Hello Honduras!

In attempt to catch up to our current location (Nicaragua) I`m going to try to whizz through the WHOLE of Honduras without missing a beat.

So we left Guatemala from Livingston by way of several boats and then a few buses to boot. The bus took us from Puerto Bairros to San Pedro Sula in Honduras. We became very well acquainted with Pizza Hut Honduras in San Pedro`s bus station. (It was the only half decent place to eat there.) Our gastronomic tour of Central American Fast Food continues!

We got yet another bus from the San Pedro bus station to arrive in the lovely D&D hostel near Lago de Yojoa. This place was fantastic. We were up in the highlands of Honduras where the only other tourists were the ones staying at our hostel. The locals were pretty curious about these odd white people as few enough venture this far up into the hills. The kids though were extremely welcoming, anything to practice their english. We were constantly plagued with `Hello! How are you?` questions from 5 year olds who were so excited because they saw their first ever gringos. They were really sweet and friendly people.

D&D hostel is in fact a micro brewery that operates out of a shipping container in the back of the hostel. It also has a swimming pool and makes excellent blueberry pancakes the size of your face. What a place, even the tap water was purified! Simple pleasures like being able to open your mouth in the (hot) shower make life worth living! Time for a classic jealousy shot:

It`s also a 5 mintue walk from the lovely Lago de Yojoa and a short bus ride from a 40m high waterfall.

The lake is lovely, really pretty, not a lot of interesting stories to tell about it really. We took a row boat out one day and nearly gave ourselves sun stroke rowing around the lake. (See Facebook for pictures) The water fall however, now there`s an adrenaline pumping place to visit!

So this is the full frontal of the waterfall above. It`s pretty impressive really. Well you go for a nice walk down the side and take some pictures and its all very pretty really. Then a gardener might offer to take you to the caves behind the waterfall. Now, you might remember from posts about Mexico that, we went for wanders behind waterfalls at Misol Ha and we went into the caves there, sure it was kind of pretty, but not mad crazy or anything.

Well, our guide warns us that we probably want to go in our togs as we`re going to get wet. I figure, a bit of spray can`t be all that much. You see, in my head I was picturing a path, possibly with a handrail that walked behind the water of the waterfall. No no no you silly girl. I misunderstood his spanish, he literally said, UNDERNEATH the waterfall, not BEHIND. A crucual and important point to miss.

Myself, Ian and our new Dutch friend Erica followed our guide down to the front of the waterfall. I realise there is no path and handrails are positively unheard of here. So we`re standing on some rocks just in front of and to the side of the waterfall, I can`t see for all the spray that`s coing from the waterfall. Actually, its kind of hard to even keep your eyes open, you have to walk backwards glancing over your shoulder every so often to make sure you`re not about to fall in.

When we jump into the water at the basin, we`re all holding hands with our eyes closed walking along the bottom of the waterfall. The water is pounding on our shoulders so hard it left bruises. It`s kind of sore. You can`t really breath either. It`s like standing under the most powerfull shower you can imagine except there`s no way to get your face out for air. Oh and if you let go of the person beside you, one or both of you will probably fall into the basin of the waterfall and probably be dragged down rapids to your death (possibly just serious injury.) Eventually we come out to an overhang and we can catch our breath, an at this point, we`re so full of adrenaline, our hands are kind of shaking. There`s a small opening about a meter and a half wide and that`s the cave. We go up and the four of us sit in the dark listening to the waterfall raging outside. As I`m hoping to myself that the cave doesn`t collapse above us, I start to realise that the only way out is back the way we came.We made our way back through the water again, it was just as scary second time round.

Eventually we decided to leave D&D and head over to the Bay Islands, (Utila) for some diving and a hopefully a chance to see Whale Sharks. Well, after many the bus and the boat, we made it there and promptly found ourselves settled into the Cross Creek Dive Centre. Lovely job. The diving was just lovely and the dive centre was brilliant. We had hammock and air conditioning, which was a god send. And there were constant humming birds at the bird feeder across the way, it was fantastic.

We were diving in our swimming togs, so we spent a lot of time messing under water, namely Ian flooding my mask, so me stealing his fin. That sort of lark. We got to dive a very cool wreck where there was a whale skeleton next to it, we saw a cool looking reef shark. I went on my first ever night dive, and got to mess around with the glowing plankton! That same night dive we saw a very cool octopus, and some lobster. I never realised that lobster`s eye`s light up like cat`s eyes in the dark. The glorius Captain Cookie took us swimming with dolphins twice and swimming with a Whale Shark once.

