Well, I did wake up in time for my 3:20am pickup to do a sunrise day trip in Tikal.  (Actually I was outside by 3:17am, but the guy was early!  Which is basically unheard of in Central America.  He ended up coming back for me though, so it was no big deal.)  Its about a hour drive from Flores (where I was staying) to Tikal (the Mayan ruins).  So we started out 40 minute hike at about 4:20am.  (This was my second hike through a jungle in the pitch dark.  I really wish I would have brought my headlamp or even a flashlight!)  My group made it to the top of Temple 4, which is the tallest temple in the complex, and then just basically sat there and sort of meditated/slept. 

As luck would have it, the sunrise was horrible.  It was incredibly foggy, so we could only see about 30 feet in front of us.  I saw that it got lighter, but had no idea which direction the sunshine was even coming from.  (Everytime I’ve ever woken up for a sunrise, it has always been a cloudy day.  What’s up with that?!)  It wasn’t a totally lose though.  The jungle started waking up around us as the sun came up.  First, we heard some birds.  Then the howler monkeys started growling and marking their territory.  Howler monkeys are actually really intimidating sounding animals.  They sound more like a jaguard roaring or a dinosaur growling.  So it was really cool listening to them howling in stereo from all parts of the jungle. 

 After chilling out on top of the temple for a while, we did our tour around the ruins.  Tikal was basically the New York City of 1500 years ago.  There were 250,000 to 300,000 people living within the city and there were 1,000’s of buildings in the city.  (Most of them haven’t been cleared yet, but there are at least 20-30 temples and ancient ruins to look at and climb around.)  The tour guide was great, and told us a lot of interesting stuff about the ruins.

I was back to my hotel by about noon, but was so tired after hiking around the ruins for about 7 hours.  So I basically just hung out in Flores and had another mid-day siesta.  (My sleeping patterns are such a mess now.) I decided to take the 5am shuttle to Belize City the next day (I thought I didn’t really need to sleep in until 7:30).  Unfortunately, my alarm on my watch gave out, so I woke up at 4:53am with only 7 mintues to go.  I had already packed and set out my clothes, so I made it outside by about 4:59.  This time the shuttle was about 40 mintues late, so all of that rushing around was for nothing.  But at least I made the shuttle.  I’m in San Pedro, Belize now and am enjoying the last few days of my trip around Central America.

I didn´t really write enough about San Pedro in my last blog to do it justice.  San Pedro was my favortie stop of the trip so far.  It has a totally hippy-backpacker vibe to it.  (There are tons of massage places, yoga schools, and new agey things.  I saw some people on the street selling granola bars that they had made in their solar powered oven- hippy enough for you?!)  Anyways, San Pedro is the cheapest place that I went to in Central America.  I stayed at a place called Pinoccios and for a single room (with a shared bath) it was 20Q (about $2.50) a night.  (San Pedro is like South East Asia prices, I´m loving it!)

Anyways, it is really easy to hang out and spend a few days in San Pedro.  On my first full day, I rented a kayak for a few hours and went around part of the Lago Atitlan.  The lake is huge, and a deep blue color.  It´s absolutely goregous!  After kayaking and eating the most amazing falafel, I went and had a Thai massage at Punta de Oro (which is a really cool little backpacker resort right on the lake).  The massage was amazing and was turned out to be more of a fusion Thai-Shiatsu massage (which just so happen to be my 2 favorite styles of massage).

On my second day in San Pedro, I went horseback riding for a few hours.  I don´t know what it is about Central American horses, but they have all been so gentle and follow commands so well.  With this horse, I just had to gently brush my foot on it and it would trott off down the road.  My guide and I went to a very beautiful look out point over the lakes and volcanoes.  Then he took me to a coffee farm and a pretty volcanic sand (black sand) beach.  I had to have another falafel pita and a massage.  But on the second day I had made a reservation to have a hot stone massage, which is something I´ve always been meaning to try but never got around to before.

