After a month in our beloved Panama, we said goodbye to Liam and made our way back into Costa Rica, this time heading to the Pacific coast. The plan was to hit a guaranteed surfing destination before the long journey up, and so we ended up in sandy Santa Teresa, a village that runs along a 2km dirt road parallel to the sea. This being off the tourist track and the low (read rainy) season, there would really be no other reason to stick around other than to surf – and in the end we spent a week here, learning some tough lessons from our attempts at this gruelling sport.
No surfing photos this time...
And so we began our horrible journey back up Central America, spending 3 days and 1 night in the bus to reach Guatemala. We headed straight to pretty Antigua (30 min from nasty Guatemala City), where we proceeded to do not much for a few days, other than to cook nice meals and enjoy the view from the terrace of our hostal, and decree Guatemala our second favourite country in this part of the world.
There were a couple of highlights we had missed on our way down, and so we travelled to central Guatemala to visit beautiful Semuc Champey, a series of pools forming a bridge under which flows the Cahobón river.
Another shit journey later (Christophe counted 25 passengers for 14 seats in one of the 3 buses we had to take) we arrived at Flores, a little village on an island on a lake, the tourist base for the famous Guatemalan ruins of Tikal, impressive in their natural dense jungle environment. We were fortunate to visit them during a major ceremony held by hundreds of locals, making us marvel at how these sites were in fact still in use. But what really made our day was to spot a couple of Toucans in the trees, despite them being chased away by the howler monkeys!!
Now being in north eastern Guatemala, we had not far to go to reach Belize, and so we decided to spend a week in the northern Cays, for a last taste of the Caribbean, Jamaican style. We put down anchor at Caye Caulker, the backpackers favourite (although more expensive than Costa Rica!), and spent a leisurely week ambling and cycling about along the sandy streets, cooking and swinging in hammocks.
We rounded it up with a fab snorkelling tour, getting very close to many large manta rays and even nurse sharks!! Check out facebook for a good video….
Our Belizean week over, it was time to head back into Mexico to meet my Dad, who was joining us for two weeks. The adventure is drawing to an end…..