Volcan Arenal from Fortuna

We’re up at 7:15am to go out and get more cash on my VISA to last the rest of the trip: where we are going, the cloudforests of Costa Rica is almost certainly more remote than VISA cash machines. Everyone is hurrying to work in the hot morning sun and the place looks a whole lot more friendly than it did last night. Breakfast is from a bakery and then we’re off to the “Coca-Cola” bus terminal, a well-known landmark in San Jose since it used to be a Coke bottling plant.
We plan to take the bus to Fortuna, near Volcan Arenal, the biggest active volcano in Central America. Unfortunately, despite the book claiming buses to a Fortuna leave from here we cannot find them. A bus leaves at 8.40am and we really needed to catch it. After some walking we are accosted by a limping old chap who speaks surprisingly good English. He says that the bus Terminal for Fortuna has moved but he will take us there. We trust him and it turns out good. We couldn’t have done it without him and so we tip him generously. Despite the area being riddled with crime, it is nice to see some people making an honest living.
We are extra cautious loading our bags on the back of the bus, having heard all the stories. We operate our standard procedure in these situations: I wait outside and watch the bags while Al gets some seats, keep hands on wallets at all times. It all goes fine. The bus is a tiny school bus again, so it is pretty uncomfortable for four hours. Outside the scenery is a misty and mountainous. Eventually we rise above the mist and it gets hot and humid. Fortuna is pretty much a one-road town with Volcan Arenal towering majestically over it, six kilometres away. We lunch on sea bass and beans and then find “Cabinas Elsie” – a friendly family run place. Our room is clean and nice for a little rustic. Immediately we arrive, Elsie, who seems to be the local dentist as well (or possibly just the local tooth-puller), is telling Al that he looks and sounds ill. He is sniffling. She tells him he has a “bad nose” but that I am very handsome… She offers to make up some honey and lemon with “Tabcin” – the local cure-all wonder drug and every time she sees Al she asks if he wants some. This is proper mothering and all communicated in Spanish.
Pretty soon after we arrive it rains, hard and the volcano is lost in cloud. A shower and fixing our laundry makes us feel better. Later we do a bit of wandering and plan a volcano trip for tomorrow. For $25 US you can get to within 200m of the lava flow and swim in the hot springs. It sounds good. While we are drinking coffee at a local cafe there is a big lightning storm. The volcano is back in view with smoke pouring from its top. The light is really weird. We run back to Elsie’s through the rain. Elsie is not impressed with Alan’s wet T-shirt but makes him a hot honey and lemon and “Tabcin” drink and sends him to bed. Now every time he sees her he has to make a conscious effort not to sniff. Elsie is a formidable mother.

