Island Hopping

Since we last updated this, we have been doing a lot of relaxing. We spent two days in Placencia which was a quaint little beach community where the locals were extremely friendly. At breakfast one morning we started talking to the owner of the restaurant and the next thing we knew she was taking us in her minivan to check out a potential wedding spot (no decisions have been made yet, we are still planning to look in Honduras as well). There were two roads in town, one main road for cars and then a sidewalk about 100 yards from the ocean connecting the beaches, restaurants and shops. If you wanted to get from the main road to the sidewalk, you walked down 'streets' which were people's backyards (ie just sand).

From Placencia we took the Hokey Pokey water taxi back to the main land and then a bus to Belize City. We thought the bus came at 11:00am so we made sure to get there at 10:30 to be safe. Of course as soon as we got to the bus station we learned that the next bus wasn't until noon. Luckily there were some young local girls hanging out at the bus stop selling their mother's cooking. We got 4 empinadas for $1 and they were delicious!

This is Eralon - one of the little girls selling empinadas

At noon the old non a/c school bus pulled up and we piled in for a 4 hour ride to Belize City. The whole way the bus's pimped-out stereo was bumping KC and Jojo, Maria Carey, Boys to Men, and other 90's jams. We pretty much relived all of high school in those 4 hours, it got old quickly. When we finally made it to Belize city, we hopped directly onto our second water taxi of the day and headed to Caye Caulker (Caye is pronounced like Key btw). Caye Caulker is a beautiful beach island where compacted sand roads lead you to fruit stands, restaurants, bars, and sunset spots. The stars have been amazing as well. Last night we laid out on one of the piers and star gazed for a long time. They have a slogan there, “Go Slow”, which we were constantly reminded of by Rastas and Garifunas ushering us along the way.

Land crabs were all over Caye Caulker. Check out that claw!

Yesterday we went on a 3 tank dive to the Blue Hole and surrounding Cayes. The Blue Hole is a large underwater cave that collapsed into itself years and years ago. It's like a flooded cenote or sinkhole. After swimming among 15 foot long stalactites at 130 feet below, we ascended upon a group of reef sharks. At first we could only see their creepy silhouettes lurking in the deep blue, but slowly we were at the same depth as the sharks. We have both seen sharks before, but something about these guys was extremely peaceful and daunting all at the same time. It was almost like they knew they were putting on a show and came extra close just to give us the willies. We did another dive off Half Moon Caye (where we had lunch and saw the local bird sanctuary), and then the third dive was at 'the aquarium'. We saw turtles, squids, schools of Chums (we call them the Mafia because they look like fat gangsters), a manta ray, huge tube sponges, groupers the size of Spike, and coral reef tunnels that we swam through. It was a great day.

Now we are in Ambergis Caye – probably the most famous spot in Belize. In the past week we have gone from Punta Gorda where we were two of the only tourists, to Ambergis Caye which is a packed Island city – with traffic and everything. It's crazy to see our beers and hostel rooms double in price as the beauty of Belize is slowly diminished by all kinds of construction and tourist traps. We've had a great time in Belize, and have thoroughly relished in our last English-speaking adventure. Tomorrow we head to Guatemala for a few days to see Tikal which is one of the biggest and apparently most impressive of the Mayan Ruins. We have a little over a week before we start the housesitting job, so we'll see where the journey takes us.

Strings of Pearls

We have just made it back from our week-long private island scuba diving adventure. We were doing 3 dives a day returning to the island after each one to rinse off, eat, and recuperate. It was a beautiful small island, with three beach cabanas, a scuba diving equipment room, a dining cabana, and a staff house. There were coconut trees everywhere for the drinking, dogs and puppies who liked to hunt for fish, hermit crabs, and horrible sand flys (that was the only downer). We dove with a group of 7 people, who we became good friends with by the end of the trip. Chris did some fishing with another diver, Paul, the captain, Chuxs (far right of photo), and his clumsy sidekick, Pip (far left of photo).

The diving was great, but instead of describing all the different things we saw, we'll talk about one night dive in particular. It was one night after the full moon. We dove down to 30 feet and knelt in the sand with our flashlights off. Slowly, phosphorescent lights started to glow in the distance. They increased in number until we were completely surrounded on all sides by a dense galaxy of lights. We left the sandy patch on little space flight expeditions through the lights. It is completely unexplainable and unphotographable. Just imagine swimming by thousands of chains of lights that slowly light up in sequential order until they terminate at the sea floor, or in the turbulence of your bubbles. They look like a lit up pearl necklace, hence the name 'string of pearls'. These daisy chains of lights were Snapper egg larva that hatch after the full moon, and apparantly are only seen in Southern Belize and a little bit in Honduras. And if that wasn't enough, there was also some phosphorescence that strobed, and some that just glowed green. To top it all off there was heat lightening in the dark skies above. It was an amazing night.

We got back to Punta Gorda, Belize (PG) this afternoon. We packed our bags and jumped on a bus to Mango Creek. We played dominoes with some local kids then took the Hokey Pokey water taxi to Placencia, Belize. Now we are in a different kind of paradise. Surrounded by gringos, on a windy beach bar eating Mango Rum Chicken and Garden Salad. Tomorrow we'll do some more scuba diving, laundry, and hopefully have time to relax on the beautiful beach.


We miss all of you guys, so please drop us a line and let us know what you have been up to. We know it's only been a bit over a week since we left, but it feels like forever!

