Several countries have flown past since last time and I am now in a small colonial town in El Salvador in thge midst of the countries elections. The voting was today and the result is expected in about an hours time. It is expected to be really close between the far right and the far left - this town is far left so I´m expecting a party if they win - if not I´ll keep my head down. Fireworks are already going off everywhere in anticipation ....
Since surfing(?) in San Juan, Nicaragua (it was hard work as the wind was really strong and the waves irreguar, but I managed to catch a few - and took a few tumbles) I went north via a couple of other Nicaraguan towns into Honduras where I went out to a carribbean island Utila for a week and then to the Mayan site of Copan, before winding my way along terrible roads and crossing into El Salvador.
It occurred to me that there are loads of things that I have become so used to in Central America that I dont write about - so just for entertainment(?) here are a few of them:
- appalling roads and uncomfortable buses together forming a journey which can be meaured on the richter scale.
- rice and beans for nearly every meal- power and water cuts (always just when you need them!)
- poverty
- wooden and tin shacks (houses) that your old garden shed would put to shame
- rubbish - its everywhere and the whole population of central america is on a personal quest to make more!
- hanging washing on barbed wire (there is no other type of wire here, but at least the barbs stop it blowing away)
- school children in shirts that are brilliant white (no on else wears white) despite the grime and poverty just how do they get their whites that white without washing machines? Maybe elbow grease is best after all.
- Gangs of large vultures (dont known what the correct collective noun is perhaps someone can let me know) gathering in trees waiting to pounce on roadkill.
- strings of volcanos
- packed local buses (there is no other sort) with chickens carried in individual plastic bags (live ones that is ).
- cold showers - I went without hot water for over a month - and haven´t had a bath since before Xmas....
- going to a different country just to see if the wet cold stuff they call beer is any better in the next country - it never is!
- Hawkers everywhere on the streets on the buses in the restaurants
- not being able to find the comma key on these strange keyboards!
- Carts pulled by Oxen and occasionally horses.
- Seeing men wearing real cowboy hats and trying not to laugh.
- Being woken at 4am by cockerels, parrots, howler monkeys, buses etc who think it is time to get up (it doesnt get light til gone 5.30am).
- Getting to remote villages and finding that the only bus of the day in the direction I want to go in goes before it gets light - typically the more remote the village the earlier the bus leaves.
- Communal bathrooms in hostels with a familiar combination of damp smells: shit and mint toothpaste!
More specifically ..........
Nicaragua
Bad bits- I hate the supermarkets give me small change which no where else (other than supermarkets) accepts (the coins are not worth that much) so I end up carrying a pocketfull of change which is worthless.
- Cloud Forests - Despite my earlier bad experiences I managed to convince myself to visit another one. When will I learn that the only thing I will see in a cloud forest are clouds and forest. And of course it is always raining, just to make sure the enticing list of animals listed in my book, dont make an appearance!
- Local people standing by big holes in the road leaning on spades and the like trying to collect money from passing cars for repairing the road. It all seems a bit community spirted until I realised that all the locals do is try and collect money from passing cars and they never actually do any repairs. Lets face it, if they did they would have no hole to stand next to and try and collect money - the cars would just whizz past!
Honduras Good stuff- Diving on Utila, supposedly the cheapest place in the world to dive - 10 dives for $125 (approx GBP 70) still maintaining decent safety standards. There is some good coral as well both soft and hard and a lot of fish. Apart from two beautiful Hawksbill turtles the best thing I saw was a Frogfish which is technically a fish but which sits on a rock (deep underwater) and has evolved its fins to grip the rock. It just looked like a bright yellow blob!
- Copan - a city with about 15,000 people which was occupied between 1,000BC to 1,000 AD. The best architecture and sculpture come from the period of the ruler King 18 Rabbit (yes that really was his name) who ruled from 9 July 695 to 3 May 738 AD. The people were very advanced and organised and wrote down their history in hieroglyphics which is how we know so much about them (like dates and kings etc). The area was abandoned when the population became too large for the agriculture to support (a lesson for us there somewhere). This is the first Mayan site I have seen but there will be loads more, but whilst this was small by Mayan city standards it does have the highest standard of architectural evolution and carving found at any Mayan site.
