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Copan

// February 3rd, 2005 // No Comments » // Honduras

Well we made it here to Copan Ruins, Honduras… it’s funny, the town is called copan ruins while the ruins are just called Copan… crazy. We got here and were greeted off the bus by the standard people wanting to show us to a room for cheap… we had planned to stay at a hostel that was recommended by a bunch of people but instead went with this one guy as he had a fucked up eye… i didnt want some crazy voodoo shit being cursed on me… but seriously, he took us to one hotel for $~2.50 each and then another for $2 each… we then went to look at the hostel which was $4 each for a dorm room… we went with the $2.50 room… it’s nice and has a balcony with a nice view…

Next we wanted to get our ticket out of here to Antigua, Guatamala… well both minibus places were full for 2pm today so we can’t leave till tomorrow… so we paid the $15 for the 5 hour ride and got our ticket… which is probably lost now anyways… then back to the hotel… i argued with the woman for about 5 mins trying to get the room for $2 cheaper since we were staying for two nights… we settled at $1 off… how nice.

Today we went to the ruins… $10 just to get in… they were nice. kinda. I dont know, i don’t really see the huge draw in them. They are all fenced off… you can climb on them a bit but not really go inside… there’s a ton of tourists… not my kind either… the southerners with their big stupid sun hats with ribbons hanging off… ergh, i hate them. no wonder everyone hates americans… plus, half these ruins had structures over the top of them… like metal roofs and shit like that… the huge cool staircase had a huge black tarp over it… making it virtually impossible to photograph… i was dissapointed… but i guess i didnt expect much… ruins don’t do much for me… it did make it clear that i wasn’t all that insterested in going up to tikal in guatamala though… we don’t have much time in guatamala and it would have been like 10 hours of bus rides one way… the ruins are supposedly the best mayan ruins anywhere though…. though i think theres better places for me to spend my time and money… so i’ll be on the lookout for them!

so now we have time to kill here.. it’s a pretty nice city… all cobblestone streets which gives it a really cool feel. the people are nice, and really like to stare at me… especially the little kids. I get a lot of kids staring at me with their mouths open… it’s funny. right now I have to go eat… havent eaten all day… not sure what we’ll do the rest of the day though… there are a lot of cool cheap souveniers here though i don’t have enough cash on me to buy any…. i’m at about $6 cash… and i dont want to take money out because i’m leaving the country tomorrow… hopefully guatamala has cheap garbage to buy as well… i’m sure they do!

Off the island

// February 1st, 2005 // No Comments » // Honduras

Well we made it off the island… not quite as far as we wanted… but off the island none the less. it was getting old… there was nothing to do but drink (which i don´t enjoy too much anymore… at least the being hungover part!) dive and waste time on the internet which was expensive… the food was poor… though there was a good place for supper right at our dive shop….

well we ended up sitting at our scuba teachers house drinking last night until around 1230… we missed saying good bye to all the kids we had met (we were supposed to meet them at a bar) but it was just as much fun to sit with the instructor and his wife… we had some good conversations… we didn´t wake up in time for the 6:20 ferry and figured it was ok because Lonely Planet said there was another at 11… well Lonely Planet fucked up again. I swear that book isn´t even worth carrying for toilette paper (it hurts!!).

So we had to wait around and take the 2pm ferry… didn´t get to the mainland until about 330 or so… We didnt feel like traveling any more so we found a cheap hotel room ($3.33 each) and are staying here… we got some food at a cafeteria place (was more expensive than the hotel!)… it was good food though… especially after the island… We walked around a little bit but realized there´s not much to do here so we´re chilling at the hotel… i wrote in my journal then decided to come online to write to all my adoring fans…

Tomorrow we leave for Copan… two nights there… then off to Antigua Guatamala…

A couple pictures from down deep

// February 1st, 2005 // 1 Comment » // Honduras, Pictures

well i got my pictures on a cd… most of them didnt turn out, though there is one or two that are nice… they are all discolored due to the fact that water absorbs colors the deeper you get… so they all need my master photoshop skills… which can´t be done till I get home…. they have a blue green tint that needs to be fixed… i uploaded one of the turtle and one of me and paul under water…

here is a link… they are again too big to post on my blog.

Click here for the pictures

One more day

// January 30th, 2005 // 1 Comment » // Honduras

Well… last night it poured super hard… enough to wake me from my deep sleep on my spring filled shitty mattress..

