Honduras, ruins, ruined diving, ruined tired.

30Jul
I got up really early to get the bus to El Poy, the last Salvadorian town before the Honduras border. What a waste of time. The bus was heaving and I could not get on let alone my huge rucksack and 2 other bags. So I went back to the hostel, had breakfast and tried again an hour and a half later. This time the bus even had seats. A well dressed cowboy, including cowboy hat befriended me. He told me where to get off and pointed me to the border when we arrived. I just love the salvadorians. Some of the loveliest people I have encountered. It saddens me to leave. I walked across the border. It was easy. The most effort was trying to locate a soldier to look at my passport. I thought I would have to have it stamped and they would as usual charge me. But no, here they were honest.

Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Guatemala have an agreement known as the C4. They allow pretty much free passage between the countries once you have been stamped one the first one you entered. However, the odd time some unscrupulous guard charges you. I find it easier to pay the 2 or 3 dollars then argue, as I am never quite sure anyhow what the rules are. I looked for a bus to take me to Nueva Ocotepeque. When I asked this taxi driver he quoted me 5 dollars.

So I walked on. At the Honduran side, I asked the soldiers where the bus was. A taxi came buy and they said why not take that. But he said 20. I said no it was too expensive. The lady soldier then pointed out that it was 20 lempira, not 20 dollars. That is about 1 dollar. I felt an idiot and laughed. They thought it was hilarious. But when you are a foreigner, you get quoted such ridiculous prices, that it hadn't twigged with me. Well the bus came along then and all was well. At Nueva Ocotepeque, it was onward to La Entrada. The driver forgot to tell me where I was to get off and it wasn't that obvious. So I had to jump off the bus on the highway a way out of town. After asking a food seller which direction for Copan, she flagged a moto taxi for me and explained where to go.

At Copan Ruinas, due to floods, the bus was unable to take us right into town but it was just a hop, skip and a jump over puddles to the centre. I got a moto taxi to a hostel but no answer and the taxi had disappeared. I was glad though, as I realised it was a bit far out once I had walked the long way back to the centro. It was time to eat. I had been travelling for hours. The centre was wet but delightful. It is a bit of a tourist enclave though. Well it is the most popular tourist centre in Honduras, in fact in much of Central America. But it has retained a certain charm, as have the people. I spent a few days walking around town, exploring museums and the myriad of cobbled streets, shops and of course cafes.

01AugJul
Walked to the Enchanted Wings Butterfly house. A butterfly farm, created by an American nature expert and ex Peace Corp. I had the place to myself. The young assistant explained they take the larvae and hold it in special wooden boxes until it is ready to become a butterfly. Many of the butterflies are moved to Roatan Island, for the butterfly farm there, as they are not as successful at breeding. Some of the caterpillars were as big as my hand and thats pretty damn big. It was weird walking around. None of the orchids were in bloom but many of the butterflies landed on my shoulder or shoes etc. if I stood for more than a minute. It was disconcerting as this has never happened to me in the wild. Some of the butterflies had this huge eye design on their wings.

It was a pretty cool place.

I hopped into a moto taxi to the Macaw Mountain bird sanctuary. The gent who escorted me and 2 older Israelis around, had lived in America, and had owned a successful restaurant in Copan. He had just sold it, so was helping out his friend who owned the sanctuary. All the birds here have been found by locals, recovered from poachers etc. Now the government actually send birds here too, as it acknowledges the sanctuary. As a result. if a bird dies, the sanctuary has to keep the body to show it to the govt inspector, as proof they didn't sell it.

There was an amazing amount/variety of toucans, parrots and macaws. The grounds are like a tropical forest and a pleasure to walk around. They have a souvenir shop and also now have their own coffee plantation, the profits of which go to maintain the sanctuary. At the end of the tour, a guard brought in a baby armadillo, whose mother had been killed on the road. It was soooooooooo cute. They will take care of it here, a new addition to the family.

Walking around later admiring the jewellery stalls, I ran into Jeremiah again, the guy I had met sailing from Colombia. This must be the 5th time we have met. Had to laugh. He said my Spanish had improved. As has his English.

02Aug.

