California

California Paragliding Trip: Day -1

Leave a comment

I guess this is a travel blog. Wooo, for all of that traveling I do. I leave tomorrow for lovely LAX for a week of sitting on top of various mountains in the area taking photos of people.

I spent this evening packing, *cough* playing Agricola with Sean, and researching all of the sites that I’ve been told we might be flying at. There’s a list of 12 of them, but I have this feeling as though we won’t fly some of them, and we’ll probably fly others that aren’t on the list. I like having fore-knowledge.

Out of the 12, I’ve marked 5 of them in red, I’ve marked 4 of them in green and 3 have been left in the default black. Naturally, red ones sound like they are leaning outside of my skill and comfort level. Green sound like they could be ok. Black, often there isn’t enough information.

I liked this process of research. Lots of information on launches (which are mostly large and grassy), landings (which are mostly large and sandy) and flights (which …well, it sounds like some of them will have strong thermals). I loved seeing photos of the places, getting a sense of what was in the area. I’m looking forward to taking my own photos and maybe posting some of them here.

Here’s a spreadsheet of the sites, some notes I took, and a quick URL for more information. In the case of Kagel, I couldn’t possibly take enough notes to write down all of the hazards of the place. wooooo! Probably just sit that one out. >.>

So, buckle up, set your RSS reader to geeksong.com/Craig, and let’s DO THIS. YEAH!

Belize

Day 6 – Diving and San Pedro

Leave a comment

Having arrived on the island of San Pedro, it’s time to go diving!

The view from the deck on our villa. This was a little shared lagoon with the bar and resort office in the middle of it.

Our villa from the outside.

There was a dock named Coco Loco near our place. We drove the golf cart over and waited at around 8:30am and the dive shop would send a boat around to pick us and our gear up. Very convenient! (Note Kerry and her Kindle :P)

The dive shop, getting some equipment. We brought wet suits, masks, snorkels, fins and boots, but had to rent BCDs, weights and…air.

Chilling on the dock. In our sexy, sexy wet suits.

The neat thing about diving at 9am, is that after two dives it’s about 1pm. You’ve been productive, you’ve had an amazing day, you’ve seen rocks and fish and turtles and it’s great. And. It’s 1pm. So you have an entire afternoon/evening still to be amazing in.

We played Agricola :P.

The streets of San Pedro. Note the golf carts parked all over the left. And the SUV. I feel sorry for people who drive SUVs/real cars on this island, there isn’t really a lot of space for them.

This is a Polaris. The SUPER gold cart.

MOAR BELIKAN

Sean and I went for a drive up island and found this crazy little restaurant on a dock over the water. They had a little bouyed/fenced in area with inner tubes – apparently during the day you can sit in the water and they will bring beer to you :P. I had…a grouper! And we spoke to this strange man who apparently builds US military bases. Secret military bases. That you can find on Google Maps very easily.

That’s unfortunately about it. As I said, most of the awesome was diving :P. Anyone want to add anything here? I bet we took a nap…seemed like there was a lot of napping around 1pm…

Belize

Day 5 – Food!

Leave a comment

I forgot to photograph breakfast until it was much to late, so you have several photos of empty plates here :P. Sausages, a communal bowl of scrambled eggs, a bowl of refried beans, a basket of fried jacks and a bottle of Marie Sharpes. Breakfast!

I did not find these fried jacks as pleasing as the ones at 5 Sisters. I began to worry if I had tasted extraordinary fried jacks, and that no other preparation would leave me satisfied. (They were still pastries drizzled in honey…I had 4 :P)

Lunch was at that creepy place with the old people. They had some decent lime juice (she had frozen pucks of juice…add sugar and water and stir for a while). I think this is a breaded chicken burger and fries. Every mouthful I thought I was going to start choking on the poison she had put in there, or pass out and wake up tied to a bed. But the food was tasty and I walked out, so I guess I don’t have to much to complain about :P.

The eldery gentleman spent a significant amount of time talking about his cashew pie, so when the question of dessert arose, we had no choice but to sample it. It tasted like a mincemeat tart, but with cashews in it. I like mincemeat, and I love cashews, and this was a good pie.

Dinner was prepared on the side of a road BBQ in San Pedra. Pupusas! They hand-make the dough and then they have bits of meat, beans or cheese inside them. Dip them in the “tomato soup” in the middle of the table, or just go straight for the Marie Sharpes. A good meal!

