Kalle goes Central America - Part 2. Guatemala

We begin our second chapter with a long and bouncy busride all the way to the border of Guatemala and ahead. I was heading to Tikal, the greatest Mayan ruins open for big audience.



I met two other travellers during my our trip who were also going to Tikal. On the way we had this idea to sleep on top of the Mayan ruins in the national park which we read from our precious LP. This time, however, the book was totally wrong and the only chance to sleep in the ruins were in overpriced huts (~20 euros/person) with guards. Boring. The others decided to stay there for the night, but I decided to head back to El Remate, a really small village 30 minutes away from the ruins and slept the night (for approximately 5 euros).

Alarm clock went off at 5:15am. It was time to head back to Tikal.

Already on our old rusty minibus I was starting to feel the hollowness that surrounded me when I watched the jungle bend over the little road heading to the ruins while the sound of wild animals were penetrating through the car window.

The ruins opened at 6am. I devoured my little breakfast sandwich in the local little store with other early birds while anxiously waiting to enter this holy ground. From the main gate onwards the jungle started to get thicker and thicker and if it wasn't for the little info kiosks or some Japanese tourists, the liberating feeling of being in the middle of nature just by yourself couldn't be avoided. I tried to capture this feeling by some pics:

Foggy sky and wild jungel from the top of Temple IV.

Clearing sky over the jungle. On top of Temple III, my personal favorite

A shot of the Grand Plaza, taken from the top of Temple II

I tried to make a funny face. Didn't succeed.

I climbed the magnificant ruins one after another and slowly more people were starting to come to the park. When the noise of american tourist groups became to common, I decided to have a relaxing lunch in a nearby cafe. This relaxing lunchtime included free listening to some grandmas talking about their sicknesses and dead relatives in the next table. After the lunch I checked still out some ruins that was left, but the unique feeling of nature had already a bit disappeared. I left the ruins in the afternoon and hanged out in a local net-cafe for the evening.

The next morning I went to the famous colonial city of Flores nearby the Tikal ruins. It was ok since the streets and the houses were nicely coloured, but the weather was pretty bad and I was a didn't find too much interesting things to do there. It was time to move on.

I had reserved and paid a bus ride to the city of El Rio near the river of Rio Dulce in the south of Guatemala. The bus would leave at 6am in the central station and I was promised to get a tuc tuc ride from my hotel at 5.30am. Still at 5:45, no tuc tuc had come for me. The streets were totally empty and my paid bus would leave in 15 minutes, crap. Then, out of nowhere and empty tuc tuc came and stopped in the front of me. He wasn't the guy that was supposed to get me, but nevertheless he accepted cash and I got myself to the center 2 minutes too early! If you aren't born to be wise, at least you can get lucky.

Arriving in El Rio. It was raining and the amount of trash thrown in the streets and in the nearby lake driving me crazy. The feeling started to get better when I took a boatride to my hostel, had a good lunch, chugged two beers and decided to take a kayak hoping to find some little jungle path separating from the lake. I did found the perfect little river after some time and headed off to the jungle. After some time, when the noises of familiar animals changed to sound of more unfamiliar and when every tree trunk was seeming like a living creature, I thought it was a good time to turn back. Nothing too special happened during the night.

Next morning I woke up early again and was full of energy. I was told about Finca Paraiso, this beautiful waterfall with warm spring water in the midst of forest, and wasn't wasting my time to get there. After an hour bus-ride I arrived to the place and I have to say that it was among other things one of the coolest experience so far. The cold river water was mixed up with this 60-70 degree (celcius) water that came down from a 8-10 meter waterfall. They formed a nice little pond underneath with an approximately 40 degree water. The feeling was like being in a natural spa and, due to my early arrival, I had it all for myself for the first 2 hours or so.

Cold water with sulfuric, hot water caused 1. constant fog, and 2. nice smell

Finca Paraiso, Rio Dulce

Happy traveler

Later on I met a really friendly finnish couple on their honeymoon there. We had also a little walk in the nearby roads while heading to the bustop. Here's a few pics of typical Guatemalan countryside.

