Honduras to Nicaragua

We finally got a boat off Utila, next destination is Nicaragua. Not a lot happened on the journey, at least nothing worthy of taking your time to read, however I will keep you informed of the lengthy and painstaking bus rides, you know so you can feel like youre right there with us!!

Boat from Utila to the mainland, La Ceiba. 1 hour.

Chicken Bus from La Ceiba to San Pedro Sula. 4 hours.

Taxi to hostel 20 mins ( the driver was blind and a bit stupid (I´m sure he wasn´t but it had been a long day))

We arrived at the hostel at about 8pm and found out there was a bus leaving in the morning to Nicaragua at 5am! Great, we just had to get up at 3.30am and get to the station and hope there were seats still available.

So thats what we did. There weren´t.

Let me digress for a moment to tell you a little about the Central American transport status.

First there are the Luxury first class buses, these are as the title gives away, very luxourious and about 3 times more expensive than the second class bus. I haven´t been inside one of these, hell I wanted to use a cash machine in the place they sell their tickets and I was frisked with a metal detector just to get in!!

The much more affordable and in my opinion still pretty luxurious second class buses are what we were aiming for, a TICA bus. These are fancy coaches with TV´s, reclining seats, air con and fast, direct routes between the Central American countries.

Then you have your third class bus, this is still a coach, a little more run down than second class, the air con is a window that may or may not open properly, there may be a movie but the driver will have the radio on aswell so you can´t hear whats going on ( On the movie front I will add I have seen Predator and Cobra (Sly back in the 80´s) !! during my journeys. ) These are perfectly acceptable modes of transport with the perfect combination of price against comfort that I look for.

4th class is the chicken bus, coming in the multicoloured, multi lighted ( in Panama they have lights strung all over them, they look like a fair ground ride only not as safe). In an array of conditions, from damn near dead to kind of ok. They are fun for the first 20 minutes then just shit.

Back to the journey, there wasn´t a TICA bus available but fortunately we could get a 3rd class coach to Tegulchigalpa, the Honduran Capital and possible catch the TICA bus from there.

So we took that one, 5 hours. Then got a taxi to the TICA depot only to be told the bus was still full, doh!

Off to yet another bus depot where we bought a ticket to the boarder on a pretty crappy bus.

4 hours. At the boarder we were taken buy a very friendly pedlo/rickshaw rider to the immagration station and then to the bus terminal. Before we boarded we asked the price as is sensible and correct, however he replied "whatever you want, just a tip" however whe we arrived, it was about a 10 minute ride, he says" ok, just give me $20!! In no uncertain terms I told him to fuck off. So we haggled about the price and I paid 100 cordobas, which is about 2pounds 50 (still a bit of a jip in my book)

Another chicken bus. At the depot, or should I say the square of land with some litter and a few houses, even a pig wanderin around, we sit on the bus for about an hour waiting for it to head to Leon, our Nicaraguan destination. Eventually we get under way, we have another 3 or 4 hours on the bus and make it. We get a taxi to a hostel to be turned away as its full. No worries theres another over the road. Also full. a 10 minute walk in the rain to a place called LazyBones. Not full, theres nothing lazy about journeys like this.


We are currently in Panama City and will fly to Columbia tomorrow.

From Mexico city to Panama City it is 1774 miles as the crow flies, we have been here there and everywhere else in the last 10 weeks.
Over the next 4 months we have to go a hell of a lot longer;

From Cartegena, Columbia to Machu Pichi, Peru it´s 1639 miles

and then to Belem, Brazil it´s 1831 miles,

to Paraiba, 1015 miles.

From there to Rio it´s 1123.

Rio to Buenos Aires, Argentina 1231 miles.

And finally to Santigo in Chile it´s just another 690 miles.

So we have travelled (as the crow flies, not that we have a crow or can fly, so we will have done a lot more) 1774 miles. We have left, 7529 miles to go. We might take a small flight for about 500 miles over some of the Brazilian rainforest but other than that ti´s going to be buses all the way.

Our 5 hour journeys will be a thing of the past, 20hour and up from now on I think.

shit

Utila

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Under Water Love 23rd June - 2 July

We travelled from Copan to a small beach town called Tela it was nice, we stayed in a hostel/hotel right on the beach and did the shopping that I was hoping for in Copan. We only stayed one night I got my fix of crappy TV having one in our room, it was great. The only problem was when we tried to leave Tela.

