Asheville, New Orleans, Austin!

hi hi hi everyone, sorry i haven't been able to update my blog lately. also, for a more detailed description of our trip please visit www.alexisfrancesca.blogspot.com .

So we made it to asheville spent some time with a friend of our who goes to warren wilson. had some great food at the early girl eatery in downtown asheville and had a nice tour of the warren wilson campus. since we were behind schedule from the break incident we got right back on the road. we spend the night in alabama and got to new orleans at about 5 the next day. we spent the night at a funky hostel called the india house international hostel for backpackers. we met some cool girls in our dorm room and we ended up meeting up with them unplanned in the french quarter district of new oreans. we had some great food and heard some amazing live blues and jazz! this morning we got up at 9 and hit the road head towards austin texas. we have finally arrived after a good 11 hours driving in the car... we didn't have that much trouble getting here except for a minor wrong turn and oh yeah we got pulled over for going 73 in a 70... outa state discrimination if you ask me! so now we are here in austin staying with one of our friends sister. we went out for some BBQ and now we are headed to bed again. tomorow we plan on making the long hall all the way to San miguel de allende. should be about 12 hours of driving plus the amount of time it takes us to cross the border and all that. we have had great luck so far making deadlines and not getting lost so i have faith that everything will go as planned. you never know on the open road what obsticals your going to come across but optimism and humor help every situation! wish us luck!

Vamos a Mexico!

SI it's true, my best friend, Alexis, and I have hit the road. we are driving across the country- final destination- MEXICO!
Today is Wednesday the 6th of January. Yesterday we left Montpelier at about 4 PM and drove five hours to Katonah NY and stayed with my mum about an hour out of the big apple. After a lovely slumber we got up at 6 and head out towards Asheville NC. However, about 2 hours into our second day's drive our breaks went and we ended up having to spend about 5 in the small town of Oakland NJ... it sucked that we had to delay or trip for a bit but we ended up having lots of fun kickin around (shopping, goofing,eating food on the curb.. i even found a dollar!) this funny town. It's funny how potential disasters can turn out to just be totally OK and sometimes even a delight! well good night for now... tomorrow is gonna be a brand new day!

Heading home

After a fabulous week or so in Belize and a wondeful 2 months traveling, it is time to go home.

I was going to fly out a little bit later but with this whole swine flu thing getting everyone pretty riled up i though i would leave asap. Yesterday I woke up in Placencia Belize at 5:45 in the morning ate some toast and since i couldn{t get a ride down town which is about a mile and half away i hopped on a bike with all my bags and rode off into the sunrise! I took a water taxi to a small town called Independence, Got a bus ( an old american school bus, which most of guatemala and belize use for the main transport) to Belize city wich was about 3 and half hours. At the belize city bus station i got to talking with this man. he was from guatemala but he was working illegally in the US for 2 years and he had just gotten deported. We catched until by bus came and he helped me find where i needed to go. I ended up giving him ten dollars ^to get home to livingston, Guatemala to his family and i hope thats what he actually used the money for he seemed like an honest guy. Anyway, back on another 3 and half hour school bus ride to the mexican border. The buses could not actually cross the border so I hopped off, payed my exit fee and walked right into mexico. The bordering town is called chetumal. not anything special as far as i could tell but i did not have alot of time to look around because i needed to make it to cancun by that night. I halied a cab and got a ride to the bus station. at first people were saying that there were no more buses to cancun that day, which would have been really bad because we were about 6 and half hours away and i needed to be at the airport the next morning at noon. BUT it just so happens that the last one was leaving only 30 minutes after i go in so i got some tacos and a coca cola and off i went AGAIN. This was a first class bus fortunetly i needed some thing a little more comfortable for the last long stretch. I got into Cancun at about 12:30...

Now after a good nights sleep and free breakfast from my hostal i just came down to probably the last internet cafe i will visit in a long time. Making sure the people are going to meet me at the airport was not a huge worry of mine but i thought it would be good to find out:) It is 10 now and at 11 i need to check out of my hostal, 11:30 get a shuttle top the airport and at 2:15 I fly home! I should be getting in to burlington, Vermont at 10:29 tonight and I so excited to go home!!

Watching movies, going to work, swimming in the rivers and lakes, seeing my friends, eating lots of food are all thing that i{ve been missing ttoooooo much. VT , cya soon!

Made it to Belize!

Adios Guatemala Hello Belize! I made it fine with a short but sweet boat ride across the ocean from puerto barrios, guatemala to punta gorda belize. Tahsa, her family, and some friends of theirs had come to meet me when i got out of immagration which was a relief! all 8 of us cramed into their rental SUV and headed to the the swimming holes right away! we went to super beautful rivers and had a nice picnic too! since there was so many of us tasha and i had to spend the night in the back of the car which was the most akward sleep of my life... but I mangaed to catch some solid Z's all the same. In the morning we ate breakfast and again all 8 of us loaded up and drove to a swimming hole! we stayed there for an hour of so.. basked in the sun and then we headed to Placencia.. there "home town" here in belize. We just arrived after a very cozy 2 and a half hour ride here and i'm very happy to be here! tasha and i have a whole bungalo to ourselfs, fully equipt with hot water and a mini kitchen! Now that we are all settled in i'm ready to being a brand new adventure here in the caribean!

Guatemala continued...