Blooming tree next to a Guatemalan road

Very typical image of Guatemalan countryside. In the back can be seen the biggest ongoing threat to nature in the country - deforestration due to poor farming strategy

Mayan people fishing. Couldn't speak English nor Spanish!

We had waited for the bus for at least 45 minutes, when a bunch of gringos came with their pickup and stopped at our place. We hopped in and and had a squeezy, but a funny ride back to the town with all the 17 of us.

In the night I met some british guys, with whom we had a brilliant idea of going with the same kayak that I had taken before to go back to the town in the pitch darkness. The trip would have been an hour to either direction if we wouldn't have lost. Three times. The trip back was starting to get a bit disastorous when our other paddler was too wasted to keep himself straight from falling off the kayak. Finally we made it back to the jungle hostel at around 3 am after 4,5 hours.

25th on January. I had planned to with a boat ride to Livingstone, a harbor city in the eastern part of Guatemala. It was a boatrip on Rio Dulce all the way up to Livingstone and included nice stops in a ancient castle and another hot fountain in addition to the beautiful scenery during the whole trip. Totally worth it!

The guide and the driver

Not bad place for the castle - huh? Originally built for defending the city against pirates.

A local starfish shop in the riverside

Clip from the river cruise - old lady rowing. The local kids used the same type of kayaks to get to school.

After the cruise I was planning to stay in Livingstone for the night and continue back to Belize and later on all the way back to the peninsula of Yucatan in Mexico the next day. Unluckily, the boat schedules weren't colliding with my plans so eventually I had to get my passport stamped right away and hooked up with two Swedes, a Mexican guy and a Canadian jerk for an 1.5 boatride to Placencia, Belize. I got, however, a few photos from the streets of Livingstone, Guatemala.

From the colourful streets of Livingstone

5 meters onwards - yeah it had its downsides

I'll tell about the rest of my trip during the next chapter which will hopefully come soon. I'll add a little overall perspective of Guatemala here in the end.

Compared to Belize, Guatemala is much more for the culture-seekers while Belize is more like a place to relax. Even though I didn't have too much time there and missed to visit some of the most beautiful places (like the waterfalls of Semuc Champey), I already encountered a bit of the Guatemalan hospitality and its diverse culture. Every people that I met were really helpful and nice. The local culture varied a lot between different places ranging from the colonialistic and more western traditions to the old, indigenous cultures that still existed in the less touristic and poorer areas.

Guatemalan food is pretty simple and consists mainly of three different things: Tortillas, black beans (frijolles) and fried chicken (if your lucky). This was one thing that I was a bit disappointed to, but on the other hand, what would you think that people eat if they think that god exists in the form of corn.

Prices and living standard was distinctively lower than for example in Belize. The daily budjet could be squeezed to way under 20 euros since an average cost for a night was around 5-6 euros and relatively good could be bought for under 3 euros.

In a nutshell, Guatemala is still a paradise for cultural seekers with low budjets. It has partly become already a bit touristy, but has still its original vibe that sometimes may seem hard to get through approach as a foreigner, especially without knowledge in Spanish. I will certainly come back there some day and go for those places that were left. The only thing I need is enough time, since the transportation will take a LONG time.

Anyway, here was a brief history of my trip to Guatemala. Hope you made it all the way to the end. After this, I had still 4 days left for my trip. During this time, I spend one day in a retirement center, had my gear broken down when diving 30 meters deep and was left in the middle of a Mexican freeway with all my luggage. But more of these adventures in the third and last chapter!

Cheers

Kalle goes Central America - Part 1. Belize

Hi again mates,

Finally after the almost-disastrious flight from Asia back to this of the globe, I made it back to Guadalajara. As I already wrote (in Finnish) during the first chapter of "Sweet Rice and Sticky Rice", I a) arrived to the wrong airport in Kuala lumpur and b) was taken off from the passenger list from my flight to Los Angeles and because of that, I was 5 minutes off from missing my 13-hour flight back over the pacific ocean. Well nevertheless I made it and here I was coughing my lungs out while watching the sunrise at 6am without a blink of sleep in my old room. Good times. That continued for 3-days, which I had reserved for arranging my internship that was supposed to start in early February..