As always Stu had the Map (if it was me with that thing I´m not sure what country we would be in right now) and he lead us to the bus termanal we needed. We asked the nice man when the bus was leaving and he said that it wasn´t. Oh no, we thought we must have just not understood him the bus must be leaving ¨the book¨ had told us it went from here so it must do. We asked the¨nice¨man again and the answer was just no.

We later found out from some other bemused travellers that there was a strike on and that they didn´t know when it was going to end. Maybe that day maybe a week later. Great another night in Tela, we decided to take a seat in the cafe accross the road from the bus and wait. (I secretly hoped I could go back to the Hotel and watch more Gilmore Girls.) We took over half the Cafe and ordered some drinks, they loved us there. After about 1/2 an hour there was a great commotion as the bus guys ran over to us telling us to jump on the bus now that it was going. We crammed in the back, no time to put the bags on the roof and off we went.

We were heading to the ferry terminal to get over to Utila in the Bay Islands to do a bit of diving. As soon as we were off the boat, a crossing that was really annoying as a really fat woman was lying beside me and digging her bag in my leg, we were beset by staff from dive shops touting for business. I using my logical head picked the hostel with a pool. Nice. We weren´t sure if Stu was going to be able to dive or if he would have to take the open water course agan. For those of you who haven´t heard the story - Stu did his Open Water in Indonisia, to process the dive licence they send it to Australia, as Stu was going there himself he decided to take all the paper work and post it himself. Which of course he never did and so has no proof that he did his course.

When we arrived on the Island we were told that Utilia was not only the cheapest place to learn but also the most strict and that with out a licence you can not dive. So off to Open Water school for Stu, pool side for me (told you I was thinking). I did a few fun dives which were great. We both loved being back in the water.

We had great debate about the next step in the diving ladder Advanced Open Water. Could we afford it both with time and money, was there any point in doing it if we weren´t going to continue on to Dive Master. After a few beers watching the Euro 08 finals Stu suggested staying and becoming Dive Masters thinking that he would come up against some resistance from me. I jumped at the chance. We signed up for our Advanced class then and there. Planning to stay on the Island for 2 months become Dive Masters and look for work. It seemed like a great plan and it would cost us about as much as travelling for that amount of time as well so we thought why the hell not.

Our Advance course was 5 more specilised dives. The best 2 were the deep dive to 30 meters down to a huge ship wreck, and the night dive. I was really nervous about the noight dive. I think I have both a healthy respect and an irrational fear of the sea (every thime I am out i can´t stop myself from singing da dum da dum da da da da and thinking about that film where the suba divers are forgotten) so mix that with pitch black and you have shit scared. But it was really cool. Unfortunatly Stu was having problems with preasure behind his eyes when he surfaced and getting really bad indigestion from breathing the dry air. So the decision to become Dive Masters was taken out of our hands. There was no point doing something that we loved but that was uncomfortable for Stu.

I don´t think we would have survived on the island for 2 months, all that was going on was diving and drinking. Good for a while but the fear of getting sick into my regulator was always in the back of my head. We did learn a great new driking game that we will have to modify and bring back home with us it is called "Nails". Basically you get a plank of wood and a nail for each person, the aim is not to be the first or the last person to put the nail in the wood or you have to buy half the round. We had a very expensive 2 games Stu lost first and then I did. We sat it out after that!!!

So getting off the Island that was fun. We had heard through the grape vine that the boat was not working and that it may be a week before it would be fixed, oh god we might have to stay. We have now learned not to blindly trust what we are told over here and went down to the port, and low and behold there was a boat. We had and hour to pack and get things ready and we were off the Island.

It was a grat place and we met people there that were lovely the only bad thing out it is that there is not alot of marine life left in Utila. It is a viscious circle, the tourists come to dive and see the fish but the locals catch the fish to feed the tourists!!!! Oh well such is life no matter how much we try not to crap everything up it still happens. My advice get out there and see what you can before it is all gone.

Copan Ruinas

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Off to Honduras Copan 20th - 22nd June

So we finally dragged ourselves away from the Budda Bar and got on our way to Honduras. We jumped on a bus to Copan which was hard as there is also a Coban which is in a totally different country and we didn´t want to go there. The people talk so fast and p´s and b´s can be mistaken very quickly so we were glad to get on the right bus. We arrived and found our hostel with ease and we decided to head to the Ruinas wich is why people visit Capan in the first place the next day.

