You'd better Belize it! - December 2014

Wow, the end of week two already! From Tulum we took a bus down to Chetumal, a seaside town in the Mexico/Belize border and the jumping off point for the Belize cayes.

After a very casual immigration process leaving Mexico (and consequent delay when the border officials realised there were two passengers who hadn't had their passport stamped, and so proceeded to check everyone's passport again) we were finally allowed to board the boat.

We all looked on in amazement as 65 people were crammed on a very small vessel - and after a few passengers were asked to sit on the top deck (read roof) and a a few on fold out chairs, or on the floor of the boat, off we set, with everyone aboard.

It seems that the smaller the country, the greater the levels of bureaucracy and more complex the official procedures. A perfect example of this was going through customs and immigration in San Pedro before being allowed to continue on to Caye Caulker. Before we got off the boat, we were each given a number and told to line up in strict numerical order  upon disembarking. This was so we went through border control in the same order as our names appeared on the boat's manifest - imagine if all planes landing into Heathrow requested the same procedure!

When we finally cleared immigration and had our passports stamped we embarked a small boat bound for Caye Caulker and twenty minutes later we pulled into paradise.

Caye Caulker is a small Caribbean island, very different in feel to Mexico.

English is the national language and the accent is more Jamaican with hints of creole dialect and laid-back Rastafarian locals. It is definitely representative of the 'Island lifestyle' we have come to love!

Locally made rum is more readily available than drinking water - and probably cheaper too! The most common Belizean cocktail is a coconut rum, pineapple juice and grenadine concoction called a 'panty ripper', offered everywhere two-for-one during happy hour - which itself takes place anytime from midday until around 7pm.

Stout is also really popular in Belize - certainly as popular as lager - so Kev was happy - if only it were the same back home in London!

The cuisine is largely Caribbean - lots of jerk seasoning and rice'n' beans. However Caye Caulker's main speciality is sea food, with an abundance of lobster. Every restaurant from street-side barbecues to the fancier establishments sell lobster for incredibly cheap prices. Our first lobster meal, all-in including sides and drinks cost about £10 each!

We certainly ate well and enjoyed sampling the local drinks on the island. One of our favourite local vendors was the 'Cake Man' who pedals a cart up and down the main street, calling 'cake man!' He sells his wife's homemade cakes and we fully endorse the pineapple upside down cake and the banana bread. Perhaps I should send Kev out on to Winchmore Hill Green selling my cakes! Ha ha.

Caye Caulker isn't renowned for its beaches - in fact there isn't really one, but there is 'the split' (the island was split in two by a hurricane a few years ago) and the old harbour wall surrounded by shallow water and a sandy bottom, which is the perfect swimming spot.

The best way to cool off however is to sign up for one of the various snorkelling or dive tours to take you off to the nearby reefs for the day.

We booked on to a 3 tank dive to the Unesco world heritage site, the famous 'Great Blue Hole'. 

Normally you have to do the Advanced Open Water PADI course to be allowed to dive here, in order to dive to 40m to see the stalactites, however the company we found offered us a shallower dive at 24m, so we could still have the experience of diving the Blue Hole but without the risk of the deeper dive.

Unfortunately visibility wasn't great due to the heavy rain over the previous two weeks - fresh water mixing with the salt water makes it go cloudy - so we couldn't see the stalactites down below, but the second and third dives on Half Moon Caye Wall, and a dive site called the Aquarium were much more rewarding and we saw reef sharks, a turtle, sting rays, lobsters and a large green moray eel.

The Blue Hole is situated in Lighthouse Reef, a two hour (choppy) boat ride from Caye Caulker so only recommended for those with sea legs! Fortunately I seem to take after my grandad and enjoyed the boat ride out on deck watching the sunrise and the dolphins alongside the boat. (This trip is probably not recommended for Hannah or Orlaith!)

