The next day I went up to La Ceiba at the Carribean coast of Honduras. I spent the night as the only guest at the spectacularly situated Jungle River Lodge and also was the only participant in the canopying tour. Definitely low-season, but very relaxing after all the surfing action in Nicaragua.
Next I crossed over to Utila, the smallest island of the three Bay Islands and allegedly the cheapest place in the world for diving certifications. Stepping off the boat you get thronged by dive school representatives offering their deals, it is hard to find accommodation as a non-diver - the island seems to be owned by diving schools. Utila itself does not have any beaches worth mentioning but I was lucky to find a dive school (Captain Morgan's) who had a little hotel on one of the small islands off Utila's shore and actually let me stay there even though I was not taking part in a course.
This place was like paradise - it was the only tourist accommodation on this tiny fishing island (2 islands in fact, connected by a bridge: Jewel and Pigeon Cay), great snorkelling right off the hotel pier, private rooms with seaview. The island's population is only 500 people and you can walk across the whole place in 10 mins, it looks and feels like a toy town.
Residents on all the Bay islands are a weird mix of indigenous people, British settlers, and Afro-Caribs imported after some slave riots way back, so you meet people of all colours and looks (and for the first time you won't get recognized as a tourist straight away). Moreover, they speak a nearly unintelligible version of Jamaican English and/or Spanish - this was certainly one of the strangest places I've been to on my whole trip, I loved it!
I stayed on the Cays for a few days, going out with the diving boat every day to snorkel at different reefs around the islands (being too lazy to do a refresher of my diving cert). Snorkelling alone was amazing enough, the reef around the islands is the second biggest in the world and there was tons of stuff to see.
Then I had to say good-bye to the sea (it's always so sad, I think I should live by the sea, I never get fed up with it) and move on north. I crossed the border to Guatemala to visit Livingston, a Garifuna town (meaning inhabited by Black Caribes) that can only be reached by boat.
The further north I traveled the better the food became - finally! Garifuna food is especially delicious, and Tortillas arrived on the menu as a variation to rice-beans-chicken dishes (therefore more food pics in this album - for Annette, who requested a food documentary :).
From Livingston I took a boat through the Rio Dulce Canyon up and continued by bus to Flores, the jumping-off point for visits to the Tikal ruins. Tikal is the main attraction of Guatemala, it's one the largest Mayan sites and is situated right in the middle of the jungle. It's so huge, it would take weeks to see it all. Besides, many of the temples have not yet been excavated (and probably never will be). It was impressive but also very touristy and expensive, but still worth visiting.
After Tikal I had only a few days left to make it to Mexico City. I did a stopover in Palenque (Chiapas) and spent a beautiful day at Agua Azul (a river with almost artificially blue water because of its high lime content) and the Misol-Ha waterfall. In Mexico City I visited friends, went shopping and stayed indoors as much as possible because it was very cold. Same goes for New York - lunches in Chinatown and at the Google office and I spent the remains of my budget in the Burton store, so now I am fully equipped for the winter season to come!
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| Honduras - Guatemala - Mexico - NY |
