A few pics from Chiapas

The tragedy of not being able to enter El Salvador when I wanted, combined with the Prague Princess making a return trip to Prague left me with some time to kill in Mexico so that once we did enter El Salvador our visas would be rougly syncronized.

So after spending time in the Yucatan, I headed to Chiapas where I stayed in San Cristobal and Comitan before taking a hellish bus trip across Guatemala to arrive in El Salvador.

Both cities have the colonial feel with buildings never above 2-3 stories, and cobblestone streets. San Cristobal though is more popular with foreign tourists while Comitan had plenty of Mexican tourists but  very few foreigners. Restaurant prices reflected this and were cheaper in Comitan, but San Cristobal has cheaper hotels.

On the whole I enjoyed Comitan a bit more than San Cristobal, my opinion being strongly influenced by the night and day of hell caused by bad enchiladas. If I knew the name of the restaurant I would happily leave a note of warning to stay away. Alas, that night is lost to a haze of cramps followed by mad dashes to the toilet.

Death of a camera - Pic of a beach

System Error means no pictures for you

Last year I upgraded my trusty Nikon point and shoot with a Panasonic Lumix with a better zoom, less distortion and my favorite feature - GPS tagging of photos. Now 10 months later the Panasonic has died, leaving me in El Salvador with no camera. No matter how good the advertising, the camera's on my piece of shit Sony phone, and Hana's junk iPhone are not going to cut it.

I had been hoping that Panasonic would stand behind their warranty as strongly as Steripen did last year, but unfortunately Panasonic seems to not have as much faith in the products they produce. Despite having official service places here in El Salvador, they will not honor the warranty unless the camera is shipped back to the US. Not only that but they will not ship it back to me - it has to go back to a US address. So the camera will become one more thing my mother gets to hold for me until I manage to either pick it up or have it sent via unreliable international mail to some random country.

It's hard to stay mad at Panasonic when I'm near the beach.

I've also now bought a cheap replacement camera in San Salvador. I may end up regretting it but I ended up with another Panasonic.

2 days and 20 hours by bus

That's about how long it will take to get from Comitan Mexico to La Libertad El Salvador by bus. According to Bing maps (because apparently Google maps doesn't even know how to drive this trip) its about a 730 km trip. I would normally assume that 730 km would not take 2 days and 20 hours, but when you add the state of Guatemalan roads, the speed of the chicken bus, and the fact that 2 of my buses broke down - 20 hours became a pretty fair estimate.

View Larger Map  |  Get Directions  |  View Bird's Eye

Palenque, Ruins done better

So the day after I make the last post about Chichen Itza where I lambasted Mexico for not allowing me to climb the ruins I went to the ruins in Palenque.

I was wrong about Mexico, not much else to say about it. In Palenque not only could you climb most o f the ruins, but you could also go inside of some of them. This without having to buy a supplemental ticket as you do in most places. There was a guy in the parking lot who tried to sell me a ticket to go into the tunnels, either he was confused or it was a scam (I really bet on scam!).

The ruins in Palenque are also in a nicer setting than Chicken Pizza, built onto the sides of mountains with the jungle rising around them. I was lucky as well to have gone on the one rainy day of the week I was in the area. There is nothing more invigorating than running to hide under an overhang to not get soaked and take some pictures - most of the pictures I took are from underneath something. It was also a good day to find out that my rain jacket has lost all semblance of being water proof, I wasn't sure before and it's good to finally know.

Despite the rain, the ruins were nice albeit crowded, especially at the entrance. Getting into the tunnels, especially with everyone running from the rain was a particularly harrowing experience - those stone steps don't give a lot of grip.

Chichen Itza - more ruins

Really, ruin are ruins and I don't really have much to say about them. If you curious about facts - go to wikipedia.

I can say that in Mexico it's a more sterile environment. Amongst the the ruins of Tikal or Copan there are trees growing out haphazardly from between the stones while at Chichen Itza all of the trees have been cleared. The Mexican ruins are in better shape because of it, but the trees splitting the rocks in Guatemala and Honduras do serve to emphasize for how long these sites were abandoned.

So if they won't leave the trees alone they sure as hell won't let you climb the pyramids either.By not allowing me to climb the pyramids, whoever is in charge is sending the wrong message. This is a message to the people of Mexico -

"Yes - the Mayans could build these pyramids, and yes they would last despite being abandoned to the jungle. But we as a nation, with our computers, other really cool shit and fucking flying machines are unable to protect the pyramids while you climb them. That's it, we give up."

Perhaps the ruins of Chichen Itza are different and were never abandoned, I don't know the answer to this and won't look it up for you. I reiterate - go to wikipedia for facts. I can show you some pictures though.

Turned away at El Poy

In January while staying on Utila I knew I would need a visa extension, so I went to the local immigration office. The lesson I learned more recently is that asking Honduran immigration if it's possible to get a visa extension for more than 30 days will also be construed as offering to buy a extension for whatever time period you want. Despite a 30 day visa extension being all that is allowed, and all extensions requiring you to visit the main immigration office in San Pedro Sula, I walked out of the Utila office with a 90 day extension for $100.

This will later cause problems.

A couple of months later in early March, myself and the Princess had decided to move to El Salvador the week before she leaves for Europe. At the El Poy border stop the troubles began. We had handed over our passports and after about 10 minutes of flipping thru them the Honduran border agent moves us to a private room. Once enough agents had congregated to enable a broken english explanation we began to understand what was wrong. At this point they hadn't noticed the issue with my passport, the issue now was with Hana.