After two dives in the morning we stopped on Half Moon Caye for lunch and did a walk to see the nesting colony of red-footed booby birds, though perhaps more impressive were the male frigate birds, who inflate and drum on their red gular sacks on their chests to attract the attention in the female birds flying overhead. 

After four glorious days on Caye Caulker we hopped over to San Pedro on Ambergris Caye, 30 minutes away by boat for the next stop on our trip.

When Madonna sang, 'last night I dreamt on San Pedro...' in the song 'La Isla Bonita' this is where she was singing about...

San Pedro is a lot bigger, busier and more built up than Caye Caulker, with a lot of resort style accommodation to cater for the droves of North Americans that spend their winters here. Like on Caulker there aren't really any beaches - until you take a ferry up the coast towards then north of the island, where there are fewer tourists and lovely sandy beaches.

On Christmas morning we went on a snorkel tour to the Hol Chan Marine Reserve and Shark Ray Alley. We saw turtles, reef sharks, rays, an octopus and hundreds of fish - none of them phased by us (and the other hoards of snorkellers) swimming amongst them.

More exciting however was Shark Ray Alley - a spot where the boats feed the sharks and rays so there were loads of them. On my first peek into the water there were six sharks nearby and as many sting rays - I was a little nervous have the rays swim underneath me after what happened to Steve Irwin, but it seems they weren't interested in me. I even 'stroked' a shark!

The seas here are so fertile - we even saw a sting ray swim by in knee-deep water as we sat and had lunch in a restaurant on a pier. Our snorkel guide also pointed out to us two baby sleeping sharks under the pier their dive boat departs from.

The biggest Christmas surprise however, was Kev's proposal on Christmas Eve - I can honestly say I didn't see that one coming (but did of course say yes!)

We're back in Tulum, Mexico now, enjoying the last few days of warm weather, cocktails and relaxation before we fly home. See you on the other side!

Love Sarah and Kev xx

Mexico, part 1 - December 2014

With 2.5 weeks planned for Mexico and Belize, what better occasion to resurrect the travel blog, we thought!

We had been saving what's left of our annual leave this year in order to take an extended Christmas break in the sunshine - and not having taken any time off since July, a holiday feels long overdue...and it feels good to forget about work until the new year!

So we decided on some familiar territory (Mexico's Yucatan Peninsular)  and some new: Belize's cayes (pronounced 'keys') which are just over the Mexican border at Chetumal.

The day before we left London there were glitches with the air traffic control computer system, so we feared we would be held up (or even have our flight cancelled, if the news was anything to go by). Now, our flight was delayed - but not for the reasons you might have imagined: One of the cabin crew tripped over and cut his head (before we took off) so we had to wait while they called for medical assistance and took his bag off the plane.

Then when we did land there was another plane on 'our' stand in the airport so we had to wait for them to move before we could disembark.

It wasn't a massive delay but we were certainly glad when we finally arrived at our accommodation in Isla Mujeres by 10pm Mexican time (about 4am UK time) - a long day's travel but worth it!

Since then we've been relaxing and enjoying ourselves, hanging out on the beach and sampling Mexico's cuisine (tacos, burritos, quesadillas and chicken mole - a savoury sauce made from chocolate, spices and chilli), and cocktails (something tequila-based for me and rum-based for Kev!)

In Isla we went scuba diving on our second morning - our first dive was in the underwater museum, amongst the stone statues of people, followed by a second dive I the nearby Manchiones Reef - and then we hired out a golf cart in the afternoon to drive around the island (which is only 5 miles long), though Kev's off-road antics meant we had to pay an excess on return for cleaning! 

It was lovely to be back on Isla - which hasn't changed a bit since we were last there 2 years ago, so it was easy to relax into our holiday with such familiar surroundings.

The weather so far has been pretty good - cooler than we expected at around 26 or 27 degrees Celsius, but definitely hot enough in the sun - and scorching compared to England in any case!