Let me tell you a bit about Captain Cookie. He`s the Captain on one of the boats in Cross Creek Dive Centre. The man is a living legend. You`re getting out of the water, and he`s standing there `Throw me ya life line sista!` Meaning, `Give me your hand`. What a man. He even has his own theme tune, which he plays everytime you come back in on the boat. The man is the happiest person I`ve ever met, he even has his own fan club on Facebook.

On our last day there, we said, you know Captain Cookie, we really want to see a Whale Shark, so after our dives, we went Whale Shark hunting. Captain Cookie went a long way out of his way to take us to see a Whale Shark. It starts off, everyone on the boat is all lined up in two rows in snorkling gear. You can hear the dive masters on the boat shouting things like ´he`s over there´, ´the size of him´, and `get ready guys, go go go!` I imagine its what a paratrooper feels like before they jump off the plane. Anyway, we slip in to the water and I`m looking back to the boat hoping they`ll point me in the right direction, I look down and there`s 12 meter`s of Whale Shark swimming directly underneath me. So I follow it, Ian was right next to me. He got so close to the Whale Shark that at one point he had to frantically swim backwards to avoid a whack in the face with a fin. It was by far the coolest thing we`ve seen so far. It was unbelievable. Yes there are pictures, a lovely French man named Fabreze sorted us out, just have to get the pictures. In the meantime, this is what they look like:

Very big and very cool! Its really hard to explain what it was like bring that close to just a rare and HUGE creature. Sharks swim through water with such elegance that its kind of mesmerising. It was a really great feeling to be able to see one up close in the wild.

Anyway, after a week`s diving we decided it was time to move on and go white water rafting. So off we trecked to a jungle not far away, checked into a very expensive hostel and went white water rafting the day after swimming with the Whale Shark.

White water rafting was brilliant! Now I`ve been rafting once before, but it was absolutely nothing in comparason to what we did in La Ceiba. The rapids were grade 4, 3, 2 and 1. Grade 4 was pretty scary. Again, picture our faces on these people:

It was terrifying. And afterwards your legs and arms were just like jelly because of the strain they`d been under. We were walking around like we`d no bones in our legs, wobbling around the place! I might point out here that Ian fell out on the last rapid and I did not.

The next day we went on a four hour hike to a waterfall. We were alone in the jungle with jelly legs from rafting the day before. We saw some really cool stuff hoping around the jungle. Frogs that looked like leaves, lizards that were blue, red and green. We also saw the coolest butterfly in the world, (Mariposa in Spanish in case you`re wondering). Now, some people aren`t terribly interested in butterflies, but this thing was the size of a small bird and bright blue.

It was very cool and fun. Afterwards, I think we were fit to fall down. So we left honduras. It took us two days by bus to make it to Nicaragua with an overnight in the capital. Teguicalpa, not quite as bad as Belize city, but still not exactly a friendly place.

And finally, we`re more or less up to date! Hopefully I`ll never get this far behind again!

Lovely Lakes, More Spanish Lessons and a Dislike for French.

I am very far behind in blogging status, I apologise to everyone for the delay. When I started writing this, we were diving in Honduras, now we`re waiting for a bus to the capital. (Points for anyone who can tell me what it is without Googling it). But I`m not going to tell you about all that just yet, first and foremost there`s Guatemala to finish.

Firstly I need to tell you all about the wonderful Lago Atitlan, about our last week of Spanish and why we now hate French people. Hate is a strong word and probably inaccurate, but all will be revealed shortly.

So when we left you last we were hiking volcanoes and resetting dislocated shoulders. Action packed stuff.  After climbing our last volcano in Xela, we slept all day and then got on a bus to Lago Atitlan. Actually it was 3 buses, but it only took a few hours. After several hours in the bus, we walked through the bustling and super touristy town of Panajachel to get a lancha (boat) to Santa Cruz. We had agreed to meet our good friend Tom of Xela fame at this hostel called ´La Iguana Perdida´.

