With the remnants of yesterday evenings hike still burning in our legs, I reckon quite a few of us were more than happy to have a 9:30 AM departure this morning for Panjanchel.
The town of approximately 11,100 is located on the shores of Lake Atitlán, a 3 hour and 110 kilometre (68 mile) minibus trip northwest of Antigua, in the Sololá Department.
Just in case you’re curious, At an area of 130 square kilometers (50.2 sq miles) and 340 metres (1,120 feet) deep, Lake Atitlán is also the deepest lake in Central America.
After checking into our accommodations at Hotel Posada K’amol B’ey we took a bit of an orientation walk through the town before settling on Deli Llama de Fuego for a pretty decent lunch.
While all 5 girls “sardined” themselves into a Tuk-Tuk to go check out an adjacent national park, I spent the afternoon just exploring the town at my leisure.
Just after
7PM we walked down to the Mayan owned and operated Restaurante
Jose Pingüinos for dinner. As part of the meal, the owner – Jose, demonstrated
the xylophone-type Mayan percussion instrument – the Marimba, is constructed and
then had his two daughters and a male employee play for us during the meal. With
the utmost of respect, the traditional music sounded a lot like that which
accompanied silent movies or Vaudeville acts of the time.
Jose also had
his daughter Michelle demonstrate how a traditional 25 millimetre wide by up to
24 metre long cotton belt is worn as a wide brimmed hat, which was quite
interesting.
Our evening walk home was punctuated by an evening downpour, which didn’t do anything to dampen my spirits in the least.
The exhibition entails 144 two metre (6½ foot) tall fiberglass bears painting in representations of every country in the world, by one of their own renowned and respected local artists. The bears are meant to reflect the world coming together as one with the same ideals, goals and understanding, while promoting living together in peace and harmony on their global tour.
Breakfast was pretty decent bagel and coffee at The Bagel Barn, before I headed back to the hotel to catch up with the G crew. At 9AM all five of us strolled over to the La Tortilla Cooking School to peruse the local markets and gather the ingredients to make lunch for ourselves.
The menu consisted of the local Chicken Pepián main dish and a Rellenitos de Platano dessert made of mashed plantains surrounding cocoa & bean paste filling and then shallow fried. This was accompanied with a couple of glasses of a really good white wine, that I didn’t the name of – pity.
We got collected at 1:30 by OX Expeditions to check out the 2,522 metre (8,370 foot) and growing – Pacaya Volcano that is actually active. The plan was to hike 3.2 kilometres (2 miles), roast some marshmallows, watch the sunset and then drive home through the other three volcanos in the area – de Agua, de Fuego and de Acatenango.
We’d barely got going on the 50 kilometres (31 mile) 1¾ hour drive to San Vicente Pacaya when both myself and an Spanish speaking passenger spoke to the driver (for want of a better word) as to why he was driving like he’d stolen the bus with us in it and was fleeing a bank robbery, while us passengers felt like laundry on agitate cycle in the washer. At one point he was taking the twisty/winding posted 40 KPH mountain roads at 60-70KPH and the tires were howling in protest while he was visibly pedalling hard to keep it on the road. When questioned, his response was ‘New Tires’.
After another
gobful from us, he slowed down to a pedestrian pace that was ½ the pace of
traffic flow. It was at this point he decided to go full on fuktard by “brake
checking” i.e. bouncing his foot on and off the brake pedal, lurching all of us
backwards and forwards with monotonous routine. I’d had enough and simply said “Pull
over and I’ll drive or keep going and I’m going to bitch slap you in the left ear”,
which I believe the Colombian woman translated correctly as after he looked at
me somewhat wide-eyed, his driving improved immediately.
It’d be fair
to say that it was a bit of hard yakka legging it the 2 hours to the base of Pacaya.
