Valladolid- Chichen Itzá

May 3-4, 2016

*Note, here's another post where I lost the majority of my photos. (Shoot!) Here you see photos from Google and a couple taken by a friend I met, along with two of mine I managed to retain.

I only traveled inland for a couple days in Mexico, my destination Valledolid. It's a cute little colonial town, and has a really great little taco place near the center. I had my first super authentic horchata there (a rice based iced milky drink with cinnamon) my first night, and every night following.

My big reason for visiting was to go to Chichen Itzá, some of the most highly acclaimed Mayan ruins in Mexico. I had heard mixed reviews from other travelers, some saying they were great, some vehemently saying they were over priced, not authentic, and not worth it at all. I went anyway, and I'm so glad I did.

I hopped a minivan from town and got arrived before all the daily tour buses from Playa del Carmen and Tulum did. On the way there I met Natalie and Rachel, two gals from Canada. We stuck together the whole day. There were definitely people there when we got there, but not so many that we couldn't get a well timed shot in front of the big pyramid with almost no one else in it.

We grabbed the photo ops while we had them.

It was spectacular, rising against the cloudless blue sky.

The other structures in the area were great as well, and well laid out through the trees so it felt like paths to go explore rather than a big empty cleared spaces with some pyramids in each corner.

Another ruin structure, showing the carving that adorned most of them

Ancient tic-tac-toe?

Another of the main structures at Chichen Itzá, an observatory

All the ruins were pretty cool looking

There were vendors set up all along the walkways selling things, and I watched a mask carver for quite a while. He had been carving for about 30 years, and it was fun to watch him turn a chunk of wood into a clearly recognizable start of a mask using just a chisel and a wooden mallet.

In one corner there was a cenote, a collapsed limestone cavern that's turned into a pool by collecting rainwater.

It got super hot, and there were lizards running around all over the place. Some were super big!

And this isn't even a very big one.  The large males were probably over 2 feet long

And leaving at the end of the day there was a cloudburst. I hadn't felt rain in over two months, and I was definitely dancing around in it in the parking lot, despite the strange looks from EVERYBODY, tourist and local alike.

I caught a mid-afternoon bus back to Valledolid, and stopped at the cenote in town, Zaci, before heading back to my hostel.

Like the one at the ruin, it's a collapsed limestone cave that has filled with rainwater. They've built a staircase in this one that goes around the back, and it's possible to get into the water for a swim from one of the edges. I did just that.

There's a bunch of catfish living in it, and it was a little different to be swimming around through fish that didn't really care I was there. There were tiny ones that would nibble your feet too if you stood still in the shallows for too long.

The black flecks in the water near the bottom? Yeah, those are catfish.

The water was a delightful cool temperature, in contrast to the 90-something weather in the rest of the outdoors, and fresh water to boot. So nice to not have salt in your mouth and eyes. Once I got out, it was right back to hot and sticky, but for that hour it was cool and refreshing.

All together it was a successful day

Chetumal and Laguna Bacalar

May 1-2, 2016

My first day in Chetumal, (and first day in Mexico if we're being really accurate), I wandered. It was hot but not terribly overpowering. I got a late lunch from a very nice lady in a little restaurant, confirmed Mexican food is spicier than all the other countries, and discovered cucumber-lime is an excellent juice flavor.

Then I found the waterfront, (Chetumal is on the edge of a bay), and did some people and car watching. Lots of slugbugs, although they tended to be more normal colored than everywhere else.

The seafront. Not as picturesque as some other places, but still water rolling in.

Monument to something that was by the water

The next day I visited Laguna Bacalar (which sounds like Klingon to me) 45 minutes from town.

I was dropped off in the center of town, where I found a delightful focaccia sandwich and an old fort. The sandwich was eaten, the fort was closed. But there were still had some cool views, with the laguna visible in the back. (Note: I discovered yet more of my photos are corrupted and gone, so I found stock photos that were basically what I took.)

From the path outside the fort. It had basically a moat, and then 10 feet of steep wall. I can see how it would be hard to get in if the gatekeeper said 'no'

Okay, I didn't have this photo exactly, but it's got the laguna in the background and was pretty sweet.

