So Friday finally arrived; I left home at 5.15am in order to catch the 6.15am bus to La Ceíba. Arrived in La Ceíba about 2 hours early, but it’s always better to be early than late (Mozambique couldn’t break that habit). Whilst waiting for the ferry I introduced Sam and Will to their first, of many, baleadas. The ferry was a delightful experience; it was so choppy! When one person is sick, it starts a chain reaction...people were throwing up left, right and centre. Will was a lovely shade of green for the entire journey. I’d taken one of the sea sickness pills which you can pick up when you buy your ticket, so I was fine.
I was doing my Advanced course and I had Tomas as my instructor again and a small group; Todd, Spencer, Mateo and myself, which was great. The deep dive (30m) and navigation are compulsory and on top of those I picked peak performance buoyancy, a night dive and underwater photography. I managed to combine a drift dive with the photography and got to dive the Halliburton wreck as one of my fun dives, which was lucky. The visibility wasn’t as good as it could have been for the photography, but I got a picture of a turtle, an eel, some shrimp and the coral, as well as the obligatory ‘look at me underwater’ pictures (pictures to follow). The night dive was interesting but I found it quite hard to see; although I did see a huge crab, a lobster and lots of puffer fish. I also let my mind wander...thinking about sharks when it’s pitch black under water is not a wise move. Sam did a couple of fun dives; he got the best weather and visibility, and Bicky did his Open Water course; after days of theory, he eventually made it into the water and finished just in time.
I, yet again, got eaten alive by sand flies; it looked like I had some kind of horrific skin disease. A room upgrade and prescription strength antihistamines got it under control, but I do have some delightful scars.
I had good intentions to actually see more of the island this time, but the weather put paid to these plans, although I did kayak out to the lighthouse twice, snorkel on the reef and kayak to the private beach.
One of the highlights of the week was the discovery of the 10 lempira cinnamon rolls from Thompson’s bakery. A lot of our time was spent eating; baleadas, pastelitos, bagels etc, especially when it rained. Another great new discovery was the cinema; it shows a different film every night and costs around £1.70. We watched 'Breakaway', a Bollywood film, set in Canada, about ice-hockey...I loved it, and 'The Ides of March', which despite knowing nothing about American politics, I enjoyed.
It was a great week and I'm really glad I bumped into the boys in Nicaragua. The world really is a village!
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