Central America Archives - Anna S. E. Lundberg

Two Weeks in Central America: Finishing in style in Costa Rica

1 April, 2014 By Anna S E Lundberg Leave a Comment

And so we’ve arrived at the final chapter of our trip across Central America. Having travelled from Guatemala City and Antigua to the Lake Atitlán, up to the Tikal ruins, down again and up the river to Lívingston, across the border and across Honduras, to Granada and over to the Isla de Ometepe, and down to the Nicaraguan border crossing at Peñas Blancas… we arrived in La Fortuna in Costa Rica.

La Fortuna was given its name after the town survived the eruption of Arenal Volcano in 1968 unscathed. It made a great final stop before we continued on to San José and each went our separate ways at the end of an epic two-week journey.

Gringo Pete's in La Fortuna — In La Fortuna we stayed at Gringo Pete’s, named after its eccentric American owner

Horse riding in La Fortuna — We booked onto a horse riding tour that did involve helmets but did not involve learning how to ride. My horse was the younger brother of Annie’s, and he would just trot off to catch up with his brother rather than pay attention to my attempts at directing him

Hiking in La Fortuna — The horse ride also involved getting off for a walk through the forest…

Hanging bridge in La Fortuna — …across the hanging bridge…

Waterfall in La Fortuna — …to the waterfall where we could go for a cooling swim

Butterfly in La Fortuna — We even got to visit some butterflies and poisonous frogs! A worthwhile investment.

In the evening, we opted for some well-deserved relaxation at the Baldi Hot Springs, with temperatures ranging from 30 up to 70 degrees

Baldi Hot Springs water slides — I bravely went on all three water slides, later finding out that someone else staying at Gringo Pete’s had got a concussion and needed stitches after flying through one of them. (There was a sign declaring that use of the slides was at your own risk.)

Chocolate fountain at the Baldi Hot Springs — CHOCOLATE FOUNTAIN! Nuff said.

Cocktails at Baldi Hot Springs — Fruity cocktail with umbrella = Holiday

Cocktail in San José — …and another thrown in for good measure, on our last night in San José

Cheers! — Cheers to the end of an amazing trip!

Two Weeks in Central America: The island of two mountains

25 March, 2014 By Anna S E Lundberg Leave a Comment

After our volcano adventure in Masaya, outside Granada, we headed down to Rivas and took the boat across Lake Nicaragua to the Isla de Ometepe.

Formed by two volcanoes, Volcán Concepción and Volcán Maderas, Ometepe is the world’s largest volcanic island within a freshwater lake. While Maderas is considered dormant, Concepción is active, its most recent eruption occurring in March 2010.

View from our balcony at Hotel Finca Venecia — We booked into a more expensive finca, or estate, than we would usually go for but I’d say it was worth it! A gorgeous little hut with stunning views, this felt like a proper holiday. We even stayed there two nights (what luxury!)…

Bicycle, Isla de Ometepe — Our big activity on the island was to rent bikes from the hotel and to cycle to the other side. When we thought we were about halfway across, and realised that we were maybe 1/10th of the way, we gave up, following signs down a country lane to an empty restaurant and resting there with a plate of chips as reward for our efforts. Then we cycled back to the hotel.

Bicycle Ometepe — Though short, the bike ride was very exciting given the special phenomenon of the brakes not working. The downhill stretches were particularly thrilling.

I seem to have had some bad luck with bikes. Many years ago, while sailing the Stockholm archipelago with my family, we stopped off at the island Utö. My cool older sister didn’t want to wear a helmet so of course neither did I, and my cool dad let us off. Now the peculiarity of Swedish bikes is that they don’t have brakes on the handlebars as in any normal country, and the only way to brake is to backpedal. The problem being that when your feet come off the pedals, well, you’re out of luck, my friend. So on a steep, rocky path down to the beach, my feet slipped off and I thundered through the woods, out of control, finally coming to a stop in as I vaulted off the bike in spectacular fashion and hit my head on a rock. It was my first concussion (followed by several others, involving other exciting adventures like radiators and slippery fire escapes) and it’s one of my great street cred stories. Oh yeah.

But anyway, no injuries were sustained this time and we made it successfully back to the hotel. The next morning, we made our way back across the lake to Rivas on the mainland.

Boat Ometepe-Rivas — Burning my shoulders on the boat ride back to the mainland

There are so many places along the way that you miss, on any trip, but especially on our whirlwind trip across four countries in two weeks. In Nicaragua, we didn’t go to colonial León or to Managua, we didn’t go surfing off San Juan del Sur, we didn’t go volcano boarding, we didn’t visit the Corn Islands off the Caribbean coast… FOMO*, man! But every location we did see, every day we were travelling, was an experience. It’s not about ticking boxes. And we can always come back and explore more next time, right?