The hot stone massage was quite interesting.  It was a lot more new agey than any massage I´ve ever had before.  First I laid on some specially arranged stones under my back, then she put different hot stones on me to line up with the chakra points. And then basically used the stones to give me a massage, focusing on energy lines and stuff.  It was very enjoyable, but probably not my favorite style massage ever.  (1 interesting thing though, is that I think the hot stone massage cured me of my cold.  I was coming down with a cold, and at one stage of the massage my nose started to run a ton.  It felt like the cold was just leaving me all at once.  Since then I´ve felt fine and my cold seems to be gone.  Very Interesting!)

The next day was a huge day of travel for me.  I got an email at about 9am from the Korean Embassay saying that they had finished processing my visa.  By 9:30am I was chasing the minivan shuttle down the road, so I could start the journey back to Guatemala City.  (There is only 1 shuttle a day to Antigua from San Pedro, so I couldn´t miss it.)  There was tons of construction on the road, and at one point we were stopped for an hour waiting to move forward.  Some businessminded local people had even set up a little road side bbq, selling steak and soda to the people stuck in the massive traffic jam.  Anyways, the 2 1/2 hour ride turned out to be more like 4 1/2 hours.  I still had to catch a chicken bus to Guatemala City and then find a taxi to take me to the Embassay.  (The embassay was only open between 2-4:30 pm, so I had a narrow window of time.)  But I ended up making it there fine, and now it´s legal for me to work again in Korea.

That wasn´t the end of my journey though.  I still had to get to Flores, Guatemala, which is a city in the north of the country (pretty much on the complete opposite side of the country as Guat City).  I got an overnight bus with Linea Dorada, and it went quite smoothly.  I had 2 seats to myself, so I was able to curl up and sleep for a few hours of the journey.  We arrived in Flores at about6:30 am.  Too late to go to Tikal (the Mayan ruins)  for sunrise, so I just found a place to have some coffee and then found a bargain hotel room ($2.90 per night).  The guidebook wasn´t wrong when it said it only takes an hour to see Flores.  There isn´t much here besides cafes all serving the same thing, travel agencies all selling the same bus tickets and day trips, and souveiner shops all selling the same colorful blankets and clothes.  The day trips are all quite expensive here too, so I choose to be lazy today.  I had a nice siesta, a browse around the shops, and spent some time on the Internet.

Tomorrow I´m leaving at 3:30am (yes it´s true!)  to go on a sunrise tour of Tikal, which is supposed to be the most well preserved and beautiful of all of the Mayan ruins.  Then the next day I´m having a sleep in and won´t leave until 7am for my bus ride into Belize.

Antigua is a really cool place.  It is very beautiful and historical!  There are at least 10-15 old churches (and ruins) to check out, plus tons of great places to eat and lots of day trip activities to do.  I spent most of my time in Antigua just hanging out, exploring the city, going to a few of the old churches, checking out the market, and eating yummy foods you don´t normal see in Central America (like Greek and Isreali dishes, plus some amazing tiramisu!). 

I went to Panachel Volcano as a day trip from Antigua and that was amazing!  It is an active volcano, so there is pretty much always lava flowing out of it.  We had to climb up the volcano for about 2 hours before we reached the hot lava part, which was both really cool and quite scary at the same time.  (Guatemala being a 3rd world country and all, doesn´t really have any safety percautions.  You just basically look out for yourselve.)  So tourists (men, women, and children) are all climbing around on freshly cooled lava.  We were jumping over cracks that had white hot rocks in the bottom and sometimes even little pools of lava in them.  It was pretty freaky because the lava rocks are both sharp and brittle, so sometimes they just break from underneath you unexpectantly.  (We saw one guy coming down the volcano, who had had his shoe burned off when he accidentially stepped in the wrong place.)

Anyways, I made it acrossed the cooled lava rocks fine, and then I was in for the real treat.  A big lava river pouring out of a hole in the side of the volcano.  It was amazing to see, and incredibly hot!  The man running my hostel told me to bring marshmellows to roast over the lava.  I brought some and got some cool pictures, but it was impossible to get close enough to actually roast the marshmellow over the flames!  The scenary was so beautiful, because pretty much in every direction you looked you saw a different volcano.

Getting back was a bit trickier.  It was a sunset tour, so as we reached the hot lava the sky was starting to get dark.  It looked really cool, but then I remembered that I would have to make it over the lava obsticale course and all the way back down the mountain in the dark.  I stumbled around a bit, but made it back safe and sound.