We’re getting into “diving territory” from here, and I haven’t yet taken the time to go through my diving videos to make a summary video. Perhaps now that I’ve thought about it, I’ll see if I can’t start that process tomorrow…I have about 7 hours of video and a lot of it will be crap >.>

Belize

Day 5 – San Pedro

2 Comments

We arrived in San Pedro and it was getting dark out. You get off the water taxi and onto the beach. This is my first view of the island.

We secured ourselves some diving for the next day and then got ice cream while we waited for our resort (resort? Wasn’t really what you think of as a resort.) to send us a person to pick us up. He arrived and less than 10 minutes later we were there.

This was a really nice place. I was impressed. 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, a kitchen and a living room.

Travel around the island is almost entirely golf cart. There is an industry on the island that allows for multiple golf cart rental stores to exist. The people who live up-island have “Polaris” – it’s not a golf cart, but it’s related. We went through 3 golf carts while we were there…and I’m told there was a fourth before I arrived (they were staying at this villa before they picked me up at the airport).

Sean and I drove into town to grab some food. We ordered pupusas and then sat at the bar while we waited for them to be made. Sean’s drink is a Dirty Banana (no idea what’s in it) and mine is a Michelada. It is…

  1. The juice of 1.5 limes
  2. Marie Sharpes hot sauce
  3. Salt
  4. Pepper
  5. A Belikin. That’s the local Belizean beer.
  6. This particular variety had tomato juice in it, but others I had on the island didn’t.

SPICY. Our food arrived and I had to down the last of the drink…wherein I learnt that the reason you have the bottle there is so you can re-fill your drink of beer when you get to the bottom where the rest of the mixture has settled. VERY SPICY.

Sean packs his dive bag for the next morning.

Agricola! woo!

I was a vegetable farmer. The orange chips are vegetables.

Belize

Day 5 – Zoo!

Leave a comment

We woke up at ridiculous o’clock for sunrise yoga. It was pretty good, but in the end we did much better yoga later on in the trip. Still, this was enjoyable. A good way to start the day.

Sean decided that sunrise yoga was not for him.

This is an ant trail. Walked by so many ants that it’s a little path through the grass. These were all over the lawn.

One last shot of the Belize Jungle Dome (at Banana Bank). We tried to go into that dome, but apparently the stairs are broken and not safe so we decided to do something else instead.

The zoo! I was a little worried about the zoo…I’ve been to a few, and I just don’t find animals all that exciting. This place was pretty hilarious though. They have funny rhyming signs all over the place. Apparently it was started in the 80s after a documentary crew had a bunch of animals left over and no where to put them. Presto, instant zoo. Since then they’ve taken in entirely rescue animals.

Monkey! This was the first time I missed my old camera. I would’ve been able to get that monkey in the frame…

Tapir!

Ocelot! Such a beautiful cat.

Wild boar!

More kitties!

Sean, the bird whisperer.

This jaguar is apparently famous. He is a “problem jaguar”, as they made sure everyone knew. But he’ll give you a high-five and apparently he’s used for jaguar education…as in…educating people.

Ok, so I desperately wish that I had the guts to take a photo of the proprietors of this place. We were driving back to the airport to drop off the ladies and needed some food, so we stopped at some random place.

Old man, old lady and they gave us the no-feeling. Sean thought they were just old. Kerry and I were amazed that we left with all of our skin. ie, it wasn’t being used as bed sheets.

Aside from the general aura of old-person-creep about them, they also had this really odd habit. They would stand over us while we were eating and have a conversation. But each of them was having a different conversation, regardless of whether anyone was actually listening or not. At one point I watched while everyone turned to the lady and the man just kept talking away. So…weird.

We left Dayl, Diane and Sandra at the airport and wished them a happy flight. Sad to see them go – they were great to hang out with – but happy to get to the island and go diving!

The boat to San Pedro. It left from Belize City and took about 2 hours. (I think, maybe 1.5).

There is more from Day 5, but I wanted to split it up. Later!

Belize

Day 4 – Food!

Leave a comment

Day 4 started in Flores, Guatemala. We stopped at a farmers market just outside of the island. Lots of food to look at!

This was a local cornbread cooked on a BBQ-thing on the side of the road. Delicious!

Kerry and Dayl and I bought an avocado. I stopped to look at something. I walk around the corner and the two of them are ripping into it as though it was the last avocado on earth. I had some. It was pretty amazing :).

We bought some local fruits. I bought tomatoes.

This was the second most disappointing meal on the trip. We went to a Chinese place in Belmopan…think it was called Golden Trunk or Golden Sea. We’d arrived early at the Jungle Dome, and they only stock food for when you say you’re coming, so we had to drive back out to town to find food. Nothing looked good, and we ended up stopping here. They had some really tasty pastries though, and we bought donuts and donut holes for later.

