Roatán – Diving on sale all year round

The view from our room across Half Moon Bay, West End... well across the road from our room, at the bar across the street, aptly named "Sundowners"

In one of the many inspired moments involved during the planning of our year-off extravaganza, I think it was a conversation with Sam Wee at a bar, later confirmed by Mike Debelak that Honduras is "cheap as chips" for diving. Thus, with little further discussion, we made room in our itinerary for a journey to this amazing part of the world.

After a fairly eventful journey to Roatán (refer to "Steph vomit" story in preceding blog below), we arrived without incident on the evening of Sunday Jan 20 at "Chillies" - a hostel that we had booked in advance from Antigua. One of the main reasons that we chose Chillies was due to the fact that it was attached to a dive shop with a great reputation for exploring the reef around Roatán, Native Sons.

After arriving at Chillies, we spent the next day relaxing, reading some books and then signing up for the dives that we wanted to do over the next week and a half. After looking at our options, we decided to book in for a Refresher Dive the next day, then the five dives required for our Advanced Ticket, as well as an Enriched Air or "Nitrox" course and exam.

SCUBA diving is hopefully going to be a big part of our year off, with diving trips planned for the Red Sea and Thailand. As such, particularly for diving WWII wrecks off the coast of Egypt, we wanted to get our qualifications for diving to the deeper levels where these wrecks are located. The Enriched Air qualification allows the use of higher oxygen blends that allow you to stay deeper longer, thus getting the most out of your dives.

Anyway, enough technical information, Roatán is an absolutely amazing spot. Even though it is the "most expensive spot in Honduras", costs were generally very easy to keep down. The
example that sticks out most in my mind is, of course, the beers. After a day's diving, it was great to relax with a couple of cold "Barenas" (basically Honduran Coronas) at Sundowners, the bar across the street, for roughly US$1.50 each during Happy Hour - 4pm to 7pm everyday!

It's difficult to sum up a week and half's diving when you don't have photos (neither of us have underwater cameras), however we can definitely say that the diving was some of the best that Steph and I have ever done.

We saw a huge diversity of underwater life, the highlight being the sea turtles for which Roatán Marine Park is famous. This picture is one that I ripped off the Native Sons website.

To get our advanced dive ticket, we had to do five different types of "Specialty Dives", two mandatory dives being a Navigation and Deep dive, as well as three dives of our choice, for which we chose a Night dive, Wreck dive and Peak Performance Buoyancy (Steph chose that one).

Probably the one that sticks out most in my head was the Night Dive, where we went out in the boat at sunset, around 5:30pm, and dove on Overheat reef, about 10 minutes or so out of Half Moon Bay. We weren't sure how much we were going to see, as there was supposed to be a full moon that night, which can make the viewing of certain underwater life that glows more difficult to see.

Luckily, the moon was obscured by cloud which allowed us to see the "strings of pearls", organisms that appear just after night fall in strings of light, like slowly falling luminescent raindrops over our heads by the hundreds. This was also in addition to the many nocturnal coral lobsters and huge crabs that we saw crawling across the reef by our flashlights. It was a truly amazing experience and, once some of us had overcome their trepidation about diving at nighttime, it is one that I'm sure we'd love to repeat.

The diving was brilliant, we got our new accreditations and we also did some extra fun dives to top off a sensational week and a half. Many thanks to Native Sons and our instructors, Jack and Andrea, as well as the other divemasters, Troy and Peter, that made our diving so enjoyable. We also met some great people who were also diving at Native Sons.

From left to right, includes Michael (cotton farmer from Arkansas), as well as Tim and Alex (brother and sister from NZ).

Roatán wasn't just all about the diving. We also walked the 4kms round the island to West Bay, full of resorts, however also a beautiful beach, with clear water and fine white sand. The walk was nice, however next time we'll take the US$2 water taxi that takes about 5 mins.

We fit in a visit to the Roatán Butterfly Garden, which houses many species of native birds, including toucáns and very friendly parrots as well as an enormous butterfly house.

We also made time to head out to Anthony's Key Resort (we stupidly walked for one and a half hours, thinking that it was just around the corner) to see "Los Dolfines" - the dolphins. They have a 4pm show that puts Seaworld to shame...well, almost. It was a lot of fun, Steph got to see dolphins (and wanted to pet them) and best of all, it was FREE!

All in all, Roatán was a sensational spot and one where we would have wanted to stay at longer, however we knew that we couldn't as Carnaval in Rio beckoned. Unfortunately, we were on a fixed schedule that couldn't be changed.

