Butterflies and murals in Nicaragua

There are two ways to tell the story.  I can say we spent 12 hours on a microbus, two taxis and four busses to cross two borders through sweltering heat and torrential rain.  Or I can say, breakfast in El Salvador, lunch in Honduras, and dinner in Nicaragua!  I tend to like the second version better, and hope to forget as much of the first version as possible.  Except we found a friend on our last bus, a Nica cowboy complete with hat and gigantic belt buckle.  Despite our inability to understand much of what he was saying (at least we got the gist), he talked with us for a while in a dusty bus stop waiting for the bus to arrive.  (We were afraid we were going to have to wait for an hour in the heat, but the bus arrived and soon took off early, much to our relief.  It stopped at a store and the driver bought a drink, then we returned to the bus station.  We sat for about 20 minutes and we took off again, where he picked up a few people along the way, and then returned to the station again!  D´oh!)  Our bus eventually arrived at another tiny town, and we all crammed and I mean crammed into a little microbus, where despite having my pack in my lap I still was getting very friendly with two other passengers sitting opposite me.  All the travel had taken longer than we had expected, and we were arriving at the Nicaraguan border right at 5pm, in the rain, and we weren´t sure if we were going to be able to find a bus on the other side or if we were going to have to get desperate and hitch.  But after making our way through, with no bus in sight, we found our cowboy waiting for us on the other side with a taxi.  He even negotiated a decent price for us.  Our stop was only about 20km down the road, and he was off farther into the highlands.  I can´t say it enough, we just keep meeting these super friendly people who go out of their way to help us, despite the language barrier.  People are awesome.

We were in the town of Somoto, a small town that had made a claim to fame based on the recently discovered river canyon that is the start of the Coco River, which is one of the longest in Central America.  Of course by recently discovered, they mean discovered by us white people.  Anyways, we hired a guide who hiked us in through gorgeous farmland to the canyon.  When the water was deep, we swam down along, letting the current help push us through a beautiful and, at times, deep canyon with steep rock walls.  We got out and clambered along the sides and over huge rocks when the river turned into shallow rapids.  It was great.  At several points along the bank we came across huge numbers of yellow butterflies drinking along the banks.  When we would walk by, they would all start flying around all at once, leaving us to walk through what we termed "Butterfly Cloud".  Our guide was great at talking slow and simply, so we were able to feel all fancy talking in Spanish all day.  The only issue we had was the water itself.  We had imagined some sparkling mountain spring, when in fact it was very brown, full of all that farm runoff and who knows what else.  We kept our shirts on to protect from the sun, and lets just say they were nowhere near as white when we were done.  Anyway, it might not have been as magical as we´d hoped (except for those butterflies!), but it was still beautiful, and a very fun day.

We spent another night in Somoto, and then moved down the road to the college town of Estelì, which is notable for being full of murals.  I am a huge fan of graffiti art, and have been taking photos at every opportunity all along the way, so I was pretty excited for a city full of murals.  Some were political, some were for kids, and some I have no idea what they were.  We just walked through the city like we were on a treasure hunt.  We found a terrific little restaurant, but unfortunately Estelí is also a cigar factory town, and it is impossible to enjoy eating anything when someone behind you is smoking a stogie.  I´ve been spoiled by living in so many cities where public smoking is illegal, and while the smoking down here isn´t as bad as it was in Asia (in fact most of the smoking I´ve been around has been by the Europeans, not the locals), I sure will be glad when I get home and can eat in a restaurant without fear of nasty smoke defiling my meal.

We are now in León, another college town, historically the arch-rival to Granada, where I think we are heading tomorrow.  Back around the time of the US Civil War, the city of Leòn thought they could finally defeat their poltical enemies in Granada by inviting William Walker into town.  He was an American who came down with a bunch of mercenaries he called "fillibusters", which apparently is another way to say pirate.  He did indeed defeat Granada, but instead of handing the city over to León, he decided to stick around as the new "President of Nicaragua".  You see he thought he could make some improvements, little things like reinstituting slavery, and hopefully give some backing to the Confederacy.  What he did do was to unite the bitter political enemies who, with some help from the Costa Rican army (back when they still had one), were able to drive him out.  Being a good sport about it, he had the good grace to burn the city of Granada to the ground on his way out, and posted a sign "Granada was here."  His awesome sense of humor somehow wasn´t enough convince the locals to let bygones be bygones, and he was captured by the Honduran army and executed.  The truth is I find this embarassing tale terribly interesting, and having found out that William Walker himself wrote a book about his exploits (I assume while he was still happily president) which I am desperate to find.  If not here, I´m hoping ebay will be good to me when I get home!

If we were in the mood to hang out, I think we would enjoy León a lot, but for whatever reason we are both feeling pressed to move on.  I don´t suppose that has anything to do with the horrible realization that we only have about 5 weeks to go!  Ack!  We still have so much ground to cover if we want to make it to Panama City.  And we are still thinking we want to go to the Corn Islands, and down into some other out of the way places in Nicaragua.  Will we make it?  Stick around to find out!

El Salvador

After another two night stay in Antigua at our favorite hostel (The Yellow House) with our favorite hostel staff (Julia!), we decided to chicken bus it to El Salvador.  The tourist shuttles are always easier (and more than twice as expensive), but generally go from one capitol to the next, and we wanted to stop before San Salvador.  We found a rough guide online for which busses we wanted to catch, and we crossed our fingers it would work out.  At our first stop, we knew what we were looking for, but then a friendly guide looked at us as he was getting off and said "Are you going to the border?"  We said yes, so he motioned for us to follow him.  We have had really good luck with friendly strangers helping us figure out where to go, so we followed him off the bus, and, as is the custom in bus stations, were immediately beset upon by 15 guys hustling us over to a bus.  We loaded our packs, and barely had time to sit down before the bus took off.  It only took us about five minutes to realize something was wrong from the direction we were heading, and the bus assistant soon confirmed our worst fear.  Yes, we were heading to the border, but instead of El Salvador, we were going to Mexico.  D`oh!

We got off at the next little town and grabbed another chicken bus in the opposite direction.  (I´m afraid our helper was a little embarassed to have "helped" us, but it wasn´t his fault!)  Back in town we were more careful about stating WHICH border we wanted to go to, and quickly found the right bus.  From there we made it to the border, did the customary long walk from one side´s bus stop to the other side´s bus stop, and after just two more busses made it to the pretty mountain town of Juayùa.  Finding street addresses is always difficult.  Even if the streets are marked, which they often aren´t, most people use the age-old method of "It is two blocks down and three blocks over from the yellow and white gas station".  We asked a local guy if he knew the way to the hotel we wanted to go to, and he pointed us down a street.  We cautiously headed in that direction, but I guess he could see our hesitancy because he ran up behind us and proceeded to walk us the rest of the way.  Many travelers opt to skip El Salvador altogether.  While the country has its share of volcanoes and waterfalls and jungle, you can find all of that bigger and better in surrounding countries.  Added to that is that the country is still trying to get tourists to trust it as a safe and interesting destination.  While options for tourists are expanding, the infastructure is still pretty basic.  But what the country does have is an extremely friendly and outgoing population.  Everywhere we went people smiled at us and said hello.  From little kids to old grandmothers, everyone who passed us had a friendly greeting.

