Ola everybody,
Meanwhile we are already travelling for 5.5 weeks. It’s getting time to write you all about our travel adventures. We still are in good health (except from some diarrhoea) and we still haven’t been robbed, kidnapped, despite all the stories we heard here about danger. Probably we don’t look rich enough.
We started our travel on the 8th of September ’98 in Mexico City. Because we don’t like big cities a lot, and Mexico City is indeed the biggest city in the world, we decided to stay only for 1 day. Alejandro Cortez, our guide for 1 day with his VW-beetle, brought us to some beautiful places in the city. We saw our first Maya-ruins. Impressive, but then it were the first ones we saw.
From Mexico City our travel went on to Oaxaca where we stayed for a week. We visited the Monte Alban site, our second Maya-site, even more beautiful then the ones we saw in Mexico City. Because we met a lot of people in Oaxaca, we had a wonderful time, like with Yoichi, a Japanese guy, who travelled 2 weeks together with us. Sometimes we shared our table with 10 other nationalities. We were also here on the 16th of September, the Mexican Independence Day.
Like real Mexicans we had a party on that day till early in the morning. In Oaxaca we stayed a little longer that we expected, but we keep on saying that we have plenty of time.
On the 17th of September we went to Sint Cristobal, a city that lies in the mountains. It was nice and we stayed 3 days. We visited 2 authentic Indian villages.
From San Cristobal we went direction of Palenque. Starting from here it always was very hot, between 35° to 40° C. Bossit had problems to adapt himself and looked like a red tomato. In this heat you have a lot of insects like: grasshoppers, cockroaches about 6 to 7 cm big, spiders, mosquitoes, tarantula’s, scorpions and more of this animals. Every night we had to check our room for unwelcome guests. We visited the Maya-ruins of Palenque, the third and the most beautiful we saw until then. Around the ruins is jungle and there are waterfalls where you can swim. We also spent a day in Aqua Azul, an area full of spectacular waterfalls and pools to swim. We thought we were in paradise for a day. Our last night in Palenque we spent with the same people we met in Oaxaca. Another party!
We had spend 2 weeks in Mexico and decided to go to Guatemala. The border crossing was a big adventure: first we had to drive in mini busses, that drove in convoy with the police ahead of us (against bandits), to a river. Here we were dropped into long small boats. After approximately half an hour we arrived in Guatemala. Our first destination was Flores. To get there, we first had to take a bus for 5 hours. Our first acquaintance with a chicken bus as they say. (everything is pushed on the bus: chickens, pigs, cats, dogs and people, sometimes there are about 120 persons on the bus). From Flores we visited the Maya-ruins of Tikal. We even started at 4 o’clock in the morning to see the sunrise from temple 4. “They are crazy”, you might think, but the view you have from there is amazingly beautiful. All the ruins are in the middle of the jungle. If you stand on top of the temple, you feel like you are on top of the world, you can’t see anything else as jungle. There are monkeys, jungle rabbits, fox, etc.
After Flores we spent 2 days in Poptun in a farm called ‘Finca Ixobel’. This place was very nice, everyone was relaxed, you could swim in the lake, raft, ride horses, explore caves, etc. Would it have been a little bit cheaper , we still would have been there.
We continued our trip with a night bus to Antigua. A must!!! We climbed the active volcano ‘Pacaya’. Our first volcano climbing, but not the last one, we hope. Because Antigua has so many nice restaurants, bars and places to see, we stayed for a week. And also because we met people from Sint-Niklaas, who later turned out to be family of Greet. (Christophe and Debby)
We will meet them again later. We also said goodbye to Yoichi, the Japanese guy we travelled together with for 2 weeks. From Antigua we went to Panajachel at Lake Atitlan, a beautiful lake. Here we shopped around a little bit for souvenirs, but we didn’t buy a lot. Bargaining is our new sport at the moment. We try to beat each other with it, but Greet wins most of the times.
A small motorboat brought us to the other side of the lake, to the village San Pedro where we relaxed for a week. Doing nothing was our goal for this week. We met Nick and Mike , 2 English motor bikers. Together we had a lot of fun. We also had a uninvited guest in our bedroom: a big scorpion. With a lot of shouting from local kids (‘mucho peligroso’) it got removed professionally by Bossit and the kids with a broom. The local chocolate salesman in San Pedro was Wilfried a Belgian guy who lived there already a while. He survived from the money he earned from his sales (self made Belgian chocolate).
After a week of relaxing, good food and partying, we are now in Quetzaltenango, a little bit disappointing. The city is not really beautiful and even in the tourist office doesn’t know what is interesting here. We stay until Saturday and then we go to Monterrico at the coast, our last stop in Guatemala. We hope to see giant turtles, at this time of the year they come ashore to lay eggs.
Allright, that’s it for now. We did get saved from diseases till now but not from Guatemalan rains. It’s the end of the rainy season here, but it’s still 25° which is nice.
Muchos besos a todos y hasta luego!!!!!!
Utila, Bay Islands Honduras, 20th November 1998.
