Here our family and friends can follow our adventures traveling the world!
Här kan ni följa med på vår resa genom Amerika, central Amerika, tropiska öar och slutdestinationen Australien..
For the entire trip we have been looking for an opportunity to get deep into the jungle and do some proper kayaking or rafting. After some research we found a small company who run jungle treks, rafting and archeological tours from San Christobal - Palenque - Lacandon National Park - San Christobal so searching for a bit of adventure we booked in even though it was a definite budget breaker.
After a good 5 hours in the minibus the first stop was Aqua Azul, apparently the most beautiful waterfalls in all of Mexico. Fair to say we agree! It was similar to semuc champay though much warmer water and a heap less people. Luckily there had been no rain for a good few days so the water was a beautiful clear turqoise color. Surprisingly we were the only ones in our super boring group of 10 that actually swam.
The water is supposed to be very rich in minerals which helps create the beautiful colors.
Due to the strong currents and crocs it only safe to swim in some spots.
Second stop was this 40 meter high waterfall where we battled old German tourists, swam and walked through a hidden cave behond it.
Sadly we only had about 45 mins to enjoy this beautiful place after hours and hours of driving.
The sprey from the waterfall created some really beautiful light effects and rainbows.
Our great guide Adam found this little fella and explained about how they kill their prey using a limited amount of their super poisonous venom so will not waste it on predators or humans. Rather they secrete a toxin from the red hairs on their back which can cause problems for animals hunting them. His big brother decided to make home in our room this night so we called in our guide to usher him away.
Nice little street parade woke us up on our first morning going past the window.
A decent size skyrocket almost came straight in the window! Fireworks were going off constantly the whole week end.
On our morning walk I found a little friend...
This is the walk to the church on the opposite side of the city which had an amazing view of the city and surrounding mountains.
we met two angry birds on our way up to the church.
We sat down on the hill outside the church enjoying the sun and the view.
Nice little community gym out the back of the church is one of the first public recreational facilities we have seen. Healthy living is not a priority in Central America.
We headed back to the market to have a look around and both stopped when we saw the most beautiful dream catcher! So we took it as a sign and bought it to help Påågy with all her crazy dreams.
Had to stop and try some of the local treats that were all 5 pesos each! Before buying some veggies and cheese for tonight's dinner. The best one was a square made of peanuts; absolutely delicious!
Ate some home made chips, horrible honey soaked funky local berries and beautiful fruits at the markets.
Stopped at the theater to see what was going on and caught the last part of a Mexican dance performance which was very interesting.
This place is the best! Our hostel is built into a very old colonial mansion with two levels of rooms set around a massive courtyard and a huge backyard where they light a fire every night.
Unaware of our perfect timing we realized that today is the start of a three day culture and music festival for San Christobal. The night we arrived there was a big techno/ house festival with famous dj's going on and we could here the music all the way to our hostel. To us this city had a real European deal to it with heaps of unique bard and restaurants and free entertainment.
At either end of the city there is a hill and atop each you will find a nice little church and great view over the city.
We spent endless hours just wandering the cobble stoned streets and finding new markets or view of the surrounding mountains.
Little Påågy was constantly cold even though it was mid 20's during the day. It was a nice change from the Caribbean heat though.
We had a little shopping spree buying a pair of converse for the Pååg and some new boots for me :) about 25 dollars each!
Just getting a clean and polish for about 12 dollars.
After a 16 hour horrible bus ride with two Mexican guys behind us spitting on the floor every fifth minute, sitting next to the stinky toilet and with a fat lady in the seat in front of us who literally crossed our legs with her seat pushed all the way down. On swollen feet we stumbled out of the bus and had no idea how to walk to our hostel, with no map or adress. A guy handing out flyers in the bus station stopped Matthew and lucky us he knew exactly where our hostel was located!
We walked 8 blocks to get to our hostel and we were immediately amazed by the city, and couldn't care less about the heavy backpacks.
