Author: rmcguire

I spent a quiet Christmas just relaxing and reading, as many places were shut down and services closed, so it wasn’t really possible to go anywhere except on foot.

I had hoped to make a few phone calls home, and the Internet cafe at my hotel actually has Skype installed, but their microphones don’t work properly so it would have been a one-way conversation with me doing all the listening.

I took the pictures here last night on Christmas Eve in Cobán’s central square. After that, thousands of firecrackers burst all into the night. I was awakened by a series of bangs around 1 a.m. I tried to get into the Christmas spirit by watching It’s a Wonderful Life dubbed into Spanish, but somehow Jimmy Stewart speaking with a different voice and in Spanish just wasn’t the same.

If I can get tours tomorrow to a couple places in this area that I’d like to visit, I’ll stay another day. Otherwise, I’m off tomorrow by chicken bus to Nebaj, a Mayan town where I hope to spend a bit of time and hopefully study some Spanish and do some hiking.

The central market is just a block from my hotel in Coban, and there’s a lot of action there on Christmas Eve.

There are sellers of toys for children, of flowers, clothes, and tables with mountains of firecrackers. The firecrackers here are huge and no doubt would be banned in Canada — there’s enough of them to start a small regional war, and I hear them banging quite often.

I took a number of pictures — some surreptitiously of the general action, and some posed, like the one of the lady selling flowers, who took off her jacket for the picture. At one bookstore where I tried to find a map, the young sales women asked me to take a picture of them, so I did, as did several other people in the street. I then went to a place that does instant digital pictures and got some 4 X 6 prints to give to the people who posed. They were thrilled, and one little girl (about 10) gave me a hug, and “Gracias. Feliz Navidad.”

Speaking of which, the song Feliz Navidad plays everywhere, as do a number of other Christmas songs. It’s been strange hearing them sung or played in different styles in different places — the reggae Christmas carols in Belize, and now various Latin styles here.

The main square has a Christmas tree that I’ve pictured below, sponsored by Gallo (rooster) Beer.

 

I decided that rather than face another day on the dreaded chicken buses, I would spend a couple more nights, including Christmas, in Cobán. My hotel here is very interesting. It’s one of the oldest buildings in Cobán and was a former nunnery. Like many old Guatemalan buildings, it has a simple wall on the front that comes right to the street, but inside everything is built around a courtyard with trees and flowers.

Around the courtyard and outside the rooms are all kinds of historic artifacts. My hotel is like a museum.

The room is pretty basic, but it does have hottish water, which is nice, as it gets quite cool here in the mountains. Like a spring or fall day at home.

So I’ll spend a quiet Christmas on my own, but there’s lots of celebration around me in the streets, so I’ll be able to participate in that.

 

Guatemala is one of the hardest countries in the Americas to travel any great distance. It’s very cheap, but the level of comfort is abysmal. For most trips, if the choice exists, it’s between a rundown chicken bus that used to be a Bluebird school bus absolutely crammed with people, or a minibus that is absolutely crammed too. Both stop everywhere to pick up and discharge passengers. The main difference is that the chicken bus is bigger and the minibus goes slightly faster. Guatemalans are very small people, and travel spaces are designed accordingly.

I spent yesterday and today experiencing Guatemala’s transportation system close-up, and will do the same tomorrow. Yesterday I got up at around 5:30 a.m. hoping to catch the sunrise at Tikal. Unfortunately, it had been raining and was still cloudy so there was no sunrise. I did visit the ruin site when it opened at 6 a.m., and it was a great time to see and hear birds and other animals, and to see the temples before the crowds arrived. I was quite exhausted from walking a great distance and climbing up and down temples on an empty stomach with no coffee when I decided to finish up.

My timing was good — as I was leaving it started to rain, and it rained the rest of the day. This was the first significant rain of my trip — there had only been a few small bursts of rain in Belize to cool things off between periods of hot sun.