*For those of you not up to speed with the Millennial lingo, FOMO is the Fear Of Missing Out.

From Rivas, we took a bus to Peñas Blancas, where we got our exit stamps, ignoring the touts (wearing badges, so looking official) who tried to convince us that we needed to buy some kind of form from them before doing so. Then we walked the 1km across to the next border post (there are also pedi-cabs) and officially entered Costa Rica. From there, we got another bus and continued along the Pan-American Highway, a road that I would spend quite some time on two years later, during my South America trip…

Chillaxing at the border crossing, waiting for our next bus

Next up, we’ll be arriving in Costa Rica for our fourth and final country. More volcanoes as well as horse riding, water sliding, and more piña coladas.

Two Weeks in Central America: Bananas and currencies on our first border crossing into Honduras

11 March, 2014 By Anna S E Lundberg 1 Comment

Full disclosure: we didn’t really visit Honduras. We just sped right across from Guatemala into Nicaragua. But it’s the journey and not the destination, right?!

Having arrived in Puerto Barrios by boat from Lívingston, we wandered a few blocks up to the market, where we were again met with shouts of “Taxi? Shuttle?” After five days in Guatemala, we found a bank where we could exchange our quetzales for US dollars, and stocked up on snacks for the bus journey into Honduras.

Feeling prepared, we found a driver heading to the border and we climbed onto the collectivo with our huge backpacks – I find it quite embarrassing, but somehow they always find space.

Annie on the bus — All the major food groups: crisps, bananas, coconut bread (tasted like normal bread – much like the coconut latte had tasted like a normal latte), and a huge tank of water

It was a bumpy ride through the countryside, and each time we stopped we thought: is this where we get off? The Guatemalan customs and immigration offices were actually quite randomly located along the way but as usual if you follow everyone else you tend to end up where you’re supposed to! Then when we eventually arrived for our first experience of a border crossing in Central America, we were quite unceremoniously dumped by our by-now familiar little van.

One complication when spending just a few days in different countries, each with a different currency, is estimating the amount of cash you’ll need so you don’t (a) end up with loads of your old currency that you then need to exchange at a less than profitable rate or (b) find yourself without any cash at all with things still to be bought. We managed to pay the Honduran entrance fee with a combination of dollars and quetzals. (I’ve found a great blog post that details the process of this border crossing so if you’re interested in replicating this journey I suggest you refer to that rather than me repeating the logistics here!)

On trying to use the toilets at the border crossing – remember that huge tank of water? – we found them to be locked. A friendly young man tried (and failed) to open the door with a credit card and then kindly offered to take us to San Pedro Sula in his brother’s car. It was a tempting offer – it would be a couple of hours direct in a car while it would take at least double that time with the changes and stops we’d have to make by bus. Sadly, though, his Chiquita employee badge was not enough to appease my dark imagination, which was conjuring images of being found dead in a ditch the next day, and we politely declined. Banana man departed and we wandered across the border on foot.

Honduras border crossing at Corinto — Welcome to Honduras!

Once on the other side, it wasn’t too difficult to locate the one and only bus that was, luckily, headed to Puerto Cortés on the coast. Looking at a map, there’s really only that one road going from the border into the country. Sheltering from the sun as we waited for the bus to leave at some unspecified time in the future, we met an Australian man who was cycling solo from Alaska to Argentina (all the As), a two-year adventure. I’ve lost his card unfortunately and can’t find his blog but I suppose he will have finished some time last year…

Eventually the bus, our first chicken bus in fact, took off. There are no bus stops to be found, no benches or shelters – instead passengers are dropped off and picked up at various spots along the road, often in the middle of nowhere. It’s actually a very luxury service: door-to-door! On arriving in Puerto Cortés, therefore, we were a little worried about finding the bus to continue on to San Pedro Sula. We needn’t have worried, though: the moment we got off our first bus in the middle of the road, a collectivo across the road shouted at us, “San Pedro! Directo!” and herded us on board.

In the rush to get us onto the bus, the driver had chosen to ignore my question as to whether he took dollars, leading to trouble when he later asked for money once we were well on our way. The smallest bill we had was 20 USD, and we had no local currency. The bus was in hysterics around us, though I’m not sure if the other passengers were laughing at us (most likely) or at the poor bus driver who was at a complete loss as to what he should do. In fact he told the young guys sitting behind us that he would throw them off the bus if they didn’t shut up.

Thankfully an older man sitting next to Annie offered to give me change – 19 single dollar bills for my 20, not a bad deal for him really. I could then give the ticket man 5 dollars. And finally another man exchanged those five dollars for the ticket price in local lempira. Money laundering in action.

