Ecolodges and Fun Stuff in Central America

Yandup Ocean Bungalow

The family-owned Yandup Island Lodge is located on a private island across from the remote Playon Chico community on the Caribbean coastline of San Blas, Panama. The eco-lodge offers two tours a day: a visit to a beach on one of the archipelago's...

Granada, Nicaragua

This highlight come from this past winter when I was living and traveling through Central America. While I had a base in Coco, Costa Rica, I spent three months traveling around Central America, including Monteverde, Palo Verde National Park, and...

Spires, cupolas and volcanoes

If you're in León, Nicaragua, make sure to climb up the bell tower of its XVIII c. Cathedral (Central America's largest). When you emerge on the rooftop, domes lead your eye to a perfectly conical volcano on the horizon; stretching out below you...

Taking it slow in Placencia, Belize

Over the past year, I spent five months living in Belize. One of my favorite places in the country was Placencia, a peninsula in the south with Belize's longest stretch of beaches. But it wasn't just the landscape, as much as it was the slow pace...

up and down into the Cerro Negro volcano

On the horizon just NE of León, Nicaragua, you can make out the giant black mound of Cerro Negro--Central America's youngest volcano. Until 1850, there was NOTHING here! Since then it's erupted dozens of times--coating the surrounding countryside...

Soccer and cellphones in El Mundo Maya

Near the town of Tecpán in the western highlands of Guatemala are the ruins of Iximché. Perched on a hill some 7000 feet above sea level, this was the cool capital of the Kaqchikel Maya in the 15th and 16th centuries, at the time of the Spanish...

Door in Antigua Guatemala

A woman walks past a door on the streets of downtown Antigua in Guatemala. Antigua is a picturesque colonial town, like many other colonial towns one might see in Central and South America. Old colonial buildings abound, as expected, but the city...

Where the Wild Things Are: Costa Rica

Recently returned from a trip to Costa Rica where I was lucky enough to see an amazing array of wild things including howler monkeys, bats, snakes, basilisk lizards, alligators, spiders, iguana, peccary, turtles, poison-dart frogs, toads, caiman,...

on the Panamericana

When U.S. schoolbuses 'die,' they get re-incarnated in Central America; repainted and rechristened, they become tropical intercity transport.

For crossing international borders on land, many Centroamericanos ride on double-decker buses, from which...