Jess and Stacey’s Travels

Utila Pix-click on photo for more pictures

Our Spanish is officially leaving the building.  On the positive side, we are certified for advanced open water scuba diving, Stacey has overcome her ichthyophobia (fear of fish) and we are also much tanner.  Utila has been ideal for squandering all previous investment in Spanish lessons while luring us into greater investment in scuba lessons.

They say that there are three lies of Utila – 1) This is my last beer 2) I love you and 3) I’m leaving tomorrow.
That pretty much sums up the atmosphere of Utila.  A lot of under 30 scuba rats mixed with a Caribbean local culture.
We fit in well. 

We’ve been here about ten days – three of which were spent hunting down the doctor for medical clearance.  The other seven were spent in dive classes at Utila Dive Center with our dive instructor Tracy, an Aussie.  We seem to attract Aussies.  Our first class was the ‘open water class’, which just gets you able to dive without drowning yourself or others.  We went on to do the ‘advanced open water’ class, which makes diving more enjoyable.  For this class we had to do five dives.  The ‘deep dive'(30m/100ft) and ‘navigation dive’ are both obligatory dives.  We also did a ‘wreck dive’ to a ship that was at 30m, then a ‘night dive’ and a ‘search and recovery dive’.  We also did a dive to improve our underwater control but you’d never know it if you saw us underwater now.  Our underwater control is about as good as our Spanish.  Monsieur Jacques Yves Cousteau would roll over in his grave seeing us near the reefs.  We are getting better with each dive but still do not get as close to things as most of the experienced divers do (do not want to hit the coral, etc) [read on]

Updated:  link to photos actually works now. 

Thanks for the concern regarding the 6.8 earthquake that hit parts of Guatemala and El Salvador.  We had left Guatemala for Honduras and were unaffected.  We read in the news that there were no casualities. 

After returning to Antigua from Tikal, we loafed around for about a week finding excuses why we needed to stay just one more day. We explored the city, watched a lot of movies that we hadn’t seen this last year, and tried more restaurants.
The number of tourists is noticably picking up as the college crowd flocks down here under the guise of learning Spanish. Katherine (the Australian woman we’ve mentioned before) delayed her departure back down-under for another month.  We met up with her again in Antigua.  She joined us as we continued on the gringo trail to the Copan Ruins in Honduras. 

Copan is just over the border from Guatemala, about 6 hours from Antigua.  The ruins are just outside of the town called Copan Ruinas which is a great little town.  They say that Tikal is the New York of the Mayan world and Copan is the Paris. 

[read on]

Semuc, Tikal and Finca Pix-click on photo for more pictures

Sometimes it feels like we’re swimming our way through Central America. We have swam in ponds, lagoons, lakes, hot springs, caves, and rivers. We have yet to do ocean, swamp, and swimming pool; although two of the three will probably be done very soon.

Semuc Champey-click on photo for more pictures

While waiting for some friends to come to Antigua, we took a three day “jaunt” up north to the area around Coban and a place called Semuc Champey. Semuc Champey is a series of naturally formed pools that are on top of a limestone “bridge” that goes over a river. The river goes underground below the pools and then emerges with the last pool. (Photo above shows the pools).  On the bus, we met a young guy, Scott – nationality withheld 😉 who had just bicycled across Cuba. He joined us for a few days. We had a great time together. We even had what we thought was the perfect day.  [read on]