After leaving the backpacks in our new hostel Puerto Vieja where we got a really nice room for only 250 pesos a night we took off to explore the city. here above is the restaurant street.
Lucky us there was a big music and art festival going on so there was lots of interesting things to look at, here they've put plastic up so the city's graffiti artists can paint as much as they want.
It was very cool to see the beautiful view and the ruff colorful graffiti at the same time.
We were starving so we went to a vegetarian buffé.
A lentil and green bean soup as a starter.
Lots of vegetables, different dressings and a dark homemade bread. Som vi hade väntat på att äntligen få äta nyttigt och färska grönsaker!
Not planning to we spent 5 nights here as we needed a bit of a rest and the hostel and town were amazing. It's a really we'll maintained old colonial town with great markets and squares.
We saw some cool street art and performances and went to the native art gallery. In the afternoons we spent a fair bit of time kicking it in the pool and gardens which were better than any hostel I've ever seen.
One afternoon we took a cab to a big shopping mall to see a movie with a few folks from the hostel.
The hostel offered all sorts of free activities including yoga, salsa and cooking classes.
We took one salsa class and loved it! The class took around 2 hours and was super intense but by the end of it we were the only couple left and spinning like pro's! Well we thought so anyway....
The following night we had a Yucatan cuisine cooking class! It was free and if you wanted to eat afterwards it was only 20 pesos, or 10 kronor and was probably the best food we had in the Yucatan.
On the menu was beef with orange and lime marinade, corn and coriander empanadas a fresh tomato onion salad and an amazing roast pumpkin seed sauce! Yum!
Matty's neck was hurting so after playing some cards jonna went out to practice her salsa with the girls :)
Arrived in Merida at night and checked into Nomadas Hostel and straight away loved the place! Great staff and facilities. We shared a room with our new friends Brittany and El.
In the morning we took a local bus to a small archeological site with some nice Mayan ruins and a great cenote.
Beautiful little observation tower used to keep the date and time depending on the sun and other star positions.
We were constantly surprised by how friendly the local people from Merid were.
Spent a couple hours swimming and snorkeling in this 40m deep cenote with some very aggressive little fish.
We had to walk a couple of kilometers from the archeological site to try and get a taxi or bus from the main road. A nice bus driver saw us walking and waited for us so we didn't have to wait another hour for the next bus.
We found it super hard to find a a good budget place to stay and in the end trusted in lonely planet again. We stayed at a pretty cheap hotel called Soberani with the most horrible staff, broken wifi and phone and terrible breakfast of a sweet cookie and instant coffee but the important things like the location and actual room were great!
walkong around town we found some nice little restaurants and these very pretty recycled works of art made from old plastic bottles. Decided to spend the afternoon and night walking around a massive shopping centre called Plaza de Americana. We even went to the cinema to see a movie Which was such a nice change.
The following day we decided to check out the hotel zone and beach and were very happy with our choice to stay in down town rather than the hotel zone. It was a concrete jungle of ginormous hotels and five star restaurants, nothing Mexican about it. From the bus we saw the beach and decided to get off and walked about 3km along the beach stopping for some swims and exercise along the way.
The weather was extremes. Super sunny or pouring with rain.although we didn't take any photos we decided on lashing out for a big party night at the famous Coco Bongo. Many friends had recommended it so we gave it a go and were very happy with the decision. The place is crazy! It was 65 dollars to get in with all drinks included and really good shows every 15 or 20 mins ranging from acrobatics, circus and dance to singing and light shows. After staying to close we hitched a ride home with some nice locals and almost missed our bus the next morning.
Yes lots of photos of this place called Los de Pescado but we had to because it is one of the best and cheapest places we have been!
It's a very simple menu with only fresh fish or shrimps in taco burrito or ceviche. it comes plain and you add all your own salads and sauces.
Was so good we came back the next day and Matty made himself sick on fish tacos.