Right now I´m in San Pedro de Lago, which is a really cool place on a beautiful lake.  It is sort of a backpacker paradise, with tons of cheap places to stay, great food (the best chocolate soufflae I´ve ever had and amaing falafel too), and fun things to do.  But my favorite part is all of the cheap massages.  I had a Thai-Shiatsu fusion massage today, and tomorrow I think I´ll have the 2 hour hot stone massage.  It´s like San Pedro has all the best things in Central America mixed with the highlights of South East Asia.  It´s an amazing place!

Copan is a really cute little town.  It has all of the colorful colonial style buildings, tons of bogevilla trees, a cute town square/park, great hotels, and nice cafes.  It is quite touristy, but also has a relaxed friendly small town vibe to it.  I only spent about 24 hours in Copan (because I was in a hurry to get to Guatemala City to drop off my passport and start the visa process at the Korean Embassay). 

I had dinner at a cute little cafe near my hostel.  I ordered a burrito and could not believe it when the waiter delivered it to my table.  It was at least a foot and a half long and filled full of yummy things (chicken, avacado, veggies, beans, rice etc.).  It could of easily fed a whole family!  And it only cost about $3, which was a welcome chage after spending 4 days in expensive Rotan where $3 wouldn´t really buy you anything. 

The next day, I woke up really early and walked down to the Copan ruins.  I was the first person to arrive for the day, so I had the ruins all to myself for about 30 minutes before the tour buses started showing up.  There were a bunch of really colorful parrots hanging out at the entrance of the ruins, which was really cool to see too.  The ruins themselves are quite amazing.  There are alot of intricately carved stones representing different Mayan gods and kings.  The Mayans built ruins on top of old existing ruins that had been destroyed by an earthquake back in about 600ad.  There is a tunnel going under the ruins so that you can see part of the oldest temples.  Normally you have to buy a second ticket for $15 to get into the tunnel part.  I didn´t know this, so I hadn´t brought enough money with me.  Luckily, I was able to bribe the guard with $6, to let me into the tunnels.  It was really amazing but very creepy too! One of the entrances looking like you are climbing dwon into a grave or something.  (The first thing you see is the tomb of an old king, so I guess I really did climb down into a grave!) 

After leaving the ruins, I hoped on a shuttle to Guatemala City.  It was the easiest border crossing ever.  (It maybe took 10 minutes.)  And the ride to Guat City went smoothly.  I wasn´t too impressed by the capital though.  It is the biggest city in Central America, and it is dirty, ugly, and sort of dangerous.  So I just checked into a Fenix Guesthouse and hung out in my room all night. 

The next day, I had to go to the Korean Embassay to aply for my work visa.  I ended up going to the wrong building (they haven´t updated the website with the new address).  So I had to take 2 expensive taxi rides to get there.  (It´s at Euro Plaza now, if anyone ever has to go there.)  The people at the embassay were really nice, but very picky.  They made me fill out tons of unnecessary forms, get new pictures taken (because my head didn´t fill up the right amount of space in my old pictures), and even have an interview.  But hopefully they are processing my visa as I type this.

Then I went to Antigua, which is where I am now.  I´m staying in a great hostel called Black Cat.  It has free breakfast, free internet, free movies, hot showers (a realy luxery), and clean rooms.  Yeah!

I got on my 5am bus from Managua, Nicaragua to San Pedro Sula, Honduras. Everything went pretty smoothly, except the fact that the driver decided we didn’t need any food or water stops on the 12 hour journey!  On the bus ride I meet a lady who owns a hostel out on Rotan, one of the Bay Islands.  She gave me lots of good advice and I decided to amend my plans to go to Rotan Island instead of Utila Island (they are very close to each other but Utila is just for scuba diving, whereas Rotan has lots of activities plus amazing beaches).  (btw the lady is Valerie as in Valerie’s hostel, but I’ll get more into that later.)

