Final Photo Album – Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and HOME!
It’s been a while since I put any albums on the internet. Here is the final article of my blog, a selection of photos of my trip from Mexico, back through Guatemala and Honduras to Nicaragua, and then the last bits of my journey home to England.
Don’t forget you can click directly on the photo to see a larger version of it.
A colourful markets nestled in the shade of a beautiful church in San Cristobal, the town I spent most time in in Mexico
The Sumidero Canyon, Chiapas – boat trips along the river of the canyon are a very popular tourist activity in Mexico
Among bags and clothes in Oaxacan markets you also find Chapulin – spicy deep fried grasshoppers!
The Santo Domingo church and cultural centre in the baking hot and dusty Mexican state capital Oaxaca
Hitch-hiking methods in Mexico – “I’m not an American!” (just in case)
This striking jade covered skull is among the relics discovered in Oaxaca and displayed in their cultural centre
Puebla was one of my favourite Mexican cities – their huge cathedral is the most impressive I saw in Latin America
Old Mexico City – the massive central square and cathedral, opposite this is the parliament
And ultra-modern Mexico City – one of the few Mesoamerican places I saw gleaming modern skyscrapers like this
After Mexico I went on to Guatemala, a beautiful country with a little more tourism than much of Central America. Many people visit Lake Atitlan and climb Volcano San Pedro, offering a stunning view
Antigua is possibly the most beautiful city in Central America, beautiful and well preserved old streets looked over by 2 great (and active) volcanos
Antigua was one of the original capitals of Guatemala (in fact of all pre-independence Central America), but was abandoned after several earthquakes. It is dotted with stunning ruins of pre-abandonment churches, and their crumbling state only magnifies their beauty
The fountain in the Merced church convent, a survivor of Antigua’s history of earthquakes
Just over the border from Guatemala is Honduras’ biggest tourist destinations, Copan ruins, a very well developed Mayan city with the most remarkable carvings of all Mayan ruins
The Ceiba tree – the huge branches of this tree hold up the roof of the Mayan world, which can be believed from this one at Copan
Copan’s most famous artefact is the “hieroglyphic stairway” – each of its 62 steps carries part of the story of the city’s rulers, the longest Mayan hieroglyhic record. But unfortunately the order of the glyphs is still being worked out as the stairway collapsed hundreds of years ago
Copan also has a very good museum including a full-size reconstruction of the “Margarita Tomb” buried under the main Copan buildings
A macaw breeding program at Copan is now in its late stages, with these incredible, massive and vivid red birds now reintroduced to the grounds
The first ENCA link I followed in Honduras was CAM in Campamento
Campamento is in the Honduran state of Olancho, a dry but fairly cool area covered in forests that CAM is struggling to protect from illegal logging
Tela, one of the centres of the Honduran Garifuna and OFRANEH, also had one of the most beautiful and tropical beaches I saw in the region – making it a target for the tourism developers that OFRANEH are fighting
Alfredo Lopez organised my visit to OFRANEH and also invited me to a couple of interviews on their community’s “Sweet Coconut” radio
Near Tela I visited the Jeannette Kawas national park with Fundación PROLANSATE who established and now protect its natural park status
From the boat PROLANSATE used to show us the national park, we could see the protected mangrove forests, whose branches merge into roots as they anchor themselves on the water edge
In many hours of motorway travel in the North of Honduras the view shows the same vast African palm plantations, which are increasingly pushing out smaller scale agriculture and eradicating natural ecosystems
Between visiting ENCA contacts in Honduras I found myself 3 days in Trujillo, the last easily-accessible town along the coast before the Mosquitia, and a great place to relax
Most of my time in Trujillo was spent on and around this pier, in order to practice diving in a sea made blissfully smooth by the natural bay that encloses Trujillo
One of my favourite bits of graffiti in Central America – “No more Violence” one of many commissioned pieces in Estelí, the first city I came to on my return to Nicaragua
After Estelí I visited Matagalpa, a city protected from the Nicaraguan heat by the cool mountains it sits in, giving it an almost English climate
Matagalpa´s cooler climate makes it a perfect place for walking, through the lush green hills surrounding the city
Matagalpa is also the birth place of celebrated revolutionary Carlos Fonseca, who was among those who formed the FSLN to fight the Somoza dictatorship across the 60s and 70s before his assassination in 1976
On one of the volcano walks I did on my return trip to Nicaragua I finally saw something I had been hoping to see since my original arrival in November – an actual tarantula
Returning to the Clinica Xochil one thing I helped with was a father’s day event “for a responsible fatherhood”, to promote the clinic’s new site
Another crucial achievment on my return to El Viejo was organising 2 weeks shadowing of doctors in the Chinandega general hospital, much of it in the emergency department
One of Nicaragua’s biggest back-packer activities is volcano boarding down the ash scree slope of the young – and active – Cerro Negro volcano
And another big volcano draw is Volcan Telica – after many hours walking you come to the summit with its massive precipitous crater, at the bottom of which we could just see the lava
The lava in the Telica crater is obscured much of the time by sulfurous steam that bubbles out of it
At the foot of Telica the mud boils and steams at the Jacinto vents – the area already has an important geothermal energy plant and great potential for further geothermal development
Another very popular city in Nicaragua is the beautiful Granada, probably the most attractive city in the country
After Nicaragua, I had a very short visit to Costa Rica on the way to board my cargo ship back to Europe – passing through the capital San Jose where I had 1 night to walk around and see sights such as the National Theatre, here
From Puerto Limón, Costa Rica, I took another cargo ship, the HS Schubert, to return to Europe – a 14 day return journey
The HS Schubert visited Kingston on the way home, and this time had the chance to visit the Bob Marley Museum – in the well-muraled house he lived in after getting famous
The HS Schubert arrived in Europe in Rotterdam, after which I had a day in each of Rotterdam and Brussels on the way home – here I am in front of the modern Erasmus bridge in Rotterdam
The journey from Rotterdam to London was another opportunity to couchsurf and hitch-hike. I wanted to revisit this kind of travel as I’d had such a good time the first time back in 2012, and was not disappointed. This guy, Brice, gave me a lift from Rotterdam to Antwerp, discussing all the while his life and views
nd back home! After a ferry from Calais to Dover and then a final hitched lift to Greenwich, London, where I took the train through Waterloo station (shown here) to my brother’s London house