This is the remains of some rice and a breaded chicken and some salad. This is about when I started forgetting to photograph my food and ended up with remains :P. You have been warned…

This meal was excellent! Dinner at the Jungle Dome – two massive pieces of chicken, bean soaked rice, a salad.

Oh, a story I forgot to tell about getting to the Jungle Dome. So all we have on how to get there is a tour book that is giving directions. But as we’re driving, the directions start getting vague…as though they could really mean “this left, or that left?” There are signs to a place called Banana Bank, but no Jungle Dome. Some panicked minutes later we find a tiny little Jungle Dome sign, right next to a giant Banana Bank sign. Someone had neglected to mention that the Jungle Dome is in an area called “Banana Bank” 🙂

Day 5 is our trip to the zoo! Later!

Belize

Day 4 – Horses and Jungle Dome

Leave a comment

We woke up the next morning, packed our stuff up and drove across the bridge into Santa Elena (the Guatemalan one). Kerry had a plan of hitting up a little (large!) farmers market about 5 minutes drive from Flores. We wandered around it for about 20-30 minutes and left with several bags of delicious fruits, vegetables and bread products.

There’s a kid and his bicycle sitting on the back of this truck. About 20 minutes later, there was another kid and another bicycle.

The Jungle Dome!

I pet the dog, named Dinero, once. I regretted it. He was adorable, but he needed a bath something fierce.

We had showed up early, so the lady at the Dome arranged for us to go horse riding for the afternoon!

There was a giant hurricane in October, so there was decaying plant matter everywhere.

Soy bean fields as far as the eye can see.

This was one of the best parts of my trip. Usually when you go to a tourist horse riding tour they put you on these lame horses that haven’t seen solid food in years and can barely hold you up. You get a tame little ride through some little area and then you head back.

These guys let me go FAST. Like REALLY REALLY FAST. My horse, Saucy, ran half the length of the soy bean fields and then back again. Good horse, good run, so much fun!

I think this kids name was Eric. He was riding backwards, and I told him “I’m taking a picture of you, showoff.” He replied that he wasn’t showing off…

NOW he’s showing off 😛

Saucy. She worked hard for me and we had cuddles after. Sherman (the guide guy) said I could take her with me if I could fit her in my suitcase. I tried, but it didn’t work out.

A photo of Sean and Kerry being cute. And Dayl reading in the background.

The room I slept in.

A rad frog Sean spotted by the pool. Looks surprisingly like a frog that Jake took a photo of in Fiji…

Agricola! This was one of two times I beat Sean. He was sick this night. 🙂

I’ve been pretty busy, but I’m trying to keep these updates coming. Lots more days of fun to show off! Food for Day 4 is next!

Belize

Day 3 – Food

2 Comments

Apparently I failed badly at photographing food this day :). This plus side is, that the food failed pretty badly as well.

We had breakfast at some place 2 blocks from our hotel. If someone remembers the name, you’re welcome to write it in the comments for me. Food was mediocre and slow. I think I had eggs and toast or something.

Lunch was worse. We’d just finished off a long walk through Tikal and everyone was pretty hungry. Rather than drive for a bit, we decided to have some lunch at the restaurant at the site. It’s open-air, nice tiles, not a bad looking place. The menu was in Spanish however, which caused some issues. Sean and I ordered burgers – they were alright. I think others ordered “plain rice”, “plain fries”, “plain tortilla”, etc. Really lackluster food. Worse, it was relatively expensive compared to other food in the area. Just avoid the on-site restaurant.

Here’s a photo of some beer and a water bottle instead :P.

Dinner, on the other hand, was easily in my top 2 meals of the trip – it could even be number one, but I have a special place in my heart for ribs (they are several days away now).

So Sean and I got fairly drunk at this restaurant. We finished our game of Agricola and pushed our table over to the girls table. They had already ordered while were finishing, so their food arrived well before ours.

I feel a little sorry for Dayl – Sean and I were looming over her meal the entire time because it looked sooo good. We both ended up ordering the same thing. It was a grouper caught that morning, cooked in what was probably a cajun sauce. The entire fish. Head to tail (entrails removed). Pull the spine out yourself when you finish with the top layer. Potatoes with garlic butter. A little salad, a cucumber, tomatoes.

But the fish, was absolutely amazing. Again, if I could remember the name of the restaurant, I’d be highly recommending it _right now_.

Belize

Day 3 – Flores

Leave a comment

We drove back from Tikal and had a night of not doing much. The girls wanted to go shopping (I kinda wanted to go shopping to…:P) and Sean and I wanted to find a place to drink and play Agricola.

