Where in the World are the Bullivants?

After transferring through Mexico City, we arrived in Oaxaca, the home of the Day of the Dead festival (Dia de los Muertos).  On our first day there, we went for a wander into the city centre to reacquaint ourselves with Mexico.  We found that the city was substantially cleaner compared to the previous time that we had been there.  The protesters, who had taken over the main square, were gone.  We were looking for a meat market that we had eaten at on our previous visit, however, it was closed and I was sorely disappointed.  In general, we spent the day looking around the market and watching people assemble their impressive decorations and alters for the festival celebrations. Continue reading →

We have finally made it to Cuba, and we have to say – it is awesome here!!!  We have been told by a lot of people that we have met on the road to Cuba that it is expensive, hot, dirty, that nothing works, and our personal favourite that it is ‘frustratingly beautiful’.  We can understand the perspective, however, it is not any more or less ‘difficult’ to travel through than the rest of Central America. Continue reading →

It is time for another blog…It has been so long so I am a bit out of practice. Continue reading →

A bit of island life to ease us into the Panama leg of our travels.  Bocas del Toro (where we will end up being when we stop to learn Spanish) is a group of islands close to the Cost Rican boarder.  We drove for an hour to the border, took about half an hour to get through (and didn’t have to pay for a tourist visa for some unknown reason), drove for another hour and then took a water taxi to our island.  Knowing that we were coming back here, we were not in a hurry to complete all the possible activities.  Apart from looking around town and eating, I went snorkelling while Laurence had a rest day.  The beaches and islands were beautiful. Continue reading →

Our Turtle Conservation Project commenced with a briefing at the local headquarters in San Jose.  To other people, one from Germany and one from Wales, joined Laurence and I for the week.  Once the briefing was over, we were put in a taxi to the bus station.  Left to book the bus and head to our project location on the Pacific Coast some 3 hours away.  The tickets were easy, finding our bus was not.  Laurence took point and discovered where our bus was to arrive and kept lookout for it.  After being safely stowed on the bus, we endured the ride with no air conditioning and in our seats no window to open.  Partway through the ride Laurence changed seats to gain some much coveted wind and to give me some space so we were no longer touching each other.  The bus dropped us off in the middle of nowhere next to a dirt track.  Thankfully, one of the park rangers was there to pick us up and drive us to the accommodation and beach. Continue reading →

As we had just crossed over into Costa Rica (by foot!) we drove past a number of make-shift camps, full of people who looking tired and desperate.  We all started checking the news headlines to see who they were, and why they were camped there.  Turns out that we had just passed a refugee camp.  A number of people had come into Costa Rica by boat, they had been heading up towards America, but had been denied entry into Nicaragua.  They were stuck, they couldn’t go forward.  I am not sure what has happened to these people. Continue reading →

Our first stop in Nicaragua was Granada.  A nice small(ish) town near lake Nicaragua.  It was barely an hour before the majority of us piled into another van to head out to the Masaya Volcano for a night tour.  As we sped out of the city (and I do mean sped, it felt as if we were racing, the tension was building) we learnt that at the volcano entrance there is usually a long line of cars waiting to get in to take a look.  We needed to get there at precisely the right time – close enough to sunset so that it was dark when we got up there, but early enough that we were not at the back of the line and had to wait hours.  While we were waiting in line, slowing creeping up the side of the mountain we ordered pizza.  Thankfully they delivered, it had been a long day travelling and we were all starving.  Our timing was perfect, the pizza arrived as we were halfway through the line, we finished just before we were let into the National Park, and it was dark by the time we got up there. Continue reading →