We Made It!

Sorry for the lack of blog entries lately, we have been very busy! Long story short we went from Utila to Esteli Nicaragua. The border crossing was the toughest yet, and we walked away somehow $50 poorer than we should have been.  After one night in Esteli (in a $5 private room, cheapest yet!) we went to Leon for a couple nights, then San Juan del Sur for a couple nights. Then we crossed into Costa Rica, and we are now at my parent´s condo in Playas del Coco. We have been mostly lounging by the pool, reading, checking out some close beaches, relaxing! Chris´ family comes down in 2 days, for two weeks, which will be nice. Honestly, I dont know what to do with all this free time we have now, so it will be great to have some guests to keep us busy!! We are going to stay at the condo in Costa Rica until the end of March, then begin the trek back home. Hard to believe we stil have over two months of vacation... not that I am complaining!

Until next time,

Natalie

YEAH UTILA!!!!

 Agua Caliente hot springs in Copan, Honduras

 Copan Mayan Ruins, Honduras

 Mitilary, Copan

 Our car is a TROOPER!

 View of Volcano from Panajachel, Lake Atitan, Guatemala

 Boat ride on Lake Aitan

 Typical Central American bus, looks safe!

 Guatemalans

San Cristobal de Las Casas, Mexico

UTILA!

Utila IS one of the best and cheapest places in the world to get your open water scuba diving ticket.  For $240 I got my dive ticket in 3 days, got 5 nights accommodation for Nat and me, and Nat got to snorkel with a whaleshark!  In addition to all that I got two fun dives which were awesome.  Talk about a good deal!  Thank you Bay Islands College of Diving! 

Utila is a really pretty island with awesome sunsets and amazing underwater reefs.  Snorkling and scuba diving are the main attractions to the island. It's very small and there are only three streets which are walkable in about an hour.  Food is sort of expensive and so is shopping so most of our days were spent out on the dive boat.  Nat would relax or snorkle while I was diving.  There was also a salt water float chamber (called Float Utila) that Nat did one morning and she said was amazingly relaxing.

Sunday we leave on the early ferry back to the mainland where we have a loooong day of driving.... sorry I have a loooong day of driving.... Nat doesn't drive.  There's about one week until we're at our final destination and I'm very excited to be in one place for longer than a week!

Until the next post!

Chris

Bad Luck Streak

So just when we are finally starting to feel a little bit better about little Azule, I get a damn stomach infection. I was fine for our couple days in Panajachel, Guatemala (and the border crossing want pretty smoothly just alot of beauocracy and nobody spoke english!). But as soon as we arrived in Antigua I had a fever, aches, and fatigue. It didnt really feel like my stomach was the problem, but I spent all morning at the hospital and they took tests and apparently some antibiotics should clear it up.

Panajachel was really beautiful. It is on lake Atitan, which is one of the biggest in CA (maybe the biggest - I cant remember). The lake is surrounded by volcanoes. The only downside is that since there are so many people living around the lake, and no proper sewage system, the lake is very dirty and we couldnt swim in it. We took a tour around the lake one day, to two towns and the supposed hotsprings. The hotsprings were the real selling factor, and the person who sold us the tour said we could swim in them so we were really excited. Then, we get to the so called hot springs and all it is is a tiny crack in the rock with lukewarm water draining into the dirty lake. We felt pretty duped!! Oh well, we still had a nice boat ride and got to check out some nearby towns.

We have completely missed out on Antigua, but we will probably stop by again on our way back and spend some more time here.

We are hopefully still heading to Honduras tomorrow, and checking out the Copan ruins the next day. Then off to the Bay Islands which I cant wait for, since it has been much cooler up here in the mountains (still in the 20s though). A few days on a carribean island will be just perfect.

Lets hope next time we write our luck has turned around and we have only positive things to say!

Nat