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.