Lesson 1: Learning how to eat cheap on the road.

• Look for where the locals eat.
• If the menu is in English and you are not in an English-speaking country you are probably paying too much.
• Eat street food.

We are in Flores, Guatemala and there are a lot of backpacking tourists and a lot of restaurants. We looked at some menus last night and we could easily have spent $20-$30 on dinner for the two of us, without even including drinks. Since that isn’t in our budget (which for Latin America is $50/a day and needs to include not just food, but transportation and lodging as well), we kept walking. (We could have found cheaper items on those menus and possibly eaten for $15 or so, but still more than we’d like.)

Much like Belize, we eventually found some carts with Guatemalan women serving homemade Guatemalan food. We ate for $2.50 and then we found more with desserts and we spent another $1.25. So instead of eating overpriced versions of what Guatemalans think tourists want to eat, we got to eat what Guatemalans really eat. Some were new things we’ve never seen or tasted before. And isn’t that really what travelling is about.

Dinner and fresh mango in Flores, Guatemala

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Mayan Temples Rising Above the Jungle Canopy at Sunrise – seen from Temple 4

However, on a sunrise tour you’ll see a few highlights, but miss most of the site, so we also spent several mid-day hours exploring and wandering on our own. This was the perfect combination of organized tour and self-guided exploration.

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Seems ruins and monkeys go together, so you’ll probably also want to hang out and watch the monkeys.

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Lamanai is unique among Mayan sites for two main reasons:

1) Lamanai was continuously inhabited from 1500BC through 1800AD – that is a seriously long time and means that it continued to be inhabited several hundred years after many other Mayan sites in the region had been abandoned. Because Lamanai was built on a river the people there were able to avoid drought-related food and water crises that plagued other cities.  Just to emphasize the longevity of this civilization, 1500BC to 1800AD is over 3000 years!! The fact that I would round this number to 3000 says something as I’d be rounding off more time than the US has been country.

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Here’s the view from the top of the High Temple, I thought it was pretty impressive.

2) You get there by a 25-mile boat trip, which seemed like much more fun than a bus or rented car, and to ice the cake there were animal to be seen along the way.

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While I did not see any crocodiles, like I was hoping, but watching this little guy eat a banana more than made up for it.

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Sarteneja, Belize. I love it here! From the moment we started walking around town there was just an air of peacefulness – possibly the most peaceful, tranquil and beautiful place I’ve even been. If you need  to relax and just appreciate being alive, this is the place.

We’ve watched the sun set over the ocean and sat on a pier dangling our feet in the turquoise water while looking out at the seemingly infinite expanse of blue-green ocean, picturesque fishing boats anchored in the calm ocean. We’ve biked and walked all over town, sea kayaked up the coast, explored unexcavated Mayan ruins and a mangrove cenote and nearly the entire time, seen hardly anyone.

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The people we have encountered have been incredibly friendly, travelers and locals. Most of the travelers we’ve met are on long journey’s not 10 –day vacations and I can understand why Sarteneja would get skipped on a shorter trip. It did take us 2.5 hours on a dirt road in a school bus from the nearest large town to get here. (Although that would have been cut to 1.5 hours had the bus not run out of gas and needed to be refueled by siphoning from gas cans in the back of a pickup…). (If you’re planning a trip to Belize, know that there is also a faster, more expensive water taxi option, where Sarteneja is a specially requested stop on the Corozol to San Pedro water taxi route.)

We’ve been staying at Backpacker’s Paradise, which has been inexpensive, friendly and really well-run. Our room is just a bed in a little hut in the wood , but its been comfortable and at $14USD it may very well be the cheapest place two people can stay in Belize.

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There’s no beach to speak of here but you can swim off any number of piers in town and the water isn’t very deep. You can expect a combination of a few rocks and some squishy mud when you put your feet down. Usually we’re told the water is crystal clear, but due to a cold front that came in just as we arrived, the water’s been churned up and milky, so we haven’t gotten to have the luxury of seeing what we’re stepping on. The fact that the “ocean” here is actually Chetumal Bay and protected by a peninsula means that the water stays calm, no waves to speak of and little effect of tides.

For those who are interested in the balanced perspective – here are what we consider to be the negatives of Sarteneja. We were surprised to find a lack of availablility of fruits and vegetables in here, like almost none and we’ve certainly noticed an increase in temperature, humidity and mosquito density since we left the Western coast of Mexico. Its a great place for a little retreat, but I wouldn’t stay too long – when we returned to the larger town of Orange Walk after 5 days, we were ready to have a little more going on.

Cool things not mentioned here that you should investigate should you find yourself in Sarteneja:

Manatee & Primate Rehabilitation Centre – you’ll need to make an appointment  a day ahead to visit, but its well worth it and Ed & Nathalie at Backpacker’s Paradise can make those arrangements for you.

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We made a weekly visit to the Friday Farmer’s Market while we were in Sayulita. We bought tiny little squashes, fresh cheese and locally made French pastry.

