As we told you when we suggested that a 5 star cruise is probably the best way to cross the Atlantic Ocean, our port stops were all too brief. We had only eight hours or so in each port. During that time, we’d get off the boat, walk into town, walk back to the boat for free lunch (it’s free, how could you not), then head back into town to see what we could see before the all aboard time.

Not only did we not spend enough time in any of the port cities to “get a feel” for the places or the people, but something strange happened. Our time was so brief that the memories of each place blurred across the partitions of our memory that separate one experience from the next. The end effect being that we can hardly remember which photos belong to which city. It all seems like one big port stop.

Over the 14 day cruise we stopped in Nassau, Bahamas; Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Canary Islands (Spain); and the Spanish mainland cities of Cadiz, Malaga, and Valencia before finally arriving in Barcelona. I actually quite liked all of the port stops, excluding Nassau, or at least what parts of them we saw.

Nassau:

Meh… Sorry, but that sums up how we felt about it.

Okay, this guy was kind of fun

Santa Cruz De Tenerife:

One of the capital cities of Spain’s Canary Islands. The city is a major stop over for transatlantic traffic, and has been known as such since the early days of Christopher Columbus.

Cool Theatre

Typical Street View

Cadiz:

Cadiz was a cool town with plenty of beautiful gardens and buildings. It’s quite small, easy to walk around in a day, and has some neat Muslim architecture, a large cathedral, old forts, and Roman ruins.

The Walls of Cadiz

Ashley’s favourite photo of all time

Inside a Cathedral that dwarfed anything we saw in Central America

Málaga:

We paid to do one thing in Malaga, which was more than we did in any of the other port stops. And it just so happened that that one thing we did was completely awesome. We toured Alcazaba of Málaga. A fortress dating from the 11th century. The photos, I hope, speak for themselves.

Wow

The Moorishness shows through

Details in everything

Valencia:

We switched things up a bit in Valencia. The old town is a fair jaunt from the port. There’s a shuttle you can book, but it costs 15€ per person. So, we decided to walk through a park that runs the length of an old river bed, and in theory would have gotten us to downtown if we had enough time to walk it.

We made it about half way, but in the process, we saw heaps of modern architecture that we’d never seen the like of before. It was a nice change from all the other ports.

Space aged

Believe it or not, this is how they build buildings

Today we begin walking the Camino de Santiago, also known as the Way of St. James.  Essentially, it is a long walk to the cathedral in Santiago de Compostela, Spain.  It has been well travelled for thousands of years.  While there are many paths to take, the most popular (and the one we’re doing) is the Camino Frances.

Our journey begins in St. Jean Pied de Port, France and continues for some 778 km (this number varies depending on the source) over the Pyrenees mountains and through the north of Spain.

Our path - 778km!

Our reasons behind choosing the Camino are simple.  Despite its history, we are not walking it for religious reasons.  Rather, we want the challenge and simplicity of travelling solely by foot.

Second, we want to raise awareness and perhaps some money for a good cause.  We are firm believers that big changes are necessary in the North American lifestyle.

Thus, we have a challenge for you.  As we walk approximately 20-25 kilometres a day for the next 35 or so days, we want you to make a diet or fitness improvement in your life.  Start going out for walks. Limit the refined sugars in your diet.  Switch from white bread to whole wheat bread.  Try to eat a more whole foods, plant-based diet (we’re not suggesting you turn vegetarian here, just add more plants and whole grains).  Watch a documentary or two about where your food comes from.  Join a recreational sports team.  Grab and a friend and sign up for a half-marathon.  Whatever you do, make it personal, make it count and stick to it.  We guarantee you’ll feel better!

In conjunction with this personal challenge to you, we’re going to try to raise $800 for the Canadian Diabetes Association – about one dollar for every kilometre we will walk.  Type 2 diabetes is very much a lifestyle disease, and we have a very personal connection to diabetes… several of our family members are diabetic.  We have already donated $80 to kick-start the fundraiser… now we need your help to reach our goal.  If you are interested in donating a few dollars or even quite a few, you can do so here:

Our Diabetes Fundraiser Page – $800 in 800 km or more!