Bad News- Having to get up when the little hand was nearest the 4 to get the only bus of the day (which turned out NOT to be an old US school bus (yes like in the Simpsons), but a cramped mini van I can only describe as being between scrapyards), to suffer 4 hours on a bumpy dirt road through beautifal mountain scenery. I´m not saying there wasn´t much legroom cos I dont want to complain too much but I should mention that the previous occupant of that very seat, a small woodlouse (called woody) who had suffered an unfortunate accident and had had all his legs amputated above the knee, was moved to write a letter of complaint to the bus company on this very subject. You get the picture.
- Even will all this ínteresting´bus travel I seemed to get stuck in a series of villages which were a bit colonial, a bit dirty and a bit boring.
El Salvador
Happy Stuff- Food - just to go somewhere where the staple is not rice is a joy. Here it is thick dry tortillas instead (a bit like pitta bread). Often you can get these filled with cheese, bean paste and occasionally fried pòrk fat (very tasty). Fried yucca makes a great snack ( a cross between fried potatoes and fried parsnips and looks very much like the latter).For breakfast they normally serve an odd combination of Refried beans, sour cream, bread, white cheese, scrambles egg and half an avocado.
- The people. Just really friendly and ever so helpful. Just ask any passer by for directions and even if it is out of their way they will virtually escort you there themselves. Of course this is probably linked to their not being many travellers here. Perhaps because of ...
Sad Stuff- The rubbish. Its incessant. Everywhere. And none of the nice people care a bit that they are destroying what is an otherwise beautiful country. They are mad or uneducated. Either way they all chuck rubbish on the ground or out of the bus window at the first opportunity - cos then it ceases to exist (or some rational like that). It makes my attempts at taking my rubbish with me and finding a bin seem completely futile. This is not a rich country but it is by no means the poorest - they have no excuse!
- As a result the sides of the road are approaching at least the international standard required for ´water resistance´. If it carries on for the same way the ropadsides can be expected to reach full ´waterproofing´ by 2010!
The fireworks (big bang, no sparks) anticipating the result are now in full swing and Im about to be thrown out of here. Heading to Guatemala next for a few weeks then Belize and Mexico...
Bye for now
Pete
Showing posts with label diving. Show all posts
Showing posts with label diving. Show all posts
Monday, 22 March 2004
Monday, 29 October 2001
Where 12 Auckland, New Zealand --OR-- SkyDiving into the Freezer for Free Beer?
Dear All,
Hopped over here from Sydney 6 weeks ago and have been travelling around North and South Islands (Such original names - Captain Cook is probably to blame). There is also a West Island (according to some Kiwis) - which some people call Australia! (It's funny the first time but everyone tells the same joke and it wears off really quickly).
High Points
- the highest point reached was 12,000 feet(nearly 2.5 miles/4 km ) above ground. And then inexplicably I jumped out. Yes at last I got round to skydiving (tandem) above Lake Taupo which was an amazing experience travelling at 125mph / 200kph downwards and yet I hardly felt I was moving - and what a view. Recommended if you are mad with an excess of cash -although its a lot cheaper here than in UK).
- Glacier climbing on Franz Joseph Glacier. As if it wasn't cold enough already it started to rain ! It was amazing going through the ice tunnels and squeeaing through the narrow cracks in the glacier - and the ice was so blue - just like a Foxes Glacier Mint!
- Milford Sound - It's a Fiord not a Sound (i.e. carved by ice not water) with sides that go nearly vertically up over 1 mile (1670 metres). Absolutely spectacular ! After a while you get used to the scale and it starts to look smaller..............
- Tranz Alpine Railway between Christchurch and Greymouth - one of the top 6 railway journeys of the world - across the plain to the snow capped mountains, over some and through others....... and as a bonus there is a special wagon where you can stand out in the freezing cold to watch it all !