Going back even further than my visit to the Honduran immigration on Utila, Hana had returned to Honduras in December of last year. It now was the beginning of March and she had only a couple of days left on her Honduran visa. This would not normally be an issue except that she wasn't going to fly out of El Salvador until 10 days later. Well well, some people may believe that we would get another stamp going into El Salvador and it would be for longer than the 10 days she needed, I know we thought this.

We were wrong.

We were wrong because although we knew of the CA-4 agreement between Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Nicaragua, what we did not realize was that only El Salvador seems to respect the agreement in relation to tourist visas. By rights we should never have received a 90 day visa on entry into Honduras and should have only had the time that remained on the original 90 day stamp Guatemala had given us. Guatemala and Honduras do not pay attention to this part of the agreement, and give you a new 90 days upon entry.

El Salvador (and hopefully not Nicaragua in a few months) does not do this though, and enforces the 90 days from first entry and would not let Hana in because she would need to overstay in order to leave. The reason we were held up on the Honduran side of the border was because the Hondurans do not want to give  you an exit stamp when they know you will not get across to El Salvador. They did consent to let us go to the El Salvadoreans to plead, and if they would let us in then we would return to Honduran immigration for an exit stamp.

It was pointless though, despite our pleas all we got from the El Salvadorean immigration was a finger wag and "No". This went on for about half an hour, until we gave up.

Once we returned to the Honduran immigration our only option was to go back to San Pedro Sula to get a 30 day visa extension for Hana (which the El Salvadoreans will recognize) so that she could enter El Salvador. We also learned that my "extension" did not exist and would keep me from entering into El Salvador, the El Salvadorean immigration had not had time to go thru my passport since he was already turning us away because of Hana's.

A week later we returned to the border where Hana went thru (with only a minor issue caused by the illegible handwriting  of the Honduran immigration), and I returned to San Pero Sula once again because I would need to leave the CA-4 completely in order to start my 90 days over.  Luckily the immigration officers both at the border and in San Pedro Sula did not seem overly concerned with me having a not so legal extension and I was told I could stay until the end date of the fake extension.

There have been only two countries that have turned me away at the border, El Salvador and years ago those bastard Canadians. 

This is the last I saw of Hana

1 hour in the air

Last week I took a short flight from San Pedro Sula to Belize on Tropicair. The airline that boasts of being the largest and most experienced airline in Belize. A couple of paragraphs later they mention they exclusively fly a fleet of Cessna Caravans, a 12 seat turboprop plane.

After I booked the ticket I did a google search for Cessna Caravan - and a lot of pages popped up with safety issues. Not really what I was looking for, and definitely not very encouraging to see an hour after I had bought my refundable ticket. Luckily though all the safety issues seemed to be related to snow and ice - something that's most likely not an issue on a flight from Honduras to Belize.

For a short one hour flight, the path across the ocean and up the coast of Belize was gorgeous. Small planes don't fly very high or fast, so the views of small boats and islands was perfect. It was made even better by the lack of passengers - there were only 2 other people so no obstructed views. I may have found another favorite way to travel...

After the flight I needed to get to Chetumal, and ended up waiting by the road for 3 hours before I was able to get on a bus. Being Sunday only one was going every hour and the first 2 were too full and not allowing more passengers. I think they need to get some Guatemalans to manage the seating arrangements, another dozen people would have easily fit.

Another city, another dentist

I really need to get out of Honduras because once again I have broken a tooth here. 

Sunday  morning I was on the way to San Pedro Sula from Ocotepeque and being hungry I went for the caramel pop corn balls sold by some child at a bus stop. There went another tooth. This shouldn't be a surprise, you see corn being dried on any flat, paved surface. Parking lots, porches, the side of the road - I've seen it everywhere. It's fairly simple to imagine a rock getting mixed in before popping. 

I also know it's probably not the fault of Honduras - but damn I have only broken a tooth once in my life outside of Honduras, and that was a long time ago :) It's also possible that this is a symptom of my current flyby on middle age......but that's not something to think about.

Those pop corn balls are delicious and an otherwise perfect snack on the bus....On another note I can recommend Dr. Pina at  CIC Dental.

Another week in Pena Blanca

In the ongoing saga of showing the Prague Princess places I've been and didn't think I would return to we spent a week in Pena Blanca at D&D Brewery. I was in Pena Blanca on my previous trip thru Central America a year and a half ago. Despite a change of ownership since then the place is still the same, a small jungle oasis with unreliable internet.
It does have some of the best beer in Honduras, but since both visits have occurred after months of separation from my beloved Czech beer I'm not sure if that means much. Sadly I do always experience sticker shock when buying beer in Central America. The prices are equivalent to 40 Kc- for a beer that seems smaller than a Czech small, and in Prague this price typically gets you some of the better breweries fare. Still, after months of drinking Salva Vida the beer at D&D is incredibly refreshing.

Strange office

Monitoring Hana's head

Sometimes circumstances leave us with no real good choices on where to set up and work. We have had to return to San Pedro Sula because of some visa issues (more on that later), and though we plan to leave tomorrow ..Today we need to do some work and the desk I was using yesterday is unavailable so today I have the dubious distinction of sitting on the edge of the bed. I'm sure the many chiropractors and masseuses I'll be visiting in the future will be very happy with the riches my upcoming back problems will bestow upon their bank accounts.