Sunday, April 8, 2007

Adventures in Transit - Honduras

Happy Easter!

We are now in, after some crazy transit situations, in Marcala, Honduras. Let us tell you our tale.
It all began in Copan de las Ruinas on Saturday morning at 6am, with our destination being Perquin, El Salvador, or at least La Esperenza, Honduras. That first bus ride wasn´t too bad - through the mountains, a few pukey people, but not us, so it was all good! This bus took us to La Entrada, a kind of transportation hub.
Here we paired off with two people from Vancouver and hopped into a mini-bus which would take us to Santa Rita de Copan. That ride was unevetnful.
Upon arrival we immediatley got on a big, crowded bus headed to Gracias. Lee was making sure the bags were put underneath properly with the driver and ticket guy, but they were out there for a really long time. Turns out the bus door closed and they couldn´t get back in! So, after a rough start we were off. This bus was really crowded, and every now and then you´d hear a little animal peep. The woman beside us had two colourful, baby birds - parrots maybe- that she was feeding. Funny looking, noisey little things. Another guy had a little puppy... cute.
In Gracias we had to take a little three-wheeler taxi to a bridge near the edge of the city. There we got on a cozy mini bus (Lee was all snuggled up with some local guy - very cute!) towards San Juan.
San Juan is in the mountains. San Juan is isolated. San Juan is full of drunks. San Jaun is sketcho. San Juan had no buses scheduled for us to leave. So, we learnt how to Honduran-hitchhike in San Juan. We ended up waiting for half an hour before a big, cattle truck pulled up and people were jumping out the back crate. In our nervous, broken Spanish we asked where they were going. Magic word! La Esperenza! We hopped in the truck with about seven locals and hit the road. The road, as it turns out, is not so much a road as a cliff-gripping, dirt/rock, isolated path. We had heard it wasn´t a very good road.. but that wasn´t a very accurate description. With nothing much to hang on to, and the only thing offering any consolation being the only semi-nervous locals, a long ride to say the least. Roads seemed to dissapear because they were so steep, one of the drivers stalled on most uphills and so we would stop, roll backwards a bit and then lurch up the hill. The sun went away, it got cold, little over cast, and the ride continued: Pretty much forever. We eventually did arrive in La Esperenza, and the three of us couldn´t be more thrilled at being out, the prospect of food, shower and toilet!!

We spent the night there and caught an 11am bus out to Marcala, where we are now. It wasn´t a bad road compared to yesterday´s and it eventually met up with a PAVED HIGHWAY!! Yay! (It was an exciting time for us).

The plan, if it works, is arriving (finally) in Perquin tomorrow.

It´s been an interesting Easter Weekend for us, hope all of you had a great one!

Thursday, April 5, 2007

Honduras

Hello Everyone!!

So we have taken a while to give an update... our bad :) Actually, we were in the Baye Islands and the internet was really expensive there and then other things just didn´t work out.. anyways, here´s an update! (Sorry if there are some mistakes we can´t get rid of.. it´s a Spanish keyboard)

We left Belize on Saturday afternoon, after a slow start in Dangringa we boarded a smallish boat to cross the sea. That didn´t go well - big puke fest. Weee! Mostly on the part of Sarah (2) and Lee (1). That was super. Nancy (0) offered no comfort and would not look - only way she didn´t puke, not to say she wasn´t REALLY close!
But we made it. So we eventually found a mini bus to San Pedro, and then a big bus to La Ceiba, which is on the coast and the host of all ferries to the Baye Islands. Spent a night in La Ceiba, indulged ourselves with some American fast food (hadn´t seen Wendy´s or Pizza Hut since Canada!) Then we boarded the second ferry trip.... thought it would be better because the boat was bigger but... not so much. Sarah (1) (again) and Nancy (0) very, very close and Lee (0) did alright (jerk).
Anywho.. we made it to the super Roatan, the biggest of the Baye Islands. We stayed in a yucky place the first night but the second and third we had a nice cabin with a shared kitchen and stuff. The beaches were really great - we rented ATVs the second day so we could explore the island a little more. There is a huge, beautiful picture-esque beach there. And, it´s so close to the reef, Sarah and Nancy snorkeled and saw some really amazing fish, got lost in the coral a bit... way better than anything in Belize!! Miss it already!
The way back, all three of us being anxious about the upcoming pukefest #3, we all requested and took some sea sick pills and passed out for the ride back. No puking. Yay!
We bused our way back to San Pedro Sula, had some food, got a place to stay... and today, if there´s buses running, we´ll head out to Copan. Since it´s Semena Santa (Easter holidays) everything´s been shut down... no good. We´ll see where we end up.

