Destination Desert

After a lengthy journey we're in Chile again. The last time we visited (in 2008) our stay in the capitol Santiago was cut very short due to travel arraignments, so this time we spent a whole day and night exploring the town. While nothing mindblowing, Santiago has some very pleasant areas and after a few months in Central America, the European style vibe feels almost exotic. Late in the second evening we board one of their brilliant Cama Class buses (hey Finland, when are we getting these babies?) which have the seats that recline all the way - after all the name Cama means "bed" - and ride through the night 800km to the north to Copiapo.

The stop in the mining town (near the mine where the miners recently got trapped) Copiapo is merely to cut the travel time to Atacama in half to avoid sitting 26 hours on the bus in a row. We didn't find a lot to do in town beyond a visit to Museo Mineralogico and sampling some of the fine wine the country has to offer. And of course to hit the Parrilladas; we've had almost no meat dishes on the trip so far besides some ground beef burgers and such, and a feast of Bife de Lomo is more than welcome. Then it's time for another overnight bus up north to Calama, where we change to another bus and finally get to our final Chilean destination, San Pedro de Atacama (pop. 3k-4k), the tourism hub of the Atacama region.

The small town of San Pedro is full of tiny tourism agencies, all offering the same exact trips to nearby (and sometimes not so nearby) sights including lagoons, geysirs, volcanoes and most strange rock formations on the planet. The weather is rather interesting here; the air is so dry that it doesn't take 20 minutes for laundry to dry. Rain is very rare here and we've yet to see a single cloud on the bright blue skies; in some places of the desert it never rains, making Atacama arguably the driest place on the planet. Oh and a cool Finn called Reijo runs the nicest - and only - bar in town.

We, of course, did some of the excursions. One of them is to get on a minibus at 0400 in the morning, drive 2 hours to El Tatio geyser field - world's highest such, altitude wise - to freeze in the -15C .. -10C temperatures and watch the sun rise from above the mountain range and light up the fuming geysers. Afterwards you get to thaw in a thermal spring about 40C hot. Daytime temperature exceeds 30C in the sun, so the variation is quite big. It felt really strange shopping for woolen socks and hats in the scorching sun. In the afternoon of the same day we went to see sun set over Valle de la Luna, or Moon Valley, a strange bunch of sand dunes and canyons just outside the town.

And finally - beach vacation in the desert? Not quite, but our visit to the salty lagoons were still really relaxing. The first lagoon of the three boasts salinity of over 40% (ocean average is 3.5%) and thus allows you to float on the surface no matter what.  

And now our busy week in Chile is up and we're moving on. Next stop: Bolivia.

See all the Chile pictures here!

The Keepers of the Seven Cayos

They call the small Caribbean islands and islets Cayos - or "Keys" to the norteamericanos - and we certainly did visit our good share of them. On the last day on Isla Utila we stopped did the first dive of the morning at the nearby Diamond Caye and spent the surface interval snacking and sunning at a café on the Pigeon Caye where they had rescued a few baby turtles - that get flushed on to the shores occasionally - and a tiny nurse shark and were keeping them in confined seawater until they'd get bigger and stronger to be released. Great last day of diving all in all, encountered two seahorses and other small stuff in the sand between the corals.

After 9 splendid days on the island doing little else but diving, we felt like doing something else for a few days before leaving the region. And after several people at Alton's had recommended a jungle lodge near La Ceiba to us, we booked a cabin there. A bit pricey, the Omega Tours Eco Lodge was a very pleasant hideout in the valley by the river, covered by jungle and surrounded by mountains. Many people on Utila told us to definitely do a local waterfall hike there, and while not quite living up to the hype, the 3-4 hours trip up and down the mountain to swim and shower under the waterfalls (taller one had a 60m vertical drop section and indeed was quite a sight) was refreshing and provided the long overdue physical exercise. While not steeper than the previous hikes on the trip, this one required a bit more technical skill (even used ropes at one point) due to the huge rocks as slippery as wet ice. Riikka had some trouble with the tallest bits with her short reach, so I ended up tossing the dwarf a few times, but nobody told the elf.