We hope you take us up on our challenges.  We’ll be tracking our progress (both distance and money raised) with weekly updates on the Camino.  We’d love to hear about your efforts too!

Well, we made it.  4919 nautical miles.  14 nights.  6 time zone changes.  7 consecutive days at sea.  And now we’re across the pond, marvelling at the architecture in Barcelona and kissing on the streets of Paris.

Our home away from home for 14 days

It turns out cruises are a great means of transportation.  While I probably wouldn’t choose a cruise vacation any time soon (for reasons I will explain later), it certainly beats a long flight followed by the jet lag that’s certain to occur.  Interestingly enough, we only met a handful of other travellers on board that were staying in Spain or Europe for a while… the vast majority were on a two week cruise vacation, taking flights homes within a day or two of arrival .

In case you’re new to the site or you missed our cruise announcement post, we just took a 14 night, 5 star Transatlantic cruise from Fort Lauderdale, Florida to Barcelona, Spain.  We booked the cruise because it was simply the cheapest option.  Taxes and tipping included, our cruise package cost us $1306.48 for two people.  That included food, entertainment, and accommodation for 14 days.

View from the Royal Promenade of the ship

The cruise itinerary looked something like this:

Day 1 – Depart Fort Lauderdale, Florida
Day 2 – Port of Call: Nassau, Bahamas
Day 3 – At sea
Day 4 – At sea
Day 5 – At sea
Day 6 – At sea
Day 7 – At sea
Day 8 – At sea
Day 9 – At sea
Day 10 -Port of Call: Tenerife, Canary Islands
Day 11 – At sea
Day 12 – Port of Call: Cadiz, Spain
Day 13 – Port of Call: Malaga, Spain
Day 14 – Port of Call: Valencia, Spain
Day 15 – Arrive in Barcelona, Spain

The Good

There are a lot of obvious benefits to long distance travel via cruise ship: two weeks of luxurious hotel-like accommodation, delicious buffets and fine dining experiences, entertainment of all varieties, and more leisure activities than you’ll know what to do with.

The food was amazing. Before you ask, yes we are still vegetarians. We indulged in sushi almost every other day, as they made vegetarian rolls on request.  We also indulged in (more than) our fair share of desserts… and we did it all without significant weight gain!

One of the great vegetarian options in the dining room… eggplant parmesan

We went ice skating, rock-climbing, played mini-golf, worked out in the gym, relaxed in the hot tub, swam in the pool, took in an enrichment lecture, caught a Broadway-esque musical, participated in a few champagne art auctions (by drinking the free champagne, not by bidding, silly), watched an ice-skating show with world champion skaters, read books, shared great conversations with our dinner mates, and took in many other shows including a hypnotist, juggler, violinist, Paul McCartney impersonator, and motown group. There’s probably some stuff I’m missing, but you get the idea. And it was all included at no extra charge!

Rock-climbing wall

One of the less obvious benefits of the cruise, however, was just getting to shut off our travel brains. One problem that us full time travelers have in common with the retired community is that we never get a day off. The CONSTANT internal banter of where are we going next? how do I find my hostel? is my passport safe? is my wallet safe? is that guy going to try to rob me? is this area safe? is this hostel safe? and so on and so forth never stops.  After months on the road, it’s exhausting.  Being able to shut off that part of our brains and just…BE was phenomenal.

Mike’s Leonardo moment (okay, I forced him to this)

Another plus was the time change.  Rather than shifting 6 hours ahead in one fell swoop, we had a one hour time change six times on the cruise.  Always on a sea day, the clock would simply jump from 11:59 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.  This gave our bodies the time we needed to adjust and we arrived in Barcelona on-time in more ways than one.

Whether it was losing an hour a day most days, or the sheer quantity of activities available to us, the days flew by on the cruise.  We thought we might get bored or feel closed in with seven days at sea, but that was not so.  We were actually sad when the sea days to ended.