I got a minibus with a group of young tourists who were going to Flores, the main tourist town near Tikal, but I got out at Santa Elena and caught another minibus going to Sayaxche, a small town to the south. My goal was to shorten today’s trip by getting as far as I could yesterday.

Sayaxche is an interesting little town on the banks of a river where there is no bridge for the main highway. At the river, there are narrow wooden passenger boats and a car ferry across. I got a hotel with a large shared balcony overlooking the river and the boats crossing back and forth. It was interesting watching the action as I relaxed at the hotel and the sun went down, but the noise from boats wakened me during the night. Sometimes the boats were jammed with passengers standing and with no evidence of life preservers. It appears Guatemala has no safety standards for boats.

On the hotel balcony was a cage with my favorite kind of bird, a scarlet macaw. He looked so confined I was tempted to release him, but the hotel people might not have been too happy if I’d done that.

Today I was also up at 5:15 a.m. to catch a chicken bus headed for Coban. I expected the ride to be about four hours as it was under 100 km, but partway through I learned it would actually take eight hours. I was holding my bags as I didn’t want to let them out of my sight in all the madness of people getting on and off, and the bus got fuller and fuller and fuller. About 4 1/2 hours into the trip my cramped legs were killing me and I couldn’t take it anymore so I got off in a town in the middle of nowhere to recover for a while.

Continuing on, I rode a minibus the rest of the way. It was also extremely crowded and uncomfortable, but at least I was able to secure my bag on the roof. They stopped everywhere to let people on and off, constantly trying to squeeze in more people so that there were close to 30 people at one time and it was hard to breathe. Despite the constant stopping and starting, they actually drove quickly on the narrow mountain roads. Suddenly, a cow ran out in front of the bus, and the driver momentarily lost control as he tried to avoid hitting the cow. The cow slammed into the side right next to where I was sitting. It was a hard bang. The driver regained control and drove on without stopping. I don’t know if the cow was fatally hit or not, but sometime later the driver inspected the vehicle and noticed only minor dents.

At last I arrived exhausted in Coban, where I am staying in a fascinating hotel that used to be a centuries old nunnery. It is built around a courtyard with trees and flowers, and there are all kinds of historic artifacts and masks from the area.

I’m not sure if I’ll stay here another day, or continue on to my destination of Nebaj. It depends, I guess, on whether I feel ready tomorrow to endure another day of Guatemalan transportation.

 

Today was a day of travelling, finished off with watching the sunset over the jungle from atop a Mayan temple, the second highest pre–Columbian structure in the Americas, at the ancient city of Tikal.

I left San Ignacio fairly early in order to make easy connections — a rickety bus to a town near the border, a beat up shared taxi to the border, and by foot over the border. Then two hours squished into a sweltering minibus with 29 other people including babies being breast fed and the driver. I got dropped off at a crossroads where I waited less than five minutes to flag down a tourist shuttle bus coming from Flores to Tikal.

It all went very smoothly despite the uncertainty of timetables, and it was a lot cheaper than the taxis from the border whose drivers wanted to charge me $60, telling me there was no other way. The moral of the story is that although many taxi drivers are honest, a lot cannot be believed if they stand to make a buck. Like the one in San Ignacio who tried to claim the buses only ran hourly on Sundays, hoping I would give up and take a taxi, when in fact buses ran on the half hour as normal.

I wanted to stay overnight in Tikal because sunset and sunrise are the most interesting times — both for the skies and for the animals that come out at dawn and dusk. The cheapest hotel said they had an unpaid reservation that they could give me if I waited 15 minutes till noon. But after paying for the room, they said it wouldn’t be ready until check-in time at 2 p.m. I didn’t plan to go to the ruins until 4 p.m. anyway, so I waited around — only to find out that the person who previously had the room they were going to give me hadn’t checked out. In the end they found me a room in a more expensive hotel and refunded my money, but it was a hassle.

