Semana Santa is the Easter week celebration. It’s a biiiiig thing here in Antigua, Guatemala. Every year, over a million people descend on this very cool, historic town at the foot of Volcan de Agua to see the Semana Santa processions at Antigua Easter. So what’s our outsiders’ insight into the world’s largest Easter celebrations? And how do we end up doing a post-Easter overlanding rocket-blast all the way north through Guatemala, through Mexico, to Texas?
Hey Guatemala… we’re back! Last time in 2018 we saw all the big attractions… Antigua, Atitlan, Semuc Champey, Tikal… yardy, yardy, yardy. This time we thought we’d check out a few hidden gems of Guatemala. These are some very cool-looking places in the far corner of Huehuetenango province. They’re more remote, less ‘international tourism’ and much harder to get to than the usual Top-Ticks. We found that sometimes they’re gems, sometimes they’re not. But first we had to do the border stuff…
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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Oh dear! Sometimes we just get our timing wrong. This time it’s very wrong. So wrong that it would hands-down win the Eurovision Wrong Contest. Why-o-why-o-why couldn’t we have got to Nicaragua a few months before the rebels decide they want regime change? They’re having a bit of bother there and we find ourselves hanging around in Costa Rica waiting to drive across Nicaragua … Continue reading
Costa Rica’s ubiquitous mantra – Pura Vida (‘pure life’) is on everything here: t-shirts, hats, cuddly toys, hair-clips, flip-flops, wooden turtles, plastic dolphins, pots & pans… you name it, it’s got a bit of ‘pura vida’ scrawled somewhere across it. It works too. The tourists lap it up, so we can’t blame the Ticos for flogging it. But it can give a rather cheesy impression of the country. So far, we’ve toured the south/west of Costa Rica which is just a bit less popular with the ‘pura vida set’ than some other parts of the country. As we head now into a more touristy part of the country, we find some extraordinary wildlife, but still ponder whether this cheesy image of Costa Rica, generated partly by the ‘pura vida thing’, is otherwise justified.
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Costa Rica generates mixed reviews from travellers: jungle, wildlife, beaches… but two words crop-up with some regularity: ‘touristy’ and ‘expensive’. Not the most enticing adjectives. But even if it were possible to avoid the country on our way through Central America, which it isn’t, we still wouldn’t want to miss checking it out for ourselves. So here we are… just checking it out…
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Do you feel lucky? Most people come to Costa Rica to spend a fortune, so why not buck the trend and find a fortune instead? All you’ve got to do is go panning for gold … and get lucky.
“How long for Panama d’ya reckon?” I asked Marcus in a rare and rash attempt at planning before we arrived here. “Dunno…” he said “…three, four weeks? Not much there, is there?”. “Dunno” I replied. Truth is, we really had no clue as to what there is to do in Panama. The Canal was on our bucket list, but other than that…. who knows? Even if you’d offered us a few $$$ to do so, we wouldn’t have been able to name another town or attraction that Panama had to offer the casual overlanding tourist – particularly not in the wild western Panama.
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It’s a big hop from South to Central America. From Colombia, our Cuthbert took a luxury Caribbean RORO cruise and we took a flight into Panama. Once we had Cuthbert released from Customs, we set out to explore eastern Panama, Panama City, and one of our bucket-list destinations: the Canal. As Panama City is a glitzy, first-world, cosmopolitan city, we also took the opportunity to sort out some over-due dental work. What we hadn’t anticipated, is quite how long the dentist would keep us here!Around the Darien Gap.
Cuthbert with a London Taxi in Panama!
Panama has a canal. You’ve probably heard of it, it’s quite famous. But have you heard it referred to as ‘The Chicken of Golden Eggs’? For Panamanians, the Canal is indeed the gift that keeps on giving. For us, the Canal is a much anticipated, Bucket List destination. We’re excited merely to see it. It’s fabulous to watch from the viewing-decks, the ships passing through. We don’t even dare to hope that we might do the Panama Canal crewing on a yacht. But guess what? Holy moly… we actually do get to do it! We help to crew the beautiful s/v Platina through the Canal. “No waaay!!!” you say in amazement. “Yes waaay” we say to convince you. Read on how it goes…
