Author: Nick

No Country for shrinking violets

We arrived in La Paz (Spanish for peace) which is almost at the bottom of Baja California, the long narrow strip of land which runs parallel to the west coast of Mexico. It’s a rough desert landscape with steep mountains, dry plains and a diversity of beaches but I should have realized something fishy was afoot after previewing our first photo. We assumed the cacti were friendly but just look at the one in the background giving me the finger and probably having a laugh at my expense, they must have seen us coming. Read more

Atitlan – Chichicastenango – Quetzaltenango – Fuentes Georginas

It’s been a tongue twister of a week! These are some of the places we visited – no wonder we often struggle to remember and / or pronounce them all!

The road to San Pedro at Lake Atitlan was slow and hard-going. There was a little tarmac between the potholes with hairpin bend after hairpin bend, both uphill and down, but we got there in the end about 3 hours late. We took a tuk-tuk through the narrow winding roads of the village to where we were staying which was a bit further out than we wanted but the little chalet was nice, very comfy and had hot water. San Pedro is a party town but after El Paredon we were all partied out and would have been happy to stay in one of the smaller villages scattered round the lake, but San Pedro it was and we were finally there! Read more

What happens in El Paredon, stays in El Paredon

Halfway through our stay in Antigua we decided to go to El Paredon, a surf beach 2 hours away to stay at a hostel called Driftwood Surfer. Malene made the booking after seeing the poster which looked idyllic and  really chilled – a bit of a party place but also time for yoga. We arrived at noon and expectations unraveled as we got off the bus and were ushered into a scruffy back-door entrance, our room was like a goldfish bowl with 3 walls of windows but at least the bed was good . We can do this we agreed, so we made our way the pool area, what was going on there set the scene for the next four days. I counted about 10 girls ………. Read more

West to north west, destination Guatemala

We are on the surfing trail not out of choice but because the beaches along our route are great surfing destinations. El Tunco is a small surfing village in El Salvador where we spent a little time en-route to Guatemala, from there we will eventually wind our way up to Mexico’s west coast. In the traditional language El Tunco means The Pig after a strange shaped rock that juts out of the shallows, but its shape has changed since it was named and it’s now open to interpretation, above is how the surfer dudes must see it, but below is how it looked when we saw it. Read more

A week in the lives of Nick and Malene

We left the monkeys in the trees and headed for “culture” and “big” city life; our next stop would be Leon, a two hour drive north of Managua. To get to Leon we had to change minivans in the town of Granada which is considered to be one of the most attractive colonial era Spanish cities in Latin America. However we are going to give this jewel the flick and instead head straight for Leon which is a city of about 200,000 also renowned for its style and with enough churches to put you to sleep if you tried to count them all. Read more

The twin peaks of Ometepe

The island of Ometepe is comprised of two volcanoes in a fresh water lake and the lake is patrolled by sharks. This description alone would deter even intrepid explorers like Indiana Jones but Malene and I piled onto the ramshackled ferry to make the hour and a half crossing to Ometepe. Safety was high on the crew’s mind after another small ferry had a disaster on the east coast of Nicaragua so the authorities were clamping down. Life-jackets, cashews and pastries were on offer, I settled for the pineapple pasty which I could have used as a raft to sail all the way to India before it would dissolve, so I was ok, Malene went for the weigh-me-down life-jacket. Read more

Managua is in Nicaragua, the highlights

Nicaragua is pronounced “Νιγαράγουα” by the locals and by people who can read Greek. Because in English there is no letter in the alphabet that can produce the sound of “γ” (gamma). Nuff said.

Nicaragua was somewhat a strange/ fantasy destination for us when we were doing our travel plans last year in Perth. it was loosely added to our travel list for no reason other than we found the name fascinating. We had no idea what the country was about but before leaving Woody and Pips gave us a Nicaraguan guide book and that got us thinking, hhmmmm…. Read more

Valladolid, a little town for chilling

One hundred and fifty km west of Cancun on the Yucatan peninsula is Valladolid pronounced “Vayadolid”. There is something nice about this town and that something made us come back for a second time, it’s actually the third counting a one night stop at the end of our Yucatan drive. Unbeknown we must have been lured back by the Valladolid magic but whatever the reason we are glad we did.

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Lost in Vinales

Vinales (pronounced Viniales) is in the Central-West of Cuba on a plateau surrounded by picturesque hills and valleys where tourists flock to get that authentic rural experience. The result is more like a faux-alpine apres-ski atmosphere which comes alive in the evening when the temperature dives from a beer drinking 24 celsius in the day to a cocktail guzzling 19 in the evening.  Read more

Making even less sense of Cuba

A visit to Havana would fall short without stepping back in time at “Hotel Nacional” in Vedado, the newer part of town. Money here doesn’t seem as scarce as in central Havana, it was once the playground of many wealthy Americans who came to drink Champagne and smoke cigars in the days before the revolution. Read more