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Central America & Colombia, Winter 2016

Central America is a destination that has been on my mind for some time, and I was tentatively considering it for the winter months of 2016 for much of the prior year, if circumstances permitted. Those circumstances are mostly my mother's deteriorating health due to Alzheimer's. In November, though, her doctor told me she viewed it as unlikely she would succumb to the disease within the next four to six months given its slow progression, which I took as a green light for an overseas trip early in the year. When you find a part of the world where you would like to travel you then face a decision about the best way to see it. For a long time I expected I'd probably travel Central America independently. Distances aren't that great, and I can get along reasonably well in Spanish-speaking countries. I thought about the possibility of an overland truck trip with Dragoman of which I have done so many, but they are not running them in Central America at the time of year I would like to go. Group tours have a certain efficiency to them, though, in taking you to the highlights without a lot of extra effort on the individual's part. I've traveled independently in Mexico several times, Ecuador, Dominican Republic, and Costa Rica and I can say that constant use of public transportation to get around can get quite tiring and such independent travel can also be somewhat isolating if you're traveling alone. I first decided to string together three group tours in the five northern countries of Central America with a little bit of time on my own before the first one begins and a few days between them. The second tour was cancelled by the company so I reworked my itinerary and changed the last trip I had booked to a different one. My first tour is with a British tour company named KE Adventure that's been highly recommended to me by a friend, and the second is with Explore, another British tour company with whom I have done several trips. The first two week tour focuses on climbing seven volcanoes in Guatemala, including the highest peak in Central America. I'll then have nearly a month to make it from Guatemala to Nicaragua on my own but will probably book some shorter trips with local tour operators in Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. The second two week tour goes from Granada, Nicaragua to Panama City, Panama and is focused on cycling. That's not cycling the entire distance of those countries but rather just some cycling days in pretty places and transport the longer distances between them by mini-van. With that I will be hitting six of the seven Central American countries and leaving only Belize for another time, maybe combining it with Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula. If nothing urgent is calling me home by the end of that second tour in Panama around March 10th I'm tentatively considering continuing on by boat to Cartagena, Colombia and also doing the Ciudad Perdida trek near Colombia's northern coast before returning home. I'm hoping that these very activity-oriented parts of my trip will enable me to return home in March no chubbier than when I left home.
Planned Dates
Jan 14, 2016 to Apr 06, 2016
Countries
7
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