers taught us that if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all. So, while we try to think of something nice to say, you’ll have to wait. I guess the surf was okay. And the friendly guards at every store, shop and hotel had nice shiny guns.

Jenny: We tried to stomach the food. The names of the dishes on the menus sounded great. Great if you like chunks of boiled skin, cartilage and bone connected to your small pieces of chicken. Chris and I finally decided to break out the camping stove and cook some good ole spaghetti. We left El Zonte and Zunzal (dirty, black sand beaches) and drove past La Libertad (well known surf spot). We were slightly turned off by the city named “The Liberty”; hearing that it was so dangerous you would need a police escort to the water if you wanted to surf. Read the rest of this entry »

Awaking early, we heard some strange sounds out front. Chris left to put some things in the car and came back a little frazzled. The crowded streets had emptied for a parade. Our “El Rodeo” sat alone on the streets, waiting to be trampled by crowds of people. He bargained with the police and told them that we would be gone within 10 minutes. We hurried out the door and made our last stop at the convenient store for breakfast on the road.

We didn’t realize that passing through towns might be a tiny difficult on the day after Independence Day. What we really didn’t realize was that the festivities go on for days and in some places, even a week. Passing through Comitan, we saw a Mexican family on horses, dressed traditionally. They rode up to the gas station on their way to a parade and their proud dad went in to buy all of his daughters Gatorade. I asked if I could photograph them and they were honored.

Before we knew it, we were at the border. The drive was a straight shot and went by faster than expected. We quickly made it into Guatemala, got through immigration and changed money with a street vendor. We headed to Antigua – another amazing Spanish colonial town in the mountains. Chris estimated that it would take 3 hours, 4 hours max with crossing the border. It took 10! Laughing it off and officially disbelieving any and all estimates that Chris would project in the future, we sat back and enjoyed the bum numbing drive. Read the rest of this entry »

We left the state of Oaxaca and entered Chiapas, the last state in Mexico. Not knowing what to expect and knowing that we pretty much hit all of the great beaches and surf spots, we were planning on breezing through San Cristobal for a night and entering Guatemala through one of the border crossings in the mountains. Much to our surprise, we loved Chiapas. It was like driving from Florida directly into Colorado. The drive was gorgeous and the towns were more affluent, organized and clean. We drove the long highway up into the mountains and began our climb to 6,000 ft – higher than Denver – to a town called San Cristobol. We arrived to the cobblestone, colonial town right after sunset. It was easy to tell that the town was a backpacker haven full of great shops, cafes and catholic cathedrals. Read the rest of this entry »

The resort area of Huatulco in Southern Mexico is actually a collection of small resort communities set on a series of beautiful bays, called Bahias de Huatulco. As overpriced and void of Mexican culture as the resort town of Ixtapa to the North, we weren’t interested much in the sights of Huatulco. Rather, we planned to stay there for 2-3 days before heading to Guatemala since it is the closest town to Barra de la Cruz, a world-class surf spot 20 miles to the South. Barra was a quiet fishing community surfed only by a few lucky locals and travelers passing through until it was thrust onto the world surf map this past June by an international contest. Millions of surfers around the world, myself included, watched the live internet broadcast of the contest for 3 days straight as the best professionals in the world swore it was the best wave they had ever surfed. Hoards of surfers, mostly Californians flying in for quick surf trips, have flooded the spot since and caused the town to actually start charging admission to the beach. However, as it was along the way for our trip anyway, I couldn’t wait to give it a try. Luckily, we arrived at Barra on a day when it wasn’t too crowded and I was able to surf some amazing chest-high right hand pointbreak waves for hours with only a few other people in the water. Later that day, however, nature struck back. Read the rest of this entry »

On our way out of town, we stopped at the local market and picked up a few things. Finally ripping ourselves away from the comforts of Puerto Escondito we moved on to Zipolite.  We had read it was a small but active backpacker community with great beaches, waves and atmosphere, so a few days of simple, cheap living would be a welcome change.  Unfortunately we found an empty village of beachfront shacks with a few half-open restaurants and no waves.  Just North of Zipolite, however, sits Mazunte, another small oceanfront community growing steadily with an influx of European ex-patriats.  Although far from being a tourist town, it has a nice little selection of restaurants and lodging as a result.  High up in the Headland Mountains we found an Eco-lodge to stay in for the night with an amazing view of the ocean and the town.  The lodge relies entirely on solar power and stored water, so provisions were sparse, but the view and ocean breeze made up for it.  Also, the place was run by a resourceful French couple that enjoyed cooking for the guests and sharing travel advice.

After pre-ordering our custom-made dinner for the night, we hiked down to the beach for a refreshing swim then around the headland to a secluded point and another beach to watch the sunset.  A tight trail through the woods eventually opened up to dramatic cliffs covered with grass and cacti.  The view was truly amazing.  There were also some donkeys and horses grazing in the wild which was really cool (the donkeys had somehow gotten loose from being tied to something nowhere near here and had for some reason come to this magnificent spot with ropes still dragging tree limbs).  The donkeys were spooked at first but finally let us get close enough for some shots.  After the sunset we hiked back for a great family style dinner at the lodge and shared stories with the French hosts, some travelers from France and an Australia journalist.  We were a bit sad since we thought our travel through Mexico was almost over but we had no idea about the week to come.