Baja California might reasonably be accused of having a slightly mis-leading name. It’s not actually California at all. In fact, it’s not even part of the USA. It’s the 1,500km long, thin sticky-out bit of land dangling down the Pacific side of ‘mainland’ Mexico. We explored its beaches, kayaked the coastline, drove some remote 4×4 trails, ate too many fish tacos and discovered the new nation-state of the USG. And it turned out to be whale-shark season, so we went for a swim with them too!
Central Mexico, mid-late winter… it’s the baffling Monarch butterflies migration season. No exaggeration… millions of them. These little chaps are a Mexico bucket-list item for us and a prime example of the inexplicable natural world. In any case, we’ve got a bit of time on our hands still waiting for a new windscreen, so we do a 1,500km loop to see them. While we’re at it, we include a short volcano crater hike at over 4,200m asl (breath-taking in more ways than one) and we follow the trail of Mexican revolutionary hero, Emiliano Zapata.
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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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 …
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?…
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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Quito’s not a bad place as far as capital cities go. We wouldn’t ordinarily choose to spend ten days there, but we’re on an admin-mission here. Missions accomplished, we head north towards Colombia, with a few detours hovering around the Ecuador Equator: a misplaced monument, some little and large birdies, a great-fiesta-escape, some hats, and (another) volcano.
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Ecuador has its fair share of volcanos and an even greater share of active ones. In our last blog, we saw Chimborazo and Tungurahua. Now we’re moving on to the hyperactive Volcán Reventador. On the way, we see some jungle critters, spot a rare bird, walk to some pretty cool waterfalls (yes… more waterfalls) and end up with Uncle Sam’s ‘Man in Quito’.
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North coast Peru travel doesn’t showcase the best of north Peru for the tourist; much more excitement on the Andean route. Loads to see there. But we got that tick last year and boy, is it a sloooow way to go! So this time, after arriving in south Peru from Brazil, crossing all the way over the central highlands from the Amazon to Lima, we’re winding-up Peru with a long run up the coast to Ecuador. We’ve done this leg before, but this time we see some history, watch some whales, hit the far-west and have a ‘ponder on Peru’ as we leave it for the last time.
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We’re back in Brazil. Friendliest country in South America, maybe even on the planet! French Guiana, Suriname and Guyana have been a fascinating, enjoyable de-tour and one that relatively few travellers make when overlanding South America. But Brazil puts them all in the shade when it comes to enthusiastic welcomes. Even when we can’t understand a word they say, Brazilians say it with a big smile and a thumbs-up! Now we’re in far north Brazil wondering what to do next…
Manaus Opera House – challenging those fancy Europeans!
Suriname, Suriname… where exactly is that? Near Vietnam? Nope. Next door to Ghana? Errr, no. It’s on the north coast of South America, above Brazil, snuggled comfortably between French Guiana and Guyana. It’s in the northern Amazon basin, so it’s hot, humid and – at the risk of stating the bleedin’ obvious – jungly! We’ve been here a month now and one of our highlights has been entertaining jungle kids with their first ever drone sighting (click here). But Suriname has some history, great wildlife and other stuff to see too, including some interesting ‘bird-cage culture’. Here’s the Suriname travel blog…
There are turtles and there are giant leather-back turtles. And then there are space rockets. An odd combination, but in French Guiana we’re lucky enough see both in the same week. The end of our last blog featured a cliff-hanger, waiting to see whether our application for tickets to the next French Guiana rocket launch will be successful. Well… we got them! And whilst we contain our excitement before the big launch day, we head off to see the giant leather-back turtles on the beaches of the far north corner.
Damn tedious all this protesting and road-blockade malarkey, but hey… ‘C’est la vie’, as they say here in French Guiana. In our last blog we arrived in a charming but blockade-ridden, far-flung part of the EU. Now, after a month of disruption, the protesters toddle home and things gradually get back to normal. For us this means freedom to move around the country. It means, the re-start of the Space Race (officially exciting!). And it means some first-hand proof of Hollywood’s tish, tosh and piffle on Papillon Island!
Just over the bridge from Brazil Amazon and… politics! Overlanders are always best advised to avoid national politics as they travel, but sometimes things just jump in your face. French Guiana is an overseas department of mainland France. It’s officially part of the EU, it has the Euro currency and, we find out to our cost, the people have the same French propensity for road blockades and labour strikes when they feel hard done-by! 
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“I’ve seen enough boobies for today” Things you thought you’d never hear your husband say 🙂 But fair cop… these are the red and blue footed avian varieties of boobies, indigenous to the Galapagos Islands and we had indeed seen rather a lot of them on that particular day. By far the best way to see the unique wildlife of the Galapagos Islands is on a cruise and our friends Mark and Lindsey have flown out from UK to join us for one of the most exciting legs of our South American trip. It’s more than just a wee bit exciting, but we’re getting ahead of ourselves here . For our flights to Galapagos we need to get to Quito. Let’s first pick-up in the Galapagos blog, where regular Cuthbert followers last saw us: leaving Peru and crossing into Ecuador…
It’s not all samba and football in Brazil you know, there’s other good stuff too! Last time we came to Brazil it was for a Caipirinha-fuelled 24 hr stop-over in Río with the freight-ship on our way to Uruguay. Now we’re zipping in from Bolivia to see a different corner of the world’s fifth largest country (click here for route-map).
Pisco brandy and astronomy are two of the things for which Chile’s Elqui Valley is famous. We’re rather fascinated by the stars and planets, and we also aren’t averse to the odd drop of brandy and wine tasting, so the Valley holds some interest for us. After that we need to dodge the snow and find an ‘all-year’ Pass to cross the Andes, but first we’re heading to the coastal town of Valparaiso.
We could gush ridiculously about Antarctica but there simply aren’t enough superlatives in the English language to do so. Let’s start this Antarctica cruise blog with a simple ‘Wow!’ and take it from there… Continue reading