After Tulum we decided to head back to Playa del Carmen two nights before going to Cancun, and instead of going back to the dirty hostel we booked a hotel with a swimming pool and huge rooms with kitchen, sofa and tv! After arriving we went shopping for dinner and finally with a good kitchen we could cook some good food. While drinking some red wine and eating cheese and olives we cooked a lovely maroccan lentil stew. Yum!
Then we put our party outfits on and went out for some crazy party! Barely spent any money at all, everywhere we went we got free drinks and tequila.
the day after we strolled along the main road and did some window shopping, then rented two beach beds and finished our books.
That night we had a delicious dinner at a sushi place, 22 sushi rolls with tuna, salmon creme cheese and avocado for only 90 pesos!!! (45 kronor)
Playa to Tulum is super easy, a couple of dollars for a direct minibus. We spent hours searching for somewhere to stay in Tulum and figured if you going to a place famous for its beach then we may as we'll stay right on the beach! So we splurged a bit for a couple of nights in the most beautiful little beach cabana.
For anyone heading to Tulum definitely recommend skipping the town and going straight to the beach! It's about 12km away from town so taking taxis back and forth can add up quick! Little Påågy doing what she does best... I think this is book number 7 for this trip.
Our favourite spot right out the front of our cabana.
Famous for turtles we searched for babies hatching and making their way to the water at night but had no luck. We did find ginormous crabs and beautiful little bioluminescent creatures that glowed a constant green along the beach at night.
we heard that food is crazy expensive along the beach so I shopped fresh fruit and veggies and wraps before we left. Though little one had to check out the sushi :)
On the last morning after a storm there were a few little half foot waves building off the reef so I paddled out about 300m more for the fitness than to catch some waves but had a fun little time with this big foam mel. After one long 30-40m ride I saw a good meter and a half nurse shark rite underneath me and called it quits for the rest of the day.
Creepo!
in between thunderstorms and afternoon naps we took some super long walks along the beachdoing our exercises along the way.
Best dinner in Mexico! Cactus burger, local spinach salad and a homemade lasagne.
After Belize we rushed to Mexico because we heard that they celebrate the day of the dead with big fiestas and street parades. So we took the ferry back to Belize city and from there a night bus. That was a comfortable bus and we slept well, just a shame they had to wake us up four times to buy new bus tickets (you couldn't buy a ticket for all the distance at once, no you had to wake up, stand in line for thirty minutes and buy a new one in the middle of the night. they also wanted to go through all of our bags and x- Ray them.Then you had to stand in a line and wait for your turn to press a red button!? If it started to beep, they would search your whole bag through. So many stops and so much to think about so the busdriver even forgot a chinese couple at the boarder! they claimed they were from Belize but couldn't speak a word of English so they got questioned, but somehow they managed to get to the bus. Guess who's red button started to beep at the bag check? yep, the Chinese couple. I felt so sorry for them! Haha
(At the boarder)
(Having tequila shots before heading out)
finally in playa del carmen we checked into a quite dirty hostel (slept on used sheets, but we didn't complain, at least there were hot water) we took a walk around town and nothing was going on!!! Got very disappointed since we left the most beautiful place just to hear they don't celebrate Halloween here.
Well we made the best of the situation and went to the beach for some beers and at night we got happy again, the party was pretty good ;)
We spent our evening at "the split". It's called the split because a hurricane split the island in two some years ago and since then this is the place to hang out having some beers and drinks in the afternoon.
We drank cuba libre and bought cookies and cakes from big Joe!
Matthew vill visa oss hans mycket avancerade dykkunskaper;)
fem minuter senare simmar den största stingrockan vi någonsin sett långsamt förbi och kvällen kan inte bli bättre..
When it started to get dark we took our bottle of rum and barefoot we all walked home to our hotel paradiso.
Inspired by our little fishing trip I bought a bit of nylon, a hook, a spinner and some whitebait and headed to the pier in front of our place where I had spotted a heap of fish when snorkling in the morning.