Now as I admitted at the beginning of this post, I’m afraid our experience of Honduras was very limited and I’m going to tag the rest of the bus and currency saga onto this post, leaving next week to cover the more interesting adventures of Nicaragua. It simply wasn’t possible to do four countries justice in two weeks – who would’ve guessed it?! – so Honduras had to be sacrificed. Not to mention El Salvador, which we didn’t even enter. We’ll simply have to plan another trip!

So we spent just one night in Honduras, wandering the streets of San Pedro Sula to find a working ATM, stocking up on more healthy essentials (bread, ham and cheese, chocolate chip cookies and chewy sweets – I seem to be incapable of eating healthily while travelling, and I’m still paying the price after my South American diet experience), and booking the last two adjacent seats on the Tica bus to take us to Granada the following day. We failed at finding the restaurant the hostel had recommended but plumped for Las Casas Viejos where we had stone-baked tortillas served by waitresses in traditional dress (a tourist trap? But the food was very good).

At 4am the next morning, when our taxi didn’t arrive, the man in the hostel reception explained that it just wasn’t worth their while to roll out of bed on a Sunday morning after a late night out. The taxi drivers, I mean. Eventually the hostel owner – a famous jazz musician, as it turns out – arrived to drive the two of us and another Italian girl to the terminal and so we made our bus. Somehow these things always work out…

Tica bus in Honduras — It was a full-day journey across the country and into Nicaragua. Our seats were at the back of the bus, right next to the chemical toilets. Lovely. But at least we had lots of sweets…

Two Weeks in Central America: Buses, boats, and piña colada

4 March, 2014 By Anna S E Lundberg Leave a Comment

The Central American adventure continues…

True to form, having taken the night bus up to Tikal in northern Guatemala and gone directly to the ruins on arriving in Flores, my friend Annie and I booked onto a 5.30am shuttle pick-up to get back to Santa Elena, where we took a “second-class” bus to Rio Dulce. It was not uncomfortable but we had the by now familiar late departure with countless stops to drop people off, pick people up, and to get breakfast from various street corners along the way.

In Río Dulce (it sounds more tempting than it is), we had a traditional cheeseburger-and-fries lunch at the Río Brava restaurant and booked onto a 1.30pm lancha to take us downstream. It was very hot but there was a welcome breeze from the river.

Río Dulce, Guatemala — According to the Lonely Planet, the town sees a lot of visitors from US “yachties” since it’s a safe place for boats during hurricane season. The rest of us are there for the boat trip to Lívingston

A lancha, from the Portuguese word for “barge”, is a motorboat. The journey down the river took a little less than two hours with no stops, passing by what looked like luxury beach huts and thick jungle in between. It’s possible to take the journey in either direction, and travelling by boat is in fact the only means of transportation to and from Lívingston, which lacks road connections to the rest of the country.

Settling in for the journey — Annie settling in for a relaxing ride

Arriving in Lívingston, we were met with the usual “Hostel? Hostel? Taxi? Taxi?” but continued up past the docks where we checked into a triple room – we only paid for a double as long as we didn’t use the third empty bed – at the Río Tropicales. Yes, everything here starts with Río. We headed back down to the harbour where we had coconut coffee and settled down on the pier to enjoy the afternoon sun.

Livingston, Guatemala — You can’t beat the calm of sittin’ on the dock of the bay, wastin’ time…

Lívingston was quite different to the other areas of Guatemala we had visited – Guatemala City, Antigua, Atitlán, Flores. This is the hometown of the Garífuna people, descendants of the “Black Caribs” as the British called the Central and West Africans brought to the continent as slaves. Lívingston is also home to the Rastafarian minority within the Garífuna, which as you might imagine gives the town quite a special vibe.

Piña colada in Livingston, Guatemala — In the evening, after a cold drip of a shower, I had my first piña colada of the trip, just to add to that Caribbean feeling man

At this point, we had a bit of an itinerary crisis. As you may have noticed from the last few posts, we were travelling at quite a pace, spending just one night in each place before quickly moving on to the next destination. This was pretty tiring but it was a situation we had created for ourselves given our arrival at one end of Central America and our planned departure two weeks later from the other end.

To be honest, it’s not something I’d recommend. Having said that, if you’re in a full-time job with just a few weeks of vacation each year then you don’t have a lot of choice, assuming you want to do a good bit of travelling and not just lie on the beach.

In any case, we finally agreed to keep moving and hoped to be able to slow down a bit in our second week.

So the following day, we had our first leisurely morning (hurrah!), indulging in waffles for breakfast in the hostel, before heading back down to the docks. (I can’t say that without thinking of Monica. What’s the opposite of man? Jam!)