Bus to San Pedro Sula

Al fetches coffee and cakes for breakfast in bed, bargain. We have to leave for San Pedro Sula today to catch our onward flight to Costa Rica tomorrow. We collect food and say a surprising number of goodbyes to all the people we’ve grown to know in the last week. It is great to feel you can get to know so many people in such a short space of time. In the end we have to dash to catch the ferry and wave Utila goodbye. I’ve had a really top time here. On the rolling boat we catch a glimpse of a school of dolphins dipping in and out of the water. It is beautiful.
The Hotel San Pedro in San Pedro Sula is acceptable but pretty much like a prison. In fact if our room were my prison cell, I’d complain. So we shower (cold and gorgeous) and head to Pizza Hut for shameful comfort food. It’s either that or the Mayan Way, a dirty cafe with a sandy floor and cracked plates.
Costa Rican coffee
We are up early to catch our flight to Costa Rica. Al feels under the weather. Enroute to the bus station we grab two slices of pizza and a cream bun for breakfast, it’s about all our dwindling Lempira supply can cope with. We board a local bus to El Progreso (which passes the airport) and eat our food. Al eats half the cream bun and goes to take some photos out of the window. The bun is excellent – unprecedented for Honduras – so I tuck in. Al comes back incredulous as I’m down to the last bite and takes it from my hands. Turns out he only had one bite of it. I apologise but we both see the funny side. I am laughing longer…
In his therefore hungry state, Al is looking forward to the flight which although only 50 minutes long, claims to offer a meal. I have a pretty good idea that “meal” means a bag of peanuts in the case of this rather local airline. We get dropped off at the airport turn-off – taxis offer to take us to the airport but we refuse. The Lonely Planet says it is a 10 minute walk. It is stinking hot and by the time we reach the terminal, 20 minutes later, we are both absolutely drenched and smell like tramps: hardly likely to get upgraded to business class.
We check-in and pay the ludicrously extortionate departure tax of $25 US each. I can’t believe it: the last of our travellers cheques gone. In the departure lounge we take it in turns to try out the testers for Paco Rabanne Pour Homme in the duty-free perfume shop in a fairly desperate attempt to improve our chances of getting let onto the flight. The visible sweat patches are giving me away.
As it turns out, we needn’t have bothered. Our aircraft is a 46 seater prop-driven job and hardly stands on ceremony. It turns out the meal is a bag of peanuts. Full of cream bun, I have to laugh at Al’s disappointment. We get two seats each though and a great view of the country as we head south-west to El Salvador where we change planes. At least we can say we have been to the Pacific coast briefly. We suffer a bumpy landing and an hour’s wait for our next flight. This time it is a Boeing 737 and the food is better but there isn’t much of it.
Costa Rica is a cooler 23 degrees centigrade but has a similar feel to Guatemala. San Jose is apparently a dump with lots of downtown street crime. We search for a bank first and find one to get $50 US off our VISA cards. Then we find the hotel Gran Imperial, which is just about the cheapest in San Jose but hardly lives up to its name. The rooms are possibly the least inspiring I’ve ever stayed in with brown walls, no windows and patches of graffiti. At £6 per night it’s lucky we are only here for one. Judging by the number of notices of the type “be really careful in downtown San Jose, I put my bags down for like, one second, and had everything stolen…” left by recent travellers, there is a lot of crime here.
The hotel is bang in the middle of downtown San Jose and not wishing to be a part of the statistics, we eat in the hotel restaurant which turns out to be a lot better than the quality of the rooms. I have a couple of beers. Al is feeling feverish – so we go through the Lonely Planet, ticking off his symptoms. He has a cold as best as I can determine.

Trying to get some sleep at Sun Jam

We get back on the boat and wave paradise goodbye. We have a slow breakfast at Thomson’s bakery on the mainland. Then head back for more much-needed sleep.
Later there are tales of woe from a few travellers who had bags stolen last night. We feel lucky but really we have no problem because we were careful. I slept with my wallet in my sleeping bag and Al slept on the rucksack. Nothing was left accessible. Anyway it turns out the thieves – three local guys – used the return boat as a get away and were spotted with four full rucksacks of stuff. They are now in the jail on the island. Hopefully everyone will get their kit back.
Later we meet Doug and Rich again. Doug is very tired and didn’t enjoy the party much. They’ve got a night dive to do tonight. We agree to meet them for a beer after. We see the after effects of what must be a local fight. A man with blood all over his head is lying in a crowd of people. Island matters – local disputes. The island itself is beautiful but the people here are not. They’re nice enough but are messy and have no culture nor, it seems much intelligence. Perhaps it is all the inbreeding of a close-knit population. They are always moaning about something. Life is slow and dull for them here.
We enjoy roast beef for dinner (it’s a Sunday) and get bitten alive – we’re getting complacent about the bugs. Then we sit out on the porch of our hotel. We cut down a coconut from the tree and drink the milk and decide (luckily since we leave tomorrow) that we’ve been here long enough and it’s time to move on. We’ve been away four weeks tomorrow, and it feels like a long time but also no time at all. At the beginning of the holiday I felt time was going too slowly. Now I am really enjoying it and I know that despite wanting to go back home to be with everyone again, in just a short couple of weeks I hand over my life inexplicably to work and lose the freedom to do this sort of thing. I think I will feel the loss but maybe not for a few years yet.

Sun Jam ’99, watching the sunset

Back on land, the talk of the town is Sun Jam ’99, the “biggest party in Central America” happening tonight at Water Caye, a deserted desert island. The party is 24 hours of live disco music plus all sorts of other stuff including food and drink. There’s a boat going over there at 1pm and plenty of fishermen willing to join in the mass-migration. We are too tired to go there straight away but we manage to secure two seats in a tiny fishing boat leaving at 4pm. This gives us time to get ready and have a sleep. Diving makes you tired.
So later, with a couple of sheet sleeping bags, water, a camera, suncream and DEET, we set off on a boat to party. Not even the fishy smell of the boat can detract from the beauty of the sun setting over palm trees as we drift over the swell accompanied by the put-put-put of the small engine. There are a number of tiny cayes close together in shallow water just off the main islands, some only big enough for one house – some lucky locals. They are beautiful.