I had planned in doing another trip for January after arranging my job here. After 4 days I hadn't even contacted any companies, let alone had any interviews. I got frustrated and bought tickets to Cancun 3 days in advance. Immediatly felt better! After that I was able to even arrange some stuff and it all looked promising until the last morning. I woke up and calculated my money, which I checked last time yesterday morning. Somehow, 1000-1400 pesos had gone somewhere! This kind of shocked me, while I just had calculated my money and was sure that I put them in my not-so-well-hided place inside my luggage. It was still around 4 hours to my flight and we vigorously tried to find them with Diego during the morning but without any positive outcome. This lead me thinking of the different possibilities, but then again, my trust for the family was really big and there really wasn't an option to suspect any one of them for taking my money. Susana took it really seriosly and the time of occurence was probably one of the worst, while these were my last days living in their house and I was leaving for a trip for almost three weeks. I had to leave to the airport in the middle of the hassle and it left a really bad taste into my mouth. Later on they had concluded that the previous cleaning lady (who before stole 220 dollars from me from the same wallet) could have made a copy of the key and came to the house in the previous afternoon. Of course it could have been my mistake too with my calculations, but I felt really certain about my memory at the time. Well, that's that. Now our relation has gone back to where it was and we're still good friends with Susana.

I was already feeling good and slowly starting to forget the whole subject while listening to my favourite song - Ratatat - Wildcats - in the airport. This would be my very first trip alone and I was really exited partly because of that! Somehow I was sure that it would all end up good and that the upcoming time would be one that I would both enjoy and remember for a long time. My gut-feeling proved to be correct, still three months afterwards while writing this text I'm still missing all the good memories like they happened yesterday. Let's get to the actual trip.

The trip started on the 13th of January. First I flied - this time unharmed - to Cancun. I had planned everything until this point.

Time to peak first time to the Central American version of Lonely Planet - the holy book of backpackers worldwide. Just before I continue the story I would like to mention a few things about this book. The series has really detailed and usually accurate information on almost every destination of its area and offers a good overall guide for alternative trips with low budjets; sadly the original purpose of offering an unique traveling experience in the local culture is already vanished due to its massive popularity - yearly sales reaching up to 6 million pieces. This basically means that this "local" culture of its destinations has been adapted to fulfill the needs of the so called LP-travellers (read: western culture) with fruits shakes, banana pancakes, hamburgers and so on. However, there is still existing a good tool for low-budget traveling with a cultural experience: Word of mouth. Asking around from fellow travellers will bring you invaluable tips for cool destinations. The authors of LP did it, so why shouldn't we too?

Despite the little criticism, the book worked just fine for me during my trip. It gave me the possibility to link easier together with other travellers when needed and easy access on information on various locations. Now off with the story!

I drank a beer in a restaurant in Cancun while ruffling my guide book on a local restaurant. By the end of the second beer I hadn't only decided my next destination but also helped a local bartender to translate a letter in english to his american girlfriend who is supposed to pay his rent.

Belize it!

Border check in Chetumal -Mexico

Belize it is! I took the nightbus to the border of Mexico and Belize and continued all the way to Belize City in the morning. From there I took a boat to Caye Caulker - the beloved backpacker island near Belize City.

The first day I took a bicycle tour all the way around the city, met a Jamaican guy who taught me how to hunt lobsters, played drinking games with people from every continent and went to a local rhasta -bar. Here's some pics from the island to give you guys some expressions of the culture and the local vibe.

Street shops in Caye Caulker

Local fisherman

No shirt - no shoes - no shit - no problem!

First day sunset

School kid

The second day we took a snorkel tour called Full Chan to the caribbean reef break. This included dozens of nurse sharks, turtles and eagle rays and sailing with an all-included buffet of rom until sunset. The famously belizean aspect of the absence of time really hit us during the dinner when we had to wait 2 hours for our lobsters. Well, the pringles and beer did the job and eventually it turned out pretty good.