So, that´s the general update, we hope everything is well back home,

Wednesday, March 14, 2007

Hopkins and Cockscomb Basin Wildlife Sanctuary


Hello Everyone!

This past weekend Sarah, Steph, Lee and I headed back to Hopkins for some good relaxation by the sea. It ended up working out really well because we went back to the same place as last time, Jeanie's Jungle Resort by the Sea. She was going to put us in a building she's working on and intends for budget travellers, which would cost about $7.50 Am per person, which is the same rate as you would pay to pitch a tent on her property. But, then she wasn't sure that she felt the building was really ready so she put us in one of her nice cabins that go for about $100 Am per night at the $7.50 rate! Yay!
We ate at a couple local places, saw some drumming, swam in the super nice water.. we had hoped to go kayaking but it was pretty rough out on Saturday so no such luck.
Here's a shot of Lee reading on the beach: pretty much all we did for most of Friday and Saturday.

Then we also strolled up the beach towards the fancy resorts. We ended up getting a drink at this pool and sea side bar that is in the centre of all these super fancy villas for sale. So we watched the rich people wander around as we lazed about in their pool and on their comfy pool chairs.
Sunday morning we got up bright and early and headed out in a local's car (for a small fee) to Cockscomb Basin Wildlife Sanctuary. Apparently they have a bunch of jaguars in the area, other jungle creatures and stuff.. mostly we just saw bugs and jungle. But that's cool too :-) We ran into some birders, on a bird watching competition who politely hushed us because we were making too much noise in the jungle.. they were pretty intense, have all the gear: mosquito jungle hat thing, chair, various binoculars, safari pants with matching shirt... We did all agree that with the amount of time they put into searching it would be pretty rewarding to spot some cool bird like a toucan.
Here's a couple pictures of us there, so you can get an idea of what the jungle flora and fauna looks like...





We walked about four trails during our morning at Cockscomb. One went up to this little waterfall. No one else was there so we were able to relax, wade in the water and just enjoy it.
Here we are - little photo op of us to keep the parents back home happy. We're still alive and well!That's all for now folks, hope all is well,

Monday, March 5, 2007

San Pedro

Hello Everyone!

This weekend we headed out (finally) to the Cayes. We took a water taxi from Belize City - here's a shot of Steph, Lee and Sarah waiting by the harbour. All the sailboats in the background are a classic shot of Belize city.The taxi ride in was a little over an hour long. Almost the entire time there seemed to be this white line in the distance. Turns out it's the barrier reef! There are big waves where the water meets the coral because it's so shallow. Pictures never do what you're seeing justice, but here's what it looked like.

We were in San Pedro to visit a former volunteer Kate and her local boyfriend, Bigs. Bigs works at a Dive shop and Kate has some friends so we had the hook-ups! We got snorkel gear on Saturday for $5 Am each and set out on a friend's boat. We did two stops: Tuffy's Canyon and Dos Cocos. The water was pretty rough so we had to be careful but either way it was really cool - and now we can say we've snorkeled the second biggest barrier reef in the world! Yay!
That night we went to Sarah and Will's (An American girl and local guy) place and had a BBQ - homemade tortillas, fresh snapper - yummy! It was an all-round great weekend by the sea. Here's our smiling faces - Lee can't keep his eyes open for pictures - but big smiles!!



Love to all,

Monday, February 26, 2007

Meet some Kiddies!

Since we spend most of our time working with children here, we thought it would be nice for you all to 'meet' them!
We are working a lot with one specific family in a village called Succotz, not far from San Ignacio. Our work with this family is not limited to their academics, but includes life skills in general.

This photo has a few of the older kids in the family. The eldest, a boy, is 14 years old. The girls beside him are 12 and 9. We are hoping that they will soon be able to help their mother in caring for the younger children in the family.
Here are a few of the younger ones. These kids are around 7, 6, and 9. The fourth little girl is from the picture above.


Here we are on the way to the clinic. The second little girl from the left is the youngest, and is actually the niece of the other kids.