An early start. Today I see the famous ruins. When I hit the reception and main plaza of the ruins, I thought oh god there are so many people here, bus loads. I ventured off a little and lost them. My next view was of 5 or six parrots, toucans in the trees and another batch on the fence. It was great wandering around, climbing up the temples, many of which have been reconstructed or repaired. Albeit, many still connected to the jungle, with trees and their roots strangling the bricks, a reminder of how they looked pre-discovery. It was definitely worth the US$15. There were some brilliant sculptures e.g. my favourite: the Old mans in the foto here. Also one of the highlights here was hieroglyphic stairs, with its amazing carvings and drawings outlining the reign of the kings here etc. as well as the giant sculpture at the foot of the steps again in a foto here.

I didn't pay to go into the tunnels. This I really regretted, once I entered the museum. Underneath one of the pyramids, was an earlier pyramid/temple, now known as the Rosalea temple. It was common for the Mayans to build a temple for one king, over a previous temple of an earlier king. A recreation of this temple was built in the museum. It had all the colours and faces of the kings, gods etc intact. The original had been spared the vengeance of the sun and the jungle, so it provided an immense amount of information and detail previously lacking. The museum itself was stunning and well laid out. The Rosalea was constructed in the centre of the museum, with the museum in two levels encircling it. The centre of which, and thus the temple itself, open to the sun. I would have gone back into the ruins and paid to see the original but I was too tired, having walked around for several hours. A shame.

03Aug.

5am start and of course today, no one is leaving the hostel to go to the bus which is a walk away down an empty dark street, I would rather avoid. Each morning, I have been woken by people with their wheelie suitcases making such a racket. OF course when I want someone to be awake...However, a few of the locals were up, so it was not as bad as I thought it was going to be. I took the expensive shuttle with hedman Atlas, instead of the cheaper local buses as I wanted to get to the ferry in La Ceiba before it left.

I arrived at the ferry port, at about 2, bought my ticket to find that the ferry had not run at all that morning and there was quite a few people that had been there for hours. Luck was still with me, as I was one of the few to still get on AND the ferry left an hour early. RESULT!!!!.

The first person I met on the ferry was Sonia, one of the girls who drove me to La Palma in El Salvador. What a coincidence. So I sat next to her and Sahara a girl from London, who were seated next to 4 Salvadorians, who had started drinking the supplies in their beercooler at 10.30 am. They were a hoot. We sat outside, as it is more fun. We got drenched as the waves landed and crashed on the deck. But we had a laugh and got a foto afterwards of the three of us wet rats.

Alex, who had been working in Altons, recommended it, so we all headed there. Luckily we got accommodation and I booked myself on a diving course. I had 2 days to read and absorb the diving manual. Sarah and Christen were there as a welcome party. It was so good to see them. It was going to be a mad week. I also met Johnny, that I had met in Grenada. Sarah ended up getting to know him too before I came, even though she had not met before. bizarre connections.

The original plan was to meet Alex in Utila, one of the Bay Islands in Honduras. Famous for its cheap diving underwater beauty and backpacking party scene. I had organised my trip around Alex being on the Island and the island for the SunJam festival (a big electronic dance fest.)on 08/08/2008. Alex had been working on the island for a few months, as a dive master. but he had got island crazy and left about a week before I got there. It was a shame, he could not have lasted but I could see why, as the place was too busy and the staff totally overworked. As I had planned various things around the 8th Aug, and had arranged to meet Sarah and Christen. Also I had decided months ago to skip Belize and was psyched up to go to the festival and it would have meant leaving El Salvador earlier and maybe not going back. So I decided not to change my plan and join Alex in Belize, as he offered to meet there.

I did my theory and read the diving manual as part of the course. However, I didn't get a chance to go snorkelling or even for a swim before having to jump into the water with all the diving equipment. I couldn't do it at first. I finally got to jump in with my mask and tank but the tank hit my head rather hard, enough to make it bleed (which I only realised later) and I couldn't bear to remove the mask. I knew that at every step it was just going to take me that bit longer than everyone else to do the tasks and I just couldn't deal with breathing through my nose. I seem to have got worse with this. So I gave up. I was disappointed and felt left out when all the others came back with grins on their faces after all the wonderful things they had seen. But such is life. Maybe I will try again.

That evening, I met some guys, Sarah and Christen had met, who have been coming regularly over the last few years and their fathers before them.
We stayed in the gazebo chatting for hours about everything. Alton an dI had a really good chat on aging, as he is jsut a little younger than I. It was interesting to chat on our experiences. Next day they invited us to go with them by boat, to go snorkelling near Water Cay. Sarah and I decided to lie on the roof of the boat. We had to hold on for dear life as the boat bounced over the waves on the way to the Cay. Not sure Sarah liked it as much as me though.

