Note:  If you’ve been following our Facebook fan page, you know that we’ve been out of Belize and in Utila, Honduras for the past month.  We’ve fallen in love with scuba diving and are currently still in Utila feeding our addiction.  Our next posts will catch you up with the last month of our lives and the new twist in our travel plans… so stay tuned.

Our trip to Belize started out as a visa run to renew our visas for the C4 Region (Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, and Nicaragua), but lasted two weeks.  We embraced the “Go Slow” motto of our first stop, Caye Caulker, and spent a lot of time just relaxing at the beaches.

View from our balcony in Caye Caulker

Belize Statistics:

Length of Stay: 14 days
Average Cost per Day for Two People: $42.44 CAD
Cities/Towns Visited: 4
Distance Traveled: 940 km in 6 automobiles and 2 boats
Days Sick: 0 for Ashley, 0 for Mike (yay!)
Number of Items Lost: 0
Biggest Tourist Traps:  Orange Walk
Exchange Rate: $1 CAD = $2 BZ

For more great travel statistics, check out our stats page!

Our Route:

Punta Gorda –  Caye Caulker – Orange Walk – Dangriga – Placencia – Dangriga

Highlights:

• Swimming with nurse sharks and stingrays in Caye Caulker
• Cinnamon bread and ham & cheese turnovers at the bakery in Caye Caulker
• Lounging on the beach in Placencia
• Happy Cow cheese and crackers
• Fairly cheap fresh seafood

Fresh snook in Placencia

Lowlights:

• Orange Walk
• Happy Cow cheese and crackers
• Expensive restaurant food

Surprises:

• It was more affordable than we had heard.  Granted, we stuck to the cheapest hostels and cheapest eats (thank you stewed chicken, rice & beans!) that we could find.
• How much younger the Queen looks on their bills compared to Canada’s.
• How many young pregnant women there were everywhere we went.

Caye Caulker

Lessons Learned:

• It’s not always a good idea to go to a city just because Lonely Planet declares they have the best street food in the country… especially during the rainy season when the street vendors aren’t even out.
• If you’re not enjoying a place, there’s no reason to keep staying there.
• Even if you have a rough idea how long you plan to stay in a country, lie and say it’s the maximum stay so you don’t lose out on days on your visa.

Palm trees in Placencia

Belize Journal – Where Did We Spend Our Time?

Caye Caulker – 6 nights
What we did here:  Very little actually… lots of lounging and swimming, snorkelling with sharks & rays

Orange Walk – 1 night
What we did here: Hid in our hostel from the rain and the pushy vendors selling tours to Lamanai ruins

Dangriga – 3 nights
What we did here: Nothing… mostly waited for the post office to open so we could mail a parcel home

Placencia – 4 nights
What we did here: Relaxing & swimming on the beach

Go Slow sign in Caye Caulker

If you want to check out some of our Belize photos, check out our photo gallery.

Our trip to Belize was only going to be a visa run. We needed to reset our C4 visa before moving on from Guatemala to Honduras, and Belize seemed like a good (albeit pricey) place to do it. We thought we would go up to Caye Caulker, and then work our way back to Placencia to catch the Friday ferry to Puerto Cortes, Honduras. The ferry would only take about 4 hours. Simple enough, right? Wrong.

Problem #1: The Friday ferry from Placencia was busted.

After being less than enamoured with Orange Walk and Dangriga, we arrived in Placencia about 10 days into our stay in Belize. This was a Tuesday. The boat left on Friday and we were told by the lady selling lunch on the dock that advance tickets were unnecessary.

Always ones to double check facts, on Wednesday we decided to check that we wouldn’t need advance tickets. A quick stop at the tourist centre taught us that the ferry was being repaired and would not be running on Friday.

Problem #2: Our visas were about to expire

We actually quite liked Placencia and figured we could just stay there another week, which would also give us the opportunity to check out the nearby Cockscomb Wildlife Reserve. Alas, our visas expired on Saturday due to a fairly rookie mistake on our part… when we entered Belize, we told the immigration official we were planning to stay about 2 weeks. So he only gave us 14 days on our visas, instead of the usual 30 days tourists get. As a result, extending our stay in the country would cost us $50 BZ ($25 CAD) per person for visa extensions. We tried calling immigration to see if they would waive the extension fee since they would only be extending within the time frame of a normal visa, but they clearly told us that wouldn’t be possible. So we needed to leave the country on Friday.

