We're in Managua airport, Nicaragua, waiting for a flight to Florida. There we can get a connecting flight to Cartagena, Colombia. We got here at 11am (2 hours ago). We now only have another 12 hours to wait. Journeys can be unpredictable, you see? And not wanting to shell out crazy money for emergency taxis, we took the 5:30am bus, ferry, bus option from the island of Ometepe that we knew would get us here. So we'll continue sit on the ground by the ATM's and suck it up. It's a good opportunity to update the blog at least, and the aircon is a dream come true. Speaking of which, we just heard of Hibs' 'epic' come back against Falkirk to take them into a second consecutive Scottish Cup final. This further sharpens my dreams (nightmares) that Hibs will win the flipping cup (when I'm not there to see it).
Anyway, when last I wrote we were on the island of Utila in northern Honduras learning to dive. After some more classroom work we got into the water to try out some safety techniques, such as clearing water from our masks, sharing air with each other and so on. First in very shallow water, then slightly deeper. The following day we had our first open water dive. Once in the open water Lyndsey had a bit of a panic attack and decided it wasn't for her.  She is now classed as a 'panic diver' much to her amusement. I went on to complete the course and do a couple of 'fun dives', while blasting into decongestants because of a cold. We'd previously been taught not to dive with a cold, medicated or not, as congestion issues can cause problems with equallising the pressure in your ears, but whale sharks had been spotted on the north of the island, and I didn't want to miss my chance to swim with them. As it turned out, I didn't see them. I did see surprisingly beautiful squid though, as well as a big ray, puffer fish, barracuda, and lots of other stuff. Very cool, despite the nose bleeds when resurfacing.
We headed back to the mainland and spent another night with the American lot in La Ceiba. I'm not sure why as their hotel was pretty horrible. Ants in the bed. Early the next morning we got a bus via San Pedro Sula to the capital, Tegucigalpa. There we splashed out on a fansy hotel for one night. It was great to have room service, air con, hot shower, a cracking view of the city and all the rest.
 This was the beginning of Semana Santa (the biggest holiday in the Latin calendar) and our onward journey hit the rocks when we found all the international buses to Nicuragua were booked for next few days. Not wanting to hang about in Tegucigalpa, and after much deliberation, we decided to try to wriggle our way there on a series of awkward local buses. These are extremely overcrowded and hot. Not to mention, prone to attacks from banditos. We managed to jump into passing minibus heading to a town on our route. It was overcrowded and very sweaty, as expected, however rather than fearing banditos, we were soon in fear of death by explosive, Hollywood style, traffic accident fireball. It was plane to see that there were a lot of these as we circled the city looking for more and more passengers. I didn't mention to Lynz the dead motorcyclist I saw as we eventually left the city. Our young driver in particular had it coming though. Imagine the most dangerous driver you've ever encountered, and then make them a lot more dangerous. We clenched our buttocks and endured, as this maniac raced his other minibus pals along windy mountain roads for a few hours, before deciding that we would just bite the bullet and get a taxi the rest of the way. There was still a long way to go and it was very expensive day.
Leon in Nicaragua is a nice old city, although is was a bit like a ghost town as this was Semana Santa and every Latin American who could, was cramming onto their nearest beach. Luckily our hostel had a swimming pool, pool table and some cool people. So there we waited for Easter to pass, eating rice and beans, drinking rum, shooting the breeze and generally having a wonderful time of it. Next was Granada. A Picturesque town/city which we explored by horse and carriage, which was fantastic, except that we couldn't understand much of what driver was telling us.
There's an enormous fresh water lake in Nicaragua. The biggest in the world, we're told. The lake has a two large volcanoes that form an island on the southwest side. It's beautiful, and life here moves at a slow, rural pace. Our hostal there was on the outskirts of the main town, where the ferry lands. A relaxed place, with a dog who'd recently had a litter of five pups. They were dirty we buggers, but we had fun playing with them all the same. The fate of the runt still plays on our minds.
We hired a scooter and explored the part of the island with paved roads. It was a fantastic day. We found an incredible beach with amazingly warm water. It was hard to remember that we weren't at the seaside. The lake stretches as far as you can see, and it's not until horses, vultures or other animals come to drink at the shore that you are reminded that the water is not salty. We moved to a hotel on this beach a few days later. After a couple of days of messing about in the water, we were surprised to find a crocodilian in the shallows. At not more than a couple of meters long it would have been unlikely to attack us, but without a doubt it could have inflicted some gorey damage had we'd stood on it. Swimming wasn't quite as relaxing after that. A great wildlife experience though.
Time and money were now conspiring against us and we decided to fly to Colombia from Managua and skip expensive Costa Rica and Panama. So to Managua for our long wait at the airport.

