Posada Las Orquideas West End

... fine sharing my room with them. Might feel different next time though if there are more of them...<br><br>Sun May 31<br>Another Baleado with the works for breakfast (I'm getting seriously addicted to these, they are yummy, filling and best of all, cheap!) before another morning in the classroom. One more quick bean and cheese Baleado for lunch and then we were on the boat for two more dives this afternoon. <br><br>On the first dive we had some of the skills that we had to do in the ...

... which was 10m down the road...got to make the most of it. Then we hit the bars (note to parents: there is only one road and no cars at night so it was perfectly safe.... : ) ) and finished on a lap of the island for sunrise. Money well spent. Ben also reversed into a truck and hit some bins, before we started drinking! Zing...<br><br><br><br>The rest of our stay was full of nothing but relaxing apart from one interruption to go swimming with ...

... head and 4m's away from the powerful tail, which has broken bones and knocked people out cold. Just when we had repositioned ourselves to do our second drop, another boat from one of the resorts sped up next to us. All of a sudden the fat tourists started jumping in the water directly on top of the shark. Within seconds the shark had dove down too deep to see. It took us 45mins until we found another shark and the whole time the resort boat ...

... most popular activity. Oddly enough, we actually planned to do neither. Instead we rented a couple of pathetic looking mountain bikes and attacked some of the routes. Actually it wasn´t particularly difficult mountain biking terrain in terms of hilliness but the roads were a mess and many sections were still covered with water even though the brunt of the rainy season would have been weeks ago. But in any case that made it all the more interesting ...

... both Mark and I finished our Padi classes and are now officially certified... me to go up to 60 ft and Mark up to 100 ft. (Editor - Mark here....I had a really cool night dive too where we switched off out lights 20 meters down and watched a light show from the bio-luminscent micro-orgaisms - amazing - almost had a fight with a 3 foot lobster too) Woohoo! So far, we´ve seen some beautiful coral and lots of cool fishies - parrot ...

... started a bit later though because being a caribean island also means that they have an easygoing lifestyle which means that the three ATM`s that are available are non functioning for over two weeks and nobody knows when they will work again which means no cashies for Tash. Also taking money from the bank seemed to be a bit of a hassle since they only accept visa cards and no maestro or mastercard. After ...

... afternoon while chrisso was finishing his course, Jason and I went to a marine park to snorkel with some dolphins. Firstly we got to meet Alita a beautiful 17 year old dolphin, and had a chat with her trainer who told us all sorts of interesting facts. We got to give her a pat, she did some cool tricks for us and she even gave each of us a kiss! Then we donned our snorkels and went off for a swim ...

... image nor a fact from the depths of my brain. I didn't have time to ask Ben. Sometimes in life, it's good to be utterly unknowing. In the end it makes the experience that much richer. How many times do we have as adults living in the time we do with information so accessible to stumble upon something with utter naivity? The slight disappointment of the wreck immediately disappeared. YO HO HO AND A BOTTLE OF RUM!!! A whale shark ...