But our favorite purchases were the strawberries and the homemade salsa.

photos by Daryle Dickens

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However, almost as soon as we arrived at Backpacker’s Paradise, where we planned to stay for 5 nights, we were told there was an appointment made at the center for the following afternoon and we were welcome to come along. I immediately got very excited!

What I saw and learned about the Manatee and Primate Rehabilitation Centres hosted and managed by a non-profit organization called Wildtracks so fascinating I just might have to come back.

Not only do they serve as the only rehabilitation center for these species in Belize, they also have an amazing and affordable volunteer program that lets them accomplish a lot more, while allowing volunteers the opportunity to get experience working hands on with these animals for 1 or more months at a time.

While we were there, we got to see a growing manatee named Duke. Duke is an Antillean Manatee who currently weighs in at about 200 pounds, but he’ll need to be closer to 350 before he starts the process of being released back into the wild.

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He’s been having trouble gaining weight, so he’s being tube-fed, a process which saves a lot of manatees but involves specialized training. There are only about 100 people in the world with that training and three of those individuals reside here at the Centre in Sartenaja. We were able to watch as the crew weighed and fed Duke.

Our tour guide, Emma, also happened to be the primary handler of a 2 month old Yucatan Black Howler Monkey named Bean. Although when she’s older, Bean’s contact with humans will decrease, right now, she still has quite a bit of human interaction, so we were lucky enough to have her accompany us on our tour as well, stealing a bit of Duke’s limelight for sure.

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Bean was discovered by a hiker on a trail in Cockscomb Basin Wildlife Sanctuary (a place we hope to visit in a few weeks) covered by ants and in rough shape. For some reason, probably involving troup dynamics, she’d wound up alone and on her own at only 1 week old. Luckily, someone knew to call Wildtracks and they came and got her. Now, with the help of Emma and her coworkers, Bean’s growing into a healthy little monkey and working toward returning to the jungle.

If you are interested in learning more or helping to save manatees and monkeys, check out the Wildtracks website at wildtracksbelize.org or sign up to come volunteer!

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On our first night in Sarteneja we walked down to the beach to see the sun set over the water, not a common sight in east-facing Belize. Because Sarteneja is located on the west side of a point of land poking out into the Chetumal Bay, there is water to the west and gorgeous sunsets like this over the bay.

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The switch to being on the move happened today (April 30). On April 1, we started off with an easy month in a place we’d visited before, a spot we love and we knew would let us relax. We’ve fallen into a slower pace and gotten pretty comfortable in Sayulita. While we absolutely love it there and certainly plan to return in the future (I still have a lot of work to do on my surfing , we’re ready to start moving and seeing some new places and meeting some new people.

However, this is a serious lifestyle change. This morning, we left what’s become a pretty comfortable space, where we had some semblance of a daily routine and a working knowledge of the geography and operating schedules of the town. We weren’t living out of our backpacks, in fact we hadn’t packed anything in a month. And we hadn’t been forced to speak a whole lot of Spanish. We knew this change was coming and in fact have looked forward to it. But suddenly its here!

I was awake at 3am this morning feeling like a kid on Christmas Eve, so much to be excited about. And on the bus ride this morning as I kept an eye out for the right place to get off and rehearsed my Spanish greetings, I had those same butterflies I get when I’m about to get up in front of an audience to talk.

When you ask what we did today, I’d say we traveled from Sayulita to Nuevo Vallarta. No big deal, its 25 miles, but in that space we changed worlds. Not only physical worlds – from sleepy little surf town of 4,000 to crowded, bustling city of over 250,000 – but emotionally from a place that’s become comfortable and familiar to one full of new opportunities and challenges.

Today, we navigated new bus routes, took our first taxi, knocked on the door of nearly complete strangers who’ve been kind enough to take us in based on a few emails and utilized two somewhat common languages to introduce ourselves, get acquainted and figure out how to be gracious, appreciative low-maintenance guests for the next few days. And that was all before noon.
This trip is about pursuing dreams, meeting people and learning about ourselves and the world. And frequently those are not entirely comfortable endeavors, but most worthwhile things aren’t.

So here we go.

Us with our Nuevo Vallarta Couchsurfing host, Alma and her family

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Besides learning to surf, the other thing I really wanted to experience while we were in Sayulita was a trip to las Islas Marietas. There’s a really interesting little beach that you have to reach by snorkeling through what is basically a tunnel, but the thing that really got me to sign up and fork over the money for a sailing trip was the blue-footed boobies. These birds are only found in two places – off the Pacific coast of Mexico and on the Galapagos islands. Since we haven’t managed to get the Galapagos into the budget for this trip, I thought I better take this chance.

I’m not usually a bird person necessarily but these guys are pretty charismatic and dramatic with the blue feet – they literally look like they stepped in pastel blue latex. Apparently as a boy bird, the bluer your feet are, the more in demand you are among the ladies.

So I signed up for a cruise with Ally Cat Sailing. In addition to the birds, the beach and a relaxing day on the water, I saw a humpback whale and her calf up close and met some great new friends.

Daryle and I even had the privilege of joining my 5 new friends the following evening for a paella party to celebrate a milestone birthday.

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