Trip stories

Moving to the south of Belize

2012-01-10T07:29:00.000-08:00

Then I moved down towards the south of the country and entered a unknown to me territory called Stann Creek district. I was magnificent to me to get to see the mountains after so many years , in fact one year since I departed from the lovely hills of the coffee region in Colombia. It somehow reminded me of those days back in Colombia. As I went further down to the south of Belize I could sense and recognize that kind of nature so familiar to me to the right for there was the thick jungle with the kind of mountains and vegetation that grew up with but I felt yet unfamiliar with what I saw to the left, namely beautiful orange plantations, thousands of orange trees aligned up all over the fields. I didn't had the change to see many people at work since it was still time for the festivities of the end of the year and the beginning of the brand new one that had been waited for since long, long ago back in those years when the Mayans gazed at the sky and where able to foretell the future generations through generations and centuries throughout centuries ahead of time with no much aid than the cultivation of the spirit and the reverence, submission and respect to nature that was considered as our truly mother and father responsible for our protection and well being.

I haven't really spotted any particular Mayan ruin or temple so far but I would like to do so when the time is due and when the proper guidance appear.

I dropped my anchor down at Dangriga, found me a nice spot to stay and I'll stay until enchantment is over.

Orange Walk Town Belice

2012-01-04T08:32:00.000-08:00

After spending two months in Corozal I finally moved down to the next district called Orange Walk. I arrived at this town and went looking for a room to stay but distances where larger than in Corozal . My main purpose was to find me an affordable place to stay that would be a bit nicer than my last room in Corozal where I was paying $50 BZ per week.

I managed to find me a place in a village called San José del Palmar where I stayed for about 4 months, I joined religious communities and did some sales work. I offered SEO services to the local merchants but there wasn't much appreciation for the services.

Orange Walk seems to me like a peaceful place to be. There where nice disco's which I have not visited but will probably visit in the future.

It is nice to see people from so many different nations together living in one single community sharing different languages. I have heard English, Kriol, Spanish and even german down on the street. It is nice move along and be approached on the street in spanish by unknown persons. It makes me feel good for they recognize the spanish in me but it makes me also feel good when they speak to me in English for that acknowledges the English part in me.

The district is kind of safe but one should pay close attention to love relationships cause the most recurrent crimes are of the passionate kind.

Corozal Belize

2011-10-21T11:46:00.000-07:00

Llegué corozal en un dia como este. Había música que sonaba constantemente, la fuente estába encendida y los pajaritos jugueteaban con el agua mientras muchas personas estaban charlando sentados sobre las sillas del parque en krioll, inglés, español y aveces todos a la vez.

Fácilmente trabé amistad con varias personas, con algunos hablaba inglés y con otros en español. Todos muy amigables y un ambiente totalmente diferente al ambiente del cual venía de vivir en playa del carmen en Mexico. Aqui no habían restarantes de cadena, ni un Macdonals, burger king o Kentuky Fried Chicken, corozal parecía un pueblo perdido en el tiempo y en el espacio, como si fuese una realidad paralella.

Luego empecé a caminar por las calles del pueblo siguiendo mi propia intuición, sin preguntar a nadie cual sería una zona conveniente para visitar, simplemente me dejé llevar por mis sentidos y al ver este tipo de construcciones me sentí más seguro porque en ellas podía ver que en una zona costera como esta probablemente no habían azotado huracanes tan fuertes porque de lo contrario estas casitas ya no estarían.

Seguí caminando y mi mochila a la espalda por todas estas calles y me por el camino me encontraba con jovenes que me saludaban en kriol o en todo caso decían cosas que no podia entender, algunos muchachos llevaban armas de cacería que parecían reales y perseguían pajaros en medio del pueblo.

Luego pasé por una calle principal a unas dos manzanas del mar y desde ahi se podía apreciar el mar de un color verde intenso bajo un sol resplandeciente. Entonces supe que estába en el lugar preciso y el momento preciso del año.