Our first glimpse was a ribbon of red lava snaking its way down face of the
ever changing volcanic mountain. It’s a barren, eerie and unique wasteland
environment that the only sounds were the winds and molten car-size boulders
coming done the various slopes. There were no real odours that I’ve encountered
at other natural geo-thermic sites, i.e. New Zealand and Hawaii.
We got close enough
to toast marshmallows on one of the small flow lines, but your clacker valve
would pucker up when hearing something coming from above.
When the sun went down, the ambient temperature went with it, plummeting to the point of having to rug up. That small inconvenience was overshadowed by being able to see all of the lava flow, all of the rolling balls of molten mass and the eruptions spewing out of the peak of the volcano – Mother Nature put on one spectacular show. Absolutely incredible. One of those “You Have To Be There” moments.
As with any adventure
in getting there – you have to get back. Armed with little more than headlamps
of various luminescence, we headed back the National Park entrance in pitch
black darkness in which I had only one slip that the Russian judges scored at
8.2 for entertainment, but lacking grace.’
Our guides efforts in blowing up on of the OX Expeditions managers phone had resulted in a new bus and we were all pleased to say – a professional driver. The 63 kilometre (40 mile) 1½ hour trip home on an alternate route via Antigua’s back door was one in which the silence was only broken by the sounds of soft snoring. We got home around 9:30PM and as I could eat the arse feathers off a low flying duck, I snuck out for a quick feed and a cerveza or three.
It appears that people have come from miles around to spend some time in Antigua today. The streets are full of parked cars, the main squares a packed full of people dressed on the best clobber. As far as I can tell, it seems to be that people have chosen this day to celebrate their respective family members Quinceañera.
Not that I’d be celebrating with them as I decided to have a full on “slack attack” and try and get the Blog to date the blog, as well as downloading some Kindle books for my iPad to make the road trips a little less boring.
While banging
away on the laptop keyboard, I noticed the unmistakeable sound of
indiscriminate gunfire from seemingly the same heavy calibre weapon like a
shotgun. The thing that was puzzling me was that it was coming from all
different directions, making me think that it may be some kind of bird scaring
program.
At around 6:30PM I meandered down the G Adventures Meet & Greet for the Volcano Discovery tour where I met our Barcelona born CEO – Sonia. Also attending were 3 of the 4 other travellers, with the final member arriving later tomorrow evening.
It looks like I’ll be the only testosterone proponent of the trip as the rest are firmly entrenched in the pheromones field, while hailing from Colombia (now a USA citizen), Switzerland and two from Germany.
The trip briefing went well enough, but for me there were more questions than answers, but through no fault of the CEO. I’ll give you a bit of background – I booked and paid for this trip over a year ago and it has changed considerably over that period with regards to inclusions and deletions.
I come to find out that even though this trip is sold as the “Volcano Discovery” product, G Adventures doesn’t actually take you to visit any volcanoes over the 3 week period. They encourage you to use one of their preferred vendors, at an extra cost to yourself. It also raised an eyebrow in the group when we were advised we have a 16 hour public bus trip that we could “upgrade” to a private vehicle, again as long as we put our hand in our own pockets. It’s a similar story to included meals, most of the breakfasts look now to be at our own cost.
In the end, it looks to be that G Adventures is supplying transportation, accommodation and a CEO to make sure we get around hassle free.
You may ask why I did not decide to change the trip or get my money back. With the amount of changes, it was hard to keep up with them, as it was more a matter of waiting until something was finalised. G Adventures do not give refunds to the best of my knowledge and simply issue a credit if deemed relevant.
Hopefully at the end of this trip my feelings to the whole deal will have changed from one of feeling fingered and then nickel & dimed, as that’s not what I signed on for.
After the meeting all 5 of us wandered down to La Casa de las Sopas, a local soup restaurant, for dinner which was a first for me. I had their meatball soup and a couple of cold Gallo cervezas for $15 AUD.
