Notes from a Fairytale Island

Paradise found:

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There are times when you go travelling when you really have to, well, travel. The day we left Guatemala was one of those days. It began at 6am with an unscheduled backpack-laden sprint to Livingstone harbour thanks to an insufficiently insistent alarm clock. Catching the commuter motorboat just in time we squeezed in between our fellow passengers and were whisked across the bay in a cloud of freezing sea spray. We were greeted at the dock by Raoul, whom we were reliably informed could get us to the Honduran border cheaper than any taxi. Joining forces with fellow backpacker Nathan we jumped into a minivan and were soon speeding towards the frontier. Following some scepticism at Raoul's suggestion that we pay a friend of his to drive us on to our final destination, some complicated Spanish negotiations, hasty exchange rate calculations and a heated misunderstanding at the point of payment we found ourselves sharing the back seat of an American Honduran man's SUV en route to the nearest major bus station. Unable to find said bus station, our American Honduran friend dropped us in the town square where we found a taxi to take us the rest of the way and he tootled off to finish his shopping. Moments later we were reclining comfortably on a surprisingly luxurious luxury coach bound for Tegulcigalpa, the Honduran capital, and I was happily munching on complimentary chocolate biscuits and sniffling at "A Walk to Remember" as we sped across Honduras. One more taxi ride and a total of 12 hours later we found a hotel room and collapsed for a while.

Tegucigalpa is a typical Central American capital city - scruffy, dirty and a bit on the sketchy side so the plan was to spend a night recovering from our epic voyage and psyching ourselves up for the 9 hour bus trip into Nicaragua the next morning. Part of this recovery was a trip to the city centre to reassure ourselves the Lonely Planet wasn't duping us into missing anything. We weren't - it took us an hour in a taxi to travel the 2km from our hotel to the main square and most of that time was spent sitting in streets crammed with fume-belching cars and lorries, piles of rubbish and kamikaze motorcyclists with our boy racer driver's Honduran Christian rock cd as an unexpected soundtrack. After a cursory inspection of the city centre we spied a Burger King and, in need of a quick fix tea before it got too late, we headed over. As we got to the front of the queue we noticed that something called a "family feast" meal was slightly cheaper than the 2 regular combo meals we were about to order. Following the backpacker instinct to save money at every opportunity we automatically ordered that instead and were duly presented with 4 burgers, 4 portions of fries and 4 drinks. Realising with embarrassment that our impromptu thriftiness was taking the stereotype of greedy Westerners to dizzying new heights we spent the rest of the meal skulking in a corner pretending the rest of our family had just nipped to the loo and avoiding the sidelong glances of everyone who passed our table...

After a frantic early morning sprint around all of Tegucigalpa's banks in search of an ATM that accepted our cards we made it onto the bus and settled in for the trip to Nicaragua's capital, Managua. From there we buddied up with an elderly Israeli gent to charter a taxi to Granada, saving ourselves a couple of cordobas and a tortuous journey in a dangerously overcrowded, dangerously overspeeding minibus. Granada was a pretty place - a bit like Antigua at first glance with old colonial buildings, a very yellow catherdral and a peaceful leafy main square. Unfortunately it was also overrun with gangs of American teenagers on some sort of synchronised field trip and the main street looked inexplicably like it had been teleported in from the Canary Islands, complete with hordes of middle aged Westerners and tour groups. However, Granada did introduce me to the joys of vigorón - a local specialty consisting of pickled cabbage, boiled yucca root and pork scratchings all served up on a banana leaf. Surprisingly tasty.

The much anticipated highlight of our Nicaraguan adventure was the island of Ometepe. Formed over several hundred years, the island grew from the gradual accumulation of solidified lava and ash from two active volcanoes that rise out of Lake Nicaragua. Still mercifully untouched by developers and package tours, Ometepe is a backpacker's paradise and as our early morning ferry chugged across the lake it emerged from the mist like something out of a fairytale. We checked into a hostel room surrounded by banana trees and hammocks in the shadow of the imposing Volcan Concepción and just metres from the lake shore. Here we spent a blissful 4 days swimming in the lake, dining al fresco at the hostel's restaurant, watching spider monkeys lazing around in the tree tops and admiring the sunsets. If we had more time we could easily have stayed for weeks, but Costa Rica and our next Wwoofing assignment beckoned and soon we were on the road again.

Earthquakes and Banana Cakes

Photos:

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After enjoying 3 weeks of Guatemalan home cooking from our host family (lots of previously undiscovered vegetables, refried beans and unexpectedly, hot dogs) we were on the road again, shoehorned into a minibus for the 5 hour journey to the town of Coban. Except that due to a teachers' strike which inexplicably involved a series of road blocks around Guatemala City, a flat tyre and some road works we didn't arrive for a delightful 11 hours, by which time we were ready for a long and rejuvenating sleep. Unfortunately Mother Earth had other ideas and we were rudely awakened at 5am by a 5.6 magnitude earthquake rattling our hotel room. Not the most relaxing day of the trip...

We spent the next few days getting back to nature - squinting at the world's tiniest orchids (and plenty of beautiful regular sized ones), touring a coffee plantation and soaking in the amazing turquoise pools of the paradisical Semuc Champey. This enchanting jungle gem is well worth the bone rattling drive up and down twisting mountain roads it takes to get there. At Semuc Champey the Cahabon River runs underneath a 300m limestone bridge topped with terraces of startlingly blue and green pools where intrepid backpackers such as ourselves can spend happy hours swimming and generally lounging. Prolonging the outdoorsy vibe, we spent that night in what can only be described as a shack in the jungle - otherwise known as the Jam Bamboo hostel. Luckily they did pretty good pizza, and the only insect life we encountered (despite the lorry sized gaps between the planks of our bedroom walls) was a humongous mantis-type creature next to the bathroom sink. It's amazing what you can get used to.

Next stop and one of Rich's trip-makers was the jungle-clad Mayan ruins of Tikal. We arrived at sunrise, when the birds and howler monkeys are at their most active and the tour buses have yet to descend en masse. Getting up at 4am paid off - we were among the first in the park and had a whole pyramid top to ourselves for long enough to eat breakfast.

Final calling point was the unusual town of Livingston. Hyped by the Lonely Planet as a fascinating example of a Garifuna town (the Garifuna people, a mixture of native Indians and shipwrecked African slaves, originated on the island of St Vincent and later migrated to the Caribbean coast of Central America), we were impressed by its laid back vibe, abundance of choco-bananas and banana cake and the excellent boat journey along the Rio Dulce river to get there. We were less enthused about the general seediness, disappointing local speciality "tapado" (less coconutty seafood stew, more watery bowl of fishmonger's leftovers) and distinct lack of things to do. Still, worth the trip for the choco-bananas :)