EL SALVADOR

Punta Roca, La Libertad, El Salvador

Having stayed the night at Pierre and Gaby's, friends of Brigitte, she and I headed for La Libertad. We found a great room on the beach over looking the ocean waves and chilled. We went in the sea, braving the rocks and waves, i chatted with this local who was teaching his son to surf and he let me have a go on his tooth pik of a board. Needless to say i couldn't stand up but he did say he would give some lessons on a bigger board. That night i ate some delicious fish in garlic and oil and the next afternoon after visiting the local market we parted our separate ways. Brigitte wet back to San Salvador for a flight to France and i went to famous El Tunco to surf! (pics below)

El Tunco, El Salvador

Now this is El Salvador, this is not Coasta del Sol in Spain. It is quite rough around the edges here. I mean you can see the beach is full of wood and stuff with a river going into the sea. Plus we have lots of black sand here with some rocks. In fact the bottom is a mixture of sand and rocks as i found out the hard way when i smashed up both my ankles on the rocks and then my hands when i tried to uncooly walk out the water.

I found the locals to be friendly once again which is really important when aclimatising to a new place. If the locals are friendly its half the battle. PLus i was able to practice my very limited Spanish again. To be honest as you will see from the pics there is not a lot at El Tunco except this surf and a very low key tempo. Really nice really when you think about it.

After being scammed for $8 dollars by a local playing taxi man i finally found a decent hostel that had access to the swimming pool opposite in a swanky hotel (they had same owner Oscar). Cool huh! You can see my hostel breakfast/terrace area, it had a kitchen etc.

Anyway i was supposed to go back to La LIbertad for some surf lessons with the two guys we met in the begining. Well i did go back, twice, but when i got there the sea was flat so i just decided to rent a board and go out on my own in El Tunco. I think after about 2hrs i was totally dead and i caught 2 or 3 waves. Crap i know. Hey its just the begining, bit like my Spanish. Give me a year and I´ll become a demond surfer and be able to speak Spanish. ...i hope. Doouuh!

HONDURAS

HONDURAS 1-11 August

Roatan, Bay Islands
Scuba diving in the Bay Islands is a must if you happen to being within a short flight, e.g. Miami or love scuba diving holidays. I took the boat over from Belize, to Roatan, some 2hrs away and then headed for the West end bay where all the dive shops are. I found some nice accommodation and more importantly a good dive shop with a group of 4 others starting their PADI the next day. 4 Brits (Twin brothers and a couple) Game On!


The courses went really fast actually, we raced through parts 1 & 2 in the morning of day 1 and by the afternoon we were already out in the sea practicing what we had learnt that morning. Fanbloodytastic. We combined doing the practical bits in the water with a dive, such as emptying your mask or gaining neutral buoyancy. In fact, we took 4 days to complete our Open Water PADI. It seemed a lot, it was a lot and it was worth every penny.

The second to last dive was my favourite. We descended down a long a giant wall of coral to our left seeing tortoise and all colours and types of other smaller fish. To your right, well it was just one great blue abyss, the big wide open ocean. Quite a unique place to be in. Its embedded in my mind. We dove until 18metres, swimming around, aside and above all the different coral terrain, making sure we never toughed anything. i really did enjoy it and i had no problems equalizing my ears, although i did think that was going to be a problem. Not so. Cool.

I still cant believe we learned so much and progressed so well in such a short space of time. Only 4 days to complete our Open Water PADI! I do hope later in my travel i can dive again, perhaps in the Caribbean in Costa Rica and Panama or in Thailand and Malaysia.


Copan

I had no expectations of Copan (i am trying to keep my expectations low always so i can be nicely surprised, much like i was with Copan). I took the bus from the north of Honduras to the East passing some of the most beautiful, rugged and vast mountainous terrain i have seen yet and luckily all in one bus! Copan is an old Mayan (2000BC) site of importance to the Mayan civilisation particularly for its stone carvings. Here they spent much time studying astronomy.

http://www.delange.org/Copan1/Copan1.htm
Copan itself was a beautiful small town of 6000 in habitants that solely survive on the tourist dollar. I met some nice people horseback riding including a French girl called Brigitte who got the best horse. I got the horse that was about to have a heart attack every time i wanted to canter, never mind gallop and yet Brigitte´s horse that just wanted to run everywhere. Needless to say i wanted to swap and it didn't happen, but we had a lot of fun!