Just wanted to show you all these wonderful, energetic smiling faces.
Any donations we received (in regards to literacy) have gone straight to these children to help them to learn English, learn the alphabet, learn to read or improve their reading and math skills.
Thank you!

Tuesday, February 20, 2007

Guatemalan Weekend

Hello everyone!
We're back from an adventure in Guatemala. We began this weekend by heading off to the Guatemalan border, which is about a half hour away from San Ignacio. From there we bargained our way to a $5 US mini bus ride to Flores. Flores is a cute little touristy town about 2 hours from the border.
Here is a picture of the streets of Flores, Guatemala.


We spent the night in Flores, filling our time with souvenir shopping and watching CABLE! Woo Hoo! Don't we know how to travel!
Saturday morning we had a little sleep-in and headed out for breakfast at Cool Beans with the group of volunteers that we were traveling with.We arrived at Tikal late Saturday afternoon. Tikal is said to have the largest and most impressive Mayan ruins. We decided, along with the other group members, that we would not see any of the ruins on Saturday and do a Sunrise Tour on Sunday. On Sunday morning we were woken at 4:30 to do our Sunrise Tour. It was still really dark out! We hiked for about 20min until we reached the towering ruin that we were going to climb and watch the sunrise on top of. Here is a picture of the stairs.
We were on top of the temple for about an hour and a half waiting for the sun to rise. Nancy decided to take tons of pictures to make sure she got the best shots. A lot of them sucked! It was a pretty amazing feeling hearing the jungle waking, being above everything and looking at the horizon.
Here is a pic way before the sun began to rise.
Here is a good shot with the sun all the way up. You can see two other temples poking their heads out of the tall jungle trees.

Here is a picture of (from the left) Lee, Sarah and Steph on the top of the same temple we saw the sunrise on.Enjoy the rest!
Talk to you soon!
Don't forget to comment...

Monday, February 12, 2007

Placencia Weekend

For our fourth weekend in Belize we decided to travel to the village of Placencia in South Eastern Belize. As you can see, Placencia is on the Atlantic Ocean, but what you can't see is that Placencia is a very long peninsula (approx. 23 miles). The beaches there were much nicer than we had previously seen in Hopkins, but at the same time the area was very more expensive and very tourist-like.
Another interesting thing about Placencia is the sidewalk that runs through the village. The sidewalk is a separated by a pathway that acts as Placencia's main roadway. It is the world's skinniest road or something like that...
One thing about it being a touristy place - the food there was awesome! The first night (Friday) we ate at an Italian place with homemade pasta. (I'm drooling right now thinking about it!) The owners are often the servers in the restaurants. On our last night we were sharing an appetizer plate because we had pretty much no money left, but we didn't want to order right away, we just wanted to drink our waters. I was explaining the budget situation to the server - making sure it was okay to take our time with free water and she told us about her 25 year old son and his budgeting, so she said our platter included free rum punches!
So, at the request, well really based on comments from our mothers, we've included some more pictures that have us in them so that you can see us - alive and well! This is us at the Italian place; right on the waterfront.

Here's Lee lookin' particularly stylish! Selling the coke in a glass bottle!
And.. Nancy. Enjoying her Fanta... as you can see - right by the ocean. Well, maybe you can't exactly see, but it's right there behind me.

And Lee made the first big, exciting purchase this weekend! He bought his own set of tortoise shells! You may recall, the Garifuna people in Hopkins played these. Here's a shot of Lee giving it the first try!
That's all for now. Heading to Tikal next weekend with a big group.

Monday, February 5, 2007

The Belize Zoo and Mount Pine Ridge

Welcome to the Belize Zoo!
The zoo was started by an American woman who had helped with the filming of some documentary on local wildlife. Throughout the filming the animals had become tame and would not be able to survive in the wild. So, the zoo was started. The zoo is the last resort for animals. They are often animals that have been used, taken in as pets or hurt. All the animals are local and the zoo emphasizes the protection of the animals and their natural habitat.

We arrived at the zoo very early (we were the first visitors of the day). The animals all seemed to be very quiet. However, as the day went on the zoo got pretty noisey. While we were visiting with the jaguar (see picture) we started hearing some crazy sounds. Was it the tapirs? (National animal) It sounded like dinosaurs - really. We felt like we were in Jurassic Park! We decided to follow the sound and it turned out to be the howler monkeys! They're so loud!! We filmed it, so we have a sound clip to bring home with us. Anyways, here are a few pictures from our excursion.

