Zihuatenejo is otherwise known as the poor man’s Ixtapa. Ixtapa only has $200+ per night high-rise luxury hotels, well out of our price range, even on a splurge. But Zihuatenejo, just 15 minutes away, is a much smaller and cheaper beach town. Though the beach isn’t as nice, it has frequent, cheap buses to Ixtapa. Much more our style.
We arrived in Zihuatenejo from Acapulco by mid-afternoon. Even though it was only a 5 hour bus ride, Lauren and I had spent more than 375 hours (15 days!) on buses since arriving in Buenos Aires in April, and they were really wearing on us. (more…)
We got up at 3:45 in Puerto Escondido for our 4am taxi. We made it to our bus with time to spare. The porters accidentally put our bags on the wrong bus and we managed to get them off right before it left. We loaded our bags ourselves on the right bus, hopped on, and stretched out. We were the only ones on the huge air-conditioned bus to Alcapulco. I slept most of the way there, and we got in at 1pm.
For the first time ever, Beth and I had started to let our eyes wander over to the “Mid-Range” hotel section of our travel book. During our whole year of travel, we had always stuck to the “Budget” section, without even a glance at better options. But even though we’re in the home stretch, we were tired of dungeons with bald light bulbs and crumbling walls. We’d rough it on food, we figured, but we wanted comfort in lodgings. (more…)
When we arrived in Puerto Escondido, Lauren and I grabbed a taxi to a hotel listed in the Lonely Planet named Las Olas. Its primary features were that it was near the beach and it had a refrigerator in the room — a luxury we had never been able to afford ourselves.
We were excited to discover that the price was right — just $25 a night — and Lauren was able to swing getting us a balcony.
North America! We had finally made it to our last destination, the much anticipated Mexico, home of the best food in the world (Thailand excluded), Pacific Coast Beaches, and Spring Break Utopias. We were psyched, we were ready. But our first few days in Mexico were a bit… chaotic.
We had woken in the morning in Caye Caulker, taken a boat to Belize City, and hopped on a bus to Chetumal, a border town in Mexico. As soon as we crossed the border, we were welcomed by the sight of tanks, hummers, and military personnel wielding large automatic weapons. A sign of things to come. (more…)
Beth: Our bus from Flores to Caye Caulker was celebrity filled. I thought that the man sitting beside us looked so much like Mel Gibson that I couldn’t stop staring at him. And Lauren became obsessed with one guy she thought looked like Ben from LOST. We entertained ourselves at the border crossing and pit stops trying to surreptitiously take photos of them.
When we arrived at the ferry terminal in Belize City, we were an hour late and just missed the 1:30 ferry to Caye Caulker. Lauren was frustrated — she had been fantasizing about being in the water by 3pm, but now we would have to wait for the 3pm ferry and wouldn’t even get to Caye Caulker until 4pm.
We had come to Flores, Guatemala to visit Tikal, one of the largest Mayan ruins in Central America. In our sprint through the last several countries, we hadn’t had time to stop and see any Mayan ruins. But we had been told time and time again that if we only had time to visit one, we should visit Tikal.
Lauren had been here before, three years ago with Katie and Meredith. She regaled me with stories about their trip, including running down steep Mayan stairs to make it to a bathroom in time. I was hoping my experience would be a little different. (more…)
Our travel through Central America had been, at points, hectic. These were not the buses of South America that we had grown accustomed to, and getting from point A to B proved to be more of a challenge. But our last day of travel in Honduras and crossing the border to Guatemala really took the cake.
Our last day in Honduras was spent traveling from one seaside town in the north to another, not far away. But we couldn’t go directly - we had to bus it inland to a town to catch another bus further north, and yet another to Omoa, where we wanted to go (see Show Me The Beach! for details). On our first bus, we secured seats for ourselves, but there was no space for our bags. We sat sweating away without AC, bags piled on top for extra warmth. I jimmy-rigged one of the bags to hang out somewhat into the isle, which gave us some additional breathing room. (more…)
Lauren: Why did you say you’re sick of shitting when you haven’t shit for days?
Beth: I’m sick of shitting playing such a huge role in my life. Will I shit? Will I not shit? Is my shit healthy? Where can I take a shit? How long will this shit take..?
Zihuatenejo is otherwise known as the poor man’s Ixtapa. Ixtapa only has $200+ per night high-rise luxury hotels, well out of our price range, even on a splurge. But Zihuatenejo, just 15 minutes away, is a much smaller and cheaper beach town. Though the beach isn’t as nice, it has frequent, cheap buses to Ixtapa. Much more our style.
