it has been a loooong few weeks. it's crazy to think that we were in tikal just a couple weeks ago and now we're relaxing on the beach in honduras. the size of central america really allows for easy, quick travel. well...in that short amount of time, we've been in the jungle spotting defecating howler monkeys, eaten some great seafood, taken a blood test for dengue/malaria, sipped some licuados in plastic baggies, and tried some home brewed guifiti. although lauren was sick for about a week, therefore not allowing many opportunities for adventure, she's recovered now after a week of good rest and ready to explore a little more of honduras...then off to nicaragua. so...enjoy the last couple weeks of guate and honduras. and happy america day! yay!
after lanquin, we headed up north...to flores, guatemala, about an hour and a half south of tikal (some awesome mayan ruins). we opted for a shuttle since it would have been another few hours on top of the 8 spent on the shuttle. anyhoo...the best part of the ride was our ferry across a tiny river a few hours south of flores, driven by one little man and one little motor.
in flores...hanging out on one of the many hammocks on our terrace.
while visiting tikal, we opted to stay in the less built-up area of el remate instead of flores. el remate is in between flores and tikal and was described as an "enchanting" town in our lonely planet. however, hindsight is 20/20. warm, stinky, muddy water along with a overly buggy hostel didn't fit the description! anyhoo...just one of the many instances where lonely planet gets a big thumbs down.
we made it to tikal the next day bright and early. tallest temple first, temple IV, for the view of the whole jungle.
tikal was full of wonderful translations :)
and monkeys! see the underlined section...totally true.
spider monkeys hanging out on the branches and checkin us out
cool path from ruin a ruin.
view of "man" plaza.
just chillin on top of temple II...
the finger tree in tikal.
ah, ah, ah, ah, templo 5, templo 5
after tikal, we went south to the fabulous rio dulce. we stayed at a cool place called casa perico where we hung out for a couple days with some other travelers enjoying some cards and conversing in english, spanish, french, and german. quite the crew.
the most unsturdy canoes that we have ever been in. we made it to a good swimming spot and that was all we needed!
like all the buses, lanchas (speedboats) also come complete with "god graffiti"
the rio dulce area was full of yachties. since it's an area that is generally protected from hurricanes, lots of yachties leave their boats in this area.
the boat ride down the rio dulce
a beautiful ride
some more rio dulce goodness
we hopped off the rio dulce about 20 minutes away from livingston at a place called finca tatin. after a couple days of just lounging, we opted for a hike through the jungle before a dip.
our swimming spot off finca tatin's dock
more beauty of rio dulce - on our way to livingston
shortly after arriving in livingston, we went on a mission to find 'tapado' - a huge seafood stew that we'd read about and been craving for two weeks. we were not disappointed - it had fish, crab, shrimp, conch, and plantains - coco-nutty and delicious, even though it was a bit of a mess to eat.
from livingston, we took a day trip to a magical place called 'los siete altares', a series of several waterfalls on a river near the coast. to get there, we walked for half an hour along the beautiful coast...
a beautiful coast, covered in trash (most due to tropical storm agatha)! so terrible - plastic bottles, styrofoam, shoes, you name it - along the entire coast. such a drastically different scene than what we were about to see...
the largest pool of the seven altars - we relaxed here for a while, swimming and just soaking it all in
a rickety little bridge up to the top of the falls - a great place to jump from into the deep pool below
view from on top of the bridge - really shows how clear and blue the water is
above the falls, there were a couple of large, fairly still pools - a cool reflection shot, you can just barely see the far edge of the pool
the next day was a long day of travel, beginning with a ride on a ferry at 6am - the sunrise was gorgeous.
this was followed by 6 different buses until we finally arrived in lago yojoa, honduras. 2 of these buses were completely unnecessary, resulting from a 'slight miscommunication' with one of the bus operators. when we said "we're going to honduras", he heard "we'd like to go two hours out of the way to the west, stop in a small town that we have no interest in, wait there for 45 minutes while they 'pimp their ride', only to realize that this was the absolute wrong bus." a little more adventure than we had planned on, but we made it to lago yojoa as planned
near lago yojoa, we stayed at a microbrewery/hotel run by a man form oregon. turned out to be a pretty cool place, even though the beer wasn't too great. we stayed a little longer than planned because lauren came down with a pretty bad 'sickness'. we never really found out what it was, but we went to the local clinic to find out what it wasn't - luckily, no malaria or dengue fever (that would have been such a drag...)
a look at the honduran currency, the lempira - the atms only spit out 500 lempira bills, which are pretty much impossible to use in everyday situations. it's become sort of a game to see how many small bills we can collect...
i am the winner! small bills - whoop! this fat stack of bills is worth roughly 13 bucks
a coconut tree plantation, on the way to tela, a small beach town (although they refer to it as a city) on the north coast of honduras. soooo much fruit is growing in honduras - pineapples coconuts and, of course, bananas. i guess it does fit the name "banana republic"
this is every evening in tela - beautiful sunset, every time
enjoying some licuados...i.e., a fruit milkshake or juice. when you get them "para llevar" (to go), they give them to you in a bag. it's a great way to enjoy a drink. we've developed a bit of an unhealthy addiction to licuados (shown here as lauren is double-baggin it) - but since there's fruit in them, its easy to justify having one for breakfast... and one after lunch... and another just before dinner...
we took a break from our licuados to check out Jardin Botanico Lancetills, just outside of tela. it was created in 1925 by the United Fruit Company, as a research and experimental facility. now...a place to casually walk around in.
a great view from the park
one of the many large, groovy trees we checked out
enjoying lancetilla, complete with lauren's new guerilla hat.
the walking man tree. at least that's what joe and i called it :)
dig these red flowers...
mangosteen trees - when we saw the sign, we thought this was a grove of mango trees, but it turns out that mangosteen is a completely different fruit. this place has a lot of fruits that we never knew existed.
one of the highlights of the botanical garden was the bamboo forests - you wouldn't believe how densely they can grow, blocking all of the sunlight from reaching the ground.
here's a bamboo tunnel
lauren and germy in the bamboo tunnel. germy was our wonderful guide during our trip to lancetilla. he met us right at the entrance and stuck with us throughout the day. he would run ahead, then just look back at us and wait until we caught up. he seemed to be saying 'you coming? what's taking you so long'. we tried to determine his name, but ended up just calling him germ-y, because of his obvious nationality (and he wasn't very responsive to 'aleman'). he didn't understand commands in english or spanish, so we determined that he only spoke german.
who needs to spend 150 lempira ($8) on a real guide, when we could have germy by our side for free? (and a security guard that followed us around the whole time via motorcycle)
dig this yellow flower...
today, we went on a kayak trip to punta izopo where we paddled along the rio platano among the mangroves. unfortunately, no crocodillos...but we enjoyed our paddle nonetheless :)
boat billed heron, referred by the locals as "bruja" - meaning "witch" - since the garifuna originally thought that the bird was a witch in the woods due to the very loud and crazy sounding call.
we had to try the local booze, aka guifiti, a mixture of rum, roots, medicinal "herbs," and ginseng. it was pretty good...quite strong and spicy.
joe with his 4th of july fish soup.
and lauren with her 4th of july shrimp, platanos, and rice and beans.
well...that about sums it up! we hope everyone had a great 4th of july! we enjoyed our paddle down the rio platano ending in some hammock relaxation time on the beach. although part of us really craved a good ol' american hot dog and a good brew, we made the best of it with our garifuna style seafood and guifiti. miss you all! tomorrow...off to trujillo, honduras, about 5 hours east of tela on the coast. enjoy the long weekend everyone...
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