We haven't really been listening to (our) music in something like a month. So on this morning's bus ride from La Ceiba to San Pedro Sula I fired up the laptop (which doubles as our only music player) and listened through Iron Maiden's genius album Somewhere In Time while working on the last set of Honduran photos. Good stuff! Really hit the spot after three weeks of almost pure reggae diet. While the weather at the moment inland is gray and rainy, when I'll think of Honduras in the future, the images in my mind will certainly be those of the lush jungles and the gorgeous turquoise waters of the Bay Islands. With careful calculation the night before, we ended up at the La Ceiba airport with 5$ worth of Lempiras in our pocket, which we used to buy baleados - the tasty local burrito with excess bean paste - and one last Salva Vida beer! 

Central America recap

The travel possibilities in the Central American region have been even better than I was hoping for. The transportation - i.e. the bus - is inexpensive and while not exactly fast, the small size of the region makes travel times doable. We've liked all the countries - Nicaragua and Honduras perhaps the most, at least we ended up spending the most time in those two. Belize was amazingly beautiful but rather expensive and offers little what Honduras - which is about 50% cheaper - does not. It's a shame we didn't make it to El Salvador, as that would probably have been the most exciting one of all with the lack of tourism infrastructure compared to it's neighbors. It's such a travel cliché to say "the local people are so nice there" but a few days ago we saw a police cruiser stop by a homeless beggar, an officer get out of the car and hand the man a few notes before driving off. Draw your own conclusions. 

Rough costs of usual things:

• entering a country through onland crossing: 0-12$
• onland departure tax: 0-3$ (Belize 4-37$ depending on the crossing point)
• airport departure tax: 37$ (Honduras, others probably similar amounts)
• night in a hostel double room 15-25$. Most often with shared bath/toilet and without hot water. Dorm prices per person were almost the same.
• dinner 3-5$ (5-10$ in Costa Rica & Belize)
• a whole large lobster on the Caribbean coast 15-20$
• 0.33 bottle of beer 1$ (1.5-2.5$ in Costa Rica and Belize and parts of Guatemala)
• an hour (anything from 20km to 80km depending on terrain, the bus and the driver) on a bus 0.75-1$
• half-day hiking/etc trip 20-30$
•  full-day trip such as rafting 50$, includes lunch usually
• getting a weeks worth of laundry for 2 people done 3-5$ (Belize 6-10$)
• 2 tank diving trip 50-55$ (Panama & Honduras, includes snacks and possibly accommodation in Honduras) to 100$ (Belize, includes nothing)
•  meeting tons of fun people: free!

So this is the end of the first and longest single leg of the trip. Next on the menu is the Andean highlands and coasts of South America. We have only done rudimentary planning on what the route will be, but with the ~20 hours of travel still ahead of us today there should be plenty of time to start looking into it in more detail and I'm sure we can hit most of the goodies of the area has to offer in the 4-5 weeks we have scheduled for the second leg. In other words it's time to open up the good old Lonely Planet South America (this is the book's 4th trip down here). But first: some nethack.



See all the Honduran photos here!



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A Few Perfect Days At Sea

After a few hour bus trip / another 4 hours of lunch and lazing around in La Ceiba we were sitting on the Utila Princess, the ferry to the Bay Islands diving capitol of Honduras, Isla Utila. We arrived at sundown and headed to Alton's Dive Center, to whom I'd been talking via e-mail for a few days. They gave us a splendid deal, 265$/10 dives, including accommodation in a private room. And the best thing is that their housing is right on the pier; less than 30 meters to walk to reach the dive boat from our door. Not to mention the awesome bar & hammocks facing the direction of the sunsets!



They advertise trips to Cayos Cochinos - or the Hog Islands - and we're lucky enough to join a boat going over already on our first day. The islands are slightly remote bunch of sand and rock with a few Garifuna people inhabiting them. The trip included two dives on a pristine reef 1.5 hrs away from Utila, meaning we were the only divers present and the reef was pretty much undamaged and teeming with marine life. After the dives we'd open a few cold beers and head to the shore where we had a fish & gallo pinto lunch and enjoyed rum from coconuts right on the beautiful white sand beach. The trip ended with a whale shark hunting session, but no luck that time. On the trip we had two fun guys filming Adrenaline Movement, some kind of a Madventures style travel show.