We hope to come back to the Bay Islands again one day, with more time to explore the reef, maybe the other island, Utila, and more room in our packs for cheesy T-shirts and souvenirs!

Copán, Honduras and our journey to Roatán

If you're into all things Mayan (and I'm sure everyone secretly wants to be) Copán is a must-see on the Mayan trail. It's sculptures are some of the best preserved in Central America and, although not as awe-inspiringly huge as Tikal, amazing in their own right.

It's also the main crossing point between Guatemala and Honduras and we thought it'd be a great place to overnight, rather than in either Guatemala City or La Ceiba (the dodgy port town on the coast of Honduras and main access point to the Bay Islands).

Copán Ruinas, confusingly, is actually the name of the town that is located about half an hour from the Guatemalan border. The actual ruins are another 1 km on the other side of town. Copán Ruinas is a cute little village, with cobbled streets, white-walled houses and terracotta rooves. When we arrived in town, we spent a little bit of time trying to find a place to stay, then set out by tuk tuk to the ruins.

Outside the ruins is a macaw sanctuary, very large, loud and colourful birds that hopped around without any ties to the aviary, they just must like it there that much!

It is a short walk from the main administrative building to the ruins which fill the area. One of the most famous in the park is below, representing king 18 Rabbits who was responsible for much of the buildings and development in Copán.

It was interesting that some of the actual ruins in the park have been replaced by replicas for the protection of the original carvings - I believe the above could be a replica with the original in a museum. One of the most amazing structures in the park is a sculpted and carved staircase, now protected by a canopy that is replaced from time to time. Note the detail in the stairs - absolutely amazing. The symbols make up a story in the Mayan language, thousands of characters long.

Steph and I were both pretty tired given our big night out in Antigua as well as long bus ride, however the ruins were not crowded at all and very peaceful, so it was a great place to recover and get prepared for another long journey the next day.

We returned to our hotel, had fantastic king size burritoes for dinner at Café ViaVia and had an early night in order to be up at 4:30am for a 5:15am Hedman Alas bus to the coast.

We woke up bright and early in the morning and almost walked right over the night watchman who was asleep in the middle of the hallway. Bleary-eyed, he unlocked the heavily bolted metal bars and let us loose into the early morning darkness of Copán. Not a tuk tuk, taxi or rickshaw to be seen, meant that we had to half-jog the kilometre or so across town in the early morning mistiness - an interesting adventure in itself!

We got to the bus station without incident and were delighted to see that our seats could fully recline and the bus was fairly new with all the mod-cons! Fantastic! We had a beautiful snooze, short wait in San Pedro and arrived in La Ceiba around 1:00pm. We caught a taxi to the airport and bought tickets on the next flight out to Roatán at 3:20pm. Having nothing to do for a couple of hours, we bought a couple of empanadas and tacos and read our books until we could commence boarding.

As we were walking across the tarmac, Steph started saying that she was feeling nauseous. I didn't pay much attention as I thought it was maybe a little fear factor of the tin can with wings and props that we were heading out to board, however as we sat crammed into the tiny plane with a dozen other people on board, I looked over to see a very pale and sweating Steph, looking at me with wide eyes that said only one thing - "I am going to vomit....NOW!!"

The plane was accelerating up the runway as we frantically searched in the seat pockets in front of us to discover only a life jacket and nothing else - what kind of tin can prop plane doesn't have yak sacks? Steph ripped open a life jacket and, using the bag that it was contained in, proceeded to hurl up the two-week old (we supposed) taco and empanada combination that we had recently consumed in the airport, all the while apologising to the lady across the aisle between heaves. The lady kindly smiled, said nothing and gave Steph a plastic shopping bag to replace the overflowing lifejacket bag as the tin can we were all seated in leapt into the air.

And then after all was said and done, Steph felt perfectly OK with nothing but a bag of vomit and a couple of drops on her pants as evidence that anything had happened at all! We learnt our first Honduras lesson: "Beware of dodgy airport tacos in Honduras".

After about 20 minutes, we landed in Roatán safely and bargained down a cab to take us out to the West End, looking forward to a week and half of great diving!

Goodbye Guatemala, Hello Honduras

Antigua a la noche

I (Kyle) am finally making my first contribution to the blog! I apologise for my laziness, however whenever I came to the internet cafés I chewed up all my time looking at the marvelous way that global share markets have been doing impressions of David Hasselhoff's singing career! Anyway, enough excuses and on with the blog!

