May 5 Update

Hi Guys,

Sorry for not posting very often in the last month. I am going to try and update the blog more often in the next several weeks.

I have spent the last two weeks in Honduras. I spent a day in Omoa, a town on the Caribbean just inside the Northern boarder of Honduras. It was very hot there and my nerves were frayed from dealing with importing the motorbike into the country. It turned out to be a mistake to drive into the country using an off-the-beaten-path border crossing. I ended up paying $70 to import myself and the bike into the country and had to jump through many beurocratic hurdles including: getting a visa for myself, filling out paper work and paying money at the boarder to temporarily import the bike into Honduras, driving 35 miles with a guide on my bike to the port town of Puerto Cortes to complete the importation paper work, take a digital photo of the bike license plate and printing the photo out at an internet cafe, make 3 more trips to a bank for variouse amounts of money to complete the paper work, all while sweltering in what felt like 85+ degree temperatures with very high humidity while wearing full motorcycle gear. All in all, it was a miserable experience. I think this was the first time I lost my temper during the trip so far, as I was so frustrated by the experience that I berated variouse officials in Spanish, and at one point went to far as to try and return to Guatamala to go to another border crossing before discovering, in Guatamala, that importing the bike into their boarder crossing would be nearly as difficult as getting into Honduras. In the future I will only cross into new countries using the main freeway crossings, CA1.

Omoa itself was a nice town with an impressive Spanish fort and an interesting mix of afro caribbean and ladino cultures.

After Omoa I drove South East to La Cieba, another hot-as-a-frying-pan town on the Honduran Caribbean coast. I stayed in this town for a day, then took a ferry boat to Utila in the Honduran Bay Islands. Utila is famed at the cheapest place in the world to learn to scuba dive. As such, it is a major tourist destination. I spent about 10 days in this town learning to scuba dive. I completed two courses, the PADI Open Water dive course and the PADI Advanced Open Water Dive course. Each course cost about $250 and included lodging in the price of the course. I took my classes at the Cross Creak Dive Center, and had a really great time. I was fortunate to bump into two fellow travellers on the ferry, Neil and Kim, and we were able to go through the courses together and most importantly share a cabana with AC, a refrigerator, and a TV. Doesnt sound like much, but down here AC is heaven. I do not have a good basis for comparison, but I though diving in Utila was great. I made 13 dives in total visting many coral reefs, ship wrecks, and seeing lots of fish, shrimp and lobsters in the tropical waters. The water is so warm, about 27 degrees celcius, that I seldom needed a wet suit, diving in only a swim suit and scuba gear to depths as deep at 115 feet. I do not have an underwater camera, so I have not pictures, but being that far underwater and watching the light pass from the surface of the ocean into the depths is an amazing experience.

The one problem I encountered in Utila was that a bug bite on my right foot became infected on Wednesday of last week. The bite soon became imflamed and painful, and I required antibiotics, first in Utila, then later in a hospital in the capitol of Honduras. I think I am recovering nicely now, but I was not feeling very good the last several days.

Now that I am feeling better I am going to try and get to Nicaragua this afternoon.

Love you guys and hope you are well!

-Christopher