Hello campers, will at the helm now.
so Hondurous was bloody hot, dry and dusty but amazing. We began with the lengthy border run from Northern Nicaragua, through Los Manos, Danli we arrived at Tegucigalpa – it was a shite place and crime all over, we stayed one night and the owner of the hotel told us ot to go out at night…. safe.
We bussed it to La Ceiba on the Northern coasty, whihch is the jumping off point to the diving Mecca that is the Bay Islands. We decided upon going to the large4r of the three islands called Roatan.
Roatan – It was a great little place, dive shops all over the beaches, white coral sand, sun and a good feel. I did some amazing diving, wrecks, drift dives, deep dives, night dives, saw and heard Toadfish, droupers, Barracuda, Pufferfish, Parrotfish, Eels, the famous String of Perals (phosphurescence from nocturnal sea animals), moonfish and loads more, it was a great place, better diving than OZ and just about on a par with Fiji, I took some good underwater pics witht he camera (see the panel to the left and our flickr account). Claire embarked on a discover Scuba course and after some persistance decided she was hapier snorkelling than being underwater puffing off a tank – she still saw some great fish as we snorkelled about the prestine coral just off shore.
Tela – along the coast from La Ceiba we spent a couple of days in this seside town, ok beach spolit by Diesel tanker 250m off shore helping to ease honduras{s power problem whihc insidently means the power goes down every other hour : ) Tela is the home of the 2nd largest Tropical Garden, set up by the united Fruit Company for research back in teh 80{s and still maintained, it had a great swimming hole with friendly fish Claire liked them.
Marcala – Great little town, really local feel, didn{t see any other white boys (or girls) we walked to asome amazing waterfalls, and found a Gigantic cave (Cueva Gigante in Espanol), with some crazy stencil like ‘ancient’ prints on the wall. There was nobody else around and we had a nice relax, a hawk gave claire a fright as it was circling her ready to nibble and local lads directed us. It was very nice and Hot!
Gracias A Dios – Meaning thank good this place was – We arrived in this dusty backwater near the El salvador border. The former capital of the Hoduran colinial rule and lovely cobbeled streets and plaza. We found a great place to eat where everything was 100 % organic, a meal was cheap as chips, we had organic coffee, fresh fish, fresh veg, blackcurrant smoothies, tortilla, it was ace. We also went to some roasting hot springs whihc were a welcome reliefe after the 4 km locust filled walk to the place.
Copan Ruinas – This was a small town 10km from the Guatemala border. Famous for the Mayan ruins called Copan. We went we saw and we sweated a lot. The ruins were amazing, great plazas, pyramids and the jem of the site the 62 steps of the Hidreglpyic stairway. The maya were a clever bunch.
Right, we got to Nicaragua and the first place we headed was to the beach of course, the lovely (and very touristy) San Juan Del Sur. The beach near our hostel was the windiest beach ever, we actually got cuts from the sand blowing against our legs, the beach also had a dead eel in the sand every meter or so, very strange!
The next day we went to another beach for a surf lesson, obviously Will managed to stand within 5 minutes (because he is great at everything 
) but an hour later and 100 tries later I managed to stand for more than 5 seconds, result!! The next day we went to a little island in the lake called Isla de Ometepe. It was a lovely tranquil place we were happy as we were the only people around, we went swimming in the lake which was great, than Will casually mentioned that there are Bull sharks in the lake at which point we ran out. We also went to the gorgeous swimming hole (ojo de agua) but as it was a Sunday lots of families appeared so we went to the beach for the day (a hard life), we caught the local bus back to our town in the afternoon and everyone on the bus was pissed and singing and playing a cheese grater?!!
The next stop was Granada, the bus route was crazy, about 20 kids and women got on selling everything from drinks, cooked lunches to pills?!! Went to Laguna de Apoyo, it is a lagoon in a dormant volcano (I know I was a little freaked out by it too). The volcano is over 21,000 years old and 250 meters deep. It has been one of the most relaxing places so far, the water was amazing to swim in and it was super chilled out! We also went on a boat tour of islands near Granada and visited a tiny island (about the size of two large rooms) called Monkey Island. It had 4 monkeys on it that were brought to the island and now live on there, we felt sorry for the monkeys, it was just strange that someone would do that.
We went to Matagalpa next to do a coffee tour. The coffee plantation that we visited, Selva Negra, was amazing, everything was organic, they even had houses for their 300 workers on the plantation and apparently half of their staff were women. The tour was good as the guide was the owner of the plantation and a very chatty and educated man called Eddy, however we were disappointed as we didn’t even get a cup of coffee out of it.
Our final destination was Esteli, it was a quiet little town. We went to the Galeria de Heroes y Martires, it was a huge room dedicated to the memory of the towns fallen revolutionaries. The museum is run by mothers of the martyrs and it was very moving seeing all the pictures and clothes of the people that fought, by far the best museum so far.