They had four macaw parrots . They were just amazing. Their colours are incredible bright - especially when they fly!

And the toucan: the national bird. This toucan was fantastic. Perfectly kept and groomed. The toucan was probably the top pick for everyone who went.Mount Pine Ridge is a day trip with a local tour company. It costs $30 US and it was well worth it. The soil on the mountain has a higher pH, so trees like pines grow there but not the usual palm trees that you see every where else in Belize. We made four stops on the trip, after a 2 hour long drive in through the super bumpy, muddy road.
The first stop is at Rio Frio Cave. It is a huge cave nestled in the forest. This is a picture of what it looks like from just inside the mouth of the cave.

Here's Lee on his way into the cave. There was a stair case in, some climbing on various rocks and you can get down to this natural sandbar on the floor of the cave. A small stream/river flows through.
Here's Nancy also near the entrance to the cave. You can see the water leaving the cave behind her.
The next stop was at an area that had several levels of water. There were some pools, some areas with semi-strong currents and then other areas where you had to be careful. The tour provided us with lunch (fresh pineapple, banana, watermelon, some plantain chips, sandwhich, water..) so Lee and I climbed to a rock right by the small falls to eat. Then Lee ventured into the falls - I didn't have the guts, plus I had the camera :-) So here he is!

The third stop is at Big Rock. It has a high waterfall, then a great pool area to swim in. In this picture you can see some rocks in the bottom left corner. We swam to them and climbed them so that we were in the pool directly under the water fall. Lee swam across that pool (Nancy stayed behind again) and climbed up on the rocks on the other side (where you can see some water hitting the rocks on the mid-right. He did a quick jump and the current just about slammed him back into the rocks that Nancy was sitting on.
It turned out to be a great trip. Lots of swimming, waterfalls and so on. Relaxing. We ended at a resort that overlooked 5 Sisters Falls, but you had to pay extra to go down there so we all stayed back on the veranda and relaxed. Here's a shot of the group. This is all the current volunteers (although, someone is arriving tomorrow) and the guide.Lee, Nancy, Ellie, Jackie, Bev (all from the Ottawa area, some on the QC side, but all have lived in and around the school), Sarah from Bristol England and Stephanie from Miami, Florida.

We hope everything is well back home,

Friday, February 2, 2007

Great Crazy News!

Travel time baby!

We just got word that schools get two weeks off at Easter, which leads into our last day. The 4th week ending on our departure date. Since all or most of our work is in schools we too have that Easter holiday. Aka we get a whole month off!!! Look out C.A., here we come!

COMMENT if anyone has tips on places to go in between Southern Mexico and Costa Rica!

Woo Hoo!

Volunteering at Conerstone

Hello Everyone!

So there have been a few questions about what volunteer work we've been doing here in Belize. I guess thats a fair question since it is the reason why we're here! For people that don't know Nancy is in the HIV/AIDS program along with youth and Lee is in the Literacy program along with Environment.

Until this afternoon our schedules have not been full. Just today we visited a near by village called Succotz(which borders Guatemala). In Succotz we set up a 2 hour session, 3 days a week that will involve tutoring and offer life skills training to a family of seven children who have learning disablilties (so we're told) and are behind in school. Nancy will tutor four of the children while Lee will tutor three.

We are also working Monday and Wednesday mornings (Lee also works there in the afternoon on Monday) in a local primary school library. Lee is looking after the upkeep of the library and helping kids sign out and return books while Nancy will be teaching kids on how to use and how to act in a library (since most of the kids have never stepped foot in a library).

We are both teaching a creative writing class at another local primary school (different from the library one) an hour a day, three days a week. We are teaching two groups of eight kids who are in standard five (or grade seven).

Also we are both tutoring/reading with kids. Lee tutors/reads with a boy and Nancy tutors/reads with two others.

Nancy is also doing research for an HIV/AIDS newsletter run by another volunteer at the foundation. She is in the process of setting up a presentation for HIV/AIDS/STIs at the prison here in Belize...we'll keep you updated!

By now you might all be wondering, why is Nancy not doing very much HIV/AIDS stuff and doing more youth/literacy stuff? Well she has found, along with other volunteers, that there has been a lot of HIV/AIDS awareness going on here in Belize. That is very good and everything but there is a sense that people are getting sick of listening to it. At the same time there is a lot of need for help in education.

If there's any questions just COMMENT!

