Tortugas and Las Peñitas

20th - 22nd February.



The waves roll in from the wide, blue Pacific, tumbling over into surging lines of foaming water before crashing into the dark yellow beach. The noise makes conversation impossible below a shout when walking at the edge of the surf. Welcome to Las Penitas, a small beach destination only a 45 minute bus ride south of Leon.



Here, the Pacific takes prisoners if you are not careful when entering the ocean. The undertow tugs at your legs, the occasional wave threatens to bowl you over. This is not a gentle swimming beach like those we have seen in the Caribbean. This sea is a monster who will gobble you up and, if your family is lucky, spit out your remains somewhere along the shore. It is a sea to treat with respect and caution – and is a whole load of fun to play in; leaping over the smaller waves, diving under the big crashers. Timing is of the essence to avoid being slammed into the hard sand and shingle. It gets the adrenalin coursing and every so often encourages a return to the beach to regather your wits.



More gentle, much more gentle, is the mouth of the river with is sheltered behind a long sand island where turtles come to lay their eggs. The river is not sluggish, and just lying in the shallow warm waters you are gently turned and pushed towards the sea. The broad expanse of fresh water is home to numerous birds, waders, gulls and vultures, who line the banks and sand bars or stalk fish in the shallows. Further upstream the river slowly narrows to a mangrove-flanked wilderness that is a joy to explore by kayak, the silence only broken by the quiet directions of our guide Miguel pointing out a well-hidden camouflaged bird, the splash of an oar or fish, the call of birds or the rustle of something moving in the undergrowth. The occasional small log boat, ironically piled high with fresh-cut logs, chunters by or the larger, and more polluting, local fishing boat taking tourists on a noisy and dirty tour.

Arms tired from the unaccustomed effort of paddling, legs from being kept straight out in front and spirits drop until Miguel turns us around and we row with the current. We are tiring now and the mangrove does not appear to be moving past any quicker than when we went upstream but in less than 45 minutes we are back near the start of our journey, which had taken 2 hours upstream. Here we see the highlight, today’s freshly-hatched Atlantic Green Turtle babies desperate to find the sea. Except, they are penned in so that they can be released when it is dark and less of their predators are around. This is a hatchery where turtles break out of their eggs in a grid numbered from A-Z and 1-10. The eggs are laid along the beach at night by turtles returning to their own birth place and gathered up to be kept under the protection of guards. Our little 40 or so newly-borns come from V3. The urge to get to the sea is unabated for hours as the baby turtles continually cross and recross their pen searching for the water. It supposedly makes these tiny little things stronger and better equipped to make their dash through the pounding surf. They must be tossed and rolled like on a giant rollercoaster gone mad given the impact those waves have on us. Maybe two to five in a 1,000 will survive to return one day and give birth themselves on their beach. But will they find V3 if they do?

Rolling into Roli’s Place, Omoa

22nd December onwards.

Backpackers in Omoa, Honduras

We picked out Omoa as the place for Christmas and maybe New Year because the guide book said it was a quiet fishing village with a good backpacker’s hostel called Roli’s Place, a Honduran resort and a quiet beach nearby. Georgia remembered it as a nice resort with a good beach 10 years previously. It shouldn’t be too built-up or noisy yet still some Honduran Christmas action.

It is easy to get to. The bus from the Guatemalan border to Puerto Cortes passes through the village and drops you off at the road to the backpackers and the beach. The walk to Roli’s is all flat, 1 km, through the village. The hostel is beautiful, with gorgeous gardens alive with hummingbirds and butterflies attracted to the flowers. The dock is a short stroll away.

But this is where most of the attractions of Omoa sadly end. The beach has been washed away by a recent expansion of the gas factory, a new breakwater changing the currents and so leaving a narrow strip where once football and volleyball pitches lay. The nearby quiet beach is quiet, surrounded by mangroves, with ospreys in the sea, but it is covered in rubbish. Many mangroves were cut down for the gas terminal and large lorries transporting gas trundle through the village.

If you want somewhere to hang out, recover from travelling and enjoy peaceful nights sleep then Roli’s is perfect. Duck in if you are on the coast road. His 10.30pm quiet curfew is strictly adhered to so it is not for the party crowd. He boasts of throwing out the backpacks of those repeatedly breaking the curfew and when we were there a couple of backpackers were given a firm warning for talking outside the dorm after 11pm. He does provide free use of sea kayaks, bicycles, table tennis, table football and a kitchen, all set in his tranquil gardens, which make it an ideal port f call for quiet recuperation from the road. There are a variety of very nicely kept double rooms at 160 - 220 lempiras,  a dorm at L70, or you can either sling a hammock or camp for L50 a person in 2007.

