i'm sorry, my friends. i have been seriously slacking in the blog department. for some reason i've been a bit distracted .....
since rio dulce i have been in honduras and arrived in nicaragua yesterday. we ended up taking a bus to la ceiba, honduras, and a ferry over to the island of utila. hello tropical paradise. 5 days of my open water class turned into ten days of diving, relaxing, and making some wonderful new friends.
Diving: Holy cow ... where has this been all my life? Breathing underwater!! I am hooked .. thank god underwaterland is limited in michigan (trust me, i will be exploring those wrecks) or else i'd be in for a whole new load of adventure expenses. the carribean is so blue, and their are so many amazing animals under there. we saw cowfish, trunkfish, green and spotted moray eels, spotlight parrotfish, a shortnose batfish (look this one up, sooo weird), squirrelfish, lionfish (invasive in the carribean and totally gorgeous), crazy corals and anenomes, a stargazer, angelfish, and more more more. At this one sight called Diamond Caye we swam with these three gray angelfish the size of big dinner plates that always come when divers do. they eat the life that is stirred up from the bottom and floats around you .. so they swim through your legs and around your body and it feels like you are playing in a pile of puppies. my favorite part of diving is swimming along a coral wall where it is endless deep blue on one side, the sea floor is so far below, and the other side is a wall of color and life .... and i soar, with my arms extended, suspended in great blue space. wow.
Relaxing: there wasnt much of a beach, but we discovered a place called the driftwood cafe, run by some fabulous expats from texas, with a great dock over two meters of water to swim in (where i saw a huge spotted eagle ray), good food and very cold beer. also, monkey balls (a homemade coffee liqueur shot that will change anyone's life). we logged quite a few hours in this location.
New FRIENDS!!: up until the last week i have been travelling with laura and jaylene, but they left the island 4 days before me, and now i'm with new wonderful people. i met abbie in my openwater course, and she just happens to be from door county, wisconsin, so naturally we midwesterners just clicked. this girl is a joy, a ray of sunshine that makes travelling even better. throughout my ten day stay in utila i met so many wonderful people (in addition to the expats at driftwood: bruce, barbara, jungle jim, danny). dan, yael, andrew, thing one and two from california, almog, sarah, lydia, mario ... i feel so blesssed to have these folks and others in my life, if only for a short time. if any of y'all read this: thank you.
so, all good things must come to an end, and after ten days abbie and i finally managed to peel ourselves off the island (we tried to leave three times and somehow ended up still being there by lunch time). we took the ferry over to la ceiba and jumped on a shuttle to the jungle lodge and went rafting! how in the world did i miss out on this amazingness the whole time i was in north carolina? ted, we are playing on your boat when i get back. our river guides were awesome ... we hiked, swam, jumped off of large boulders, checked out a weird spider, and watched the guides jump off of even bigger boulders. and then we arrived at our boats and blasted down the river. waaaaaaaaahhhhh .. ! i love when you have so much fun you cant help but laugh outloud.
at the jungle lodge we disovered isabelle, a girl from sweden who stayed there and worked for a week and a half. she happened to be heading to the same place as us, so now we have a new travel partner. two days ago we took a bus from la ceiba to the capital of honduras, tegucigalpa. while for most travellers this is a city to get in and out of as quickly as possible, we got picked up at the bus station by local friends of a friend and were convinced to stay a day to check things out. these guys, raul and malcom (with the help of a few others) spoiled us rotten. stayed at a home with real beds and a hot shower, breakfast, then explored the university! i love universities. these two guys are biology students and showed the world of reptiles, butterfly, and honduran natural history. raul works at a reptile rescue place with so many cool snakes, turtles, crocodiles, and iguanas (raul actually works everywhere that there's a need ... he will save the world someday). after a day of exploring the city (lunch in los dolores, downtown, a maze of comedores that hadn't seen a gringo in there maybe ever) and university we did a salsa lesson with raul. haha, not my forte.
yesterday morning we jumped on a bus the took the long way to managua, nicaragua, then a cab ride to granada, and now here we are. i think we'll head to the artisan market in masaya today, to la laguna de apoyo tomorrow, and ometepe the next day (or something like that ... it's likely the plans will change, they always do).
safe and sound in nicaragau...... missed you all for thanksgiving (although i dont know if i've ever felt more thankful on that holiday). cant wait to see you at christmas. only 4 weeks to go ....
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