Afterthoughts

As usual with our blogs, here are a few conclusions.  If you aren't familiar with blogs, the top post is always the last.  To get to the first day of the trip, open the link to 'February'  on the right hand side and then choose the bottom of the list . 

John's favourites:

• Lake Atitlan.. is as relaxing and picturesque a place as it is made out to be, even if everyone knows about it.  There are still quiet niches on the shore where you can stay peacefully. 
• Best Hostels were: La Iguana Perdida on Lake Atitlan,  Tortugal on Rio Dulce and La Casa Rosada in Livingston.  The Casa Rosada had by far the best food of the trip.  These were not the cheapest of hostels,  we are talking £20 - £25 a night for a double room, (sometimes with shared bathroom) but they each have a unique and amazing vibe. Other hostels we stayed in were cheaper. 
• Travelling to the hardly visited Cancuen Ruins near Raxruha.  We had to use the local transport.  Standing in the back of a pickup on a dirt road, then a 40 minute motorboat ride up the Rio Pasion.  On this trip we rubbed shoulders with local Mayan villagers who were lovely, friendly people.  Some of them spoke Spanish, but many only spoke Q'eqchi.  (pronounced 'Kek chee'!)   
• Tulum in Mexico has great beaches, particularly nearest to the ruins, in spite of the thousands of tourists who must pour through the small town every month. 
• Conversations with locals and other travellers.

Unfavourites: 

• Tortillas.  These are probably the best, slightly scented, hand made tortillas in the world, but we just couldn't get to like them.  Give me a good paratha instead.  

Yvonne's favourites:

• The decaying beauty of the Spanish colonial buildings in Antigua
• Meeting Silvia in Guatemala City
• The stunning beauty of the mountains around lake Atitlan – buying the huipiles in San Juan
• The beauty of lake Atitlan
• Swimming in Semuc Champey and staying in Zephyr lodge near the ancient conquistador church of Lanquin
• Going upriver to Cancuen ruins.  Visiting Candelaria caves with Cesar
• Livingston and the Casa Rosada with the delicious seafood and friendly atmosphere
• Meeting the sailors at Tortugal
• Visiting Copan in Honduras
• Spending the day at Vinas del Lago hotel at the pool
• Snorkelling and drinking cocktails in Caye Caulker
• Tulum – the lovely ruins and the amazing beaches for swimming

Yvonne's unfavourites:

• The poor quality of the buses
• Losing 90 pounds at the atm in Chiquimula (did get it back)

• The food at Hotel Cancuen in Raxruha
  The journey from Raxruha to Livingston
  The weather in Coban – forced us to change plans – cut out time in Raxruha and go to Livingston instead

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Packing.. for those who asked..
John got his pack weight down to 8kg  before leaving the UK.  Three shirts. two t shirts, 2 prs light trousers, 1 pr shorts. Light fleece. swimming trunks. 2nd pair of shoes.  We used laundry services 3 times.
No laptop, just smartphone, kindle and compact camera.   Good charger with 4 usb outlets and appropriate cables. USA type plug adapters.  We bought some hold baggage allowance and took lightweight backpack over-bags which we used as our hold bags.  Flying back I was therefore able to include a special bottle of Zacapa rum wrapped inside the textiles that Yvonne had bought  ;)

As usual, we also took super light day packs.

I wore a money belt under my shirt .  My watch isn't expensive, but next time I will take an old scratched one that I have. Not for fear of it being stolen, but out of respect for some of the people we encountered on the local buses, etc.

Yvonne took a lightweight mosquito net. Not needed but we did use the 50% deet repellent a few times.
Took a water filter bottle which purifies dodgy tapwater.  Not needed as all hostels provided bottled water either free or v cheaply.   If we were going off the tourist trail more it might have been useful.

Yvonne took her compact camera and her iPad4 with an SD card reader to transfer the camera photos onto the iPad.   Also, her Logitech bluetooth keyboard for the iPad.

Took binoculars but only limited usefulness as we aren't serious birdwatchers and you can see most of the larger animals with the naked eye. Wouldn't take them again.