Playa del Carmen - Belize en America Central

2011-10-21T11:28:00.000-07:00

Playa del carmen es un hermosos lugar en México, lleno de gente amigable, con turistas y locales soñadores y amantes de la buena vida. Mar playas, restaurantes, discotecas y vida nocturna todos los dias de la semana y del año. Un mar donde puedes apreciar al rededor de unos 7 colores todo en franjas como si fuece un arcoiris maritimo. Azul muy oscuro, mas claro, verde, y otro verde y otro azul, todo un espectaculo de colores que se puede apreciar desde la playa. Contrario a lo que se ve en la televisión sobre México, Playa del carmen es un lugar bastante seguro, con mucha precencia policial, en 6 meses de estancia no escuché disparos a vi situaciones de desorden publico. Todo era muy bonito pero era hora de partir, quería visitar un pais vecino pero aun no sabía cual, por un momento pensé en Guatemala pero cuando me detuve a mirar el mapa encontré que había un pais llamado Belice mucho más cerca de Mexico. Entonces decidí viajar a Belice. Busqué en internet indicaciones de como llegar a Belice desde playa del carmen por tierra y encontré un blog que me informó como hacerlo en plan económico. El truco consistía en llegar a Chetumal con el ADO o cualquier otra flota de buses y desde chetumal caminar a la plaza mayor que queda a unos 10 minutos a pie de la terminal de chetumal y desde ahi tomar el bus a belize que te cobra como unos 2 o tres dolares si te bajas en el primer pueblo de Belize llamado Corozal.

Belize es un pais muy pequeño ubicado en medio de paises que han disputado conflictos armados y disputan en la actualidad, como es el caso de Mexico en la actualidad y la guerra contra los narcos y el salvador y honduras que ahora se las ven con las maras.
Belize es un pequeño pais neutral, bilingue y multicultural que además es muy joven y un paraiso fiscal para muchos empresarios internacionales.
Su moneda es estable ya que esta equiparada con el dolar en un 50%, por un dolar estadounidense siempre obtienes 2 dolares belizeños. Este hecho y el hecho de que no existan ni hayan existido conflictos externos o internos lo convierten en un clima perfecto para la creación de compañias offshore.

Playa del carmen en mexico

2011-04-04T12:26:00.000-07:00

Playa del carmen es una preciosa playa de la riviera maya ubicada a tan solo 45 minutos de cancun. En playa del carmen hay fiesta todos los dias del año y sus playas estan frecuentadas por turistas de todas partes del mundo. El lugar es excelente para vivir, su clima caribeño es excelente y hay grand oferta hotelera para todos los gustos y precios.

Un excelente lugar para todos aquellos que quieran explorar los misterios mayas.

Pereira Colombia

2010-12-07T08:02:00.000-08:00

Pereira is the main city of the coffie region in Colombia.

A nice city with a nice weather , it rains a lot but it's not cold at all.

There are 4 big parks in the center that you can go visit.

-Parque de las banderas
-Parque de los lagos
-parque plaza bolivar
-parque de la libertad
-parque olaya

Parque de las banderas
This is a small park where people go play football and practice parkour.

Parque de los lagos
The parque de los lagos offers an water and music espectacle for all its visitors

Parque plaza bolivar
As in all south american cities, there has to be a plaza bolivar, this demarks the very center of the city.

Parque plaza de la libertad
This is a park where you can see much alcoholics and drogadicts, the mostly sit down and chill the whole day log

Parque olaya
The parque olaya is located nearby the gobernor office and has nothing special to show except for the ladies at the startdust.

Atacames in ecuador

2010-08-03T09:47:00.000-07:00

I was just about to leave but my counsin insisted that I could not leave without paying a visit to montañita and atacames.

So we went to Atacames for a day, not big deal, a very huge beach with a perfect temperature, the sun didn't show up for a single second but yet we could feel it's presence, it was just warm and wind blew just the way it has to blow.

My cousin and I had not other plan than chilling out on the beach and so we did, we spent a nice day just sleeping on the beach.