My Copa Airlines flight CM321 departed Havana on time at 8:45 AM and landed (with spontaneous passenger applause too I might add) at Panama City’s Aeropuerto Internacional de Tocumen at 10:30 AM, which is precisely the time when they are boarding flight CM544 to Guatemala City.
As luck would
have it, my incoming flight gate is at the opposite end of the airport, so I
have to hustle the entire length of the joint …. and all travelators are not
operational – go figure. I get to my gate and slip straight on to the ½ full
flight to find a little kid sitting in my seat. I show what looks to be the accompanying
mother of the child my ticket and seat number 10D, but she just shakes her head
and ignores me. I get the attention of a trolley dolly who tries to seat me in
the “shit house” seats i.e. the very
last ones that rest up against the cattle class toilets and rear galley. I
decline the offer.
It wasn’t
until a Spanish speaking woman comes up and wants her 10F window seat in the same
row that I have the disputed aisle seat, that the hostess asks the woman for
her boarding pass. The woman rolls her eyes, huffs & puffs and makes a big
show of not being able to find her boarding passes, meanwhile my new row-mate
and I are performing the airline seat-swapping dance trying to not block the
remaining passengers from getting to their seats.
I come to
find out during the flight that it wasn’t until the Cabin Manager came up and
threatened to offload the mother and her two kids, as they are required to have
their boarding passes available upon request, that they were produced. You
wouldn’t read about it – I watched the hostess walk the trio to the very last
low of seats on the plane.
We arrive just on 1PM at Guatemala City’s Aeropuerto Internacional La Aurora, spend over an hour clearing Immigration and then play the Guatemalan Customs “Ring A Bell And Win A Prize” game in which I declared I had prescription medications, a pocket knife, scissors and a piece of artwork. The attending officer takes a disinterested glance at my Customs Declaration, then asked me to push the button on her workstation, that would illuminate a large red or green light, thus randomly selecting you for further investigation. I went “Green means Go” and was outta there like an Ethiopian after a chicken before anyone had second thoughts. The American Airlines pilot behind me wasn’t so lucky, he not only got the big red light, but also copped the loud obnoxious fail buzzer sound as well.
My final destination for the day would be Hotel Posada De Los Bucaros, located in the adjoining town of Antigua, that according to my transfer driver, on a good day would take under an hour. Today wasn’t my day it seems, as it took just over 2 hours in bumper to bumper traffic to cover the 41 kilometre (26 mile) journey. Not that I had a care, I just took it all in from the co-pilots seat.
I got my accommodations sorted and hit the streets with the intention of securing some of the local Guatemalan Quetzales (GTQ) currency, which currently runs 5.35 to the AUD or 7.645 to the USD. This turned into a bit of a mission as either the ATM’s would only allow 200 GTQ – if they had currency available, that’s if the ATM was working at all. The bank was a no-go as it had a queue for Africa at 15 minutes to closing and I didn’t have my passport to proceed with any transaction. In the end I settled on taking what was available – 200 QTC’s, and will sort it out on Monday.
My hotel supplied walking map which listed the Hotel Posada de Don Rodrigo as a local dining option. Its non-descript unassuming hole-in-the-wall façade gave no hint as to the how large, intricate, ornate and old the actual building is.
I found my way to the dining facilities, that are literally hidden away in the rear corner of site, was seated with an ice cold Gallo cerveza and took in the available surroudings with the varied menu.
Alas, I could
not make my mind up with so many good looking options. Time to enable my back
up plan. I resorted to my usual fall-back position and
simply asked for the Chef to choose for me, and hand on heart, I was not
disappointed in the slightest.
A starter consisting of made-from-scratch asparagus soup with a fresh tomato & chilli salsa picante got the meal going. A stuffed pork Chile Relleno with homemade chicken chorizo sausage, guacamole, rice, bean paste and the best tortillas I’ve had in a long while. It was an awesome way to top off a long day.
My 3AM start to the day came about because I was sharing a transfe service with both Andrea (an Advertising Exec from Melbourne, Australia) and Gretta (Sports Science professional from Mildura, Australia) who were on the 7:30 AM flight to Toronto, Canada.