Rainwear.. We agonised over this.  We took ponchos in the end as we thought it would be hot and wet.  Ponchos provide a lot of ventilation if you don't mind the flapping about.   However, in the event, we hit the coldest February most could remember, which meant nice English Summer temperatures and the rain we did encounter, we were able to shelter from.   The ponchos stayed in their bags.

Footwear.  We always agonise over this as well.   Expecting rainforest wet, we took waterproof trainers. Not goretex type (too hot) but beach type ones that dry out in an hour and are mostly mesh.  We didn't need them as it was so cool.  Just wore sandally type things.

SOME MAYAN NOTES

WHAT WE HAVE LEARNED ABOUT THE MAYA

The ancient Maya were pretty warlike and fought between each other for supremacy.  They were ruled at times from headquarters in Mexico Teotihuacan, and orders and trade passed between there and Palenque and Calakmul, then on to Tikal and through various little sites like. Yaxha and Cancuen to Copan in Honduras - it is amazing to think how they traded across this great expanse of difficult terrain in those days - the rivers and the sea were vital in their trading as well as their paved pathways between the cities.

At one time the great leader of Copan was probably a heavy from one of the northern settlements.  Their culture is dominated by the need to pacify angry gods - whether it be the God of the earth for their crops, of the weather for their protection against hurricanes and of course the God of the volcano - the great Kukulkan- 

Everything was painted red -(made from cinnabar which is liquid Mercury and very toxic) red of the earth , volcanic lava and you can see how this would translate to the need for red blood - hence the role of the royal family to bleed themselves regularly by using the sacred stingray barb - spilling blood from the tongue for women and fingers, tongue, ear lobes and male genitals of course - as you do.  This was also a way of showing the subjects how brave the ruling class were and the priest and Royal elite kept the secrets of how the calendar worked from understanding the moon and stars - so they kept the natives ignorant and they blindly followed any mumbojumbo - predicting the next eclipse helped them to keep their subjects in awe of their power and communion With the gods of the natural world.

The blood from the blood letting was collected on tree bark and then burned and the smoke was offered up to pacify the Gods.  Hence I suppose names of kings such as Smoke Rabbit or Smoke Jaguar.  Not so clear is the rather cute name of 18 Rabbit!  

Only the elite could be sacrificed to the gods to pacify them and bring fertility to the soil and they went willingly to their deaths because they believed their personal sacrifice meant they did not go into the underworld and have to work their way up the levels but went straight to heaven - the opposite of the Christian idea of suicide being damned and unsanctified to wander in purgatory - the Mayan belief reminded us of the current jihadist idea of self sacrifice for riches in the hereafter.

When you died you were buried in your house and the family built a new house on top of the  of the old - so you live on top of layers of your old ancestors.  Every so many years it was custom to break all the old pots and make new ones or destroy old houses or temples and build new ones - which makes it harder to find out things through archeology.  They are finding monuments under or within monuments when they tunnel under these days.

The importance of the large ball courts to play the pelota game - the game was obviously very important as part of life and seemed to have substituted for battles in that the rivals would play the game and the winners got to be decapitated as an honour and route to heaven.

The Mayan calendars are important as there is an auspicious time to do everything and they seem to have listened to shamanic advisors who could very accurately read the calendars and predict the best time to plant the corn - though they can't have been all that good at it because they think places like Tikal failed due to overpopulation and lack of food for the population - deforestation to grow crops in the forest.  Roxy explained this as the fact the later Mayans of the Classic period kept the pre classic traditions up of doing things according to alignments with the sun and stars - but they had not had the knowledge passed on of why this was true (the power of knowledge kept a secret from the masses) and believed it as jumbo jumbo stuff - so when the crops failed a couple of times, they blamed the position of the alignments and moved the position of the temple arbitrarily which basically destroyed the mathematical accuracy of the buildings.  

