Volcan San Pedro la Laguna

Ended up back in Marios Rooms with the usual suspects. We were planning on climbing the volcano when we arrived but were apparently too late so Tom decided to go Para gliding. Roger, the slightly weird French Canadian asked me if i would come along and drive his car back down the mountain, so Rob and i tagged along. Much the same as when i did it in France. Had a bit of fun rallying his car down the mountain as there was a bit of offroad before we hit the road. After seeing how much fun Tom had Rob decided to have a go. I had a bit of a headache so decided to take a raincheck on the drving and Tom reluctantly said he was fine driving down. Rob had fun and Tom announced when they got back that he didnt have a licence and it was third time he had ever driven. Said that he wanted to do for the adrenaline ruch. Luckily Roger had a automatic or it could have been nasty! Pretty stupid thing to do if you have seen the way the locals drive over here. Overtaking on blind summits and round corners...he made it back in one piece though.

Tom, Rob and myself all trekked over to San Pedro at 6am for the volcano trek. Pretty hard climb but as we had to get back to Antigua we legged it up and down in 4 hours 15mins, where as the guy in the shop said it would take us at least 6. Honestly dont know where they get their timings from Rob was going at a proper snails pace as he got a headcold from our last nocturnal volcano climbing trip. Anyway were quitre annoyed when we got to the top only to find the clouds had dropped and we had no view. So after some messing around taking pics withb Mexican wrestling masks on finally the clouds parted and we got a spectabular view. Ran most of the way down as really wanted to get back to Antigua tonight as laving tomorrow and not wanting any delays due to usual Guatamalan nonsense like closing roads and protesting!!

So now a tired so man but back in Antigua for the last night of the trip. Been a cool, different type of trip from last time but quite looking forward to getting home, seeing Ruth and sleeping in a proper bed :D

Bye for now.

Chris

Volcano Santa Marta

Well someone had the good idea that getting up at 12:30 am to hike to the top of the 2nd highest peak in CA would be a the right thing to do. Normally this would be true as when clear the views take in a whole chain of volcano system, even looking down onto Volcan Santaguito. This is in the top 10 most active volcanoes in the world and erupts every 30 mins on average. However once we finally made it up and out, 15 mins to the start of the hike and started trekking things started to go wrong.

First thing was the guide didnt notice that the token Jap in the group fell behind. We had been told that there would be two guides and all assumed that he was the 2nd one due to giant size of his pack. This was not true. The poor guy started struggling right away and by the 2nd rest stop he was no where to be seen. The guide noticed about 2 hours later and started frantically looking for him! He turned up on the way down and had been sitting at the start of the trek all night. Bit unfortunate but he should have called to alert someone in the group that he was struggling.

Second was the weather. lashing it down and very foggy. hard 4 hour climb up with a stop for 45 min in the middle while the guide looked for the Jap. hannah almost didnt make it as 2/3 of the way up here legs gave way and took a bit of gentle boy bullying to get her up. Gareth, the most unprepared boy in the world. decided that even though he didnt have a waterproof or most other gear he was still going to get up a 3772m peak in ther rainy season. He was beginning to go into mild hypothermia near the top so hannah and i managed to get him into the rest of our dry gear. Luckily it stopped raining at the top but it could have been quite nasty. Pretty cold for us all at the top but rather that than have to try to carry him down.

The view at the top was very Scottish in feeling, that is you could see about 10m and the wind was howling. Even with the stops and delays we managed to get up before dawn and had to sit there for 45min waiting/hoping to see the sun. No such luck. So started the trudge back down.

Very dissapointed but been up enough hills to learn that you take your chance. Especially in the rainy season! The hike was hard which i quite enjoyed. Now off to some hot spring to bath our tired limbs.

Off back to Atlian tomorrow then Antigua in preperation of coming home....Yayyy

Chris

Molten Hot Maggmmaaa

Ola Amigos,

Well did the Volcan Pacaya tour again and rewarded with some molten lava freeflowing down the side of the volcano. The lava has changed sides since last time to the hike was a bit harder. Nothing too taxing but nice to get a slight sweat on :) Lava stream was quite small but flowing quite fast and making cool crackling noises with the more solid top layer. We did the usual roasting of marshmallows over the heat and other really sensible things like sticking poles in and chucking other rocks in to watch them melt!! Health and safety has not really arrived in Guatamala yet but sometime s quite refreshing to do something obviously dangerous without having someone telling you that! Yes i am aware that if i fall into lava the bits that touch will probably disintegrate...

Yesterday took all day to get to Xella as locals closed the roads to protest about some new government scheme or other. bit of a wasted day and as a result we arrived too late to book the two day volcano hike. So at a bit of a lose end today.