Some of the art in the champagne art auction

The Bad

What didn’t we like about the cruise?

The food, though amazing, got a little repetitive.  We skipped the dining room half the nights because they would often only have only a curry or pasta dish for vegetarians which was the same curry or pasta dish as the day before, and sometimes the day before that. There were many more whole food options in the buffet.

I proved that gastrointestinal problems can strike not only in Central American, but on a cruise ship too.  I quarantined myself in our stateroom for about 24 hours while I expelled more fluid than I thought my body could hold.  Luckily our cipro supply from Central America made short work of the bug/food poisoning/whatever it was.

We were pretty much our own age category on the boat. The average age of our co-cruisers was a wee bit higher than us… by about 35 years or so! This made it tough to form more than superficial relationships with anyone, and we really didn’t meet too many people that we could relate to. Our dinner mates were good company, however, and made our dining experiences our social highlights of the trip.

Formal night in the dining room… notice the age of the other diners

The ports were the least enjoyable part of the cruise.  We loved all the Spanish cities we stopped at, but afterwards they all started blending together in our minds.  We typically had about 8 hours to exit the ship, get out of the cruise terminal, explore a port city, and return.  8 hours is just not enough time to experience a place.

We thought briefly about some of the shore excursions that were offered through the cruise line, but they were all quite expensive, fairly brief (1-3 hours) and worse still, took away from the already limited time we had to explore each port city.

This is why we wouldn’t book a cruise vacation anytime soon – it’s just not our kind of travel experience.  But would we book a re-positioning cruise as a method of transportation?  Absolutely.

Ice skating show onboard the ship

Infobox:

Interested in booking a cruise as transportation?  Check out transatlantic and re-positioning cruises on a site like

I have to end with a towel animal… this little monkey was happy to see us!

It’s been a little while since we posted videos and stories from underwater for you.  So I thought that while we are gliding over the Atlantic Ocean in our 5 star cruise liner, eating and drinking everything in sight, it would be nice for us to share the last of our video footage from Utila, Honduras with you.  I hope you enjoy.

What follows is our best effort to answer the hundreds of questions we receive daily through facebook, twitter, and this blog about Central America. Okay you caught me, zero would be vastly more accurate than hundreds. Consider this a preemptive FAQ then. Whatever it is, we put it together after 9 months of travel through Central America, visiting every country except for Panama. Is Panama the exception to the rule then? I don’t know, but I doubt it.

Cost

First of all, how much does Central America cost? Using our budget lifestyle as an example, we can now answer that question. It cost us $49.98 CAD per day or $13,794 over 9 months including the airfare to get here, 3 months of scuba diving, and 6 weeks of Spanish classes.

Language

In Utila, Honduras; most of Belize; and much of Costa Rica they speak English. Everywhere else, they speak Spanish and only Spanish. To make your life a lot easier, we highly recommend listening to a “Learn Spanish” CD of some type before your trip.

If you want to take Spanish lessons, there are a number of good/cheap schools all over. Plan to take 6-8 weeks of 4 hour lessons 5  days per week for an introduction to all of the major language concepts. If you just want the “Learn Spanish” CD basics, 1-2 weeks should suffice.

The People

Just like anywhere else in the world, the variance in people is vast. We’ve met people that we describe as “beyond friendly… helpful even” and we’ve met people that made us feel like we were walking ATM machines.

One thing that did impress us was how little of a grudge the average person held against us for being Canadians who look and sound the same as our neighbours to the South. As nations, Canada and the USA have not been kind to Central America, and still are not. There are plenty of sweat shops and unsafe mines in operation today. But despite the wars and other problems North Americans have contributed to, the people don’t seem to hold us as individuals responsible.  At least not to our face, and that’s a good thing.

Accommodation

We stayed mostly in the cheapest hostels/inns that we could find. Internet access was about 50/50, free breakfasts were rare, and most rooms were nothing but a concrete box, just big enough to fit a bed into, and free from the blight of windows. In places, two dorm beds were cheaper than a private room and in other places the reverse was true. We stayed in dorms and private rooms indiscriminately depending on price. Our cheapest beds cost a combined $3.65 per night, the most expensive $45.93 with an average of $10.36 per night.