We came to Juayùa specifically for the feria gastronomico, a food fair they have every weekend.  Booths were set up all around the main square, and we walked around looking for something weird to try.  We finally settled on frog.  It was marianated in a green sauce, almost like a pesto, and was served with rice, a tortilla with a weird white paste stuff inside, a small salad, and some delicious fried plantain.  I´ve never had frog before, and it tickles me to say it, but it tastes like chicken, only chewier.  For dessert we had a chocolate covered frozen banana.  There was a piragua guy, which is sort of like a snow cone, but then they put all sort of weird thick goop and powder and stuff on it, so the banana just looked more appealing.  Maybe we´ll try a piragua another time.

We also found a little place to get haircuts.  The lady was great, and it only cost $1.25 each!  We found that the hotels were expensive, but just about everything else is really cheap.  Our original plan had been to scoot through the country after this, but since we were enjoying it we decided we could spare another night.  In an unusual decision for us, we decided not on the cute little colonial town, but instead decided to spend a night in San Salvador, the capitol.  Our first hour-long bus went smoothly, and at the bus station we quickly found our next bus and got on.  It was still fairly empty so we figured we´d have a few minutes to wait, but it started to fill up fairly quickly.  Then a man got on and started making some kind of announcement.  This happens often on the busses, and is usually someone trying to sell something or give a sermon or whatever, so I´ve stopped even trying to figure out what they are saying.  But then he got off, and a few people followed him.  At first we wondered if there was going to be another bus that left sooner, but most people stayed on the bus so we weren´t sure.  We waited a few more minutes, and then someone else got on and said something, too quietly for us to make out, but again a few but not all the other people got off.  We decided something was up, so David got off the bus to take a look around, and sure enough across the street he found another bus station.  We unloaded and went across, and were even lucky enough to find a deluxe bus with more comfortable seats and curtains over the windows which was leaving promptly.  After we got on, a very nice lady came over to us to ask what we had paid for our seats, just checking to make sure we hadn´t been overcharged.  (We hadn´t, the two hour bus ride was just $1.25 each.)  These El Salvadoreans are just nice!  I still can´t figure out why so many people stayed on the original bus though.

We arrived at a rather chaotic bus terminal in San Salvador, and were able to quickly jump in a cab.  The neighborhoods in San Salvador are pretty clearly demarcated between the good side of town, the bad side of town, and the stuff in between.  We chose the good part of course, up near the university where the college students and most of the backpackers go.  Unfortunately we hadn´t really thought about it being a Sunday, and to our chagrin most things were closed.  We tried walking around, but with so few people around we just couldn´t be sure of how safe we were, not to mention there just wasn´t much to look at anyways.  We did end up in a mall at one point, which was a little weird.  They even have Cinnabon here!  Sadly it was at American prices, and I wasn´t willing to pay $4 for it.  ;)

Still we found a little local joint to have lunch.  For dinner we caved to convenience and went to Pizza Hut.  (The street was loaded with American fast food joints, there were even two Burger King´s less than a block away from each other.)  The Pizza Hut was fancified though, with waiters and a full menu of pastas and sandwiches and other stuff.  We went for a special take out deal, two pizzas for $9.  When we got back to our place we found one pizza was thin crust and one was thick crust.  Who knows why.  While we were waiting though, there were two young local guys sitting near us, talking in a mixture of spanish and unaccented english.  They had some tattoos and piercings, but were wearing jeans and polo shirts.   We started talking, and they told us they had each grown up in Los Angeles since they were little kids.

"But I got into a little trouble, and so I got sent back here a year ago.  It was really weird having to come back to a country I didn´t even remember.  I wish I could go back to the US, but I guess it will be alright here.  Gotta make the best of it anyways!"

They didn´t elaborate on what kind of trouble they had been in, but coming from LA and knowing the history El Salvador has with gang troubles, I could imagine.  But I was really impressed with their attitudes about it.  Neither tried to complain about how the mean old USA had treated them unfairly.  Whatever they had done, they were taking responsibility for it, and for the consequences they were now facing.  They weren´t thrilled with their new life, but they were making the best of it.  They got their food and as they said goodbye they directed us down the street to where we could find some "ladies".

It´s good enough for me, yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah...

Our stop in Lanquin was the sublimely located "El Retiro", which is right on a river deep in a lush valley of green rolling hills.  This was our third experience with a jungle lodge, and it didn´t disappoint.  Well, truth be told we didn´t have many bug sightings, but we did get to chase out an adorable black and red snake from our room one night.  Obeying the rule that if anything is especially flashy it is probably poisonous, we treated it with caution, but it was only maybe 18 inches long and couldn´t get any traction on the concrete floor, so it was throwing itself around in a most amusing way trying to get away from us.  As soon as it hit the grass and had something to hold on to though it literally disappeared.

The big draw here is the nearby Semuc Champey, which is billed as the most beautiful spot in Guatemala, or, depending on who you talk to, in all of Central America.  A river comes crashing down a canyon and then plunges underground before coming back to the surface farther downstream.  But a small amount of water from the river and from the surrounding canyon flows along the surface in a stepped series of natural pools.  The river water here was colder than anywhere else we´ve gone yet, but the water in the pools is heated by the sun.  After swimming around at the bottom where the pools form a waterfall to rejoin the river coming out of the ground, we sat around in the pools, where little fish swam all over nibbling at our skin.  That last part was a little creepy.  One little fish might have been kind of cute, but there were dozens around each of us.  We then hiked up a very steep but scenic trail up to the top of the canyon for a view of the pools from above.  On the way down we ran into a family of howler monkeys, including an adorable little baby.  We were glad they weren´t feeling territorial and didn´t throw their poop at us (as howler monkeys are known to do).

We then went to the cave.  Unlike the ATM cave in Belize where we wore fancy helmets with headlamps, here we went in holding candles, which gave the whole experience a very different feel.  One little candle doesn´t illuminate much, but when you get ten, it was surprising how great it looked.  We swam through parts, climbed up a rope through a waterfall, and jumped into some deep pools.  (We had to trust the guide that the pool was deep enough, cause we couldn´t see, and David was the first one to try it.)  We´ve had several experiences where we feel like Indiana Jones coming across some ancient artifact, but this adventure was decidedly straight out of The Goonies.  We didn´t find any pirate treasure, but we still had a great time.  Afterwards we jumped in the river with innertubes and floated down some rapids for a bit.  We even got to stand in the back of a pickup truck for a crowded ride back to the hostel.  Another very fun day.

We are now back in Antigua (again), and for our last hurrah took a trip out to Volcan Pacaya.  It turns out caves and waterfalls and ruins aren´t all Guatemala has to offer.  You can also get up close and personal with hot lava.  Magma.  It is just fun to say, magma.  Say it.  Magma.  Told you so.  The crater was spewing smoke when we arrived, but besides the lava it has a tendancy to spew poisonous gas, so is strictly off limits.  We were underneath the peak, watching a river of lava flowing rapidly down the side before slowing and spreading out across the lava field.  It was unbelievable how close we got.  We knew there had been an accident and some people had been killed a few weeks ago, so we were determined not to get ourselves in trouble.  But the lava was flowing so strongly that we didn´t have to go very deep into the field at all, and were able to do so above the flow where we didn´t have to worry about it falling down on us.

We got within a few feet of one of the flows, which was moving much faster than I´d imagined, a couple of feet a minute.  The heat coming off it was incredible.  The rock in front would crumble away, exposing the red lava which had a consistency of sandy molasses, or molten glass maybe.  Then the outer layer would cool and turn black again, until it pushed foward another few feet and another chunk would crumble down.  We watched a small ledge we stood on initially get completely engulfed by the flow, it was mezmerizing.  Up above we could see where the lava was much hotter, running like water, and every few minutes there would come a loud rumbly belch from the crater overhead.  Just incredible.