Problem #3: Chartering a boat from a “boat guy” that really doesn’t want to go is a bad idea

On Thursday, we ran into a couple of European ladies we had met on the bus to Placencia. They had managed to find a guy that would charter a direct boat to Utila for $300 BZ/$150 CAD per person (our first Honduras destination) that would bypass the need to take a bus, a water taxi, a land taxi, another bus, spend a night in La Ceiba, and a morning ferry to Utila.  Skipping all that would cost $50 more per person than not, and the chartered boat was going to leave on Friday.

Since everyone else in the group had much stricter schedules than us (as in, they had a schedule), their preference was the charter boat. Since we kind of like checking out the countryside via bus, and don’t mind spending a night in a gateway city, we wanted to save the $50 CAD per person and take the extra bus, water taxi, land taxi, bus… etc.

Unfortunately, we were the deciding factor for whether the tour operator was willing to take his boat out on the water (without us, there weren’t enough people).  Feeling kind of bad for everyone else, we negotiated a lower price for just the two of us, so we could be happy taking the charter boat, the tour operator could make a little money, and everyone else would get to save at least one transportation day.

I know what you’re thinking… how is that fair that we got a lower price than everyone else for the same trip? The socialists in us hated the idea too, but the cheapskates in us allowed it to happen. After all, we were totally happy taking extra buses and boats and for everyone else, they were paying the same price they had agreed on earlier.

The plan was to meet up Thursday afternoon, so we could go to the mainland to get our exit stamps in our passports. After meeting up twice and being sent away twice with different excuses, along the lines of  “one of my captains is out fishing so we can’t go right now”, we were finally told to meet again at 8 am on Friday.  We’d do the passport stuff in the morning, on our way out to Utila.

This set off flashing warning lights: If we met the tour operator at 8 AM and he had yet another excuse, we would have missed the 7 am bus to Dangriga and lost our only chance to catch a boat out of the country. This objection didn’t seem to bother him though. He promised he would work everything out with his captains and would come to our hostel to confirm all the details that evening.

At about 8:00 PM Thursday, there was still no word. So we borrowed our hotel owner’s phone and called. That’s when we found out he wasn’t willing to go for the price he had already agreed on. So the charter boat was cancelled.

Problem #4: I think all of Belize runs on “island time”

Come Friday morning, we woke up early, caught the 7 am bus to Dangriga and arrived hours before the ferry departed. It was indeed running and it was a beautiful, sunny, calm day. We bought our tickets ($120 BZ or $60 CAD per person) and were told that immigration would be there in about an hour.  We left our stuff with the boat and got some breakfast. An hour later, we went back to the ferry and waited for immigration. And waited. And waited. One hour became two, but finally, immigration showed up, took everyone’s cash, and stamped our passports. We were finally on the boat.

The snazzy looking ferry building in Dangriga

Problem #5: You know it’s not a good thing when someone has to get out of the boat and push

As we were leaving the Dangriga harbour, the boat got caught on a sand patch. It took a few attempts to remedy this situation.

Attempt #1: The captain attempted to manoeuvre the boat back and forth to get free.  This didn’t work.

Attempt #2: They sent this poor guy out into the water to push. He made several attempts and was aided by the shouted instructions of the many bystanders on the shore.

Sometimes the boat just needs little push…

Attempt #3: Everyone was sent to the front of the boat. This didn’t work either.

Crowded in the front of the boat with Emma, one of our travelling companions

Attempt #4: Once the guy gave up pushing, he walked the anchor waaayy out into the surf.

Walking the anchor out…

They rounded up “all the strong guys” to stand on the front of the boat and pull on the anchor rope. All this accomplished was pulling the anchor back in.

A little tug for the stuck boat

Attempt #5: I’m not sure exactly what combination of pushing, pulling, and engine manoeuvres did it, but we were finally free of the sand. Success! A cheer rose up from the crowd on the boat.

Problem #6: Guess the engine didn’t like the sand much

Our boat had to stop mid-ocean twice due to engine problems. At one point, they changed out the propeller. I don’t even know what happened the second time… the rolling waves and my stomach were too busy battling it out to look up and see what was going on. I did master my new zen approach to avoiding seasickness. Mike doesn’t understand it, but for some reason if I close my eyes and just let my body move with the boat I don’t get sick. Oh, and Oreos help too. Mike tells me that we started with three engines, and when we got to Puerto Cortes, Honduras, we were down to just one.

I may be feeling a little queasy, but I still managed a smile(ish)!

But we got there! We finally spotted Puerto Cortes.  The trip ended with us setting foot on land. Hello Honduras!!!

