Go North Instead!?

I was unable to make a tropical trip south during the winter of 2013, so in May I opted to take a trip across the northern boarder to Toronto for 5 days. I was welcomed with sun and a city full of sites I had never discovered before. 

I had no intention of blogging Toronto, because it seems less exotic than other places, but what the hell!? I really did enjoy the city, so I wanted to share a few photos of my experiences...

My first Blue Jays game. Perfect day! Awesome view!

CN Tower from my seat

Lunch in Chinatown!

A little different view of the baseball game from the CN Tower.

I assume Toronto as blue skies every day?

The attraction at the Toronto Zoo was Panda Bears, but the Grizzly feeding stole the show...

Casa Loma was worth the trip too

Marco vs. Ernesto

Sitting on a morning flight from Hotlanta to Guatemala, I decided that I should probably decide where I was going and what I would do for the next week...

Guate City

My original plan was to go to Rio Dulce and up the coast of Belize to Tulum, finishing up in Cancun for a wedding... so my buddy Ernesto decided that he was going to be in Belize/Mexico at the same time... 3 days of rain and wind and being in my first hurricane did not sound like vacation for me, so yes, my route changed. Still a great trip.

Literally the first person I asked directions to when I was waiting for a bus from the airport in Guatemala made me think the trip was going to turn out ok after all.  A university student named Oscar ended up getting me on the right bus, getting me off at the right spot and then showing me around dtown Guatemala. Nice people like this make my freakin' day.

I didn't have much interest in Guate City (another massive, dirty city), but it was actually quite pleasant and similar to other huge cities in CentroAmerica.  I spent the day wandering, eating tasty food and even found some live music near the university that night. There was also some serious excitement in Guatemala that evening when someone from Guate won the first Olympic medal in the country's history! A silver in speed-walking... yes, I learned that is an Olympic sport... interesting, but good for them! The guy turned in to a national hero overnight in Guatemala.

Xela view

Xela festival

San Andres

Ruins

The next day was an early bus to Quetzaltenango (Xela). Xela is the second largest city in Guate, and was quite amazing. I spent a couple of nights there roaming the city, visiting surrounding villages, hiking a bit, visiting hot springs, enjoying the festival in the town square, the zoo, eating tasty food and having some cerveza.  The city is surrounded by awesome volcanos and beautiful mountains. A very easy place to lay-low for a while.

From there Huehuetenango, where I spent a night.  Another very beautiful city, far less touristy than Xela. Pretty sure I was the only white boy in town, but again, very nice and welcoming people.  My main excursion in Huehue was to some cool Mayan ruins in the outskirts of town.

From Huehue, I was off to the border with Mexi... going through a surprisingly not shady border town called La Masilla. On my way to the border (only road there through this amazing river valley), I had a little hiccup when 10k out of Huehue the bus I took to the border stopped unexpectedly and let everyone out in the middle of nowhere... then we all started walking... (it was like another 75k still to the border btw). A bit down the road a group had blocked the roadway protesting something or rather. It was really quite  scene and no one was going anywhere. So I started walking, probably walked 5k until a man picked my up and took me another 15k down the road to his house where I could wait for the next bus going to La Masilla.  When I finally got on the bus, it was  special 50k+ of standing and being really jammed in a chicken bus (old American school bus).

Tacos for breakfast! Amazing idea

I was happy to get to Mexico, as buses there get much, much nicer! From La Masilla, I went to San Cristobal de las Casas, which was an amazing city that I must go back to to spend some more time... note the pictures. It did rain some of the time I was there, but I really enjoyed exploring the city.




From San Cristobal I took an unfortunate 18 hour bus ride to Cancun. Yes, 18 hours... 5pm to 11am... I really have nothing positive to say about that experience, but I doubt I will ever have to take a longer bus ride again in my life!  Once in Cancun, roughing it was over. I met up with some Drake friends and attended a very nice wedding for Lauren and Josue. After much travel and Ernesto avoidance it was really nice to relax, eat, drink and enjoy the beautiful weather in Cancun (at one of the nicest resorts I have ever stayed at).

Guats Up?!

This post will be heavy on the pictures and light on the prose!

I made another quick trip down to centroamerica... there were a few places in Guatemala that I did not get to go last time I was there, so it seemed like an excellent time to visit some new spots.

My trip actually started in El Salvador, a place I have avoided in the past, but my short time there was excellent. Great food and nice people. After a hearty $1.50 lunch I roamed around San Salvador for the afternoon and evening. It honestly was much like the other big cities in Latin America (chaotic, great people watching, cheap beer. massive churches, poverty and everyone selling anything you could ever imagine).