Hello,
Here we are again with our travel adventures. Despite all the news about Honduras and Mitch you got in Belgium, everything is fine with us. Mitch has messed up our travel plans a little, but it is actually no too bad. In our previous report we told you until Quetzeltenango (Guatemala). We visited a little village Zunil and close to the village we went to the hot springs “Fuentas Georginas”. Bossit did a hike in the mountains with a Danish guy and they saw some strange ritual. The local God of Zunil appeared to be window-doll with a cowboy hat, Nike-Air sport shoes, a suit and a cigarette in his mouth. He wore a sachet to put money in which the locals did a lot without thinking. Quite a spectacle! Since that day, Bossit tries to do the same, but without success. That worship is not for him according to us. The hot springs were very hot and pleasant.
After Zunil we went to Huehuetenango and from there to Todos Santos. After a very spectacular bus ride in the mountains we arrived in the village, famous for his traditional costumes and famous horse races on the 1st of November, the festival of Todos Santos. We had a nice 2-day stay in a cosy place where we shared our room with the family flea. Bossit didn’t have a lot of problems with it, no bites for him, but they left all their traces on Greet. In Todos Santos we made a hike in the mountains which seemed to have no end. We wanted to reach the top of the mountain, but all the time new tops showed up. In this way, we climbed 7 tops in 9 hours.
On the second day we took a morning bus at 5.30 am back to Huehuetenango. In the dark the bus ride seemed even more spectacular. We took immediately the bus back to Panajachel, a place where we had been before, to relax for a while and to make our backpacks flea-less.
After Panajachel we went to Monterico on the Pacific Coast where we thought to see giant turtles. Monterico was indeed like a dream, but then without the giant turtles. There is a reserve for iguanas, alligators, turtles (small ones, 50 days old), ….. In Monterico we enjoyed the rest, the sun, our hotel on the beach, the swimming pool of the hotel, the sea and the enormous waves, the good food, the palm trees and a lot more. Sadly, to every dream comes an end and after 5 days we went back to Antigua, for us the most pleasant city in Guatemala. It was there we heard the first time about Mitch, but we didn’t think a lot about it and after a day Antigua we left to Honduras, to Copan Ruinas, right over the border with Guatemala.
On the way to Copan in the bus we saw that the water level of the rivers had risen from the heavy rains. The bus had to cross some overflowed rivers, sometimes the wheels of the bus were totally under water. Greet didn’t think much good about this, but Bossit thought he sat in his Toyota Land cruiser and enjoyed the ride. In Copan Ruinas we saw Debby and Christophe (from Sint-Niklaas) back. From the moment we entered Honduras we saw that Hurricane Mitch was raging through the country and made a lot of damage.
During the first days of our stay, the actual news reached us: terrible message on TV, everywhere panic, floods, houses full of water and mood, people who where drowned in the rivers, etc. The rains were still very heavy and the wind was very hard by the tropical storm after Mitch. Our hotel changed, because of the presence of e-mail-telephone-TV, in a sort of crisis centre where panicky tourists came to ask for information. They even advised us to buy food and water for a few days because the roads were closed and so we would be stuck for a while in Copan because there seemed to be no improvement in the situation. From the moment the roads to Guatemala were OK, everybody went back to that direction, except from us 4, the Belgians and a few other travellers.
We had just spend 5 weeks in Guatemala and our plan was not to go back and to visit the country again. Flying to Costa Rica was also not an option, in that case we would have had to skip a big part of our travel route. We decided to wait a little while in Copan until the roads were open again. After having stayed a few days in our hotel, crisis centre, we were getting nervous by all the information, often wrong information. We moved to another hotel, with very nice place and people. Whilst waiting we helped some of the locals by digging mud out of their houses and gardens, together with the Belgians and an English motorcyclist. It is something different to do something. The situation in Honduras is really bad at the moment. We had a curfew at that moment, before 8pm we had to be inside (not here in Utila, but on the mainland) and it is forbidden to sell alcohol. This measures were taken to prevent too much criminality because of the damages by Mitch.
Besides from helping, we visited in Copan the Maya-ruins and “Agua Caliente” hot springs.
After a week in Copan we heard that we could travel on. During our stay we had met an American with a Russian 4×4 minibus. He was a travel agent for rich American tourists. Together with Christophe and Debby he brought us to San Pedro Sula. Duncan, the English motorcyclist also drove together with us. A hard drive, we were lucky to drive with a 4×4. In some places nearly 20 to 30 m of the road had disappeared and so we had to take a lot of by-pass roads.
In San Pedro Sula we had a hotel that looked like an old hospital, very cosy, ???. San Pedro Sula is a big city and we didn’t want to stay there for a long time. 2 days later we took a bus to La Ceiba. During the bus ride we saw again the damage that Mitch had made to Honduras. The damage in Copan was nothing compared to this. Some neighbourhoods, often to he most poor, were totally washed out and destroyed, people were sleeping on the streets under plastic covers, they were covered with cloths to prevent epidemics. It all looked terrible.