Vilcabamba a place to get younger

2010-07-31T13:36:00.000-07:00

Last week I went down to Loja and ended up in Vilcabamba, a place that has become very famous because of the longevity of its inhabitants.
I went to this place to find out what it was that made people live longer.

I've got my own theories:

Number one:

If you have notice the vilcabamba river is flat enough so you can see the botton at every meter of the river, that helps for the solarization of the water that takes place from 6 am when the sun sets up in the sky up until noon at about 6 pm whe the sun lives the village. Solarized water has proven to be benefical for the human beans als well as the light of the supreme master of fire, the sun.

Number two:

The fact that people believe that spending some time in this village will help is definetly important.

Number three:

The place is surrounded by nice piramids that helps to energy absorption from the cosmos..

Atacames in Ecuador

2010-07-31T13:31:00.001-07:00

Ecuador is a place where everybody should pay a visit at least for once in a livetime.
Nowadays you don't need other currency than the USD en everything is fair cheap down here.
Yesterday I went to visit atacame's beach nearby Esmeraldas, an afroamerican place near the border with Colombia.

The beach is really huge to walk it by, pretty clean and populated with people from Quito during this fase of the year.

The spanish language has it´s passion

2010-02-10T07:03:00.000-08:00

The spanish language carries passion within, the flamenco dancers, the bull fighters, it´s guitar players, it all carries an strange energy that the word itself makes you vibrate.

Here`s a nice article on learning spanish that I do recommend.
About learning spanish

Learning spanish game

The top 5 best hotel reputation in europe

2009-11-13T04:37:00.000-08:00

According to hotelprice comparator trivago, about 2,7 million hotelreviews and about 10.000 hotels in 50 european cities have being analized to come up with the conclusion that this are the top 5 quality places where you can find reasonable hotel accomodation for reasonable prices. Just keep in mind for the next holliday

1. Dresden - Duitsland

2. Brugge - Belgie

3. Bologna - Italie

4. Salzburg - Oostenrijk

5. Venetie - Italie

flight java

Guaduas cundinamarca Colombia odd city

2009-10-12T11:48:00.001-07:00

Guaduas cundinamarca is a small town but really really rare.
I first made contact with this town a couple of months ago. I had to bring my car from Bogotá to Ambalema and I didn´t know wich way to chose so I headed to Honda knowing that the town was reachable from there, a really vague way of travelling, I know but this is my way , what can I do about it, anyway, sometimes this particular way of making desicions brings me to the most amazing places and situations.
The thing was that I departed from Bogotá at midnight all on my own in an oldy car that could run into problems any time, plus the security thing in Colombia, you can´t just drive your car the direction you place anytime, you have to be carefull not to transit ways where there have being guerrillas and that kind of situations. None of this kind of problems happened except for the fuel that runned out, i poured some more en kept on heading to Honda.
It was about 3 in the morning when I arrived at Guaduas, I was a little bit tired so I decided to sleep there. I found an hotel with a parking place but to my surprise the hotel keeper insisted that it was no use at all to open de parking door, she said nothing will happen to your car I warrantie that. She sounded really convincing, my car has no lock working and one of the glasses was blown out, so no security at all. I was tired as I said and didn´t want to go through so much hassle so I collected some things and got into my room.

In my room I had to think about the past, José Celestino Mutis himself travelled this same path at the back of horses and on a ship first. The little I could see was much of a colonialism impression, really nice though as you can see you are in a especial place , a place with history in its surroundings, a place with an Identity.

I took a shower and got some sleep. When I awoked it was 10 am, I felt fit and wanted to continue with my trip, went out got into my car I watched over my shoulder and guess what I saw, there was my mobile phone that I´d forgotten in the car.
For a moment hope came into my mind and body about this country, dude! that was like being in Canada or Somewhere in the netherlands.

I continued my trip along Honda,Mariquita,San felipe till I got to Ambalema, the so popular Mutis route that I was visiting.