If you look at a map, you’ll see that Lívingston is actually very close to the southern border of Belize, and you can take a lancha across to Puerto Gorda or, in fact, to La Ceiba and then on to the Honduran Islas de la Bahía where the diving and snorkelling is meant to be amazing. We were headed in a different direction, and once 15 people had gathered to fill the boat, we took off on another course, across to Puerto Barrios.

From there, we would travel into our second country, Honduras.

Two Weeks in Central America: Journeying to the Tikal ruins in northern Guatemala

25 February, 2014 By Anna S E Lundberg 2 Comments

Having started our journey in the south of Guatemala – Guatemala City to Antigua to Atitlán – my friend Annie and I had been umming and ahing about whether or not to head up north to Tikal.

These ruins, one of the largest sites of the pre-Columbian Mayan civilisation, had been described by our contacts as “unmissable”; but including a visit to Flores, the closest town, in our trip would mean a detour almost up to the Mexican border before heading back down again and across two or three more countries still to reach our flights out from San José, all in the space of ten days. Flights would be expensive, buses time consuming.

According to our trusty Lonely Planet guide:

“While bus travel at night in Guatemala is rarely a good idea for anybody, it is strongly advised that solo female travellers not catch buses at night time, the exceptions being the overnight buses travelling between Guatemala City and Flores. There have been no incident reports regarding those services.”

So we opted for this one night bus that was deemed safe, saving us the cost of one hostel night while getting us up north without “wasting” the day trapped on a bus.

From Panajachel on Lake Atitlán, we booked onto a mini-bus to take us (via Antigua for some reason) to Guatemala City, where we arrived in the dark almost five hours later. There we waited at the bus station for our “deluxe” night bus up to Flores, leaving a little after the scheduled departure of 9pm.

Now for our first experience of night buses (and the last, in fact, although a year later I was to repeat the experience a few times in South America), it could have been much worse. With my earplugs and eye mask, I actually got quite a bit of sleep.

Unfortunately the entertainment system was set to repeat the same old American film over, and over, and over – dubbed into Spanish, of course – so poor Annie eventually had to go and ask the driver to turn it off. And every time the bus stopped in the middle of nowhere I would wake up abruptly and imagine gunmen climbing on board. This is one of those times when having an active imagination is not such an advantage. Thankfully, the gunmen stayed in my imagination.

With my very limited Spanish at the time, though, it was quite an uncomfortable experience as we never knew what people were saying around us. At one point, we all had to get off and it turned out we were to show our passports, along with visiting the toilets if needed. Usually you get by if you just do what everyone else is doing…!

In any case, we survived the journey and arrived in Santa Elena around 6am, still pitch black all around us. Flores is actually on an island across from Santa Elena and apparently the bus would not take us all the way. After some hesitation, we had no choice but to get into one of the unmarked vans waiting there at the otherwise empty bus stop, and ask the driver to drop us off at Los Amigos hostel in Flores. Ah the adventure of travel. Alas, the reception didn’t open until 7am but we had a bit of luck when someone inside the gate saw us and let us in. We sneakily had a shower while waiting and eventually got a room when reception opened.

Super efficient as ever, we immediately booked onto an 8am bus to take us to the Tikal ruins. We didn’t get a guide but we had a decent map and spent a good four or five hours wandering around (at the end of which we were pretty hot and water-less). I’m so glad we decided on the detour, though, as these ruins really were spectacular. They will have been my first pre-Columbian ruins, so that’s always going to be extra special.

Tikal Ruins, Guatemala — Climbing up to the top you get a fantastic view – the location of the Tikal ruins in the midst of the tropical rainforest really makes for an unusual experience

Monkeys at the Tikal Ruins, Guatemala — I’d watch out for those monkeys, if I were you…

We took a 2pm shuttle back to the hostel (a quick visit, in the end, but plenty of time to explore!) and had a lovely relaxed afternoon after another shower.

In the evening, we indulged in strawberry daiquiris and mojitos along with a huge burrito for dinner. We were joined by Calem the Welshman, Eugene the Australian, and Baptiste the Frenchmen, and spent the night playing Cheat and Bullshit. There was also Chris who was working in the hostel since two weeks and, providentially, looked like Dennis Quaid. Which I appreciated. (Ooo I suddenly noticed the resemblance between Benedict Cumberbatch and Dennis Quaid. Interesting.)

Really, this is the best part of travelling to me, what happens in the evening. You’ve had an amazing day seeing something you’ve never seen before, you’ve had a shower, and you’re now relaxing with a cocktail while chatting to random strangers you meet in the bar. It really doesn’t get much better than that…