nTwin3

like landing on the moon. it is a mystery how anything ever survived in an environment so seemingly inhospitable to life.

A great place to base yourself if you plan on exploring Chile.

as long as it’s not winter!

this was one of the most memorable places that I visited on the the “Ruta Maya”. I was stunned at how much more expansive it is than Teotihuacan. It is simply immense and awe-inspiring. Read about it before you go and perhaps take a guided tour. Be wary of guides that have gotten all of their “facts” from the books of Erik von Daniken.

Tip: avoid the bus trip from Ciudad de Guatemala; if you can afford to take a plane, I highly recommend that you do so! The buses in Guatemala are great for short trips between towns, but not for long distances. It was not uncommon to be accompanied by Chickens in the bus. In addition, the vast majority of buses that I took were basically American school buses.

This is a fabulous place to spend a couple of months studying and using a base of operations while seeing southern mexico. However, the political climate should be taken into consideration before making this your destination.

If you go, you should definitely check out the internet cafe and language school, El Segundo Piso.

Cuernavaca is a fantastic place to study and to base a tour of central Mexico from. The landscape is breathtaking, and the sense of being somewhere ancient is always close at hand.

In retrospect, it seems that the quality of my experiences was inversely proportional to the number of (primarily) English-speaking tourists. In other words, I highly recommend staying away from places like Cancun and Acapulco, and take some Spanish if you can; a little bit goes a long way.