On the way down we found a gigantic grub on the trail, bigger than my thumb.  David, surprisingly, wouldn´t touch it though.  "Grubs gross me out." he said.

We are still trying to figure out our route, but I think we will be heading to Juayua in El Salvador for the food festival this weekend.  You never know what to expect with internet access in a new country, but hopefully I´ll have another update soon.

Belize it or not, we swam with a manatee!

Sleep deprived from several nights spent sweating instead of snoozing, we boarded a chicken bus to Belize City.  The bus was packed with folks headed to an "Agricultural Fair", which from the street seemed to be the equivalent of a state fair, so we had to sit with our bags in our laps.  It was hot, but the bus was using the latest in AC technology, Model 4-50, which is four windows down driving at 50mph.  (People love telling that joke down here.)

From the Belize City bus station we got in a cab for a quick ride to the water taxi terminal, and soon were on our way to Caye Caulker.  There are lots of cayes in Belize (pronouced "key"), but Caye Caulker is the favorite of the backpacker set.  The town was surprisingly empty, it turns out May is a quiet season caught between the dryer weather of April and the beginning of summer vacations in June.  We happily splurged on a room with air conditioning, and since it was off-season were able to negotiate the rate from $60 a night down to $35.  This was still a big splurge on our $50 a day budget, but we didn´t regret it for a minute.

When we arrived the island was in the middle of a huge windstorm, which kepts things comfortably cool but stirred up sediment in the water so made for less desirable snorkelling or diving.  So we spent several days napping and walking along the beach and watching the sunrises and sunsets, and didn´t begrudge the wind for a second.  When it finally died down we scheduled a snorkelling tour of the barrier reef (second in size only to the one in Australia I believe).  We got in the boat with a pair of Aussie girls, and took a 25 minute boat ride down the reef.  As soon as we pulled up, a six foot long nurse shark passed under our boat in water that was only four or five feet deep.  As soon as we got in the water, a school of jackfish and a gigantic grouper swam through us.  We went to four different sites, and we saw just about everything we could have hoped for, including a frenzy of feeding nurse sharks, green turtles, a moray eel, sting rays almost as big as me, a school of barracuda, porcupine fish, puffer fish, a parrotfish as big as my torso, and even a manatee (otherwise known as the sea cow).  Our driver saw a boat cleaning their fish over the side, so stopped to let us watch the feeding going on underneath the boat.  A huge swarm of sting ray and even a huge spotted eagle ray were swarming around, and right in the middle was a gigantic Loggerhead Turtle.  I was amazed by the size of the turtle, and just as I was thinking "I could easily fit my entire fist in its mouth" it turned and swam right towards me.  I backpedaled furiously (we were only about ten feet away) and crashed into one of the Aussies behind me, but just as it reached me it decided it wasn´t done with the fish guts and turned around and went back into the frenzy.  I´m willing to bet turtle attacks are relatively rare, but still.

Our day of snorkelling was so successful we decided we didn´t need to go out for a dive, which would have been fun, but I´m pretty sure we just would have seen more of the same.  (The exception being the famed Blue Hole, but we´ll save that for next time.)  Caye Caulker is a great spot that I´d recommend to anyone that is ready to live by the local motto, "Go slow". 

This morning though we took the water taxi back to the mainland and took a shuttle back to Flores in Guatemala.  Our travel was delayed for a half hour when traffic suddenly halted to allow a funeral procession to march over a mile down the road - the highway! - to the cemetary.  It was a full military funeral with lots of people in uniform and even a marching band.  Our driver was extremely frustrated, but it was kind of interesting for us.  Tomorrow morning we are headed to another jungle lodge in what is billed as the "most beautiful spot in Guatemala".  I never trust hype, but I´m sure it will be a nice place to see for a few days.  We are still a little irked that we missed a week of Spanish class thanks to my dental adventure, but I´m not sure we want to spend any more time in Guatemala, as much as we love it here we are itching to get down to El Salvador and Nicaragua.  Hopefully we will find another spot to take some classes along the way, but I´m guessing we will be out of Guatemala by the end of next week.

You betta Belize it!

We left Antigua (again) for a 90-minute shuttle into Guatemala City.  Heavy rains with some awesome lightning sent people running for cover, giving the streets a very deserted feel as we drove around.  We did see what looked like a room in a building one story up where the outside wall to the street had been removed, and in the room was a statue of a man with some office furniture around him (also possibly made of stone, although it was hard to tell in the dark).  David swears he saw the beginnings of a gang fight there, but I was too busy staring at the weird statue to notice.  lol
We then got on a bus up to Flores.  I'm never a fan of night busses, but this one wasn't bad as far as they go.  We arrived 12 1/2 hours after we left Antigua, and quickly hopped on a colectivo minibus to the Belizean border, about two hours away.  Big sections of this road are still unpaved (although not as much as the guidebooks warned us about), and the rain made the road muddy and slick.  But that was probably better than the dust storm it would have been on a dry day, so we didn't complain.  The border crossing was rather uneventful, although the Guatemalan agent must have somehow realized that we had been spared the usual 10Q "fee" when we came back from Honduras, because he charged us each 20Q.  Very obnoxious.  It is so lame when you know you are being, basically, robbed, and the guy knows you know he is robbing you, but for the sake of just getting across the border without hassle you fork it over anyway.  20Q is still only $2.50US, which isn't worth a fuss, but the principle!  The principle!

A half hour and a short cab ride later, we were in the city of San Ignacio, our stop for the night.  Although it is one of the largest cities in Belize, it feels very small, just a few crisscrossed streets with lots of shops and banks, although there are what seem like homes stretching off in every direction.  What we noticed right off was the heat.  It is maybe 90F, with a humidity to match.  We've felt the heat in other places, but without an ocean breeze we are really feeling it here.  I've done my share of complaining about cold water showers, but here even the cold water is only "cold".  I can't believe I'm pining for a real cold shower, but it sure would help relieve the heat.

The other weird thing is that people speak English here.  I've gotten so used to speaking in Spanish that I am having a hard time not saying "buenos dias" and "gracias" all the time.  I'm sure many of the people also speak Spanish anyway.  They also speak Creole, which I think comes in both English and Spanish varieties.  Whatever it is, through in that Rasta accent and I can't understand a word of it.  Another oddity are the large numbers of Chinese living here.  The Chinese restaurants far outnumber any other kind of food in town, which was great for me, as the Guatemalan´s best attempt at asian food was my plate of "Chow Mein" which was actually angel hair pasta dressed with butter.  So I had some chicken fried rice one night, and some Sesame Chicken the next, it was awesomely unexpected.

Our first adventure was to a place called Cave´s Branch.  Basically you get in the river (the water was cool and delicious) on an innertube, and you float down the river, which winds its way through a series of caves.  Cave tubing is a popular tourist attraction here, and hoards of cruise ship passengers arrive on busses from the coast.  While there were a lot of them, they were in full cattle mode, and were easy to get around.  Must be all that buffet or something.  Since David and I were coming from San Ignacio, instead of arriving with a busload of 30 people, it was just the two of us with our guide.  He snaked us around the masses and farther up the river so we got to go through an extra cave, which we fully appreciated.  The last cave was the best though, I´m talking caves that are the length of several football fields, and the river just eases you down and through.  The last cave has a little waterfall coming over one side, and a partially collapsed celing in on part with the sunlight and jungle plants reaching down into the cavern.  It totally felt like the beginning part of the "Pirates Of The Caribbean" ride at Disneyland, minus the gloom and smell of mildew.  After the cave we went through some minor rapids, which was fun too.  A totally great day.