Anyways, Valerie and I pulled into San Pedro Sula at about a quarter to 6 in the evening.  The last bus to La Ceiba (which we really needed to get on) left at 6 o’clock and was on the other side of the city, plus it was rush hour traffic!  It seemed impossible, but with our taxi driver weaving in and out of traffic, and a quick run after the bus as it was pulling out of the station, we manage to catch the bus!  Unfortunately, I didn’t get a seat so I had to stand up for most of the bumpy 3 hour trip.  (Plus we still hadna’t had a single thing to eat all day, and not much to drink either.)  We made it to La Ceiba, and got some chicken and rice and then I collapsed into bed in a very sound sleep.

The next day, we headed out to the ferry and had talked another guy from the hostel, Jason, into coming with us to Rotan and staying at Valerie’s hostel (instead of Utila like he had planned).  Everything went very smoothly and Valerie let me and Jason stay in the apartment part of the hostel, so we (theortically) had our own bathroom and kitchen.  In fact, the hostel was a dump!  Everything was broken and dirty.  Plus nothing worked.  (I think we had water in our kitchen and bathroom for about 30 mintues of the 4 days we stayed there.)  But we couldn’t really complain, because Rotan is pretty expensive and there are only 2 other hostels on the island.  So we stuck with the $5 a night place, and it worked out fine for us. 

The first day in Rotan, Jason and I took a scuba course at Native Sons dive shop.  The instructor was fabulous, and the theory/classroom part of it went really smoothly.  Then after we had geared up and got into the water, I began to realize that scuba is just not for me.  I was fine just sitting under the water breathing, but I never felt very comfortable.  Then when we had to start to do the skills like filling the mask with water and taking the regulator out of our mouths, I knew that I didn’t really want to scuba after all.  So I quit early, but at least I gave it another try. 

The rest of my time on Rotan was great!  I wandered down to West Bay beach a few times, which is one of the most beautiful beaches I’ve ever seen.  (Nice white sand, crystal clear turquoise water, coral reef only about 20 feet from the shore, so it’s easy to snorkel there.)  I also did a lof of snorkeling at Half Moon Bay and West Bay.  I saw an octopus and a lobster in Half Moon Bay, plus tons of colorful coral and tropical fish. 

My last day in Rotan was a bit rainy, but I had a great time.  I went to the dolphin experience, and got to spend about an hour in the water with the dolphins.  Petting them, learning more about them, and getting kissed and licked by them.  (Yes, I said licked!  They poise for pictures with you where you croach down in the water and the dolphin swims up at kisses you.  Our dolphin was really cheeky, and would always lick us!)  I loved the dolphin experience and was so glad that I was able to finally get a reservation for it. 

Today, I left Rotan on the 7am ferry.  I was able to tag along with some El Savadorian people who I had meet on the island (and were in the scuba class).   They had a car and were driving home in the same direction as I was going, so we had a little roadtrip today.  Then I caught a local bus the rest of the way to Copan Ruinas.    So now I’m in another cute little colonial town, that is right next to some ancient Mayan ruins.  Tomorrow I’ll go check out the ruins, and then the next day I’m off to Guatemala.

Granada is a really cute city!  All of the buildings are old colonial style, and they’re painted bright pastel colors. Plus they have tons of great little cafes, restaraunts, and shops. I spent most of my time in Granda just wandering around, drinking tons of coffee, and just chilling out.  I also got a nice massage from a place called Seeing Hands, that is located in the Euro Cafe.  There are three blind guys that work there.  They give excellent massages that are pretty cheap too!

Unfortunately leaving Granada began the beginning of the worst day of my trip!  It all started when I got on a minibus bound for Managua (the capital of Nicaragua).  (btw, I was taking the mini bus because it was supposed to be safer than the normal bus.)  Anyways, I was sitting on the bus waiting for it to leave, when this family got on.  They were being really annoying.  They were talking really loudly, and the kid was running and jumping all over the seats.  Then the mom leaned really close to me to scream out the window at people on the street.  Then all of a sudden, they just packed up at left.  Of course, naive me, I didn’t really think about it until the bus was moving and we were leaving Granada.  That’s when I noticed that my purse felt a lot lighter than before. My wallet was missing!  It had to have been that annoying pushy lady.   Luckily all that she got was about $40. 