I actually had an 8:30 AM departure for Panama City and then on to Guatemala City, but waiting at the casa or at the airport is still killing time by any measure.
It took ½ an hour to get to the airport, then a 2 hour long Copa Airlines queue to get checked in and a mad dash though Customs & Immigration to say goodbye to Gretta and Andrea whose flight was in final boarding.
With having a
little bit of time and similar to my leaving Mexico on this trip – what did I
think of Cuba?
Cuba is an
interesting mix of unique historical activities, elements, political &
religious interference as well as armed incursions, that have shaped the
country into what it is today. It’s a mix of failed Communism ideals, that have
morphed into semi-Socialism with a dollop of fast spreading capitalism to spice
up the mix.
Whilst people
who are used the government either providing or heavily subsidising everything,
the prevailing government recognizes they cannot afford to continue that way.
Having said that, the ruling elements have identified tourism as the catalyst
for getting the country back on its feet, but they are fast realising they have
to relinquish their control of everything – hence the two local currencies as
well as the free, grey and black market economies.
A couple of interesting observations:
Not every Cuban has a stogie or Cohiba hanging from their lips. Whilst there looks to be proportionately more cigar smokers than you’re used to, it’s simply too expensive for the local to buy the top grade cigars.
There is a tremendous amount of rice consumed in Cuban dishes. Similarly, there is a lot of plantains on the table as well.
Alcohol is cheap: Decent local cervezas run you $0.90 to $1.25 USD for a can or stubby. Rum can be had for $3 USD for a litre of what I call cocktail starter, with the decent rums $5-15 USD a litre for your smooth sipping pleasure.
Water on the other hand can cost you anywhere from $1.00 – $3.00 USD for a 1.5 litre bottle, depending on which government run un-super market or local owner kiosk you purchase it from.
It is expected that you pay $0.25 to $1.00 USD for every visit to the toilet in any public area – even your own hotel, and best you bring “Poo Tickets” as that can be scarce in many places.
If it has wheels and moves in Cuba, then it’s a human transport device and potential revenue generating facilitator. Horse, cart, bicycle, bus, truck car or tractor – it doesn’t matter how you travel, as long as you’re not walking by the looks of it.
Female government workers and school girls uniforms looked to have been designed by a male adolescent schoolboy – the skirts and shorts are seriously length deficient.
Local casa stays are awesome. You get to hang with the locals and get an instate to how their housing and daily life goes.
Communication for me in Cuba was not a major issue as with hand signals, “SpanGlish”, pointing and the fun game of “chatting with charades”, we seemed to sort out what was needed
I have to say that regardless of where I went throughout the island, the people were warm, friendly and very accommodating, which speaks volumes considering the adversity the nation has been through and continues as part of everyday life.
Today is my
penultimate day in not only Havana, but also Cuba and we had a few things
scheduled with the crew like cruising in 50’s convertibles, visiting Old Town
Havana, a bit of a walkabout and a farewell dinner.
My first task of the day was to checking to see how our CEO – Victor, is travelling. His mum had cataract surgery rescheduled several times during the past couple of weeks, but today was the day. Like any good kid, you want to be there in support, but like any adult – work generally find a way to impede. Not a lot we can do other than be there for him and keep his mind off worrying about it, but sometimes it’s simple a matter of a sympathetic listener that can help the most. With the promise of regular “mama” updates, we set off for the day.
We spent a good hour travelling around in 50’s classic convertible cars. My ride was a pink & white 56 Chevrolet with ancient three cylinder Yanmar marine diesel motor, that sounded like an old chaff cutter with a stutter. Everything else in the vehicle was “Cubano original” in that it was kept running with ingenuity, bush mechanics, a big dose of luck with a prayer or three thrown in for good measure – but that was all part of the charm. I loved the experience.