I took an early bus from Salvador (simple boarder crossing) and woke up in the crazy Guate City. A massive traffic nightmare reminded me why I was spending no time there, except for in transit. I hopped on the first shuttle to Antigua and was gone. One of the most interesting part of my transit in Guatemala were the political signs - their election is on 9/11 - so campaigns were in full-swing!

The main part of my trip was spent in Antigua (3 nights) and Panajachel/Lago de Atitlan (2 nights). I'm not going to even pretend like these places are not massive tourist traps, because they are, but they are for a reason. Unreal scenery and architecture, delicious food (yes, I can eat guac for every meal), low-key/kind/hard-working people and plenty to do.

Most of my time was spent hiking, wandering, eating, sleeping, in transit etc. etc.
I got the opportunity one morning to trek with group up an active volcano - that was fun. Also visited a very cool nature reserve and some amazing buildings/markets.

Additionally, I visited a couple surrounding towns. Chichicastenago was an impressive stop. I spent a day there visiting their famous Mayan market on Sunday. That was quite a scene, luckily I had a birds-eye view of the market since I was over a head taller than most people. I also took a boat across Lake Atitlan to Santiago another lakeside town, there is saw more avocados than I had ever dreamed possible... amazing.

Guatemala is an excellent place to explore... I hope to make it back soon!

centroamerica - Panama y Costa Rica

Another freezing January called for an escape... viva centroamerica! It was difficult to go back and not go to Nicaragua, but it was time to check out a few new places. For this fettyfunventure Panama y Costa Rica were the targets with a last-minute, welcomed tag-along Sethman.

Left my place in DC @ 3am, shivering and was sweating in Pamana City by 10:45am - what a small world we live in... refused to complain about the heat though. Holy Panama City - looked out the window of the plane and could of swore I was flying in to Miami - massive buildings - very impressive infrastructure. The first day (before Seth arrived that night) I toured the old part of the city, visited the infamous canal and relaxed at an int'l jazz festival that just happened to be going on. Great day was topped off with some cheap cerveza with Seth after he arrived. Seth and I continued to explore the city the next day, went on an awesome hike where we saw lots of animals (and got caught in some rain) and were witness to many shenanigans that evening...

On that note we escaped the city the next day on a bus ride across half of Panama to a little town in the mountains - Bouquete. This little mountain town was beautiful (and has been found by many foreigners who now live there) - it is the outdoorzy capital of Panama. Our main activity in Bouquete was to rock the zip line and it was awesome! First time for both of us and perfect day for the zip tour. While we were there a coffee and flower festival was going on - though coffee or flowers are neither of my favorite things, there was plenty of interesting food/drink/party action that went along with it!


After Bouquete it was beach time! We bused to Bocas del Toro, Panama the next day. Bocas was a very chill, beautiful place - we explored a couple of the islands, ate some great food and enjoyed some R&R. There were some amazing, deserted beaches that we found, everyone was working on island time in this little paradise...

From Bocas it was off to Costa Rica - after a quick morning of travel and boarder crossing (actually surprised we made it to CR given the condition of the bridge you have to walk across there) we ended up in the very interesting/sketchy town of Puerto Viejo. Don't get me wrong, it was a cool spot with amazing beaches, jungle, wildlife, etc... but definitely gave off the sketchy-vibe left and right. There was more R&R to be had in PV, we did rent beach cruisers one day and visit some cool beaches along the coast. Also had some great food there. Fav meal of the trip came one night in PV - pasta w/ white sauce and some VERY fresh shrimp (lotsa shrimp - so good).




From PV we headed to San Jose to catch flights home - our day in San Jose consisted mostly of watching AFC/NFC Championship games... so American of us! We did take a stroll down the main street of San Jose, almost got ran over 10 times and Seth almost left his foot there, but uneventful mostly!

Overall nice trip - great to be warm. Seth and I were both a bit under the weather during parts of the trip - but powered through.

Panama y Costa Rica were similar and different in many ways to the other spots I have been in centroamerica, both definitely had more of a American influence than other countries and also both were more $$$ - which is very important for the backpacker... centroamerica is for $1(max) beers, get with the program CR!

SALUD

Columbia!

So I got the itch again and decided to pretend to be a backpacker for a quick 5-day trip to Columbia... I guess I was just missing the lifestyle/adventure/etc. and don't have time for a real trip. I had heard good things about Columbia and my plane ticket was the right price - which was enough for me.

I spent most of my time in and around Bogota - yes, most people would not want to go from one massive, crazy, dangerous city to another for their vacation, but I am a bit of an odd bird I suppose... but I would definitely argue that Bogota has DC beat in the crazy department! Bogota also has no air... 8000+ ft above sea level, coming from CO it is weird to see palm trees at altitude, but they were there. Actually the weather in Bogota is pretty great - the same temp every day, all year (65ish w/ a chance of rain). I stayed at a hostel in the center of BOG and visited many of the typical "big city" sites - cathedrals, plazas, presidential palace (even saw some DC-style motorcades, but with Landcruisers), neighborhoods, museums, etc. A couple things really stood out.