Unsurprisingly it doesn't feel very Christmassy over here - there's something about summery weather that just doesn't feel festive, but there are Christmas trees and decorations everywhere, including a few snowy scenes and shivering snowmen which do look a little out of place, as you can imagine!

After 3 days in Isla Mujeres we took the Ado bus (much like a Mexican version of the Greyhound buses in America) to our next stop, Tulum, where we spent the next 4 days.

Tulum is a charming beachside town surrounded by jungle and with a motorway running through the middle of it. 

Our accommodation happened to be right on the main road so we did feel a bit like we were living at a truck stop. In addition to this, we were right by a speed bump so had the constant squeal of big lorries and cars slamming on their brakes in a desperate bid to slow down before the bump, which usually ended in the car bottoming out - it basically sounded like a constant series of car pile-ups throughout the day and night! Still, it's funny how quickly we got used to this and were soon sleeping through the noise.

However on the other side of the premises was jungle, and we were visited one morning by a large family of coates (pronounced co-ah-tees), which are Mexican raccoons. As we enjoyed our breakfast in the garden, twenty-odd raccoons descended on us from the treetops to be fed by the hostel owner - this experience is not to be confused however with eating breakfast (or trying to eat breakfast) with the monkeys around in Borneo! The coates are timid and not aggressive (and very cute!)

One particularly sunny morning, we got up early to go to Casa Cenote - one of the many 'cenotes' or limestone sinkholes across the region. Casa Cenote is situated right by the beach so the water in the cenote was saline, rather than the usual (freezing) fresh water. We hired a kayak, a snorkel and mask and spent the morning paddling around in the water, then spent the afternoon on the adjacent beach, reading and watching the pelicans dive into the sea.

The next stop on our trip is Belize - I'll write you another post from there. 

I hope the Christmas preparations are going well!

Love,

Sarah and Kev xx

Switzerland Photos

Switzerland, September 2013, a set on Flickr.

Switzerland, September 2013

We set off early in the morning on the day after my birthday for Heathrow Airport, bound for sunny Lugano, supposedly the place in Switzerland clocking up the most hours of sunshine annually.

Lucky for us, the weather didn't disappoint and despite leaving London in the rain, we were met by beautiful Italian sunshine, which stayed with us as we crossed the border into Switzerland.

Even though the weather has only just turned autumnal back in the UK, it was so nice to have some summer conditions again! So back on went the shorts and swimwear and we hit the (lake) beach.

After a very quick change in Milan (if only all airports could have you off the plane, through passport control and out of the airport within 5 minutes!) and a quick Italian espresso to keep us awake, we were on the coach bound for Lugano.

Lugano is right on the Swiss-Italian border, so despite having an official language of German, most people speak Italian. If in doubt, English worked best - or certainly better than attempting to speak German or Italian, as everyone here seems to speak a minimum of three languages! Bizarrely we did get chatting (in French!) to an Italian at one point, whilst waiting to cross the road, so we were at least able to communicate a bit, though my language skills were otherwise put to shame in this European, multicultural, multilingual centre!

Lugano is a very pretty and cosmopolitan town, situated right on Lake Lugano. Its proximity to Italy means that if you go on any boat trips you need to take your passport as some of the beaches are Swiss and some Italian. Fortunately we were not caught short!

Switzerland's economic position also means that it's one of the most expensive countries on the continent - to put things into perspective, a bottle of wine in a restaurant costs a minimum of £30 or £40, despite being a wine-producing region, so we really had to do things 'on the cheap!' Lucky for us also that we were able to eat a hearty breakfast in our hostel, and food court 'Manora' kept us fed - and with good quality food - when we did come to eat out.

After a stroll along the shores of Lake Lugano, we headed north-west by train to Locarno, situated at the top of Lake Maggiore.

Whist maintaining the beauty of the Italian lakes region, Locarno is altogether a more relaxed town than Lugano. We were immediately charmed by its cobbled 'Piazza Grande', complete with big band playing popular classics, and lined with restaurants and gelaterias, their tables extending out into the square in the balmy evening.