There are two prices of admission to Tikal — a cheap price ($3) for Guatemalans, and an expensive price ($24) for Gringos. But I knew that if you buy a ticket after 4 p.m., they stamp your ticket for the next day, and you can still get in for the remainder of the day until closing time at 6 p.m. So I went for a couple hours in the late afternoon, knowing I can return tomorrow.

Tikal is quite large. It was a major city in its day. There are a number of tall temples, and many of them have not yet been unearthed and are still jungley mounds. What makes the place so special is the setting surrounded by jungle. Even in the day you see exotic birds like toucans, Petén turkeys, and numerous others I can’t identify. There are howler monkeys, and coatimundis. As dusk approaches, the sounds reach a pitch of crickets, birds, and other noises.

I visited a couple of the temples in the main plaza. They’ve now added wooden steps to climb one because the original stone steps were too steep and have resulted in a few fatal accidents of tourists. The other one you can’t climb at all.

After that, I hurried over to the tallest one, temple IV, which is known for its sunrises and sunsets. I was not disappointed. There were other tourists and photography enthusiasts there already, as the sun lowered in the sky. It cast orange light patterns across a couple of temples in the distance, and over top of the jungle foliage. Very dramatic.

It’s 35 minutes back to the main gate, and I knew I had to move quickly so as not to get caught in the dark. As it was, there was only a trace of light — just enough to see roots, stumps and steps on the trail as I approached the gate. The jungle sounds and animals though were amazing.
Tomorrow I’ll be up early to see more.

 

It’s sometimes said that Belize is like a cross between Jacques Cousteau and Indiana Jones. If Thursday was my Jacques Cousteau day, today was my Indiana Jones day.

I was up early to take the famous Actun Tunichil Muknal (ATM) tour, a journey through a network of caves extending kilometres into the mountain to the Mayan underworld. It was here that gods lived and human sacrifices took place. The Belize government maintains strict control over who can visit this site because you are literally stepping over artifacts more than 1000 years old. Only a limited number of specially trained guides can conduct the tour, and groups are limited to eight in number. For this reason the tour is not an option for the many cruise ship tourists who visit Belize.

I was put in with a group of a German couple and some Americans. Several other groups were going at similar times and numbers had to be controlled so there wouldn’t be too many people in one area at a time. Our guide, Emile, was obviously of Mayan ancestry, but jumped back and forth between English, Creole, and Spanish. He’s an experienced caver, who once spent a week underground exploring a massive cave network.

It was a bit of a drive out of town along the main highway. Then we turned off to follow a rough dirt road through farmlands with grazing cattle and orange groves. At last we stopped and left in the van the second pair of dry clothing we had been instructed to bring. We set off taking only our lunches, cameras, and helmets. We were prepared to get very wet, and the guide carried a dry bag to transport our cameras through the wetter areas. It was now a 40-minute hike on a fairly easy jungle trail, and the only difficulty was having to wade across a river three times on loose stones, sometimes in water up to our crotches.

At last, at the large cave entrance, we had to swim wearing our clothes and shoes through deep river water for about 40 feet into the cave. From there we had to hike, often wading through water, and climbing over stones, in darkness lit only by our helmet lamps. We followed Emile, calling out any hazards to the people behind us down the line — sudden drops, sharp rocks, or which side to walk on. In a number of places we had to swim or wade, and then emerging soaking wet, had to climb up and down rocks. It was quite strenuous.

The cave formations were quite impressive. Stalactites, some hanging like curtains, or even like dreadlocks; stalagmites, columns, and other interesting formations marked the way. We were warned not to touch them so as not to cause damage, and also because some formations are quite sharp. The guide pointed out various places where Mayan rituals took place, and where artifacts have been found. As he shone his flashlight, bats that were disturbed by the light began to fly around.

Apparently the Mayans believed that their gods lived in these caves, and in times of drought or other natural disasters they brought offerings into the caves — large urns of corn, chicha (corn beer), and sometimes human beings. Our guide explained that sometimes even kings would pierce their penises, or queens would pierce their tongues, to offer blood to the gods in order to appease them.