Flores with a sunset. I can’t remember if I used the digital zoom on this or not. >.<

Sean had used TripAdvisor to find the name of the #1 ranked restaurant on the island and we had a mission to find it. I hopped into an internet cafe and wrote some e-mails, sent that post card that I’d picked up (did it arrive yet? :)) and then we asked for directions to Cafe Arqueologico Yaxha.

We never found it. But we did find a great sunset, some basketball courts and, about 45 minutes of walking later, a restaurant that looked ok that was exactly one building further than the place we’d eaten breakfast at. We looked at the drink specials menu, did a little quick math and determined that Cuba Libres (rum+coke+lime) were about $1.20US, and walked in. Sean asked if we could play a game and the German waiter said go ahead.

We had a couple drinks. By a couple, I mean a few. By …a few, I mean several. I mean Sean at Agricola last night – one of my 2 (3?) wins this vacation. 😛

The girls showed up part-way through our second game and were slightly embarrassed to be seated with us. 😛 We finished our game and pushed our tables together and proceeded to be drunk with them.

Dinner was pretty amazing. This was either my top meal of the trip or second meal, I can’t decide between the fish here or the ribs on San Pedro. Can anyone reading remember the name of this restaurant? It would be nice if I had that written down :).

One last photo of Flores, Guatemala. The entire island looked like this.

Next stop – day 3 food! (although I appear to have forgotten to take a photo of breakfast…meh…it sucked anyway).

Belize

Day 2 – Tikal

4 Comments

We woke up in the morning and had some breakfast at a place that served it to slow, and wasn’t very good. Had a short walk around to take in the sights – Flores is a neat little place, as I’ve mentioned before. Here’s a photo of the seawall and the view from one of the edges.

We drove to Tikal – probably about a half hour drive. We stopped at the gate and were immediately greeted by a tour guide. Minutes later we had negotiated a price for a tour for the day (“$10US per person, but you can negotiate”…so weird that they add that last bit), and Luis (Lewis?) was our guy.

At one point he points into the jungle a bit and says “this is my favourite part”. I immediately think we’re going to die, but we follow him in about 5 meters to a little clearing. He points at some vines and explains, in slightly broken English, that people like to sit on them and take photos. We did so :). The vines looked pretty sturdy, so I got a little fancy :).

I’ve only been to pyramidal ruins once before, and that was somewhere in Mexico. There you climbed up the pyramid steps – here you climb up specifically built wooden stairs. We climbed a lot of stairs on this day.

The view from the first pyramid.

Sean stands on the edge, scaring the girls into thinking he’s going to fall over. In reality, the edge isn’t really an edge…it’s a slope with a shelf of dirt below it. If he fell, he wouldn’t enjoy it, but he probably wouldn’t die :).

This next one was the most brutal climb. Sean says that the last time he was in Tikal he didn’t climb this one, but was determined to do it this time. The stairs shook when you climbed it, and they were all but vertical.

Luis was a really cool guy. I got the feeling that he was really into his job – he got excited one moment when we saw a white-tailed deer and he said that he had been looking to see one for several months now. He was knowledgeable about the area and the wildlife, and was able to answer most of the questions we answered, even if his English wasn’t perfect. Our cave tubing guy was a salesman – Luis seemed more like a nature lover taking some folks for a walk.

At the end, he asked us all if we had had a nice time in Guatemala and we had to say that we had so far. He seemed pleased and asked us to tell our friends about it, that it’s safe and friendly and all that stuff. I don’t pay much attention to world issues, so I’m afraid I’m completely unaware of what point-of-view he was trying to overcome, but I was impressed by his earnestness and so I feel it’s appropriate to give a glowing review of the day.

Afterward we were all hungry, so we walked over to the little cafe/restaurant attached to the park. Wherein we had the worst meal of the trip. You’ll have to wait for the description, since the meal photos go with it :). But here’s a photo of Sean and Kerry waiting for their food, not realizing yet that they won’t enjoy it when it arrives. “Gallo” is the name of the national Guatemalan beer and this was the first and last time I had one.

I bought a postcard and mailed it to Cin that evening. Because her home address is the only one that I have memorized :P. I don’t even know if she’s gotten it yet…

I’m away for the weekend, so this is the last post you’ll see for a couple days. I’ll be back Sunday, so hopefully I’ll get one or two in there – there are at least 2 more in day 2.

Thanks for reading! And thanks everyone who has written to say they are enjoying my posts – it’s nice to have the feedback :).