- Mount Cook (the highest Mountain in NZ) National Park. Had a snowball fight with fresh snow and met a Kea, the worlds only alpine parrot. It followed me around staying 5 metres behind me, just walking in the snow, for some reason it couldn't be bothered to fly. Trying to scare one of these away is not recommended as you have to get so close they will bit you - and
they have big sharp beaks. They often eat windsreen wiper blades and shoes........
- Wildlife - the Yellow eyed penguins are dead cute, the albatross are huge (wingspan is the largest of any bird at over 3 metres) and the Kiwi is fairly stupid (!) although I only saw them in captivity (in the dark and even that wasn't easy). NZ has 80 million possums (imported from Oz originally) and most of them are very flat and live next to the road - or so it seems.......
And there's the rarest duck in the world the Campbell Island Teal with only 50 left in the wild (it's not very exciting though!) I could go on about NZ birds..........but I won't.
Surprisingly the only mammels native to NZ are bats - everything else has been brought in - and as in OZ anything that is not native is hated by most of the population!
- Whale watching (again) This time Sperm Whales the biggest toothed whales. They don't jump out of the water though so actually it was pretty boring - roll on Humpback whales anytime.
- Boiling hot geysers and vigourously boiling pools of water in Rotorua - the whole places does smell of sulphur though!
- To make up for the heat I did my first cold water dive - I had the whole wetsuit with boots and hood and 12kg weights round my waist to make up for the buoyant effect of the suit. And it was still freezing!! (rated *** in freezer terms). The dive site (Poor Knights Islands - another daft Captain Cook name) was rated one of the top 10 in the world by that Cousteau fellah. Fish and plant life were really good though.
- The Maori culture is much more accessable than the Aboriginal people in Oz and the Maoris are much more integrated into society as a whole and there appears to be little racism. Hoorah for NZ and the positive attitude of the Moaris !
The Lows
- The Torrangiro Crossing - usually the best one day walk in NZ. But on the day we walked it the wind was howling over the ridge at around 60 kph trying to blow us off the ridge down the vertical drop, we were in cloud, in was wet, visability was ...er... low and it was bloody freezing (a **** freezer). Just to make it worse after we had come down from the ridge where supposedly the best views were it cleared and the sun came out - for about 5 mins anyway) - a real experience !!
- The NZ wine here is no cheaper than it is back in UK ! Why that is I have no idea.
- The free beer tap in Dunedin. Yes this should be a high.. BUT....... We were told of this free beer tap as we passed the Speights Brewery in a van ... free beer you must be joking ? There was the tap coming straight through the wall of the brewery - but if this tap was really dispensing free beer then surely there would be a queue of people with polypins ... and
there was ! So off we went (sod the wildlife there's free beer in that there wall ... er... I mean this is culture!) and when we got to the tap there is was .... free flowing .... nearly colourless (but then thats Speights beer for you !) ....... and just about tasteless as well (again that's Speights beer). Very very like water in fact (that's Speights!). Are you Seriously saying that all these people
queue up here with their polypins to get water out of this tap when they could just turn on the tap at home ? Er yes they do! NZ has never had a great reputation as a beer drinking nation .... and there is no way it's ever going to get one now. 'Just popping down the brewery for a few pints of water love' just dosen't wash !!!
- And I might just mention that it is a pain travelling with people who can't get into a pub 'cos they are too young - 16 years old to be exact. And before you start thinking THAT - the answers NO!
Next up is Tahiti (where hopefully it will be a bit warmer and less rainy than the North Island of NZ) for 9 days then Easter Island for 4 days and then Lima in Peru to start some challenging travelling !!! I am trying to learn Spanish but it's slow going !
Bye for Now
Luv
Pete
Hopped over here from Sydney 6 weeks ago and have been travelling around North and South Islands (Such original names - Captain Cook is probably to blame). There is also a West Island (according to some Kiwis) - which some people call Australia! (It's funny the first time but everyone tells the same joke and it wears off really quickly).