Today I got know things about Guaduas, It was pouring with rain yesterday and today people from all over the town claim to have found gold down on the streets,how come?.
There are pictures and films about this subject and that was on the news today.

Honda Tolima Colombia a city above water

2009-10-12T05:07:00.000-07:00

I had the opportunity to visit Honda yesterday due to the festivities being taking place.
The place is cool but it won´t be what it used to be cause there are winds of disaster blowing or let us say there are liquids of disaster flowing.
It seems that the place is crossed by many rivers that troughout the years have being draining earth and sand from below the city letting a huge whole that threats with sucking the whole town down.

Some are afraid of what might happen in the future and they already started selling their houses.
The place is nice tough, you should pay it a visit, one of the former presidents of colombia was born in this town.

The enchanted house in Ambalema

2009-10-10T15:15:00.000-07:00

Since a long time ago they say that there´s an enchanted house in Ambalema Tolima down in Colombia. It all began when the contractors left aside work due to noises en strange things they got to see.
I´m planning on going with a couple of friends to find out about this place, we want to see what´s in there with our own eyes.

articulos en linea

from Ibague to Neiva in 2 1/2 hour

2009-10-10T04:24:00.000-07:00

I went to Ibague, I wannted to see my grandmother but at the moment I arrived she was planning a trip to NEiva,her good girlfriend was really ill, at her 80 years, her heart was half functioning half malfuntioning.

So we hit the road, but only now I realized how big Colombia is and how nice it is to travell in this country, the road heading to Neiva was straight so you had the opportunity to speed and so I did on my way back.
I took me just 150 minutes from NEiva to Ibagué with an speed average of 130kmph.

I wish I can go back to pick up my grandmo.

guia ecologica

Live and work in spain

2009-04-23T18:03:00.001-07:00

My relationship with Spain is kind of bitter sour. I love it because of the fact that it is lovely to visit a place which is located thousands of miles from your home country and where people happen to speak your home language, but on the other hand the same fact makes it to me a less interesting thing because the farther you fly the different things your expect to see in regards to the culture. I was born in Colombia and I grew up with most of the things Spanish people grew up with. We also have bullfights in Colombia which by the I don´t like partially because the part where the bull beats the shit out of the bullfighter I like. Don´t you think they deserve it?. We Colombians eat a lot just like Spanish people do. There are though some things that are a bit different between this two cultures. For instance Colombians won´t argue verbally that long, they would inmediately react violently and not only verbally, they will actually hit first and let the arguing for later.
Strangely enough Colombians are softer and mannered when speaking, Colombians do ask for a favor no matter what the position of the asked person is. Colombians do show respect while Spanish won´t ask a favor of a waiter, they will demand whatever they want. A waiter in spain won´t go making a gentle conversation with you before hi asks you what you want, An spanish waiter will go directly to the point and will ask you with urgence what do you want or they say "Diga Diga" wich means speak up! speak up!.
Anyway, first I tought they where just rude and not well educated persons but now I realize that this is just a cultural thing.

How To Plan the Perfect Romantic Anniversary Getaway

hot summer time in platja d'aro Costabrava

2009-04-19T06:45:00.000-07:00

Summer 2008, the summer was hot down in Barcelona, really too hot. I went to Barcelona with a couple of friends to spend our holidays away from family job and school. We first found out about the camp sites in the Costa Brava where you can place a Caravan. Platja d´aro was the place we chose. That was the place with all the elements we where looking for. There´s a nudist spot, lots of dutch Disco's where you can go drink a liter beer for just one euro.

During the day we where to spend the day in the camp site with all the campers sipping pastis with a bounch of frech guys who where caravaning too. The nicest thing about getting drunk with those dudes at the campsite is that as soon as I got too much drunk then I could easily return to my motorhome crawling, it was just a couple of meters away. Next day we would laught about the day before and the things we did. A friend of mine got the word knaus tatooed in his faces. He got drunk en fell over the floor of the motorcaravan and inmediately fell asleep too with the sign knaus pressed onto his face.

Ecological tourism