Anyways… we got up again at a bit before 7am… and headed out for a morning of diving… the weather was nice but it was really windy which meant huge crests of waves… so we couldn’t go to the preferred north side to dive… so we went to a different site… it was very nice as well… the highlight of the dive was seeing a huge Spotted Eagle Ray… it was so big i thought it was a manta ray… the dive master said she’s never seen one so big… nifty. i had a camera but it got fogged up right before we saw the ray so i doubt the picture turns out… we also so a bunch of other fish of course, none of which i know the names… JOY

the second dive site was one that we had already diven (dove? doven?) twice before… and sadly, my least favorite… this time the battery went dead in the camera, though i think i still got some good shots… about 170 between the two dives and a short movie of me and paul… i hope 10 turn out ok… the camera today was a 3.2 megapixel so they won’t be able to be blown up very big… and the one yesterday was a 5 EFFECTIVE megapixel…

that brings me to a gripe, and public service announcement… when you buy a camera now a days… make sure you know what you’re buying… if you look at the camera and it uses the word effective after the word megapixel, i say stay away… what it is “effectively” doing is taking the same image as a 3.2 Megapixel or whatever the sensor actually is… and then using math to blow it up to 5 megapixels.. so it doesnt make sense for you to pay extra money thinking you’re getting a 5 megapixel camera when in fact its just a 3.2 megapixel doing something that Photoshop can do better… just my thoughts…

anyways… on the way out to the first dive site this morning we had dolphins swimming off the bow (front) of the boat… i grabbed the underwater cam (thinking i was going to jump in with them) … the owner set it to video mode… i hit the power button instead of start… doh… so i turned it back on and hit the start button before it was ready… so i shot nothing… i should have just grabbed my camera and taken pictures… had i known i wasn’t going to get in the water with them!

anyways… we dive tomorrow twice more, then leave on tuesday… time to travel on…

Another day…

// January 29th, 2005 // 2 Comments » // Honduras

Well i just got back from two morning dives… the first dive was a deep one… down to 100 feet… we explored a wrecked ship… it was called the Halliburton… nice huh? can’t get away from that shit even down under water. it was sunk intentionally for diving… about 5 years ago… it’s nice it already has corral growing on it… there were a lot of other people down unfortunatley.

the second dive was a multi depth dive… so basically it was just for fun… i was allowed to take a camera along… very nice… though it kind of takes away from the overall experience… i snapped off about 100 photos or so in under an hour (i went through my tank pretty quick this time… trying to swim everywhere for photos! i hope to be able to post them online sometime this week… we saw and swam with a hawksbill turtle… about the size of my torso give or take…

we also saw a huge moray (sp) eel out of the reef… it was probably about 10 feet long and about 1 foot round…. huge and green… the above picture isn´t mine by the way…

Tonight we go on a night dive… as long as the weather holds off … which it should. there’s supposed to be a bunch of bioluminescense (sp? again) so when we turn our flashlights off and wave our arms, the water should light up… i’m sceptical! there is also usually octopi spotted on night dives… thats the one thing i’m hopping for most!

i think we’ll be leaving the island on tuesday… heading to Copan to see some mayan ruins… then to guatamala… we’ll see. we have four fun dives we have to take before we leave…

well i’m out of here

whale shark!@

// January 27th, 2005 // 1 Comment » // Honduras

well i finished my open water scuba diving course today… it was great. two beautiful dives… finally got to just swim around and look at all the crazy fish… which i have no idea what the names are so i cant tell you what i saw… we did see though, a baracuda, a green moray (sp?) eel, blue tangs, parrot fish, some other fish about 3 feet big… crazy!

the coolest thing though, we swam next to a whale shark… between our two dives, we went out looking for them,though its out of season, we got really lucky…. supposedly our boat drive is the best on the island and he saw a bunch of tuna splashing at the surface…. which generally means theres a 75% chance there’s a whaleshark near…. we boated oover there and it was right off the side of the boat… we were already ready with our snorkle equipment on and i jumped in first…. it was within about 2-3 feet of us… stayed around for about 30 seconds then swam away… in terms of whale sharks, it was small - medium… about 20-25 feet or so…. though they get huge and dwarf the boat we were on…

i wasn’t able to have a camera (an underwater one anyways) as we were still “in training” so i didnt get a picture… though this one i found online is pretty close to the correct size….

diving.

// January 24th, 2005 // 6 Comments » // Honduras

well i just got done scuba diving for the first time… not to be cliched but it really is another world under there… snorkeling is awesome but being able to swim around down there for an hour is unreal… it took a little getting used to but i didnt have any problems… Paul got a little anxiety but got over it fast… its really hard to explain… with our course we get two fun dives… which they will let me rent a digi cam for… so i will for sure do that… it’s not the best quality but it’s sure better than nothing.

we saw a trumpeter fish, some small garden eels or something like that… blue tangs, parrot fish, and i cant remember the rest… tomorrow we do more skills then some good dives the next day… after that is another day of diving and thats it…i’m pretty sure i’m going to go for my advanced certification as well… since i’m down here… it will let me go down twice as deep but also will let me experience night dives anda few other elective dives… not sure whats all availble…

well it’s time for supper so i’ll write more some other day!@