At last the cave narrowed, and we were instructed to climb up the rocks, very carefully, hand over hand and foot over foot to a ledge about 30 feet upwards. From now on up it would be a dry walk, and so we could carry our own cameras. We were also told to remove our shoes and walk only in socks, leaving our shoes behind. This is to protect the delicate floor of the cave. The socks are necessary because the oils in feet can also do damage.

Quite often right beside the trail we would see fragments of clay pottery and other artifacts. The areas where these were are simply marked off with orange tape. Our guide monitored our steps to make sure nobody stepped over the orange tape. It would be very easy to take one accidental step off the trail and crush a 1500-year-old pot. Suddenly, among the pots at the side of the trail we saw a human skull sticking from the ground. It was here that our guide told us about the human sacrifices, speculating about whether the victims would have known their fates as they were led into the caves and the world of the gods.

At last we climbed a long metal ladder up into a small cave leading off the main one. At the end of that cave was the skeleton of a young woman, believed to be about 17 or 18 and with features suggesting she may have been royalty. Like the pots left behind, her body had also been smashed in places, her hands amputated, and her vertebrae smashed.

This was as far as we could go and we now begin the journey back. We were all exhausted when we finally emerged from the cave and returned to where we had left our lunches.

This excursion was fascinating and fun, and is an experience I’ll remember as long I live.

Back in town I went for dinner at a Sri Lankan restaurant and had a very spicy curry washed down with Belikin, Belize beer. The man who runs the restaurant is from Colombo. It was one of those combinations you would only see in Belize — a Sri Lankan restaurant decorated with Christmas ornaments in a Belizean looking setting with Belizean waiters.

Tomorrow I plan to cross the border into Guatemala and head to the ancient Mayan city of Tikal.

San Ignacio is a popular tourist destination, but it’s also a real town. It’s popular not for the town itself, but because it is the starting point for a number of interesting and exciting excursions to major Mayan sites, to caves, or for tubing down rivers. Unlike the flat northern Belize, San Ignacio is hilly and is at the edge of broad-leafed jungle. It’s only a very short distance from here to the Guatemalan border.

The bus took nearly three hours, and stopped every few feet to take on or let off passengers. The total distance was only around 100 km. In the bus station at Belmopan, I saw a Mennonite family, the man wearing a broad straw hat and suspenders and a beard, and his wife and girls are following in long black dresses with their heads covered in black. They were very white looking, and such a contrast to most Belizeans. There are significant Mennonite communities around here.

After checking into a hotel where I’ll stay a couple nights, I took a walk a couple kilometres out of town to the site of the old Mayan city of Cahal Pech. It was a very steep climb up a tall hill in the blazing sun, but the site itself was pleasant amidst tall tropical jungle trees. The smell of decaying leaves, sweet and almost perfumey, reminded me of Tikal, another Mayan city in Guatemala, which I hope to get to shortly.

Cahal Pech had several temples overlooking plazas, many with gnarly roots and trees growing from them. It wasn’t as spectacular as Tikal or Palenque, but was in a nice setting and made for a pleasant excursion.

On the way back, I stopped at a luxury hotel that is the site of an iguana rehabilitation project. The iguanas are in danger to because they have been hunted and their eggs are collected as a delicacy. Here they are breeding them until they are decent size to be put back in the wild, and they have a much better chance of survival if they are released when they are big enough to avoid being eaten by birds etc. A guide, Eddie, took me to see the iguanas and on the way he showed me numerous medicinal plants and trees, telling me about each. So many were known to the Mayans as having medicinal properties, but Eddie said many of the young people are not learning these traditions and are using modern pharmaceuticals instead. There are a few bush doctors around, but they are a dying breed. One tree he showed me has a similar, but worse, effect than poison ivy if you touch it and get its sap on you. To me it looked like any other tree.