But to make me even more annoyed, the bus man (who I’m pretty sure was in on the whole pickpocket thing) totally ripped me off on the bus fare.  The lady had stolen all of my Nicaraguan money, so I had to pay with a $20 bill.  The guy gave me an awful exchange rate and charged me triple the normal price on top of that! Then to piss me off a little bit more, after haggling with the taxi drivers (which I was really not in the mood to do), I arrived at a great little hostel in a safe part of town.  Unfortunately the hostel was completely full, and there weren’t any other reasonably priced places to stay in that part of town.  So I ended up getting a room at the bus station hotel (the Tica Hotel), which was fine since I had a 5am bus the next day. 

I spent the rest of the day trying to cheer myself up with a trip to the mall, a bad Ben Stiller movie at the theater, and a slice of pizza.  Things started to look up the next day, but of course there have to be bumps along the road when you are travelling. 

I just spent the last 3 days on Isla de Omtepe, which is a volcanic island in the middle of one of the largest freshwater lakes in the world.  It´s a great place and I really enjoyed my 3 days there! 

Getting to the island is more of a pain than I had thought it would be, since it is only about 50-60 miles away from San Juan del Sur (where I was before).  So I thought it would take at most 3 hours to get there, but of course I was wrong!  Getting those 50-60 miles involved taking 3 buses, 1 boat, and 1 taxi!  But I eventually found a tiny little hospedae in Santa Cruz to stay at.  (My first choice El Encanto was full, but they were nice enough to drive me to a little hospedae-restraunt down the road.) The owners didn´t speak a word of English, but I some how got by just fine.

I meet 3 other people (Karla and Vanessa from Oz and Marty from the States) who were going to be on the island the same time as me.  We all wanted to do pretty much the same things, so we hung out together most of the time.  The first activity we did, was climb up Volcano Maderas.  (Well, actually we only climbed half way up to the view point, but who´s counting.)  It was a great time, but it got very slippery, steep, and muddy at the end.  Coming down was even more of a challenge!  Karla and I ended up falling in the mud a bunch of times, ensuring that everyone (especially our guide) had lots of laughs!

The next day, Karla, Vanessa, and I went kayaking.  It was incredibly beautiful!  We saw a bunch of interesting tropical birds and some great scenary.  (We didn´t see any of the crocodiles that were in the river, but that was fine with me, since we were in little kayaks!)  Then that afternoon, I went horseback riding along the beach to a natural springs pool on the island.  It was very fun!

So far Isla de Omtepe has been my favorite place on the trip!  It was such a relaxing place, with hardly any other travellers around.  I didn´t want to leave.  But there are still tons of things to see and do in Central America, so I did make my way to Granada this morning.  Granada is such a pretty colonial town.  All of the buildings are painted bright pastel colors and it is really a charming place.  I´m not sure what I´m going to do here yet, but I´m sure there will be fun things to do around here!

It was an epic journey to get from Panama City to San Juan del Sur.  It involved 4 buses, 2 border crossing, and a night in Liberia.  I took a 15 hour overnight bus from Panama City to San Jose, Costa Rica.  It went quite smoothly and Expreso Panama had great buses with reclining seats, movies etc., so it was a comfortable ride.  As soon as we got into San Jose I jumped into a taxi and went to a different bus station, so I could catch a second bus to get to Liberia, Costa Rica.  (San Jose´s bus stations are the most unorganized thing ever.  They have at least 15 different stations all going to just a few cities each!)

Public transport to and from the Nicaraguan border ends at 5pm, so I ended up having to spend the night in Liberia.  (Jenny and Stacy are familiar with this exciting town, since they were sidetracked here while trying to fly to San Jose.)  The next days travel was supposed to be very quick.  Just 45 minutes to the border, cross the border, then about another 75 minutes to get to the beach.  But of course things weren´t so simple!  The border for getting into Nicaragua is the most confusing I´ve ever seen.  First it is basically a kilometer long maze, with absolutely no signs (in Spanish or English).  Then to actually get your passport stamped, you have to wait in a massive line.  With only 1 window!!  Plus the line was formed on a dirt street-parking lot, and it was really windy.  So I was constantly being sandblasted!  Fun, huh.  (Well, its all part of travelling.  It can´t all be easy.)