Toilets

They use the standard North American flush toilet with a few twists. Public washrooms cost money, so carry small change with you at all times. It’s not a bad idea to carry TP as well, because if you come across a free public toilet, it won’t have any.  Speaking of toilet paper… it does not go inside the toilet, it goes in the waste basket, and don’t forget it. Toilet seats seem to be optional.

Showers

Where the weather is warm, the showers are cold. In the highlands where the weather is cold, the showers are hot. Beware the electric shower heads. They work wonderfully well, so long as you don’t touch them while you are wet, for example when having a shower. Zap!

Bugs

The ones that amazed us were the ants. They seem to be everywhere, in everything, and there’s nothing you can do about them (except to get off their ant hills. They are biters). Mosquitoes don’t seem to be much of a problem except in heavily forested areas like Tikal, Guatemala, and Southern Mexico. They do carry malaria, but I think dengue seems to be the more common illness they spread around.

Transportation

You’ve got three options, first class bus, second class bus, and shuttle. The first class buses are spacious, air conditioned (to ridiculously cold temperatures – dress warmly), tv showing, modern buses with bathroom on board. They are a great option for longer trips between cities especially when you have to cross borders. A 6 hour ride, crossing one border will probably cost something like $25 per person.

Second class transportation can be made up of old school buses (most commonly referred to as chicken buses), or mini vans. They leave very frequently and stop everywhere, which is handy when you need to flag one down on the highway, but not so handy when you are in a hurry. They are crowded (standing room only most of the time), and are notorious for petty theft. They cost about half what first class transportation does, and are our preferred method of transportation for any distance less than 6 hours.

Finally there is the shuttle service. You book this from any travel agent. The cost is usually double that of your first class options, and the conditions are equally as crowded as the second class options. On the flip side, you have the privilege of sitting on the knee of another tourist instead of a local for the duration of your trip. We avoid these wherever possible, with the exception being trips through Guatemala City where they seem to be the preferred method of not getting robbed.

Food

Typical fare consists of rice, beans, and corn tortillas. Honduras has the Baleada (a made-fresh flour tortilla filled with beans, cheese and sometimes meat and veggies), Guatemala has the best tortillas, and El Salvador the amazing pupusa (worthy of poetry). Contrary to our own belief, food is not served overly spicy. Any heat the food has is served on the side in the form of pickled peppers/veggies or salsa. Most street vendors will ask you if you want picante (hot sauce) and if you don’t speak Spanish they generally assume the answer is no.

Shopping for food is best done in markets. There’s usually better selection of fresher local produce than what you will find in the Walmart-owned full-sized grocery stores. And it’s more fun to walk though a market.

Restaurants are everywhere. Again, the cheapest prepared food can be found in the market, for a little over $1 per plate at lunch time. Comedors and sodas usually offer cheap set plates for breakfast (eggs, beans, rice, fried plantains, and sometimes cheese) or lunch (meat, rice, beans, and “salad”).  If you go to a restaurant that serves international cuisine (read touristy place) you will be spending about $5 and up per meal. Tipping in local restaurants is purely optional. In the touristy restaurants, it’s expected and quite often you will find an extra 10% charge has been automatically added to your bill.

Weapons

Guns are everywhere. There are shotgun wielding security guards in front of every bank, fast food joint, and half of the stores in any city. Get used to seeing a lot of guns (the police and army have them too).

Personally, what bothers me more than guns are the machetes. Anyone who works outside will be carrying a machete. Most don’t bother buying a sheath for it, so you walk by a lot of people carrying brandished steel.

Crime

In total, we were pick-pocketed twice, losing a camera and a wallet with about $15 USD. Some of our luggage was stolen from an overhead compartment in a bus and Ashley’s mom had a bag lifted from the beach. Crimes of opportunity are a fact of life here, and you need to be careful.

