Well, after an early start, three hours of minibus, another three hours of the most uncomfortable boat ride (not to mention the one hour it took for immigration!) we arrived at Puerto Cortes in Honduras (the official language is Spanish but in the Bay Islands its mostly English). We were greeted by tons of people wanting to change our money for lempiras, yanking our passports from us for immigration and ushering us in groups towards taxis --seemed like a cattle ranch! But we arrived ... now we just had to find a way to get to La Ceiba!
After eating we got a bus to San Pedro Sula and got there to find out that the last bus to La Ceiba had already left. We found another 2 guys that had come on the boat with us and with them took a taxi to find among the many bus terminals one that still had a bus! Unsuccessful, the taxi driver negotiated with us to takes us to Progresso where he guaranteed us there would still be a bus. On the way to Progresso we passed a crowd of people and tons of policemen around a guy who had been shot at least 3 times in the chest and was just lying dead on the road -- I didnt actually see it as when Jo told me the taxi had already passed but Jo said it was quite impressive (not in a good way of course!) The taxi driver said it wasnt normal but it was probably just rivalry or something!
Got to Progresso to wait for a bus where we found yet another girl that had come on the boat with us. The buses came and went without stopping (and it was already 7pm and night out) but as we are the luckiest people on earth a minivan stopped and Jo hurried to it and after much negotiation managed to get 300 lempiras (19.2 lempiras = 1 US dollar) for the 5 of us (yes, not each for all of us!!! something the other girl wasn’t aware of until we arrived and she paid 300 and then we told her that was for all of us and that we had to pay her back the rest! She was quite impressed I must say! :) So we bunked for the night in La Ceiba in a comfortable hotel, not expensive but also with TV and air conditioner...
In the morning we tried to hurry to get to the bank and to the ferry terminal before the morning ferry to Utila (one of the 3 Bay Islands of Honduras and also the cheapest) where we knew there would be a festival tonight as this week was Carnaval!! We missed the ferry and had to wait for the one at 12 -- we checked out the port in the meantime and Jo got a couple of photos and then we were told by a port authority policeman that we were actually not allowed in the cargo area of the port and that pictures weren’t allowed! Oh well :) Made it on the boat and enjoyed an extremely rocking trip (it was as if we were on a see-saw going up and down -- but none of us got seasick :)
Now, at first we had just thought to come to the island, enjoy the festival tonight and tomorrow do canoeing and snorkeling and head back to La Ceiba on monday -- well, as you know, we are not very predictable and our plans have changed. As soon as we got off the boat we headed to a Dive shop where we learned the prices for beginner courses in scuba diving. We didn’t like the first and went looking for a hotel...on the way we went into another dive shop: Deep Blue Divers (5-star PADI certified...for those that don’t know PADI is Professional Association of Diving Instructors) and decided to take its 3 day course...se now tomorrow morning bright at 8 we start with our scuba lessons (in french and english!) and will already be in the water in the afternoon learning how to use the equipment and we will get about 4 dives in all and at the end will have a nice card saying we are certified to scuba dive without supervision anywhere in the world and all this for 200 euros each -- yes, this is the cheapest place on earth to learn to scuba and also the 2nd most beautiful reef in the world -- so not too bad I might say :)
Tonight we are gonna jam with the locals at their beach party but before that we have to catch up on some reading for our course tomorrow as we actually get tested after the 3 day course hehehe :)
Catch you all later...we send our love and besos to everyone and keep those comments coming!
Love
Jo and Fil
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