Losing it in Latin America

I loved Caye Caulker, but I finally made it off the island. It was becoming a bit of a local joke where I would say i was leaving tomorrow and then people would see me the next day saying the same thing. Still, when it’s good it’s good – time’s on my side.

Sunset on Caye Caulker

Monday was the day of escape, taking the water taxi back to the mainland, then a couple of local buses – Belize City to Dangriga, then Dangriga down to Placencia. When I say local I mean really local. Stopping at every pothole in the road to pick people up/drop off. Finally arrived in Placencia after nightfall and we were greeted by an old man offering lodgings, which turned out to be perfect, especially as were strangers in a strange land with nowhere to stay. It felt like we were the only people in the village on the first night, but the next day more backpackers turned up and the place started to come to life. Had a beautiful day on the beach with sunshine and tranquil waters, followed by much rum and coke in the evening.

Proceeded to spend the next 4 days in Placencia, and while the weather never returned to the form of Tuesday, it was still a cool place with beautiful friendly people. The faces from Caye Caulker kept popping up as the week progressed and ended on a high on Thursday night – perfect for getting that hangover for travelling Friday morning!

Managed to get to the Hokey Pokey water taxi at 10am Friday, took that down to Independence where we (just) caught the bus up to Hopkins for the Garifuna Settlement day celebrations. It’s been pretty shitty weather since we got here, which has put a bit of a dampener (!) on the party but there’s more fun tonight so all will be good.

Out of interest, since starting my trip in Mexico I’ve been hearing the Gasolina song all the way along – has this made it to England or is it just sweeping over this continent?

I’ve been in Caye Caulker for almost a week now, and think that it’s time to make plans to move on. Life here is just too laid back and easy that I can see myself slipping into the lifestyle and never continuing my journey.

Al, Ed and myself arrived here last Saturday morning when it was overcast and raining occassionally – not what we were expecting. We sorted out accommodation and within an hour we all had a beer in hand and the sun came out to play – welcome to paradise island.

Ed and Al

The beaches are white sand, palm-fringed, turquoise blue sea kind of thing. The place is so friendly and laid back, everyone speaks English (with a dollop of Creole) and reggae lazily drifts out of most bars and restaurants. You just can’t help but smile here, and that’s coming from me which says a lot.

The three of us went out snorkelling on the Monday morning (I’ve lost all concept of time and dates) with a small group of people. The local reef was beautiful with loads of tropical fishes, sharks, manta rays, coral etc. I really enjoyed the experience (first time for me) and will have to do some more on my travels.

After a couple of days the Tucan tour that we had left back in Mexico rocked up, with 30 new people and a few that were on the first leg of it with us. The next few days were fantastic as Ed, Al, Charmaine, myself and joined by Charmaines new partner in crime on the tour, Terrie. We all hung out together eating, drinking, kayaking round the island and generally having fun. I should mention a couple of the locals we’ve met. Maurice is the man, a big tall rasta dude from Chicago, living on the island running his own bar & grill – Wish Willys. He provided much hospitality which led to Terrie and myself ordering items which are not on the menus of any of the other restaurants in the area – the girl is a bad influence on my innocent self! Another local Reggie was working in the ‘I and I’ bar (reggae bar with hammocks and swings) and he’s such a nice guy. He’s originally from Hopkins on the mainland and I will no doubt bump into him again when I go there for the big music festival next weekend.

Come Thursday when the Tucan tour left along with Ed and Al returning to England, I found myself feeling sad and sorry for myself. This is going to be the toughest part of travelling, meeting really good people and then having to say goodbye all the time – what a pisser!

Still, within a couple hours I’d met some more people in the hostel, went out for drinks with them and had a really good night. How fickle am I?!!!

Right I need to go and start planning where next – I aim to get off the island in the next day or two and should get off the net before I run up a bill for more money than I have on me.

After 2 very busy weeks crossing Mexico on the big yellow (come and fleece us we’re rich) Tucan bus it all finally came to an end last Friday. Despite having had 2 occasions on the tour where I seriously considered bailing out in favour of travelling independently, when it came time to part company I was actually rather sorry to say goodbye. I couldn’t recommend the tour to people as the big tourist group thing is not what I expected or wanted, but the people on it were what made it for me.

