January

We spend the month of January rushing through Mexico from Puebla to Oaxaca, to San Cristobal and Palenque, and finally to and through the Yucatan. January was the month of Zapotec and Maya wonders: Monte Alban, Palenque, Uxmal, Chichen Itza, Tulum. And many more, smaller and less well-known but nonetheless fascinating like Xochicalco with its amazingly well-preserved frescoes.

Our Ford Escort gives us problems. We have long had overheating episodes and they are getting worse, but an attempt to fix them in Oaxaca is a signal failure.

February

Finally, we leave Mexico and cross the border into Belize. Such a sad place in such a beautiful setting. We find two places we enjoy: the beach at Plaisance and the friendly Hi Et guesthouse in the breezy sunshine of San Ignacio. But it is time to move across another border and with some trepidation, we cross the border from Belize into Guatemala in time to celebrate Gerry's 62nd birthday near the magnificent Mayan city of Tikal. It is a high point in more ways than one as we climb to the top of a partly restored temple and while listening to howler monkeys catch sight of a toucan.

March

We spend the first part of March completing our tour of Guatemala spending time at Lake Atitlan, the wonderful colonial town of Antigua with its ruined churches and courtyard houses. We sail down the Rio Dulce to the Caribbean and through banana fields to the statues of Quirigua before saluting the Black Christ of Esquipulas on our way across the border to Honduras. In Honduras we continue our acquaintance with the cities of the Maya in Copan Ruinas and Las Sepulturas then drive up into the mountains to the lovely small town of Gracias. But time is awasting so on we push to Lake Yojoa and on to Tegucigalpa Comayagua and ultimately the border with Nicaragua.

April

We spend most of the month in Nicaragua, land of the Sandinistas. We spend Palm Sunday in the northern city of Leon and Easter Sunday in Leon's historic rival, the city of Grenada. Neither comes close to Antigua, Guatemala in charm, but the ingredients for a tourist explosion are certainly there. We bake in the heat of Managua but are comfortable in the Orschel guesthouse and happily take advantage of a modern cinema in a western-style shopping mall. Further south we enjoy a few days on the island of Ometepe in spite of the bone-jarring ride from the ferry terminal to ??? It is only 16 kilometers but takes us an hour and a half.

May

Costa Rica certainly deserves its name (Rich coast) by comparison with Nicaragua. We spend a week relaxing at the pool at Bahia Salinas and then a week at the mountain resort of Santa Elena where we watch the sunset from our hotel balcony and walk in the rain. But most important we spend time at the Aronsons where we learn what the rainy season really means and are easily persuaded to linger. But Panama calls and so on we go to San Isidro del General and nearby xxxx National Park and then last but not least the Puerto Jimenez peninsula where we are thrilled to see scarlet macaws putting on a show in the wild just for us.

June

Panama, our last country in Central America turns into the one we stayed in longest. Partly that's because we loved its hill towns like Boquete and El Valle, and lingered there to hike in nearby hills, but its also because we found places to relax in the sun like Coco Beach where we experienced our only earthquake of the trip, and around the pool in Santiago??.

July

Our last stop was in Panama City where we have no trouble filling more than a month. finding lots to see and do in spite of the heat and humidity. We spend lots of time attending talks at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, we visit all three sets of locks on the Panama canal, and having found an onward passage to Cartagena by sailboat, we also manage to sell our Ford Escort. We are sad to say goodbye as we have owned it for 17 months and have driven 20,000 miles through a dozen U.S. states, Mexico, and all but one of the central american states. We often wished we had something with higher clearance, but we cannot complain too much given the Escort's great gas mileage and the fact that we get more cash for it than we originally paid.

