Real Intercontinental Tegucigalpa Hotel

... breathing. I had one hairy moment as I had to swim up and over a bar and down through a small tunnel as I raised myself over the said bar to slip through the small opening and then out of the cave, my mask filled with water. I screwed my eyes tight shut and deflated my BCD. Exhaling I tried to lower myself feet first down, knowing that there were rocks above me and all around the small gap I had to fit both myself and my tank through knowing that the ...

... ingrained in the culture here and it is such a refreshing change from the **** you get thrown at you from supposed customer service people in the US. Did you ever get the impression that the self-checkout lane at Wal-Mart is more pleasant than the employee of the month behind an actual register? Down here people are just unfailingly nice and I am glad we have not exported our own brand of customer no service to these parts.<br><br>On a more serious note, I ...

... up to a computer and the salesguy asked mein Spanish if I was from CNN covering the politics. I told him no and he didn't seem too convinced. <br><br>Not thirty minutes later I was buying some snacks and a crowd was staring at me inside the store. Someone asked, "CNN?" and I said no and explained I was not with CNN in broken Spanish. He stared at me for about ten seconds and finally turned away, though thoroughly unconvinced. Did Anderson Cooper ...

The night at the airport in Barrabuilla was uneventful and it was rather nice in that it was deserted and I was able to sleep without noice other than once in a while a person would comover to look out the windo I was at and wake me. The capital on Hondurance is a Dump of a place but I was greeted with new cigars at the airport and they were made locally and priced well. I stayed near the bus depots so I could catch an early morning bus to ...

... was taken care of we went back to our nice cool room. Outside here it is much muggier than it first seemed when we arrived. So far Hondurans have not been nearly as nice as Nicaraguans. They seem to have a general distaste for Americans and we feel majorly oppressed. It is something to experience racism in this day and age. Everywhere we go we get treated like **** or overcharged because we are white. Some people are nice, of course, but it's about an 80-20 split.

... 140 people, no wonder the kids are the ones to go out and sell the dolls. They were all very cute and it reminded me of the orphanage in Cambodia. I also went to a bird sanctuary with mostly Honduran birds. They were all very colourful. Toucans, macaws, owls; it was great to be able to interact with the birds as some of them were out of their cage. Of course, I went to visit the ruins as well. They were magnificent. I found them very different from all ...

... car park, about 3 pm the security boss knocked on the door and told us that he had been told that by 3am we had had over 300 clients. My response was "how could he manage 300 women, he is not superman, well not quite." So we said we would be leaving the next morning and give others the chance. Apparently the security guards should have asked his permission for us to stay, it was all OK in the end and we could ...

... weeks ago, I decided to start with a brief tune up, which involved going over some of the safety exercises such as swapping regulators or making emergency ascensions. After this I was free to do a "fundive", where my German instructor and I descended twenty five metres or so alongside a beautiful coral wall. Whilst we weren't lucky enough to see anything as exciting as a whaleshark or manta ray, we did see a few cool crab-like creatures, one of which resembled a giant daddy long ...

... Tomorrow we will take a long walk in the national park next to the town, but at 1pm we will be sitting to watch Spain beat Russian and reach the Eurocup Final. Cheerio for the time being. P.D. We include photographs which we couldnt upload for Ocotal. Our guide book said "Ocotal is worth a visit". Thats relative and depends if the only thing in life you have left is to be a writer for a Travel Guide. Then, and just probably then, its "worth a visit".

... restaurant with friends, is still a scary leap of faith when it actually comes time to do it. And I know that I can do it, but arriving in a strange country, in a strange city that everyone has told me is super dangerous, without a hotel reservation and only my instincts to tell me whether this taxi driver is not going steal my bags and sell me into an underground slave trade is still a bit daunting. Luckily I have absolutely fabulous instincts, though, and I have made it safe and ...