The next day was even better.  We went to the ATM cave, which doesn´t stand for Automated Teller Machine, but I´ll have to look up the Maya to remember the full name.  We went with Nick from England and a married couple from Utah.  After driving for an hour or so, we then hiked through the jungle for another hour, crossing three times through a small river.  We saw herons and owls and what are called "Jesus Christ" lizards, which are so named because they can stand and run so fast on their hind legs that they can literally run across water.  Our guide pointed out different plants all along the way, telling us which ones would cure upset stomach and which ones would give you an itchy rash, helpfully called Poisonwood, and which ones were an antidote for Poisonwood.  He showed us one vine covered in sharp needles, which he said can grow up to three miles long!

Unlike any tour I´ve ever been on before, the guide was totally relaxed and kept encouraging us to take our time and not to rush.  We took full advantage of this, and what was supposed to be a seven or eight hour tour stretched into almost 12!  It was great, and we tipped appropriately.

Eventually we came to the mouth of the cave, from which the river pours out.  After putting on helmets with headlamps, we jumped in the river and swam into the cave.  From there we followed the river deeper and deeper into the ground.  Sometimes the water was ankle deep, sometimes chest deep, sometimes we had to swim, twisting through crevices and over boulders and underneath huge stalagtites and gorgeous curtains of rock.  We saw huge crawfish, a few bats and a totally creepy cave spider.  As if cave spider wasn´t a creepy enough name, this one is called a Scorpion Spider.

At some point we left the river and climbed up into an overhead passageway that we never would have found on our own.  (The cave follows the river for over two more miles from the point we veered away).  The passageway was tight at first, but soon opened up into a series of large caverns, and this is where the ancient Maya would come to bring offerings to the Gods.  There were pots all over the place, many well preserved thanks to the calcium sediment dripping from the celing which coated and protected everything.  We had to take off our shoes and walk around in our socks here to help preserve the site.  Farther back we started coming across the bodies, 1000 year old preserved skeletons lying where they fell.  The cave is named after the most perfect of these, a skeleton of a young girl laying on her back, limbs askew.  Talk about "Pirates of the Caribbean".  It was creepy and awesome and humbling all at once.

After a third night that was too hot to sleep through, we were ready to head to the beach.  Note to any travelers coming to San Ignacio, do yourself a favor and get a room with AC!

A visitor and the end of a 90-day visa

Our little adventure down here took a different kind of twist and we had a visit from our friend Erin.  She lives in Albuquerque, which according to my nephew Jackson is pronounced "Albert Cookie".  We spent a couple of days in Antigua shopping and looking at ruins and shopping and eating and then shopping some more.  It was fun for David and I, not just to share a fun place with a friend, but also to have an excuse to live a little and spend a little more money than usual.  We went to the fanciest restaurant in town, the kind with a chef instead of a cook, and had the most amazing meal.  Mine was so fancy I couldn´t even pronounce it.  For a 5-star meal, set inside the most gorgeous ruin of an old monastary, for three people we paid less than $100.  We´d practically pay that for TGI Fridays back at home.  In fact we enjoyed it so much we did it again at a different fancy restaurant a few days later.  I am so spoiled.

We did a day trip up to Tikal to show her some toucans, lizards, crocodiles, howler monkeys and an agouti.  Also there are some ruins there, which she also thought were pretty cool.  Then we did a few days around Lake Atitlàn.  We found a much nicer hotel in San Marcos than we stayed before, the Aaculaax, that along with a great lake view also included spiders, lizards and scorpions for our enjoyment.  In Pana we fed bananas to some spider monkeys.  It turns out they ignore you if you are skimpy and throw them a bit of banana, but if you throw the whole thing in the peel they love it!  Actually saw a squirrel in San Marcos grab a banana out of a tree and kindly stopped in full view of the balcony to let us watch it eat it.  There was also a cross-eyed dog that loved to play.  Hmmm, was Erin´s trip all about animals, or it is just me?

We were also excited that she got to experience an earthquake, which was just a little rumble but lasted a good 15 seconds.  Later that day we saw a volcano erupt in the distance, with a huge plume of smoke rising up into the sky.  We didn't really notice the ash fall, but the hotel staff were complaining about all the extra dusting they were having to do that day.  I'm not sure she enjoyed the large spider she found in her room, but it is always good to go home from the tropics with a good bug story.  We even did some hard bargaining at the local market, and she found one of the items she bought at the airport for almost 200% more than she paid, so I guess we did pretty well.

We didn't get the chance to ride a chicken bus, but we told her all the stories of crazy driving and bad road conditions.  So as we were leaving San Pedro in a shuttle bus, we come to a section of road where there has been a landslide and a huge boulder is blocking the road.  Several guys were already there, and our driver and a few others got out to help, and they muscled it off the road over the other edge.  Nothing like a little necessity to get some road work done!

Now our little vacation within a vacation is over, and it is time to get back to some travelling.  Actually, to my astonishment our 90 day visa expires on Tuesday.  Where does the time go?  So after much consideration, we are heading to Belize tomorrow, taking a night bus back up to Flores (our third visit!) and then will jump on a local bus to and across the border.  We haven't exactly decided what to do in Belize, as we are expecting some pretty hefty sticker shock.  But I'm sure we will enjoy it.

Guatemalan dentistry

Thursday night I started to get a little tooth-ache.  By the time we arrived in Antigua Saturday night, the tooth had stopped hurting but my face was starting to swell up.  I figured that wasn´t a good sign.  Of course Sunday nothing was open, so I took advantage of my nursing background and the prescription-free pharmacies here and started myself on some amoxicillin.

Choosing a dentist in a foreign country is a little nerve-wracking, but as it turns out a lot of Americans actually come to Guatemala specifically for dentistry services, a little dental tourism.  Many of the dentists here have an American level of education, but the prices are about 1/10th of the cost.  But rather than finding the cheapest option, I went with the most-recommended.  The dentists even spoke english, which was a definite plus.  They kept me on the amoxicillin (he didn´t seem remotely surprised that I had already started an antibiotic) just at a higher dosage.  And they had me come back Wednesday to meet with the root canal specialist.

I asked a lot of questions, and the specialist was quite comforting.  But as I lay back in the chair, he said "I think it will be better if we do this without anesthesia."  Say what?!  I was more than a little terrified, but by this point I trusted him.  And he was right, I didn´t feel a thing, and it was over in maybe ten minutes.  Just before he filled it he said "OK, now I am going to fill the canal with Clorox." ::sigh::

The root canal was finished with another visit (still no anesthesia used), and then I was back to see the regular dentist again.  I had the option of getting a crown done, or of just having a permanent filling put in, which would last long enough for me to get back to the States before needing the crown.  Since the crown would mean I'd have to stay here in Antigua another week or two, I opted for the filling.  As much as I like Antigua, I am definitely ready to get moving again.

Three dentist visits, no novocaine, I was in and out in twenty to thirty minutes each time.  Not bad.  When I was paying the final bill ($137 all included), we glanced up at the TV, and they were playing a section from the Matt Harding dancing video that we participated in for the DC clip.  It is really weird to be at the dentist in Guatemala and see yourself on TV.