...the border crossing, Honduras to El Salvador

In fact Brigitte and i decided to travel together to El Salvador from Copan a few days later, she had friends in living in the capital. We left Copan that morning at 10.20am in the sweltering heat but we found out later we had so much luck on our side during the journey. Each time our bus stopped, the guys took our bags (Im like, oh, our bags!) and brought them to the connecting bus 2 seconds away. We followed, of course, and the bus left within minutes. It was so fluid that we even thought we might be able to make the 4.15pm connecting bus at the El Salvador border. Might!

Well we finally got to the border town at 4pm, got a taxi immediately to the border. Whilst we were driving we saw there was a full scale monsoon shower in serious progress. None of this England/Belgium spitting rain crap. It tell you a FULL SCALE MONSOON. So this taxi driver drops us 200metres from the actual boarder crossing. Im like, man drive further, its pouring. He says the Law states we have to walk to the border. Im like, are you kidding me.

OK, Whatever! we get out the cab in our shorts & t-shirts, don on the rain covers and macs and start running in our flip-flops with our 25kilo ruck sacks for the border. When we finally get to the border guard he looks at us, our passports and let us through without stamping (i thought strange, no stamp). Anyway, somehow Brigitte who is running way ahead of me gets a lift from a random, probably showed some leg! I am quite far behind now and having a cardiac arrest. 20kilo on the back and 10k on the front, in flip-flops in El deatho land. Panic starts to set in. I am running in the middle of this road, now in El Salvador, cant see Brigitte anywhere, i ask a girl on the side for directions to bus, she doesn´t know what i am talking about and looks at me like i am barking mad. I stand there drenched in no mans land. Shit!

Finally, after going on further i see this car park in the distance, i head for that and then i see Brigitte holding up the bus from leaving. I was so relived, completely wet but very happy. We both got on the bus and finally landed in San Salvador at her Friends place at 7.30pm that evening. Bloody brilliant!

What a day. A day of luck but damn, talk about challenge bloody Annicker. I guess these are the joys of travelling, ....and its only been a month! Shiiittttt!

BELIZE

BELIZE 25-31 July

Belize, Caye Caulker
Belize is completely different to Guatemala although they are neighbours the contrast is stark. i hadn´t even planned on visiting Belize, but hey that´s the joy of travelling, each day is NEW. I was travelling up with some gringos (yanks), took the bus over the border and then a boat to Caye Caulker. A very chilled out, no car allowed, Caribbean island that has the Blue Hole (google it if you don't know it). I went snorkeling seeing as i didn´t have my PADI. That being said i did see a small Shark feeding, many manta rays, silky smooth with large wings and lots of little fish
among the coral.



Although Belize is an ex-British colony and everyone speaks English, there is a very strong US influence on popular culture such as music, clothes, food etc. Furthermore, there does seem to be a lot more infrastructure in place when compared to Guatemala. Such brick houses, electricity pylon's, efficiency and things generally working. It seems strange to me because the local Rastafarian belizian is quite chilled out and lazy, its the Chinese than run all the corner shops and supermarkets so i don't know how they got all their ducks in a row. Maybe the US helped.

I also spent a couple of days at Dangriga to visit Tobacco Key. Dangriga is nothing to speak of, somewhat down trodden. Sometimes the locals were friendly (if money is involved) and sometimes there don´t care to notice you are there. The reef was very similar to that at Caye Caulker.


Finally my last days were spent at Placencia waiting for the weekly boat to go to Honduras. It was a nice enough small town on a peninsular however i just couldn't believe the litter on the beach. i even took a photo of it and when i went to the tourist to buy my boat ticket, i told them what i thought. Later that day they started digging holes in the sand and burying the rubbish as opposed to using a bin bag to collect it. What can i say? I guess litter is only a worry for the West. It certainly doesn't seem to be a worry for the people here.