I wanted to live in Lago Atitlan and never leave. In fact, I may have tried to convince Ian that we should try get a job in the hostel! A picture of the view you wake up to every morning will demonstrate why:

The Iguana is one of the coolest places we´ve stayed and I´d say my favourite hostel so far. They have a family style dinner, so everyone eats a three course (amazing) dinner together and afterwords you play cards. We met some cracking people there and learned manys the card game. Catchphrase was definately brought out on more than one occasion and the smack talk got offensive! Catchphrase had to be put away at one point because we were getting so roudy! Classic Catchphrase...

If anyone is going to Lago Atitlan, I can´t recommend the Iguana Perdida highly enough. If anyone wants to go diving, they are a very slick operation and the dive guides are very sound.

Anyway, while at the lovely lake we went kayaking, we swam a little and we also went diving. Now, Lago Atitlan is a lake in what was once a volcanic crater. Its at high altitude, so what we really did was dive in a fresh water volcanic lake at altitude. This might not mean a whole lot to some of you, but for the divers among you, it was cool.

There were volcanic rock formations, a petrified tree (which we didn´t get to visit because it was covered in algae) and hot mud along the fault line from the volcano that the lake sits on. The diving was a lot like diving at home, dark, not much vis, but the water was considerably warmer. You also have to add another level to your pre-dive equipment check: scorpian check in your wetsuit. Time for a classicly stolen picture from the internet:

This isn´t either of us, its purely for demonstration purposes. Just imagine its us.

We went to Santa Cruz with the intention of staying at a different town around the island every night. We liked the Iguanga so much, we just stayed in there the whole time and did day trips to the other towns.

Every morning we´d get up really early to make the most of the day as it usually rained at about 3 or 4 in the afternoon for the rest of the day.

The one other place we did stay while we were at the lake was Casa Del Mundo. Get your jealous faces ready folks, becuase this is actually the nicest place I´ve ever stayed in... ever.

The Garden:

The HotTub (again, just imagine our faces in this picture):

The view from the Balcony:

Casa del Mundo, also known as paradise. It was a bank holiday at home, so we splashed out.

When I finally agreed that, yes it was time to leave Lago Atitlan, we headed off to Antigua in search of yet more Spanish classes.

We arrived, found a hostel, found a Spanish school and quickly hurried into town to meet those trouble loving fiends, Matt and Rob. That was our downfall. We spent the night partying till late and myself and Ian had our first fight.

I say fight, he was trying to convince me that I should go into a puddle and I mearly disagreed. (There´s a picture of a similar scene underwater where Ian tried to flood my mask so I stole his fin, I´ll try get it up soon.)

Anyway, we shortly started our new Spanish course, was good fun, we even got to play with a Piñata which is epic! People around us were shocked to hear that neither of us had ever hit a Piñata before. We met up with Matt and Rob one last time before they had to head back to reality, which again caused scenes of shock and awe in Antigua.

Antigua is a really funky little town, its not very Guatemalan though. Think more European chic than third world. There are coffee shops, lovely restaurants, hip bars. We even got to visit a Macademia farm. (Macademia´s are my new favourite nut by the way.) Very hip city, not very true to life in Guatemala. For instance, Enrique Inglesias has a mansion there, its very impressive. Most Guatemalans live in small one room houses with corregated iron roofs. Most Guatemalans can´t afford the coffee or macademia nuts that grow in the area and they definately can´t afford to eat in the fancy steak houses. (We couldn´t afford the steak either, we´re saving up for Argentina.) But its a very very cool spot to visit and learn some Spanish.

On to Rio Dulce we said, so that´s where we went next. We got up at 3am to make sure we were in time for the bus which was due to leave at 4am.

After 4 hours on our shuttle bus, we swapped to a bigger bus with lots of French people. Its now about 8am, we have begun to notice the French are all over the bus. We arrived in Rio Dulce at around 11.30am, tired but happy to be on our way. We went dock to get a boat down the river to go to the Garifuna* town of Livingston. The French people somehow got into a loud fight with one of the locals over the cost of the boat. Now I´m not sure how it happened, something about the guy not believing it should be so expensive.

*Garifuna: very interesting carribean culture originating from slaves who rebelled so the English dumped them on Rotan island off Honduras. The Garifuna spread along the coast to the coastal town of Livignston and further afield.

