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Oh my where to start!Has been a while, but we will explain.
After a last blog entry we went to Belize on a 6 hour chicken bus from the Mexican border through flooded roads! From Belize City we caught the 45 minute ferry across to Caye Caulker which is one of the many islands. It had a very Caribbean feel and lots of Rastas smoking lots of drugs with the American teens! After Isla Mujeres and Tulum, Caye Caulker didn´t really compare. There wasn´t any beach and there was nothing to do, and prices were very high! We only stayed a couple of days because there wasn´t much to do so we met an Australian couple on their honeymoon and got the bus from Belize City across to Guatemala and Flores.
Flores is a beautiful town situated in the middle of a lake surrounded by mountains, and we stayed in a really nice, fun hostel called Los Amigos. Flores is mainly used as a base for surrounding sights, and we caught an early shuttle the next morning at 4am to the ruins of Tikal a couple of hours away. We were really impressed with the ruins, and in our group we had an English speaking tour guide, which made it better. Throughout the tour we saw loads of howler and spider monkeys in the tree which was so cool, and some racoon type animals are really tame and come to try and steal food. Because the ruins are at such altitude and it was so hot and humid we were exhausted, especially after climbing to the top of one of the temples!
That evening we enjoyed some nice, cheap margaritas on the lake which were lush. We met a really nice english girl and canadian couple who were heading in the same direction as us, so we joined them on the 8 hour bus ride down to a place called Lanquine and Semuc Champey in the Guatemalan highlands, after a few days in Flores. There were some beautiful rivers and natural warm pools for us to swim in and the whole place and surroundings were really impressive. We bought some of the local chocolate, which was compltely different to ours. At first it is really rich and bitter, but after a while we developed a taste for it!
From there we stopped over in Coban (3 hours to do 30km!) for the night. Here, there wasn´t much to do, but we did try some of the food from the stalls, which we risked and managed to get dinner for 30p each! The next morning we caught a 7 hour bus ride down to Guatemala City where we were to transfer to another bus headed for Lake Atitlan. After the first exhausting journey, we got a taxi across town to get on one of the chicken buses across to the Lake, as no nice buses went there! Here is where the adventure began!
An hour into the bus ride to the lake we went to check the time on our phone, but noticed it had been knicked. We then checked more thoroughly and saw Rose´s camera, debit card and Mike´s phone and sunglasses had all been stolen. We knew that it was the people who put our bags on the bus and then talked to us to distract us were the ones who stole them, but the frustrating thing was that we still had five hours left on the bus before we could do anything about it. Once we arrived, the whole town had a power cut so it was abother hour before we could check the intenet bank for our funds and cancel the card. Once we checked we saw they had taken about 900 pounds from the account, but what we realised a few days later was that the first place they spent money was Pizza Hut!!
That night we found an American bar, which was showing an English film with Martin Clunes in. After a nice big pizza that was just what we needed to drown our sorrows! We were in this town called San Pedro La Laguna, which unfortunately when we were there was completely covered in fog, so we couldn´t see much. After lots of calls home we just about managed to start and sort things out, but low on funds and morale we thought we´d get some money out of Mike´s account before heading back to Mexico, where communication would be easier. To cut a long story short,we only had seven pounds cash, and the cash machine didn´t work where we were, so Mike had to go across on a 3 hour round trip bus ride to a town called Panajachel, while Rose and an interpreter explained what happened to the local police!
After trying five ATM´s and having a card swallowed, Mike eventually found one that gave us enough money to get the bus back to Mexico the next day. No bus journey is ever fast here, and the supposed 6 or 7 hour bus ride quickly turn into an 11 hour bus ride across the border and into San Cristobal de las Casas in Mexico. However, we found a really cheap hotel, which was nice and the whole place was so pretty and it´s a real colonial town. We enjoyed a few days of relaxing and cafes to destress before heading on to Oaxaca, which is a larger city 11 hours west of San Cristobal. We did the journey overnight on quite a nice coach, but Rose felt really car sick, unsuprisingly as the roads are just constant hairpins, and the bus temperature was about 40 degrees celcius!
Nevertheless we made it, and found another nice hotel, which is pretty reasonable and has cable TV which is bliss at the moment as we count our pennies! It´s not as quaint as San Cristobal and we´re struggling for things to do, but the weather´s nice and we´re enjoying just chilling, walking and reading books we got in the English book shop here! Not sure what our plans our yet as we´re waiting on STA travel to sort out our ticket, but hoping to fly up to LA in a week to get a base to send new card out and contact banks easier etc. Not sure whether we can face the 11 hour bus ride down to Puerto Escondido on the Pacific Coast (look on the map, because it´s hardly any distance!) so may stay here for a few more days before heading back to Mexico City to explore a bit more before heading out.
Hopefully our next blog entry will bring happier news, and won´t be so long!
Speak soon, love Rose and Mike.xx
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