The Water Cay is a tiny little islet if you could call it that with just a few trees etc. There are a few other smaller islets around it with one or two houses on them or nothing at all. It was stunning there. The water was really shallow, with turquoise water and white sands. After a lot of tomfoolery, we headed back to the dive centre.

Over my 10 days in Utila we met the boys on a semi regular basis, as well as Alton. This was always a blast and conversation was entertaining. I also met some of the others too for dinner etc. We made it to Treetanic a few times and a few other bars on the island. Treetanic was incredible. The owner has spent the last 12 years or so creating this amazing bar with mosaics made from tiles, bottles and god knows what else. foto attached. The bar is a work of art in progress and pulls in the punters and the money like nothing else in town.

One day I went to the private beach, the nicest beach on Utila, accompanied by this Israeli girl who had similar problems to me and had also given up dive classes. We went snorkelling around this reef but it was a killer to get to as there was a lot of sharp coral. We tried to follow the path to the reef but without shoes it was vicious. The Israeli girl went for another stab at it but I just lay on the beach reading, as I felt uncomfortable going over coral and killing it.

As I was walking back to the dive centre, my name was shouted by this person whizzing by on a golf buggy. It was Brendan from San Juan in Nicaragua. I was so surprised to see him. The last time I saw him, he was in crutches, in a lot of pain and could barely walk after a motorbike accident. As Sarah and Christen also knew Brendan, we all met up for food and drinks that evening. There was definitely a clicking between Brendan and Sarah, so I left them to it, after we started playing pool late into the evening.

Utila is definitely a party town. Although many nights didn't really go out too late. Sarah or christen usually came back with a tale if they went out, which always made me laugh.

07Aug.

After the beach went to treetanic and another bar that turns into a late night club. Everyone was preparing for tomorrow. The boys, Paul, Reed etc were there and were joined by these 2 guys they had been expecting and talking about for days. Apparently they are mad. They didn't seem as mad as some of my friends but I guess we all have different views on madness. ha ha. The music was brilliant, So I just went and did my thing. The others thought I danced mad. As we were dancing on this bench near the wall. I saw Eddy, whom I had met in San Juan. He joined us. Had such a laugh especially watching Christen and Paul taking the pee on the dance floor. We bought some balloons filled with laughing gas and played with those for a while. Then home.

08Aug.

Today is the day of the Infamous SunJam. We are sooooo excited. Spent ages though trying to sort things out, like mail, packing, and most importantly getting money, ATMS are not working and getting cash has been a stuggle. It is going to be a long night and we leave first thing in the am. Then we got the Alton dive centre boat to the Water cay. There were so many boats heading there. The foto here shows the cay, before the 4000+ people arrived. Simply beautiful.

The Israeli girl and Sonia managed to get work behind the bar, so got in free. We got there about 7.30/8. We were early. Those behind the bar were on such a high. The boys, Paul, Reed etc. were there already. It was all a bit subdued and the music was ok. However, as the night wore on, the music really took off. Nearly everyone I had met was there so danced with different people. It was so amazing, the set up. There was a large bar to the side. Everything was under the stars. If you wanted chill you just went over to the quieter side of the cay where it was darker and you could sit or lie. Some people brought tents so they could take a nap etc. There were food stands too, so all was catered for. It was such a cool night.

09Aug.

At 4.30am it was time to leave. The worst thing was this was when it was really getting at its best. It was really, really difficult to leave. We easily got a boat back to Utila, then grabbed our bags from the centre and managed to get tickets for the 6.30am ferry to La Ceiba. We were really nervous in case the ferry was sold out but we got lucky. A 5 hour bus ride to San Pedro and we were in a hostel and searching for food. We were so exhausted. It was early to bed and again at 6am we were up and on our way to the airport. The girls were flying to the US. so we were all leaving together which was great.

10Aug
At the airport, Sarah, Christen, and this young guy we had met in Utila and I, all decided to meet up next year and go to all the festivals and become international ravers. This cracked us up. I can see them doing it but I think I will be working my butt off back in London or on the dole. Either way no money or no time. On the plane, I was missing the girls. I had such a good time with them. Always something to laugh at. They have such a great sense of humour and fun. Oh well at least I was on my way to something good not back to work. I was really looking forward to meeting up with Sue and seeing Cuba.