David Gualtieri's Central American Vacation
November 15th - December 5th, 2008
November 15th - December 5th, 2008
Introduction
In 2007 I didn't take a foreign vacation. I'm not sure the reason I didn't make plans. It might have been that I was completely satiated from my three month trip in Africa in 2006. Maybe I thought that I couldn't achieve that level of vacation nirvana again. But now the end of 2008 was approaching, and I was in a situation at work that if I didn't use my vacation time, I would lose it. I drew up a list of destinations around the globe I wanted to visit - over a dozen - and set to get an idea of the current prices. I dialed up Expedia.com on the internet, put in a tentative schedule and was presented with a price for airplane tickets. In all cases the price was over $1200 US and in some cases almost $2000. (This was during the height of the 2008 energy crisis and all the airlines were feeling the effects.)
I resigned myself to a "stay-cation" for 2008 to just hang out in the Seattle area for a few weeks and enjoy not going to work. I was also feeling poor due to the 2008 economic collapse and not feeling like spending much for a trip.
At the last minute I had an idea for a destination - Belize, Central America. What would that airfare be? Expedia told me - roundtrip from Seattle would be $380. For 6 1/2 hour of flying each way, I thought this was a good deal. I grabbed this ticket and was on my way in less than three weeks.
The Trip
In mid-November I flew from Seattle through Houston, Texas to Belize City. After a few days in Belize City, I took a bus to Tikal, Guatemala. I stayed in the small city of Flores. I visited the Tikal Mayan ruins, then took a bus to Copan, Honduras. After visiting the Mayan ruins of Copan, I took a small bus to Antigua, Guatemala. I explored this small city for a few days and then got an airplane flight back to Flores, Guatemala. I found a tour bus back to Belize City and then started the island vacation portion of my trip. A 45 minute boat ride took me from Belize City to Caye Caulker and I stayed there for 4 days. From there I moved further north on the island chain to Ambergris Caye and stayed in the small city of San Pedro for 4 days. It was an hour and a half boat ride back to Belize City to prepare for my flight back to Seattle.
This wasn't one of my favorite trips because I got sick half-way through and had to shorten my stay in Guatemala.
The Web
Like all my other web adventures on my site, getting this experience down in print required me to recall all the details, schedules, highlights and lowlights of the trip. It was a chore, and required further research on what I had seen, but in the end it was like taking the vacation a second time. I enjoyed the memories and hope you enjoy reading the trip description and seeing the photos..
The trip descriptioin begins in Belize City.