Just before La Ceiba we had to leave the bus because the bridge was broken. They made a primitive suspension bridge that we had to cross by foot. Then we had to go by taxi to La Ceiba that is situated on the Caribbean. Here also hurricane damage, no palm trees anymore, no white beach and a brown sea.
After a day in La Ceiba we left with a very small airplane (15 passengers) to the Caribbean Island, Utila. It is here that we write you this letter. Utila is famous for his diving schools. Nowhere in the world you can learn to dive as cheap as here. Greet felt a little claustrophobic under water. But Jurgen is the proud owner of a Open Water Certificate and Jurgen starts tomorrow with an Advanced course. Greet’s activities on Utila are mainly boat rides, snorkelling, swimming, also fun. Utila is a nice island and the sea is recovering fast after the hurricane and becomes more blue by the day. The visibility in the water is better now, 15 meter. The weather is also very nice, a lot of sun, hot, sometimes a little rain.
This was the second report. We hope you enjoyed it to read our report.
20th April 1999
It has been a while since you’ve heard from us, but here we are again with big stories.
After our stay in the San Blas Island Paradise near Panama, we had seen enough of Central-America. It was time to fly to South-America.
On the 27th of February we fly from Panama City to Cali in Colombia. In our case the country honored it’s bad reputation. Our first day we take a bus from Cali to Pasto. At 2 pm our bus gets stopped by 3 kids (13, 15 and 18 years old approx.). The problem is that they have real loaded guns. They force the busdriver to drive into the mountains. A little later the bus gets stuck in a gulley. Everyone has to get off one by one to get checked (for curious people, complete naked). Later they check the bus and all the luggage. After about two hours, they take off with our small backpack, camera, walkman and a few other things. At this time we still pay for psychiatric help to get over this drama. (???)
Actually we thought Colombia was so beautiful we will probably go back for a few weeks at the end of this trip. After some stories from other travelers it looks like we just had bad luck. We never met so friendly people as here. Hard to believe but true.
After an extra day in Pasto, to get papers for our insurance, we moved on to Ecuador. Our intention was to get as quick as possible to the South of Bolivia to travel slowly back up towards Colombia, because our return flight to Belgium is from Bogota, Colombia.
Our plans have slightly changed during our trip. We liked Central America so much we stayed 6 months. The plans to go to Chili, Argentina and Patagonia will be for the next time. For the time we got left we’d like to travel from Bolivia through Peru, Ecuador and Colombia.
To get from Colombia to Bolivia we have to take quite some buses. This is always adventure: a cooling fan blew up (or something like that), earthslides, mudavalanches, trucks who got stuck and terrible roads together with smells of vomitting people. The whole trip takes about 2 weeks. We take a few breaks in Quito, Lima and Puno. In Lima we buy ourselves a secondhand camera as our first one was stolen by the robbers.
Finally, on the 16th of April, La Paz comes in sight. The temperatures are lower than those we were used to, so we have to adapt a little. Also because of the altitude of 3600m. From La Paz we take a nightbus to Potosi (4100m and even more cold). In the morning we find out that Greet’s passport is gone (she didn’t look after her backpack). No worries, we get a new one later in La Paz. We visit the mines of Potosi and after we’ve been guided around, we decide never to complain about our job again (but we aren’t at home of course). Terrible long working hours, very hard work for ridiculous small wages and a life span of 45 years is not really a life to dream about.
Our next stop is Uyuni. A jeeptour of 4 days brings us through the area of the Salt Lake of Uyuni (at 3600m altitude). A highlight of our trip I should say. The first day we go through the lake where there is a little water in and it looks like we fern with the car over the lake.
Amazing, the whole lake lookes like a mirror as even the horizon gets reflected in it and we feel in space. The second day we go through the high altitude dessert and are still surrounded by snowpeaks. The third day we see geisers, boiling mudpools and a lot of lakes (a green and a red one) with some flamingos, this is on an altitude of 4800 m. The last day we go back to the village Uyuni. It was amazing, with a lot of adventure of course : we slept in the jeep in the middle of the lake, got stuck in the mud, … It was a lot of fun.
We went back to La Paz to apply for a new passport for Greet. In La Paz we celebrated Bossit’s birthday, 29 already.
We move from here to Cochabamba and then to Villa Tunari. There’s an animal project for abused tropical pets, mainly monkeys. Our plan was to do some voluntary work here but they already had enough volunteers at that time. So we just do a one-day visit. The animals : monkeys, an ocelot, 2 pumas, parrots, … are so used to people that when you start walking around suddenly you have a monkey walking with you on your hand or one comes to sit in your neck. The small ones even hang on your mouth and want to feed you bananas. The animals look really happy and that’s a release compared to what you see on the streets.
We regret to miss the possibility to work here but maybe we’ll return later. Anyway, we meet an American couple and together we travel for 4 days on a cargoship through the Bolivian jungle. Temperatures are very nice here. We spend 4 days on a military cargoship that transports fuel. The nature is beautiful, we see pink dolphins, alligators, birds, piranhas, … It ends in Trinidad, the city of motorcycles, they say. For 10 bikes there are 2 cars. We rent a small bike for an afternoon to ride around.