The next morning I went fishing with an australian buddy Joe to the split of Caye Caulker. The split was caused caused by hurricane Hattie in 1961 which basically split the island into two parts. It's the best place of the island to snorkel and fish due to the large sea population and shallow, sandy bottom with the beautiful turquise water. Joe was a professional fisherman for two years so the expectations were really high. In the end of the day we had caught one small yellow snapper; i guess fishing wasn't really the main thing at anytime. We almost woke up to a paradise when rowing back with our small kayak to our hostel since we saw ourselves surrounded by a huge swarm of kingfishes ranging up to 2 meters in length. Just when we were throwing our baits to the water some local kids started to shout to us to stop is since a) the fishes were protected by law, b) it wasn't anywhere humanly possible to get those monsters up with our tiny little fishing pole and c) this idiot pelican landed to our kayak and stole almost all our bate any way. In the night we didn't eat fish, but a big lobster tail and a cheesburger - oh boy. Here's a few pics of the day.

Fishing in caribbean 20 meters away from a bar - what else can you ask?

The fish! In the backround the other side of the splitThe infamous pelican and Joe

This was my last day of Caye Caulker. I really enjoyed my time being there, even though the whole island is already quite touristy. The saviour was the nice hippie atmosphere that predominate all the Belizean islands with the addition to all the really cool people that I met.

On the 17th of January I left early in the morning to my next destination: Tobacco Key. After a sweaty 7 hours of traveling I finally arrived there. Unlike Caye Caulker, this wasn't mentioned in LP with a big magnitude and it surely did show. The whole island was approximately 500 squaremeters big with a population of around 30. I had arrived virtually in a small nice comun, where every member had his/her own duty and the warm atmosphere and hospitality made me somehow feel part of it immediatly when I arrived. Already in the first evening I went fishing barracudas to the nearby islands with a local fisherman. We both got one, wihhiiee! Few pics of paradise, por favor:

The island was located right before the reef break --> no waves

My guide and the fisherman

My hammock

Next morning I was offered to go with a local guy to hunt lobsters! All we had was sticks of around 2 meters made of plastic with a big fishing hook in the other end. The place to hunt lobsters was these previously made traps of wooden shelters that the lobsters were hiding under. The technique was simple and hilarious: You dive down there in the bottom and lift the shelter a bit. If you see a lot of long antennas (tentacles of the lobsters, bigger ones had bigger tentacles) while lifting the shelter you will lift it as much as u can so that the lobsters will go into panic and start crawling along the sea bottom. Then you chased them one by one, placed the hook under their tail and make a fast pull to get the hook stuck into the lobster. The whole episode was indescribably hilarious when you see 20 panicous lobsters crawling under the sea bottom at different directions with their antennas pointing straight to you. They even let me to keep a few lobsters which the lady of the house prepared for me. Awesome.

The biggest catch of the day

Future lobsterhunter by profession

In the afternoon I went a little diving to the reef break which was located 20 meters from the island. I saw plenty of spotted eagly rays and lion fishes among others. In the afternoon I had a 1 beer at and fell asleep at 7.30pm.

On the next morning I was invited to come island hopping to the nearby paradise islands with two locals, Munch and Delilah, who I met during the previous day. The whole day was really cool since we went to various little islands and even got the opportunity to snorkel with a manatee! It was really one of the kuddliest animals you can imagine and still being over 3 meters in length. Still I couldn't stop thinking how these animals are only now becoming threatened. They are slow, fat, big defenseless meatballs that flow in the water a.k.a the perfect meal for any predator. I guess they have chosen their territory carefully or sharks just take them too adorable (or easy) to attack. Few pics from the island tour included:

Little protected island full of birds in their mating season. The males had an odd way to attract females by turning the throat bright red!

Jamming

My foto of the manatee - yeah, I need an underwater camera..

In the afternoon I went snorkling again with some barracudas and eagly rays and even saw one eagle ray getting tackled into the bait of some unlucky fisherman. It was both sad and hilarious to watch to say the least. Eventually they managed to get the hook out and it flapped itself to freedom.