Our hostel was simple but it did at least fall into our price bracket (not something that the rest of the accommodation in this area can boast) - so we made do with bunk beds and a shared bathroom and enjoyed getting back into the traveller’s way of life – so it was a shame this was just a long weekend away and not the beginning of a six-month trip!

Our second day was spent wandering along the shores of the lake, where we stopped for a swim (or just a wade, in Kev's case!), reading, sunbathing and generally relaxing; taking in the scenery and trying the delay the thought of the oncoming winter back home.

We enjoyed a delicious Italian pizza lunch, washed down with some Swiss beer and some lovely Italian gelato (diet and half marathon training will begin upon my return to London!)

Day three was bungy day - the day I was to do the James Bond 'Goldeneye' bungy jump off the Verzasca Dam: Europe's highest at 220 metres (whereas my previous highest was 135 metres in Queenstown, New Zealand). 

I was somewhat nervous as we approached the foreboding dam - it seemed enormous 'in real life'!

As we watched a few people throw themselves off the platform I genuinely wondered if I still wanted to do it (and at a Swiss price!) but no doubt there really - of course I did!

I had to wait some time before my go - and of the three people directly ahead of me, only one managed to jump - the other two turned back! The clue here was not to look down - just smile at the camera and look out over the mountains! As you might imagine, I loved every minute and smiled throughout the whole jump :-)

Here's a video of my jump:

I sent a few texts once down, reassuring people that I did indeed 'bounce back' then we enjoyed a walk back down the mountain (despite what 'Swiss efficiancy might have you believe, the buses are about as regular as they would be in a Cornish village, so we eschewed the 3 hour wait for the next bus and walked it!) We then bought a bottle of wine (decanted into plastic water bottles since we didn't have cups!) and sat at the end of the lake and watched the sun go down.

Our final day was a rainy one and around ten degrees cooler but it still made for a nice walk by the lake, the clouds low amongst the mountains, almost touching the water in places.

Unfortunately the bad weather seemed to be affecting both London and Milan too so our flight was delayed and we didn’t get home until after midnight (and with work to go to bright and early the next morning, it wasn't ideal), but all in all it was a fantastic trip - happy birthday to me! J

The Last Few Photos From New Zealand and the Cook Islands

The Cook Islands

The final week of our trip is already over: a week of desert island paradise before the long journey home to the UK - and back to the real world. Our exotic location however makes our imminent return feel a long way off.

Flying into the Cooks we crossed over the international date line, meaning we landed in Rarotonga about 28 hours before we took off from Auckland! - and consequently we're in the last country in the world to see the sunrise, technically speaking. It's odd to think we were behind even the UK, despite having been ahead the entire durtion of our trip.

Landing at 1.30am we experienced a particularly friendly welcome from customs and immigration, which is not something we've had much in all the flights we've been on! When we flew into New Zealand we had to declare everything from muddy shoes to wooden items and they even took Kev's trainers away from him, cleaned off the mud and disinfected them before he was allowed across the border. Now, when we landed in Rarotonga I declared my muddy shoes only to be told, "just hide them away" by the biosecurity official!
The friendly welcome seems to extend to all the locals here, from the man serenading with a ukulele at baggage reclaim, to our hostel owner who picked us up from the airport in the small hours.

Our accommodation was right on the beach, right infront of Muri Lagoon, a gorgeous stretch of calm, sheltered, turquoise water protected from the crashing waves of the South Pacific by the reef just off shore. About 200 metres out into the lagoon were a couple of small islands (called motu), accessible by swimming or by kayak, affording impressive views of the mountainous jungle interior of Rarotonga.

On walking to the local shop to buy some provisions we noticed signs showing the tsunami evacuation route (to higher ground) - it's easy to forget quite how remote we are here, having flown for 4 hours over nothing but ocean to get here, and the next biggest populated island of Aitutaki being over 263 km away. We were certainly grateful to make it back to Auckland without the threat of tsunami!