Another deserted Caye

On Water Caye there is loud reggae music and lots of people already setting up hammocks and swimming. Al and I regret again not buying some hammocks we saw in Tulum. The party mood is great and oh, so many women in bikinis! In terms of female to male ratios Al and I have consistently done well here. On the boat here, as at the diving school, we were surrounded by women. Diving, there was one male instructor, the captain, us and ten women. I keep telling Alan it’s his job to turn statistics into results, but so far no luck.
We make a base camp among the coconut trees. The island consists of only coconut palms and sand. It is 50 metres across and 500 metres long. Alysia, the girl we learned to dive with, is here along with quite a few of the others we know including two girls from Edinburgh University who studied French and Spanish. The sun is setting beautifully across the sea and we sit and watch. As one of the girls remarks, it is a moment you just have to remember: no camera can do it justice.

Arriving by boat

500 westerners have come here to enjoy a night of fun making this island their home. The sun sets here every night but we have this one chance to share it. Of course, some people have come here for other reasons: to get drunk or stoned. People who get caught with drugs here in Honduras get a choice: they can either pay $5000 US and live in a confined house on the mainland with murderers and rapists, or they can refuse to pay and go to a quarry to crack rocks and eat rice and tortillas. Bad news both ways.
The long-termers on the island used to hold secret “Full Moon” parties on Water Caye until the police cottoned on and regularly turned up. So they switched to holding “Half Moon” parties instead so the police never knew when to come. We settle into the party. There’s plenty of good barbecued food and cheap beers available. The music is pretty cool and there is a traditional Carribean drumming group who make the place feel like some tribal festival. There are also fire-jugglers and campfires. There are dancing shadows and people laughing in the night.

Entertainment

Ever present is the smell of paraffin torches which light up the paths and the palms. The atmosphere is brilliant and I just soak it up. Doug and Rich are here too, chatting up the ladies. We swim out in the clear shallow water at sunset. Later we go for a mad strobe dancing effort to the local house music. After that and a few beers the diving is telling on me so I go back to staring at the stars and chatting to a softly spoken Liverpudlian guy who teaches Spanish in the East End of London but spends all his long vacations in Central America with the locals.
As the heat gets unbearable, Al and I go for another swim. This time, we choose the wrong location and end up swimming out over very shallow and very sharp corals. I end up scraping my back and legs just escaping. I bed down on the sand, which is surprisingly comfy if you mould into it.

Beers

I use my boots as a pillow. The music keeps on pounding all night long but it doesn’t seem to matter. I drift in and out of very pleasant sleep with the hum of laughter and party going on all around me. The stars are beautiful and I am happy. We wake up to dawn, sleepy faces and more reggae.

We are up early for our final day’s diving. This morning Al goes for breakfast which is great as I get to have a short lie in. We get to the boathouse late at 7:15am and most of the kit is already taken so we have to settle for what is left. There are 15 of us on the boat today doing various dives.
Out at the first dive site, two of the other students, a couple of girlies from Essex, manage to drop their weight belts in the water, which of course sink. Darren dives in to rescue them them and comes face to face with a big octopus down there.
We’re off on our deep dive first – the deepest we are allowed to go with our Open Water certificate – to 18 metres. I have some ear troubles on the way down but eventually get it and find it is exhilarating. At this depth it is difficult to see the surface clearly – only as a patch of light. In this and the second dive we see some great things – a moray eel, a huge red snapper, a baracuda and three eagle rays. Beautiful. It is magnificent always to be down there and sharing it.
I would love to take diving further – an advanced divers course at least, the only problem is that it costs double the price everywhere else and we don’t have time to stay and do it on Utila. I’d love to do a diving week off a boat for something. Back at school we just have a final 49 question test to do which we all pass with flying colours. We are now fully qualified Open Water Divers. We plan to do two more “fun dives” tomorrow if Al has the bottle. It’s a $30 US for two tanks (two dives) which is pretty good value.
Saturday 21st August
We are up early again at 6:30am to dive and Al looks grumpy this morning. I pacify him with cinnamon rolls and a cup of coffee from shop. Works a treat. Today we have to persuade one of the instructors to take us with them this morning since we discover (and rightly) that we are not allowed to go diving alone (even though we are qualified) for safety reasons. However Moniker and Fiona, two of the instructors who are out today are very willing to help us out, so we get our gear and go out with them.
Out on the boat the chit-chat of divers getting ready to dive is becoming familiar. The atmosphere is really friendly, like an extended family. Everyone has to trust everyone else in diving, the instructors are highly responsible for each of us and it shows. It is fun and now we have a little confidence and are well up for it. Today the location is new and we make a “backward roll” entry into the water. Al manages to lose his mask in the spin and before he can retrieve it, it is sinking towards the bottom, fast. I decide to go down for it – a slightly dubious decision – since it takes me a while to equalise my ears on the way. In fact it is painfully slow getting there and back. However, Al is grateful and I feel like a hero.
The rest of the dives are great – exploring a “coral garden” underwater and we see some great sights and colours. It is kind of sad to surface on the last dive. We’ve had a great experience and we would both love to do the advanced course if only we had more time here. Doug and Rich have already begun their advanced course.