It was with mixed feelings that we approached our last days in Guatemala. Although we were looking forward to being done with 4 hours of Spanish school everyday (so taxing compared to just pissing around and travelling), we were definitely going to miss our host family and the friends that we had made while we were here.

On Thursday 17 Jan, our second last night in Antigua, we invited our host family out to dinner to an Argentinian grill restaurant (Maria's choice). The food was sensational, mostly meat (which is also sensational) and we had a fantastic time.

This is the photo that we took of the restaurant and also the only photo we have of our host family. From left to right, Maria (la madre), Steph, Otto (el padre), Kyle and Carlos (el ijo). Terry (el perro) was missing, however he would have caused chaos anyway. Our host family was fantastic and I gained new insights not only into the Spanish language, but also the organisation of the Guatemalan Fire Brigade, biting habits of Golden Retriever puppies and just how friendly and hospitable people are in Guatemala. We can not thank them enough.

The next night, our LAST night in Antigua, we went out with some students from our school, including the Swiss couple, Janette and Roger, that we met in Semuc. Before dinner, we took a tuk tuk to "Sky Café", cramming four people into it. Seth (another student from school) took a great photo from the front seat:



Sky Café had a fantastic view over Antigua, it was a shame that we had only discovered this place on our last night here, however it would have been hard to tear ourselves away from the Sunshine Grill, our local on the way home from school!





The above picture shows the ruins of the Franciscan monastry in Antigua. It was ruined by a mudslide that destroyed most of Antigua in the 18th century (I think). Anyway, history aside, it may not be habitable anymore, but it makes great viewing while watching the sunset, drinking a cold one.

After Sky Café, we headed back to our host family for a spot of dinner, then met up with the other students from the language school and headed to the place where Steph had cruelly made me get salsa lessons with her, as on Friday nights it turns into a bar. Although this was taken a couple of nights before, here's a group shot of us out with other students from school.

As a side note, dancing, i.e. REAL dancing, not the "walk around slowly dance" that we do in Australia, is a distinctly masculine thing to do. The man makes all the decisions, pushes the woman around and basically makes the female look amazing while not looking very impressive themselves. To LEARN this, however, is extremely difficult, and after three hours of lessons I had learnt "Basic Step", "Basic Turn" and "Basic Switch". However, when watching the locals dance at the clubs, I couldn't identify any of these steps being used, so I stayed on the sidelines, shuffling my feet in a poor imitation of the walk around slowly dance, and feeling like the wallflower that wore pink taffeta to the country ball.

Anyway, back to our last night in town. The samba place was jammed, so dancing was off the cards, however Roger and I managed to win a free beer by singing "Guantanamara"...which rhymes with "one tonne tomato" if you say tomato the american way - "tamaada". Anyway, free beer, all good.

After our salsa school bar closed, we hit another salsa club which seemed to be populated by the reserve squad of male dancers from "Dancing with the Stars". Damn my useless, clumsy feet!

However, disappointment changed to excitement as Roger and I found out we could purchase 3 litre barrels of beer. This, apparently, is also a great excuse from having to feel woefully unmanly by not being out on the dance floor (which is strange in itself really). Janette danced her toes off with many of the guys and Steph also had a whirl with a guy that was about five foot nothing and could dance salsa better than the weather guy off Sunrise!

We finally had enough around 1 am and hit the all night taco place on the way home, which was sensational! With a tearful farewell to Roger and Janette (¡Muy Triste!) we got up to our room at 1.30am, realising we had to pack and be awake by 3.30am to make the shuttle to Copán, Honduras, our first stop before getting to the Bay Islands and Roátan where we were spending a week and a half diving!

An hour to pack, an hour to sleep, and five hours in a minivan to feel hungover and like absolute garbage! However, it was all worth the fantastic great night out and it was a fitting way to say farewell to Antigua and Guatemala!

Volcan Pacaya in Guatemala

The hike up to where the magma flows on Volcán Pacaya

In Antigua, climbing Volcán Pacaya is one of those things that only the tourists do. At just 2552m, it's not especially tall or a challenging climb, the view from the top is not very memorable, and many guidebooks recommend one of the closer Volcáns, such as Agua or Acatenango which have stunning views over Antigua and the surrounding areas. However, if you want to see real, live super-hot magma as it dribbles down from an active volcano, Pacaya is where you have to go!

The hike starts fairly inncouously, just a simple grass-covered track up a hill, however before too long, you come to a barren moonscape which is the extent to which previous lava flows from Pacaya have reached.

The rock itself is porous and very strange, however the highlight is definitely reaching the lava flow itself!

