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!
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