whereskevo.com

..WHOAH there goes gravity…

Err.. Yeah.. anyway..

So I’m back on the mainland after my week out on the island of Roatan… which is F&/(’ing amazing… it’s beautiful… in every way… I spent my days diving and my nights at the bars with my fellow dive students and the instructors and divemasters in training… which was quite fun… God I love it there…

I did my PADI Open Water scuba certification course which involved 4 dives out on the reef which were AMAZING… the reef there is in pristine condition… and I got to friggin swim with a little sea turtle… SO ridiculously cool… he was probably about a foot across… and SO cute… it was so surreal… he was just hovering like a foot from my face checking me out like ‘what the hell is this weird thing doing down here?’ I also saw larger turtles but they stayed further away… Hmm… the coral and the fish were beautiful as well… If I only had an underwater camera I’d be able to share some of this with you all.. but I d0n’t…

After I finished my open water course I wanted to do one more dive and opted for a night dive that was going out… it counts as an Adventure dive so I can eventually apply it toward earning an Advanced Open Water certificate…

During my stay I also decided that the beard that I’d been growing for the past 6 weeks or had to go… ‘cause it was making my mask leak a bit… and it was just getting to long… So 2 blade cartridges later (and one funny facial hair-do) later… I was clean as a whistle… With less facial hair than I’ve had in years… Upon seeing me Georgia (one of the dive instructors.. from England) began calling me “Mickey Mouse Bum-Chin” ‘cause my face was all pale where the beard used to be… And some people didn’t recognize me… But my mask stayed nicely sealed afterward so it’s all worth it… I’m gonna grow it out again now… fun fun… There’re progress pictures below…

I do have some other pictures from the island though… though I was too busy chilling out to even think about it for the most part… Tomorrow I’m getting on a bus that’ll take me from here (La Ceiba, Honduras) to Antigua, Guatemala by tomorrow evening… I leave here at 5am and get into Antigua at 7pm… YIKES! But I paid a lot of money ($60) for a luxury bus so it’s no biggie… and they take care of all the border formalities so that’s great as well..

Anwyay… I’m gonna go call some of you… Enjoy the pics

View more...

Hey all… I’m now on the Caribbean island of Roatan… and it’s beautiful… but that’s all I can say for right now cause internet is like 20 cents a minute here… Ack!

So Marzena left me this morning at a little after 6am… I sat and plotted my next move for a couple hours while I watched Honey, I Shrunk the Kids (in english) before getting weirded out by being in the big empty apartment by myself… I got here (La Ceiba) a little before 4 and got an overpriced hotel room… but there’s a/c and tv to occupy me at least…

Yesterday for Marzena’s last day we spent at a much, much nicer beach we found on the outskirts of town… there’s a nice resort hotel there and we just parked ourselves in front of it and made use of their on-beach bar facilities… Then we ate dinner at the pretty nice hotel on the top of a hill with really nice night-time views of the town and the water…

It was really cool to have a friend from home down here for a week but it went by SO fast… Now I’m readjusting to being on my own again.. which is kinda weird… but it shouldn’t be long til I’m back in my routine again…

I head out from here in the morning for a 2 hour boat ride over to the island of Roatàn, where I’ll be spending the next 5 or 6 days getting my PADI Open Water SCUBA certificate… which should be amazing… I don’t think I’m going to be able to call or e-mail from there so I might not update for almost a week… But for now I posted pictures to my last entry for your viewing enjoyment…

¡Adios!

I’m now in the peaceful (maybe?) town of Tela on the Caribbean coast of northern Honduras… We made the trek over from Copán Ruinas on Tuesday and that took up most of our day…

Yesterday we spent a little while down on the beach… which is nice if a bit garbage-strewn… We also moved into another hotel which has spacious apartments with a/c, tv, and a kitchen and everything… and it’s really nice…

We woke up early this morning to go on a tour of Punta Sal, at the tip of a long peninsula jutting out into the Caribbean. The boat ride to land took about an hour before we got on shore for an hour or so of hiking through the tropical forest where we saw a lot of these crazy crabs and HUGE spiders (but no monkeys unfortunately)…

We met the boat on the other side of the peninsula where we reboarded and made our way to another spot along the shore where snorkeling equipment was handed out and we explored a little offshore reef along the coast… At first Marzena was freaked out by the prospect of breathing underwater but after some coaxing she grew to love it…

After an hour or so of snorkeling we got back on the boat and went to this small settlement of houses on a nice beach where one of the two families allowed to live in the National Park have their homes. They cooked us a great lunch which a little green parrot watched us eat in the open-air thatched dining area… After lunch we had a couple hours to just relax on the gorgeous beach before heading back to town…

I have a bunch of amazing pictures from the trip but I don’t have my camera with me to put them online… I’ll post them asap, so check back.

Hope everyone is well..

TTYS

View more...

…but it’s ok… ‘cause I got to ride a crazy horse yesterday…

But to start at the beginning (or where I left off anyway), I met Marzena at the airport on Saturday and we went straight to the bus station and onto a bus for 4 hours to the town of Copán Ruinas… a town right near the ruins of the ancient Mayan city of Copán where we spent Sunday.

Then yesterday was Marzena’s birthday and we booked a tour to this huge coffee & cardamom farm… where we spent like 4 hours riding horses (which I did NOT expect to make me feel as hurt-up as I do today…) which was amazing… we swam in a mountain river, learned about coffee and cardamom production… I got a scrape on my face from a tree branch, and Marzena’s horse decided to scrape her leg along a barbed wire fence… this in a addition to the general aches and pains that a day of horseback riding brings… We’re now quite sore and are about to head out to another town for a couple days of more fun…

Gotta go catch the bus… Later!

View more...

I was on a bus for over 12 hours today… Leaving from Managua, Nicaragua (pretty scary town I must say.. or at least the bus station neighborhood) at 5am and getting into San Pedro Sula, Honduras like an hour ago (~5:30pm)… Thank god the bus was airconditioned and comfy or it would have been hell on wheels…

I checked into a nice hotel ($20) to treat myself after the bus ride and it’s really freaking nice when you compare it with all my other digs so far…

Yesterday in order to kill some Managua time I walked to this modern shopping mall and saw Elektra (no it wasn’t good.. but it kept me occupied for a couple hours)… I got popcorn and a soda (of course) but the popcorn ended up not sitting well with my stomach… I woke up after my 3 hours of sleep and I had an interesting morning… throwing up popcorn like 5 minutes before the bus left… which was not fun… even less fun was getting it on my shorts… But I suppose I should just be glad I didn’t throw up on the bus… ‘cause that would have just been horrible…

Anyway… Tomorrow Marzena flies in and I’m gonna meet her at the airport and then we’re gonna hop a bus for the ancient Mayan ruins of Copan where we’ll spend her first 2 nights… I haven’t eaten anything today other than 4 Chips Ahoy cookies and so I really need to go eat something…

¡Hasta mas tarde!