Guatemala - Honduras

Lake Atitlan. This is a really beautiful place. We got a tourist shuttle from Antigua to Panajachel and a water taxi across the lake to Santa Cruz: the hillside village which would be home for the next two and half weeks. We actually stayed below the village by the shore, where the hotels and hostels are. We spent a couple of nights in a hostel, but the food and service were gash, so we scoped out the hotel next door which we suspected would be out of our price range. Behind some beautiful, furnished decking with a mind boggling view across the water to the volcanoes opposite, was a stunning garden full of tropical fruits and flowers and all the amazing creatures that accompany them. The mature garden was peppered with private seating areas either side of the winding path leading to the vine covered hotel building.
We met Rosa, the owner, and managed to agreed a delicious price for a lovely room overlooking the garden, lake and volcanoes. We arranged for a young woman to come from nearby Panjachel to our hotel to give us Spanish lessons for a couple of hours a day. This provided the perfect amount of stimulation to spice up the sitting around watching the humming birds zip around, the boats to-and-fro, and hot sun creep across the sky as one day merged into another. The hotel staff, the local family we sometimes ate with up the steep hill in the village, our Spanish teacher, Victoria, as well as many other guests and neighbours became our friends. It was great getting know people and the area, and was very sad to eventually leave and say so many fond farewells.
After another couple of nights back in Antigua, we left our hotel at 4:45am, Honduras bound. After hanging around the cold, dark street for 40 minutes, our battered minibus eventually arrived. With only one headlight, a smashed windscreen and a fearless driver who seemed to be trying to set some kind of personal best, this bus journey didn't feel very relaxing. It didn't feel much more relaxing when the bus stopped on a country road near the Honduran border a few hours later. It wasn't clear at first why we had stopped, but it soon became apparent that we were among the first on the scene of a political assassination. The leader of a union of health care workers had only 30 minutes earlier been shot to death in his pickup truck. The police were there and had cordoned off the road. Senior police and the media arrived soon after. To continue our journey we had to cross the crime scene to get another bus on the other side. It was a surreal experience walking past the bullet riddled car with a blood stained sheet covering the murdered body behind the steering wheel, bullet cases littering the road. This was the previously unreal, dark side of Central America made flesh.
Our hotel in Copan Ruinas was lovely. Friendly staff and great food delivered to balcon from the restaurant below. The town was also very nice. It was small with an attractive, bustling square at it's heart. Sadly Lyndsey had been becoming quite unwell, and it was apparent that it was the result of our anti malaria medication. Thankfully we did have a window of health long enough to go to the Mayan ruins that make the town famous. Also on the same day we visited a bird sanctuary which was thankfully in a beautiful, shady forest, on what was a stinking hot day.
Having paid a bit extra for first class bus tickets, we journeyed north toward the Caribbean in spacious, reclining comfort. Just as well, seeing as we were changing buses in the most violent city on earth, San Pedro Sula. Only a month or two earlier a British tourist had been murdered here while resisting robbers. We didn't see much of the city, save for the inside of the maximum security bus station (where we watched the Barca Milan game in the first class lounge), but what we did see looked pretty spicy. Not the kind of place you want to be wandering about late at night, drunk, looking for a square go.
La Ceiba, where we had a hotel booked for a couple of nights, had a similar feel, and two nights were promptly reduced to one. Our ex-con, African American hosts, who to-and-fro between the US and Honduras (78% of all drugs smuggled into the US by air comes from Honduras), were nice guys although they weren't keen on me beating them repeatedly at chess over a few beers that evening. Mwuhahaha...
Next day we had a boat to catch. The Utila Princess. Utila being the island the boat serves. The boat was fast, but the waves were big and there was much studying of the horizon during the hour and a bit it took to get there. This is our first Caribbean island and one geared almost exclusively to scuba diving. I say "is" because for once I have managed to update this blog to our current location, and feel much better for it, so I do.
Our dive school, as with most of them, are full of late-teens/early twenty something, upwardly mobile, predominantly American, bright young things. Or as we like to call them, "fannies". If you've ever seen the program for young adults on T4 called "Ship Wrecked", then your half way to imagining the clip of these idiots. Lots of strutting, posing and chest beating, but then crying when they get a letter from their mum.
Between bad weather, catching colds, cut feet and a blocked ear we've only managed to do our diving theory so far. Hopefully we'll get in the water tomorrow (Monday) though.