The great Mayan calendar started at zero at something like 3416 when all the planets were in alignment with the sun.  This happened around 2012 and the gravity of this caused the earth to wobble enough to move the earth's axis 2 degrees or 9 metres which then upsets every calculation from the old system - so now the alignments on the temples no longer work.  Every 20 years they built a new temple and made stelae to show the plebs how good the rulers were - problem was the elite spent too many resources building temples and did not focus on the effect of deforestation caused by needing wood to burn the lime for the mortar and stucco plaster - so this impoverished the soil and led to poor crops and eventually starvation - leading to the plebs losing confidence in the leaders.  This led to one city fighting against another to steal their resources and ultimately led to cannibalism.  At one time one city attacked another - as in Cancuen and they beheaded all the elite and through them in the reservoir - thus ensuring no future claims to the throne.  It took many generations for the locals to get trust in each other - hence all the different languages and suspicion between the current tribes in Guatemala.  In the Rigoberta book you feel the suspicion of the Maya for any outsider and the need to keep safe the secrets of the community - this was further sealed during the civil war when nobody could trust anybody.

The Holy Books of the Maya: the myths were collected by a clever priest in Chichicastenango who realised that in order to bring the Maya into the Catholic Church, the church had to bring their own beliefs into the church with them - so the Popol Vuh and the Chilam Balam were Mayan collected stories which are revered today and versions of them have ended up in places like France and Germany and studied in detail.  For instance, one of the great writers of Guatemala - Miguel Angel Asturias - studied his own history in Guatemala City and in France and was greatly influenced in his writing by these creation myths as told by his own family members - which he used in his Nobel prize writings of Hombres de Maiz and El Presidente - which are rich in description and a mixture of reality and magic which was to become the magical realism of later writers like Marquez.  Asturias was Guatemalan ambassador in various countries including France.

Also I Rigoberta by Rigoberta Menchu gives a simple and clear account of Mayan life before and during the terrible civil war in which her parents and many of her family died fighting for the rights of the indigenous Maya.

Alcohol, hallucinogenic mushrooms and wild tobacco were used to commune with the gods.

Indigenous Mayans live by subsistence agriculture - growing maize, beans and chillies and squash in their little milpas or fields which were in the forest, in harmony with the natural world.

When you see the soil in the jungle around the sites you can see how thin the soil is and how you soon hit solid limestone - so careless deforestation would easily lead to ruining the land for future generations.

All packed and ready to go

We have jiggled our luggage around and seem to be within our kilos - in fact we have not  lost anything and gained only a few things so we should be ok.  It seems sad to be getting out the old fleeces again ready for home.  Arthur has been down for a swim in the surf and cycled up to town but the lazy ones amongst us have been chatting over a leisurely breakfast and having our final telling off from our motherly hostess Chelo who I thought was going to put Arthur up for public flogging when he pushed his bike too close to the breakfast table on his way to the beach - all hell broke loose and a lot of feathers had to be unruffled!  But, she does look after us well - calls us her little soles or corazones when she clucks around checking our welfare - which is a lot better than the cooking class lady last night who was a complete rip off for 70 dollars US a piece! - they only got onion and tomato salad, a couple of moles and a bit of cheese I think followed by a thimble full of mezcal and a dollop of rice pud!

John and I had the better deal last night although it started badly when we walked miles to the other end of town to the recommended fish restaurant to find it shut - then it poured down - but luckily we fell by chance into the place next door - another fish restaurant where we had tacos most of which were too hot for us, a nice fishy soup followed by ceviche or prawn salad and for mains John had fish fillet and I had delicious garlic prawns washed down with yet another piña colada.  About £8 each.  We got a taxi home and he didn't overcharge us - of course nobody would dare overcharge Chelo's guests because she will know their mothers and grandmothers and the mafia would sort them out!

Fortunately the sky is a little cloudy so we are not too uncomfortable putting our socks and trainers back on for the long journey home.  We have had to sleep with earplugs in here due to the huge double American style trucks racing past our rooms almost all day and night - but we were very well placed for the ruins of Tulum and the beautiful beach and only 1km from the town.

Last day of sunshine and beach

We had a hearty breakfast of fruit, cake and yoghurt followed by tortillas with chicken and home made mole - 35 ingredients and delicious.  Then we went to the beach on our fixies and swam in the lovely surf.  Glad we went early because the clouds have come in this afternoon.  We will walk into town for dinner while Moira and Arthur are doing their cooking.

Everyone feels a bit frazzled by the sun

EARLY BIRDS TO THE BEACH AND RUINS TODAY

LOVELY! Just ahead of all the crowds arriving.