The boat to Livingston was due to leave at 1.30pm, so we grabbed some lunch while we waited for the boat. We´re now pretty tired. The boat was supposed to take 2 hours, but the driver had to stop for gas and go back to the dock as one of the French had forgot their bag. An hour after we were supposed to leave we got on our way. Somehow there are only French people on the boat. Our nerves are wearing thin, sleep was a very long time ago and the French language has somehow begun to grate on our ears. At 5.30pm we arrived at our destination very hungry, very cranky and very tired. Somewhere on that 13 hour journey, we began to hate the French language. I apologise to all French people everywhere, I really do like you, its just my nerves were shot.

We spent a few days enjoying the view at Finca Tatin which is a hostel literally over the river. There are paths through the swamp to the rooms. It was very cool and that`s where Ian learned to walk on water. (See Facebook photos.)

From there we moved onto Honduras and as my computer is about to die I`ll save that for next time!

Xela (like Shela) and other stories...

It`s been a while, so I`m not sure where we left off. Somewhere around the lovely Semuc Champey.

What have we been doing? I`m not actually sure, but we`ve been very busy.

Once we left Semuc Champey, we headed off to the Biotopo del Quetzal. What is that you may ask yourself? Well, the Quetzal is the national bird of Guatemala, and the Guatemalans are really mad about this bird, so much so that their money is in fact called, Quetzales and has a picture of a Quetzal.

And why wouldn`t you love the Queztal, just look at it:

Unfotunately, no matter how much they love Quetzales in Guatemala, their habitat is being destroyed. Most Guatemalans never see a Quetzal in their whole lives. One of Ian´s Spanish teachers has been to the Quetzal reserve 15 times and never seen one, apparently he´s been trying to see one for 15 years.

We didn´t see any when we were at the Quetzal reserve, but we did have a lovely hike for a few hours. We were lucky enough to see two Quetzales in Tikal when we were there. Unfortunately, I didn´t appreciate how rare a Quetzal sighting is and I foolishly deleted the picture I had of one because it was pretty bad quality. Ah well, at least we were lucky enough to see them.

When we left the Quetzal reserve, we went on that memorably horrific bus journey to Huehuetenango. (See other post). And from there we headed off to Xela for our first week of Spanish lessons.

We were studing at a place called Casa Xelajiu. Although the host family we stayed with was lovely, and Maria is an excellent cook, the school wasn´t a great fit for us. More High School Musical than Lonely Planet backpacker hoang out. We ended up moving to a new school, Celas Maya and a new host family with the lovely Marisol.

After one week of school and before we moved to our new school, we decided to take a break, relax and get away from it all by hiking Central America`s highest volcano. At 4, 220m above sea level and just on the border with Mexico, Tajamulco is a pretty tough climb. Its not the actual path that´s difficult, most of it is paved path and some walking though forest. What´s phsically heart wrenching is the altitude. You can walk for ten minutes and after a fifteen minute break, you still can´t catch your breath.

Path up to Tajamulco

We set off on a bright Sat afternoon with our guide Juan, a German girl Maria and a French girl Julia. It took us four hours and three buses to get to the base of the volcano. We stayed with a local family sleeping on the concrete floor in the basement of their shop. Ian was absolutely in his element, Bear Grylls eat your heart out. Ian O´Gorman, Man of The Wild is about to come to a volcano near you. Anyway, the accommodations were basic at best. The toilet has to be seen to be believed.

I´m shamelessly stealing the German girl´s photo because I can´t get my own photo on this. You get the idea.

Anyway, we were supposed to start the climb at 12 midnight, but it was lashing rain so we couldn´t leave. We waited until 3am and then we set off on our merry way. From the get go it was tough. I was eating an apple as we set off, but I had to disgard it pretty quickly since eating, walking and breathing was too much. You can really only walk and breath or sit and eat. Any more than that and breathing becomes impossible. It was tough, even when you were standing still you could feel your heart going nintey and you were just trying to catch your breath.

Although it was hard, myself Ian and Juan seemed to be a good bit ahead of the two girls a fair bit of the way. After an hour and a half the French girl couldn´t go up any further so we rather chivilrously left her behind on the volcano in the middle of the night to descend alone. The poor girl had pretty bad altitude sickness. She got sick and then went to sleep on the volcano for a few hours before heading back down when it got bright again the next morning. In retrospect, leaving her on her own probably wasn´t the most sensible thing to do, but her friend and the guide seemed to be ok with it so it didn´t seem like a problem at the time.

Anyway, onwards and upwards we struggled until the German girl started to fade. Again we fearlessly abandoned a poor girl to the fates (although this time we left the casualty in the capable hands of the guide)  and we continued on our merry way to the top of the volcano.

