Thursday, May 29, 2008

Rainy season?

So we are now in Southern Nicaragua on the coast, in a town called San Juan del Sur. We were aware that the rainy season was approaching, so I was wary about how much rain we would get and how crappy things would be. About 1 week ago we were in Granada, and it did rain a few days at night. I mean, torrential rain. But when it rains at night it´s not so bad, plus it cooled things off. But this past week since Sunday it has rained a lot. Everyday, and for the past couple of days, most of the day...And now we are in the middle of Tropical Storm Alma!!

What makes it worse is that our friends Gavin and Lilly are visiting...And it´s just raining and raining! Normally we would just chill and wait out the storm. We want to do things and show them around, but there´s not much to do besides surf here. And we can´t do that in a tropical storm! Our initial plan was to leave here this morning, but all the buses stopped running because the roads flooded. It might not even look good tomorrow for us to leave here, or take a surfing lesson...We shall see...

Tuesday, May 20, 2008

Country number 6!

So we have made it to Nicaragua, quite easily. When we got to southern Honduras to get a bus onwards, we found out that the bus strike is over. That made things ok for us to get around. Right now we are in Granada, an old colonial city. It's very cute, all these old buildings and churches painted in lively colors. We have heard great things about Nicaragua, so we are reviewing our plan of attack so we don't miss anything here. There are a bunch of volcanoes, crater lakes, and beautiful beaches to see. Our friend Gavin is flying into Costa Rica on Saturday, so I think we will have them come up to Nicaragua for a few days and then work our way back south with them. There are places we don't want to miss by going to Costa Rica to quickly, and things we think that they would also enjoy...

I think tomorrow we will head off to a place called the Monkey Hut, a cabin on a crater lake called Laguna de Apoyo, do some swimming and relax. It is hot here, so I need to get to some water to cool off!

Friday, May 16, 2008

More diving and good times in Utila

We have been here in Utila for the past 5 days...Besides the insane bugs and how hot it is here, we are enjoying ourselves. I have never had so many bug bites all at once that are so itchy!

We did some cool dives here, including a night dive! I have to admit, I was pretty nervous the whole time. It was hard, because it was dark, everyone kinda clustered together underwater, not wanting to get to far away from the dive leader. The clustering led to a lot of bumping into each other and kicking each other, which was kinda annoying...Because of that I couldn't exactly calm down and relax the whole time. We did see a crazy Bat Fish, which basically looks like an ugly underwater frog with a tail. It even hopped along the ocean floor...I will give night diving another shot sometime, and maybe I will be more relaxed if I try it again.

Yesterday we did another set of cool dives during the day and we were able to borrow a good underwater digital camera. We got some really good pictures, better than with the disposable underwater camera! We should have done our advanced open water certification while we here (currently with our open water certification you can only dive to 60ft, so with the next level I think you can dive to 130ft.) but it was an extra $100 that we didn't really want to spend. Adrian has a friend here who is a dive instructor and has been great showing us around and helping us with the dives....

Today is our last day here and we will probably ride around on some bikes to see more of this tiny island. We are going next to Nicaragua, or Costa Rica. Apparently there is a transportation strike in Nicaragua which will make traveling within the country much more of a hassle and expense. International buses are running, so our other option is to skip the country and just go to Costa Rica, which would be a shame because we here great things about Nicaragua...I will keep you posted on what we end up doing. We have another visitor next week! Adrian's buddy Gavin and his girlfriend Lilly are coming to Costa Rica....Should be fun!

Sunday, May 11, 2008

I miss my friends!

Yes, it's true. I wish I could see them and talk to them more then I can while traveling. I was thinking of this especially yesterday...We took a 4 hour catamaran sail boat ride to get from one island of Honduras to the other (Roatan to Utila), and with us on the boat were 10 girls that were living in Roatan, working there as dive masters. They arranged this boat ride as a "girls trip", and they were having fun just hanging out and lounging on the boat. I was very jealous, wishing I could transport all my girlfriends to that sailboat ride in that very instant. It would have been great to have them there, so I dozed into a nice little daydream about them all being here and sharing in the fun times...

So....Just to catch you up on what we've been doing-like I said, we are in Honduras. It's been a busy couple of weeks, and simultaneously without very good internet connections. Right now we are in Utila, and last week we were in Roatan. My mom and her friend Lynne were here visiting us for the week, so we had a great time with them! We picked them up in San Pedro Sula after blazing through El Salvador in three days. From there we took them to see the Mayan ruins of Copan, and then back across the country to the coast, and off to Roatan. They were up for backpacking around Honduras, which kicks butt, cause not many people might want to travel the way we are. But they were up for it! We stayed for the last 4 days in Roatan and enjoyed the beautiful island. The weather was amazing, and the beaches were gorgeous. You could even just swim right off the beach and snorkel on the reefs there. After they left on Wednesday we did a couple of dives, which were also amazing!

So we are now in Utila and we will be here for 3 or 4 more days. We will do some more dives, definetly a night dive!! From here we will get ourselves to Nicaragua...