SwiftRambles

Going home - Incheon Airport, Seoul, Korea

We finally came to the end of our trip.  We were excited to head home, but at the same time sad to end our journey - a mix of emotions for sure.  We said good-bye to our awesome bungalow and began our long journey back to San Francisco.  

Our itinerary was to take a boat to Lombok, get a shuttle bus to Senggigi to chill for lunch, get a ride to the airport, fly to Jakarta, fly to Seoul, Korea, and then fly to San Francisco.  The total travel time: 43 hours!  Amber was a proponent of breaking up the trip for a couple of days, but I wanted to maximize our island time and I made the plans.  

Learning to relax among an angry mob - Cairo, Egypt

I was looking forward to Thailand for at least a month: the food, the cheaper prices, the beaches, and the culture.  For our flight to Bangkok, we got to the Cairo airport nice and early (Amber and I have different travel styles when it comes to the airport: I like to get there early and relax and Amber likes to get to the airport so you have to run through the terminal and onto the plane) and got into the check-in line for Qatar Airways.  What airline was that? you ask.  Yes, I booked our cheap flight from Cairo to Bangkok on Qatar Airways (the tagline is "World's 5-star airline").  I was excited that our flight would actually fly through a stopover in Doha, Qatar's capital.  Well, truthfully, I had never heard of Qatar before the airline showed up on cheaptickets.com and I had to look up where the country was.  But after booking the flight, I was kind of hoping that maybe we would get delayed and have to stay in Qatar for a night, just to experience a new country.  Of course, these thoughts of a delay jinxed us...

Auspicious start in Patagonia - Isla Tierra Del Fuego, Argentina

After a 10 bus ride, we got to Ushuaia, the southern most city in the world.  We arrived late at night and immediately marched off into town trying to beat the other backpackers on the bus in the game of finding a hostel.  We hadn't gone 5 blocks when we realized that our brand new tent was not attached to my bag anymore.  I thought my bag was lighter, but just assumed it was my excitement of being in a new place that gave me more energy.  I hastily wanted to leave the bus station to secure a room before the rush of other travelers, but haste makes waste.  I ran back to where the bus dropped us off, but nothing was there, not even the bus.  My heart sank as I realized my blunder.  We had spent a good part of our traveling budget in order to be economical and I threw that plan out the window by losing the tent.  Since we arrived at the middle of the night, the ticket office was not open and the search for the tent or a new one would would have to begin the next day, a Sunday. 

Signpost in Ushuaia (no distance to San Francisco though):

Earthquake! - Santiago, Chile

We were no where near Chile when the massive earthquake occurred, but since we had not updated our blog it made sense that people were concerned with our welfare.  We will do our best to keep our itinerary updated so folks know where we are. 

We made the joint decision to make our way down to the south as soon as we could so that we could enjoy the fall months in Patagonia.  Because of this and the earthquake we decided to not check out Santiago and go directly to Punta Arenas.  This meant we had a long layover in the Santiago airport.  We didn't realize that even though flights were going in and out, that the airport was "closed".  The buildings must have sustained damage because the whole airport infrastructure was set up in large tents outside.  We ended up sleeping at the "airport", literally outside under the stars and then the sun, and using the porta-potties outside.  As we queued up for our flight, the lines were chaotic with people trying to get out of town, but we eventually got on our flight after a 12-hour layover.  Though I caught a cold/flu from the tough travel conditions, this doesn't really count as being affected by the earthquake compared to the local Chileans.  We later met a Chilean girl who had some friends killed in the earthquake as well as some fellow travelers who experienced the earthquake firsthand which definitely hit home that we were blessed to have missed the quake and were far south during the aftermath. 

We are feeling a little superstitious about earthquakes right now as it seems that they are occurring prior to our arrival in different countries/regions.  Quakes have hit Guatemala, Haiti (near Cuba), and Chile.   Let´s hope the ¨Big One¨ doesn´t hit California!

- Tom

A long way to Semuc Champey - Lanquin, Guatemala

Note: We are very behind in blog posts (about 3 countries!) and we're trying to catch up... We are in Patagonia, Chile now and are not feeling any of the earthquakes as we are so far down south.  We are safe and are planning some hiking/camping trips over the next month or so.  Sorry the following post is so long, as the quote goes, we don't have time to make it shorter :)

After waiting out our week in Xela, following Tom's hike, we headed north to the remote region of El Peten. Our goal was to visit the the lowlands and in particular Semuc Champey - a cave / river system that is strikingly beautiful. Although we knew it would take a long time to get there, the journey was more difficult than anticipated.

After getting up early for our 7:00am shuttle, we were still waiting by our hostel come 7:30. Tom was getting understandably anxious. Luckily an owner of one of the travel agencies strolling by noticed we were waiting and we figured out together that they did not have our reservation in the "system" (or lack thereof). It was interesting getting his perspective about running a travel agency in Guatemala and some of the labor issues he's experienced. He fixed our problem and 5 minutes later a shuttle arrived to pick us up. So we left Xela at 7:30am thinking happily we were on our way! However, multiple transfers and side trips later, not to mention a 2 hour "layover" in Antigua, caused us to arrive at our final destination at 11:00 at night.