Right more after the hike. Only 4 more sleeps till i have to head home :(

Chris

Cenote Diving and Cave Tubing

Hey Everyone. Well once we got to Tulum we did a couple of fairly average dives off the coast which would have been very dull except for a huge 2m wide Spotted Eagle ray which swan alongside me for 5mins or so. majestic creatures flying through the water. Stayed a good away from it as didnt want to have any Steve Erwin incidents. That might have been a sting ray but they are very similiar. There were also some massivo crabs which we played with for a bit.

The wind had changed from the usual onshore direction to offshore due to Ike and as a result Tulum had turned into a mosquito infested hellhole...pretty place but dont think i have seen so many of the little bastards in one place before! I faired betrter than the rest due to liberal use of psuedo skin melting 55% deet!

We headed off to dive the Cenotes in the morning. Cenotes are submerged cave systems which you can explore and even emerge into the ocean. Those are quite dangerous and you are meant to be a qualified cave diver for that. So we just explored two of the caves. The first was well lit by natural sunlight and very beautiful. The sun playing off the various stalectites and stalectmites. We all had torches and it was quite an eerie experience. The second had no natural light and was quite a bit colder than the first. Gives you a good understanding of cave diving. Still prefer ocean diving as there is much more life to look at, but the rock formations were amazing. Definatly a worthwhile experience and quite unique as this is apparently the only place you can find them. Said our good byes to the others and headed off to Belieze. Managed to get all the way to san Ignacio which was unexpected. Arrived at dark o clock and managed to get sorted with accomondation and also book a cave tubing tour for the next day.

Cave tubing was a little shambolic as meant to start at 8, finally left at 9ish and then had to wait beside the river for 2 hours. Not the worst place to have to hang about as was a pretty little place. Cool, crystal clear water with rocks and rope swings to jump off. Eventually the locals had removed their thumb from their anus and we got issued tubes and torches and hiked for an hour through the jungle to the start of the cave system. Apparently Indiana Jones 2 Temple of Doom was part filmed here. The end part in the cave system. Looked vaugely familiar but will have to rewatch when i get home to confirm. Internet does back this statement up though! Started with some more rock jumping into a ridiculously clear water. One of the yanks was very good spin jumps and while i matched him on the frontflip, the backflip and twist flip were not going to be attempted. We then jumped into our rings and floated/paddled downstream. caves were huge and lots to look at. Quite surrial experience but a good thing to round off the cave diving from the previous day. 2 hours later we popped out where we started. An excellent way to while away a day. The jungle is so beautifull here with monkeys and exotic birds everywhere and not even any nasty biting insects to detract from it.

We then got our local fixer, Kenny G to sort us for a taxi to the border then managed to blag a taxi to take us all the way to Flores as we had just missed the last collectivo mini bus. Now in Flores wondering what to do with the last 9 days of the trip. I had planned on doing the El Mirador trek through the jungle to see some more Mayan ruins but you need 2 people and its $300. Still might happen or might head to the beach for some last min rays. Thing is not sure i can spend a week on the beach as A - I will be bored shitless and B - will have no skin left due to massivo sun burn. So at a bit of a loss at the moment. But hey ho we will struggle on. 9 days left till i'll be back in blighty.
Right you are all now thourally bored so i'm off.

C

Isla Holbox, the Whale shark and the Hurricane

Sorry its been a while on the blogging front but last week has been fairly manic even by my standards. Said goodbye to the boys in Playa after some weekend partying. Met a cool couple, Turlough and Aoife and started travelling with then. Decided after another messy night that Playa was shite and we all really wanted to head to Holbox to see the biggest fish in the world. So we managed to rent some huge american muscle car as its all Hertz had. Drove just past Cancun before we noticed that we were on the wrong road and that the brakes had stopped working. Managed to limp back to Cancun without killing any stray dogs or mexicans. Easier said than done! Got botty raped by Hertz as they decided to give us no compensation for the hassle and charged us ridiculous rates for the fuel we had used. We then got stopped by some corrupt motorcycle cop and had to bribe him to let us go. We were apparently doing 30km over the speed limit, which was shite as everyone was doing the same speed. He obviously saw the rental plates and saw doller signs. We did, however manage to convince him to give us an escort to the right road so it wasnt a total waste of money! But by this time we were muchos late and had to get to the ferry by 7. Much speeding and pot hole/speed bump avoidance later we caught the ferry by the skin of our teeth.

So happily cfhecked into mintos resort and booked said whale watching for the morning. Woke to find Hurricane Ike doing some more botty molesting and the whole thing was binned. So decided to cut our losses and trekked down to Tulum.

