Central American Adventure

Been a while since I updated, but I can explain…. I´ve just been having too much fun!

Sydney was simply awesome. Big thanks to Alex and Dorota who were fantastic hosts and showed me a really great time. My Sister is also in Sydney so it was like taking a brief break back home. After Sydney and a 14 hour flight to LA where I landed before I left (thanks International Date Line) I continued on to Mexico where I began an organised tour of Central America with Intrepid.

After nearly 2 months of lone travelling it was so nice to have everything done for me. On some days in South Asia and India, it felt like a full time job just going from A to B. Find bus station, work out right bus, buy ticket, work out where stop is, find train station, dodge pesky touts, visit 5 hotels to find they are all full or too expensive, find food, make effort to talk to someone. pfff. Now – I can be truly lazy – my forte! All hotels and transport are sourced for me and I have a guide, Milton, who helps organise and sort disasters. Accommodation and transport is very basic – dorms, cheap hotels and public bus – so its like travelling alone but just without the stress of organising it. By far the most pleasureable bit though are the guys i´m with…

It´s a bit like being in a reality TV show. There are 16 of us – 3 guys and 13 girls! (tip for you single guys out there – always more girls than boys on these trips apparently – often no boys at all…!) There are people from all over the world. The two other guys are a Kiwi and an Australian-born Canadian with a British Passport(?) (He´s white Mr Griffin so is that OK?) The girls consist of an English girl, an Irish girl, a Scottish girl, an Austrian, a German, a 50-something couple from Belgium, a couple of other Aussies, two Kiwi´s (neither of which live in New Zealand), an awesome how do I say it – Australian-MILF we call mum and two of the naughtiest 20yo Australian liabilities i´ve ever met.

There are already contrasts, politics and cliques within the group – just like you get on Big Brother. It happened so quickly and without anyone trying or meaning it. I guess naturally us three boys have stuck together as ´the lads´. We´ve formed a little group along with the two liabilities and the Austrian, as we´re all pretty outgoing and enjoy of a beverage or 10. We´ve already got into so much trouble. The liabilities went off with a group of Belizian men on a boat and disappeared until about 10pm one evening sparking panic, then proceeded to get shitfaced and hurl ´pommy´abuse at me all night. By the end of the night, we were sprwaled across a jetty singing ¨I shagged Matilda´at the tops of our voices, waking the locals up and pissing off the Belgium Couple.

If you´ve ever seen that TV show Ladette to Lady, where the tear-away Australian girls come to England to learn manners, well you´ve just met Niki and Sarah. Last night we nearly got attacked in the street in San Iguacio, Belize as the girls were stealing local guys hats off their heads – most of which found it less than amusing and decided to follow us menacingly around town. The hotel owners had to resuce us with a local bouncer and escort us home!

Putting the behaving-badly-in-a-reality-TV-show-with-raucus-Australians-who-annoy-everybody aside, I have actually taken the time to enjoy the Central American sights and have seen some awesome things. We stayed in Playa del Carmen and Tulum in Mexico where there is a beautiful beach and intesting Mayan ruins. We then moved on to Belize to Caye Caulker where I had my first taste of diving. Caye Caulker is a tiny island off the coast of Belize surrounded by a barrier reef which offers unbelievable diving with all kinds of corals and sea creatures. We saw Nurse sharks, Loggerhead Turtles and Stingray to name but a few.

We´ve also been to San Iguacio in the hills of Belize which offers some awesome caving and river canoeing. Unfortunately, disaster struck with the canoeing plans. Thinking we were driving to the river, I brought along my Nikon D80 DSLR and iphone intending to leave them in the car. When we walked to the river and straight onto the canoe, the tour guy gave me a waterproof bag to stick my stuff in. Rather than take it back to the hotel I just hopped in and we rowed up stream gently. All was fine until we encountered a set of rapids. Paul and I rowed furiously but we just couldn´t get over them. After 3 attempts on the right bank, centre and left bank of the river, we got stuck between a rock and a branch of a tree. Trying to get ourselves un-stuck, we stupidly used the branches to pull oursleves up over the rapids. As the movement of the water was perpendicular to the tree, holding this caused the boat to veer with the water and flip us out.

The camera and phone went under the water in the rapids and the clip holding the bag tight came loose, filling the bag with water. I tried desperately to keep the bag in the air, but treading water in fast moving rapids holding a camera bag above my head was no easy feet and by the time I got the the bank everything was soaked through.

My first thought was turn it all off, leave it to dry and hopefully it´ll be ok, however the iphone wouldn´t turn off. Everytime it powered down with the little rotating timer, the apple sign would appear again and it would power back up. When I got back to the hotel, the phone was displaying the message ´does not recognise input device´ over and over again until it finally exhausted the battery. This morning I tried the camera to find a blank display and a foggy grey image in the view finder. Dead.

So that is that. No more photos, music or phone calls. I´m now in Guatemala which is beautiful but poor as f·$k, so I doubt there will be a camera shop to buy even a cheap digital cam. On the one hand I do feel like an IDIOT for taking such an array of expensive technology on a canoe, but on the other I really didn´t expect to flip it and hoped the waterproof bag really would be waterproof. I´m not gonna let it get me down but it is very frustrating. Central America is beautiful – there is so much to see and so many great photo opportunities.

Well Ce La Vie. Gonna go enjoy the late afternoon sun. Clocks go back for you guys in England tomorrow. Ha. Start of winter. At least I can be thankful for the beautiful central american sun even if I can´t capture it on film.