Little boys and grown men with their heads on fire, running around the town square to cheers and to loud traditional Mexican fiesta music (obviously!). Fiestas in Latin American towns are always fun, bright and quirky affairs reflecting local colour and tradition. We’ve seen much of such quirkiness in our travels, but in El Tule, Oaxaca, they out-quirk the quirkiest of traditions.
Tah-dahhh!!! Today, 6th February 2019 marks our fifth anniversary on the road, living full-time in Cuthbert. Happy Anniversary to Us 😊. After taking delivery of Cuthbert from Bocklet and giving up our jobs in December 2013, we spent January 2014 fitting him out with our stuff and preparing for our new life on the road. Finally, on the morning of Thursday 6th February 2014, we left UK on the Eurotunnel for a shake-down trip around Europe.
Five years, 167,000 km, 46 countries on four continents later… here we are in Oaxaca, Mexico… watching from afar as our homeland implodes in the midst of Brexit muppetry and mayhem. Here’s a short video of Cuthbert’s highlights over the last five years. Grab some popcorn and enjoy!
Continue readingOaxaca. What kind of a name is that? And how do you even say it?? Well… it’s both a city and a state in south/central Mexico. For the uninitiated, the name’s of Aztec-Nahuatl origins and pronounced Wa-ha-ka. It’s a pretty colonial city, with nice architecture, history and most importantly, some good coffee shops. There’s lots to do for Christmas in Oaxaca and the icing on the proverbial cake, is at around 1,500m asl it has one of those perfectly sunny-but-not-too-hot climates. Nice. It’s a top place to park-up for the festive season, check out some radishes (yes… you’ll see) and to deal with a grumpy glow-plug. It might even be an opportune spot to take delivery of a new windscreen for Cuthbert. We live in hope.
Woah!! Another year over! 2018 was our fifth year on the road and we tootled just over 20,000km between Colombia and Mexico. We thought we’d end 2018 with a few random/geeky/curious statistics from the year…. Continue reading
“So then I thought, if I can shout about my own chickens, why not shout about other businesses? Now I make money from that too” Maria is an entrepreneurial lady with a micro-finance loan from En Via to set up her chicken business. But soon she was branching out into the ‘shout-out’ business. I was fascinated to meet her and other women entrepreneurs, to learn the stories behind their enterprises: rug weavers, caterers and an ‘emergency hairdresser‘. Learning about micro-finance in Mexico is one of the most worthwhile days I have spent in almost five years of full-time overland travelling.
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As the crow flies, it’s only 420km through the central highlands from San Cristóbal in Chiapas, to Oaxaca City, but the only feasible routes detour way-down to the coast. Pacific or Caribbean – either way it’s around 800km. A potentially jam-packed arribada turtle beach on the Pacific side lures us in that general direction, but we’re torn with our timing… torn between lingering in places of beauty, or rushing in the optimistic expectation of resolving our on-going windscreen saga. Such are our daily overlanding dilemmas. In the end, we find some (non-Mayan) rubble and a lotta, lotta baby turtles….
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Route planning can be carried out in meticulous detail, or extremely vaguely, or anything in between. Generally, we favour the ‘extremely vaguely’ option, but travelling Chiapas State in south Mexico is an exception to this randomness – a bit of route-planning caution is required. With Mayan ruins planning on the other hand, we’ve developed a reckless tendency to live life on the edge, running a real risk of ‘overload’ and becoming ‘Mayan’d Out’.
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Just over five weeks ago we cruised into Mexico from Belize and started our quest to replace Cuthbert’s cracked windscreen. We hunted across the Yucatan peninsula… Chetumal, Cancún, Mérida, wherever… and whilst waiting for replies, we had plenty of time for exploring Yucatan. The Yucatan peninsula is dismissed by many as “too touristy” and “full of cruise-ship visitors”. Well… it’s true, we cannot tell a lie… it does have its ‘mega-hotspots’ to which many thousands of tourists fly or cruise in every week. But that’s not to say there aren’t great places to explore away from the mass tourism. And we have a rather freaky sequel to our Day of the Dead experience too!!!
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Mexico’s Day of the Dead is gaining in global notoriety in recent years. Mexican and international media is ‘bigging-it-up’ to the world. It’s been on our radar over the last couple of years as we’ve travelled up through South and Central America. This year, we’ve reached Mérida, Yucatan at just the right time. Day of the Dead Mérida is marketing itself as a tourist destination city for the event. We’re excited to be here, but it actually turns out to be not entirely what we expect. First, we learn how that James Bond chap has a lot to answer for. And secondly, we find it something of an Emperor’s New Clothes experience.
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“Ándale, ándale!” says Speedy Gonzales with gusto. “Arriba, arriba!”. So far, we’ve found that Mexicans are lovely people but aren’t all quite as ‘speedy’ as the iconic mouse might imply. After three years in Latin America we’re used to the mañana approach. But even by the standards of the region, things are slooow here. We’re in Yucatan, in limbo. How so? Read on…
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Quite a lot of stuff packed into such a teeny country. Belize has a lot going for it. It’s quite different to all the other teeny nations of the region. We’d go so far as to say that you haven’t really ‘done’ Central America unless you’ve at least had a brief look at Belize. Its British heritage and English language, for a start, set it apart from its neighbours. After our last blog where we scouted around the inland Cayo region, we now check-out the bit that it’s famous for… the Belize coast and Cayes. Is it, as the locals like to say, un-Belize-able?