C

Cozumel

Sorry it´s been so long since the last update have been very busy being scuba student again. Went to Cozumel with Hannah and the boys but when Hannah realised that there was zero things to do on the island except dive (closest beach is 10 miles away) she headed back to the white sand beaches of Playa Del Carmen. Boys and I decided on different dive shops as we each got better deals for what we were looking for. They were doing the PADI Open Water and I was looking for Nitrox Coures. Was originally planning on doing the Rescue Diver course but they wanted $180 for a first aid course which was 2 days and another $330 for the course. I can do the first aid at home for free so will get that sorted when i get home. The Nitrox course means you can dive with more than 21% of oxygen, up to 40% in some cases. This gives you either longer on the bottom or shorter surface interval. Course was Ok but quite hard due to lots of various dive planners and index cards you need to refer to. but screwed the nut and actually studied for a change and suprisingly managed to get 98%. Got one wrong but it was just a case of putting the figures round the wrong way. So dived with Nitrox which is very cool and gives you a quite pumped feeling due to increase in O2.

The diving here in Cozumel is pretty amazing. Sea life is still not as good as asia but the visibility is out of this world. Up to 50m in some cases. The setting is stunning with lots of colourful coral and white sand on the bottom. Seen loads of Green and beaked turtles, even managed to stroke one when it came up to have a noisey around me. There are quite a few nurse sharks and spotted a huge (2.5m) one sleeping under a coral shelf, managed to get up to a m away from it and really wished i had a camera. Think that it going to be next on the shopping list, well maybe after the iPhone :)) Also managed to get a twilight and night dive in where i saw quite a few octopii (sp) and probably the largest lobster i´ve ever seen. No exaggeration this thing was the size of a medium sized dog. The dive master was right beside it when it started legging it away and shat himself...very funny. I´ve now also managed to master the art of blowing o2 rings under water which i have been trying for ages now. So all in all a very productive 5 days.

Now over in Playa Del Carmen where its party and posure tastic. Tried to go out for a session last night but everyone was fully done in from diving. So much sleep last night in the most comfirtable bed i´ve been in for a while and some beach today should recharge the batteries for tonights proper session!

Plan is to head to Tulum tomorrow for a few days then say goodbye to boys and head back North for some whale shark swimming and then back into Guatamala.

More later.

C

Chitchen Itza and Cancun

After spending best part of a day playing shithead in a bar we eventually left Palenque on the 21:00 bus. Not the best night bus as stopped everywhere and dumped us at the bus station at 5am. Hannah came and met us at 8 and we ended up on the 9:15 to Chitchen Itza. Got there and managed to dump our packs in left luggage for no wedge which was a nice change. Chitchen Itza is probably the most well preserved of the Mayan ruins but as we had arrived at noon it was tour group hell. Must have been a couple of thousand people at the site. Decided to go the wrong was round the loop to avoid the worst of the groups and did manage to get some clean shots through clever use of tours group timing. You get a small window when one leave before another arrives. The place is very impressive. One massive pyramid called the Castle standing in its own grounds. Largest ball court in mesoamerica gives you an impression of how imposing this city would have been in its heyday.

But it is fecking hot in Chitchn Itza. We were wilting after a couple of hours and decided to call it a day. Everyone agreed that they preffered Palenque as it was much quiter and as it is still quite overgrown looks far less santised.

Tried to get a bus to Chaquila to go to Isla Holbox for whale shark action but missed our connection by 5 mins so had to fire onto Cancun. Arrived early evening and booked into one of the LP recomended places. What a mistake that turned out to be! Room was tiny and the adjacent room had to use ours as a entry point, there was no fan and the guy in reception neglected to mention that there was a night club on the roof playing bad dance music till 8:30 in the morning. Had the worst night of the trip to date. No one got any sleep so checked out asap in the morning and managed to find a sweet place with ac and a pool.

I decided that the tooth situation needed to be resolved and found a dentist who informed me that i needed root canal treatment which i went for there and then. The nerve turned out to be totally dead and the pain i had been feeling was due to pressure of all the nastiness filling the cavity. Guy whecked the bad bits out and gave me some drugs for the pain and infection. Said i had been lucky to catch it in time as it was on the cusp of turning into a much worse infection. Apparently my face would have started swelling and getting infected. $350 US which the insurance co. wil be picking up but had to be done and much happier now. Have to go back on Mon for the temp filling to be put in place and to check the infection is clearing up then i free to continue on my travels. The guy has been a total legend so far :)

Going to go to the beach today and out for a session tonight as there seems to be nothing else to do in Cancun. The place is a hole. Isla Muhero is the next stop after here.

Right thats me folks. Speak to you all later.

C