California USA, Mexico, Guatemala & Belize

Barcelona, Spain

carolwil — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 07:09:00 GMT

Arrived in Barcelona on Thursday. It is a beautiful city. Have been walking around looking at the beautiful buildings. Today visited Barcelona Cathedral and visited La Segrada Familia {but didnt pay 10 euros to get in} and looked at it from outside. Staying in a hostel in the posh area of Barcelona L'Eixample which is close to pretty much everything. Have also visited La Rambla the famous street in Barcelona with lots of buskers and the colourful market.

Taxco

carolwil — Wed, 4 Jun 2008 22:00:00 GMT

Wow what can I say about Taxco the silver capital of Mexico but that its absolutely beautiful!! The city is on the side of a very steep hillside. The Spanish first came here and when silver was discovered Taxco became the main silver export. The mining of silver here has long since finished and after the mining ceased it became a very poor region until an American came and opened up a silver factory here. From there his apprentices went into business themselves and since then the main employment here has been making and selling silver. Today I visited the Teleferico (cable car) which goes to the top of a mountain where there is a very expensive hotel!! The views are amazing of the city though!!

The streets here are very windy and narrow and the VW Beetles and VW combis offer the main public transport here. I dont know how many times I have got lost here as a lot of the time the maps show streets which are in fact little lanes with steps but really dont mind as its so beautiful here!! The Mexico government has gone to great lengths to keep Taxco´s beauty. Houses are renovated when possible and when new buildings are built they have to be built in the old style and use the old type materials whenever possible. There are no signs on the shops. Normally the signs are just simply written in black paint. Im going to relax here until Saturday when I go to Mexico DF for my final few days in Mexico.

Palenque

carolwil — Sat, 31 May 2008 19:33:00 GMT

Palenque has some ruins about 20 mins drive from the town centre which are amazing!! They are in the middle of the forest and are absolutely stunning. I went this morning when it was still raining (so there werent too many tourists) and was amazed at how beautiful these ruins are!! There is a Tomba de Reina Roja (tomb of the red queen) as when they found the tomb the remains were in were painted a red colour and there were many precious jewels in her tomb. The tomb next door contained the ruins of the king (Templo de las Inscripiones) which led people to believe that buried next to him must have been his wife. There are many other ruins such as El Palacio (the palace). It is thought that this was built in 5AD. There is also Templo del Sol (Temple of the Sun) which as many beautiful carvings, Templo de la Cruz (Temple of the Cross) and many more. I think these ruins and the ruins I saw in Guatemala (Tekal) are by far the most beautiful that I have seen. There is not too much to do in Palenque as it is only a little town.

Campeche

carolwil — Fri, 30 May 2008 23:37:00 GMT

The first Spanish landed on the shores here in the early 1500´s and were allowed to stay temporarily by the Maya leader. When the Spanish took no notice of this the whole crew were killed. It wasnt until 20 years later after the Maya leader died and numberous attempts to attack Campeche that the Spanish managed to defeat the Mayas. It become a major port to Europe of wood, silver and gold. Pirates (English and French) soon became aware of the richness of the city and would frequently attack it. This led to the Spanish building a fortress around the city to help protect it. Some of this fortress still stands today. The city is very famous for the pirates. Lots of money has been spent here to renovate old houses and it is now a Unesco World Heritage site. The houses are all terraced down narrow cobbled streets and are all different colours. It is a very quiet city.

Merida

carolwil — Thu, 29 May 2008 14:55:00 GMT

Merida is a Mayan city where people walk slower and there are lots of plazas scattered around. It is however quite a busy city and the traffic can be quite dangerous sometimes!! Its easy to find your way around as all the streets are numbered with even numbers horizontally (calle 32, calle 34 etc) and with odd numbers vertically. There are a number of very old churches here that were built in the 1500's and 1600's. They are very beautiful. There are also some very old beautiful houses here that are empty and just rotting away which is a bit sad. Visited the market yesterday which is a busy bustling place with lots of colour and basically you can buy everything there.

Chichen Itza

carolwil — Wed, 28 May 2008 14:52:00 GMT

Chichen Itza is located about 4 hours west of Cancun and are famous ruins. There is a famous time ruin there. It has 4 sides with steps and there is a temple on top of that. The area is extremely touristy and there are people trying to sell you all kinds of souvenirs.

Isla Mujeres

carolwil — Tue, 27 May 2008 02:30:00 GMT

Isla Mujeres is a 25 minute ferry ride away from Cancun. The beaches are very beautiful with white sand and with the gorgeous blue sea in the Caribbean. The only thing is, is that it has caught the Cancun disease and it is very expensive here compared to the rest of Mexico and it is getting very americanised (but still isnt as expensive as Cancun)!! Asked today in some shops prices of things and some things were as much as 6 times the price of the same thing in other parts of Mexico. When I said this in one shop I got told to get out by one of the owner - nice!! Mmm dont think i will be buying anything here!!

Tulum, Mexico

carolwil — Mon, 26 May 2008 00:01:00 GMT

Tulum is absolutely beautiful. Tulum is on the Caribbean Coast. Im staying in a hostel in the town which offers a free shuttle bus to the beach which is 3km away. The beach is like a postcard with very fine white sand and the water is beautiful!! When you get in the water it is so warm!! There are some Myan ruins situated right on the beach here. The only downside here is that the closer you seem to get to Cancun the more expensive it seems to get (tourist prices!!).

Caye Caulker

carolwil — Fri, 23 May 2008 23:34:00 GMT

Caye Caulker is a tiny little island about 45 mins by boat from Belize City. There are no cars here but then you dont really need one as you can walk around the island quite easily. The streets here are all sand and the houses are mostly built from wood. The taxis here are golf buggies!! Most of the people here speak Creole (a mixture of languages), English and some people also speak Spanish. Most of the people here are decendents from Africa. Its very strange going back to speaking English all the time!! The money here is the Belize Dollar and has Queen Elizabeth on it!!

Flores

carolwil — Wed, 21 May 2008 21:27:00 GMT

Flores is one of many little gorgeous little towns on the edge of a lake. There are many cobbled little lanes here off main streets and some of the houses here are very colourful. Today I visited a Maya ancient ruin site called Tekal which is located about 1 hour 15 mins away from Flores. There are some crazy tourists here that leave Flores at 3am to catch the sunrise at 5am from one of the highest temples in Tekal. Luckily I found out that today there wasnt a good sunrise because it was too foggy so felt better that I had got there at about 8am. It is a huge site that requires a lot of walking set in rainforest and has animals such as jaguars, spider monkeys, crocodiles. By about 11am it starts getting very very hot there so its best to get there as early as possible to see the sights.