Rainfest 2008

Hello there everyone (or those who are still interested).

As you may have guessed from the title it is raining quite a lot. Blame omar. Tropical storm cum nemesis. He has put the carbosh on many of my plans of late and I am starting to grow quite tired of his tomfoolery.

Kate and I left Antigua on friday in order to visit the caves and waterfalls of Semuc Champey and Lanquin, in Guatemala's middle/north. So we caught a bus at 5 to get there at 1 in the afternoon. When we found out that the caves and the falls were closed BECAUSE OF OMAR, we thought it mildly annoying but nothing to get too upset about. After all, we could just get a bus to Flores to go and see tikal the next day. So we did. Only the trip took a bit longer than expected because the road was flooded and cars couldn't pass. Meaning we had to wait for the bus coming the other direction to come to the same conclusion as us (ie that trying was impossible and that maybe we should all just swap buses on the opposite sides of the river thingy), then cross the river refugee styles with our bags on and our shoes off and our pants looking decidedly like those seen on an afl field. Quite fun really. That and the cold lasagne given us by some lovely guatemalan ladies and the encounter with the french people who had driven their caravan from france to cape town then caught a barge type thing with it to south america and then driven as far as guatemala and we had quite an interesting few hours. Just to add a bit of spice there was also the addition of the always painful gang of israelis in our bus. Fun times.

Oh, the other bit about Lanquin: when we arrived into town there was a large crowd of folks milling around the court house and the police station. Weird. Only when we got down to the place we were staying we found out the real reason: a group of five men had held up a car (we think) and somehow managed to get away with about 10 grand equivalent in aussie dollars, and then three of the guys of the five had been caught. So, the lovely folk were standing around waiting to get their hands on them to beat, lynch and burn them. Which they did to at least one. Grisly. So, needless to say the last fw days have been quite an insight into the place and what can go on. I can´t imagine the frustration some of these people must have with thieves and others who are making their country such a dangerous place to live, because for the most part the people are quite lovely, yet if you read the newspapers the first five pages or so are filled EVERY DAY with stories of murder, rape and robberies. And this isn't just in the capital. It kind of is shocking to sometimes be snapped out of our friendly happy tourist bubble by the things that occur around us and realise just what is actually going on.

But enough about that. The rain, it seems, has made a decision for me. Tomorrow night I was going to have to decide whether to go into mexico north west to San Cristobal or North east via belize and up to the beaches immediately. But, the rain has blocked all roads into belize. So, north west here I come! Kate heads off home on tuesday, so we will need to have a super excellent day tomorrow at the ruins. Hopefully the rain won't put too much of a dampener on things at the site and will encourage the animals to be a bit more forthcoming. Not the jaguars though, if they could perhaps remain in the jungle and not eating me then that qould be perfect.

Alright then! I think I'm done for now, if anyone has any travelling suggestions for southern mexico then please let me know (it won't surprise you to hear dear reader that I haven't really done any research into it the area yet- I'm sure there'll be heaps for me to find up there). Otherwise, next time I will be speaking to you my hat will be considerably larger and I will be strongly considering trimming my beard to a mexican style moustache.

Brandon