Central America 3 - Antigua to San Jose

The third module of our Tucan trip has been travelling down from Antigua (Guatemala) to San Jose (Costa Rica), via Honduras (Copan, Tela and Roatan in Bay of Islands), Nicaragua (Granada, Ometepe Island) and finally down to San Jose itself.

Acquired another group of people on this section; but including us, 7 of the 19 from our previous module are still here, so not as many new names to learn this time. However, we still have more people to annoy with the fact that we are away for 5 months, and they only have a few weeks!!

The highlights to date have been...

- getting our exit visa stamps from Guatemala, but having to hang around for 30 mins to get actually get visa-d into Honduras, as the border officials decided to have an early lunch hour!!

- visiting a set of Hot Springs near Copan (Honduras). They were very warm and realxing to bathe in - and it made a change from having to have a shower!! But the ride there, with 8 of us perched on the back of each pick-up truck, whilst hurtling along along un-paved roads, was also an event in itself!!

- seeing our last set of Mayan ruins, the Copan Runias themselves. Again, many of the Mayan themes were present, but with numerous local differences in style - e.g. new buildings built on top of the old ones every new Mayan "century" (of 52 years), and so remains of buildings have been found 100 metres beneath the level of the ruins that currently sit at ground level (which date from B.C.)

- attending a "cultural" evening of talking, eating & watching a local Garajuna show (near Tela, Honduras). The Garajuna people are the local black negro community, who originally arived on St Vincent in the caribbean from Africa (a few hundred years ago) and who still try and protect their cultural values / community.

- after a 2 hour "rock-and-roll" ferry ride, spending a few lazy days in the West End area of Roatan, in the Bay of Islands. Here we did snorkelling and tried a beginners diving course, although the latter was not a great success (the course was too rushed for us and instrucrtor not the best - so we may have to do a slower, longer course later on in our trip). C found a prescription face mask, and this made all the difference with his snorkelling confidence - funnily enough, it makes a difference when you can actually see where you are going!!

- having two constant travel days between Roatan and Granada (Nicaragua), with just an overnight stop in the Honduras capital. Basically, we spent two solid days (12 hours a day) sitting on express intercity coaches ... shivering from the cold air con, and with only way to pass the time being to watch the films being played, which on these occasions included The Alamo, Troy, and The Mummy.

- spending a night in the Honduras capital of Tegicegula, where the local driving antics were something quite unique. Nothing makes for a more relaxing taxi ride from bus station to hotel than playing chicken with oncoming traffic, making turns across the path of oncoming traffic that is not stopping for you, etc...!!!

- arriving in the local bus station in the Nicaraguan capital just before dusk (Managua, not the safest place in the world per the guide books), only to find horrendous queues. However, our tour leader luckily manage to bribe the shuttle bus driver sufficiently so that we jumped to front of the queue and had a private bus ride!! Money talks down here...!!!

- arriving in the relaxed, colonial-style town of Granada, to find that we are staying in the nicest hotel in town, right on the main square (- a budget trip goes a long way in Nicaragua!)

- two nights staying on Ometepe Island on Lake Nicaragua, the largest freshwater island in the world. Although we did travel around some of the island, the best bit was just laying back in the hammocks on the deck area of our cabin and lazing on the desrted beach - this is how travelling is meant to be!

We are now in San Jose, the capital of Costa Rica - with 8 days of exploring Costa Rica to go. Then off to New Zealand we go, on next leg of our trip...

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