Outside of our personal experience, we have met a few people who suffered more violent crimes. Several people have been robbed at knife/machete/gun point. One lady was sexually assaulted, and others have had their houses/tents broken into. Our general rule is to stay in after dark,and go out during the day. Restrictive, but you get used to it.

Currency

We always used local currency. Try to keep your small bills, as the large bills you get from the ATM’s can be near impossible to change.  We learned to be strategic about where to spend the big bills so we’d have change for the market and street vendors.

ATM’s are easy to find, but they don’t all work. If you can, bring two different bank cards from two different banks that use two different payment systems. We use TD Canada Trust, and INGDirect. When one doesn’t work, the other usually does.

Converting currency when crossing borders is easy. Someone will find you at the border and ask if you want to convert anything. The cost is steep (about 10% usually) so try to spend what you’ve got in cash before moving on to the next country. Outside of the country it’s printed in, you’ll find money worthless.  $USD are the exception.

If you plan on using VISA, expect there to be additional fees/taxes. Typically this can range anywhere from 4% to 8% depending on how big of a sucker you appear to be.

Shopping

Prices are always in local currency, don’t let those Belizians tell you it’s in US dollars. There are exceptions to every rule though, and some of the ultra touristy bars/hotels and most travel agents do list prices in USD.

“3X5″ means three items for 5. This stumped us for a little while, as our educated brains kept doing the multiplication automatically arriving at an incorrect cost of 15 for one.

Electricity

If you are coming from Canada or the USA you are in luck. They use the same 110 volt, 60 Hz power we do, with the same plugs.

Drinking Water

Some hostels provide free drinking water, some don’t. In Costa Rica you can drink the tap water unless otherwise stated, the rest of the countries remain suspect in our mind. The cheapest way to buy water is in the 20L jugs. You’ll have to pay a returnable deposit on the bottle, and haul it back to your room.  The savings can be considerable. Remember, you should be drinking 2L each day. Minimum.

If you have any other tips or questions, or just feel like saying hi, drop a comment.

Antigua is described by many as THE place to experience Semana Santa (Holy Week) in Central America.  So we were happy to discover we could make it there in time for the festivities.

The history of Semana Santa dates back to 16th century Spain, when the Catholic Church decided to educate the masses about the story of Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection.

In Antigua, things get started on Palm Sunday with the first processions.  In preparation, residents and business owners cover the streets of the city with alfombras (carpets).  The alfombras are usually made of a base of sand or sawdust (used to level out the carpet on the uneven cobblestone street) and then are built in intricate patterns using stencils, coloured sawdust, flowers, pine needles, grass, plants, fruits, vegetables, and breads.

A sawdust alfombra

An alfombra created out of fruits, vegetables, and bread in La Merced church for the vigil

The processions themselves are all very similar, with the following parts:  First, men dressed as Roman soldiers lead the way, followed by hundreds of men in purple robes.

Roman soldiers

A sea of purple

After the Roman soldiers, there are flag bearers and incense carriers.

  Incense bearer

Next, an anda (or float) is carried on the shoulders of between 60 and 100 men (again, in purple robes).  These andas weigh up to 7000 pounds, so there are lots of men, sorted by shoulder height, in the wings ready to switch off.  The first float features Jesus and the cross.

On Good Friday, the purple robes are changed to black mourning robes.

Behind the first anda is a marching band, playing funeral songs.  Then, more incense, and the women’s float – a smaller float featuring the Virgin de Delores who represents the Virgin Mary.  The women are dressed in white dresses/skirts and veils (again, changing to black mourning clothes on Good Friday).

Women’s float

Another band follows, and then the cleanup crew to sweep up what remains of the destroyed alfombras.

The carpets, which are often finished minutes before the procession are quickly destroyed

The processions happen on Palm Sunday, and then Wednesday to Sunday of Easter weekend.  They are slow and long… many start before sunrise and go throughout the day.  Others go throughout the night.

Procession going into the night

Nighttime carpet

Most processions seem to last about 12 hours or so, and they start at various churches throughout the city.