We befriended an English couple on the shuttle bus and we decided to continue our journey on the shuttle with them to Lanquin instead of stopping in Coban (which is what we paid for). After many twisty turns, a stop to cover our backpacks on the roof from the rain, a long gravel road, and some really bad Spanish music blasting on the radio, we arrived late in Lanquin and our first choice for accommodations was full for the night. However, we were in for itluck! Our entrepreneurial shuttle bus drivers knew exactly where to take us: Jam Bamboo. The sales pitch for our accommodation began in Coban which we didn't realize. Someone mentioned staying at some random place and Tom said yeah maybe just to get the person to leave him alone. Then he noticed the same gentleman riding along in our shuttle bus. We could foresee that we would likely have to go where our drivers took us and that they were going to get a kickback for taking us there, but we were powerless to stop the well-oiled machine. So another 20 minutes down a gravel road, we ended up at Jam Bamboo, but lo and behold, it was full also.

Killing time in Xela - Queztaltenango, Guatemala

We left the lake for the mountains and I was excited to try and climb the highest point in Central America, Volcano Tajulmulco. So we headed to the second largest city in Guatemala, Quetzaltenango, called Xela for short (thankfully!). I researched the costs for the guided climb and the cheapest, most safe (English speaking guides), and most philanthropic tour operator only does overnight tours on Saturdays (more on the hike in a future post). As we arrived on a Sunday, this meant we had a week to kill in Xela.

In fact, we arrived on Super Bowl Sunday.  As we had an unexpectedly tough travel day (we had to take 3 chicken buses and a cab to arrive in Xela, and we have never been on a bus so crowded, I was literally standing in the stairwell of the bus with the door open careening around mountain passes - it was scary!), we deserved some beer and football.  We headed to a bar simply called "Pool and Beer" to watch the Super Bowl en espanol.  I got to enjoy an IPA for the first time since setting off on the Big Trip and it was good!  Brewed by a friend of the bartender, it felt well-deserved after a tough travel day.  After attempting to ignore the Spanish, we actually felt very American for a while and it was a nice change of pace.

Checking out the Super Bowl while drinking a beer:

Costa Rica At-A-Glance

Transportation taken: Planes= 4, Buses = 10, Taxis = 9, Boats = 4

Number of places we stayed: 6

Final daily budget (not including 5 nights of hotel/food in Drake's Bay we prepaid for back when we were working): $112

Wildlife spotted: Humpback whale, all four monkey species in Costa Rica (white-faced, spider, squirrel, and howler), racoons, kinkajou, olingo, three-toed sloth, grey fox, coati, agouti, toucan, scarlet macaw, resplendant quetzal, taruntula, many other bugs and spiders, many frogs, many other birds (including hummingbirds), and many crabs

Beers tried:

- Imperial (Amber's favorite)

- Pilsen (Tom's favorite, higher alc %)

- Bavaria Dark (Yummy)

- Rock Ice w/ Lime (Not good)

Tours taken:

- White water rafting, Toro River, La Fortuna

- Selvatura Zip Lines and Hanging Bridges, Santa Elena

- Ranario (Frog Pond), Santa Elena

- Guided walk, Montevedre Cloud Forest

- Night hike, near Montevedre Cloud Forest

- Snorkeling Cano Island, Osa Penisula

- Tracy the bug lady, Drake's Bay, Osa Peninsula

- Sirena Ranger Station, Corcovado National Park, Osa Peninsula

Most Touristy Activity: Canopy Tour + Hanging Bridges Walk

Least Touristy Activity: Walking 5km to the locals' beach to the Whale Tail in Uvita

Amber's favorite memory: Being dropped off via boat at San Josecito Beach, near Drake's Bay, Osa Peninsula and seeing a large Scarlet Macaw in the tree we decided to sit under.

Tom's favorite memory: Going to the beach in Manual Antonio National Park after seeing monkeys on the hiking trail. The water was a perfect temperature and calm and there were plenty of trees offering shady spots to sit and relax.

Here is a link to some short videos we took in Costa Rica. 

Guidebooks didn't scare us away from experiencing Tico life

We left our condo at 5:15pm Wed and arrived at our lodge at 9pm (Central Time) Thurs. (While on the bus to Fortuna, Tired Amber: "We have been traveling for over 24 hours." Tired Tom: "We are going to be traveling for 9 months, get used to it.") In between we rode three planes, two cabs and two public buses. Our flight was delayed which messed up our original plan (two planes, one pre-arranged door to door shuttle bus), so we had to improvise when we arrived in San Jose, Costa Rica. We read stories that tourists were taken advantage of at the airport (taken to cab driver's hotel for a payoff) and on the local buses (luggage gets mysteriously picked up by someone else before your stop). We were a little apprehensive when we got to customs, knowing that on the other side awaited touts and taxi drivers working for local hotels.

Above: Photo of volcano we saw from the plane.

Costa Rica Here We Come, almost...

Rather than sleeping on a red-eye waking up in Costa Rica, we ended up sleeping on the floor at the Denver Airport (for 2.5 hours). Who knew we'd use so much of our gear so quickly?

Bad weather in other parts of the US delayed our flight enough to miss our connecting flight. We were re-routed on another flight to Costa Rica via Houston on a different airline. I am writing this as we fly to San Jose, Costa Rica. On top of missing our shuttle connection to our hotel 3 hours away (which it looks like we'll have to pay for), we are uncertain of how we will get to our hotel in La Fortuna, as all buses seem to stop running by early afternoon. Our trip might not be off on the most auspicious beginning, but we're looking at this as our first real test as travellers. Wish us luck as we need to negotiate a 3 hour ride to our hotel (hopefully without getting ripped off) and neither of us speak a lick of Spanish.

-Tom

PS: We used the public bus system once we arrived...an upcoming post.