The angel from Guatemala City

We decided to pull ourselves away from the finca and head back to Antigua to do another week of language school.  We walked our packs down to the main road and waited for a passing bus to stop.  When it did, the handler jumped out and opened the luggage compartment underneath for us to put our bags in, and pointed for us to put them behind a burlap sack.  As I heaved mine over it hit the sack, which began to move and chirp - the sack was full of live chickens!  I jumped and the luggage guy laughed at me for almost squishing the chickens.

We had to change busses only once, and we arrived into Guatemala City about three, so still had plenty of time to find a cab over to a different bus station where we could get a chicken bus out to Antigua.  Guat City has a few ritzy, nice areas, but in general is not thought of as a safe (or interesting) place for travelers.  Just before our bus stopped, a girl sitting across from us leaned over and asked if we knew where we were going.  We started talking, and she told us she lived close by where the Antigua busses went, and if we wanted she could take us.  Since we weren´t sure of where we were or even which bus station to tell a cab driver to take us to, we readily agreed.   She walked us over and we got on a local city bus, which travelers are always warned never to take, and that we never would have been able to figure out which bus to take even had we wanted to.  Her name was Claudia, and she is getting ready to graduate with a masters in architecture.  We rode the bus out quite a ways, with Claudia pointing out various landmarks for us.  When we got off the bus we had to walk through a back alley, and I was thinking, OK, here is where the sweet angel girl turns out to be luring us to our doom.  But no, on the other side of the alley was a huge shopping mall, and on the other side was a big bus stop.  She waited with us and even helped explain to us some of the method to the madness of the chicken busses, how they are named and painted according to their routes.  It won´t suprise anyone in my family to learn she is LDS.

So our Guatemala City angel got us through town and onto the right bus, saving us a ten dollar cab ride and giving us a far more interesting experience.  It is experiences like this that make me love travelling.  People are just awesome the whole world over.  It isn´t easy to approach strangers, especially with a language barrier (though her english was better than my spanish), and we sure appreciated her going out of her way for us.

Spiders, bugs, and the smell of freshly baked bread.

From Flores, we had about five different plans of where we wanted to go next, and kept changing our minds every five minutes.  The only thing I like more than making plans is changing plans.  The day we were going to leave, we arrived at the bus station an hour before the bus to Cobán was supposed to leave, only to find out that the bus line we were looking for was out of business, and the bus that took over the route had just left 15 minutes earlier.  Thank you Lonely Planet.  We weren´t prepared to wait another four hours for the next bus, so what else could we do but immediately hop on a bus going the opposite direction?

The bus dropped is off in a little town of Poptún, and we hopped in a tuk-tuk out to the Finca Ixobel.  The finca is a working farm, but also a guest house.  We had skipped staying here on our way to Flores because we´d heard it was booked solid over Easter week.  Arriving just afterwards, things were very quiet.  In fact our first night we stayed in an eight bed dorm but had the whole room to ourselves.  The next night we moved to our own little bungalow, which was up on stilts and very rustic.  Our cabin had no electricity, so we had to use candles at night, but then we´ve long been in the habit of going to bed not long after the sun goes down and getting up with the sunrise, so that wasn´t a big deal. 

Finca Ixobel was basically a jungle lodge set on a farm instead of the jungle.  But where the jungle so far has surprised us with the lack of creepy-crawlies, the farm gave up the goods from almost the moment we arrived.  Our first treat was a nice big tarantula crawling across the lawn.  As we looked around, we saw dozens of holes in the grass, with tarantulas just barely peeking out at us.  Unlike the wolf spider we saw in Honduras though, these were not aggressive, and we surmised that these were a kind you could probably pick up, although we did not test our theory.  Next we found a giant stick bug that was probably a foot and a half long, probably twice as big as what I´ve seen before.  We found another bug that I can´t even describe, and I am dying that I can´t post the picture I took cause it is totally awesome and freaky.  We also saw three different types of fireflies.  One was gigantic, and instead of flashing would light up and then fly around for five or ten seconds.  The first time I saw it I thought it was someone with a flashlight it was so bright. We saw ant lions and leaf-cutter ants and a huge praying mantis, not to mention several different kinds of lizards, some of them a couple of feet long (but not iguanas).

We also found some frogs, one big one that was covered in these giant disgusting ticks.  Luckily it put us on the alert, because we both found ticks on us as well (albeit a different kind, much smaller).  I love bugs, but ticks are just gross.  We did manage one hike up a huge hill outside the finca, but after we found the ticks we stuck to more well-worn paths.

We met some great people, including a family from Ireland who had rented an RV and were driving from Florida down to Panama and back.  They had two pre-teen girls who weren´t quite sure if they were having fun or not, though they did shyly admit to liking snorkelling in Belize and horseback riding there at the finca.  Very cute.

The finca also had a working bakery and restaurant, so besides eating yummy cinnanon rolls for breakfast we also had fresh bread every night for dinner.  We ended up staying five days, and the food was a big part of that.  A happy belly is not something to mess with.

The perils of public computers

Ok, a little hold on the narrative for a little housecleaning.  After some time where we didn´t have a good internet connection, I am trying to get caught up.  However it seems we have picked up a virus on my camera memory cards, so for the time being I can´t upload any photos.  Argh!  I can still see the pictures via my camera, so I know they are all still there, but I can´t wade through the spanish operating system on the computer to figure out how to get to them.  I´m optimistic I will after we get home, but I don´t really know for sure.  We will start using a new card today, so hopefully more pics will be coming eventually.

Tikal

A lot of people had cautioned us that Flores wasn´t a "real" Guatemalan city, but we take everything people tell us with a grain of salt.  We didn´t actually DO much on Flores except swim in the lake, but we really enjoyed it.  We loved walking along the water in the evenings when everyone came out to enjoy the cool breeze off the lake.  We were also there for the Santa Semana procession.  The procession here isn´t as big as it is in some of the bigger cities, but the street murals made of colored sawdust and flowers and candles were still big and beautiful.

But we weren´t here to swim or to admire religious parades.  We were here to make a big check off our list of Places To See Before We Die.  And that place, of course, is Tikal.

You never know how it is going to go, when you visit a place you´ve been dreaming about going for years.  Will it be what you expected?  Will it live up to the hype?  Hype is the biggest enemy of all, leading you to be disappointed with something amazing just because you were expecting more.  Luckily for us, Tikal met and exceeded what we were hoping for.  (I´m still not sure if we were more excited about seeing the temples or at the wildlife.)

Our hotel, the Jaguar Inn, was located just outside the main gates, and was a good base for an overnight visit.  Most people to day trips to Tikal from Flores, but by staying overnight we got to visit the park in the evening when it is much less crowded.  The wildlife was surprisingly active, and we saw a pair of spider monkeys and a new kind of toucan before we´d even left the grounds of the hotel, playing in the trees right outside of our bungalow.

The ruins themselves were, as expected, big and spectacular.  We climbed sevearal of the temples for great views overlooking the tops of the trees in all directions.  One of the temples is accessed by climbing a "staircase" that is really more of a ladder.  I´m not terribly afraid of heights, but even so it was a pretty humbling experience for those that braved the ascent. (Heck, the descent was worse.)  It was so hot, that even with a bottle of water at my side I must have gotten a little dehydrated and I started to get cramps in my legs from all the climbing.  A nice rest in the shade with a tall drink of water fixed that though.