So after the nice time on the nice time on the lake danny and I began to head back to San Pedro. On the way I asked if we could stop somewhere so danny could teach me how to ride the motorcycle...
I got on started it up allright and off i went riding a motorcycle all by myself! i should have practiced braking a little bit, but i got so excited that i went right onto the main road... i was doin g ok but i tried to turn around in pretty much a pile of dirt so obvisouly me and the bike fell over... i was really embaressed not because i fell over but because when danny tried to start it back up it was having difficulties... I began to REALLY regret going out of the parking lot. But he called the rental place and they told him he had forgotten to flick a certain switch before starting it.. So I didn{t break the mororcyle after all!!

The next day we caught another early morning bus to the second biggest city in Guatemala. Xela is the nick name of the city and its a good thing because i don{t know how to pronouce or spell the real name.. something like.. Quezatelango..not sure..

Danny wanted to re vist this city because he had spend three weeks studying spanish here in the beginging of his trip. It was pretty mellow as far as citys go and it had really big markets where i splurged on tons of pirated DVDs!!! another 2 nights there and I was off by myself to guatemala city to pick up my friend Luna from the airport. Luna was comming to visit me for a week partly for a little vacatrion in the sun for her and partly for my birthday!

I met her at the airport at 10 at night and we took the first shuttle directly to Antigua. The next afternoon we went to hike the volcano that Antigua lies at the base off.. I can{t remeber the name of it somelike payamama or something. Actually we did not hike the volcano at all, luna and I were still feeling tired from the night before so we decided to rent horses! it was such an enjoyable ride up although our horses rarley went faster than walking pace. At the top of the volcanop was like being on a different planet and there was a thick mist covering everyting . When we saw the lava for the first time it was unreal! you could go as close to the lñava as you wanted (which would never fly in the states) but it was so hot that you could only get about 8 feet away with out being burned by the air. It was particularly cool because since we took horse up wer where pretty much the only ones at the top of the volcano for quite a bit of time and when the group tours cames up it completely changes the atmoshere and mysteriousness of the place...

The next day Another early start to chatch the bus to San Pedro. I loved iot so much that I had to show luna. We stayed only one night but It was such a blast. We went dancing at the only club in town and mets lots of cool people! AGAIN another early wake up to catch the suttle BACK to antigua so that we could get a shuttle to the beach where we were going to stay for the rest of the week. once we got to antigua we dropped our stuff off at the travel agaency place where our ahuttle left from and we had on hour to roam free... we got some fruit, picked up some sunscreen.. and began to head back with about 15 minutes to find our way back.... UNFORTUNETLY we could not. We were walking around practically in circles for 30 minutes untill we c}found where we were looking for, which was of course right under our noses the whole time. FORTUNETLY the shuttle had waited 40 minutes for us and we were able to hop right on and go!

The next day, sunday april 19th 2009, was my 20th birthday. We woke up and decided that we were going to go find a nice place to eat breakfast. But first we need to take out money from the ATM. UNFORTUNETLY the ONLY machine in town does not except mastercards. so we go backl to our hotel and and scrouge up all the change we had. FORTUNETLY we had enough to0 by 2 ice creams and some veggies at bread that we were going to stir fry at our hostal. UNFORTUNETLY, our hostal does not have a kitchen. So we figure our where the closest ATM is outside of town, in a town called Iztapa about 1 hour and 30 minutes away. FORTUNETLY there is man we was going right thorugh there at the same time we were leaving so he gave us a ride free of charge! We found the machine very easily and went back monterrico. When we got back into town i went to the internet cafe and i had to spend a couple of hours doing homework and taking test online. By then it was dinner time and we found the nicest resturant in town and we indulged! we went to bed early that night, no birthday party for me, not birthday song, or cake, but all in all everything worked out and it was not a complete disaster!

fore the next two days we just relaxed on the beach and in out hostle and dined out. It was a nice end to Luna trip to Guatemala. The next night we went back to antigua were we bumped into danny at the hostal we were staying at! we were so happy to see eachother and we all out for a "this is our last night dinner" (although everyting is usually you last night when you travel to a new place everyday). Today is april 22nd. When i woke up this morning at the hostel Luna was gone. she had taken a shuttle to the airport at 4 in the morning. and day had left to go to a differnt town in the mountains. I got on a bus straight to puerto Barrios which is a small town on the carribean side of guatemala. I am here now and I will get up tomorrow morning and get on a boat to Punta Gorda, Belize to meet up with tasha! I hope belize is as nice as they say!!

Antigua

 Antigua was a great place to be for semana santa. Lots of poeple in the street but not to caotic vibe. persesions where happening all day long thursday and friday. On saturday morning Danny and I took and early bus to a town about 3 hours away called Panajanchel. From the we took a boat across lake Atitlan to a small town called San pedro. We like San Pedro alot. Since Semana Santa was still going on there were allot of people there too. When we woke up the next day we rented a motorcycle and rode it along the shore of the lake ( on the roads) to the other side to another small town called San Marcos. We parked the bike and walked down to the docks and took a swim and bathed in the sun. 

GUAT!

I made it to Guatemala city with no difficulties! Danny was there to pick me up at the airport and we took a bus to Antigua. Today is my first day.  The holiday Semana Santa is happening this weekend so I'm pumped up to shoot some wild pic's in the super cue town!