Note:  After all of that, we still hadn’t made it out to the island of Utila.  We managed to get ourselves stuck in La Ceiba for two nights waiting for the ferry start running again due to bad weather.  Aaaahh, the joys of travelling during rainy season…

Our first view of Puerto Cortes

We have always loved to cook and traveling around the world has not changed that one bit.  Cooking in a hostel is a bit different though, largely due to poorly stocked hostel kitchens.

In Central American hostels, for example, you have to overcome a few obstacles in the kitchen:

• No oven!
• Burners with limited temperature control
• Dull knives
• Probably no more than 1 pot and 1 frying pan

What we have come to love while traveling are simple dishes with easily found ingredients, that can be cooked in one pot with minimal fuss, and that smell and taste so good you’ll become the envy of every other hostel cooker.

Enter Hostelbookers.com and their #hostelkitchen approved recipes.  They are putting together a cook book just for us hostel cooks, created from entries like this, and voted on by their facebook fans.  For more details, check out their site here.

Coconut Curry:

Ingredients:

3 – large potatoes (skinned, and cut into 1/2″ cubes)
5 – cloves of garlic, minced
1 – can of chickpeas
1 – can of spinach
1 – can of coconut milk
4 – tbsp curry powder
1 – tbsp salt

Directions:

In a large pot combine all ingredients.  Include the liquid from the canned chickpeas and canned spinach.

Cook on medium-high.

When it comes to boil, turn down the heat to low and continue boiling for 30 minutes.  There’s no need to stir… go read a book, have a beer, or hang out in the common room.

Serving:

Spoon curry into a couple of bowls or just eat it out of the pot.  There should be enough to comfortably feed 3-4 people.  As a couple, we usually make it as one big supper for the two of us, and then eat the leftovers for lunch or breakfast.  (It’s even tasty cold!)

It can also be served over rice (as pictured above), on quinoa, or with a side of bread.

Substitutions and additions:

These additions/substitutions work well:

• Add eggplant cut into 1/4″ cubes (love it)
• Add cauliflower (curried cauliflower is amazing)
• Substitute 2 plantains for 1 potato
• Use fresh spinach instead of canned.  You will need to add a little water if you do this.

Have a suitable recipe for a hostel kitchen?

Head over to the contest’s site and submit your own!

It finally happened… we found a place we just didn’t like. In fairness, we didn’t give Orange Walk much of a chance either. We spent only one night there, and were more than happy to be on the first bus out of town the next morning.

Before I get into why we didn’t like it, I should mention why we bothered to go there in the first place. According to our traveler’s bible (the Lonely Planet) Orange Walk is famous for two things – it’s home to Belize’s cheapest and best street food, and it’s the starting point for a river tour to the Lamanai Mayan ruins. We were less interested in the ruins, and much more interested in the food.

Not exactly street food, but even it is called “Yummy”

You see, Ashley and I love to eat. We’ve also become rather frugal (which is just a nice way to say we’re uber cheapskates) as we try our best to conserve our savings to extend our trip as much as possible. Naturally, street food has quickly become a staple for us when we’re not cooking in our hostel. It is both delicious and cheap and we love it a lot more than we probably should. The prospect of street food that was even more delicious and even more cheap than what we had grown accustomed to eating was too much to pass up. We had no choice but to go.

By this point, you are probably wondering just how good the street food was if it was worth a special trip.  So are we. Unfortunately for us, and our gourmet supper plans, the weather just didn’t cooperate. When supper time finally approached and our tummies started to grumble, the sky let loose one of the most torrential downpours that we had seen in a while. The rain washed the streets clean, and sent all of the vendors running for shelter, packing up whatever they had prepared to serve that night and taking it all home with them. We never tasted the famed street food of Orange Walk.

But that’s not why we hated it. If it were just rain, we would have gladly booked ourselves into the hotel for another night and waited for a nicer evening. What we hated was the way we were treated by the people. Specifically, the people who treated us like walking ATM machines. Which was pretty much everyone.

Before the rain hit, we had a few hours in the afternoon to walk around the town and get a feel for the place. In that brief period of time, we were approached continuously by locals trying to pressure us into buying a tour to the Lamanai ruins. It must be that everyone in town is on commission. I don’t think there was a person we met who didn’t try to sell us the tour. There was the man who sold us a tamale outside the bus station, two hotel owners, the driver of a white van who had to pull over on the road to try and sell us the tour, a fellow in the park, the baker, a gentleman who was out for an evening stroll with his wife and newborn baby, etc, etc.