We move on to Santa Cruz. In our opinion maybe the richest city in Bolivia, we couldn’t believe we had to pay 1,75 euro for a small beer. Via Cochabamba, which we like a lot, we make our way back to La Paz. Then we have to cross the border with Peru, we Belgians only get 30 days stay in Bolivia. We want to get another 30 days as Greet’s mother visited us. Tomorrow we’ll leave for a few days to Coroico to relax and to go hiking. We have to ride on one of the most dangerous roads in the world. Next to a precipice of 1000 m down. La Paz is at 3600 meter and Coroico at 1800 m. That looks like fun.
Greetings from Greet and Jurgen
16th June 1999
Hi everybody,
Here we are again from Huaraz, the hiking paradise in Peru. Our previous report ended in La Paz, when Greet’s mother arrived. We enjoyed the stories from our families and were treated with Belgian chocolate, cheese, beer, ….
After a few days in La Paz we took the ‘most dangerous’ road in the world, to the mountain village Coroico. In the beginning of the road, we didn’t really understand where the danger was, but after a while it was very clear to us. The road became a small sand path, just wide enough for 1 car. At one side of the road there was a precipice of 1000m or even more deep. It’s quite scary if the bus you sit in rides only a few centimetres from this.
After 4 hours we arrived safely in Coroico, a marvellous village in the middle of mountains. The next day we did a very beautiful hike and relaxed a little bit at the cold swimming pool of our hotel. After Coroico we had to go back to La Paz for one day to take the bus to Sorato, another village in the mountains. There we did a hike of 32 km, pfff!. In the evening we enjoyed of a well-disserved pizza and beer.
After Sorato we travelled on to Copacabana at Lake Titicaca, the highest lake in the world. There we did a trip to Isla de Sol, an important island in the Inca-culture. After Copacabana we crossed the border to the city Puno, also on Lake Titica. There we did a very touristy trip to the floating islands (20 on 20 m) and to island Taquille. The islands were nice to see, but very touristy. We doubt if people really still live on those islands. On Island Taquille you can see if a man is married or not on the hat they were, white is not married, red is married. Also the women have different skirts if married or not. You can not make a mistake!
From Puno we take the train to Cuzco for a change. A bumpy trainride, but nice as a change. If you have to sit 12 hours on a bus, you get bored after a while. Also because we never met people that can stink so hard as here in Bolivia and Peru. It’s a smell that makes you put the window open, even if it is freezing outside. Probably a shower or bath once a year, we think without soap.
Cuzco was very nice. The Plaza is amazing. The restaurants on the Plaza have European prices, but they serve very nice food. After a day of sightseeing we visited some Inca-sites close by Cuzco. Greet’s mother did a daytrip to Macchu Picchu. Thursday May 6th she flew from Cuzco back to La Paz and then back to Belgium. Probably she told her travel stories already at home.
After a few days we left on our own on the 4-day during Incatrail to Macchu Picchu. Those 4 days hiking, climbing with our backpacks were heavy, we crossed peaks of 4200 m, but it was worth the effort. We made it, what else can you expect from us and were happy to reach Macchu Picchu on the 4th day, which is impressive as expected. With the train we went from Aguas Calientes back to Cuzco, where we relaxed for a day and took care of our feet full of blisters.
After 14 days we left Cuzco and went to Arequipa. The temperature was nice here, like spring weather. We visited the Santa-Catalina Monastery. The nice colours and beautiful buildings here made us stay longer than 2 hours. It is wonderful!
We also visited the Museum of the University. They have a few mummies here that were recently found in mountains close by. The mummy of Juanita is also here, a 14 year old girl that was offered to the Gods on a mountain of 6000 m height. She was found frozen in 1992 by some archaeologists. Unfortunately there was only a replica of her at that moment. She is on a world trip and is for the moment on a exhibition in Tokyo. From Arequipa we did a 2-day trip to the Colca-canyon with the giant condor-birds. And we saw them, even 20 and they flew right above our heads. After Arequipa we went to Nazca, where we visited another cementary. Quite a lugubrious place, in the middle of a dessert landscape. The only thing that is left of the bodies are the bones and a lot of long hair. Not a place to visit at night. Jurgen flew with a small airplane over the famous Nazca-lines. Beside from this lines, Nazca is not really worth a visit and so we went on to Ica, a village with huge sand dunes. In a village close by we tried sand boarding, comparable to snowboarding, but a little more difficult. After Ica we went to Pisco to make a boat trip to the Ballestas islands. We saw a lot of sea lions, penguins, different kind of birds and even a whale. From Pisco we went to Lima, where we did some sightseeing. Lima is nice, but not really the safest place. We also visited one of the richer areas. Big houses, good ice cream, expensive French cakes, but not really worth to see.
