NEWS

15/1/04 R- Currently we are San Cristobal de las Casas in the southeastern state of Chiapas. We have been working on this site and researching the Lacandon indians at a resource centre called Na-Bolom. We will shortly be visiting the ruins in Palenque along with some Mayan villages surrounding this city. At the conclusion of our time in Chiapas will be making the trip to the rain forest to a Lacandon settlement... we will be visiting some more obscure sites located in the thick of the jungle. This city is cool, clear and vaguely Bohemian. There is a strong indigenous presence. San Cristobal was the site of a Zapatista uprising ten years ago. Their leader, Sub Commandante Marcos has been highly commidified... his image adorns t shirts and postcards... you can buy little Zapatista dolls at the market.

4/1/04 R - We're in the coastal city of Campeche (SE, Campeche state)... relaxing for a few days before setting out upon the Ruta Maya... a trail of ruins that runs from here to Honduras. After San Cristobal we jumped north to Palenque. We spent nearly two weeks out there... in the rain forest... surrounded by beasts and bugs and enormous creeping vegetation. We made it to the Selva Lacandona too... visited some more obscure ruins on the Guatemalan border... stayed in an indigineous village (Lacanha Chansayab) and hiked some 24km to check out murals at the site of Bonampak. It was an exhausting time but very enjoyable.....

18/2/04 K - Currently languishing in grotty hotels in Merida, the White City, in the state of Yucatan. We've been taking it easy here, enjoying free movies at a little cinema on the zocalo and using the university library. Our explorations of the area so far have included a trip to the beach near the town of Progreso, and a heavy day touring the Mayan archeological sites of the Ruta Puuc. We saw 5 sites in about 8 hours. The Puuc sites are famous for their elaborate building decorations and huge archways... some of the buildings were truly astounding. The biggest is Uxmal which features a huge oval-shaped pyramid that Maya legend has it was built in a day by a dwarf who hatched from a witch's egg. Uxmal was also overrun with gigantic iguanas which added to its strangeness. Right now it's the day before the start of carnaval... so we're looking forward to some good music and bizarre costumes.

8/3/04 K- After completing our time in Mexico in a manic 4-day sprint across the Yucatan peninsula, we headed straight for the island of Caye Caulker in Belize. Turquoise Caribbean sea... snorkelling with sharks and stingrays... and Richard had a special birthday song sung to him by a rastafarian called Lyrical King. However, Belize was expensive & we headed straight back out again after a week, and are now in the town of Flores in Guatemala. Tomorrow we embark on a five-day jungle hike to the remote ruins of El Mirador... in total we will be walking 120km with a Guatemalan guide and a couple of horses to carry our supplies.

23/5/04 K- Well, it's been a while since we updated this page... We spent a good couple of months in Guatemala, kayaking around the feet of volcanoes, climbing to a crater lake, and stumbling upon Mayan ceremonies. We then spent a couple of weeks in Honduras, where we attempted to climb the highest mountain in the country. We didn't quite reach the summit, but we managed to reach the cloud forest which was stunning if a little creepy. We spent the night on the side of the mountain where we ran into our two friends Lizbeth and Erwan, who we met on the El Mirador hike in Guatemala. It wasn't pure coincidence - we'd also met them in Copan Ruinas town a couple of days earlier, and realised that we were all heading for the same mountain at the same time. We sat on the side of the mountain by a pitiful little fire, and they brewed us a coffee on their camping stove. Then Richard and I bedded down with 4 Honduran workers who were constructing a new shelter for hikers at the camp. (Lizbeth & Erwan had a tent). The 6 of us lay side by side in a tiny shack, in sleeping bags on top of sacks on the ground. There were a lot of mosquitoes and it wasn't the most comfortable night, but is was a memorable experience... After that we left Honduras and spent a couple of weeks in Nicaragua. The weather there veered between unbearably hot and torrential tropical downpours. The rainy season has begun and the whole of Central America is awash at the moment. We had a good 5 days at the beach in Nicaragua before it started... but had to cut short our stay on Ometepe island (an island made of 2 volcanoes and covered in rocks with ancient petroglyphs on them). In an attempt to escape the worst of the rain we've come to Costa Rica... but we're not sure what our plans should be for our remaining few weeks, except for buying umbrellas and rain ponchos. We return to England on the 16th of June... looking forward to seeing everyone!