The ruinas were amazing wonderfully restored monuments and buildings. There was an undergroung tunnel that you could go into to see more but it was $15 and we were ruinas´d out (and cheap) so we decided against it. As we walked round we saw a hole in the base of the grand stairs so decided to stick our heads in it and take a picture. It wasn´t untill we looked at the picture did we see all the HUGE spiders on the rood of the hole crawling towarde us. Very Indiana Jones.

So back to the hostel, mooch around town and then we found a magazine all about Honduras with places to go and trips and things in it. I was really excited to see that there was a Shopping Centre just outside of town it was descirbed as "The El Jaral Shopping Mall, located only 10 km (6 miles) from Copan Ruinas offers a variety of shops, eateries and even features the only first class cinema in the area, showing some of the latest released movies! Where locals and tourists can mix while exploring the mall¨ I was sold, I needed some new close and felt like a bit of retail therpy.

We jumped on a Chicken bus (yes I have gotten over my harrowing experience and am travelling on them again). So we are sitting on the bus waiting for a shopping mall to appear on the horizon like a shining becon of shopping goodness, after what felt like an age the driver said that we were there. What can I say it didn´t really live up to my expections. We were told to go round the back of the ¨Water Park¨to get to the Mall, in the ad about the place it said that it was safe for you and your family as there was tight gun control now. The gun control was really tight with a little sign telling us not to bring in our guns!!!!!! I felt very safe. We walked in to the Mall and we just had to laugh. Of the 4 shops that were in the ¨Mall¨3 of them were closed and the state of the art cinema was showing a Hillary Duff movie and the Simpsons (very up to date). The swimming pool that we had dreamed about was an Auqa Park full of kids and one slide and water that came up to your knees. We just felt wrong going in.

The one bonus was that the Cow Museam yes the COW museam, was open. So we had a look at all their cow stuff, stifling our giggles as we went and tried to figure out what to do next. The bus was gone and we had no idea when it was coming back and there was no way that we could stay in this twiglight zone for much longer. We decided to walk to the gas station to see if we could flag down a collectivo. We didn´t have to wait too long to get one. We hopped in and away we went, unfortunatly the guy collecting the money took a shine to me and concentrated his staring to one area only (my boobs) for the whole trip, until I had to move and he tried to look up my skirt. Oh the fun.

Back in Copan we thought about our day, we had had a choice to either go to the hot springs or the mall with a swimming pool, hmmm I think we made the wrong one. I don´t know why we both had such high expications of this Mall. I was invisaging loads of shops, some air conditioning, a pool on the roof and we got 4 shops in a shed. It was a great day!!!!!!!!!

We did go to a bar and watch "In Bruige" that night which almost made it ok. To paraphrase the lovely Colin Farrel - "It was like a Fairytail or something¨, ¨Maybe if I grew up on a farm and was retarded I would have thought El Jaral was good but I didn´t"

Lake Atitlan

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San Pedro, Lago Atitlan - Gualtemala 16/6 - 20/06

Stu.

"I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel's sake. The great affair is to move. " ~Robert Louis Stevenson

Well Robert obviously hasn´t spent too much time on chicken buses or in minibuses full of Isreali´s with bad singing voices. - (Don´t take this wrong, I like everyone, despite where they are from, colour, beliefs, taste in music- thats quite hard- , it´s just that a lot of Isreali´s keep living up to the negative stereotype that has been cast of them, it´s uncanny!! I´ve met dozens of Isreali people. A couple of them were nice. It´s almost like a challenge now to find pleasant ones!)
There are very few people that you will find in Central America that will say they enjoyed the journey.
The journey isn´t fun, it´s hot and cramped and noisey and your stuck with people who you may dislike for any reason, mainly though because they keep elbowing you in what is clearly your part of the seat, and singing to their MP3 player. Badly. Look out the window, thats an ok way to pass the time, the views are nice at worst, spectacular usually, grasp that silver lining coz it´s the only one. And your bum hurts. And it´s damn hot. And you sweat. A lot.

