Travel stories, quotes and fun facts

The bus that circled the island

There are two buses: clockwise and anticlockwise. You cannot get lost, and if you miss yours the other one arrives eventually going the long way.

Cenotes are collapsed cave roofs

Thousands of cenotes dot the Yucatan, formed along a ring of fractures linked to the asteroid impact that ended the dinosaurs.

Chocolate began in Mesoamerica

Cacao was drunk bitter and spiced by the Maya and Aztecs long before Europeans added sugar and milk.

Diving with the mantas

They arrive silently and are far larger than anything in the briefing prepared you for. Our guide held up nine fingers, meaning nine metres of wingspan, and then just watched.

Hygge on the road

Hygge: the warmth of a small, well-lit room while the weather outside does its worst.

Monarch butterflies migrate 4,000 km

Monarchs fly from Canada to a few Mexican mountain forests, and no single butterfly completes the round trip.

Waiting for the supply ship

The ship comes every few weeks and the whole island knows the day. Everything changes when it arrives: the shop, the menu, the mood.

Guatemala has a lake in a caldera

Atitlan fills a caldera left by a colossal eruption 84,000 years ago and is ringed by three volcanoes.

Belize has the second largest reef

The Belize Barrier Reef is the largest in the northern hemisphere and includes the famous Great Blue Hole.

Dolce far niente

Dolce far niente: the sweetness of doing nothing, best practised on a terrace after lunch.

Sunday singing

Nothing is open and everything is quiet, until the churches start. We sat outside on the grass and listened to four-part harmony coming through open windows for an hour.

Honduras has a Maya city in the jungle

Copan's hieroglyphic stairway carries the longest known Maya text, over 2,000 glyphs on 63 steps.

El Salvador surfs a long point break

Punta Roca near La Libertad delivers one of Central America's most consistent right-hand point breaks.

A sea that changed colour

The skipper said the reef changes every year now. He had been diving the same site for twenty-three years and pointed out exactly where the colour had gone.

Sobremesa

Sobremesa: the conversation that keeps you at the table long after the food is gone.

Nicaragua has an island of two volcanoes

Ometepe sits in a freshwater lake and is formed by two volcanoes joined by a low isthmus.

Night dive with manta rays

We knelt on the sand with torches pointed up. Plankton gathered in the light and the mantas came to eat, rolling over us, close enough to feel the water move.

Costa Rica abolished its army

Costa Rica dissolved its military in 1948 and redirected the budget to education and health.

Costa Rica runs on renewables

For years Costa Rica has generated close to 99 percent of its electricity from renewable sources, mostly hydro and geothermal.

Saudade

Saudade: the presence of an absence, a longing for something that may never return.

Volcano road closed

The road ended in black rock that had not been there two years before. A sign asked us not to take any lava home, which is apparently both disrespectful and unlucky.

Panama's canal uses fresh water

Every ship transit releases millions of litres of fresh lake water to the sea, which is why droughts slow the canal.

Panama sunrise faces the Pacific

Because of the isthmus's S-shape, you can watch the sun rise over the Pacific and set over the Atlantic in Panama.

Snow on the Icefields Parkway

It snowed in June. We pulled into a viewpoint, three other cars did the same, and six strangers stood in a line watching a glacier disappear behind cloud without saying anything.