After 5 days in Lima we went to Puerto Bermudez in the jungle. In Albergue Umboldt we enjoyed first from a few days of rest. This hotel is owned by 2 Spanish guys, Jesus and Raoul. After 18 year, Jesus was tired of travelling and together with Raoul he takes care of other travellers with things like : delicious Spanish food, a lot of hammocks, loads of books, cats, dogs, a beautiful garden and travel stories. Together with a German and Norwegian couple we did a jungle trip of 5 days with Raoul as guide and also a few Indian guides whose names were very complicated. The first day we went with a boat to San Juan, a small Indian village. Our accommodation was with el jefe of the village, it was a wooden skeleton with a floor in bamboo (approx. 5 meters above the ground because of animals). In daylight everything seemed OK but at night we were happy that we had mosquito nets. The cockroaches had a party on our sleeping floor, samples of 10 cm were not an exception. The second day we hiked for 9 hours to waterfalls, our Indian guides made the tempo really fast, fast, fast!!! For them the jungle is nothing new, it is like their backyard. Before we reached the waterfalls; we had to climb for a few hours over slippery rocks, adventurous. Luckily we only had some scratches and bruises. The third day we walked from San Juan to Hawai, another small Indian village. El Jefe and his family welcomed us very warmly with delicious food. Again our accommodation was a wooden skeleton, now also with poisonous spiders. We are still normal at the moment, so we think our mosquito nets were OK.
The fourth day we built a float together with El Jefe and his son. With this float we would try to raft back to Puerto Bermudez. The float or Balsa was made with 100% jungle material. A little difficult to explain, but we promise you slides with explanation. The boat ride was good and funny, some of us managed to fall from the boat and other things. We reached Puerto Bermudez at 2.30 pm, after marvellous jungle days with Indian families, children that hardly had seen gringos, every evening a bath in the river with big interest from the locals, etc….
After 2 days rest in Albergue Umboldt we travelled back to Lima. When we sat in the back of the pick-up with 14 other passengers and kids that were throwing up, we asked ourselves if it wouldn’t have been better to stay longer in Puerto Bermudez. But we are getting short in time and we still have a lot of things we want to see, so Lima it was. Unfortunately they robbed us there. We thought we had some adventure already, but this is a special story from Peru. When we walked on a busy street in Lima and made a picture, the camera was stolen out of Greet’s hands. Before we could react, the robber was already gone and also the camera (the 3rd one now). After visiting the police we went to the black market to look for a second hand camera. Everything that is sold on that market, is once stolen from tourists. If you ever need something : suitcases, perfume, sleeping bags, expensive clothes, shoes, expensive camping gear, cameras, … Malvinas in Lima is ‘ The place to be’. On a certain moment we saw the guy who robbed us. He also saw us, so ran away. 5 minutes later Jurgen sees a guy in shop with our stolen camera in his hands. Accompanied by the police (If we told the shopkeeper that he was holding our camera, we probably wouldn’t have written this report, Malvinas is not the safest place) we went to the shop, but the camera had disappeared!?? The next day we went back twice to the shop accompanied by the police, but the shop was closed!
We told the police-escort that we still would like to buy another ‘stolen’ camera. They even helped us bargaining. We never saw policemen shaking so many hands on a market. A cooperating partnership! For this adventures you have to be in Latin- America.
Since yesterday we are in Huaraz, like we told before the hiking paradise in Peru. Yesterday we hiked to a lake on a height of 4600 m. Today is a relaxing day. Tomorrow we travel to Trujillo on the coast. We will send you a report from there next time.
Our holiday is getting shorter, for the first time in 9.5 months we really have to plan because we still want to see a lot of things. On July 28th we will come back to Belgium.
We hope that you all voted this weekend on the right party. We want to be able to enjoy Belgian meat, Belgian fries with MAYONAISE, cheese, things that are on a black list in Belgium you at the moment. Fortunately we can drink Cola here, because that also seems to be a problem there. We count on you!!!!!
See you later. Greet and Bossit
10th October 1999
In the beautiful Huaraz we make a few magnificent daytrips. In fact, this is a climbing and hiking paradise.
Our next stop is Trujillo where they have a big nice plaza and an archeological site which we visit.
After Cajamarca and Chiclayo, where we see a few places of interest, we arrive in Piura. Our last stop before we go to Ecuador.
The bordercrossing is different and not touristy and the busride through the mountains to it, is amazing.
Vilcabamba is our first stop in Ecuador. There is a relaxed atmosphere but we still make some trips.
Cuenca should be a nice city which we can confirm. We enjoy the local markets, but then our plans get messed up by a big strike of the public transport which means : no busses, no trains, no taxis, … We see a few demomstrations where police and army use tanks and tear gas. So we cried a lot as the gas came all the way up to our balcony. We socialise with other travelers because we couldn’t leave Cuenca during 10 days.
The strike doesn’t seem to end, so we take a flight to Guayaquil, to continue our travel to the coast.
Puerto Lopez (at the coast) isn’t really special but you can make a trip to Islas de la Plata from here. That’s what we do and we see bluefoot boobies, albatrosses and on the way we even see magnificent whales from nearby.
Back in Quito we visit the Ecuator where Greet splits herself in a North and a South part.