High Points
- the highest point reached was 12,000 feet(nearly 2.5 miles/4 km ) above ground. And then inexplicably I jumped out. Yes at last I got round to skydiving (tandem) above Lake Taupo which was an amazing experience travelling at 125mph / 200kph downwards and yet I hardly felt I was moving - and what a view. Recommended if you are mad with an excess of cash -although its a lot cheaper here than in UK).
- Glacier climbing on Franz Joseph Glacier. As if it wasn't cold enough already it started to rain ! It was amazing going through the ice tunnels and squeeaing through the narrow cracks in the glacier - and the ice was so blue - just like a Foxes Glacier Mint!
- Milford Sound - It's a Fiord not a Sound (i.e. carved by ice not water) with sides that go nearly vertically up over 1 mile (1670 metres). Absolutely spectacular ! After a while you get used to the scale and it starts to look smaller..............
- Tranz Alpine Railway between Christchurch and Greymouth - one of the top 6 railway journeys of the world - across the plain to the snow capped mountains, over some and through others....... and as a bonus there is a special wagon where you can stand out in the freezing cold to watch it all !
- Mount Cook (the highest Mountain in NZ) National Park. Had a snowball fight with fresh snow and met a Kea, the worlds only alpine parrot. It followed me around staying 5 metres behind me, just walking in the snow, for some reason it couldn't be bothered to fly. Trying to scare one of these away is not recommended as you have to get so close they will bit you - and
they have big sharp beaks. They often eat windsreen wiper blades and shoes........
- Wildlife - the Yellow eyed penguins are dead cute, the albatross are huge (wingspan is the largest of any bird at over 3 metres) and the Kiwi is fairly stupid (!) although I only saw them in captivity (in the dark and even that wasn't easy). NZ has 80 million possums (imported from Oz originally) and most of them are very flat and live next to the road - or so it seems.......
And there's the rarest duck in the world the Campbell Island Teal with only 50 left in the wild (it's not very exciting though!) I could go on about NZ birds..........but I won't.
Surprisingly the only mammels native to NZ are bats - everything else has been brought in - and as in OZ anything that is not native is hated by most of the population!
- Whale watching (again) This time Sperm Whales the biggest toothed whales. They don't jump out of the water though so actually it was pretty boring - roll on Humpback whales anytime.
- Boiling hot geysers and vigourously boiling pools of water in Rotorua - the whole places does smell of sulphur though!
- To make up for the heat I did my first cold water dive - I had the whole wetsuit with boots and hood and 12kg weights round my waist to make up for the buoyant effect of the suit. And it was still freezing!! (rated *** in freezer terms). The dive site (Poor Knights Islands - another daft Captain Cook name) was rated one of the top 10 in the world by that Cousteau fellah. Fish and plant life were really good though.
- The Maori culture is much more accessable than the Aboriginal people in Oz and the Maoris are much more integrated into society as a whole and there appears to be little racism. Hoorah for NZ and the positive attitude of the Moaris !
The Lows
- The Torrangiro Crossing - usually the best one day walk in NZ. But on the day we walked it the wind was howling over the ridge at around 60 kph trying to blow us off the ridge down the vertical drop, we were in cloud, in was wet, visability was ...er... low and it was bloody freezing (a **** freezer). Just to make it worse after we had come down from the ridge where supposedly the best views were it cleared and the sun came out - for about 5 mins anyway) - a real experience !!
- The NZ wine here is no cheaper than it is back in UK ! Why that is I have no idea.
- The free beer tap in Dunedin. Yes this should be a high.. BUT....... We were told of this free beer tap as we passed the Speights Brewery in a van ... free beer you must be joking ? There was the tap coming straight through the wall of the brewery - but if this tap was really dispensing free beer then surely there would be a queue of people with polypins ... and
there was ! So off we went (sod the wildlife there's free beer in that there wall ... er... I mean this is culture!) and when we got to the tap there is was .... free flowing .... nearly colourless (but then thats Speights beer for you !) ....... and just about tasteless as well (again that's Speights beer). Very very like water in fact (that's Speights!). Are you Seriously saying that all these people
queue up here with their polypins to get water out of this tap when they could just turn on the tap at home ? Er yes they do! NZ has never had a great reputation as a beer drinking nation .... and there is no way it's ever going to get one now. 'Just popping down the brewery for a few pints of water love' just dosen't wash !!!
