But wow, what a great time it was and what a great thing Shannon & Jen are doing with their company Sweet. If you haven't checked them out yet head to www.discoversweet.com to find out more. Not only are they putting together some great holidays but they are also a company interested in giving back as much as possible and for that alone, I stand up tall and applaud them loudly.
So...here are a few photos from our trip. I have great video to put up in the next week or so once I am done editing and for now, its back to trying to stop the world from moving.
Our first stop was Costa Maya, Mexico. Once we worked out how to actually get out of the damn port we paid $2 and caught a cab up to the little fishing village on the port side of the island and walked up the coast until we found this little spot to plonk our butts. All you can eat, drink and sleep for $25 is pretty common here....as are roaming skinny dogs and little tiny fishing boats in front of each home along the water.
Next stop was Belize...the only place we were advised to not just hit the town walking. We decided to book a tour as both of us wanted to check out some Mayan Ruins. So we headed out to Lamanai - a city about three hours away from Belize City. We sat on a bus for 90 minutes then hopped on a river boat for another 90 minutes and then hiked in to the pyramids of Lamanai. It was pretty spectacular to put my hand on the pyramid and to feel the energy of a civilization so old. We climbed to the very top of the largest pyramid and looked out across the beautiful jungle. All the while the howler monkeys kept us entertained and looking up, incase one of the decided to poop on us..!! I KNOW!!! Fun huh?!
Driving out of Belize City on the way to Lamanai.
At one point on the way to Lamanai we had to go through a military checkpoint. Not sure if they werent happy about us taking their photo, or if they were waving at us...hmmm.
The trees through the jungle were massive...just so you get an idea. And if you see an allspice tree, don't lick it...it doesn't really taste like all spice.
This is us atop the highest pyramid in Lamanai - the leg work out was amazing!!!But more so, the view from the top was beautiful.
One of the pyramids in Lamanai.
Of course, one of the important things, I believe, is to try as much of the 'local' as possible. Every city has it's own beer and after sweating our asses off hiking we cooled off with this local communities beer:
Day four brought us to Roatan, Honduras. A lot of people were worried about us going to Honduras because of the civil war that is happening there right now but Roatan is actually an island off the coast of Honduras and we really didn't see any trouble whatsoever. What we did see though was extreme poverty. It was hard to find any sense of balance between this huge bloody ship pulling into a port where you were overwhelmed by the poverty the moment you stepped outside the port. We walked outside the main gates of the port and were instantly inundated with kids asking us for money and adults asking us if we needed taxi's or drivers or hashish....that's the other thing that was EVERYWHERE...people asking us if we wanted drugs.
Letting us know they could get us whatever we wanted...I think I asked for advil once.
Anyway, we walked up through the main street of Roatan for a few hours, wandering into shops and talking to people along the way. It was really quite exhausting though - I worked out that I was brought up to not walk away from someone when they are talking to me and then I worked out that the little sleazy men in the stores knew that about me too and tried to get me to engage with them every time. I had to learn really quickly to just nod and say 'nadda' and 'gracias, no' and just keep walking.
We hung out in the city for a few hours and then walked back to port, not really sure what to do with ourselves, when we happened across a crew of women (some of whom I knew from San Francisco) and they had just organised a driver to take them around the island. We dropped our $25 each and hopped on the little mini bus with our own guide and headed to the highest point in Roatan to get a view of the island.
This is the 'spanish' section of Roatan.
Our guide eventually took us to a private beach on the island and a new hotel served us cocktails while we swam in the ocean and the amazing pool. It was awesome to get in the water but alas, whilst doing that, I also broke my toe...ha!
I know...it's a hard life, but someone has to do it.
We had one more stop....I will get that one up soon..it includes drinking amazing tequila at 10am in the morning. Right now, the world is rocking and I gotta go re-balance it!!!
xxm
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