We then travel North towards Colombia and make use of it to stop in Otavalo to buy some souvenirs for those at home.
We go via Pasto to Cali. This time we take a different buscompany than before. This one should be more safe, at least that’s what they say.
Cali is a nice city where you can see lots of different kind of people.
Our last busride brings us to the sparkling capital, Bogota. You can walk around in amusing neighbourhoods with colonial houses. No panic, at the Tourist Office, they give you a map on which they mark with a red marker where NOT to come. A warned man is worth 2.
The biggest highlight in Bogota is the Museo de Oro or the Gold musuem. Unbelievable, what a spectacle and so many treasures. Definately worth a visit! It was a great ending for our 11-month travel.
A few days later we are standing on Belgian territory. Yes, all beautiful things come to an end as well.
I had the feeling to fall back into a black hole when we came back. We had been through so many things this year and I wanted to share that with others. But most of them weren’t interested because their lifes went on also. Later it went a little better, especially when you can talk to other travellers who know what you are talking about.
At least for me that was a great relief.
We didn’t let ourselves down because meanwhile we are working again and new plans are made.
Until next travel stories and greetings,
Greet and Bossit
Hi everybody,
We wish you all the best for 1999 from San Gerardo in Costa Rica!!!
Your reporters just came back from climbing the Chirripo, the highest mountain in Costa Rica, 3820 meter. We will try to finish this report without breaks because we are very tired. Where were we?
After our diving adventures in Utila we went to Tegucigalpa, the capital of Honduras. Here also a lot of damage caused by Mitch. The city of Tegucigalpa was OK, apart from the damage then. We stayed 5 days and visited some sites like the presidential palace where we sat down in the presidential seats.
After Tegucigalpa we decided to go a little quicker, we took a direct bus to Managua in Nicaragua. There we only stayed 1 day, because it was a terrible city. The city has no centre, it was several times destroyed by earthquakes and you can still see this . Because of this everything is spread out and you constantly take taxis if you want to see something. The atmosphere in the city is a bit dangerous to walk by yourself. We took in 1 day 8 taxis. Luckily they are very cheap, especially the Lada-taxis, they asked less money and you even could negotiate. We were very happy to leave Managua and arrive in Granada, a very nice city close by Managua. Granada is very beautiful, full of nice buildings, a big plaza and it all is very pleasant. The owner of our hotel took us on a trip to the Masaya-volcano. In Granada we visited the local market (here you can buy iguanas, alive, to cook) and a few museums. One evening there was a procession for the Holy Maria. A big party! One of the travellers we met, Nick (an Englishman who travelled by motorbike), had his 30th birthday in Granada and we had to celebrate this of course. Together with a lot of people we went to a local disco and we had a lot of fun.
After 6 days in Granada we went by boat to the island of Ometepe in the lake of Nicaragua. Very beautiful and quite. The island has 2 big volcanoes and the view from the boat is sensational. On the island we did a few small hikes and trips.
In a local restaurant we suddenly got a visit from a monkey who started to drink Jurgen’s beer, quite funny!
After Ometepe we went together with Peter, a Canadian, to San Juan Del Sur, a village on the Pacific coast just before the border with Costa Rica.
We did nothing but relaxing on the beach for 2 days in San Juan, it was marvellous.
After this 2 weeks we left Nicaragua. We did find the country very beautiful, very hot, interesting, but it is very poor and they have a big problem with street children.
We travelled on to San Jose, capital of Costa Rica, still accompanied by Peter. San Jose was the most modern city we saw on our travel until then. On the local market they even have freezers for fish an meat, we couldn’t believe it. After a night in the first hotel we chose, it appeared that Peter got electric shocks in the shower and in his room he was accompanied by a family of mice. Smart as we are we changed hotel. Our second hotel had a restaurant were they serve Belgian fries and beef, Jurgen was very happy of course.
San Jose is a pleasant city . The first 3 days we walked around trough the shopping streets, it was a long time ago we had so much luxury. Costa Rica has a disadvantage, before we arrived here we were already afraid for it, the country is full of American tourists who only know 2 countries, the USA and Costa Rica. It is a different travel scene here, they even walk with there surfboards in the busiest streets of San Jose, to show off we think (because the nearest beach to surf is 3 hours driving away). This makes the country a little more expensive then we are used to, but all in all it’s OK and it is amazingly beautiful.
After 3 days of walking around, we visited the city a little better. We visited a few museums, interesting, and the zoo, where we had to laugh a lot because of one monkey who did a sort of break dance. On our last day in San Jose we took a bus ride to visit volcano Poas. The weather was so bad that day that we didn’t see a lot of the volcano. We walked to the crater but all we could see were clouds. Our volcano trip ended in a 4-hour during card game with other, also very wet, tourists. On top of this they had no electricity in the bar and so they couldn’t’ serve us hot drinks, brrr. The live of a traveller can be really hard.