- And I might just mention that it is a pain travelling with people who can't get into a pub 'cos they are too young - 16 years old to be exact. And before you start thinking THAT - the answers NO!
Next up is Tahiti (where hopefully it will be a bit warmer and less rainy than the North Island of NZ) for 9 days then Easter Island for 4 days and then Lima in Peru to start some challenging travelling !!! I am trying to learn Spanish but it's slow going !
Bye for Now
Luv
Pete
Thursday, 28 June 2001
Where 9 Singapore --OR-- More Western than the West
Hi Peeps
I have been really busy the past few weeks so haven't had time to email (those beaches and clear waters are really time consuming.....)
After Myanma I went South from Bangkok to Thailands east coast and spent 3 weeks on Ko Tao island. Then to the west coast to see the limestone pinnacles at Krabi. South to Malaysia - Penang , Kuala Lumpar, into the jungle (not that KL isn't) in Tamar Negara for a few days, Malaka and then Singapore.....
Highs
- Diving and snorkelling in Thailand was excellent - saw loads of fish, sharks, octopus, squid, hard and soft corals etc... including Xmas Tree Worms which look like tiny colourful Xmas Trees underwater!
- Passed my Advanced Open Water PADI (diving certification) and did night diving and night snorkelling - just a bit creepy night snorkeling on my own!
- Limestones pinnacles rising out of thw water near Krabi - this is where they filmed 007 'The Man with the Golden Gun' in 1973. The bit they used in the film looks a lot bigger on the screen than it did in real life !! (But then in 007 films everything looks bigger than in real life !! - apart from the things that look smaller that is.....)
- Tallest buildings in the world in KL. The Petronas Towers are 452m tall and have 88 floors. The view is good but partly blocked by all the other tallest buildings in the world ! (Actually we could only go up to level 41).
- The oldest rainforest in the world - the jungle at Taman Negara in Malaysia in 130 million years old and is full of trees, bushes, trees, vines, trees and trees and is fantasticly beautiful. The trees grow up to 60 m tall and their surface roots seem even longer ! There are a few animals living there but there is just about zero chance of seeing any (even though you can hear them all night long !) as the jungle is very dark and denser than most US presidents. I spent the last night in a hide deep in the jungle with all the other people who booked it - except that no-one else did and I was alone !! Apart from the bumps on the roof that is ....well .. I mean you've all seen 'Friday 13th' right......
- Full Moon Party on Ko Pha Ngan - it had to be done as it is a bit of an institution. It was good fun but a just a tad over commercialised - maybe the highlight of the night was watching England beat Greece 2-0..........
- The food ! It's just great and cheap - even in S'pore you can get cheap food if you know where to go.....
- Night Safari in S'pore - definitely worth a visit - the best bit was going into a large cage with flying fox bats (the largest bats in the world) they are huge (half rat and half wing)but they are (nearly) cute really!
Not so Highs
- Having my camera stolen on Ko Tao (Ok so I shouldn't fall asleep on the beach at night) - luckily I didn't lose any good pictures....
- lascerating my hand on coral while diving. The worst bit is looking at all the green stuff coming out of my hand ..... After a bit I worked out that all the red light is absorbed by the water at that depth and so blood looks green. Well at least that's what I hoped it was......
- Being attacked by a Trigger fish whilst snorkelling. Thay are less than 0.5m long but are very fast, have big teeth and can easily bite off an ear. On Ko Tao they are very aggressive for no reason. I shoved my sandals in it's face but it kept attacking, 4 times in total. I was as scared - as a fish out of water ! And I didn't go near any trigger fish after that.
- Cost of S'pore (especially the beer). It wouldn't have been so bad but it was just the place for a party so we spent shedloads on the stuff.. and had a great time (I may have to stay in US$1 per night places in Indonesia though...)