Just when we’d had enough and were heading back to the privacy of our hotel room for a reprieve, someone had the nerve to call us “cheap ass white motherfuckers” because we refused to buy a cellphone from him in the middle of the street. It certainly didn’t help improve our opinion of the place at all.

When we made it back to our hotel room, and the rain started, we only needed to look at each other to know that we were not spending another day in Orange Walk.  Not even for the best street food in the country.

I guess we can’t love every place we visit.

I hate to stereotype, but sometimes you just have to. In this case I’m going to stereotype travelers. Of fellow travelers we meet on the road, we often find more often than not they fit into somewhat of a mould. For example, they are usually professionals, or on their way to becoming professionals. Thus we meet a lot of lawyers, doctors, engineers, teachers and grad students. I’d say the whole works of them have a very leftish view of politics, are spiritual in one way or another but not devout followers of any organized religion, drink beer, and smoke pot.

Being myself an ex-politician, an engineer, and recent pilgrim stumbling down the road of self enlightenment, I find I have a lot in common with the average traveler even without smoking pot. As you can imagine, when you get a big enough group of travelers together, in a chill laid back environment full of cheap booze, it’s easy to start talking in circles and try to solve all the world’s problems.

Here are some thoughts from a group of travelers on a balcony in Caye Caulker:

• The universe is infinitely large and infinitely small; all things in it are infinitely complex and infinitely simple
• The major problems of the world are easy to identify and just as easy to (theoretically) solve
• Even if everyone in the world wanted the world to change in the same way; the world would not change
• You can change the world by changing yourself
• Definition of Evil: when someone tries to do the best thing, but fails to consider the morality of their decision
• Accomplishments bring happiness
• Too many people are addicted to buying new things
• Your life is worth more than anyone else’s life, but nobody’s life is worth less than your own
• All things are relative
• Political correctness is a dangerous excuse to keep the world ignorant
• Discussion tempers the extreme
• It’s one thing to learn, another to apply

I’m sure everyone has similar nights, where you feel like you’ve solved all the worlds problems.  At least until you wake up in the morning.

The truth is, somewhere along our travels, we’ve become serious cheapskates.  So as we hung out in Caye Caulker, Belize, eating stewed chicken with rice and beans for every meal (pretty much the cheapest eats on the island if you’re looking for a full meal, and luckily for us, it just happened to be super delicious) we debated long and hard if we should spend the money on a snorkelling excursion.

Hanging out at “The Split” in Caye Caulker

A half-day snorkelling trip from Caye Caulker cost $50 BZ (about $25 CAD) per person.  So we weren’t really talking about breaking the bank.  Our plan, however, was to head to Utila, Honduras to try our hand at scuba diving after our short stint in Belize.  So we thought… why spend money on snorkelling now when we’re about to spend a lot of money to do a lot of diving (and probably snorkelling) in Honduras?

Ultimately, though, we silenced our inner cheapskates and decided to snorkel.  Am I ever happy that we did!

The trip involved a five minute boat ride out to the reef, with three snorkelling excursions in three different locations.

Boat ride to the reef

The guide led us in the first trip out, and we saw some really cool stuff.  He coaxed some eels to swim up out of the reef, and we saw some barracudas and a manatee.  At least Mike saw the manatee.  Unfortunately, my mask had a major leaking issue and I missed out on the manatee while I was clearing the water out of it.  Oh well… hopefully I’ll see one later.

Next up was Shark and Ray Alley.  Which is exactly what it sounds like.  Our guide tossed some chum in the water and instantly we were surrounded by nurse sharks.

The sharks we swam with

Several Southern stingrays joined in the party too.  I was a little nervous jumping into the water (“Make sure you don’t land on top of a stingray – they don’t like that much”), but my anxiety was quickly replaced with excitement and astonishment as the creatures swam around us.  We were told not to touch the sharks, but the rays were fair game.  In fact, the rays actually seek out human interaction.  They rubbed up against our legs just like our cat used to when she wanted attention.  We could “pet” them too… as Mike says, they kind of feel like the white part of those gummy frog candies (you know, the green and white ones) – soft, slippery, and smooth.

Southern stingray

At the third stop, we did some independent snorkelling along the reef, seeing tons of colourful fish.

Definitely a great trip and an unforgettable experience!

What can I say… we loved Guatemala and had a hard time leaving.  Here’s a summary of our time there and a few random Guatemalan pictures that we haven’t yet had the chance to share.