I got another taxi a couple kilometers out of town, where I paid a small entrance fee to use the lakefront services of a tiny resort for a couple hours.

I went swimming in the very blue waters, and reveled in the fact that it was fresh water for a change.

Also, there were stromatolites to geek out over. They kind of resemble coral, but are really bacteria that have been building these structures for thousands of years. They leave awesome fossils and are fascinating from a geo-bio perspective, so I enjoyed that too.

A couple hours in the sun and water, and I caught another taxi back to town, happy with the day's adventure.

68 hours of Belize

April 28-30, 2016

My time in Belize was short lived. I spent a total of 68 hours there, spread between parts of 4 days. I was running short on time before my flight home, and was way more stoked on the things I was looking at to do in Mexico, so I decided to push on through Belize with just one real stop.

To get there from Honduras I took a bus across the border into Guatemala, another bus to the nearest port town, Puerto Barrios, and from there a boat to Punta Gorda in Belize. That also meant I logged another day crossing two international borders in one day, the other time being Honduras which I crossed to get to El Salvador.

The boat ride

From Punta Gorda I stamped through immigration and managed to chase down the noon bus as it made a loop through the city before leaving on the road north. I got off two hours later at the crossroads to Hopkins and hitch hiked into town. It was a beach town, though the beach was only about 3 feet of sand before the water started. I had a shower and some food and made a big pile of dirty clothes to wash.

The next day I bused and hitched my way into the Cockscomb Jaguar Reserve a couple miles down the road.

It gets its name from the jaguar population, but you're unlikely to actually see one. I went for the hiking instead.

Up the trail I went, gaining elevation and sweat.

Resting benches were needed, the trail got pretty steep

I had part of my yogurt and peanut butter lunch at the top and enjoyed the view.

From the top a small trail went down the back side of the hill. 15 minutes down the trail was a lovely waterfall and swimming hole, which I took advantage of.

The stream that went downhill from the waterfall pool.

The pool was cool enough that I could still feel the temperature after swimming for a little while. I got so much better at the cold water thing! It also had small fish in it that would nibble if you stayed still for too long.

On my way back out I stopped at a plane wreck just off the main road out of the reserve. It was just as advertised. A plane used for monitoring jaguars with collars went down in a rain and thunderstorm while taking off from a landing strip nearby.

The plane was pretty cool, all covered in moss and leaves, slowly being reclaimed by the forest.

And of course I had to take a selfie

I hitched with the same tour group back out to the main road, and caught a bus back to town. A shower, some food, I folded my clean laundry from the washing machine, and bed.

The next day I got a ride north with Andy, another guy staying at the hostel. He was headed in his rental car up to Belmopan, which was much more enticing than a 7am bus to get out of town.

We stopped for a moment at the beach so he could take some footage with his drone. The kids around were thrilled.

A third guy heading north caught a ride too, and we had a nice ride. We stopped at the best ice cream place in Belize, and also to visit a friend of Andy's. The old guy was quite the character, building a giant tower on his property with the intent to turn it into a bar that would get tourists with the view. It did have a great view of the valley.

My view from the back seat. Yes, that's the size of the main highway through Belize.

Typical house along the side of the road.

From Belmopan (capital city, about the size and feel of Leavenworth) I caught a bus to Belize City (not the capital, but the size and feel of one) and then to Corozal right before the border. It was about 7pm then so I found a hotel and spent the night rather than trying to navigate the border to Mexico in the dark.

The crossing the next morning was quick and easy and shortly I was in Chetumal, ready for my next adventure.

Welcome to Mexico! My last land border crossing for a while.

Another note about Belize is the official language is English. However there's lots of influence from the native Garifuna language and Criol, so its heavily accented usually and I could still only understand a quarter of what people were saying. It was unsettling after 9 months of Spanish to be speaking English again, but still not be able to understand what was supposed to be my native language. I was happy to escape into Mexico where I could understand everything much easier.