La Merced church

Thinking about checking it out?  There’s a few things you should know.  First, accommodation fills up during Semana Santa, so book yours well in advance.  Expect to pay approximately double the regular rates.  Second, the petty criminals also know that Antigua is the place to be, so they’re here too.  Don’t carry anything valuable and be extra vigilent about your stuff.  We had a wallet with about $15 in it pickpocketed during a Good Friday procession.  Another girl at our hostel had her bag slashed and wallet stolen the same day.  And another girl we met was robbed at gunpoint while walking a couple of blocks after dark.

Children’s procession

Roman soldier

No one is too young to participate!

 Note: If you liked these photos, there are oodles more in our Antigua gallery.  Check them out!

As far as I can tell, Copan Ruinas is “the” Mayan site to visit in Honduras. More generally, one could say it’s also “the” tourist destination in Honduras. Put another way, if someone has been to Honduras, they’ve probably been to Copan Ruinas.

Copan Ruinas is actually the name of a town located in the foothills of Honduras very close to both the El Salvadorian and Guatemalan borders. In our case, getting to the town from El Salvador was most easily done by crossing first into Guatemala. Though it is possible to cross directly from El Salvador, it requires a few more hours in a chicken bus.

It’s so common for people to enter Honduras for the sole purpose of visiting Copan Ruinas from Guatemala that they have devised a special exit/entry visa system to accommodate exactly that, reducing your border crossing fees. This works well so long as you enter and exit the country from the same border crossing and don’t plan to visit anywhere else while you are in Honduras.

The ruins themselves can be divided into 3 parts, the entrance which does not require any tickets to enter, has a large grassy picnic area and a self guided nature trail (with signs in English and Spanish) that takes about 30 minutes to complete.

Also in the entrance are the cages that are being used to help re-introduce the Scarlet Macaw to the forest. These photogenic birds are easy to spot, and numerous.

I wonder what secrets they are telling.

Next comes the main area. Located just past the entrance it lies behind a fenced in gate. To enter, you require a ticket, valued at 285 Lempiras ($15 USD) per person with an optional ticket to view the tunnels, created by archaeologists, for the same amount again. We chose not to view the tunnels, as the price seemed a bit too steep for us.

The main area has been beautifully restored, and consists of a series of Stella, and Temple buildings spread across 1 sq. km. Take your time looking around, the detail in the carvings is the best we’ve seen anywhere. Truly amazing. It took us about three hours of wandering around before we’d had a cursory glance over everything.

We arrived in the main area as soon as the gates opened, 8:00 AM, and had the place almost to ourselves. By the time we left near 11:00 AM several school buses had arrived on site and there was a significant amount of people pouring in. The staff let us know that this is pretty typical and advised us to avoid the park between 11:30 AM and 2:30 PM if we wished to avoid the crowds.

It’s getting crowded.

The last section of ruins that we visited were located 2km past the main entrance along the same road leading from the town. These ruins were also restored, and consisted of the residential buildings that belonged to the Mayan Elite. In contrast to the main area we were completely alone here even during the peak visiting hours, with the exception of the gatekeeper who decided to take on the role of unofficial tour guide – partly for hopes of a tip and partly out of boredom.

The Sepulturas, as this section of the ruins is erroneously called, requires your entry ticket from the main area to visit. It’s quite large with a simple trail along the river connecting the various buildings. The lack of other tourists made this a perfect place to sit down and ponder the failed civilization of the ancients (if the Mayans can really be called ancient). We also brought our books with us.  We set about reading them until the park closed at 4:00pm.

In addition to what we saw, there is also a Museum that houses much of the original carvings and pottery found at the ruin site (most of the carvings and statues you see outside in the ruins today are replicas). Like the tunnels, we found the additional museum fees of $7 USD a bit too much to swallow, and decided to pass. Seeing the replicas on the buildings was enough for us.

So, how do the ruins stack up? The carvings are the best we’ve seen. The buildings were about average.

Stella

Stella

Mike taking photos

Obviously they were a happy people

Ruins