The motley crew of theTucan tour and our lovely yellow bus

A steady diet of lime, chilli, beer and tequila (with some food too I should add) has generally kept me safe and well. Three weeks in Mexico and I haven’t had the shits once; quite a bonus though no doubt it’s in the post! Having said that there was a couple of late club nights where the tequila did fuck me over. One night ended with me waking up on the bathroom floor, only to crawl into bed at right angles to the conventional way (the Mexicans are not a tall race in general but I knew the bed shouldn’t be that short).

The other night started at the Mambo Cafe – the high cover charge encouraging us to take full advantage of the free bar ’til 1am, so after much tequila it ended with me pitifully asking people to take me home and proceeding to amuse them in the taxi by requiring a shoulder to rest my head on while mumbling about being Special Ed and requiring sympathy. Obviously sympathy was not at all deserved but Charmaine was a star and came to my rescue with both the shoulder and the sympathy – top bird!

Al sucks a phat one at the Mambo Cafe (Arthur Dayley eat your heart out)

Come Friday night, after a meal and a few drinks, Al, Ed (another one) and myself all got an overnight coach from Merida to Chetumal near the Belize border. At 5am we stumbled out of the coach half asleep and miraculously found a connecting bus that took us to the border crossing and then onto Belize City, where there was a ferry taxi almost straight away to take us over the Caye Caulker, the beautiful island off the Belize coast from where I’m writing this – this place is tropical paradise, but more on this in the next few days.

I should add that the border crossing was interesting. I’ve had my passport for 8 or 9 years now and not once has a border official laughed at my photo. Enter 3 british boys at 5am to be confronted by 3 beer swilling Belizian border guards at the end of their shift. They gave us some advice about drinking as much of the local brew as possible and getting jiggy with the local ladies, before ripping me apart for the dreadful goatee beard and helmet head hair that my student days blessed me with for my passport photo. Easy border crossing and well deserved piss-taking – it’s about time!

Right must go to drink beer and watch the sun go down, more about Caye Caulker later.

After a mad week in Mexico City, meeting loads of nice people at Hostel Amigo, I´ve now found myself one week into a two week tourist trip across Mexico. This is not how I intended to travel and can only be attributed to not reading the brochure properly(!), but despite the stupid big yellow bus and being lead round by the nose in a large group the people on the whole are really nice and we´ve covered a lot of ground.

The main itinierary has gone something like this:
Mexico City
Teotihuacan (pyramids of the Sun and Moon)
Puebla
Oaxaca
Monte Alban (ruins)
Tehuantepec
San Cristobal de la Casas
Agua Azul (Blue Water waterfalls)
Palenque (town and ruins)

Palenque Ruins

Of all of these places San Cristobal has so far been the stand out place for me, and definitely one that I´ll return to should I come back this way after the tour.

At present the plan is to end the tour in Merida (not Cancun due to hurricane Wilma) and get a bus down to Belize with a couple of the guys on the tour. I will continue this nonsense when my brain’s awake and add some commentary about my travels, for now I´m just trying to keep a record of what I´ve done.

I thought I’d only stay in the bewildering metropolis that is Big Bad Mexico City for a couple nights, prefering to escape for most of the week to a nearby place more chilled. However the fear subsides after a night or two and the madness of the place becomes quite infectious. I ended up loving the city and moved round the corner from my hotel into Hostel Amigo, where I’d been hanging out each evening meeting other backpackers at their bar.

Discovering the hostel was the best piece of luck I could have had as I finished a week in the city armed with more good info and advice than Lonely Planet can provide, and lots of nice people that I’ve met that I hope to meet up with again at some point.

The mean streets of Mexico City

Walking the streets of the city was enough to amuse me for some time, it has that hectic market place feel of Glastonbury festival. Despite that I did manage to take in a few sites as well including the Anthropology museum, Frieda Kahlo’s house/museum, checked out Trotskys’ pad (bit of a luxury fortress for a ‘man of the people’ though he had good reason which the ice pick in the back of the head proved), and took in the views of the city from it’s tallest building, the Latino Americano skyscraper – what a good little tourist I am.

I got in on the saturday night after very little sleep, found a good hotel easily enough and went out to get a bottle of water. I met an aussie guy on the street round the corner who took me into his hostel bar where I thought I`d get some water and maybe stop for a beer. Four hours later I`d met loads of nice people, including a couple from Bristol(!) had quite a few beers and went back around the corner to my hotel for the big sleep, satisfied in the knowledge that it was easy to meet people but without the bottle of water that I`d come out for in the first place!

Start as you mean to go on