We wandered around the backs of most temples looking for animals, and did cross several agoutis.  At one point we cleared a corner and up ahead we saw the unmistakable profile of a coatamundi, which is sort of a cross between a racoon and a ferret, and has a ringed tail it sticks straight up in the air as it walks.  We slowly started walking towards it to get a better look, when it turned and ran.  We were surprised we could have scared it at that distance, but then we saw what it was really running from as a trio of tourists came around the corner running at it at full speed hooting and hollering.  I can´t imagine what they were thinking, I mean is chasing an animal into the bushes really that much of a thrill?  But they paid a price, as David and I proceeded to mock them for the rest of the afternoon.  I am sure they would be devastated if they only knew.

The next morning we were back at 6am.  By that point we had seen all of the main temples, but wandered around sort of looking at the more minor structures but really looking for more jungle creatures.  We were rewarded when a group of about two dozen coatamundi´s walked by us.  They are the most adorable little creatures, David was desperate to get one as a pet.  They were rather tame and got surprisingly close to us, obviously hoping we would feed them.  (We resisted the temptation, but it was hard, they were so darn cute! I even got a video of one of them sniffing at the camera, if only I had had a wide angle lens!)

Later on we were treated to the wild screams of the howler monkeys.  Signs warn that if you get too close they will throw their poop at you, but we were spared that behavior.  Still, pretty awesome to be standing in the jungle, a howler monkey screaming over your head, several spider monkeys jumping about the next tree over, and a group of coatis running around practically under your feet sniffing for dropped bits of cookie.  And I haven´t even talked about the birds.  (Three kinds of toucan, parrots, the wild oscillated turkey, and even the Woody Woodpecker woodpecker.)

Yes, Tikal was a success.

North to Tikal

[Note: Sorry I'm so far behind, I will get caught up soon, and will add some photos to this post as soon as I get to a better internet connection.]

We left Utila on the 6am ferry, took a cab to the bus station and hopped on a bus to San Pedro Sula.  Three hours later we were on a colectivo to Puerto Cortez, where we transferred to a chicken bus going to Omoa, our destination for the night.  We stayed at Roli´s Place, which is a nice little hotel run by a Swiss expat with a habit of posting lists of rules on every conceivable surface.  None of the rules were particularly unusual (Don´t light candles, Don´t be loud at night, Don´t pick the fruit on my fruit trees), but the sheer number of them was a little intimidating.

Here is a little experiment.  We visited an old fort.  Sounds kind of boring, huh?  Now try this.  We visited an old fort used for fighting pirates.  Just add pirates and suddenly everything gets more exciting.  My biggest disorientation of the day though came that evening as we walked up to the beach, which faces the Caribbean Sea, and the sun was setting quite nicely out over the watery horizon.  Suddenly my entire frame of reference was off, watching the sun set in the East.  Or, obviously, what I thought was the East.  It is so easy to forget that the Honduran coast is actually to the North, not the east, and I guess the bay we were on was particularly curvy towards the West.  But it totally threw me for a moment, high school did not prepare me for the intricacies of Central American geography.

The next day we chicken bussed it to the Guatemalan border, where my mind was blown and neither the Honduran or the Guatemalan officials asked for a "border fee".  First and last time, I am sure.  Another shuttle and boat taxi later and we were in the little town of Livingston, which was memorable only for its very distinct Caribbean culture.  We only stayed for breakfast, and then were on another boat up the river to the Finca Tatin, a secluded jungle lodge.

The lodge is up a small fork off the main river, sitting back in the jungle with a bunch of individual cabins of varying degrees of fanciness, but all with a rustic charm.  The main hall was open to the elements on all sides, with a thick thatch roof.  The thick wooden beams were strewn with hammocks, which we quickly got acquainted with.  Nothing like a relaxing swing in a hammock listening to the sounds of the jungle.  There was also a large dining hall, where everyone gathered to eat a communal family-style dinner every night.  This was the best part, and we met and talked with many of the other travelers over simple but filling food.  Out front there was always a group swimming off the dock.  The water was just cool enough to be refreshing from the heat of the day, and the mix of fresh with the salt water provided an extra boost to your buoyancy so you could float around with ease.

The first day we took out a kayak and went paddling up the river, and through some of the mangrove thickets along the rivers edge.  We also, for the first time, got sunburned.  This could have sucked, except it gave us the excuse to stay at the lodge a few extra days while we "recovered".

We saw plenty of wildlife, a bunch of kinds of crabs, spiders, some cool grasshoppers.  David ran across a six foot long snake on a pathway, and we saw what we think is called a paya, a rabbit-sized jungle rodent.  (It was cute, more squirrel/rabbit than rat.)  Somewhere along the way David had even learned to identify the call of the toucan, which sounds nothing like a bird and totally like a frog.  I kept teasing him, but early one morning (we were almost always up with the sunrise) we spotted four toucans in the trees across the river from us, clearly making their weird frog call.

Easter Week is called Santa Semana here, and is when just about every local goes on vacation.  This has the effect of pushing a lot of backpackers out of the cities and into the jungle lodges, so everything gets crowded for the week.  The lodge was full while we were there, and though they found room for us we had to change rooms three times in the four nights we were there.  Our first night was the best, a very fancy room with a private deck and fancy glass shower, all up on stilts.  Though, surprisingly, bugs weren´t a problem for most (except a few girls who were bitten by a horsefly which caused a lot of swelling, poor things) all the beds were decked out with mosquito netting which was great for atmosphere.  Our last room was in the dorms, and with eight beds with mosquito netting, the place looked like a malaria ward.

We are now in the town of Flores, which is a gorgeous tiny town on a small island in a lake up in northern Guatemala.  Everything is brightly painted, and the roofs are all a rusty red.  Though it cools down at night, it is pretty hot during the day, which  makes swimming in the lake off a pier a highlight of the day for tourists and locals alike.  Indeed, you have to watch out that you don´t get creamed by a pre-teen flinging himself off the dock and into the water.  For the third time we have run into a guy from Seattle we met in Xela two months ago at our first school.  We joke that he is our oldest friend in Central America.

Diving

We came to Utila for the scuba diving.  After a few days of just enjoying island life, David started his PADI Open Water course, and of course turned out to be a natural.  I waited for him to get through the book and skill stuff, and then joined him out on the boat for a "scuba tune-up", which was advisable since my last dive was in Puerto Rico in 2002.  So while David was getting his first taste of breathing 60 feet underwater, I was off with a divemaster practicing all the same things he was learning - taking your mask off and putting it back on underwater, finding your regulator should a shark startle you and make you accidentally spit it out in surprise, that sort of thing.

All the divemasters at our school were straight out of central casting.  Young, tanned and beautiful, and all with fun accents.  David was primarily with Ethan from Australia, and mine was Alice from Norway.  I was really spoiled my first dive because it was just Alice and me on our own, so we just swum around and she kept finding moray eels and parrotfish and some totally amazing sea cucumbers for me to see.

After David finished his course, he had two more dives scheduled, so I got to join him.  We had been hoping to go to the north side of the island, which is where the elusive whale sharks tend to be sighted, but the weather was too rough to make it.  In fact, while I would have suffered through any seasickness if it meant I would get to see a whale shark, not a single one was sighted the entire ten days we were on the island, even though this is technically the season.  The whale shark may have eluded me for now, but while whale sharks can run, whale sharks can´t hide, at least not forever.  Another time we will have to go to Holbox in Mexico or maybe Ningaloo in Australia to hunt one down.

