Honduras

I ended up spending a week on the island of Utila and could easily have stayed longer. Island life has a way of sucking people in. My scuba course went well and I am now certified to dive up to 18 meters (~60 feet). I saw a couple turtles (hawkbeak and green), tons of butterfly fish, porcupine fish, trumpet fish, parrot fish, spotted drums, and scorpion fish, among others (see http://www.aboututila.com/PhotoGallery/PGReefFish01.htm for photo examples). I also got tosnorkel with a baby whale shark between dives on my last day. It was only about 8-10 feet long--they can grow up to 100 feet!

Besides diving, there is not much to do on the island but drink. One bar that was especially cool was called Treetanic--a bar built in a tree. The story I was told that this guy who made it got rich in the 70s-80s dealing drugs in the US then moved here and spent the next 12 years doing drugs and building a crazy bar/restaurant/hotel which together are called the Jade Seahorse. (I unfortunately didn't get to spend as much time there as I would have liked because I had a cold, felt terrible, and went home early.) There are also a lot of other good bars built directly over the water. And a great view of the entire island and the sunset from atop a water tower. (Although the original directions we got to that one left us in the middle of someone's cow pasture!)

I finally managed to leave the island on the 6:20 ferry Saturday morning and met up with the friends I met in Utila at the Omega Tours Lodge in the Pico Bonito rainforest. I arrived in time to have breakfast with them and then we all went on a great hike through the jungle to Honduras' longest waterfall, ~230 feet. The hike was the perfect difficulty, we all got sweaty but everyone was happy and felt good. Our guide, Alejandro, only spoke Spanish, but Liz and I knew enough to translate for everyone. The hike ended with a lovely swim in the river, which was cool enough to be refreshing but not so cold you couldn't swim for awhile. We spent the afternoon and evening talking and drinking tea, enjoying each other's company on our last night together.

In the morning, we had breakfast and I decided not to do the rafting trip I had planned on for the afternoon. I'd talked to a lot of people about it and it seemed like the guides were wankers and the actual rafting part of the trip was only about 45 minutes. So I decided the $45 could be better spent somewhere else. I tried to change for another kind of tour, perhaps horseback riding or canoeing, but they said that nothing else was available for the day. And I was basically told that if I didn't do the rafting thing, I wasn't welcome to stay there because I was taking a bed away from someone who would spend more money. Even though theyadvertise primarily as a lodge, with the option of doing all these other activities. By that time, I was all pissed off and decided to leave with my friends that day instead of staying for another night or two as originally planned.

This actually worked out really well as I arrived in La Ceiba five minutes before the next bus left for San Pedro Sula. And when I got there, the bus for Copan Ruinas left within about five minutes as well. So no waiting around, which is always nice.

After the standard 7-8 hours of traveling, I arrived in Copan Ruinas around sunset. Getting off the bus, I met Lisi from Austria and we went out in search of a hostel together. The one we wanted was either full or didn't have a dormitory (after drinking there too days in a row, I'm still unsure) so a woman who works there walked us to another hostel, Manzana Verde [Green Apple].

Ah, the dorm life... This was my first one of this trip; I'd forgotten how it is sleeping in a room full of strangers. I was woken up around 7:00 by an older woman who started packing at that time, rustling around with plastic bags, trying to stuff everything in her backpack, and was still there when we left for breakfast around 9:00. Rude. Either pack the night before or wait until at least after 8:00 if you're not in a big hurry!

Today, Lisi and I went to see the Mayan ruins. (Getting there was the hardest part. We asked for directions, thought we knew where we were going, somehow walked to another part of the city instead, and had to get directions again.) We hired an English-speaking guide named Berger who was 38 and had lived in Copan Ruinas for his entire life. Before becoming a tour guide, he worked with the archaeologists excavating the ruins for 10 years so he knew quite a lot about everything. The tour was really informative and he answered all our questions. I'll post pictures of this and everything as soon as I get around tobringing all my camera stuff with me to the internet cafe.

I keep meaning to mention this: If you have questions about anything, please let me know, either here in the comments or via email. I know that there is a lot of stuff I don't mention about life down here because it's just part of my normal life right now that might seem really different/strange/interesting to other people.