Proper adventure travelling

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Hi

Well I seen to have joined quite an accident prone group here and theres a few of those funny stories to say as well.

Before I joined the group apparently Helen and Chris had been quite ill and Mark had fallen of a horse or something similar. All thats just for reference so you cann see how unlucky some people are.

The morning after I last updated we were up at 6.30 and on the bus to the Bay Islands. Really nice bus, but was still a seven hour journey and then over two hour wait for the Catemaran to Utilla, the smallest of the Bay Islands. The only exciting thing that happened on the journey is our guide got off the bus to buy some Mango and the driver started to drive off until we all started shouting at him. After being warned that people sitting outside might get wet I decided to sit inside which was good because as soon as we were outside of the harbour it get extremely rough with massive waves crashing over the front of the catamaran and everyone who sat outside got absolutley drenched. We stopped half way to Utilla to pick up a bouy that had become loose. Then once we were on Utilla chucked our bags on the back of a pickup truck. Then four of us jumped on top of the bags and got to the hotel the easy way whilst everyone else walked. During our time on the island we all got bitten a lot by mossies and sandflys. We were all quite hot by that point so we jumped in the pool, then headed for dinner and finally off to a bar on a canopy/treehouse/walkway in a garden which has been decorated qith bottles and mosaics and as Mark put it is "where Peter Pan would go for his 21st".

The next morning I laid in then after brunch went to the dive school to get sorted out for diving that afternoon. I was the only person doing an experience (ie not qualified and not training) dive but there was four people from our group doing training dives and 1 person who was already qualified. Anyway we get on the boat with really friendly guides and go out to the dive site. Chris jumps in first and imedietly shouts "Ouch" he got back in the boat and couldn't dive anymore due to ear pain, he later found out he had torn his ear drum. The rest of us still dived. On my first dive I was having a lot of difficulty equalising (sorting out the pressure in my ears like in a plane) and therfore my ears were hurting a lot during the dive and also my mask was on too tight and was getting quite annoying, so all in all I really didn't enjoy the dive even though the coral was good and the marinelife wasn't to bad. It was a bit rough getting to the second dive site but on the way I loosened off my mask and Emielle (my instructor) gave me advise about equalising. This completely sorted out my problems and I enjoyed the second dive a lot more. I was able to take in more of the surroundings and I was diving down into encaves attempting to swim along with fish (they were too fast) and although I have no idea what fish I did see they were really cool with a long mouth (a lot of them did) I was only meant to go down to 12 metres but actually made it down to 15 metres before Emeile got my attention and signalled for me to get up a bit. When I got back on the boat I talked to the others as you do and it turned out Fiona got seasick getting to the second dive site and thought she was going to be sick underwater but didn't know the correct handsymbol for "if I am going to be sick do I leave my regulator (bit you breath through) in or take it out" so she had to hold it in (the correct anwser surprisingly is leave it in, but we all only found that out afterwards and even one of the instructors didn't know).

When we got to the hotel we found out that Mark, MP and Aubrey (and maybe others) had taken out scooters and before they even got onto the main road Mark (who was carrying MP on the back) took a corner to tightly and the scooter fell over leaving those two with big scratchs down there side. After deciding that maybe a scooter wasn't the best idea they hired a golf buggy to go and see the island, however after driving over some rocky paths they managed to break the steering wheel on that.

That evening it was back to the Treehouse bar where some people had passed there divemaster course and therefore had to down a cocktail through a snorkel.

The next morning on the way to the doctor to see him about his ear Chris tripped over and twisted his ankle, and had to convinve the doctor that he did not need to be airlifted of the island (the catamaran was on strike). A lot (9 of us) decided to hire bicycles to go round the island (what could possibly go wrong). My bikes front brake did not work at all and back brake kindof worked which made the downhills quite interesting. It was a really hot day so when we got round to the first beach everyone decided to stop and most of the people (except me, Chris and David went in the sea and walked accross to another small island. On the way back Helen, deciding Chris had outdone her on the injury front, stepped on a sea urchin and got several (26 apparently) sea urchin spines in her foot. Mark carried her out then laid on the beach then went about finding how to get her to the doctors. About 10 minutes later he came back with a scooter and somehow Helen was balanced on the back and they went off to see the doctor (he made it without crashing this time). Almost everyone else went to the doctors with Helen but me and David decided to carry on and that 6 people was probably enough to keep her company.

We carried on cycling round the coast along some smoothish paths then onto a road where we went past the airport (well when I say airport I mean small airfield with 1 shed and 2 tiny planes, no gates etc, so not really an airport but the locals refer to it as one) and onto a really rocky path till we found the beach again and then got to a mixture of rocks and sand whilst we were sweating buckets. Having to stop every ten minutes to stock up on water. After a little bit further the path got that bad we had to push the bikes, then it just stopped and was blocked by trees and piles of rocks, so we had to turn back, when we were just leaving the beach we saw we had a choice of paths the horrible rocky path we had come along or the nice smooth runway. Obviously we choose the nice smooth runway (I bet you can see whats coming next) when we were about 1/4 way along the runway we see a small cesena plane pull onto the runway go to the far end from us and turn around ready for take off and it starts coming along the runway with us still cycling along it. We got straight to the side off the side of the runway, but we needn't have bothered as it actually cleared us by about 50 feet. We stopped at the airport bar for a cola then headed back and met the others still waiting at the doctors, in the end the receptionist told her there was nothing the doctor could do (after they had waited there about 2 hours) and we all headed back. When I got back to my room I found out Keith (my 65 year old room mate, yes you read that right) had also been to the doctors with a bad shoulder. I had a really nice cold shower then John (our guide) had cooked us a bbq which was also really good then me Fiona and the American headed again to the treehouse bar.

It was a 5.50 start to get the boat back to the mainland (luckily they had come off their strike) and it was a lot smoother crossing. We then had an hour wait for the bus then it was a pretty straight forward seven hour bus ride to Tegucigalpa, the capital of Honduras. We got here about 4.30 then got in the taxis to the hotel oh this was another experience. We had a frustrated racing driver as our driver and he managed to get in the smallest gaps by sticking his hands out of the window and all the other racers, I mean drivers, would let him in. Though at one point we got behind another on of our groups taxis and had to give it a push (our taxi pushed theres) as we thought they had broken down, but we soon left them and went a long way through the city along random streets and made it to the hotel. The other tax it turned out had not broken down but had run out of petrol and after we stopped pushing them they all had to get out and push and then once they had petrol the driver proceeded to get lost.

We have walked round the city a bit this evening but another early start tomorrow so think Im going to head off as I have no idea what adventures await

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