In any case, both our dives were excellent.  The water was warm and the visibility was high.  We saw several lionfish, which are gorgeous with these feathery spines fanning out, a warning to everyone of how poisonous they are.  (As a general rule of thumb, if anything is the ocean is especially ugly or especially gorgeous, it is probably lethal.)  While David proved quite adept at handling himself underwater, not everyone else on our dive was quite as graceful underwater.  One guy seemed to crash down to the bottom or up into rocks with an almost purposeful drive.  My tendancy is always to stick close to the guides, so you can see the cool things before other people scare them away (or in this case, steps on them).  However there were a couple of girls who couldn´t quite figure out the concept of "personal space" underwater and kept crashing on top of me.  So David and I retreated to the back of the pack, and contented ourselves to finding the things the others swam right by. 

The best example of this came right at the end of the second dive.  Diving for me is like flying, and I really enjoy swooping down to just about the sand to sail through tight spaces between the rocks.  As I came through one particular passageway, the first thing I realized was there was a hidden cave underneath the rocks, and the second thing I realized was there was a six foot long nurse shark sitting in it looking at me.  I managed NOT to spit out my regulator in surprise, and just admired it for a second.  Then I swam up to David and the rest to make them come back and look.  This was Alice´s 80th dive on the island, and it was the first time she had seen a nurse shark, so we were all pretty excited to have found it.

Our last day on the island we hiked up and around to the north side.  It was great to see the water, but kind of depressing to see all the trash that had washed up from the sea, plastic bottles and the soles of shoes mostly.  But we have enjoyed the wildlife.  There are two types of iguana here, one that is endemic and endangered, but that lived right in the backyard of our hotel which we could watch over lunch.  Another lizard we enjoyed was maybe eight inches long, bright green and with a vivid blue belly.  It would run a few inches, and then stop and wave at you.  Yes, you read that right.  Every time it would stop it would wave its front paw like it was saying hello (or perhaps a hopeful goodbye to get you to leave?).  We looked it up and it is called the Shakey-paw lizard or something like that.  The third kind was bigger, and when it would run away from you it would do it on its back legs, its front legs just sort of dangling there, which was always funny to watch.  Finally we found another spider, hairy and mean looking.  It ignored us when we took its picture, and we weren´t sure if it was alive or not, so David poked it with a stick.  It attacked and bit the stick with rapid vengance, and we screamed like little girls and jumped back about ten feet.  So yeah, alive.

Besides not finding a whale shark, the other tragedy was the fact that our dive shop was out of t-shirts, so we don´t get to show off our PADI cred.  Hate that.

Utila town

We arrived for the ferry early, so we had plenty of time to experience ferry envy.  The Bay Islands of Honduras is made up of three separate islands.  Roatan is the more upscale, Utila is more backpackery, and the other one is lightly populated with super fancy resorts, and basically no casual travelers go there.  The ferries for Roatan and Utila were sitting side by side.  Our little blue boat sitting next to this gigantic ferry that just dwarfed our poor little launch.  Ah well.

As we waited David caught a group of young European girls making eyes not at me, but at all the patches on my backpack.  I played it cool though and pretended not to notice. Secretly though, showing off your travels brings the sweetest kind of enjoyment any backpacker knows.  People often ask how long we are travelling for, and knowing we are American are always surprised by our answer of "Six months, more or less".  The ones only out for a few weeks (or months) without fail express envy, which we eat up like the sweet nectar it is.  Then there are the ones like a girl I met yesterday from Norway.  At my "six months" answer, she nodded approvingly, but didn't say more, knowing that the next step in the protocol is for me to ask her back, which of course I did.  "Well," she answered as non-chalantly as she could muster "I've been out for about eight months already, and probably have another eight before my money runs out."  Now it was my turn to be envious, her slight smile betraying her inner pleasure at trumping me.

Utila is a small-ish place, with the main town situated around a circular bay.  As it was not created for tourists, but instead discovered by tourists, it is not particularly ideal for showing off what it has.  The main road is separated from the water by a thick line of buildings.  Many are now dive shops (the reason most people come here) or restaurants with decks that extend out over the water.  But many are homes, shops, or worse empty half demolished buildings that serve no purpose but to block the view.  There are only a handful of trucks on the island, most people get around by scooter, golf cart, bicycle or ATV.  The road however is extremely narrow, with just enough room for two golf carts to pass each other.  Add in the vehicles parked on the side, not to mention all the people wandering around on foot, and you have a very uncomfortable situation.  Especially since both local and tourist alike find no greater thrill than to riding down the crowded street on a motorcycle as fast as they can go.  I have yet to see an accident, which is a constant surprise.  A scooter will scream by with two adults, each holding a toddler in their laps.  In the states the feds would take your children away for doing that, but here they are just going to the store and would surely be offended at the suggestion they were acting as unfit parents.

From the main road a low hill rises up inland, and it is up one of these roads where our hotel is.  The walk isn't far, though is somewhat tiring when everything else in town is so close together.  However we can't move.  Our mattresses are old and both have body sized depressions in them, however we are both sleeping just fine.  But, importantly, we each have a powerful fan, and the icing on the cake is the shower that has water in three temperatures to choose from.  Cold, warm, and hot, and with water pressure to spare!  This is a rarity here, and we are making the most of it.  The weather here has been varied, with cold rainy days leading into hot sunny ones, so we have enjoyed all three settings.  The water heater, which is an electric device stuck onto the end of the shower head, doesn't even have any exposed wires!

We are also enjoying multiple showers a day, as we have run out of deoderant.  The supermarkets here only carry antipersperant, which we reluctantly tried using, but both of us developed ugly itchy rashes.  So until we can find a place with plain old deoderant, we are both on the stinky side.  Island life is better suited to this than city life, so at least we are in the right locale.

The backpackers here tend to be on the young and foolish side, with a surprising number of spring breakers thrown in the mix.  For St. Patricks Day one of the restaurants hosted the "Beer Olympics", which somehow David and I ended up missing.  However, as with any place, we are good at finding our niche.  While the food in the restaurants has been largely expensive and disappointing, we found a guy who operates out of an empty lot who makes the most amazing tacos.  He even has David salivating over the smell of the roasting onions!  We did find a place last night that is only open three days a week, but we both had huge plates of carbs (mashed potatos, rice, corn on the cob and garlic bread) and then I had a huge tuna steak and David went for marlin.  It was so good we didn't even have room for the chocolate cake, which is saying something.

We have been waking with the sunrise, and generally go for a walk every morning.  Though the island is far more rocky than beachy, there are small beaches on either side of town and we usually spend an hour or two just wandering around.  The pace here is just right, a perfect spot to slow down and chill out.  There is the issue of the spiders.  Fortunately they tend to keep to themselves, spreading their webs up between the trees or tall bushes, occasionally in the power lines.  There is a fantastic restaruant here called the Jade Seahorse, which has been decked out with fantastical sculptures and twisted pathways and treehouses, every surface a mosaic of glass or beads or bottles.  It is fun to walk through and we'd love to go at night for dinner, but with all the trees it is infested with these spiders.  The spiders are large anyway, but they also seem to be communal, building their webs in huge sheets connected to each other - a single sheet between two distant trees might be made up of a dozen individual spider lairs, and these webs can easily encroach into the human living space.  As much as I love the look of the place, no restaurant is worth getting a spider in the face.

Exploring the backside of water is even more exciting than it sounds

Our last day in Copán was marred slightly by an unexpected 16-hour power outage.  Things were still open (restaurants all cook with gas), and was mostly obnoxious because we couldn´t get some laundry done as we had hoped.  We were also cut off from the internet which I had been hoping on using.  But oh well, we sat in the town square and enjoyed just hanging out for a while.  And fortunately the power came back on about 7pm, so we were able to turn on the fans when we went to bed.  (Otherwise we would not have gone to bed, way too hot!)

