Its an early departure from Gatlinburg for our journey to New York City. After a short wait in the rocking chairs at Knoxville airport we're on our way to New York. As we fly North Keith spots lines of hills in the haze looking like lines of waves coming in to a beach - he's obviously been too long away from the sea. Its very exciting flying into New York as the famous skyline appears. We check into our hostel in Manhattan and race out to check out the city. We didn't expect it to be so hot - 36 deg C today. We look like true tourists gazing up at the skyscrapers and people out on the streets hailing yellow cabs. The subway seems like the best way to get around so we attempt to ... read more

We've made it to Gatlinburg, Tennessee, for Keith's National Marine Education Association conference. We're sharing a room with Bob, who Keith knows from past conferences, but Tessa and I get to meet him when he kindly drags himself out of bed on our arrival after midnight. We all fall into our beds, looking forward to moving into conference mode and checking out Gatlinburg the next day. Well we're into full culture shock now after Central America. Gatlinburg is the gateway to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, the most visited National Park in the States. This is touristville for Americans and they certainly go all out to entertain. The town is bursting with all sorts of family entertainment options, there's a huge (2 storey) replica of the gorilla from King Kong, famous cars from films and ... read more

Our final destination in Guatemala is Antigua, near Guatemala City. The town where we started our trip 6 weeks ago. In Lanquin we walk chatting with some local schoolkids on their way to school til we find a tuk-tuk to take us to our shuttle. We're squashed in for 8 hours, and are really onto the busy roads by the time we head back into the belching modern capital, Guatemala City ('Guate'). Loads of cars, banana trucks, buses, all spewing fumes, fast food franchises and broken down outer suburbs. Then we're out the other side and into the quaint tourist town of Antigua, and we're back at the posada where we spent our first night in Guatemala. In this town surrounded by volcanoes, its a clear night and Volcan Agua stands out over the town with ... read more

From El Estor we are heading for Flores, in Northern Guatemala. We start the day with perfect timing as just around the corner from our hotel we find a public micro bus passing by that happens to be going our way - to Rio Dulce. Its amazing how many times that has happened on this trip. Back to busy and hectic Rio Dulce, where we help a couple of tired distraught English girls trying to get to Copan (Honduras) after a chain of mishaps and lack of access to money. We locate a 'second class' bus for us which is heading for Flores. The bus is super full so we stand in the aisle for the first few hours, until eventually enough people get off for Tessa and me to get a seat. Its no problem ... read more

From Copan Ruinas in the Honduran foothills we were heading for Livingston on the Carribean coast of Guatemala. We were up at 5 to catch a local micro bus to the Honduras/Guatemala frontera. We swapped to a tourist van at the border, which we then exited at Rio Hondo, next catching a passing large bus which took us most of the way, then got off at a road corner and waited again in the searing heat to catch another public bus to Puerto Barrios. Before its final stop we leapt off at the closest street to the port and did a 20 min walk from there down a road with all our gear to finally reach the lanchas (boats). The public lancha waited until it was full of passengers, then we were all off to Livingston. ... read more