Central America

We spent the weekend in a beautiful town called Suchitoto in the north of El Salvador. The main sight is the Iglesia Santa Lucia, a white church that has a …

After so many months rambling through colonial city after colonial city, imagine our surprise when we arrived in Panama City and saw this impressive skyline!

A town called Copan Ruinas is going to be most famous for the nearby Mayan ruins, but after spending a week in the small Honduran town just 12 miles from the Guatemalan border, we found there to be much more to Copan than first meets the eye, including several lesser known Mayan ruins scattered throughout the hills beyond town.

Escape the heat of Panama City for a day and visit Taboga Island where there are no cars, no rush and no noise, just the sound of the waves and a beautiful beach.

When you travel long term, your budget becomes your Bible. This is why we wanted to share a break down on how much it cost for us to travel through Central America – including all the splurges and island vacations.

Along with Antigua and Lake Atitlan, most visitors to Guatemala will include the famous Chichicastenango market to their itinerary, and with good reason. The Go Beyond series looks beyond this bustling market to reveal one of Guatemala’s most charming towns. Read on for what you might miss if you only visit the market.

Two shiny new Ford transporter vans stop along the side of a white cement road and nearly 30 passengers pile out and reformulate into the small groups everyone came with. Dani and I stand off to the side and observe with some shock the other tourists in the group. A group of Brazilians (both female and male) in tank-tops, short-shorts and movie-star sunglasses and several girls in short-ish skirts. Before you start thinking Dani and I to be very prude (standing there in our long pants, closed toe shoes and jackets), we should explain that our tour was taking place in traditional Mayan villages outside of San Cristobal de las Casas, Mexico. The agency had mentioned that we should wear appropriate clothes out of respect to the villagers – advice apparently very few of us chose to heed.

During this eight-month leg of our trip through Central America, we crossed paths with countless travelers coming up north as we headed down south, and listened to their tips and advice for places we had yet to visit. The only place that nobody could tell us much about was Honduras. It seems many people wonder whether it is safe or not to go there – here is our take.

The cooking course in Leon was not exactly what we expected, but turned out to be an unforgettable glimpse into Nicaraguan life. We wouldn’t have had it any other way. (No Indians, young or old, were harmed in the making of this meal).

The long anticipated ‘luxury’ train ride from Panama City to Colon turned out to be quite different from what we had expected. Is it worth taking the train along the Canal?