3 Countries in 5 hours

At 5:00am on Friday, Luis drove us to the bus terminal. Feeling excited about not using out Spanish book too much while talking to the ticket agent, we got tickets to Puerto Barrios, Guatemala. We thought it was going to be a hot and sweaty school bus, but thankfully it turned out to be a giant air conditioned tour bus. Three hours down the road a Honduran immigration agent came on board and looked at all of our passports. A mile later the bus stopped again and another immigration agent came on board and looked at everyone's passport. Three miles after that the bus stopped AGAIN and two Guatemalan custom agents boarded and reviewed passports. Eight miles later the bus stopped again and we were all told to get off. Outside was a 4th immigration stopping point, this time a Guatemalan agent took our passports and disappeared inside. He came back one minute later and gave us the ok to proceed.

So we're back on the bus, not believing how many different people have had to thumb through our passports, when we noticed a fork in the road - and we weren't taking the fork that said 'Puerto Barrios'. After dumbfounded looks at each other, I decided to ask the bus driver. He quickly pulled over and kicked us out. So there we were, in the dust of the tour bus, surrounded by chickens and children, with two HEAVY scuba suitcases, two hiking backpacks, and no Guatemalan money. We crossed the street and started walking back toward the Puerto Barrios intersection.

A packed minivan pulled up and we were lured in. At first we didn't see any space, but they squeezed us in. Kimmy didn't really have a seat, she was just kinda floating between two smiling Guatemalans, with her hiking backpack on her lap. So for the next 15 minutes we bounded down a dirt road, shuffling our bodies and luggage as people squeezed in and out of the van. After some coaxing I got the driver to accept our Honduran money, and we got out at Puerto Barrios.

After walking all the way from the van to the pier with our suitcases, we were told that we missed the immigration office. What the hell? We walked half way back to where the van dropped us off, found the immigration office (this one was much more official), got out tickets for the water ferry, and walked back to the pier. The water taxi ride was about an hour and really refreshing after being cooped up on buses for so long. We arrived in Punta Gorda Belize, and had to go through immigrations, yet again.

So here we are in Belize. We met some people at a bar yesterday who work for a conservation dive operation off Belize, on an uninhabited island. We are headed out with the group (about 6 people from the US, Canada, UK) on Monday and will be there until Friday. Although the island is uninhabited, the conservation group has a bar and small restaurant there, which are operated by some Punta Gorda locals. We sleep in cabanas on the beach and drink rum out of coconuts (verbatim from one of the divers). We'll update you all with details from the week next weekend, but won't have internet access until then.

Here's a Garifuna band that plays at the bar we met the divers at (we have a video to upload later but this internet connection is really slow). And look at my fish! It was delicious.

San Pedro Sula

We made it!! We got in late last night and are staying at the Los Mollinos B&B which is owned and run by Blanca and Luis. It's located about 10 minutes away from downtown San Pedro Sula, and about 4 blocks from the City Mall. This morning after breakfast, Luis drove us downtown so we could see the few sites and also exchange some of our money. He speaks very broken English, and Chris speaks even more broken Spanish, but between using lots of hand gestures and looking up words in our phrasebook, we were able to understand that he wasn't taking us to any old currency exchange, but to the 'black exchange'. We assume he meant black market exchange.

As we were driving down the main drag, we turned an inconspicuous corner and saw probably 10 guys standing up and down the street with huge wads of Lempira (Honduran Money) shouting to all the passer-by's. Luis drove to the end of the block and found someone he seemed to know, did some shouting, and some quick math, showed us a calculator with a figure on it, and this guy threw a handful of Lempira into the car for us to count, took our US dollars, and was off. Chris and I looked at eachother and just shrugged hoping we hadn't been totally ripped off (We checked the exchange rate at a bank later and found that we had made a few extra Lempira in the shady dealings).

After we had some Lempira, we had to spend it. So we went to a hotel for lunch and our first Honduran beers.

After lunch we meandered back to the B&B, sweating like we've never sweat before. Yesterday was a record high in San Pedro Sula - Luis said it got to 40C (~110F). We decided to try to cool off so we went to El Museo Natural, which was more like a compilation of 5th grade science fair projects than a Natural History museum. There were lots of laminated posters, animals in jars of formaldehyde, LEGO dioramas, black lights, and toys... yes toys. Got to keep the kids interested I guess. To top it off it wasn't air conditioned, and at this point we could hardly focus on anything anyway.

We made our way home and now are relaxing in our A/C room. Tomorrow morning we're starting a long, multi leg journey to Belize that is guaranteed to provide interesting stories.

And We're OFF!

OK this is it. Our bags are all packed, we're ready to go, we're standing here outside our door. With two scuba suitcases and two hiking backpacks.

We've had a great visit home, and we got to spend lots of time with our families and friends.

So, it's bye for now... and let the adventures being in Central America. We will write as soon as we can.

Here's a picture right before our first flight of the day today. We are flying from Chicago to Florida and then Florida to San Pedro Sula, Honduras.

Home Again, Home Again

Hello everyone, we've made it to Chicago! We had a great but short visit to Minnesota, got to catch up with some friends and babies, and give the car a break from the way-too-heavy trailer it had been dragging.

We're glad to be done with the road trip, and it's nice to be home with our families. Liza came to visit for a few days, so we got to show her the town as well.

Fun facts from the last few days:

1. From Sarah's 3-year-old, Ellie: Mommy's get pregnant during the first dance at their wedding. And babies come out of the tunnel.

2. When you go to a bar in a town of population 67 and they tell you they have a 'wide variety of beers' this means not only do they have budwiser AND miller, but they also carry bud light AND miller light.

3. Apparently Kimmy is really good at darts. Or maybe it was the vodka tonics?

4. When you are at a diner in the middle of nowhere, don't be too surprised if the person next to you is talking about how Newt Gingrich should really be running for President.

5. Though waterparks are everywhere they are never open!

We leave for Honduras on Wednesday. So expect some exciting posts soon. Till then we're packing and planning.