The rain in Central America falls mainly all the time!

Hello from cloudy Utila, one of Honduras' Bay Islands,

We arrived here yesterday after a few days of travelling from Antigua, breaking our journey at jungle-shrouded Rio Dulce, then Livingston on Guatemala's bit of Caribbean coast. To the right is a picture of Utila Bay that we took this morning, as you can see it's fairly overcast unfortunately, but at least the rain is holding off for the time being.

We must have swapped weather for the past week because it has been positively monsooning for us, not fun when you're on a two-hour open-top boat-ride up a Guatemalan river - we and our bags got absolutely soaked. Actually, soaked doesn't do it justice. We arrived at Livingston dock looking like we'd swum upriver with our bags in tow, a couple of drowned, feeling very sorry for themselves, rats with dripping backpacks! The weather didn't improve in Livingston, but at least we had a roof over our heads and a couple of cockroaches to keep us company (one of which managed to creep into Mark's backpack and made it all the way to Honduras with us before meeting an untimely end at the hands of Mark's flipflop. RIP Cyril.). We didn't mind so much because there wasn't an awful lot going on in Livingston, apart from take a walk to see the two giant alligators in the park.

Early the next day there was a break in the weather so we decided to make a run for the boat to Puerto Barrios, which was a far more pleasant ride than the previous one, and arrived in time for the shuttle to the Honduran border. Border crossings here are hilarious affairs. Whether you encounter roadblocks, rudeness, unofficial fines to enter and leave countries, have your bags thoroughly searched, or not even looked at, there's always something to make you smile about much later. This one was relatively easy, we had to pay to get into Honduras but not to leave Guatemala and no one even so much as looked at our bags or even bothered to check whether we had any stowaways on board the minibus.

Three chicken-bus rides later and we'd made it to La Ceiba, a largish town on the mainland and stepping stone to reach the Bay Islands. It seemed almost deserted in the evenings, with hardly any tourists to be spotted, and in the dark with the rain coming down it certainly didn't hold much sparkle for us and we were happy to leave early the next morning for Utila. Tomorrow we're heading to one of the little Cays just off the island to do a SCUBA refresher (where are you when we need you Sean??) before hopefully doing a couple of fun dives on the north side of the island. Unfortunately the whale sharks that had been here to breed and frolic in the warm waters abandoned the Bay Islands for fun elsewhere three weeks ago, so we're unlikely to see any; but apparently we should spot some turtles and maybe some eagle rays!

But what of our time in Antigua? Well, we spent a lovely week there while I took Spanish classes with a very nice local lady called Carolina. I was there from 8am to midday every day and we only spoke in Spanish, which was tough but very beneficial. It was a nice school and I made a few pals there that we went out for lunch with on the last day. While I went to school Mark mainly concentrated on admin but went on a tour of a coffee finca one morning and came back with a bag of very tasty smelling beans! On the Wednesday afternoon we rode Miguel and Glenda (they are horses) up to a park to the north of the city that overlooks the city and out towards Volcano Agua, which looms over the south of Antigua. On Thursday afternoon we hiked up another volcano - Pacaya - and stood next to the flowing molten rock (there is no such thing as Health and Safety here, which is sometimes good, but when we heard that two Americans had died there there week before and the guides were still letting tourists stand close enough to the smoldering lava to incinerate marshmallows when we were there, you begin to think that a little bit of H&S wouldn't be a bad thing to introduce). The heat from the lava was incredible, you could feel it from many metres away, and when we were up there the clouds cleared from around the top of the volcano further up and made for some fantastic photos. We heard today though that the volcano exploded a day or so ago and that more people died, so we won't be climbing up any more any time soon.

At the weekend we went to Lake Atitlan, to the west of Antigua (pics to the left and right). The journey there was another hazardous one, but worth it to swim in the cool, placid waters and mosey around the hippy village of San Marcos and visit the market at the larger town of San Pedro. We had a go at kayaking too, which was good fun, but unfortunately didn't have time to go too far.



We were back in Antigua on Sunday night so that Markevil Kinevil (no idea how you spell that) could go off motorbiking in the countryside environs of the town for a (late) birthday burn present. A picture of the gallant rider and his steed is to the left. He had a great day and got to see some picturesque little villages as well as quench his need for speed!



And that was Guatemala.

More updates from Honduras soon.

Lots of love,

Soph and Mark-James xx