The heat that comes off the rocks is absolutely phenomenal, just facing it feels like you're putting your face right in front of Steph's super turbo hairdryer (this didn't make the final cut for the trip, by the way)!

One of the tricks that the guide did (this is why you need to have special training to be a guide on Volcan Pacaya!) was getting close enough to put his hiking stick into the red hot rock which instantly catches fire.

Steph and I were instantly regretting the fact that we didn't bring our hot dogs and marshmallows for toasting over the lava. However, it's probably a good thing as I'm sure that I would have lost the majority of my forearm hair, if not my eyebrows and eyelashes in an effort just to get close enough to the lava.

Another trick that the guide does is throw a handful of green leaves that he picked up off the trail which made a loud popping and cracking noise. Too much fun!

However in all seriousness, the lava was truly spectacular, the heat, the bizarre shapes that the lava flow makes when it cools and the porous feel of the rock were unique and well worth the short trek up.

As we were leaving, around 7:00pm, there was still a steady flow of people coming up the mountain to look at the lava, which had started to glow in the twilight darkness. It does mean that you make the descent down in relative darkness (luckily we bought our headlamps, we were advised to do this by other students as the tour operators forget to tell you this before you start the hike).

As we descended, the sunset was a spectacular deep blood red colour (probably due to the noxious fumes from the volcano). It was a great mid-week excursion for us during our Antigua Spanish lessons!

Semuc Champey & Las Grotas de Lanquin, Guatemala

From Antigua, we hopped on a bus and headed off for an adventure-filled weekend in Semuc Champey and the Lanquin caves. Semuc is a series of natural, cascading pools in a river in the middle of the jungle, which came highly recommended from my friend Natalia in Sydney (who also recommended La Casa del Mundo). Thanks Nat!

Here is Kyle getting off our shuttle with our tour. We went with Rene from Maya´ch Expeditions and would highly recommend him. He made our weekend truly unforgettable!

A view of the hills that we saw all along the drive through a very remote part of Guatemala.

Checking out the view.

The swedish couple that we were hiking with along the trail through the jungle.

Our first view of the falls. (If you look over at the dark area just to the right of the falls, you will see where we jumped from... 10 meters down into the water. I nearly had a heartache, but I was NOT going to be the chicken that had to climb back up the dodgy rope ladder by myself!! Not a chance. (I just crossed my fingers and hoped not to be leaving collared on a hard board.... Not that it was possible as there are no hospitals and not even a first aid kit with us! Haha.)

Taking the few of Semuc Champey´s cascading, natural pools from above.

Our group and soon to be very good friends.... Roger and Jeanette on the left, and a swedish couple in the middle (I can´t remember there names... oops!) Roger nearly had to push me off the cliff to get me to jump, and Jeanette held my hand several times so that we didn´t fall into the guano in the caves... Lots of good stories there!

Looking down at some others enjoying the water.

The rapids just above the pools where the water becomes very placid and still.

The first pool that we swam in where Kyle managed to find a little cliff to jump off of. Very nice!

Looking into the second pool, and over the embankment is the third, etc.

The 3rd or 4th pool.




The 4th or 5th pool. I´m sure that you get the point, but I just couldn´t stop taking pictures. It was so pretty!

After all the swimming and jumping off crazy cliffs (that easily could have been a trauma call), our guide Rene took us to our next destination: Las Groutas de Lanquin (the Lanquin Caves).

The view of the river outside looking back out from the entrance.

Our guide Rene telling us about what crazy stuff he´s going to make us do next. Sure, going down an extra 400 meters into pitch black into the bat caves sounds like a really good idea....

The early views in the cave.... where it was lit (and not so scary).

And the scary part, where it wasn´t lit. This must have been the look on my face for the entire 90 minutes that we walked, and sometimes nearly crawled, through tight little crevaces with hundreds, and I mean hundreds of bats whipping by, often just a bit too close to your face. Oh shit!!!! How did I get into this!!!

(No picture)

This is the picture that I should have taken of the section of the tunnel that we walked through that was 4 inches thick with guano (bat shit). Ah, the great part is that it not only covered our shoes but our hands as well. (It was so slippery and a bit steep so you had to hold on to keep yourself from falling completely into it....)

It subsequently led to a discussion with Roger & Jeanette (during happy hour, of course) about the time that a bat got into my bedroom, and I used my cell phone from under the covers to call mom (in the next room) to come and save me!!

The monstrous and scary looking spider-like thing that we found in the depths of the cave. I can´t remember what Rene said it was.... kind of a cross between a scorpion and a spider. Ew!