Diving has been seriously nice. The diveboats of Alton's are top notch with dedicated water tanks for cameras, a marine toilet where you can stand up (!) and floor material that prevents slipping. The sites on the north side of the island are amazing and closer sites on the south side are not too shabby either. While the amount of fish is not on par with Indian ocean and the water temperature is only 26-28C, the crazy visibility of 30-40 meters or more on almost every site makes up for it rather nicely. On the dives we've encountered a spotted eagle ray, stingrays, hermit crabs, a baby nurse shark, countless angelfish, lobsters and other crustaceans and seen two wrecks - and that's in 5 days of diving. And at the time of the writing we have 4 more days to go before having to leave for the mainland.

And then on to the whale sharks. The largest (known) fish on our planet is somewhat sacred here on Utila, and they are easier to spot here than almost anywhere else, and they're seen on a regular basis. And since you already looked at the picture, you might have guessed right: yes, we did see one. What they do here is during the surface interval of the north side dives they look for signs of a whale shark, which means looking for the surface "boiling", ie. tunas jumping on the surface. And thanks to our keen eyed captain, we did get to swim with a 7-8 meter shark for almost a good minute. And, last but not least, we got to take a picture most divers will never get to take in their lives.

Sleeping it off in Tela

So it's back to Honduras then. After some busy nights in Placencia - there was a Garifuna festival going on in Belize - with people we got to know from the sailboat and out on the town, we decided it best to stop in Tela to rest. Glad I didn't stay all the way till the morning, when they had a re-enactment of the Garifuna arriving on the beach on their boats, already felt rather unsteady as it was :p The 3-4 hour powerboat ride over to Puerto Cortes was a rollercoaster, with very rough seas after a few days of rowdy weather. The trip over also included a few very interesting border procedures, eg. the Belizean side immigration took place over the hood of a Toyota pickup truck, and in Cortes our passports were taken some 5km away from the harbor to the immigration office downtown and we had to go after them.

After arriving in Cortes, a horde of taxi drivers started to hustle people to go to the usual spots - La Ceiba for most people, and we hopped on as well. Getting off in halfway in Tela was a relief since it was already getting dark after a good 8 hours of travel and all the others still had a good 2 hours to reach La Ceiba where they'd have to stay overnight since the last boat to Utila had already gone.

After a week of staying in quite low key accommodation, we splurged a bit and grabbed a upmarket hotel at 30ish USD a night with cable tv and hot showers, and just spent a few days napping and watching movies and CNN. Tela is supposed to have a Garifuna Museum, and while we looked for it for a while, we couldn't locate it anywhere. Oh well. There was a few national parks around, too, but the weather was quite uncertain with occasional heavy showers and we didn't feel like risking getting soaked in the middle of nowhere. So for the most part of our waking hours we'd just walk the town and climb up on a small hilltop to watch the view over the bay. A relaxed beach destination, Tela seems to be mostly favored by the domestic tourists, and this seems to be a real quiet time to be here.

On the latter night we splurged a tad more and hit the town's fanciest restaurant Ceasar's Mariscos for some fresh local fish dinner. Not too bad at 10 USD a pop. Budgetwise it's nice to be out of Belize again. Been talking to a few dive shops on Utila through email, trying to work out a nice deal on dive packages and accommodation that they often bundle in the price. Looking good so far, and tomorrow we're going over.

Belize - A Small Slice of Heaven

Our story with Belize started with a 6 hour bus ride from Guatemala to Belize City harbor. Once again, the border crossing was rainy, with big puddles of crap to slosh through wearing flip-flops of course. The weather improved rapidly when getting closer to the coast, and by the time we were sitting on the speedboat to the small island of Caye Caulker, the sunshine was upon us from between the cloud cover. And come the next day, the clouds were long gone and now, almost a week later, we haven't seen any since..

Caye Caulker is a somewhat popular yet low-key tourist destination, not in the least because of its location only 1 hour by boat from Belize City, as well as the world class diving provided by the three main atolls on the barrier reef, Turneffe, Lighthouse and Glover's. The largest coral reef on the northern hemisphere and only second to the Great Barrier Reef planetwide, the Belizean reef is a great spot to come face to face with large marine life; sharks and big rays are abundant here, with the seasonal chances of seeing dolphins, whales and manatees. The only problem here is the cost of the sport - a two-tank dive would cost 100 USD. Whoa! We did one day trip, saw some nurse sharks, were amazed, but sadly couldn't afford more. Too bad, but then again it won't be long till we're on the Honduras Bay Islands doing the same thing for 1/3 the price.