More Belize, and Guatemalan Quick Rinse

I'm thinking back a couple of weeks now, but hopefully I won't miss anything important.
Back in Belize we extended our stay in Jose (Belizean) and Carmen's (Mexican) cabana to just over a week. The village of San Antonio quickly became very familiar. Our host family were lovely people and they made us so welcome.  It was nice to know that what we spent on food and lodgings were paying for their for kids to go to school.
One of the highlights was swimming in the huge crater-like cenote near the village. It was tricky getting down the steep, jungle covered sides to the waters edge, and I had unnerving imaginings about what lurked beneath the surface. Especially as little was know about the remote circular lake, except that it was supposedly very, very deep. If there was a mystical Jurassic Park type creature still alive today, I felt certain it lived here. Once I'd negotiated the underwater obstacles to get into open water, it became worth the angst. The water felt clean and refreshing, and after swimming away from the waters edge, the 360 degree view of untouched jungle slopes was amazing. We sadly lost the war against the mosquitoes that day. And against the Doctor Flies, Sand Flies, and pretty much everything else that bites and/or looks horrible; but it was worth it. Especially when we collected a fragment of pre-classic Mayan pottery on the way back to the village. Taking it home may technically be archaeological theft, but the stuff was absolutely everywhere. Littering the roadside at an uncovered site we passed. There are more of these sites than it's possible excavate it seems. Discovering just how established the Maya civilisation were in the region has been a real eye opener.
Another excursion worth mentioning was our 3 hour round trip in the back of a truck along unpaved roads to some better known ruins at Lamanai. The ruins themselves were impressive. While being well excavated the majority of the jungle around the temples had been left intact, giving the place a mysterious, authentic feel. Especially as we'd arrived early enough to have the place to ourselves. Here we saw, and definitely heard, a family of howler monkey's. What sticks in the mind perhaps even more however, was the Mennonite community we passed through on the way there and back. They are basically a Caucasian group of ultra conservative Christians. Think Amish without beards, and you are 95% there. I don't know their history exactly, but it seems that some are English speaking, but more so they speak a Dutch/German mish-mash, and all seem to have come from, or via, North America: particularly Canada. Now I've seen Silent Witness (or whatever the film was called), but actually seeing these guys in real life is hard to describe. The men and boys all wearing dungarees and cowboy hats, and the women and girls in long, all-concealing dresses with bonnets, pinnies etc. Their homes and land were spacious and orderly in relation to the rest of the country. Apparently they do not pay tax. Something the Belize government tried to remedy in recent years. However their demands soon subsided when the Mennonites threatened to leave en-mass, seeing as their discipline and hard work has made them the bread basket of lazy, corrupt Belize. We felt like we had been transported in a time machine as we rolled by row after row of pristine horse and carts, outside a large, but simple wooden church. Ghostly faces peered from the windows, seemingly condemning us for daring to drive, in a motorised vehicle no less, through their community on the sabbath. Incredible. Needless to say the set-up looks favourable for the men, who apparently keep the prostitutes of nearby Orange Walk in business, while the women are basically baby, and homemaking machines.

...ok. More weeks have rolled by, and I'm going to have to admit that I'm going to have to be more selective with how much detail I'm able to include. Probably a good thing anyway.
One last thing in Belize worth a mention was riding a rickety bike back into Mexico to visit Carmen's family. What was interesting was that on the way back night fell and Jose told me that we better not use the torch I had brought in case the Belizean border patrol see us and take our 'limes'. I do honestly think it was only limes we were smuggling. Either way, the treacherous starlit cycle through remote tropical countryside, trying to evade customs was quite surreal.
So to Guatemala. Going to really speed things along here. Bus journey long, lots of changing, scary man, beautiful countryside, tuk tuk, arrive island of Flores, Lyndsey motion sickness for several days, my filling out, trip to dentist, visit to Tikal (cradle of the Maya civilisation), amazing, more monkeys, miss bus, lots of rain, tourist bus to village of Lanquin in Central Highlands, crazy driving, breathtaking scenery, beautiful hostel by fast river in picturesque valley, tubing down river with beers, Lyndsey crashing and needing escort, hot sun, make nice friends, visit incredible local waterfall, swim in pools like tropical fish tank, out of this world, bedbugs, new hostel, great views, bus to Antigua, crumbling colonial town, lots of tourists,upgraded digs, lovely Valentines meal, bus to Lake Atitlan.
It's a shame to blast through it like that, but the whole process was threatening to derail, you see?

