HOW SPONATANIETY SAVED MY LIFE

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Hurrah for spontaneity! Why do you say this Simon? Well if you are sitting comfortably (not that comfortably, pop it back in) then I shall begin.

On the Tuesday of my last week in Xela my lovely friend Renee makes an off the cuff remark about going to the Bay Islands to learn to dive and whether I wanted to join her. Now I was planning to see Lago Atilan and Antigua in Guatemala and this was firmly in my Si-tinerary but after sleeping on it, I thought, "I'm young, I'm single, I can make spontaneous decisions" and with these thoughts firmly penetrating into my psyche I booked a bus, hostel, emailed some dive centers and by Friday we were on the way to Utila to learn to dive.

All told it took us 44 hours to get there with two nights' stop overs. One was heaven; comfy bed, cheap private room, staff bending over backwards to help you. Second stop was awful, a cramped dorm with little air, the toilet from Trainspotting and the hostel backed onto the center of La Ceiba Carnival which did not stop until 6am, so no sleep. Then a very choppy boat ride to La Ceiba where 30 % of the boat were sick and then we finally touched down on a bit Caribbean paradise called Utila.

The week that followed was probably one of my favourites of the trip so far. I didn't party hard, in fact I only got pissed once but I was really content learning to dive (which I LOVED!), eating BBQ food, sunbathing and hanging out with lots of lovely people. Not to say my dive training wasn't plain sailing (if you pardon the slightly tangential pun) - I did freak out a couple of times underwater, one was quite spectacular when I got my mask in a tangle, got water up my nose, felt I couldn't breath and then ascended to the surface with an instructor trying to pull me down to slow my ascent otherwise I could have damaged my ears with the sudden pressure. Oh Simon, what a twat you are. But I am now a PADI certified diver and I can enjoy looking at all the wonders of the ocean deep in another tropical location. I have a new found respect and love of Coral, Turtles are officially the coolest sea animals ever and its impossible to stare out a Barracuda.

Unfortunately the week raced by and last Friday I had to leave, so I packed all my stuff up again and off I went. It had been a pretty crap morning - I had an incredibly disappointing bacon sandwich at the local cafe, the sky was a boring grey hue but I did see a cloud that looked like Aslan the Lion so that cheered my up. My next stop was supposed to be seeing my mates Blake and Weilien in Antigua for couple of days to catch up before they went to Melbourne. Unfortunately its not only Europe with Volcano issues and Antigua's resident volcano (found the apostrophe - woo hoo) decided to blow it's nut, killing 3 people and covering the town in ash http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/world/latin_america/10189054.stm. I needed to catch my flight to Costa Rica on Monday from Guatemala City (down the road from Antigua) but it looked like the flights may not start again for about 5 days. So executive decision time. Even though I had paid 35 quid for a coach to take me the 16 hour journey back to Antigua I decided to chance my luck, stay in Honduras and see if I could change my flight to go from there. Thankfully, it's not only Guatemalan lovelies that my bad Spanish works on because I am now flying to Costa Rica tomorrow after charming the people of TACA took pity on me.

I am currently in rather boring and slightly dangerous city called San Pedro Sula, hostel is nice though, it's very hot and I have just eaten a big bowl of granola with banana. However, this is much better than my original plan where right now I would have been in Antigua, probably about to meet my maker when a stray lava rock comes hurtling through my window, cursing the world that I can't catch my flight until Wednesday. Oh and there's a tropical storm there at the moment too causing a lot of devastation too (I am hoping all my nearest and dearest in Guatemala are okay and well). So, in a way, spontaneity has saved me from a lot of travel anguish and pain - so I am planning to exercise my spontaneous streak a lot more in the future!

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