I took a few pictures of the iguanas. Coincidentally, it was mating season, and the big alpha male, Gomez, was busily engaged in mating with a rather passive female. Eddie introduced me to George, another male, who is only able to breed when Gomez is similarly occupied. Otherwise Gomez doesn’t allow George to breed. George is not happy with this situation, and he is the most aggressive iguana if approached. He puffs out his neck, and may swing his tail at someone who gets too near. Eddie says this can hurt if you are struck by a flying tail. There was a separate cage filled with younger iguanas that had hatched in June and July.

Back in town I booked a tour for tomorrow. It involves exploring a cave complex known as ATM, or Actun Tunichil Muknal.

 

Today was one of those experiences to last a lifetime. I decided to go snorkeling for my first time ever. I don’t know if I could have chosen a better spot – the barrier reef in Belize is second only to the Great Barrier Reef off Australia. I took a tour with a guide, along with six other people, all European tourists, and all of whom have snorkeled before.

We took a small boat about 10 minutes out onto the water to where there’s a coral reef, and we snorkeled in three different spots: South Passage, Shark and Ray Alley, and Coral Gardens. I managed to get some prescription goggles that corrected my eyesight so I could see beautifully underwater. We also had flippers. The water was incredibly clear, and you could see very well under the sunny sky.

We anchored in a sandy area just a short distance from the coral reef, and our guide, José, led us over to the reef. The water was filled with amazing schools of colourful tropical fish that darted in and out of the coral. I never could’ve imagined there would be so many different fish species in one small area. There were plants in amazing shapes and colours rising from the reef. At one point, a green eel slithered by.

At our second spot on Shark and Ray Alley, there was a boat already stopped and tourists were swimming among the stingrays. We also anchored and swam over towards the other boat. I was amazed to see dozens of stingrays sliding just above the bottom, sometimes right below me. It was an amazing experience. The thought of Steve Irwin occurred to me, but apparently these rays are fairly accustomed to people, and the trick is to respect them and not annoy them. They are used to being fed, and they simply swam around a few feet underneath. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, we didn’t see any sharks this time, but swimming among the stingrays was an incredible experience. As we were leaving and back in the boat, we saw a huge spotted eagle ray.

At our last stop, the Coral Gardens, we anchored in shallow water and the guide just let us explore the reefs on our own. In this area the reefs came very near to the surface, but you can swim through the channels between them that were deeper and had sandy bottoms. The fish here were just incredible. Sometimes as I approached the reef, a whole school of medium-sized and multicoloured fish would dart out in front of me. There were little creatures that moved along the bottom, and others that lurked in caves. The reef was teeming with life.

This is my last day at Caye Caulker. Tomorrow I’ll catch the water taxi back to Belize city, and then the bus to San Ignacio in the jungle close to the Guatemalan border.

I haven’t ridden a one-speed bicycle with pedal brakes since I was a kid, but the pedal brake bicycle I rented yesterday and today is a good analogy for Caye Caulker. There is only one speed here — laid back.

Caye Caulker is certainly a tourist destination, but it hasn’t yet been overdeveloped. It’s small enough that you can get from one end of the island to the other in about 10 minutes by bicycle. The only paved surface is the airstrip at the south end of the island. The rest is sand and dirt roads where mangy dogs lie around, and tourists and locals simply bike around them.

Weather is warm, but a cool and steady breeze blows in off the sea keeping things comfortable. From my hotel, it’s only a few feet across the sandy road, down the dock, and into the water.

There is no cultural or educational reason for me to be here. It is simply a time to decompress, try to put work out of my mind, and slow my pace. The cultural and educational stuff will come later.

I spent much of today exploring by bicycle, swimming and relaxing. At the south end of the island is a wild area with mangroves, a tree with complex roots that grows in salt water and is home to many animal, bird and fish species.

There are still lots for sale here at well under $100,000 U.S., or around that and up for sea front lots. It could be a great investment if Caye Caulker takes off as a tourist destination. Then again, with global warming, the whole island could some day be under water.

