Poops Heading South: January 2007

9 jours à bord de Poop's

Quelle chance avons-nous eu de passer 9 jours en compagnie de Poop's et son
équipage! Marsha et Sylvain sont vraiment des hôtes incroyables. Ils sont
venus nous chercher à l'aéroport, petits sandwichs dans le parking et bières
pour la route, spécial de Bryan!

Voici quelques photos pour vous faire vivre, en partie, notre passage au
Mexique. Enjoy the show!

16. Cultural experience part III Who wants some ribs?

02. hmmm, de bons tacos faits maison sous la surveillance de nombreuses
mouches et même, d'une poule stressée qui se promenait dans le resto...

03. Amelie prepares Marsha's recipe; avocado, onion, tomato & lime.
Somebody have white pepper?

04. Take a number, shower time!

05. La mer, belle et puissante!

06. Souper à saveur locale, arrosé de Corona et accompagné d'un superbe Turcotte smile.

07. Seul sur le sable, les yeux dans l'eau, mon rêve était trop beau...
*** editor note: what a camera poser!!!!

08. Cultural experience part II

09. Our camp site (from the back) with the watch dog

10. Méchant bon deal; 9 pour 1!

11. Dj Surf en action!

12. Should I say something... Westfalia style
*** editor note: yes you should say something! this T class, not westfalia class! the hair from his hair cut... nevermind

13. Tout nu sur la plage, j'étais tout nu sur la plage...

14. Marsha on her board at the end of a wave

15. Amelie dans le feu de l'action (signé Pablo Photo)

01. En route pour une expérience culturellement différente!

El Remate, Guatemala

These are some pictures from our place by the lake in El Remate. So beautiful! Pierre-Luc, this reminded me a lot of one of your pictures in the play. the orangy mekong river scene...

so, we stayed for two days here. now we are in rio dulce, about 3 hours south. we are headed to some hot spring waterfalls... time to shower!!!

a la prochaine!

happy hour on our private dock

tres beau - eau! great french rhyme

the mekong shot - hmmm... it isn't as dark on our camera. there is a fisherman in a boat in the centre!

El Peten, Guatemala

Well, we are now in Guatemala!

The border crossing was amazingly simple. sign out of our belizian passport stamp, pay an ecology fee, get a stamp for guatemala, pay a fee, sign our car into guatemala, get a nice sticker, and get fumigated - the car, not us. and we are in!

the roads were again pretty bad, but mostly just muddy and slippery. again, an amazing 14 miles took only an hour this time!

we went into santa elena, the largest town nearby and stocked up on groceries, gas and money. money was hard, we went to almost 5 bank machines until we found one that would give us money! turns out that guatemala was having a currency deficiency over christmas. the money is so old that you can barely see any numbers or writing on it - so they destroy a bunch of bills. which they did before christmas, but forgot to re-order new bills! so there was a huge currency deficiency over the holidays, one that they are just now recovering from! can you imagine that happening at home?!

anyways, we were off to tikal, the largest mayan ruins. pretty crazy how large the buildings are. on one of them, i started having a panic attack - which is weird, because i have no fear of heights. it wasn't fun at all!!!

we camped in el remate, near a large lake. we parked outside the national park, just by the water. howler monkeys "serenaded" us during the night!

guatemala traffic just after the border

even the horses love soccer!

temple lunch break

tikal temple - look how HUGE it is!

hidden still under the earth

i am not sure why i was freaked out...

the standard tikal shot

Belize

!

well, we headed to belize. turns out we only spent 4 days there. and a lot of money! turns out the things we enjoy doing, ie beer and internet, are quite expensive here! we had a funny feeling about hte country as well. didn't quite jive with what we were in to. so... off we went! we tried to go and hang out in this national pine tree park, as there are hikes and waterfalls etc in the park. however, the roads were HORRIFIC. in 4 hours we went 16 miles!!! and, we didn't even get to see anything. other than monster pot holes.

at one point, sylvain asked me, amidst all the rain, mud and enormous pot holes "are we doing something stupid with our van right now?" it was an excellent question, as the journey was starting to feel extremely reminiscent of a trip we did with hans and amelie near whistler... one in which we lost our exhaust system in a creek!

so, we turned around. we picked up two local people and gave them a bumpy, slow ride into town. on the way, i saw something leaving the road into the ditch... the guy in the back said it was a boa constrictor! his mom was like, ooooh it's a big one! AND IT WAS!! HUGE!!!! and it was in the wild, doing it's own thing, we weren't on a tour to see boas... tres cool. still confirms that i do not like snakes too much!

our only pics from belize are of the bad roads, however, they don't look that bad in the pictures. trust us and trust our dirt road experience - these were the worst roads we have driven on!!