I've been waiting for lightening bolt of inspiration to come before starting this blog, however I'm feeling more and more sure that I just need to get writing and not think about it too much.

So why write a blog? Firstly to let you folks back home know how the trips going, and secondly, to to keep an account i can look back on and reminisce in years to come. With that in mind I'll start at the beginning...

Packing up our stuff in the flat and tying up loose ends before setting off was bit of a mission and took us right up until the last minute: I was still trying to arrange a meeting with a guy interested in buying Lynz' Iphone at 23:30pm the night before we left. So I was feeling a bit sleepy when the alarm went at 1:30am to go to the airport. Although our flight wasn't until 6:30, Lynz' insisted we leave with plenty of time to spare. Having had less than 2 hours sleep, I could have resented the 2 hours we spent watching people clean a closed Edinburgh airport, but having missed flights in the past due purely to complacency I thought it best that the wife called the shots on this occasion.

Needless to say, our early weekday flight to London was not full of fellow backpackers. Sharing our first flight with people on their way to work put our trip into a surreal perspective. What we were doing was finally starting to sink in.

Our flight from Gatwick to Cancun was a comfortable one. Having done most of our flying in recent years on Ryanair, it was nice have a comfy BA seat, with films to watch and other good stuff. Whether I could restrain myself from all the free bevvy was in question at one point, but I rained it in and after a few hours kip felt brand new.

We had a smashing wee apartment in Cancun, managed by an interesting, borderline eccentric, Canadian woman. Despite only being 10 years our senior, she described us as her 'cute little babies'. The small empire of holiday properties that her and her husband had amassed suggested her head might not quite be as empty as it first appeared. The truth is, she was lovely. Always stopping by to visit and make sure we had everything we needed. The apartment had a small balcon and a roof terrace with a panoramic view of the long hotel lined beach. We spent a relaxing 3 days there, by the pool, on the beach and chilling in the apartment. We also had an invitation to lunch with Karolina: a former SWIP teammate who was in town for a conference. It was surprisingly reassuring to see a friendly, familiar face despite only having been away for a couple of days. Thanks Karolina.

With limited money and limited shops near our apartment, we found ourselves eating toast pretty much the whole time. We didn't mind though. This was a period of exciting realisation. Realisation that our foreseeable future was going to be one exotic holiday after another. Lots of smiling and laughter.

2 Hours down the road lay our next destination, Tulum. Another fantastic beach, but this time much more sensitively developed. Mayan style beach huts and wooden staircases up to open, Caribbean facing bars and restaurants, rather than the enormous concrete hotel complexes standing shoulder to shoulder of Cancun. Sadly due to our tight budget we were staying several miles from the beach in a charismatic, yet slightly grimy, hostel at the far end of the town of Tulum. While the town was clearly a haven for holiday makers and backpackers , our location on the outskirts did give us an insight into everyday Mexican life, including the cyclists passing periodically, honking a horn to indicate bread for sale, ringing a bell for maze snacks, and so on. Also the never ending music emanating from shops and homes alike, filling the streets. Almost all of it traditional Mexican music. Lots of trumpets, guitars, and so on. Here we ate good food, met nice people visited Maya ruins and much more. Lovely stuff.

Our third and current destination was 3 bus journeys and a days travel from Tulum, south into Belize. Currently, I am swinging gently around on our double bed, suspended from the palm beems that form the skeleton of our cabana, which sits on stilts, a few meters from the Rio Honda. We're staying with a lovely family in a rural village, surrounded by the sights and sounds of the jungle (as well as more loud, but not unwelcome, music from our neighbours). Yesterday we went down to the houseboat of 'Meester Rod': a fascinating man, originally from Texas, who chose to make San Antonio his home, for the second time in his life, 4 years ago. We canoed with Rod into the jungle until the sun became too hot. The birds here are so beautiful (read into that what you will). Fantastico.

Soon we'll go to a local cenote; hopefully we can swim there.

Not sure I'll be documenting the next 340 odd days in the same detail, but there you have it.

So, so good.