After 5 days we left San Jose. We took the bus to Puntarenas and there we took a boot to Montezuma on the Pacific Coast. From the boat we saw dolphins, wonderful! Montezuma is beautiful, has amazing beaches, but all is a little bit ruined by the numerous resorts that have been build there to satisfy the American tourists. We camped on the campsite, just on the beach. In the morning we woke up by the noise of the howler monkeys who lived in the tree above our tent. We saw enormous iguanas (1.5m), racoons (who stole our food during the night) and all sorts of monkeys. Together with Peter and Filip (from Antwerp, Belgium) we went to the waterfalls of Montezuma. And it has to be said, Jurgen jumped from the 10 meter high waterfall. That jumping from the waterfall wasn’t without danger. This was proved by an American tourist who slipped whilst jumping, he broke a few toes and had a wounded bottom. With Jurgen everything is fine, although maybe his mind is even more mixed up now .
We also visited Mal Pais, close to Montezuma, a very quiet village, with an immense big beach where nobody was, but a little bit too much sun. After this day Mal Pais we looked like if we had been baked in an oven.
Meanwhile we had met some more people in Mal Pais. With them we went for dinner an Chrismas eve. When the disco bar, that was set up in the street (gravel road), played Boney M, we started to dance with all of us and it only took 5 minutes until whole the village was dancing with us. That was an experience, this warm Christmas eve. After Montezuma we wanted to go to San Jose for 1 day; 1 day became 3 days because we had to do a lot of things we couldn’t do on a Saturday, like laundry, post letters, ….
After 3 days we left for Quepos where we saw Debby and Christophe again. We visited Manuel Antonio Park, where we saw a lot of monkeys. A lot of tourists gave them food, and this made the animals so aggressive that it was scary to come too close to them. Apart from monkeys we also saw sloths. Sloths normally only come down every 7 to 10 days, but we were lucky that one just came down. We also saw an armadillo, a lot of birds and iguanas.
The next days were relaxing days, we just walked around in Quepos and the nearby village Manuel Antonio, waiting for old year’s eve. That party was a little more quiet, but also fun. We enjoyed our lobster and shellfish and after that we went to the beach of Manuel Antonio, where we started the new year with fireworks and Costa Rican Rock.
After our stay in Quepos we returned to San Jose for a day. Our next plan was to climb the de Chirripo, like we wrote earlier in this report.
The first night in San Isidro we took a bus in the early morning at 5 o’clock to San Gerardo de Rivas .
At 7u30 we started our hike from the ranger station. The first 9 km we had to climb to a first stop, the path kept on going up and that was very tiring. The next 7 km to the Refugio, where we would sleep, were even more steep. We were very relieved to reach our hotel for that night, after 7 hours of walking. On that point we were on the 3350 m. It was very cold but we had a lot of things with us to keep us warm. We made hot soup, dressed warm and slept like angels at 7 pm, like real mountaineers.
At 7.30 am the next morning we were already walking again to reach the top of the Chirripo. After 2 hours (7 km) we reached the top and the view was amazing – 3820 m! We hurried back to the Refugio to eat something and at 1 pm we started our descent back to San Gerardo, too late as appeared later. Descending was even more difficult then climbing up the mountain. Especially our knees and muscles had a hard time. At 3.30 pm we reached the first stop. Everything was still fine then. We went on, but Greet started to get problems in her knee. Our descending speed decreased, the knee problems became worse and we got tired. At 6 pm it was totally dark and we had to descend with our flashlights on the bad muddy track. At 8.30 pm we arrived at the entrance gate, but from there we had to walk on for 2 km to the village. Jurgen went to a house of local people to ask for water. By coincidence there was a doctor in the house who gave Greet a blitz-massage. The last part of of the walk Greet got a lift on a horse from a man, Jurgen thought to follow this horse tempo, but had to slow down eventually.
At 9 pm we arrived exhausted in the hotel. We decided to wait a little before we start to climb our next mountain. Today we are relaxing in San Gerardo. The muscular-, blister- and knee- pains have won now.
Tomorrow at 7 am we take the bus back to San Jose to type this report and to go to the knee doctor.
Hopefully you enjoyed reading this report. We wish you all the best and until the next time.
Greet and Bossit
Saturday February 7th 1999
On our last day in Central-America we make some time to write you a report.
After our mountain adventure on the Chiripo we went back to San Jose and stayed there for a few days to arrange some practical things.
After this we went to La Fortuna to visit the famous active volcano Arenal. If you have good weather, you can see Arenal explode several times a day, with lava streams. We were not so lucky and only heard the mountain explode, the volcano was covered in clouds. Again we tried to do something adventurous, without actually planning it. We wanted to see something of the nature park around Arenal. The second day of our stay in La Fortuna we went hiking and this hike turned again out in night hike. The hike was fun, but at 6 pm we couldn’t see anything anymore, even the road not. It wasn’t that much fun anymore then. After spending an hour in the dark with poisonous snakes and all sorts of tropical animals around us, we chose another way. We went straight through the meadows, climbed under the barbwire in the direction of the light we saw. All of a sudden, Jurgen got attacked by……? (we actually don’t know what it was), it was too dark. It bit in his boot ….at that moment we took a run. When we finally arrived in the restaurant, we both stunk like cow shit and couldn’t stop laughing because of our misery. In the restaurant we filled our stomachs because we disserved it. Maybe our future lies in setting up a travel organisation specialised in “Night tours” in Costa Rica.