The others thought I was a bit crazy until they came to check on me an hour or so later and I had already caught enough red and black snapper for dinner! Cut my hands a bit pulling them in on the nylon and was tough cleaning them with a bad knife in the dark but I must say standing out on a pier off the most beautiful Caribbean island and catching dinner while the sun set was the most relaxing and fun moment of the trip.
Tobias and I prepped the fish while Jonna bought some veges and spices.
I stuffed them with garlic, onions and peppers and wrapped them in foil then borrowed a local ladies ( France's) grill to cook them while the others poured some nice strong Cuba Libres!
Forgot to tell you about this little boy! Before we took off with the motorboat to go fishing we had to walk to the captains house. The house was totally flodded because of all the rain. We waded trough dirty water and up to us comes this 2 year old with no pants. I got a bit surprised because he pinched my leg really hard and laughed when I sad no, no malo! He was so angry, he also wanted to go fishing so when we left the bridge the boy burst into big tears..
When we sat down and had our first belizian lunch this weird old dude called bobby rides up to us and tries to sell us a fishing trip. We didn't really know what to think but decided to at least look up the boat and the captain. We bought the trip for 50 usd each and it was worth every penny!!
The first stop was stingray alley and we snorkled with stingrays and reef sharks. Soooo amazing! It was probably over 30 huge stingrays in the water and two reef sharks cirkeling around us. The stingrays were very friendly and curious and you could pat them and some of them even swam up to people and got attached to them.
We jumped on a boat and went off to another snorkeling spot with lots of cool things to see. One person in another snorkeling group even got attacked by a green big muray eel, I must say I laughed soo much so I got water in my snorkel.
After the snorkeling we started fishing, Matt was first up and caught a big barracuda!
Everyone caught a barracuda except me :/ haha but I was happy anyway as we caught 6 in all.. Unfortunately we didn't get any pics of the fish we caught as we were too busy pulling them all in!
We arrived to this lovely island and we brought the fishing rods from the boat and waded out to try to catch some fish. Matty had to teach Tash and Toby a few things but after a few minutes and three snappers later the captain finished cooking..
We got served an amazing conch stew with potato and carrot. They chopped up the barracuda and served it with grilled potatoes...
...we ate lobsters and even tried shark!! So delicious!
our little family:))
Matthew happy after lunch spent some time filleting the rest of the barracuda. We turned back and on oir way home snorkled a ship wreck.
This day must have been one of the best days of our trip and we returned home very happy and tired:)
Booked a very early bus to Belize City where we then took a boat to Caye Caulker.
Crossing the boarder from Guatemala to Belize. Was really nice to step into an English speaking country. Although our Spanish is sufficient for traveling now it's great to be able to really get to know locals and be able to make jokes and hear if people are talking about you ;)
Excited on the boat ride to Caye Caulker.
We walked around with a crazy old rusta dude who helped us find a great little hotel right on the beach! For a little commission of course :)
Straight away we went for some food and a big walk around the little island and straight away real showed that this is the right place for us!
There are 3 main streets the front, middle and back, with some side streets like this one.
This is the view from the Main Street. No cars, no shoes, no shirt, no worries ;)
Very sadly we had to say goodbye to our hero Clint leaving him in Semuc as he had to get back to Guatemala City while we boarded yet another shitty long busride to Flores. Though we did pick up a new travel buddy from Australia/Japan named Natasha :) When we finally approached Flores the mini bus pulled over on the freeway next to another mini bus with a group of shady looking characters who started pulling our bags into their bus telling us to get in and they would take us to our hostel. This was obviously a ploy to rob or rip us off so we told our driver to keep driving who refused to because as we later found out he was paid off to leave us there. Being a large group of 12 with are new Isreali buddies we took our bags back and just walked the last 2km. They explained at the hostel that this is a really common way for locals to either rob tourists or take them to overpriced hostels where they get large commissions.
We stayed for two nights at Los Amigos hostel which was super busy with a very cool vibe! Put about 5kg of washing in for about 4 US and booked a private tour to Tikal with our Isreali friends.