You really notice how far away you are when you see how limited the supplies are in grocery shops. Items are limited to one of each on store shelves and goods are well spaced out. Since everything has to be imported from New Zealand the price is also pretty high - in some cases four times the price of the same item in New Zealand - though that said, you can eat out in a restaurant for about the same price as in NZ so it's not all bad and there's an excellent supply of local tropical fruit and fresh fish.

Staying in a backpackers' establishment, especially one on an expensive island means it's not uncommon for other travellers to pinch your food and drink from the fridge. We were annoyed but unsurprised to find half a bottle of our lemonade stolen from the communal fridge one night - so we decided to exact our revenge! Half filling the lemonade bottle with sea water we replaced it back in the fridge. Much to our delight when we awoke the following morning, we discovered our "lemonade" standing next to an empty bottle of tequila on the table in the morning and suffice to say our bottle of mixer had hardly been touched! Revenge is sweet!

Our first few days on Rarotonga we did very little apart from swim, read and sit around in the sun. Next we hired kayaks and ventured across the lagoon to the nearby 'motu' and did some snorkelling. Most of the coral in the lagoon is now dead, but we did see a red octopus hiding in amongst the rocks - and hundreds of sea cucumbers. Apparently squeezing the guts out of the sea cucumbers is a local delicacy (called 'spaghetti'), but not one that we could be persuaded to try!

Feeling a little bit more energetic and like we ought to see a bit more of the island we hired 'e-bikes', which are push bikes with an added battery for when you're feeling lazy. We completed the 30km lap of Rarotonga with relative ease, even if Kev's battery did die about 8km before we made it back to the hostel. Navigation on 'Raro' is certainly easy: there's only one road which follows the coast, around the circumference of the island, and there are two buses per hour: one that goes clockwise and the other anti-clockwise.
From our tour round the island we realised we're definitely staying in the best bit, with the best beach and swimming, by far, so we didn't venture far from our accommodation for the rest of the week.

Having had glorious sunshine every day since we arrived, the rain arrived on the Wednesday - and we're talking torrential tropical rain storms. We had booked in to do diving that day (well, we couldn't exactly get any wetter!) so the rain didn't stop us. It was great to do another couple of dives - I think it does feel more natural and more enjoyable every time - and we were lucky enough to spot turtles, groupers and Spanish dancers. The 28 degree water felt an awful lot warmer than the cool, rainy air temperature. Amusingly, of the eight of us on the dive boat, three of us were from the Westcountry - what a small world!

One evening we went to an 'Island night': a showcase of Cook Islands music, drumming and dancing, which was truely spectacular. Also included was an enormous buffet of delicious local delicacies. Hopefully the recordings that Kev made of the music and drumming came out well: if so I'll put some of the audio files up on the blog at some point.
At the end of the evening the dancers came out into the audience for a spot of audience participation, and embarrassingly I was picked to join in with the dancing. I'm hoping that particular video didn't come out well! It was a thoroughly enjoyable evening though and a 'must do' for anyone considering a trip to the Cooks.

On our final day we did a tour around Muri lagoon in a glass bottomed boat, which stopped for us to do some snorkelling in a marine reserve. I think we saw even more marine life whilst snorkelling than we did scuba diving - we swam amongst hundreds of butterfly and parrot fish, giant trevally and other coloured fish - not forgetting a big moray eel! On the sea bed were giant clams, including a pearl farm, home to the famous Cook Islands black pearls.
The tour then called at the nearby motu for a barbeque fish lunch and a couple of hilarious demonstrations by the crew including how to husk a coconut and sarong tying (where I was picked on again to be a model!) The crew also put on an impressive drumming show and serenaded us with ukuleles whilst we snorkelled.