In December 2007 Roli was talking of selling up and leaving, so I don't know what the future holds for the place. As of November 2008 he seems to still be in business. Its worth checking his website -  www.yaxpactours.com - to check.

There is one great attraction if you find you need to stopover at Omoa – the Paticceria Italiana. Sheltered behind white Roman columns is an Italian bakery owned by an extremely charming Neapolitan. He bakes awesome panetone, delicious pan blanco, exquisite cakes and great pizza as well as having a good supply of Californian champagne. What a find!

Tulum Too-rar-ay

Return to Tulum, Mexico


Tulum Beach

It was great to return to Tulum, to start where I ended my last trip to Mexico in 1999. I thought we'd look for the place I stayed before but couldn't remember the name and the pouring rain meant we took the nearest affordable beach cabana to where the taxi dropped us. We had thought about a place called El Mirador but the taxi driver assured us it had closed 2 years ago.


View from our cabana

We stayed at El Mirador in a typical Mexican sand-floored, wood and concrete palm leaf thatched cabana right on the beach for 250 pesos. All it took as a left turn and a short walk and we were in the Caribbean. El Mirador is one of a number of places on a strip along the beach. If you want to have good access to the beach then it is best to head to this strip. If you're on a budget there are cheaper places to stay in Tulum itself, the town that is about 1 mile from the beach and ruins. Buses run between the town and beach so it is easy to get to the sand, but you miss waking up to the sound of surf, the general tranquility of the rural beach-side setting and being in the sea minutes after getting out of bed. You pays your money and makes your choices.

A quick look around suggested some things were a bit different and then the owner of the cabanas supplied the answer - Hurrican Wilma had hit this part of the Yucatan coast 2 years ago randomly decimating some cabanas while leaving others standing. Half of his were out of order while the others were fine and he hadn't the money to yet rebuild the ones he had lost. But where was the place I stayed before? I was sure it was only a little further along the beach towards the headland with the Mayan ruins. And there they were - or what was left of them. A few sticks, some rectangular depressions in the sand and lost of debris. The place I had stayed, and my memory at last caught up to tell me it was El Mirador, had been flattened by Wilma. The cabana I had shared with a German backpacker was a wall, a door and a place where rubbish collected.


Remains of the old place

Tulum works out as a great place to rest up after a long-haul flight. Highlights are of course swimming in the turquoise sea, lying on the fine white sand and the Mayan city on the nearby cliff. If you're after a beach holiday or want to get together with other backpackers then it should suit you really well. The Mayan city is worth a visit for its breathtaking location as much as its architectural interest, as well as being one to tick off the list if you're on a Ruta Maya journey. Highlights include the Castillo, the most visible building on the site, which is seven and half meters tall and has a small shrine may have been used as a beacon for incoming canoes. The Temple of the Frescoes is perhaps the most impressive building. Figurines of the Maya “diving god” or Venus deity decorate niches in the temple's façade. The architecture is similar to nearby Chichen Itza, though on a smaller scale. There's a few Tulum photos on my flickr photostream - flickr stream

We had met an American who lived in Isla de Mujeres who claimed that as it was the rainy season we would get an hour of rain each day at 3pm but that a low depression was moving south-west from Florida. How quickly we were to discover it was heading our way. The first day the rains came at mid-day and stayed for the rest of the day. Then the second held dry until 3pm but after a dawn downpour and then the rains came at midday on the 3rd day too. Each day we had a 3 or 4 hour window of sun to swim and sunbathe in before huge dark grey towering columns of clouds moved in from the sea like marauding armies crossing a plain. Spectacular to watch, bands of rain drenched everything in their paths. The first night we watched four lightning storms play themselves out silently behind different cloud banks, like the spaceships in Close Encounters silently communicating to each other. The light show was awesome. So were the gale force winds and sheets of rain. Our plans to go to Caye Caullker in Belize for a week or two of snorkelling were looking somewhat unlikely. This was simply reinforced reading a Mexican paper over a woman's shoulder. Even my limited Spanish could not hide the two pages of news about the low front that could turn into a tropical depression that was swinging in towards Belize and the Yucatan from the Caribbean. The news warned of two to three days of stormy weather. There wouldn't be a lot to see at sea.