After a cozy warm day of doing absolutely nothing beyond exploring the town and the occasional dip in the sea, we came into contact with the brilliant local company Raggamuffin who organize snorkeling trips on sailboats, and after a lengthy discussion ended up booking a 3-day sailing trip down south towards Placencia.  Talk about ex tempore! Till the last minute there was a bit of excitement about whether the trip would happen or not since the company needed 8 people to go and only 6 had signed up, but when we went back to their office at the deadline hour, they informed us the trip was a go. Super! At 300 USD the price of the trip was somewhat steep, but now having experienced it all I would be as bold to say it was worth the money.

The next morning we boarded the vessel Ragga Gal and headed out to sea. The breeze was very calm and we'd run on the engines the whole day, occasionally zigzagging small mangrove islands inside the reef and running fishing lines continuously. The first catch of the trip was by an English gent called Rob, and he got a pretty big one quite quickly. Go Rob! Before leaving they'd brief us about the trip and the fishing opportunities, but I'd definitely not expected we'd really catch anything worth mentioning. Oh man was I wrong about that! The total score was something like 2 big barracudas, a trevally, several red snappers, a grouper, 5-6 lobsters and a few other fishes whose species didn't reach my ears. Our diet consisted almost totally of the stuff we caught ourselves, cooked by our brilliant captain Patrick, while our tour guide/deckhand Shane was keeping people on board entertained with his reggae sing-along. What he lacked in singing voice was well compensated by the quantity of effort!

Our first overnight stay was on Rendezvous Caye, a tiny 15-by-50 meter strip of sand and palm trees close to the rim of the reef. We'd eat another serving of fresh seafood, including a lobster ceviche with nachos, and help ourselves to a gigantic amount of rum punch by a bonfire and fry marshmallows and play funny drinking games.

And the sunset on the island.. just purely unbelievable. Our 5 tents barely fit on the island, and being in the middle of nowhere under the stars was pretty wonderful.

The second day started with some more snorkeling and speargun action, looking for some lunch from the reef fish population. And the result: several lobsters and a load of red snappers. Later, some hours into the sailing southwards, our boat suddenly stopped with a thump, the hull trembling: we had rammed the reef on a shallow part and our vessel was stuck on it. With the slightly embarrassed Mr. Shane at the helm, us passengers hopped into the sea to lighten the load and after some time gunning the engine, the guys managed to back the boat off the reef and off we'd go again.

The second night we'd set our tents on Tobacco Caye, an island just slightly bigger than the first one but with some settlements, AND most importantly, a thatched-roof bar with ice cold beers to keep us oiled through the early night. Enjoying the general chatter among our group and watching a local Garifuna style drumming group play their music, we really enjoyed ourselves on that small island on the Caribbeans. This certainly is what life should always be about.. good times with nice people, good climate, unhurried pace with no deadlines. Go Slow! like they say on Caulker.

The third day started again with bit of snorkeling on the local stretch of reef. Before we set sail, we had an hour or so to play in the water, and it was worth it: I came face to face with a large spotted eagle ray swimming in the shallows. I dove after and followed it till my lungs were bursting, and it disappeared into the blue. Afterwards we just sat on the deck, talking about traveling and life with the fine people we'd come to know and like in the past few days on the boat. In the evening we arrived into Placencia, a midsized beach town in the southern Belize where a lot of north Americans are enjoying their retirement. While nothing spectacular, this place is great for sipping some cold drinks at the beach and thinking about the awesome past three days on the boat. A cool Irish couple from the boat are staying here with us for a few nights, while the others went their separate ways already. We're leaving for Honduras in 2 days as well.

Belize recap

Belize is quite different from the other central American countries. For one, it is a proper Caribbean country with the culture that comes with it. Out with the Spanish; English/Creole are the languages here. The backpackers are nowhere to be seen - people arrive here pulling  Samsonite bags after them. The prices are through the roof - roughly double compared to the most expensive counterpart in the area. But all in all, it would be impossible not to like the life here. The seas are turquoise and warm, beaches are white and the rum is relatively cheap and good.

And everyone you meet is smiling.

Edit November 20th: See all the Belize pictures here!