We caught a 7am bus up to San Pedro Sula.  A horrifying new trend for me is that I´m starting to experience carsickness on some of these busses.  This has never been a problem for me before, and I´m really quite annoyed with it.  I´d bought some corn muffins from a corner store next to the bus station just before we boarded, and they turned out to be quite stale, but at least it got me over the hump.  From San Pedro we walked along a surprisingly large bus station and found a connecting chicken bus to our next destination, a small town called Los Naranjos on Lake Yajoa.

I thought I was catching movement out of the corner of my eye as we boarded, but when I sat down my worst suspicions were confirmed when a flurry of cockroaches scattered out from around the seat, up the windows, over the ceiling, across the floor, up over the back of the next seat.  There wasn't much we could do but flick them away when they got too close.  Fortunately my memory of a similar experience in Indonesia proved reliable, and once the bus started moving, they all retreated to whence they came and we didn't see another for the rest of the ride.  At least the bus was cheap, only $1.50 for the two hour journey.

We were dropped off along the road by a sign pointing the way to the guesthouse we were headed for, D&D Brewery.  The guy who owns it operates a small brewery, and one of the draws of the place is that thanks to that process, even the water that comes out of the shower and the sinks is purified, so you don't have to worry about keeping your mouth closed while you shower like in most places.  Both of our guidebooks raved about the place, so we were pretty excited to go, although the reality was more sobering.  A note to whomever it is that writes lodging reviews for Lonely Planet in Honduras (you too Rough Guide!): Stop pretending things are so awesome when, in fact, they are not.  Don't get me wrong, overall the place was fine, and I'd even recommend it.  We are even savvy enough travelers not to have had super high expectations, reviews nonetheless.  But still we couldn't help be disappointed.  The food was ok, but expensive. (Why is it that it is always the most expensive restaurants that never INCLUDE the food taxes in their prices, which adds an additional 15%?)  The room was barely adequate, the kind of room where the toilet is next to the bed - I've certainly stayed in worse, but when you are expecting something nice, adequate doesn't cover it.  Every other traveler we talked to was also very disappointed with what they found, most staying less time than they had intended.

On the plus side, there is a nice (but cold!) swimming pool, that was great for cooling off our feet on the first and very hot day we arrived.  The garden setting is lovely, we saw some great birds and a few awesome bugs.  But in the end, the hotel is just a means to an end to get to the lake.  Even if it was the worst hotel in the world (and it isn't), I'd still recommend you come here.  Here's why.

Our first morning we walked through an "Eco-archeological" park nearby, with a boardwalk through some marshland.  We saw lots of birds (and ran into an amusing bunch of Mennonites who were brimming with frustrated excitement because they could hear - but not see - a very elusive bird they had been hunting for months) and walked by some unexcavated ruins.  The weather had cooled significantly from the day before and we had a great time just walking through the woods.

When we returned we ran into a quartet of teachers, three from England and one American who were traveling around teaching English to schoolkids.  We joined up with them and we all headed out to the main draw of the region, Pulhapanzak Falls.  (Don't worry, I couldn't pronounce it either.)  We walked around and enjoyed the view, and once we'd talked the one girl teacher into it, we hired the guide.

Stripped down to our swim trunks and sandals, the guide led us down to the bottom of the falls.  We went through a locked gate, and made our way along a rocky, muddy path along one side of the falls - you can barely see the path in the photo, sorry I don't have more but my camera isn't waterproof!  We were soaked with spray long before we even approached the water.  We reached the first pool, and headed in.  The water was cool but warmer than I'd expected, which was a good thing because after wading through a series of small pools our guide led us right underneath the roaring curtain of water.  The sound was deafening, and we just barely made out our instructions to always look down and breathe through our mouths, as the rush of water made it impossible to inhale otherwise.  We went under and through several times to a couple of different little caverns, and at one point had to get down and wiggle through a small hole on our bellies into a cave that opened up behind the water.  It was exhilarating.  The girl was rather scared about it all (and humorously kept almost losing her bikini in the rush of water) but the guide was great and literally held her hand almost the entire way.  We were just blindly following him through sheets of water with no idea what was on the other side, so it was a good thing he knew where he was going.  With each step you didn't know whether you would sink to your shins in the water or up to your chest, or whether you would step on the bottom or have to balance on the tip of a rock. The strength of the falling water was impressive and humbling.  On the way out we jumped off an overhang into a pool below, which is one of those things that you do knowing how stupid it really is.  I did hit bottom, but comfortably so.

A tour like that could never happen in the States.  There would have to be handrails and insurance and everyone would have to wear life vests and helmets and be hooked to a line.  You really do take your safety in your own hands when you come to countries like this, which can be a little intimidating at times, but also quite liberating.  No one is going to take care of you, or keep you from doing something "for your own good".  There is a certain downside to that too of course, but it also makes you realize what a sterile place the "civilized" world can be.  I think I could spend a lot of evenings talking about and trying to decide exactly what I think about the merits of keeping people safe versus giving the freedom to live as they want to.  Anyway, this was definitely a highlight of our entire trip so far.

The second reason why a stay at D&D is a must, is to meet Malcolm, the resident bird nerd and tour guide.  A self-proclaimed wanderer, he has been traveling away from his native England for most of his life, and does things like travel to the India/Pakistan border by himself just to see a rare kind of bird that lives there.  (He said it was kind of a cross between a chicken and an ostrich, so it does sound intriguing.)  He has been living in Honduras for about three years now, and leads birdwatching tours on the lake.  After making the arrangements over dinner the night before, we met him at 6am along with a local guy who rowed our boat for us.  After a quick snack of fresh papaya at his place, we spent four hours paddling through the marsh and along the edge of the lake.  We saw all sorts of great birds, including hawks, five kinds of herons, and even the keel-billed toucan.  In all he was able to identify 57 species for us, giving us lots of tidbits of trivia along the way.  This was my first bird tour, but we really got into it and had a fantastic time.

From there we were back on the chicken bus up to San Pedro Sula (since we caught the bus mid-route the cockroaches were nowhere to be seen), and then on another "nicer" bus to La Ceiba, which is the jumping off point for catching the ferry over to the Bay Islands.  We stayed at the Banana Republic Hostel, and since we arrived late in the evening the only thing they had available were the dorms.  The beds were surprisingly comfortable, but overall the place was pretty dumpy and the bathrooms were just gross.   We arrived at the same time as a few other people, and we tried to find a neighboring place to go to instead, but turns out it has moved across town, and we didn't feel comfortable walking around in the dark.  The best thing about the place though is just a block away is a fast-food joint called "Super Baleada".  A baleada is a local meal, a tortilla filled with beans and cheese as a base, then you can have them add in egg or different kinds of meats or whatever.  There were two girls standing outside the place who were making the tortillas fresh for each customer.  They were cheap and delicious, and after a day of travel totally hit the spot.

There is a huge bug museum in La Ceiba that we wanted to go to (they have specimins of both the largest moth and the heaviest beetle in the world), so the next morning we got up early and went looking for another place to stay.  The other place we checked - again recommended by both our guide books - was even worse, a huge concrete nightmare over an admittedly nice-smelling bakery, and our walk through town revealed very little of interest.  Both we and the people we had met (a nurse and her husband from Canada and a girl from Liechtenstein) all decided La Ceiba was definitely not worth it.  The couple left for a bus to Trujillo, the girl went to the mountains, and David and I, though a little sad to miss the museum, grabbed the ferry over to Utila.