After La Fortuna we went to Golfito-Puerto Jimine to visit the Nature Park Corcovado. In our hotel stayed a German couple that rented a jeep. We could ride with them to the park and like this we saved a lot of money. The park was beautiful, but we already saw so many animals in Costa Rica and in Corcovado we didn’t see anything new. Except then for Jurgen, he saw a black puma, who turned out to be a normal street dog.
After Corcovado we took the bus back to San Jose, where we visited volcano Irazu. Impressive! The volcano has a fluorescent crater lake, amazing! You feel like you are on the moon. From San Jose we travelled on to Playa del Coco, quite an expensive beach resort. We met in Guatemala Charlie and Maureen, the owners of the Bananas Bar in Playa Del Coco. We were there guests for one week. They had a fantastic house with a big garden right on the beach.
That week was like a vacation for us, in Playa Del Coco we didn’t do more than swimming; sunbathing, snorkelling, eating, barbecuing, drinking wine, lying in a hammock, playing with Jip and Ice ( the 2 dogs of Charlie and Maureen) ,….. We lived like God in Costa Rica for a week.
After that week we travelled on to Tamarindo, also at the Pacific Coast. There we slept in our tent, a big difference with our previous room and house. We stayed in Tamarindo to see the leatherback turtles at night when they come on the beach to lay their eggs. Such a trip is expensive, but Jurgen acted like he was poor student and so we got a discount. We saw the leatherbacks and after all it was a disgusting tourist trip, but the leatherbacks were still impressive, they are enormous, in average they are 1,5 m long and 1m wide.
After Tamarindo we took the bus to San Jose. We arranged some small things and after some days we took the bus to Puerto Viejo on the Caribbean coast. There was a relaxing atmosphere under the local black population and a lot of reggae-music. A lot different then the rest of Costa Rica, but fun.
After 7 weeks Costa Rica we were glad to go to Panama. Costa Rica was fun and is a recommendable to go on a short holiday, but you need to take a lot of money with you.
From Puerto Viejo we took the bus to Sixaola where we crossed the border to Panama. From Almirante, the first village we stopped in Panama, we took the bus to island Boccas del Torro. For the ones who are interested, the boats are equipped with a V6 Yamaha-motor of 175 Hp. These watertaxis are real race-boats. Bocas del Torro was beautiful. We stayed for 6 days in a cosy hotel, together with a lot of other backpackers, like Eli and Regi, a Swiss-Israeli couple. Together with them we travelled around for a while.
One of the days on Boccas we made a daytrip with a boat. Our stops were San Cristobal, an Indian village, Red-frog-island, an island with a lot of orange, very poisonous frogs, a place where we could see dolphins, a snorkelling place with amazing corals and fish, a beautiful day.
In Boccas Jurgen added two dives in his diving diary. His comment was very beautiful and interesting!
After Boccas del Torro we took the ferry to Chiriqui Grande. From there we hitchhiked to David where we stayed for 2 days. With Eli and Regi we went from David to Bouquette for a day. We did a special hike, the Quetzals-hike, named after the famous Quetzals birds, but we didn’t see them that day. From David we decided to hitchhike again to Panama City. This was a success because we got there in 1 day, 430 km and 4 cars without problems. We sat in the back of pick-ups for 3 rides, and so at the end we looked like clochards. Luckily our hotel in Panama City had a good bathroom!
Panama City is a nice city, with skyscrapers and even Belgian Chocolates. We visited the Panama-Canal, but we didn’t think a lot about it. Our plan was to stay only a few days here, but because of the carnival a few days became a week as everything was closed. It was fun as we partied along with the locals for carnival.
From Panama City we went 2 times to the yacht club of Colon. We wanted to find a boat that could bring us to Colombia. An American couple, Richard and Margie, with a splendid boat (a Nordhaven 46 foot) first would go until Cartagena, but because of the drug traffic to Colombia there insurance didn’t cover them. They then offered us to take us to the San Blas islands for a week. We gladly accepted this offer. Together with Ute and Markus, a German couple, we left last Thursday with Richard and Margie and their boat” Miss Texas” to the San Blas Islands. Markus and Ute went to their cabin to sleep while the boat started to go and Greet was seasick from the beginning. Jurgen was like the second captain on the boat, he really enjoyed it. After 2 days we arrived at the islands, they were like paradise , real Bounty-islands, white beaches, blue-green water, dolphins, palm trees,……
During 5 days we enjoyed different islands. The sea was calm so nobody was seasick there. We had a real good time: snorkelling, swimming, sealing with the thingy (a little zodiac), hiking on the islands, eating lobster and fish on the boat, … paradise!!! It’s a pity that yesterday the trip came to an end. We are back in Panama City and tomorrow morning we fly to Cali, Colombia. Our next report will come from colder countries.
All the best to you in Belgium! Until the next time! Greetings!