Monserrate the huge mountain overlooking the city. I took the funicular up - awesome view - smog as far as the eye could see - until the wind came and gave me an eternal view of the city and surrounding mtns.
el Museo de Botero - an amazing museum in the middle of the city with all things Botero - aka fat naked people, fat guitars, fat food, fat horses, fat fruits - you name it, Botero made it fat! But the style was very unique and I really enjoyed the museo - there was also some great impressionist paintings in there as well.
el museo de oro - If you like gold, you would love this place - it was such an impressive collection and presentation of the origins of gold in the area dating way back - unbelievable gold pieces for 3 floors...

The coolest part about BOG was Sunday... they closed down hundreds of kilometers of streets across the city and reserve them for bikers, runners, rollerbladers, scooters, whatever is moving that is not motorized I saw on Sunday. I really wanted to find a bike to rent, but apparently they don't rent them anywhere so I did enjoy the top-notch people watching sporting my five-finger shoes as I strolled down one of the busiest avenues going through the middle of the city (some 120 blks to and fro). The whole city was electric - it really felt like a holiday. Fresh-squeezed juice vendors on every corner... mmm. Not to mention vendors for literally everything else you can imagine. The funniest part was running into a massive jazzercise session in one of the parks - they had roped off this whole section with police tape and there were hundreds of people jazzercising (mostly dudes and older ladies - but no, I was not prepared to join in-haha).

I did venture out of the city to the north for a couple of the days I was in Columbia. The first stop was Zipaquira, which was a friendly little town that is famous for their massive salt cathedral (which was produced from an old sal mine) - very cool. After the cathedral del sal my challenge was trying to figure out how to get to the next town... I found many townspeople and a taxi driver to help. The bus I was supposed to take was on this random road outside of town, but after arriving there the taxi driver realized I had 3 hours to kill before the bus arrived - so he decided to show me around Zipaquria, take me to an amazing/cheap lunch spot, pick up other passergers, etc. the guy was really crazy - my favorite part was him blowing his whistle and/or honking at every Colombiana walking by and waiting for my reaction. haha! After all the time he asked me for 5,000 peso fare ($2.25) - I gave him 10,000 and made his day! Wow, only in Columbia! BTW - this taxi driver and most everyone else in Columbia spoke NO English, so if you go please practice up - I wish I would have!!!

The next little village I finally made it to was Villa de Leyva - one of the most beautiful little towns I have ever been to, all white-washed buildings with reddish roofs. I went for a nice early-morning hike here and also cruised the town with my new camera (it was a perfect place to practice with different settings etc.) In Villa de Leyva I also sprung ($25) for a hostel on Plaza Mayor, with my own room - the hot water was the main selling point!

I would be leaving out the best part if I did not discuss food/drink (possibly my fav part about travel)...

Breakfast - usually scrambled eggs with tomato and onion, bread, hot coco (and sometimes beef and potato soup) - so good and so cheap - usually $2 and not really hungry for the rest of the day... makes me re-think my typical yogurt and fruit bfast...

Lunch - same soup as bfast (or other types available) with an additional/enormous plate of food - beef, plantains, potatoes, rice, salad, etc. - also, so good and SO cheap.

Dinner - a bit more random and not a typical meal that Columbianos eat out. I did splurge on a really nice dinner my last night in an up and coming barrio in BOG - Macarena (yes, also my fav song) - this hood was written up in the NYTimes multiple times and was amazing - I spent about $25 on a dinner/drinks that in the states would be at least $75. If you go to BOG splurge here!!! It was well worth it (also, the restaurant was covered in old carousel horses and naked baby dolls - so weird - but the food was unreal).

Dranks - haha - great beer (yes, I had one or two...), aguardente (the Columbian ouzo), chicha (death-drink Columbiano - an amazing home-brew) and mostly fresh-squeezed OJ and other jugos - I couldn't get enough - literally the last two things I purchased besides my taxi to the aeropuerto was jugo...

Also, just for the record, Columbianos DON'T love Shakira (por que?!) - I'm pretty sure they think she is a sell-out... I only heard her once... que lastima...

Finally, I know Columbia is thought to be very dangerous - I did not experience this first-hand, so I say GO!!! However, as much as I tried, I did end up in a barrio "muy peligro" in the taxi driver's words when I missed my bus stop in BOG (it took this gringo about 10 seconds to realize I was in the wrong part of town and grab a taxi - if you know me, you understand the danger that was sensed if I got a cab... haha)

buen viajes!