- Culture shock in Malaysia and Singapore - the places are so westernised. Everyone had a mobile phone the first I have seen in months. KL has more McDonalds than any other place I have ever been. S'pore is more westernised than any western place I have ever been - where is all the dirt ??? At least they still have rats in S'pore although not a single pigeon ! Any
guesses?
And that was the posh places - now to the grime of Indonesia .......
Best Wishes
Luv
Pete
I have been really busy the past few weeks so haven't had time to email (those beaches and clear waters are really time consuming.....)
After Myanma I went South from Bangkok to Thailands east coast and spent 3 weeks on Ko Tao island. Then to the west coast to see the limestone pinnacles at Krabi. South to Malaysia - Penang , Kuala Lumpar, into the jungle (not that KL isn't) in Tamar Negara for a few days, Malaka and then Singapore.....
Highs
- Diving and snorkelling in Thailand was excellent - saw loads of fish, sharks, octopus, squid, hard and soft corals etc... including Xmas Tree Worms which look like tiny colourful Xmas Trees underwater!
- Passed my Advanced Open Water PADI (diving certification) and did night diving and night snorkelling - just a bit creepy night snorkeling on my own!
- Limestones pinnacles rising out of thw water near Krabi - this is where they filmed 007 'The Man with the Golden Gun' in 1973. The bit they used in the film looks a lot bigger on the screen than it did in real life !! (But then in 007 films everything looks bigger than in real life !! - apart from the things that look smaller that is.....)
- Tallest buildings in the world in KL. The Petronas Towers are 452m tall and have 88 floors. The view is good but partly blocked by all the other tallest buildings in the world ! (Actually we could only go up to level 41).
- The oldest rainforest in the world - the jungle at Taman Negara in Malaysia in 130 million years old and is full of trees, bushes, trees, vines, trees and trees and is fantasticly beautiful. The trees grow up to 60 m tall and their surface roots seem even longer ! There are a few animals living there but there is just about zero chance of seeing any (even though you can hear them all night long !) as the jungle is very dark and denser than most US presidents. I spent the last night in a hide deep in the jungle with all the other people who booked it - except that no-one else did and I was alone !! Apart from the bumps on the roof that is ....well .. I mean you've all seen 'Friday 13th' right......
- Full Moon Party on Ko Pha Ngan - it had to be done as it is a bit of an institution. It was good fun but a just a tad over commercialised - maybe the highlight of the night was watching England beat Greece 2-0..........
- The food ! It's just great and cheap - even in S'pore you can get cheap food if you know where to go.....
- Night Safari in S'pore - definitely worth a visit - the best bit was going into a large cage with flying fox bats (the largest bats in the world) they are huge (half rat and half wing)but they are (nearly) cute really!
Not so Highs
- Having my camera stolen on Ko Tao (Ok so I shouldn't fall asleep on the beach at night) - luckily I didn't lose any good pictures....
- lascerating my hand on coral while diving. The worst bit is looking at all the green stuff coming out of my hand ..... After a bit I worked out that all the red light is absorbed by the water at that depth and so blood looks green. Well at least that's what I hoped it was......
- Being attacked by a Trigger fish whilst snorkelling. Thay are less than 0.5m long but are very fast, have big teeth and can easily bite off an ear. On Ko Tao they are very aggressive for no reason. I shoved my sandals in it's face but it kept attacking, 4 times in total. I was as scared - as a fish out of water ! And I didn't go near any trigger fish after that.
- Cost of S'pore (especially the beer). It wouldn't have been so bad but it was just the place for a party so we spent shedloads on the stuff.. and had a great time (I may have to stay in US$1 per night places in Indonesia though...)
- Culture shock in Malaysia and Singapore - the places are so westernised. Everyone had a mobile phone the first I have seen in months. KL has more McDonalds than any other place I have ever been. S'pore is more westernised than any western place I have ever been - where is all the dirt ??? At least they still have rats in S'pore although not a single pigeon ! Any
guesses?
And that was the posh places - now to the grime of Indonesia .......
Best Wishes
Luv
Pete
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