So yeah I like to arrive, I like to leave when I´ve had enough of a place or seen what it has to offer and I like to arrive. the bit in the middle pretty much sucks.
If at some point in the future they invent a teleporter then sign me up now, thats the way to do it, check I´m the only one in the thing first though. "Be afraid, be very afraid" Brundlefly -that´d be shit. If you don´t know what I´m talkin about right now you should probably go do something else, we have nothing in common. (only joking, but really go watch some classic horror films)

What I´m getting at is that travelling has a lot of, well, travelling involved. So we got a minibus to San Pedro de Lago Atitlan.
Life on the Lake. Love it.
A very chilled out place ( thats becoming quite a theme - it helps that we are avoiding cities). There are a few little towns dotted around a huge lake, we chose San Pedro, it sounded good in "The Book" - Thats a reference to the Lonely Planets "Central America on a Shoestring", without which we would probably be stuck in Mexico still.

I´d like to say that we travelled around on our own 2 feet, trailblazing, finding new ways to travel, discovering unknown hostels in the middle of nowhere where the beer is cheap and the folk are friendly ( actually thats pretty much everywhere anyway). The truth is we just read the book. We choose our destinations when we get a recommendation from someone about somewhere thats nice but then it´s the Book that tells us how to get there, gives us a selection of places to stay, has maps of where we are. It could only be better if a Lonely Planet employee met us off the bus and carried or bags for us!

I try to hide the Book sometimes, not letting people see that without it I´d be lost, I try to look like, "Yeah, I know where I´m going and I know how to get there"
Theres a danger you see, in my eyes, probably in other peoples too, that despite my best efforts I´ll become the unthinkable, not a traveller but a TOURIST!!! hahaha -- computer laughing is so fake.

Maybe thats just me.
Yeah, life on the Lake, we found a very cool bar called the Budda Bar - because they have a huge Pizza oven on the roof shaped like Budda and the Pizza goes in his belly to cook.
I played a lot of pool, actually we had a knockout competition which I lost in the final to a local guy. He probably needed the 5 pound prize money more than me anyway.

Drugs.
ClassA´s B´s and C´s, and probably some I´ve never even heard of. E´s, coke, MDMA, mushrooms, weed. They´re rife around the lake! I have tattoos I know and I´m backpackin around but this surely doesn´t instantly catagorise me as someone who will accept drugs from everyone I meet. It got ridiculous how many times in a day I´d get offered drugs on the street. The very first shop we went into, we were asked if we wanted to but a tshirt?, no, a Hammock? no. Some weed? The shopkeeper then proceeded to show me the bag of pot he had in his pocket to prove there were "no seeds, look, no seeds"
This continued pretty much constantly for the 3 or 4 days we were here.
"you want to rent a kayak?, No, You want some pot?"
In the bar, sitting around the pool table with some locals and other travellers
"Hi, I´m Frank" a local guy says as he comes over to the pool table, we shake hands. "you smoke weed? I got good weed man, if you need weed you come to me and I´ll sort it out"

Now to some this might all sound like San Pedro is a town of depravity and drug abuse but you couldn´t be further from the truth, yes there are drugs readily available for those who choose to partake but the guys selling it were actually very pleasant. The man in the shop asked me how I was doing every time I walked past (although he called me Steve). Frank was a familiar and friendly face in the bar. These are just locals who realise there is a hell of a lot more money to be made selling weed and mushrooms to Westerners than there is trying to sell them hammocks and bracelets.
Who are we to judge?

We did rent a Kayak while we were here, spent a very nice hour rowing around the lake.
We took the boat to a couple of other towns around the lake, not much to report, we chose the best town. There was a bit of rain when we were over at another town that continued as we were on the boat back too.
The street flooded, we had to sit in the boat for 15 minutes because the steps at the dock had turned into a river!

Pacaya Photos

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Magma Baby! Pacaya- Antigua 15/6

Stu.
Ok so despite my previous declarations of lazyness and general unhealthy lifestyle I just couldn´t pass up the opportunity to poke lava with a stick.
Come on it´s not every day you get to play with molten rock now is it!?
This did mean we had to face a 2 hour hike up a volcano. Doh.

I´d love to say it wasn´t that bad but really the first 10 minutes could have killed me! It did get better after that though and I took some small pleasure and manly pride in making it to the top without having to get what the guide was referring to as a "taxi" what he meant was a horse. Now riding up a volcano on horseback is a cool thing to do dont get me wrong and Gini partook in some cowboy style ascending. I however had developed a sense of what I am thinking as now as stupidity, then it was pride. So up we went, and 2 hours later we were standing near the top of the active volcano Pacaya and I got to poke lava with a stick. I was a happy man.

