I caught an early plane from San Jose to Miami and had 7 hours to kill before my connecting flight to London. This time the Miami custom´s officer was not so nice - I wanted to ask her if it´s part of the job description that you have to be an asshole. Instead of sitting at the airport feeling sorry for myself, I caught a bus to Ocean Drive and chilled out on South Beach trying to feel hyp and cool like everyone around me. I was clever (for once) and had worn my bikini under my clothes so was able [View Full Entry]

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Chichicastenango is a 2000 year old Mayan market which takes place every Thursday and Sunday. It sells everything from live chickens, flowers, vegetables and Mayan handicrafts. It's touristy but also traditional as the Maya still trade and haggle amongst themselves. The road to Chichi from Lake Atitlan was arduous as the bus wound up and down steep mountains burrowing further into the western highlands. The scenery was stunning but I was reluctant to look over the edge and kept myself busy listening to amusing stories told by Joe and Janet, our American friends. We got there on a Thursd [View Full Entry]

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We spent the day wondering how to get to Antigua. We wanted to be there by the end of the day, but it's all the way across the other side of the country. We were prepared to make the 10 hour overnight bus journey if it came down to the crunch, but I'd developed a nasty cold over night and was feeling pretty awful. We decided to go to the airport in Santa Elena and enquire about plane tickets and knew that they ranged from $60-80 and even up to $130. A local met started hassling us at the airport telling [View Full Entry]

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It took us AGES to be able to leave Livingstone. After establishing that there was not much to do in the town other than eat breakfast, we attempted to catch a boat ('lancha') down the scenic Rio Dulce where we were hoping to catch a bus to El Remata - a remote village near Tikal in northern Guatemala. The boat had no set time at which to leave, instead we had to wait a couple of hours for other passengers to show up and fill the boat. It was frustrating as hell as we were afraid of missing our connecting bus. [View Full Entry]

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Finally managed to tear myself away from Roatan and make my way to Guatemala. I only had a week left and wanted to pack in as much as I could - enough lazing around on beautiful Caribbean beaches and waving at the fishies, it was time to up the pace and experience some Guatemalan kulture, innit! I was fortunate to acquire another travel buddy for my last leg of the journey: Calvin from Roatan who was on a visa run, which means having to leave Honduras for a week or so to renew it. We set off on the 6am ferry [View Full Entry]

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Here are some more dive photos from my second time in Roatan with Lorna, completing my Advanced Open Water course. We saw many weird and wonderful things in the sea including an octapus, giant starfish, baracudas, more turtles, and on my last day a shark as big as me! On one of the dives several giant Grouper fish followed us around and allowed us to pet them - they look hilarious with their fat lips and curious eyes (see photo below!). I'm proud to say I completed 23 dives this holiday. I'm afraid I'm hooked, but unfortunately neither England nor Canada [View Full Entry]

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Roatan is like a magnet. I ended up spending almost 2 weeks there, which cut into my Guatemala trip but I was having such a great time I just couldn´t leave. Lorna stayed 4 days, until Saturday after which her 2 weeks were up and she (sadly) headed back to London, and I stayed on in Roatan taking my time to complete the Advanced Open Water qualification. We stayed at the lovely Posado Arco Iris (where I´d stayed with James) and we absolutely loved our room which was so different to the awful room we had in La Ceiba! We basically [View Full Entry]

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We weren´t expecting Tamarindo to be all that as according to the guide books it is built-up and very Americanised. So we were very pleasantly surprised when we turned up that afternoon from Tortuguerro to find a large gorgeous palm-fringed beach with white sand and very few people. The town is also very pretty. Yes it is Americanised in a sense that there are a ton of expensive boutiques and souvenir shops, and most of the real estate is owned by Americans, but from what I´d read in the books I was expecting something like Spain with those awful beachfront highrises [View Full Entry]

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Well it´s been a while since I´ve written. Apologies but I´ve barely had time for computers with all this running around! I believe I left off in Antigua just after Semana Santa and I was on my way to catch a plane to meet Lorna in Costa Rica. Well, that´s what I did and there she was waiting for me at the airport with a BIGGER BAG THAN MINE!!! And she was only staying 2 weeks!! After all the hugs and cheers and jumping up and down with excitement, we decided to ignore all the taxi drivers who had swarmed over [View Full Entry]

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Happy Easter! Well things certainly picked up since my little experience with theiving fingers last Thursday. In retrospect losing $100 was not bad at all considering I bumped into a girl from London who had just had EVERYTHING stolen, leaving her with only $0.50 in her pocket, and her friends were held at gunpoint and robbed the other night (something that I hear has started to happen quite often in Antigua). ANYWAY, I´m really enjoying the town. It´s absolutely gorgeous. I´ve spent my days wandering the cobbled-stone streets visiting beautiful churches as well as ruins caused by ear [View Full Entry]

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