Zebrafish

Our hotel Aaxalaax was built by an architecture addict. Each room being unique, some were built up into a rock face with features such as a bathroom built into rocks or a wall made out of netted stones,  windows and lamps made from broken pieces of glass joined together with paper mache. Hummingbirds would feed right next to us as we ate breakfast on the roof garden.

 

We travelled here with 4 friends from Spanish school, Mat, Susan, Alex and Alea. All anthropologist students from LA and each unique in their own way, from a Mennonite who cleans Snoop Dog's pool to a war vet from America's latest illegal wars, we enjoyed their company immensely.

 

San Marco is built into jungle paths on the lake shore. It's a quiet alternative lifestyle hippy village, the locals village being just behind. Before breakfast you could jump from rocks into the still silent lake and swim out into the grandiose landscape of reflected volcanoes.

 

Four of us took 2 canoes and headed out along the shore, stopping to catch some sun on a remote beach. But at this season the afternoons are plagued with heavy rain and we found ourselves paddling back in a torrential downpour. Our muscles burning but keeping us warm. The lake around us darkened, and shimmered all around, with raindrops and claps of thunder from the next valley as we passed fisherman resigned to staying out in canoes for their catch.

San Pedro across the lake was more gringo'd but still good fun. We went to an Israeli run restaurant where there was more to the mushroom omelet and laasi than met the eye, This seems to be the theme here, for many who don't seem to be able to leave the party atmosphere.

Johanna and I were back on our own again for another night in Antigua in transition. It always feels good to make a loop when you are travelling and close off a little part of your trip.

 

We took a day long bus journey back east to the small town of Rio Dulce. Bought a nice bottle of rum and a boated out to some cabins built in mangroves on stilts by the river. It was remote but being the safest place in the Caribbean to moor boats from hurricanes there was also a fair but of luxury. We had a great little swimming pool with WiFi too!

We sat by the pool surfing the internet on my PDA and fold-able blue-tooth keyboard trying to plan out how to see the lakes and river. I phoned a company in Antigua over the internet with my mobile and 30 minutes later we were packing our bags ready to be picked up for our sailing trip.

Its amazing how much technology is changing travelling. Now every corner of the globe has internet cafes and using websites like Jajah mobile and a local SIM card I can walk down a street almost anywhere in the world having a conversation on my mobile phone with someone on a different continent for cheaper than I can make a call between mobiles in the UK. Even hotel bills can be paid on-line with Paypal.

Soon we were aboard the catamaran La Sirenas and sailing up lake Izabal. John a sixty year old American skippered the boat. An interesting guy he seems to have spent more than half his life sailing either around the Caribbean or across the Atlantic. Normally he is running his tour business out of Antigua but while it was quiet he bought his wife and two boys out to make up the numbers for this 4 days river trip, along with 3 girls travelling from Germany.
http://www.sailing-diving-guatemala.com/sailing-rio-dulce.php

 

 

The catamaran had 2 hammocks up front where you could lie directly above the water. That was my favourite spot for as long as I could handle the sun. That evening we dropped anchor, swam around the boat then ate dinner on deck.

Johanna and I have a small cabin we have to crawl down into, it's the size of a double mattress with a small place for our backpacks and it's really hot at night. I slept out for a few hours on the hammock over the water but came in at the sound of distant thunder.

The next morning we walked out to a stunning waterfall. Steaming hot thermal water crashing over your body and into the cool river. Then back on the boat for lazing and reading as we sailed downstream past an old Spanish fort used against pirates, back past Rio Dulce and into lake El Golfete surrounded by biosphere reserves and nowadays a fair amount of luxury houses. Guatemala is very corrupt and natural paradises like this are not protected properly to stop people just building luxury homes in the national parks.

 

We arrived in the tropical Afro-Caribbean Garifuna port of Livingston while it was pouring with rain. Kids were using the street channel drains on the side of the hill as their own water chute. But luckily for us it cleared up, we got a short look around this great looking town before heading back upstream.

 

 

The Rio Dulce gorge rises steep on either side with steam rising from the jungle all around. We stopped and swam a few times at a fresh, clean, cold water spring and at a hot springs where the water on the surface was so hot it stung, you had to mix it with your hands to make it sublime for bathing.

 

After 3 nights relaxing on the boat it was a shock being back on land having to deal with travelling, bus connections and border crossings. On the way we stopped for Garifuna seafood coconut curry soup in Puerto Barrios. Not a great town. It's streets are all planned out in a grid when designed by the United Fruit Company. At the docks a huge freight ship was being loaded full of bananas for London with the same logo on that you see in the supermarkets at home.