Bolivia- sand dunes, flamingos, and a giant sloth

May 19-24, 2016

Just one week after getting home from my big travel adventure, I set out for one last hurrah before putting my passport away for a while. I got the chance to do field work in Bolivia for the lab I worked with all through undergrad, so I'll be here for 10 field days and then 5 on my own exploring a little. Or rather 'we' will be exploring, since my friend Taryn was able to come as my field assistant. She was the one who visited me in Colombia.

So we set out from Sea-Tac at 5am, and 24 hours and 3 airplanes later found ourselves at 13,300 feet in La Paz, Bolivia.

2:30am oxygen deprived faces, but still smiling!

It was a weird feeling being at elevation with no time to acclimate, I definitely was kinda dizzy feeling with a touch of headache. We had a short layover there before another two planes got us to Tarija, almost at the border with Argentina.

Out the window, beautiful mountains

There we met the rest of the group from universities in Ohio, and got to our first hotel. Taryn and I went for a walk in the afternoon and found pretty scenery and a teeter totter.

We had a tour of a museum in an old monastery, which was filled with lots of interesting things from the 16th century and later. My favorite room was the library, chock full of beautiful old books.  They had 15 from the 1500s, some from the 1600s, and most from the 1700s and after when the monastery became a school.

One night there, then we set out for Quebrada Honda, our field site. The Bolivian landscape here is wide open, dry, barren, and beautiful.

We paused at the crossroads to the site and the nearby town where Darin (our fearless leader) had to go to get some permissions.

It was the perfect time for a Bolivian selfie.

It ended up that the mayor was in an all-town meeting, so we all drove into town since there was going to be some waiting.

Yunchapa was a cute little place with a lovely park. Taryn and I found the baño next to the town hall, and as we were leaving got the 'where are you from' questions from a couple guys and ended up chatting with them for an hour. We learned about the animals around, typical foods, some geography. And I'm realizing now we didn't once get asked if we were single, which was a pleasant change.

We ended up needing more paperwork and signatures before they would let us work there, Bolivian politics are hard to navigate apparently, so we ended up staying the night.

We got rooms at the hotel run by the mayor's dad, and once bundled up properly slept pretty well. Being at such high elevation it gets really chilly after the sun goes down, so we all did sleeping bags under blankets while wearing hats and fleeces.

The next morning we packed everything back up to return to Tarija. Along the way we did a little bit of sightseeing with Jacinto, the local geologist helping us out.

We stopped at a teensy town in the middle of nowhere, next to the sand dunes and lake we were headed for. The church was cute, and a couple of us climbed the bell tower.

The stairs were barely shoulder width, and not meant for tall people.

Getting up to the bell tower. I definitely bumped my head a couple times coming down.

Taryn, Angeline, and Darin

Jacinto did some explaining about things, you can see how removed from anywhere we were.

We visited the sand dunes there, and they took my breath away.

Blue sky, white dunes, scrubby bushes around. It was a beautiful landscape.

Left to right: me, Beverly, Andy, Darin, Jacinto, Taryn, Angeline, and Dan

Then we drove next door to Laguna Grande, where I got to check flamingos off of Wildlife Bingo.

Flamingo selfie! They're really small in the background

When the flocks took off and flew together it was really pretty, a mass of fluttering black and pink

Duck nest on the dried up lake bed, the water is really low right now

Back in Tarija we had a lazy day waiting for people and paperwork, and took a tour of the natural history museum. It had a great selection of big fossils from the area.

The one type of ancient elephant out of the three that made it to South America. Mammoths and mastodons didn't get that far south. I don't remember its name though..

Glyptodont skeleton

Glyptodont with the shell attached

Ancient capybara skull

Glyptodont tail with old and modern armadillo animals

There was also a giant sloth which we had lots of  fun with.

Also a collection of rocks and invertebrate fossils from across Bolivia.

rhodochrosite makes the pretty pink

big beautiful amythyst

pyritized ammonite (filled with pyrite and then the shell dissolved so it looks like it's made of gold)

bracheopod

We're on our way back out to the field now, armed with more papers and signatures.  My next post in a week or so should be filled with photos of field work!