Our dive instructor

The culture around the island is interesting. Life is very laid-back here and for the locals there is little to do apart from fish or serve the tourists. Most locals speak a weird and loud Caribbean English which sounds like Street American and can often seem threatening and aggressive unless you know what to expect. Lots of fat women and blokes seem to just sit around all day moaning at each other in loud voices.
At Thomson’s bakery, an old white chap sits in the cashier’s chair. He is a descendant of the first British colonisers of this island and speaks with an Irish accent. The funniest thing is that when you ask for something from the shop he stays sitting where he is and shouts exactly what you said but louder at the two women, possibly his daughters, who bake all the cakes and wrap them. Traditional labour division applies…
Elsewhere a rather disturbing thing is that all the young kids walk around the streets carrying relatively realistic-looking plastic guns. All of their parents presumably own real ones, but I don’t like the lack of respect they give these weapons.
We wake early again this morning ready for diving. The sun is already hot and bright – a beautiful day – as we get our kit together. Then we are off on the boat to a nearby reef where the plan is to do two proper dives today each to about 14 metres and lasting about 50 minutes. I am excited. It all feels very natural today – breathing under water is so easy. I have some initial problems with my ears but they are fine quickly and we perform the tasks easily. After that we are off swimming to the reef to hassle fishes. The coral “wall” is just incredible and drops down from the island level to about 40 metres. Unlike with snorkelling where you look down on coral, here you get the coral towering above you and stretching out below you. The water is filled with fishes swimming above and below. It is as beautiful as a forest but entirely alien. New sounds, new colours, textures and shapes. It is breathtaking: another part of the whole.
Even we, the divers, are beautiful, covered and immersed in millions of silvery bubbles. It is so easy and fun to be down there. I mess about somersaulting and diving. We’re about 14 metres deep and it seems a long way to the surface. We have to come up all too soon but return for a second dive at a different spot. I play with iridescent fishes. Afterwards we are both extremely tired – it is surprisingly exhausting. Take a burger for lunch and then it’s back to the classroom. Dinner and sleep like a log.

Alysia diving

7.00am. We’re out at the boat with some chunks of delicious banana cake from the local store. We load up our equipment onto the dive boat and move out. A couple of kilometres off the shore is a lighthouse around which the water is only chest deep. We get in and do some practice snorkelling. There are lots of exercises we have to perform underwater – including losing your regulator, clearing a flooded mask, breathing someone else’s air, learning how to be neutrally buoyant and swimming without a mask. They are all easy once you know how and the underwater world comes to me much more naturally than I expected. We never get deeper than one-and-a-half metres today but spend a couple of hours in the water. It is exhilarating and I can’t wait for more. But there’s another afternoon full of lectures on safety first.
Later, during a break we bump into two guys from Cambridge one of whom, Dougie, is an Engineer friend of mine from Jesus College. The other, Rich is a historian. They have plenty of stories to tell so we arrange to meet them later for a few beers. They plan to start to dive course too.
At the doctors, Al is told he shouldn’t have gone diving this morning before been checked out. But when he tests Al’s breathing it is a 103% normal and his manner changes. Everything is OK now and Al can dive. He has reservations of his own though – he got freaked out today by a couple of minor mistakes he made. It is shame but he just needs his confidence restoring.
In the evening we head out for a fun meal of shark steak with the boys. Dougie had all his valuables, tickets and passport stolen in Mexico so has a story to tell. This is followed by beers then a trip to the cinema to see “Lock, Stock and two Smoking Barrels” rudely interrupted by a couple of electricity cuts. The island is stinking hot and showers are the only way to cool down. Bed in the heat with the bugs.