With no
wheels, it was “foot falcon” time
where we’d simply wander around Old Town Havana. I decided to pull the pin just
before lunch at the El Gallo Y La Muyer (Old
Town Square), as my back was playing up. While the crew headed off to a
Tapas Bar for a nosebag, I headed back to the casa for a hot shower and a lie
down to ease the discomfort.
I also took
this opportunity to spend a couple of hours sorting out my gear for an early
departure, before meeting up with Sarah, Chris “Sexy Time” and my roomie Derrick for a couple of pre-dinner Mojito’s
at El
Chanchullero.
The whole crew met up at the main casa, wandered over to MeKeDé Bar & Restaurant for our farewell dinner that was accompanied with falling rain and unintentional tossed prawn main course, that was something out of Fawlty Towers. A few speeches, numerous H&K’s and more than a few Hasta Luego’s before we dropped most of the group off at the Buena Vista Social Club show and heading to mi casa.
Today’s scheduled highlight was a drive out to the area made infamous by the failed CIA backed Cuban exile armed Bay Of Pigs Invasion. More expressly it was the Museo Giron where the Cubans have created a museum proclaiming the victory over the “CIA supported bandits”.
To be honest, I struggled with the visit due to the seemingly one sided commentary, that lays the blame for the Bay Of Pigs armed action squarely at the feet of the United States. Contrastingly, history has shown the Soviet superpower was pulling strings and supplying arms and intelligence from the shadows, but the only mention of any Russian influence was that of students manning newly delivered Soviet artillery weapons during the action.
The adage of “to the victor goes the spoils” and “the conquerer writes their own history” seems to hold some sway with a few sites I’ve visited so far, but Cuba is certainly not alone in the that endeavour.
Just after 11 we pulled up at the oceanside facility of Caleta Buena, where for $15 USD you get a buffet lunch and a free drinks selection of 4 cocktails, tap Cristal cervesa, soft drinks and water.
It was looking to be 3 hours of my life I’d love to get back, as I’m so not a big fan of lying out on a sun bed or snorkeling along with dozens of bus loads of other quickly burning “rock lobster rubber-neckers“.
But after updating my Blog, partaking in a pretty ordinary buffet lunch, I grabbed my camera and went exploring the pocket bay, that makes up the site and I’m sure glad I did. I found a cenote (sink hole/rock pool) that measures about 20 metres (60 feet) in diameter where you could swim with a large amount colourful tropical reef fish.
A 3½ hour bus ride into the nation’s capital – Havana, saw us arrive back in my original Casa from a fortnight ago, but not before stopping at the road sign announcing our arrival in Australia. Why yes, there is a settlement named Australia, which is somewhat unique as all other Cuban towns were named by the Spanish, except for Cienfuegos, which was named by the French Haitian immigrants.
After a quick freshen up and getting some laundry sorted, it was a few drinks at El Chanchullero with my roomie Derrick, before dinner at D’Next Bar & Cafeteria with the crew, where I had my first Cuban double meat patty burger, with the lot, including two fried eggs ….. and it was all sorts of ooiest-gooiest awesomeness.
As it’s only an hour and a half to our next overnight stop at Cienfuegos, we scheduled a 2PM departure which allowed us all morning to wander around Trinidad.
After hitting the “Hole In The Wall Gang” i.e. an ATM, for hopefully the last time in Cuba, my room mate Derrick and myself had to return to the very same bank and spent over an hour exchanging the 100 and 50 Cuban CUP peso notes. No one would take them as payment due to them being too large a bank note.
With the
finances all sorted, we headed over to the main casa to see if anyone else was
around. With no one in sight, we headed off over to the crafts market for
Derrick to try and locate a dominos set.
We pulled up at the Plaza Mayor for a morning tea cerveza and ran into a few of the crew, did another lap of the crafts market for one of the girls looking for Canchánchara cups and settled on lunch at Cubita’s, where all 7 of our meals were great.