August

We leave Colon, Panama on August 4th for a four-day journey from hell on a small Spanish-owned sailboat of French manufacture to the Caribbean port of Cartagena de las Indias, Colombia. It is hot and sweaty but authentically colonial, colorful and mercifully on very solid ground. We laze around for ten days and then finally take our courage in our hands and board a bus for the five hour ride to Mompox. We are delighted with this small town that looks just as it might have done centuries ago with narrow streets lined with whitewashed colonial courtyard houses. From Mompox we take a jeep and then another bus to Bucaramanga/Giron and stay in the latter preferring its colonial atmosphere to that of its big-city neighbor. Next stop is San Gil, one of our favorite places on the whole trip. We learned to love Colombian hot chocolate here and freshly made arepas (corn fritters). We also got to know more exquisite colonial towns, best of all was Barichara, an unbelievably beautiful little place that looks like it is still in the 17th century. We finished off the month in Villa de Leva and Tunja both worth a visit and Tunja especially high enough in the Andes that the air had a bite to it and any exertion made the heart race.

September

Almost the entire month of September was spent in Bogota, where we laid back and fought off germs of all kinds and managed in between times to enjoy the old colonial churches of the city, to soak up some welcome culture at the lovely library auditorium. We made the acquaintance of an Anglo Colombian couple and learned why they prefer life in Bogota to that in London. Here, for the first time we were the victims of petty crime when Gerry had his pocket picked and we had to spend a couple of days waiting for replacement credit cards to arrive. On a more positive note, Jan bought herself an emerald ring, Colombia being very famous for its emerald mines. We ventured out of Bogota to visit a salt mine and on almost our last weekend we took the cable car up to the hill above the city for a breathtaking view. The one unchanging fact about Colombia is how friendly and welcoming its people are. We were always warmly received especially in the smaller towns to the north of Bogota. We wish we had had time to visit Cali and had felt safe enough to visit the area south of Bogota, but we did not. We hope that the situation will continue to improve and that we will get a chance to go back and fill in the gaps.

October

Havin flown from Bogota to Quito, we settle into a very nice hotel overlooking the Plaza Santo Domingo and fall in love with old Quito. We walk its streets, admire its baroque churches, and just feel good about being here. We take time out to go north and see Ibarra and Otovalo, hike volcanoes and lakeside villages and then head south to Latacunga. We hate our hotel and so quickly take off into the high Andes to spend a couple of nights in Chugchilan, a place where the journey is the thing. We spend a day walking along a canyon road and then take another breathtaking bus ride back to Latacunga that includes superb views of the Cotopaxi volcanic cone, rising snow-covered from the dusty Latacunga valley. Then its further south again to Banos, a little town huddled between soaring peaks the highest of which, Tungurahua constantly spews smoke. We would have stayed here a month but national holidays pushed us on to Riobamba and Guaranda.

November

Our second month in Ecuador began back in Riobamba where we carefully selected a hotel with cable TV that included CNN in English. There we watched the U.S. Presidential election returns come in, happy to see that all the negative press we had seen in Central and Southern America was as uninformed as it seemed, and happier still to see that all predictions to the contrary, Bush is re-elected. A decisive defeat for the Al-Zarkawi's of this world. The election over, we head further south to Alausi and ride the train down the Devil's Nose. Then we settle down for a couple of weeks in Cuenca, Ecuador's third-largest city. Our first week is pleasant indeed, but in our second we finally run out of luck and fall victim to hotel thieves. Both of our laptops are stolen as is some silver jewelry and a small amount of cash. We are in shock for a while and then decide the only way to protect ourselves from identity theft is to head back to the States. While trying to get a ticket we make a quick visit to Vilcabamba, a pretty little mountain town set amidst green, green hills. We buy our ticket to Miami in Loja and then take a bus to Guayaquil, the country's largest city and its commercial port and spend three days waiting for our plane.

December

And suddenly, we are back home. Well, almost. Home for us is still Middletown, but we are staying with our friends Moshe and Cris who have found themselves an apartment with a view in Jersey City. We spend hours and hours changing account numbers, passwords, and addresses and searching for replacement computers. It takes time, much more time than we had expected so the end of the year comes with only one new computer and only two thirds of the account changes done. But we have managed to celebrate Hannukah and a birthday and visit old friends in our old stomping grounds. We toast the New Year on the balcony of Moshe and Cris's apartment watching the fireworks in various places in Manhattan.

Last updated March 29, 2005

2004 At A Glance

Jan & Gerry

Andean Village of Chugchilan, Ecuador, October 2004