Oaxaca
Well, Montezuma finally exacted his revenge. While I started feeling ill before boarding the bus in San Cristóbal, I didn’t receive the full impact until after I arrived in Oaxaca. This left me with only one full day to really explore the city. I was most impressed by the ethnobotanical gardens next...
San Cristóbal de las Casas
San Cristóbal de las Casas is a picturesque colonial city in the Mayan highlands of southern Mexico. I’ve enjoyed its abundance of restaurants and cafés with organic vegan food, fresh whole-grain bread and great coffee.
Quetzaltenango
The city with two names – Quetzaltenango and the original Mayan name Xelajú, or just Xela (“Shay-la”) – is considered the academic center of Guatemala and the largest city outside of the metropolitan area around Guatemala City. After too many hours on the school buses in Belize, I decided after arri...
San Marcos La Laguna
San Marcos is another town I visited on Lake Atitlán, much smaller than San Pedro, and only a short boat ride away. It has become a kind of new age tourist center, drawing mostly hippies, or ex-hippies and other foreigners to its blend of Mayan culture and various new age “spiritual” enterprises. At...
San Pedro La Laguna
I think San Pedro is probably the best place I know to learn Spanish. I studied here for a couple of weeks in 2007 and 2008. There are many schools here that give inexpensive private lessons with local teachers who speak slower and more clearly than in many places. Many of the classes are taught out...
Antigua
Antigua has always been the tourism capital of Guatemala, but since I was here 11 years ago, it has become more upscale and expensive compared to how I remember it. While there are many good locally-owned restaurants and cafes, they are unfortunately intermingled with a large number of American fast...
Livingston
Crossed the border from Belize to Guatemala in a small boat over choppy seas. The port of Livingston has more of a Caribbean/reggae vibe, different from most of Guatemala and more like coastal Belize, although mostly Spanish-speaking.
Punta Gorda
Enjoyed a peaceful stay in Punta Gorda, an authentic multiethnic small town and a lot less touristy than Placencia, probably because it lacks the white sand beaches. This is the end of the road in Belize, and the departure point for ferries to Guatemala. In this town, I learned about a new twist on...
Placencia
After many hours of riding in crowded and cramped repurposed old school buses (the only kind of bus I’ve seen in this country), I arrived again on the Caribbean coast. Placencia is at the end of a long, narrow spit of sand barely above sea level, and is a popular beach destination for Belizean and f...
San Ignacio
San Ignacio is a nice, relaxed small town in western Belize, considered the ecotourism center of the country. Lots of birds and birdsong in the air. On the bus to Belmopán, then on to San Ignacio, I passed a continuous series of billboards encouraging citizens to vote “yes” on an upcoming referendum...
Belmopan
Stayed at a farm and guesthouse in Agua Viva, near Belmopán, owned and operated by an expat couple from the US and Russia. They moved from the US in 2015, within a couple of months of when I moved. It was good to share stories and learn about their experiences and the challenges of life in their rur...
Belize City
I’m now back in Central America after almost 11 years, traveling from the Caribbean to the Pacific coast through Belize, Guatemala and southern Mexico. Belize was the only Central American country I hadn’t visited, so now I’ve been to all 7 of them, as well as to all 13 countries in South America. I...