The Maya Experience

Right now we were supposed to be enjoying the surf in sunny El Salvador. But fate had a different plan for us.. in Guatemala's Antigua where we would enjoy the scenery for a day or two and then catch a tourist shuttle to the Salvadorean coast, our transportation ended up being in an accident and never showed up to pick us up that morning. The driver had been hospitalized and the owner later greeted us with a limp. Lucky for us we were not on board yet. Meanwhile I kept thinking we had been had by a good old scam; paid for tickets and the ride never showed and the "travel agent" was nowhere to be found. In the end we got fully refunded, and offered a ride the next day but had already made up our mind of heading to Tikal instead of the coast.

When traveling, you tend to sit on a bus a lot. And the trip over to the lovely island of Flores - the gateway town to Tikal's Mayan ruins - was just that, some 8 hours on a shady bus way too chilled by the AC overnight. On the roadside toilet stops there always seemed to be a guard waving an assault rifle at us yawning passengers. Perhaps he was making sure nobody misses the urinal OR ELSE! Ole! Night buses are great as a concept, you travel all night and when the sun comes up you're in a whole new place having saved the price of a hostel room. But in practice you're totally exhausted from the lack of sleep and when you do arrive, you're hungry as hell but nothing is open for breakfast yet because its 0530 o'clock..

Arriving to Flores was awesome despite the tiresome trip. The island is compact and pleasant, we found a perfect place to stay in the center of it all and the day is turning great, 18C at 8am and going up, blue skies and all. In the afternoon we crossed the lake with a boat and walked across the peninsula of San Miguel to a local "beach" by the lake. Was amazed by how clear the water was. Never seen a turquoise lake with palm trees growing on the shores. There we enjoyed a relaxing swim with crowds of small black fish.

The next day it was wakeup call at 0400 and off towards Tikal, where we'd arrive shortly after sunrise and enter the park precisely at 6am, when it opens, as the first minivan. The group size of our guided tour (4-5 hrs, 7-8$) was way too big (20 pax or so) but other than that our day at the site was nothing short of fantastic.  I didn't expect for the ruins to be so awesome, but they're certainly up there with The Lost City of the Inca/Macchu Picchu as well as Angkor Wat. Nor was I expecting to encounter so plentiful flora & fauna - from the gigantic hardwood trees to tarantulas and crocodiles, not to mention the abundant bird life all around. Howler / spider monkeys constantly around in the canopy too!


 The weather was in our favor too, mostly sunny and not too hot, with the temperature hanging around 28-29C at noon. All in all a wonderful experience and well worth the 20$ park fee. From here we're heading to Belize to enjoy the caribbean coast for some marine sports. After a week of historical and archaeological sightseeing, some splashing around in the warm waters shall be very welcome.


Guatemala recap

Out of the countries of the region we've been to so far, Guatemala has the strongest tourist infrastructure by far. Shuttle buses connect all the major destinations, and the prices are quite high accordingly. Beyond that, the country is very pleasant to travel in, with overly friendly and helpful people and so much to gawk at. And yet so much remains to be seen; El Mirador ruins hike for example.. but that's for the next trip.


See all the Guatemala photos here!

Exploring the Copan Ruinas

Having kicked off the Honduras leg of the trip by overnighting in the capital Tegucigalpa, we hastily moved on from the city hustle (and what a dull city it was) to see the Mayan ruins at Copan Ruinas, a small town 12km off the Guatemalan border. I find it worth mentioning that the accommodation here has a hot water shower :) It's been almost 3 weeks since our last (in San Jose, CR) and man it's been way overdue. As for the dengue, the fever seems long gone now after a week of misery, what remains is a almost full-body rash which is starting to fade away as well. Good riddance.

20 minutes by foot from the town, the Mayan ruins cost 15$ to see but are worth it. Then again why would one be here if not for the ruins? We were the first ones to arrive that day and thus had the whole site all for ourselves for the 2 hours we spent there in the morning. Due to the somewhat overcast weather the pictures didn't turn out as good as I was hoping.. the primary group isn't exactly The Lost City of the Inca or Angkor Wat, but it makes quite a nice sight nonetheless. The total lack of crowds made it much better. In the evening there was some kind of a biker party in town, as lots of HD folks had come down for a meeting. Live bands on the streets and such, and we enjoyed our first night out since my getting sick over a week ago.

The next day we rode a mototaxi up to the Macaw Mountain, a bird sanctuary set up some 4km outside of town. They boast dozens of bird species, rescued from illegal animal traders around the country. Most were caged since they had never known any other kind of life and would not survive in the wild. The birds were very lively and colorful - and talkative - especially the the macaws, parrots and tucans that you could approach and even hold if that was your game. We just admired them from a distance.

Tomorrow we're leaving for Guatemala and El Salvador, with a plan of returning to Honduras in the end of the Central American leg of the trip to dive on the Bay Islands.

Isla de Ometepe

Isla de Ometepe is an island on Lago Nicaragua, central americas biggest fresh water body as well as home to a freshwater shark, originally thought to be endemic but later discovered to have migrated from the Atlantic. And lo, it is the bull shark. The island itself consists of two volcanoes having grown together, and now supports a tropical ecosystem and sandy beaches on it's shores. Our plan was to climb the Madera peak, which is the easier one, while the effort needed to reach the summit of Conception rivals that of running a marathon. And for someone who cannot even run 10 km let alone 42, this was a nobrainer choice. Plus on Madera there is a nice crater lake.