ARRIVED SAFELY TULUM

We had to get up and be out of Caye Caulker by 6.30 this morning and caught the ferry to the next island called Ambergris Caye and the main town of San Pedro - this is much bigger and noisier.  Then we had to get off and go through immigration out of Belize and get our passports stamped and fill in bureaucracy then onward on a narrow fast launch with airline seats for 1 hour 45 minutes to Chetumal.  The boat sped along bashing down on the waves over very shallow lime green waves and we were entertained by a great black chap with a great sense of humour who did the health and safety talk in a very novel and entertaining way - got the message over but full of jolly japes - the best one for me was - if you end up in the water and meet a shark, you shout the password empanadillas and they will speed away because every shark knows the pasties around here are made with shark meat!  Then for the toilets - if you want to do number ones - we have a little room at the back - for number twos you wait 1 hour and 45 minutes and go on shore! Number 3s or vomit is out the window but not into the wind etc etc.

When we arrived in Chetumal we had to line up with our hand luggage to have it sniffed by the sniffer dogs while we stood in a line next to them - like an identification parade on the dock - then fill in loads of forms - then the armed police hid a can in our luggage and tested the dog to show us it could find the drugs can and he snarled and barked when he found it.  At last we got our luggage and paid our entry and exit visas (expensive) and then got a nice shuttle all the way to posada Los Mapaches just opposite the ruins in Tulum.  We then had our bags fumigated for bed bugs by our hostess Chelo who is like a strict Mum. I was half expecting her to check us for nits, next!  Apparently some mucky backpackers like us brought bedbugs with them once and she had to have the whole place fumigated so never again!   Lots of house rules but she runs a tight ship and is and is super helpful. We are living in a hobbit like tree house with free bikes to get down to the beach. The bikes come issued with head torches, bike locks and high viz jackets and, no doubt, a telling off if you don't wear them.

This is the upstairs

And this is the downstairs

This is our house from the outside

More pina coladas

Not forgetting the mariachis

and how is this for cool kids - our bikes are fixies, well, they have no brakes on the handle bars. American style, you back pedal to stop and they are absolute death traps! We are a danger to all!

We walked 1km to the town crossroads and 3 of us ate the house speciality of steak with guacamole and roasted cactus and chillies - very tasty - starters, pina coladas and corona beers followed by chocolate flan and coffee and all for around £12 each - I remember just the cocktail cost us £12 in Henley - so I am staying here!  And we were serenaded by Mariachis!  And I bought a hamichair - how will I get it home you may ask!

Up early tomorrow again to go to the ruins before the crowds come and maybe to a cenote or the beach - then Moira and Arthur are doing their cooking class in the evening!

Windy Caye Caulker

A real wind came up last night and a little rain that cooled the whole place down.  This was quite good since we had got quite burned on our backs yesterday.  We didn't need the air con last night and woke up to a still but grey day.  We took the opportunity to sleep in a bit and then walked right round the rest of the island, so that we have been everywhere.  We walked past the rich houses with private jetties and saw how the other half lives.  It was a nice walk in the mangroves on the beach with pandanas trees that reminded me of Vila and mum's Gauguin paintings

The airport is a simple single strip for small planes to land and you have to watch your head at the end of the runway

The international airport terminal was quite quaint

We wandered into the poorer workers' town and spotted this sweet animal family scene

I have never seen a chick riding on its mum's back before!

I think we have done Caye Caulker now and really feel that there is not a lot to keep you for more than a couple of days here - snorkelling good.

I think you could get more for your money if you stayed in Guatemala and from Puerto Barrios caught a boat out to the beaches of punto de Manabique- but on the other hand, this is a good hopping off point on our way back to Mexico.  Some people tonight told us the rest of Belize is more friendly than here where really there are too many tourists now and most come in for no more than a week of sunshine.

We leave here at 6.15 tomorrow morning on the fast ferry from Caye Caulker to Chetumal on the Mexican border.  From there we have to catch the ADO bus up the coast for about 250 miles to Tullum on the coast.  We have 2 nights here before we fly back from Cancun.  John and I will do some final ruin visiting and Moira and Arthur are doing a Mexican cooking course- I am taking Matt's advice and looking for a licuado de guayana which is a soursop and looks very much like an elongated custard Apple which in Spanish is called chirimoya.

It is sad to see the holiday coming to a close....