Anyways, I made it to San Juan del Sur (a cute little beach town in  south western Nicaragua, on the Pacific coast.)  It is was worth all of the hastle!  The beaches are goregous, the town is really cute, and my hostel is great (Casa Oro)!  The first day I just relaxed on the beach. Yesterday, I took a truck out to one of the more remote and beautiful beaches. And last night I went out to watch the sea turtles at La Flor Reserve.

When we first arrived at the reserve, we got to release some babies that had just hatched that day.  (If they try to make it to the water during the day, birds and other animals eat them.)  They were so adorable!  Two of them kept coming back to me, and one even started climbing onto my shoe.  We also got to see a few mom´s that were coming to lay eggs.  One had her flipper biten off by a shark, so the reserve people tried to help her dig her nest.  And we also watched a second, healthy one.

Today, I´m headed off for Isla de Omtepe, which is a volcanic island in the middle of a huge lake in southern Nicaragua.  (It is one of the top 10 biggest fresh water lakes in the world.)  Then I´ll be off to Granada.

After Jenny and Stacy left Costa Rica, I got on a bus and headed down to Panama. The bus trip was supposedly only going to take 5 hours, but it turned out to be closer to 10 to get from San Jose to Bocas Del Toro.  The border crossing here between Costa Rica and Panama was the craziest I´ve ever seen.  After you get stamped out of Costa Rica you have to cross a long rickety bridge made of random pieces of wood nailed together, which would have been fine if there weren´t semi trucks trying to share the narrow little bridge with you!  After a lot of bartering, me and a few other backpackers set off for Bocas via a minivan and then a speed boat. 

Bocas is a cute little island off the north east coast of Panama, in the Caribean Sea.  It has a very laid back vibe to it, and is a great place to chill out.  I stayed at Hostel Heike, which was really good.  There was a great group of travellers from all over the world staying there, so it was fun to hang out, chat, and relax. 

Unfortunately, the weather wasn´t the best while I was there.  It rained every night and for at least a few hours in the day too.  I still managed to go to the Bocas Del Rocas beach and go on an all day boat trip around a few of the islands, though.  The beaches were pretty nice, very natural (virtually no hotels or bars or anything on the beach).  My boat trip was very cool, too.  We went out and saw a family of dolphins jumping around in the waves, then went snorkeling, and went to Red Frog Beach (which is famous for having little poisonous red frogs on it).  I did see a few frogs, but they were ones that local kids had caught and were showing to tourists trying to get some tips. 

After 3 nights in Bocas, I made the long trip down to Panama City.  The bus was super nice (reclining seats, air con, movies), so the journey went quickly!  I had a whirlwind day of sighseeing here.  I went out to the Miraflores Locks in the Panama Canal, which was pretty cool to see.  Then I had an adventure at the bus station trying to buy a ticket to head up to Nicaragua.  (The most popular company was sold out on the 9th of Jan, but I found another company that will get me to San Jose. Then I can take local buses from there.) 

In the afternoon, I went exploring with a Canadian and French guy from my hostel.  We went to Panama Veijo to check out the ruins from a city there in the 1500´s that Captain Morgan (the pirate) had destroyed.  Then we went out to the causeway to see a great view of the city and chill out near the ocean.  (Panama City has a lot more skyscrapers than I expected.  Our taxi driver told us that the planners were modelling it after Miami.)  Then we checked out Casco Veijo which is the old historical part of town and has a lot of beautiful old buildings, but its also next to the slums so we had to get out of there as soon as the sun started to set. 

For New Years Eve we went out to Calle Uraguay, which is supposed to be ¨the¨bar and club street in Panama City. It was surprisingly dead though!  It turns out that New Years is more of a family holiday in Panama, so we ran in the New Year with all of the other gringos in town.  We eventually found a place to go dancing that wasn´t charging a crazy cover charge (all of the clubs were charging $50-$75 just to get in!!).  It was a pretty fun New Years. 

Tonight I am taking a 14 hour bus ride back up to San Jose, Costa Rica.  Then it will be about 3 more short bus rided until I finally make it to Nicaragua.  I think my first stop will be the beach, than Isla de Omtepe, followed by Granada.