As we arrived at the airport for our flight back to Auckland the heavens opened and before long a lone lightening strike had taken out the runway lights! This meant that our plane (which was on its way from Auckland) was unable to land and continued on to the nearest airport, which was Tahiti! Meanwhile we had nothing to do but wait. Unfortunately as we were supposed to depart at 1:30am, our delay continued long into the night whilst we waited for the plane landing in Tahiti to turn around and come back to Rarotonga! Eventually at 6am we were bound for Auckland after a night spent trying to sleep on the floor of the departure lounge.

So now we're back in Auckland, repacking our bags and preparing for the long flight back to the UK tomorrow. It's been great being away but after seven months we're glad to be on our way home.

See you all soon!

Love Sarah and Kev xx

New Zealand Part 5: On The Way Back Up

Well summer has finally arrived! After weeks of pleasant - not cold, but not exactly beach weather - we awoke to blazing hot sunshine whilst camping at a little beachside campsite next to the Moeuraki Boulders. Not since we've been in Australia has it been a race to get out of the camper van in the morning because it's been so hot - quite the opposite, in fact, its been freezing in some parts! And how nice to be able to head straight for the beach when the fine weather finally hits.
When we felt we'd had enough sun we hit the road and travelled further up the east coast before stopping 100km on in Timaru, a town that's largely unspectacular, but does have a nice swimming beach and a free place to camp so we decided to stop for the night and go for a swim. I realised it's actually our first swim in the sea since we've been in New Zealand, despite it being summer. It seems we became quite acclimatised to Asia's climate so anything less than 30 degrees is too cold to consider swimming! The sea here is more like Cornish temperatures, but when the mercury hits a scorching 40 degrees, as it did, it was lovely and refreshing.

Our next stop, further up the east coast was in Christchurch - a city with a very English feel to it (so, long queues, rain and lots of complaining - only joking! The weather was beautiful and with the cathedral in the centre and the river meandering through the city and its botanical gardens, it felt a bit like Cambridge - or somewhere like that.

We simply couldn't leave the South Island without doing a wine tour in our favourite wine region: Marlborough, so it was back on the minibus to visit a handful of wineries, including some boutique wineries and some of the big players you might have heard of, such as Cloudy Bay and Villa Maria. We sampled a wide variety of wines, including the world renowned sauvignon blancs and pinot noirs, as well as some lovely chardonnays, gewürztraminers and various others. It was a thoroughly pleasant day in the sunshine and we couldn't resist investing in a few bottles to drink on the way back up to Auckland.

Our ferry crossing back over to Wellington the following day was another smooth one, with pretty views out over the Marlborough Sounds. On arrival we again caught up with Jojo and Stu, who are now living and working in Wellington, and enjoyed a lovely meal with them in their new flat (and playing with a gorgeous black kitten called Jordie).

I insisted to Kev that we stop for just one more night in Taupo so I could fit in a final bungy jump (and because I had a voucher to do one half price). This time I went for the full dunk into the water and ended up with my clothes soaking wet and a big mouthful of river water! Third time round it was definitely less terrifying, but also as thrilling as the first time. I think bungy will be what I miss most on leaving New Zealand!

Our last port of call before returning the camper van to the depot in Auckland was to a little surf town on the west coast, called Raglan, where Kev's friend Simon (from Devon), his wife Beth and a very soppy collie named Molly now reside. So our last two nights with the camper van were in fact spent on a very comfy sofa, which was a real treat as we'd had just about enough of living in that van!
It was a great relief to return the camper - no more arguing over directions for us! After a 50 day rental, however, packing all our things into bags was not an easy task - we're sure everything has expanded and multiplied in the meantime! It was a good job we had a couple of nights in Auckland before our flight to the Cook Islands, if only to pack and re-pack!

So we're off to our final destination on our agenda: the Cook Islands - for one last week of sun, sea, sand and that island lifestyle - we can't wait!

I'll blog again once we're back in Auckland.
Love Sarah & Kev xx