Guys if you think prodding a campfire or bonfire with a stick is manly (and lets face it, it is) then you really need to get some lava!! it´s a bit hot though. Some cool pictures.

Oh, another thing I wanted to let you know is that I have started looking at situations more from a "how good will this sound on the blog" perspective than from a nice and kind way to my fellow human beings way. The thing that led me to realise this was as we started to descend Pacaya it started to growl quite a lot (it did this quite often) and my thought process went something like this;
If Pacaya erupted and the fifty or so people that were on the top were killed in a lava flow, would this be worth the loss of those lives (people that I didn´t know remember!) so I could write on the blog that we narrowly escaped with our lives from an erupting volcano?

I blame you. I have been reduced to an uncaring monster in order to keep those of you who are nice enough or bored enough to read this blog entertained. ....or was I like this already?
I think I´m joking.

It would be a cool story though.

EarthLodge Pictures

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EarthLodge - Antigua 7/6 - 14/6

Stu.
Ok folks I´ll start with a little apology, suprisingly we have fallen behind in the blog, you know it´s a catch 22 situation, we have chosen to actually be out doing new things to write about rather than writing the things we have done! The date today is 6th July and we are in Nicaragua - Still safe and haven´t been robbed, hurt, hijacked or kidnapped- Good times.

However I am writing about Antigua, which was a month ago, it just means your gonna get the gist or what we did but maybe not the little details coz I can barely remeber what I had for breakfast let alone how I felt 4 weeks ago :-)
I had some cerial and a coffee.

Antigua´s quite a nice place although we were only here for a day to start with, we actually made it in time for the room we had booked at EarthLodge, part Hostel part Avacado farm up in the hills.
Wow.
We were anticipating quite a nice place because had been recommended by a friend (thanks Helen!) but it really is somethin else.
Picture if you will a really big hill, now think of it a bit bigger, well EarthLodge is three quaters of the way up a massive hill, where the ground plateau´s out enough to build a house and a dorm, along with a little stone sauna and some treehouses!
The view is spectacular, each morning as I woke up in our treehouse I´d open a bleary eye to look out of the window that covers the whole of one side of the building and look at Antigua far below and the tops of the 3 volcanoes that surround the town.
Every now and then it´s even better and you can see the smoke coming out of the top of "fuego" - one of the few active volcanoes in the region.

Life goes at a slow pace in Antigua and Earthlodge takes even that to new levels - except for the feckin healthy folk who insist on telling us about the hikes in the area, I mean, I get out of breath climbing the bit of the hill that goes from my treehouse to the main house (where the beer is) so why the hell would I want to trek up the side of what is practically a mountain just to come back down again? I get plenty of exercise going from the fridge to the hammock and back again thank you very much.

Ok so with the intentions of doing a 2 day trek to see Machu Picchu in a couple of months I can see some sense (through my cloud of refusal) of getting in shape some time soon. (is my current sort of roundish shape gonne be ok?)

I digress.......but apparently you can now get a lift all the way to Machi Picchu without doing any walking...hmmmm

Ok so yeah the Treehouse, the hammock, the cerveca ("Mosa" is a dark local beer that goes very well with pretty much anything, especially 2 more Mosa´s), the movie room with over 300 films. I´d been here for about 3 minutes and decided I wanted to stay forever.

Yo bebo I drink
Tu bebes You drink
Elle/el bebe She/ He drinks
Nosotros bebamos We drink
Elles/Elas beben They drink

Oh how happy we were conjugating verbs all day long with our spanish teacher. 4 Hours a day for 5 days we payed attention in class, we did homework and we studied hard. At the end of the week we could both hold a conversation in Spanish, we had memorised about 50 verbs and about 50 nouns. Fluent Spanish here we come...
Unfortunately the majority of people in Antigua speak English - and in the other couple of places we have been since. The knowledge has drained as if my head were a sieve. It´s going to take a bit more studying to get back on track. I can understand more of what is being said to me now though so thats a good thing.

Dinner at Earthlodge was quite cool too, all the guests sit around a big table "family style" (in my house that would mean on the sofa with a plate on my lap) to enjoy whatever was the dinner of the day, some damn fine cooks with some hearty servings, as you can imagine I was a happy camper (I was polite though and let some other guests have second helpings before I had my thirds!)

7 days later and we headed back to Antigua, time at EarthLodge had come to an end, other places to be and things to see.