Yucatan, Mexico

hola amigos! here are some pics from our yucatan, mexico portion. we have a lot of pictures, so there is less talk in the next bunch of blog entries! we had fun!! we went to a little explored mayan ruin, slept in the jungle, saw massive tarantulas on the road, got ripped off for gas on the way to the beach... made it to the white sand beaches and turquoise waters that make up the yucatan- to find it incredibly windy! way too touristy for us now, so after a few tough days of sleeping at the beach, we headed south!!

mayan ruins... still covered by earth

l'homme et sa jungle...

l'homme et sa douche

l'homme et son snorkel...

view from poops side door in tulum, mexico

tulum ruins that sylvain snuck into... note the lizard in the right hand corner

on the way out

hola

well we are heading out of mexico right now. heading to belize. stuff to check off the list is fill the gas tank, fill the propane tank, check the battery, tire rotation and an alignment. then we are taking it easy belizian style!

we have been in the yucatan for the last almost week. surprisingly, it has been crazily windy. too windy to chill on the beach - to be honest! actually, when we were driving to tulum we saw the beginnings of three little twisters in the clouds. i took pictures, which we will place online. you will have to examine them VERY carefully to see what we actually took a picture of!

but all that aside, we are good. saw a jungle, hung out in private mayan ruins, slept in the jungle, almost died of excessive heat in the van one night ( the phrase ¨don´t touch me¨ is said every single night... you can´t imagine how sticky and stagnant the air in the van is during a night without a breeze!) we swam in the caribbean sea, although it was too windy for us to snorkel, sylvain did finally replace his snorkel mask. MUCH to my happiness, because he has finally stopped whining about losing his precious ¨snorkel bob¨(snorkel mask strap given to him by snorkel bob in hawaii...). it is definitely worth the ten bucks to finally hear an end to that complaining!

ummm... we are in a little town right now. just about an hour from the belize border. tomorrow we run some errands, and then hit another adventure!

if there is one thing that i have learned about our little adventure right now, is that it is not an adventure at all. everyone we have met is driving down to panama. so, in all that, sylvain and i have finally made the decision - WE are driving to panama too! why not? por que no??? pour quoi pas???

well, more pics next time. they are in the van, and honestly, we are too tired to go and get them.

a la prochaine!

Palenque, Chiapas

Well, now we are in Palenque. Beautiful Mayan ruins. After leaving San Cristobal we made our way along a slow slow road. We finally decided to pull out in a little town instead of driving all the way to Palenque. 200 kms takes a long time here.

But we were lucky in our overnight spot. We made it to the Tonina ruins, which were a lot of fun. We could climb over all the buildings and go through the ¨secret¨passages and down fun staircases. We camped just outside the ruins entrance in a beautiful, empty campground! We had the place to ourselves!

So we were still sick, trying to get better. Made it to Palenque. Poor Sylvain´s cough seems to have gotten much worse - it is painful to listen to him, so I can´t imagine what it must feel like!
Palenque was beautiful. We made it there for the opening, and then rushed to find a temple that wasn´t invaded by the bus loads of tourists that were arriving. The reward was having our van prepped latte on top of an isolated temple in the middle of the jungle! tres cool.

We finally got to hear the howler monkeys again. Didn´t see them though. next time!
we have seen some strange road kill while driving. cows, horses, lots of dogs, a possum, tarantulas (yes hans, i don´t know the exact species name, but the family should work), goats, skunks and chickens!

sylvain is still really sick with a nasty cough and this morning i woke up with a sore throat. we are a bit worried that the sickness cycle is going to continue for another round... and yes mom, now that we can eat (no appetite before) we are eating very healthily (is that a word??) anyways, lots of fruit, veggies and good stuff.

next we are heading to a remote jungle area. i want to see a protected jungle! apparently there are a lot less tourists there as it is about 60kms off the main hwy and no bus service. we will see! it is about 500kms to get there - any guesses on how long it will take!?!

sylvain turned for a second and our little gato helped himself to his breakfast!

mexican road construction

tonina ruins - 8 levels!

sylvain is happy - he found some stairs!

morning latte on the ruins

palenque temple of the inscriptions - the standard palenque shot...

San Cristobal, Chiapas

so we are now in san cristobal, chiapas. it looks really nice, but both of us are sick so our appreciation has been decreased a bit. tomorrow we will be in top shape! here are some pics of our last week. the first one is from when we drove through the narrowest part of mexico and the most windy. we actually thought our roof was going to pop open! as it was, we lost some stuff that was attached to the roof! very scary. we didn´t realize exactly how scary it could have been until we saw a semi truck blown over on the side of the highway...

frickin nuts

sylvain learning how to climb trees

first night sick in the van and we happen upon the ¨most extraordinary festival in mexico¨... we left to sleep in a gas station - toilet access!

sorry these are sideways, but too much effort to translate from spanish how to adjust the pics... i like these pictures, because this one shows me smiling, and the next one shows how i really felt!!!

a little gato seems to have adopted sylvain!

the little cat acts like a kena re-incarnate! he rolls over when he wants to be petted and whines all the rest of the time!! don´t worry, we did a ¨flea check¨before he was allowed in poops! he is soooo cute!

Oaxaca coast

hola - quick little update. nothing too fancy as we are both sick and this is all the energy we can muster. besides, hans drouin is going to add some comments on their vacation with poops shortly... i am sure it will be more colourful than anything we could write at this moment!

in brief - we spent the last two weeks around puerto escondido with hans, amelie and bryan. good times... broke the budget every day and we are both sick now. whew!