Travel and Scuba and more Travel

Ferry-colectivo-taxi-bus-microbus-chicken bus-colectivo-ferry. That pretty much sums up the past two days of traveling from the Roatan, Honduras to Livingston, Guatemala, which is a town accessible only by boat on the carribbean coast. Yesterday was a 12-hour travel day. But it went relatively smoothly considering the first bus we took was, according to my schedule, supposed to arrive in San Pedro Sula Honduras at 10 am and we arrived a little after 11. And one of the microbuses had about seven guys who had been working at the banana plantation pile up on the roof--I thought it was going to collapse on us. It was like watching a clown car fill up--they kept climbing up one after the other and I was thinking ¨where are they all sitting?¨

The coastal areas North of San Pedro Sula all the way over the border were hard hit by the recent rains so as we moved up the coast yesterday we saw shanty towns of tarp tents where people who have been displaced are living. We saw a boy of about 12 carrying a television on his shoulder as he waded through chest-deep water. In Guatemala they have semi-truck trailers parked by the side of the road with kids sleeping on mats beneath them. It was hard to see but apparently the government is providing some food and other assistance.

So I was a gringa in Honduras for the past week or so. I went early to Roatan and learned how to scuba dive with Daniel, a British guy working for an outfit called Reef Gliders. We did everything in the ocean--confined dives requiring skills like swimming without a mask, sharing a regulator, learning to hover, etc. It was challenging because the usually calm sea was a bit rough, so sometimes while we were underwater there was current and waves pushing you around. My dive partners were Tao and Bativa, a honeymooning couple from Israel whose names I am sure I did not spell right.

Once Jon arrived we did three fun dives to sites called Spooky Channel (it was a little bit dark down there and Jon spotted a green moray eel--his hunter instincts make him a good dive partner), Texas, and Herbie´s Fantasy. Apparently the fish life here is amazing (second only to Australia´s Great Barrier Reef) but I have no comparison so I guess I´ll just have to be content that I was spoiled on my first dives.

So. . . now we are staying in a bungalow at a hostel called the casa de la iguana with a bunch of young Americans working there. So much for practicing my Spanish! Next we plan to head inland by boat up the Rio Dulce and then to Semuc Champay. Last little tidbit--my new favorite snack is the lychee fruit--they sell them as you board the buses in Honduras and they are delicious!