Beautiful sunset in Utila.Okay, so we were nearing the end of January and had to figure out how to get to Colombia. The problem is that it’s quite expensive to fly so we decided to bus some of it and get a glimpse at some other Central American countries.
First of all we’d been hearing that the Bay Islands in Honduras is one of the best and cheapest places to learn scuba diving. Lenny and I have always wanted to try this so that was our first stop. The bus ride was pretty boring but I’ll have to say that American commercialism was all over the place as soon as we entered Honduras, and it was also more noticeable in Nicaragua and even more so in developed Costa Rica. But I digress, I was saying about getting to the Bay Islands–islands right, meaning you have to get on to a boat or fly, we decided for the boat because it was cheaper. Bad idea! The sea seemed okay at first but as we left the protected area it got progressively rough. The boat was like a small ferry but with no car capacity, still it rocked like a rocking chair or a swing…I don’t know, but I had to hold on hard while I was bent over puking in a trash bin and Lenny was holding on to my jacket to make sure I wouldn’t fly out through the railing.
Anyway, we went to the island of Utila and signed up for a 3 day PADI course to learn how to scuba dive. These courses teach you ‘skills’, like how to deal with emergency situations, before you do some pleasure diving. So on the first day we had to do 5 skills, for example, with all our gear on we went down to 8 feet and stayed down at the bottom on our knees while we had to take our regulator off (your air source) our mouth and try to recover it; take our mask off and hold on to it for 1 minute and then replace it — sounds easy but with both of these skills you’ve got to make sure you don’t breath with your nose or you will take in water and the urge to use your nose is really quite strong; another skill was experiencing loss of oxygen, so one guy turned off my air supply and I had to continue breathing for as long as I could up until my last breath and then give the signal that I was completely out and then they turned on my air– oh, mommy!; etc, etc. This stuff was actually quite scary and really quite stressful. It didn’t make sense to learn scuba diving under such stress, so we called it quits and decided to try the course again in Vancouver under better conditions. The reefs might be spectacular in the Bay Islads but we never got to see them, oh well, I hear there’s great scuba diving up the Sunshine Coast.
Getting our morning coffee at a kiosk next to the hotel. The owner put the parrot on my shoulder without warning. It was one of those parrots that kinda talks.
Utila airport!
So, more busing to get to Nicaragua. We went to a nice colonial town called Granada. Granada was by a lake and so had some nice breeze. The streets were wide and airy and it was fairly quite compared to Antigua in Guatemala. Ofcourse this changes as soon as you enter the market area. Interesting, exciting market. We saw humongous coakroaches among other things.
Wide streets of Granada.
Walking in the market of Granada.
On the a chicken bus from Granada to Isla Omotepe. Lenny sitting next to a borracho (drunk).
Being in cities can sometimes get tiring what with the pollution and noise, so we went to Isla de Omotepe for some peace and quite. We stayed in a in cabaña by the lake in Charco Verde. The highlight of this place was the howler monkeys. There were so many. One lazy afternoon I was lying on the hammock in front our cabin and not just 20 meters away there were four monkeys foraging on the trees above. There were quite a few baby monkeys. It was fun to just watch them plunge from tree to tree. There were also lots of lizards. They would be inside our cabin crawling the walls and roof. Some nice lizards with aquamarine blue tails.
Cabins at Isla Omotepe. Ours was down towards the end.
Lenny returning from a bike ride at Isla Omotepe.
We had plans to go for a few hours but it was so hot and road was hilly that we gave up after 30 minutes.
Monos, monos (monkeys) everywhere.
San Jose, Costa Rica — The guide books say that San Jose is just a stop to make connections, but we don´t agree. We thought it was a pleasant city with some interesting neighbourhoods and architecture. Like I said before, there are many American companies here, e.g. Pay less shoes, and all the fast food joints. As in many cities and developped countries, there´s a lot of over consumption, hence a lot of chunky figures and overweight people. Also, as we left highly indigenous Guatemala we noticed that smoking increased drastically. In general, the indigenous people in Guatemala don´t smoke. Women´s clothing was interesting to say the least. They were super tight revealing tops and low rise jeans, hence you get the blobby stomach hanging out.
A nice neighbourhood in San Jose.
Market in San Jose.
One thing common in all Central America and South America is that pedestrians have no right of way, therefore you really, really have to watch your step. Cars will honk to let you know that they´re coming and that means they´re not stopping for you even if they had plenty of time to stop for you. Some locals seem as apprehensive about crossing the road as we are. Although surprising, it is hard to get good coffee in Latin America. I had a really good cup of coffee at the airport in San Jose. We also had a wicked corn pancake by the bus terminal in San Predo Sula in Honduras (don´t go to San Pedro). That´s it for these places. Hasta luego. Laura.
we were there 