Later in the afternoon we had a garifuna - night in the bar of the island. If was really fun to watch these big - and I mean BIG caribbean girls shake their body to the local drums made out of turtle shells while the guys were going crazy while moaring some odd sounds and dancing in a freakishly funny way. This went on until 11pm, when the island went to sleep.

The next day I was going to Guatemala and my time in Tobacco Key had sadly come to its end. Some personal experience of Belize in general: Belize is somewhat different to other Central American Countries and it varies a lot depending on the area. This is shown for example in food: In the coastline and in the islands people eat naturally a lot of seafood. In the south-western part the population consists mainly of mayan people who eat traditional mayan dishes (tortillas with black bean etc.) in the cities chicken and rice and/or frijolles is the basic combo you meet. There are also many different type of people in Belize. One part - that lives mostly on the seaside in the eastern part are blacks that have mostly come out of Jamaica. The overall culture of the sealine reflects a lot to the Jamaican culture in other ways, too. When going more inlands, the people change to more Mexican (when going UP) or Mayan (when going DOWN). I really don't have too much experience from those areas but I would guess that a similar reflection with the origin of people and the local culture can be made.

Next morning I left this paradise island and headed through the capital of Belize - Belmopan - all the way to the eastern port of Guatemala. On the way in the bus I met two girls from the U.S. that were also heading to the ruins of Tikal. I'll tell about this and much more on the second chapter. I hope you guys made it all the way to the end, these texts don't come too often!

I'm a man!

Hi!

Important notice. I'm sniffing my newlybought deodorant from Old Spice..

...while watching their commercial

This is one of the manliest moments in my life

Ps. Blog texts from my trip to Central America coming soon!

Sticky rice and sweet cakes – Chapter 3, Singapore

Hi again guys!!

It’s time to finish my journey of 40,000 kilometers. I forgot to put a summary of Philippines to the last text, but I have to say it was one of the most interesting countries I’ve been to, where I definitely will return some day! People were reaaaalllyy friendly and the whole atmosphere was much less touristic or materialistic like for example in Thailand. I put below a few pics from our last plast that we stayed in Philippines, Talisay.

The local taxis - straight from the horror movies!

AAAWWWWWWW where are my thongs when I need them?!?

Singapore, in turn, was a totally another world. It was like stepping inside this one big facility, where everything was authorized by rules and penalties. For example, there was a penalty of 500SGD (around 275 euros) for eating in the subway. Obviously this released my inner rebel during our time there and somehow I felt necesary to broke the rules every now and then with some pretty hardcore stunts, like for example CHEWING GUM or DRINKING ICETEA IN THE SUBWAY STATION. Crazy stuff which made me almost shit in my pants, but then I remembered the penlties for it so I gathered myself.

On the positive side, everything functioned there like clockwork. The transportation worked like clockwork and everything seemed perfectly planned out for effectiveness. Even though Singapore is one of the most developped countries in Asia (besides Japan, Korea (and Hong Kong), there are still some great differences to the western world. That said, in my opinion Singapore represents best the Asian culture in the sense of authoritiveness and punctuality, without ignoring the importance of religion.

Every minute of me walking there in the clean streets of Singapore made me think that how would these people survive without rules guiding them in every matter. A little roundtrip through - for example - the central America could do wonders to them or just be the worst experience ever. Buhahaha.. I'm just laughing out loud while thinking of the case. But it wouldn't work the other way around. All the latinos would end up in jail within the first 24 hours.

Like in all of the Asian countries, religion was also a pretty funny phenomenon. Before saying any more I'd like to emphasize that the following text are only my thoughts about the buddhism that covers only 33% of the Singaporean population (Chinatown area). Compared to for example our religion in Finland, the local religion in Singapore a) plays a much bigger role, and b) is overly materialistic. To get a good life and a place in heaven, the rule was simple: The more you paid for the buddhas and the more you owned the beautiful statues of different buddhas, the better person you were and the closer to getting to heaven. For example, every single one of the 100,000 buddha statues were "on sale" so that they could be dedicated to you, of course for a prize. A dedication of a single buddha could be as high as 25,000 SGD, which converts to over 13,000 euros.