The food is good here. Tonight I had barracuda steak cooked in foil with tomatoes, onions, peppers and spices. It was a very good. You can eat seafood, Mexican food, Belizean food, or whatever else.

Aside from swimming, or lying around in hammocks, the main activity here seems to be the many bars. There’s also a lot of activity centered around diving and snorkeling. Some excursions go out to neighboring coral reefs. I’m tempted to give snorkeling a try if I can find prescription goggles to rent. One of the places where expeditions go is called shark and ray alley, and you can swim among sharks and stingrays. Steven Spielberg and Jaws aside, it’s a popular spot, and only a few tourists get eaten each year. I may do that, or rent a kayak.

Paradise is nice, but by Friday I plan to head back to the mainland and to western Belize before crossing into Guatemala.

Click on thumbnails below to see slide show gallery:

 

 

This morning I got a taxi down to the Swing Bridge in downtown Belize City. It’s from here that the water taxis leave for Caye Caulker and San Pedro out in the Caribbean. The Swing Bridge rotates early in the morning to allow boats through, bringing traffic to a halt. It’s also the key spot for hustlers who prey on tourists.

The boat, a large launch, zipped out onto the relatively calm and clear blue water, taking just under an hour to reach Caye Caulker, where I plan to spend a few days decompressing. This island is definitely geared to tourists, but it’s more like Negril in the 1970s than like the big tourist resorts. Pretty laid back and irie. There are no vehicles other than bicycles, golf carts, and the odd scooter.

The roads are sand, and you’re never far from water. There are little shacks catering to the budget tourist industry, offering reasonably priced meals, diving expeditions, etc.

I’ve found a hotel a few feet from the water with all the basics, including fan, private bathroom, good windows, and for a small fee access to wireless Internet. Paradise has to be sun, palm trees, the sea, and good wireless Internet. Is this paradise? We’ll see.

Yesterday I caught a bus out of the city to Belize Zoo, which is set in a jungle-like location an hour out of town. If I were an animal confined to a zoo, I would choose this one. They have lots of space and they’re in their real environment. Most of the animals are ones reclaimed from captivity, and unable to be released into the wilds. The zoo also has a very strong educational component, teaching visitors about protection of the animals’ habitats. The ocelot, for example, is now protected, but before that, it took 100 of the poor little cats to make one coat.

Among the other animals, all from the region, were a number of tapirs, the national animal of Belize. These look a bit like pigs that are growing longer noses that are trying hard to become trunks. They are sometimes called mountain cows, though apparently they are related to horses. They came up close and let you scratch them behind he ears, though one, Scotty, had a sign warning that if you got too close he might pee on you.

Other animals included giant crocodiles, a beautiful black jaguar, spotted jaguars, cougars, and black howler and spider monkeys hanging out in trees. One spotted jaguar reposed about 30 feet up in a tree. There were birds — my favourite, the multicoloured scarlet macaw, toucans, parrots, eagles, and others.

And on the way there and back I got to experience village life from the seat of an old Bluebird school bus.

Back in Belize City, I had a good walk in the downtown area, which seemed only a little less threatening than it was on Sunday afternoon. My hotel was in a richer area, and many of the houses were all decked out with elaborate displays of Christmas lights.

Had a great East Indian dinner at a restaurant just around the corner from my hotel — run by a family that appeared to be from south India, though things were too busy to engage them in conversation. They had the TV on, first with a Bollywood channel, and then they switched to local news. The newscaster spoke good English, but there was a murder story where they interviewed the family of the victim, who all spoke Criole, the local dialect of English. Then there was a lengthy interview with a wealthy businessman who had thwarted a planned home invasion by disgrunted former employees who planned to kill him and his family, despite the elaborate security system around his home. The news was entirely focused on crime, though earlier in the day I was in a restaurant that had CNN, and showed dozens of instant replays of a journalist in Iraq throwing shoes at Dubya, who kept ducking. The people in the restaurant and I thought it was hilarious.

Here people love Obama, and there are stickers on windows, and t-shirts proclaiming “yes we did.”