Day to Day

Got sent this on a Friday evening by Rob and thought I'd share it...

Link: http://www.shopsins.com/

Went here for breakfast with Shawn in NY and thought it was worth a mention. Check out the menu (pdf) here.

Aoife had the Sneaky Pete, Shaun had Peanut Butter and Chocolate Pancakes, and I had a Shirley

We are finding it SERIOUSLY difficult to get on any computers in the US for any length of time but I have managed to get some photos up to keep us going! Enjoy

Hollywood and Chicago photos and details of all our encounters with the stars (including our visit to the Playboy Mansion) to follow!

Been a mad two and a half weeks! Apologies for the lack of posts but it has been really hard to get near a computer!! Since our last post we´ve done a weeks Spanish lessons (helped a lot!), won a table quiz (hurray - at last!), experienced an earthquake (a tiny one... although reports said it was about 5.0 on the scale.. nothing fell off our table so we were terribly disappointed), climbed an active volcano (not at the same time - don´t worry! ), surfed in El Salvador and Nicaragua, swam in a lake in a volcanic crater (cooooool), and we are now living with 3 people we met in Antigua / El Salvador (Shawn, CJ and Claire, just for the record) in a house by the beach in San Juan Del Sur (Nicaragua) for a few days!

Phew! We will flesh all this out in another post in a few days but its going to be a long post and we have no time - must get back to beach house

Take care

Tadhg & Aoife

Just a few photos....

Halloween was a fun night - we didn't manage to get dressed up though due to our VERY limited wardrobe options With great difficulty we managed to drag ourselves out of bed in time to catch "The Hokey Pokey Water Taxi" (great name!) to Mango Creek. From there we caught a bus (see photo) to Belmopan (Capital City of Belize - though city might be generous), and then switched to a bus to San Ignacio (otherwise known as Cayo). Phew! When we got off the bus (probably looking a bit shellshocked) we were approached by a well dressed, well spoken, young man offering his assistance. Usually "Can I be of assistance" (spoken in good english) = "We should get the hell away from this before he rips us off", but Belize being the very friendly place that it is means that we took him up on his offer. Just seems like people are really nice and aren't bothered ripping you off here. Would probably get in the way of their Lilt lifestyle.

Next day we ran in to an English guy we'd met on the bus to Placencia (Richie), and he convinced us to go on a tour of nearby caves and waterfalls the following day with him and what few other backpackers could be scraped together in San Ignacio. Turned out to be a fun day - a bit of swimming by some waterfalls and a bit of a walk around a cavern. Wasn't the best tour ever but we had a good group which made all the difference.

The next day we did another tour (pretty impossible to do anything in Belize without doing a tour) - Actun Tunichil Muknal (ATM for short). It was recommended to us as one of the highlights of Belize and they were right. ATM is a cave system that was used for Mayan rituals and sacrifices. The tour consisted of a 40 min walk through jungle (crossing a few rivers on the way), a short swim into the caves, and then a guided tour through the various passages (lots of wee bits of swimming and climbing through crevices) until we got to the main cavern where all the pottery and skulls etc. were kept. We had to take off our shoes and pad around in socks so as not to damage anything. It was all very cool - lots of very gory details on the whole sacrifice business (you did not want to get captured by the Mayans!) and plenty of skulls and bones, and a massive spider to boot (people from Australia wouldn't be impressed but it's the biggest one we've encountered). Highly recommended!! We came out of it all feeling very Indiana Jones.

Yesterday we said goodbye to Belize and made our way to the border with Guatemala. Big difference once we crossed the border! We're not judging the whole country on this but the first person we met was a total scam artist! He was trying to convince us to catch a collectivo (minibus type affair where they pick up and drop off people wherever they want on the way to the final destination) with him to Flores but was trying to charge us 3 times the going rate for it. He followed us around for AGES, totally ignoring the none too subtle signs of hostility towards him. He even followed us from about 10 metres back for 5 mins before deciding to have another bite at the cherry! His story changed every 20 seconds! In the end another collectivo turned up and we hopped on - much to his disgust

We arrived in Flores yesterday evening and got ourselves set up in the very basic, and very cheap Hotel Itza II (so good they made another one..).

Today we went to Tikal - what seems to be the Rolls Royce of Mayan ruins It was a great experience - up there with The Great Wall and Machu Picchu. Lots of massive stone pyramids in the middle of the jungle with a backing soundtrack of howler monkeys and toucans. Cool. The photos say it all we suppose.

Tomorrow we are moving on from Flores (hopefully) to Coban and then onwards to Antigua.

Hoping everyone is keeping well,

Tadhg & Aoife