Villas Telamar

... they were telling the story of how the garifuna got onto the mainland from roatan. Next day we head out to the botanic gardens that united fruit used as a research station and spent a very pleasent hour with a guide who very patiently repeated what each plant was about three times untill be fully understood it. With tela done we are of the capital for the night before heading into niguragua.

... let us right back in and gave us stamps to avoid any overstay fees. Sure, we still had to get back to Costa Rica to "abandon the region" and then come back in again, but we got out of huge fines and the overstay fee we were initially happy to pay. Banditos that we are. Lesson learned: never overstay a visa, especially when you don't feel like spending 2 worthless days riding back and forth in hot, cramped buses. Onward and ...

... between Copan Ruinas and La Ceiba that was raved about by the lonely planet for great beaches. Tela's bus stop consisted of a gas station on the side of a dusty highway. The 15 minute walk into town was hot and sweaty and it turned out the destination was not really worth the effort. But, we didn't know that at the time, so we ...

... so i´ll just give you the highlights. On tuesday I got very muddy and very bitten clambering through the mangroves to collect crabs to the iguans to eat. I went in my walking boots, which provided little protection as i consistently kept sinking knee deep in the mud. I decieded I hadn´t had enough of the mangroves so went to a different location on the island to do what is know in the business as a ´transect´. This involved walking through the ...

... in fact it was a bus company strike. Strange enough, it wasnt the employees of the bus company that were striking, it was the owners. They owners had trucks blocking the roads to their own buses. So we had to go a different, longer way. On the way, I met a nice guy, Derek, and we ended up taking a taxi from the bus station to the same hotel (different rooms, of course).

I a, trying to get used to this spanish keyboard. The q and the a are reversed among other letters....so you may have to guess at some incorrect spelling....some of you are thinking that I spell badly anyway. Today was an interesting day. I was going to sit down and blog about food tonight but it seems rather insignificant considering how the day progressed. We were picked up early from our hotel in La Ceiba but the ...

... our time there, but after one look at the size of the waves there, we decided that we valued our lives too much to try it. We did take boogie boards out one day and brave the fury of the waves. After a few painful hits, we got the hang of it, and were able to ride a few waves at least. We stayed in a nice little beachside cabin at a place with a pool, and a bunch of hammocks all around. The only downside to the place was that there was no ...

... chill, town, with a mixed population of Latino and Garifuna populations. The beaches are lovely, the water nice to swim in, and some interesting day trips to be done to local Garifuna villages or the bio-reserves, etc. Looks like we´ll stay a few days. La Ceiba and the Bay Islands are only a few hours away, so Erik will likely take off for a few days diving at some point. Life here is slow and good!

... out what anyone would do with so many sticks... Tela is a small town on the Caribbean that some call the "next Cancun". Just for the record, I could never see it becoming a Cancun, but I did enjoy it. We arrived just in time to watch the sun go down and splash around in the water a bit. For dinner, we splurged on a nice Italian meal of pizza and pasta. We had seen this girl wandering around by herself so we invited her to join us. Her name ...

... and such like we found a good appartment in the middle of town and signed up with a dive centre, went for some dinner and out for a few drinks, buy this time it had stopped raining and we sat in a cool bar at the top of this tree and drank some beer, then we got little steve and brought him to the bar, he was a hit, having dried out he was happy again and getting all the attention, which he loved, never thought a chicken would be such an attention seeker! so the next ...