We were officially Central America´s highest huggers. (Sick, I know). You could see all the way to Mexico and the Pacific Ocean. We missed the sunrise because of all the delays, but the feeling of finally getting to the top was pretty satisfying nonetheless. The views were really impressive.

Well the descent wasn´t nearly as bad, but the next day we had to go and meet our new family and we were officially dead to the world! I´m pretty sure I said two words to the poor Bean an ti the first day which were Hola! and Buenas Noches! I can´t remember the last time I was that tired. Ian wasn´t much better.

Settled into our new house, we met the absolutely lovely Tom who shared the house with us. Tom was at the same language school and is probably one of the most instantly likeable people I´ve ever met. He´s just outrageously postive and chirpy. Lovely man. Anyway, Tom introduced us to fun things like the local Guatemalan Hot Chocolate and the Salsa night in the nearby salsa school.

Our new school, Celas Maya is without a doubt a brilliant Spanish school. You sit around a garden, learning spanish one on one, and your teacher makes a language plan completely tailored to you level of spanish. Myself and Julio (my new Spanish teacher) got on like a house of fire. We had a great laugh. But one of the best things about Celas Maya is the wonderful people we met there. From ex-army service Matt from California who´s undoubtedly the biggest Mujerzuela in the village and travelling Guatemala with his Mum. To English Rob, with his umbrella, James Bond accent and ever exciting career in International development, Rob was a pretty interesting guy. We may have called him Charles in the beginning because we couldn´t remember his name and he sounded so much like Prince Charles. (Sorry Rob!)

Anyway, Xela was full of characters, kareoke and craic!

After our second week of Spanish classes, we realised that the only way of chilling after 25 instense hours of Spanish classes, is by climbing a volcano. So up we went on a full moon to Volcan Santa Maria. From the top of Santa Maria, you get a perfect view of the smaller yet active volcano Santiaguito exploding.

The climb was phsically harder, but becuase the altitude wasn´t nearly as bad, myself and Ian were well able for it. There was a big group of us and our good friend, Mujerzuela Matt was there too and he unfortunately had a bit of a mishap.

Matt, being ex-army and full of ´Let me tell you about a little place called Iraq´, was eager to get to the top first. He even took off his tshirt to make himself more aerodynamic. (For which he was duely dubbed ´Tits´). Anyway, when he started to fall a little bit behind myself and Ian, Ian may have suggested that he might like me to carry him. Being beaten to the top by a girl was not going to go down well with Matt. In an effort to cut a corner, he cut a corner, slipped and dislocated his shoulder.

It wasn´t one bit funny to be honest. We were 15 mins from the top of the volcano, in the pitch black with a fairly well built (therefore heavy) guy with a disloacted shoulder. Carrying him down wasn´t really looking that appealing. Fortunatley for Matt, this time we didn´t leave anyone behind. It just so happened that Dr. Sam from an ER in Chicago (I´m not kidding) was there to save the day. With the coolness of a cat, Sam said ´Its alright, I´m just going to take your arm and do this and, oh yes its back in now. God I´ve never done that before!´

We were pretty glad he told us he´d never relocated a shoulder after the fact. Anyway, Matt was more or less right as rain and to his credit, he continued to the top and got there not last. Which given what he´d just been through was impressive. Matt, you´re an impressive fool.

The view from the top was spectacular, and this time we didn´t miss the sunset either!  We were all pretty chuffed with ourselves given the climb that we´d had.

You can see some pictures on the picassa album here if you haven´t already seen them.

That´s about it, we did some other cool things in Xela like visit natural Saunas where the steam literally comes out of the ground. All down the side of the road, all you see is the hillside next to you smouldering. We also visited an artisanal pottery where they showed us around someone´s house that doubles over as a pottery factory. One side of the room is the bedroom, the rest is full of moulds and half finished pots awaiting decoration.

We took salsa classes (I did, Ian sat that one out). We visited Central America´s first christian church. We generally had a brilliant time. Anyone looking to learn Spanish on the cheap, Celas Maya in Xela Guatemala is probably the best place to do it.

Anyway, that´s all for now. You can look forward to hearing all about Lago de Atitlan and the nicest hotel I think I´ve ever stayed in on the next post.

Hope you´re all planning your visits soon!