However due to me being sick, no climbing would be happening. And as fate would have it, the lake's water level was so high that all the beaches were under the waves completely. And since the local bus traffic is only a few per day, doing sightseeing proved difficult. We stayed the first night on the Madera side, mostly sleeping and talking to a parrot outside the room. For the second night we returned to the Conception side and didn't do much more. Small amount of walking around in shade was all I could muster. For the evening we got a lucky deal on a room with a cable TV which was just perfect for recovering. We'd order a pizza and eat it in bed while watching Halloween I-IV in a row (happy happy Halloween).

After the short island tour we moved on to Leon, the country's former capitol, on our way north to Honduras. Booked 2 nights at the local backpacker haunt Via Via to hopefully finish off the fever (going down already) to face the new challenges in a new country. Simple restocking such as replacing broken sunglasses and looking for new pair of Converse sneakers (pair of converses here 20$; they didn't have my size. crap.), beyond that just cooling off in the garden pub of the hostel reading books and paying bills.

It's now been a month since we left Helsinki.


See all the pictures from Nicaragua here!



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Surf Nicaragua

After some time just basking in the warm sun and doing pretty much nothing, we got ourselves to book a surfing lesson. Our teacher would be a local surfer legend from Peru. And for the price of 20$, his 3-hour lesson was well worth the price! Pretty much the whole group stood up after the first hour, and in the end would stand up almost every try. And Riikka was the star pupil! There are no pictures of this, since we were both in the water at the same time. The next day we'd planned on renting a board on our own and go practice on the secluded Playa Majagual, but by dinner I - Matti - started to get crazy chills, totally lost my appetite and realized I had either had way too much sun or I was getting sick, or both. Later that night my skin was burning red, brain all messed up from the fever and what not. This continued the next day, and the next. There was little else to do but lie down on the bed/hammock, shaking. At the end of the second day we decided it's time to leave the beach, go back to the civilization and find a doctor.

And, when we got back to San Juan we paid a visit to a local hospital, where the doc would tell me that I had - drumroll - Dengue fever. Now, there are two versions of Dengue and I'm lucky to have the "classic" one, while the nastier one makes your skin ooze blood and other nice stuff. There's no vaccination for it nor a proper treatment, so what you apparently just do is wait it out, popping Panadol or similar to keep the fever down. Should be gone in 3-7 days but who knows. Needless to say this will wreck a week's travel activities pretty well. And here's something I wasn't expecting - the medical care in the Nicaraguan hospital didn't cost a dime. Even the medicine was free. Whoa! Way to go Nica!

Beach Life

We arrived to Nicaragua some 4-5 days ago and been a bit "in the bush", meaning there's been no internet and occasionally no electricity.. but now we're in town again for restocking & checking the internet, so here we go.

The border crossing from CR to Nica was probably the most colorful we've done. There you hike across a 1km stretch of soaking mud (while it's raining cats and dogs, of course) while big trucks push right past you and splash the ooze all around you.. there are no signs to the stamps offices and absolutely everyone not wearing an uniform is trying to con you for some money. Definitely an experience not soon to be forgotten, and I mean this in a good sense! After a lot of frenzied sign language and pointing fingers we make it to the country (entry cost 12$/person) and on a NicaExpress bus headed for the capital Managua. We ended up paying 10$/head for the 30+ km trip from the border to the town of Rivas, what a ripoff and we knew it. Hell, Nicaragua is supposedly the cheapest country in central america and in Panama we could cover 400km for the same ticket price.. oh well.

From Rivas we took a taxi to San Juan del Sur, which is the tourist destination of Nicaragua. Naturally it still is low season and since Nicaragua isn't exactly the biggest blip on the tourism industry's radar, so it's rather deserted here. Also we aren't really looking for a town to stay in, and the beach isn't that nice here, so we frantically explore our options by googling and talking to the locals.


Hopping on a "shuttle bus" (a large pickup truck with tires big enough to deal with the craterous muddy path the locals know as a road) to a surfer beach some 10km and 50 minutes outside of San Juan, we get to take a first peek at the waves of the Pacific here in Nicaragua.. and yes the surf's up, as they say! But, onwards we go and after asking for some directions we hike 15-20 minutes over rocky peninsula to the beach two coves over, called Playa Maderas/Majagual. Now, this is really something and even the way of getting there is really exiting, so we're quite psyched.

 On the way we run into another traveler couple who point us towards the end of the beach, where Hostal Mathilda's is hidden under the trees, right on the beach. Ye gods.. this is it, the peace and quiet we've been looking for. With stupid huge grins on our faces we greet the other 5-6 people (even during the high season there wouldn't be much more than 50ish on the whole beach) hanging there and get ourselves settled. We're staying at least a week, while one Canadian hombre has set up a camp for 6 months.

To quote The Beach, this place is a beach resort for people who don't like beach resorts. In a small shack on the sand, the resident cook Martha sells ice cold (occasionally frozen) cervezas for a hefty price of one dollar each as well as delicious meals for 2-3$. Several hammocks swing in the breeze all around, nearest no more than 2m from our door.. and we're getting the beach all to ourselves. There are no motor vehicles around, electricity goes out every now and then and all of that is just perfect.


Falling asleep every night to the sound of the huge waves crashing 20m away is really something.