Its really hard to find words to describe Tikal which is the giant of the ancient Mayan world. The biggest city and centre of the Mayan world that was home to over 100,000 people.
Mayan people still use the temples of the Tikal site to make sacrifices to their gods, including bleeding out and burning various animals.
Our guide was super passionate explaining everything possible about the Mayan way of life and what life would have been like living in the city of Tikal.
After a massive night out with Clint, Tobias and our Danish buddies we packed our little snack bags and buckled in for a massive 16 hour bus ride from San Pedro to Semuc Chempey. We arrived exhausted late at night in the pouring rain to be mobbed by about 30 men yelling and screaming and taking our bags trying to get us to go to their hostels. We all decided to go to a hostel called El Retiro because it was on the river.
Very excited on our way to the caves where we swim, climb and wade through underground caves using only candlelight. It was still amazing but a bit of a let down that we had 30 people with only two guides. It was pretty dangerous in there we were honestly surprised nobody drowned or got lost. We then went tubing down a river and jumped from a massive bridge into the rapids.
We then climbed about an hour to the mirador for this amazing view of the pools.
The crew! All sweaty and dirty after the days adventures...
Enjoying the view
Messing around at the entrance point where the river enters the caves! It's humbling to see and feel the power of the rapids it really makes you respect the river.
Tobias taking creepy photos of us while we chill out in the most beautiful pools.
While we waited for the hero (Clint) to arrive we organised a coffee tour with our Danish buddies Thomas and Ida.
The tour guide drove us to the base of the volcano where his family has for four generations grown organic coffee beans.
He explained everything about the coffee community, growing of the plants and harvesting the beans. I wanted to bring home and roast my own bean, unfortunately the cleaner chucked it in the bin:(
The view of the lake from the coffee plantation.
We then drove to the factory where all coffee beans from the ten surrounding towns are taken to be processed. There is one comunity led company that is working to promote organic and safe farming, equality in wages and sustainable practices for the honey and coffee industries. The company spokesperson was our tour guide who spoke in perfect English answering all our questions and teaching us heaps about Guatemala and his people.
80% of all employment is from the coffee industry in San Pedro. And over 50% of all regional coffee is organically farmed thanks to this organisation who use the husks of the beans (above) and other waste products to create top grade fertilizer that they provide to farms free of charge. They also pay 15% more for organic beans .2% of coffee is sold internationally and 95% of honey is sold to Europe.
This huge trays is full of worms. they give all the rest products from the coffee to the worms and the massive amounts of worm pee they use and sell as fertilizer.
Jonna and I spent a couple of quiet days on lake Atitlan enjoying some more good food while waiting for Tobias to join us for his final 2 weeks. We stayed at a very chilled out Isreali hostel called Zoola which had a great view with heaps of hammocks and a pool. Though the staff were terrible and lied to many guests to make them stay in more expensive rooms so we moved when Tobias arrived to a really nice little hotel on the corner where we found a Guatemalan man who spoke pretty good Swedish!
Happy cowboy finally gets to ride a horse
Cost us about 5 dollars each for 2 hours with the horses and a pretty useless guide
Little Pååg finally happy to be on a horse as she missed out last time with her kidney infection. Though it was about 5 minutes in that her allergies kicked in...
We walked through some streets before getting down to the lakeside and up into the base of the volcano. galloping through the mud and tropical rains we really thought we were cowboys, at least before I rode off for a while and when they called me back I turned and took off to realizing my horses went under a try branch which knocked me clean off the horse. As my horse ran around the corner without me and I hung onto a tree branch all I could here was bloody laughing
We also went kayaking in the morning when Clint arrived, to one of the other little towns. That was the most beautiful view with 3 huge volcanos staggered in a line along the lake with cloudes moving in between them. We had a very insignificant feeling sitting out in the middle of the massive lake surrounded by giant volcanos. Poor Clint and Toby couldn't make it to the other side so we went on without them...