2PM on the dot and we were out of Trinindad and headed to Cienfuegos, the so called “Pearl of The South”, which is the only settlement in Cuba that was not established by the Spanish. French immigrants from Haiti established the port town and it shows in the architecture, wide boulevards and promenades.
Apparently no visit to Cuba is completed without a visit to “the most romantic Cuban house” – the Palacio de Valle. As the story goes, the Moorish inspired 3 story building was a symbol of a Spanish merchants love for his wife. He ran a competition in which he combined several architects entries to have the building we have today.
It costs you
$4 USD to visit the top floor open balcony, in which you receive a
complimentary drink. Unfortunately, it does not appear that any of the entrance
money is being spent on maintenance, which is unfortunate and the work that has
been done, resembles a toddlers finger-painting in both execution and end
finish.
As with most
romantic love stories, this one also has a happy ending. After two years in the
house, and with the wealthy merchant not being so wealthy after a downturn in
sugar pricing, she left him and returned to Spain, presumingly living happily
ever after.
Dinner tonight was our last with our driver “Beef Steak” as when he drops us off in Havana tomorrow, he will be on another tour. We ended up in the cramped environs of a converted house that is Restaurante Bahia where the food was good, but the service requires some attention. At the end of the meal Andrea and Natalie presented “Beef Cake” with a photo they took of him driving the bus, while I gave him something that he says aids him in his domino playing – a carton of Cristal cervezas.
With today being a free day, most of the group were off either hiking to a nearby waterfall, cruising around on a local catamaran or on a scheduled local tour. Myself and Sarah, a rock licker (Geologist) from Perth, Western Australia decided to meander around town on our own.
We visited the local crafts markets, joined a free city walking tour for a bit, before breaking away for an awesome lunch at the Cubita Santander. A couple of Cristals and a chinwag at the Casa De La Cerveza (House of Beer) and we were back on the streets exploring Trinidad.
We happened upon a couple of galleries which had some stunning artwork on display. I don’t do the whole ‘trinket & t-shirt’ souvenir bullshit thing, but I will purchase artwork, which was the case at Galeria R-Evolucion which features the work of the owner Rafael Alvarez Alonso.
After a second visit to Casa De La Cerveza, Sarah and I returned to the Main Casa to meet up with the rest of the group for our included Salsa dance class. As there were ½ a dozen of us who were not interested in the Salsa lesson, I arranged for Ronaldo to come back instruct us on the art of making a Mojito, a Daiquiri and a Canchánchara as we obviously failed yesterday’s class.
Dinner was held just a little out of town at a place called Restaurante La Marinera whose specialty is seafood and while most of the group decided to continue on at a local nightclub – Discoteca Ayala (The Cave), that is situated in a huge subterranean cave, I on the other hand decided it was best to check my eyelids for holes.
All of us were up and out of the Hotel Colon before 9AM as we had scheduled a bicycle taxi tour of old town Camagüey.
I have to say outside of staying in The Underground Hotel in Coober Pedy, this is the first hotel I’ve stayed slept in that’s had no windows at all – kind a weird ….. or did they re-purpose a broom closet, because the room sure felt that way.
It was then a 3 hour bus ride into Sancti Spiritus where lunch was meant to be a Serrano Ham sandwich at the Taberna Yayabo, which turned into a 2 hour ordeal in which you got two one inch thick slices of dried bread with bacon like pork meat and sweaty cheese for $8 USD that could be best described as a shit sandwich without the bread.
The rest of the afternoon was filled with the 1½ hour drive into Cuba’s third oldest city – Trinidad.
After freshening up, we all met back at the main casa – Casa Anay y Jesus for Ronaldo to both instruct and allow us hands-on tutoring in the making of a Mojito, a Daiquiri and a Canchánchara, which I might add, was a hell of a lot of fun.
Dinner was a group affair at the main casa before quite a few of us headed out to a local square which was pumping with locals bands at Casa de la Música.