One thing that Singapore is also really famous for, is food. Singapore has a reputation of being the world's food capital. I couldn't agree more. There was food stores, food courts, little snack stalls and restaurants in literally everywhere, and they offered the biggest variety of food served in even more different ways. Even though I didn't always want to where the food was really from, it tasted almost invariably really delicious. Food was one of the things that I really missed when I came back to to Mexico.

We arrived to Singapore in our second attempt at around noon at the New Year’s Eve. The day wasn’t exactly the best of our trip, because it was raining like mad and I was feeling sick and sleeping pretty much the whole afternoon. I pretty much stayed in our hotelroom, which was probably one of the cheapest in the neighborhood, 30e/night. We still had a bit time to roam the local shops and restaurants, here's a few pics of that.

Meat... GRAAAAHH

Typical scene from a market

In the night I was feeling already better and finally rose from my wet bed (because of sweat!) at 9pm. We were going to meet Jette’s friends in a really nice club with a masquerade theme for the New Year’s Eve. Jette bought me this:

After making people laugh with my awesome mask we left to see the firework show just before midnight. It sure didn’t disappoint us. We among other 20,000 people saw millions of Singaporean dollars blown into air every minute for a total 10 minutes in the nicest firework show I’ve ever seen. It was also the crowdiest, it took us 30 minutes to get to the first taxi stop and another hour to drive us the 3 km distance home.

On the next day I still wasn’t feeling perfect, but we still decided to head out to skirt in the streets of Chinatown and Little India. Chinatown didn’t differ too much from the night-market scene in Hongkong, but Little India offered many new smells – which all weren’t necessarily good – and the absence of women in the streets. We visited a temple in Chinatown and went eat to Little India. Here's a few pics of that.

Sri Mariamman Temple - Chinatown

Incences in Sri Mariamman temple

One of the various statues inside Sri Mariamman temple

Kitchen knife art in Chinatown

Man eating in Little India. I was really lucky to capture the only female in the streets

Some indian food, it was ok.

On the second day of the rabbit's yearwe went to Marina Bay to see the mascot of Singapore - The Merliot Lion. We were also planning to go up to the Marina Sands Bay to the rooftop pool, but since it was only for hotel guests and only taking the ride up to the viewpoint would have costed around 15 euros/ person, we decided to skip it.

The Merliot Lion

Marina Sands Bay

View from Marina Bay

I paid us to go to to hotel Fullerton and its famous dinner buffet. It was pretty costly, but also one of the best buffets we've ever had, so totally worth it!



Next morning we moved to Jette's house to Commonwealth where she continues her studies for another semester. After moving the stuff we headed to eat the famous Singaporean chilicrab with her schoolmates and watched a freakishly weird movie afterwards.

Our next day was our last. We went to the Singapore national park do hang out. In the night we went to G-Max, which is kind of a human slingshot in Clark Quay, an popular place with a lot of nightclubs. The G-Max was SUPERBLY fun, thanks Jette for the present!

The next night was about saying goodbyes and preparing for my trip back to Mexico. My flight to Kuala Lumpur and onwards to Los Angeles and Guadalajara left the next morning at around 11 am and the leaving ambience wasn't obviously the best I've had. Everything has to come to its end sometime. The last three weeks had been again one of the best in my life, thank you Jette for your company and everything!

Hotel Fullerton at night

Clark Quay - The white towers of G-Max can be seen in the backround

Cya, soulmate!

My trips didn't quite end here! I had still planned to travel in Central America for another three weeks with my dutch friend. To see how I survired to write this text, come back to read the next chapters of the blog! Thanks guys for reading, I hope you made it all the way to the end. A little sneak peak from my adventures from this on can be read at the beginning of the first chapter of this trip (Sorry my English readers, I decided to write it in Finnish!).

Cheers,
Kalle