Later

Tuesday, January 30, 2007

Hopkins Weekend

Welcome to Hopkins!
In the wee morning hours of Friday we headed to Belmopan (the capital of Belize), with a few other volunteers to get our Visas extended. All went smoothly and we headed back to the bus station in hopes of getting closer to Hopkins or Placencia.
As we sat in the bus station waiting for a bus to come, a man approached us and asked us where we were headed. We said Dagringa, so, his bus went to Dagringa. We were a little sketched out by this at first, but it ended up all well and good! From Dagringa we went to Hopkins, which is a small town of about 1000 on the ocean.
After walking through the entire town and out the other side we were feeling tired and sick of trying to find a place to stay. On our last straw, we walked down the driveway of Jeanie's Jungle by the Sea Resort. A truck pulled over and the people (Jeanie and John) offered us their only room left - a fancy one - at half the normal cost, since we were obviously budget travellers. Since we now know that North American accommodations cater best to our needs, we took it.
The first night our cabin was set back a little from the water, but still had a view, had two double beds and hot water! Big treat! It also had a big, great balcony. Which we promptly relaxed on with a book. (That's right - Lee has started to read!)

The second night there (since we were too lazy to continue on to Placencia) we stayed in this cute little cabin, still within Jeanie's Jungle Resort. It was way cheaper ($20US), pretty small, but still had hot water. It also had a way better ocean view. Saturday we took out a kayak and played around. We saw jellyfish-like things - they were rounder -, a school of blue & yellow fish jumped up all around the kayak and we saw some huge, hungry birds. Oh also, we saw a couple pretty big, orange starfish.
Apparently, you can also find manatees and dolphins in the area. We'll have to go back for that. Actually, our plan is to go back and do a day trip in the kayak. You can go down to Sittee River and there's crocs there - yikes!
Here's a shot of Nancy reading by the ocean shortly before sunset. We were the only people on the beach - very peaceful!


This is a shot of the view from the reading chairs.
We also went to a drumming thing. About 5 or 6 guys played various drums and sang Garifuna music. The boy standing is playing tortoise shells - they had a great sound! Lee practiced the beat for hours after this and wants to get some shells for himself.


We also noticed how much garbage was by the shore. There was the usual, washed in by the ocean stuff - tons of shoes and bottles - but then there's the oh-so pretty dump. This is behind one person's shop.. it just didn't seem like something you would find easily back home. The shore was not taken care of, except for private beaches like in front of hotels.
And small side note - this is Gabby, our gecko. She hangs out at our place all the time... pretty noisy little thing. :-)
Hope all is well with everyone,

Monday, January 22, 2007

Our First Full Belizian Weekend!!

Well Friends - we had an excellent weekend. Saturday we went to the market where we got all sorts of fresh fruits and veggies for like $2.50. Sweet! (Although.. we have yet to eat them - tonight for sure!) Then we just chilled out with the other volunteers and had a low-key day. But on Sunday....


We went to some ruins! Weee! Here's a shot of the most impressive structure on site:

On the side of it you can see some incredible frieze, or as we refer to it, stuffy-stuff. Stuffy-stuff is neat. :-)


This is Lee on the way up to the top. He's all smiles now... but wait.....


This is Nancy chillin' over the edge looking out - incredible view. Where's Lee you might ask?! Well, turns out Lee is a little (by little I mean a fair amount) afraid of heights. He wasn't so keen on checking out the view or having a seat. He also, was not too keen on having Nancy sit that close to the edge.


So Lee decided to go back down. On his way, about a half way down he came underneath us and took a photo. That's Nancy, Nurse Kate, Sarah and Kirsty. All smiles!

Now this picture is a little unclear.. but we were so pumped that we decided to share it anyways! It's a ... MONKEY! Actually it's two adults and two babies! The one baby crawled on the branch and it was super cute and amazing! What do you have in Canada? Seagulls? Haha! We have monkeys!


q: So tell me, why did the iguana cross the road?
a: Who cares!? It was freakin' awesome!

This is actually one of the small to medium ones we saw. We saw about 6 or 7, the biggest being umm.. ginormous.

Anyways, hope you like our pictures and incredibly eloquent posting here... talk to you all soon! And comment on our postings - it's more fun that way!

PS.

Mum (MaryB) - Email me more, I'm feeling abandoned!
Uncle Scott - Yes. We have internet access at work - slow, but functional.