Guatemala Statistics:

Length of Stay: 71 days
Average Cost per Day for Two People: $43.04 CAD
Average Cost per Day for Two People (excluding Spanish lessons & replacing our stolen camera): $24.97 CAD
Cities/Towns Visited: 8
Distance Traveled: 1938 km in 18 automobiles and 3 boats
Days Sick: 3 for Ashley, 0 for Mike
Number of Items Lost: 2 (Camp Soap, Ashley’s t-shirt)
Number of Items Stolen: 1 (camera)
Biggest Tourist Traps: The unofficial Garifuna tour of Livingston.
Exchange Rate: $1 CAD = 8 Quetzales

For more great travel statistics, check out our stats page!

Our Route:

Flores (Tikal) – San Pedro La Laguna – Quetzaltenango/Xela (San Andrés Xecul) – Coban – Semuc Champey – Lanquin – Rio Dulce – Livingston

Highlights:

• 6 weeks of Spanish lessons in San Pedro La Laguna on Lake Atitlan
• The turquoise pools and water caves at Semuc Champey
• Channelling our inner “Batman” at Lanquin bat caves
• Climbing Volcan Santa Maria
• Xocomil water park

Lowlights:

• Having our camera pickpocketed at the fair in Xela and then having to cough up the cash to replace it
• Losing our Nalgene water bottle in Xela – somehow we took this harder than the camera being stolen a few days earlier (happy note: we found the water bottle sitting on an ATM machine in the grocery store the next day!)
• 3 days of being sick in Xela for Ashley (like really, really sick)
• Finding out right after Ashley got healthy that she could have been paid $100 USD to be treated as part of a university research study on traveler’s sicknesses
• Having to eat out way too much, as there were no kitchens in our hostels for two weeks between Xela and Livingston

Beauty in unexpected places… flowers in the Walmart parking lot in Xela

Surprises:

• Xocomil water park.  The last thing we were expecting in the middle of Guatemala was this epic water park!  We had a blast there!
• Feeling like giants.  After Mexico, we were used to feeling tall… but in the smaller Mayan communities of Guatemala (like San Pedro La Laguna) we felt freakishly tall.
• Seeing women in traditional dress pulling a cellphone out of their bras. Despite the extreme poverty levels, cell phones are everywhere.
• It takes a looooong time to cook dry beans.
• Six weeks of private classes is not enough to become fluent in a language.  This probably shouldn’t have been such a surprise, but it was.
• Guatemala seems to have a love affair with marching bands and fried chicken.  Maybe it was just the time of year (leading up to the national election and Independence Day), but we saw impromptu parades and marching bands daily.  Restaurants selling fried chicken can be found on every block and in the evening the number doubles with a mobile fryer set up on every corner as well.

Parque Centro in Quetzaltenango (Xela), Guatemala

Lessons Learned:

• If you know there are likely to be pickpockets about, leave everything you don’t need safely in your hostel. This includes cameras… it’s pretty hard to download photos off of a stolen camera.
• We don’t need lots of stuff and a big house.  I think we were pretty much in this mindset before we left home, but our time in Guatemala has taken the belief to the next level.

Sunset in Flores

Guatemalan Journal – Where Did We Spend Our Time?

Flores – 2 nights + 1 spent on a bus between Flores and Guatemala City
What we did here: Not much… went swimming in the lake and got a great view of the area from the roof of the church
Day trips: Tikal

San Pedro La Laguna – 43 nights
What we did here: 6 weeks of Spanish courses
Day trips: Chuira-X-amolo (zip-lining), Indian Nose, Volcan San Pedro, Santa Clara, kayaking Lake Atitlan

Quetzaltenango (Xela) – 14 nights
What we did here: Independence Day celebrations & parades, Independence Fair, Railway Museum
Day trips: Volcan Santa Maria, Fuentes Georginas, San Andrés Xecul, Xocomil

Coban – 1 night
What we did here: Not much… this was just a rest stop before continuing the rest of the way to Semuc Champey

Semuc Champey  – 2 nights
What we did here: hiking, swimming in stepped pools over a river, river tubing, jumped off a bridge, water caving

Lanquin – 1 night
What we did here: bat caves

Rio Dulce – 4 nights
What we did here: mostly rest, relaxation, and catching up the blog – it pretty much poured rain our whole stay
Day trips: El Paraiso (a hot waterfall)

Livingston  – 3 nights
What we did here: we spent a lot of time strolling through town
Day trips: Las Siete Altares waterfalls

Mmmm… street meat!

If you want to check out some of our Guatemala photos, check out our photo gallery.