 

The north western Honduran coast is hot and stunningly backed by rainforest covered hills and banana plantations. We spent a couple of nights in the quiet village of Omoa at a Swiss run hostel. It had great facilities, a garden kitchen, free guitars, bikes and a rabbit. But there were so many rules plastered everywhere that it totally spoiled the atmosphere.

 

 

Along the coast in Tela at least in front of some of the better hotels the beaches were much cleaner and it was a pleasure to swim and jump in the surf. But the heat was oppressive here and we splashed out a little more for an air con room. Tela is a great place for cheap seafood, garlic shrimps and fried red snapper every night.

We took a day tour out to the Punta Sal national park, and a small headland populated by blue and red crabs, spiders, monkeys and stunning beaches. A hidden bay here was once the hideout for the famous pirate Henry Morgan, it's now a quiet spot for shy manatees to hide.

 

On the way back the waves grew scarily huge. Our small two motor boat turned into a roller-coaster ride jumping off the tops and riding between peaks much higher than us. It was quite scary at first and we got a real soaking from crashing into waves.

 

We had another steaming hot afternoon in the 2nd largest Botanical gardens in the world which we explored by mountain bike. This was also set up by United Fruit company. There was a time in Honduras' history when 2 fruit companies from the USA dominated the entire democracy here, resulting in a history of dictatorships and violence.

 

We spent a sleepy Sunday afternoon  in La Ceiba. We went to the mall to use the internet and buy a few things. And that's where everyone else was hanging out too, a bit sad and surreal.

After almost 2 hours on a stomach churning fast boat ride we arrived on the diver's paradise island of Roatan, part of the Bay islands. Once heavily contested between Britain and Spain the island now is bilingual but mostly English speaking and Garifuna as well as an international gathering of divers, escapees from the rat races of colder climes.

We spent 2 weeks here in a great apartment at Mariposa lodge run by Canadian couple Mike and Susan. We had our own kitchen, balcony with hammock, DVD player, movie collection and a cat. It was great!
http://www.mariposa-lodge.com

We made friends with Ocean Connections dive shop run by another Canadian called Trevor and took a number of courses in Scuba diving.
http://www.ocean-connections.com/

Honduras incidentally means 'depths' in Spanish after Columbus discovered the deep passages that enabled him to set foot on the North coast, this is also where the 2nd largest barrier reef in the world starting in Cancun ends.

 

Johanna got individual training here and passed her Padi Open Water, then did a couple of introduction courses on deep and night dives for experience. She seems to really love diving after being a little apprehensive beforehand. Diving is really quite an easy and mostly relaxing activity, although I always thought she would love it as she loves swimming so much.

 

We saw turtles, huge groupers and learned about the amazing huge structures, channels and tunnels of coral that we swam through. The night dives showed the coral feeding on small blood worms by torchlight and with lights off we were surrounded by iluminescent algae and the mysterious string of pearl iluminescence.

It was also a chance to focus on the intricate detail of giant colourful sponges and the little cleaner shrimps and crabs that live in the coral and anemones. Its truly a evolutionary soup of diversity and beauty that blows your mind. I can understand why people become dive instructors and never leave the island.

 

Working towards my Master Scuba diver qualification (I hope to get this later during the trip). I took a series of 5 speciality courses to qualify in deep, navigation, night, wreck and naturalist. And with a few fun dives I did 18 dives in all. And Johanna and I managed to dive together on several occasions which was really cool.

Each of the courses provided a good grounding in experience for the last one on wreck diving. The El Aguila wreck was moved and sunk in 30 metres of water below the reef wall for divers to explore. Its quite a challenge to fully explore mainly because of the depth and the short time you get to explore that deep before you get your fill of Nitrogen.

The wreck itself is quite straightforward to explore but doing the course I had to make 4 dives on it to sketch and evaluate it for penetration. Eventually on the last dive I simulated a exploratory dive by tieing lines at the entrance as I navigated my way inside the old cargo hold before exiting out the side of the ship where it had been ripped into 3 parts by hurricane Mitch. Pretty cool experience, but I only had 6 minutes at that depth to correctly lay the line and get through, so not much time for error.

 

 

Diving is quite exhausting, we found ourselves just cooking and watching films before falling asleep early. One afternoon we took the water taxi out to the stunning West Bay beach, relaxed and snorkeled some more, watching squid changing colour over the coral.

Not until the last Friday did we go out and party along the beach bars and clubs. Starting off in Sundowners for happy hour we met up with Nicola from Putney, Trevor and Chris my instructors and a whole melee of islanders and diving characters from around the world.

 

The rum here is cheaper than the cola and everyone seems to know each other by the end of the night. Onto Purple Turtle and you are talking about anything, then onto house club Nova, talking nonsense, and watching the fire dancers, great fun!