An afterthought

Ben Writes -

It has occured to me that we have rather absentmindedly missed out an entire country on our blog. My apologies to the people of Honduras.

We left Caye Caulker by motor launch and travelled to Belize City From there the only connecting flight to La Ceiba in Honduras was with a Nicaraguan outfit going via San Pedro Sula. OK we thought. We boarded a small propeller driven, non pressurised, dirty aeroplane with cracks in the windows and cargo on most of the seats - it was great fun. You can see how the plane looked fifteen years ago at www.atlanticairlines.com.ni - its the one on the front page. Tig was a little apprehensive before and during and rather traumatised after.

We arrived in La Ceiba OK and tried to get tickets for the ferry that runs out to Utila in the Bay Islands but it was not running due to some machanical problem. You can see what it looks like at www.aboututila.com/TravelInfo/Utila-Princess/Index.htm (they have painted it green since the photo). We were lucky enough to get two tickets on a small boat across instead.



We did some more diving in Utila at one of Deg´s old haunts, Gunter´s Dive Shop. It was fantastic - we got our advanced diving certification which certifies us to dive to 30 meters. We dived a wreck and did a night dive where we saw a massive Octopus. We did an underwater photography module too and got some great pictures.

We stayed for a week and really enjoyed it before heading back to the mainland. We needed to get a flight to Costa Rica which meant we needed to go back to San Pedro Sula. That place is an absolute dump. Our hotel - ¨San Jose¨ - looked like a less cheerful version of a victorian prison and they were obviously expecting dubious characters to stay as they had the name of the hotel was printed on every item. The heavy iron gates were needed to keep people out. San Pedro Sula is an unsafe place but luckily while we were there it tipped it down like crazy which kept most of the locals indoors.

We got our flight the next day with TACA which was thankfully a return to 21st century travel although they do like turning the air conditioning up to arctic levels for some reason. We changed planes in El Salvador which was quite interesting for a few hours before arriving in Costa Rica in the evening.