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It’s amazing what an easy border crossing, a great first camp-site and a fabulous restaurant meal can do for your first impressions of a country. All of this, plus the fact that everything here is in English so (I don’t have to translate everything for Marcus 😊) puts our initial view of Belize, high-up on the official list of ‘Tucks’ Truck’s Nice Places’. It rained on our first afternoon here, it’s hot, stiflingly humid and we fail in our several attempts to extract spondoolies from the ATMs. Nevertheless, first impressions are favourable. Here’s our cruise through Belize Cayo …
It’s difficult to put Guatemala into a pigeon hole unless, of course, you have a hole for an unfeasibly large pigeon… then it might fit. It’s a small country, but its variety of cultures, regions, climates and experiences is way too big for your average pigeon hole. There’s no shortage of things to see and do. Descending from the cool highlands to the heat of Guatemala lowlands we find great kayaking in the Tarzan jungle, a hot water fall, a cacophony of vuvuzelas, some stacks of ancient Mayan stones… and a scary man with a gun!
Surprise! Central America isn’t all low, flat, hot, humid and jungly! Until we came here, we never really thought of it as having a ‘highlands’, but blow me down with a feather… it does! Some parts are well over 2,000m amsl and it’s a fabulous climate up there: warm, sunny days and cool clear nights. It’s one of the reasons we’ve lingered so long in these places. Most tourists in Guatemala take in some highlands, maybe Guatemala City, definitely Antigua and Lake Atitlan. Fewer visitors explore the more remote Guatemala highlands. One reason is possibly because the media-machine of touristic publicity for these parts has yet to reach, shall we say… peak efficiency. Another reason is that the high roads are often just downright dreadful.
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Guilty as charged. We have been down-right lazy recently and haven’t done a blog for a while. Truth is… we haven’t been doing much adventuring. We have been, as the cool kids say, ‘chilling-out’ in and around the beautiful town of Antigua. But we do have one little piece of exciting news to report…. kayaking lake atitlan
Boaty’s maiden voyage
Ladies and Gentlemen… (dramatic drumroll)… please be up-standing and raise your glasses to toast the newest member of the Tucks’ Truck Team… Mr Boaty McBoatface!!! Continue reading
Some countries come highly recommended by fellow overlanders and Guatemala is one such country. What should we expect? Well… apparently, we’ll find a beautiful country, friendly people, pretty town plazas, lots to see and do, reasonable prices, but bad roads. And volcanos. Lots of volcanos. These are very scenic, but they do have a tendency to be rather active here. So active in fact, that Volcán Fuego catastrophically erupted just a few weeks ago with a tragic loss of life in surrounding villages that has reached hundreds. Travelling Guatemala, we (briefly) encounter a new kind of fear and a sobering reality-check to respect nature.
Sometimes, we get it wrong with initial impressions of a country. Sometimes, it takes a while to get a feel for a place. Sometimes, we change our minds after a couple of weeks. Bolivia was like that. We absolutely loved it… eventually. But Honduras? Well… our last blog concluded that Honduras is nice. Not amazing, just nice. We rather wanted to like it more and hoped that by doing a bit more Honduras travel, it might grow on us. So did it? Eventually?…
Honduras is one of those countries you’ve probably heard of. Remember? Central America… right?? Maybe you could name the capital city (it’s Tegucigalpa, in case it slipped your mind). But what’s your opinion on Honduras? Have you even got one? We didn’t, at least not until we reached here. And even after three weeks here in places like Tegucigalpa, Roatan, Utila we still don’t have any strong views. It’s just nice. Let’s explain… 
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Overland El Salvador? Seriously? Yes. It’s a gem. An un-cut diamond maybe, but nevertheless, still a gem. Beautiful country, plenty to see and do, tasty street-food, reasonable roads and a welcome which trails a very close third behind the legendary friendliness of Colombia and Brazil. In our last blog we climbed volcanos, lounged on beaches, wondered at ancient ruins, hiked around crater-lakes and visited interesting museums. All very fun and fabby-doo, but then there’s the ‘seriously’ bit of El Salvador… the ‘elephant in the room’. El Salvador is more famous for its 1979-92 civil war and its current crime problems than its tourist attractions. So let’s check these out…
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It doesn’t have the best reputation does it, El Salvador? Travel in El Salvador conjures up stories of civil war, drugs gangs, high crime levels. Not a place you’d think to buy a cheesy fridge magnet. We could skip El Salvador, go through Honduras and by-pass it completely. But we’ve spoken to enough travellers who’ve spent time here to hear that these days, it’s not what you might think… it’s not that bad. El Salvador these days, they say, suffers from a poorly funded PR Department. Use a bit of common sense, avoid the inner-city deprived areas and El Salvador is an undiscovered gem. Okay…. we’ll check it out.
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