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Hello everybody,
Sorry for the late blog, I have been super busy and just concentrating on having fun for the remaining days of my trip before my return home, my days are numbered now which is really sad. This may be a long one as I have left it for so long, you've been warned.
So starting from where I left you last. I arrived successfully to Utila. I made the ferry crossing with a cool German guy called Mike and a quiet American girl from Alaska, who's name escapes me.
I managed to contact and find Megan pretty quickly, she was staying at a nice place called Under Water Vision, placed right besides my beloved UDC dive centre where I was at previously on my last visit to Utila with Anna.
We were approached on arrival to Utila by numerous people offering accommodation and diving as always happens at these places. I didn't really have any intension of diving this time round as I had already done 10 dives in Utila previously, however Mike and the American girl were interested in diving and a place called Parrots Diving Centre were offering a free nights accommodation, so it would be foolish to turn down such an offer. We met Lee and Bill on the first night, the 2 guys from London who I was with in Mexico City and Lanquin, which was cool. We arranged to eat Christmas dinner with them at their dive centre a couple of doors down, called Altons Dive Centre, a really nice place actually.
We didn't really have any intension of staying at Parrots Dive Centre longer than a single night as we had heard that the dive equipment was shocking, not what you really want when your 18m under water, I also wanted to move to Under Water Vision too, which is closer to Lee and Bill and where Megan was staying.
We moved here on Christmas Eve and instantly felt better, it is a 10 times nicer place, with it's own deck, bar, volleyball court, and really nice accommodation, it puts the Parrots Dive Centre to shame really. My time across the Christmas period was pretty messy, as has most of my trip, but I have loved every second of it.
I met a great set of guys from Australia at Under Water Vision on Christmas Eve, Will (Quaylo), Adam (Pitty), and Andrew (Spinksy). We all hit it off straight away and went and painted the town red for Christmas Eve. I also went to a private party of someone I had met on my last visit to Utila; Fanny my Swedish princess :). We kinda hit it off last time I was here on Utila if you know what I mean and resumed things, she is really cool and super cute. I had a great night, which made up for missing the traditional drinking antics in Christmas Eve with my boys from back home, which is always awesome.
Utila is such a great place to spend Christmas, they really embrace the spirit of things, houses fully decorated, fireworks and fire crackers all over the shop, it was great, I am so glad that I decided to head over there instead of staying in Antigua.
Christmas day was a fairly quiet affair as everyone wad recovering from the night before. I was up fairly early, early being about 14:00pm :). The streets were desolate when I made the walk to the internet cafe to call my family. It was great to speak to them on Christmas.
I knew that Utila wouldn't remain quiet for too long as everyone would be having their Christmas dinners and heading out afterwards. I was looking forward to my dinner with Lee and Bill at 19:00pm, roast lamb and veg, followed by apple pie mmmmmmmm. Christmas dinner was really good, nothing compared to back home obviously, but good all the same and really good company.
There are only a few bars in Utila so everyone on the island ends up piling into the same places, which is really cool. Christmas night was really cool. Probably one of the funniest moments of the night happened pretty early on when my boys from Australia came whizzing up to us in a golf cart after apparently knocking over a drunk local guy, sounds bad but he was fine. Quaylo pretended to be an off duty doctor with his s***ty first aid kit and patched the guy up, it was pretty hilarious, but I am sure you had to be there to think so :D
I managed to add another hot Swedish girl to my list on Christmas day too, which was fairly pleasant. She was staying at our place and was travelling with the Aussie boys for a bit prior to arriving in Utila. However she snored like an absolute trooper, the second bad one of the trip, girls shouldn't snore like that surely, she wouldn't even wake up when I gave her nudge. It was only when I attempted to give her a fireman's lift out of my bed after no sleep that she woke up. I think I must have fallen asleep quicker than her in this instance as the second stint wasn't bad.
The following day pretty much followed that of Christmas, everyone was hung over, I on the other hand didn't seem to experience any kind of hang over on Utila which was pretty nice :). The days events passed without much consequence, we just chilled back at the dive centre. We started on the rum at around 17:00 and all had a massive, but cheap steak dinner at a restaurant called RJ's which was so nice. It was another cool night, I hooked up with the Swedish girl from our place again, unfortunately it wasn't Fanny, I much preferred her, but she just wasn't playing ball for some reason, not too sure why. I thought id give the other Swedish girl Karin another chance, maybe that snoring was a one off, but no again................bloody terrible.
Spinksy persuaded me on this drunken night to get up at 06:00am to go for a dive with him and for some stupid reason I agreed, we probably got to bed at about 04:30am, not a good idea. It was pretty funny as we were both so quiet, but there was still a fair amount of banter flying around. The dives were pretty cool actually, besides the fact that we were both feeling rough, we saw a massive Eagle Ray, Morray Eel, Lobster and Turtles. The dives would have been better if the equipment wasn't crap, I had a leaky mask and a leaky regulator which meant that I was constantly clearing my mask and constantly blinking to get rid of the salt from my eyes as well as taking in a small amount of salt water every time I breathed in due to the leaky regulator. All I can say is that wouldn't have happened at UDC, I think/know that they are the best dive outfit on the island and the world.
Fanny met me off the dive boat before I left Utila. She apologised for the way she acted with me for the last 2 nights and said that she wished that she had acted differently; her and me both. It was a real shame as I really liked her. Oh well you can't stay in one place just for a girl whilst your travelling. You win some, you loose some.
On the same day that myself and Spinksy did our dive myself, Megan and the rest of my Aussie crew left on the ferry back to La Ceiba, en route to Granada - Nicaragua. We did pretty well on our days travel and ended up in San Pedro Sula in Honduras. We got up at 05:00am the following morning, hoping to catch the Tica bus straight to Managua, the capital of Nicaragua. Unfortunately this bus was full so we
decided to hit the chicken bus route, we took 5 separate buses and 4 taxis, but we managed to arrive in Granada that same day and save about $30.
We spent a couple of nights in Granada and bumped into a group of Aussie girls, Hilary, Kate, Laura and Anna, who were also in Utila with us and who the guys know from back home. They had planned to travel at the sane time and meet up along the way, but not travel together. They are a cool group of girls.
We persevered with Granada and explored what it had to offer, but there really isn't all that much to do there. The Lonely Planet describe it as the gem of Nicaragua and I can assure you that this definitely is not the case. The strip on the lakeside is dirty and the water in the lake black. The streets are really quaint and pretty, very much like a lot of the places in Central America. It is a nice place don't get me wrong it's just not worth spending too much time here.
Following our 2 night stay in Granada we headed for San Juan Del Sur for New Years. This is the party place on the West coast of Nicaragua. We managed to hitch a lift on the back of a truck all the way there, it was pretty fun all being bundled in the back. We made it there in no time and were instantly on the hunt for a place to stay. San Juan is a really popular place in Nicaragua anyway, let alone when it is new years eve. Finding accommodation in the rain was pretty hard, but we managed to find a nice little place owned by this old lady. She charged us through the roof, but we had nowhere else to stay. We paid $20 each per night for 2 nights. Myself and Pitty shared a double bed in one Room, and in the other Megan had a single bed while Quaylo and Spinksy shared a double.
We had a nice veranda with rocking chairs, which we made full use of during our stay. We were also meeting the other girls in town for new years too so it was pretty cool. Our veranda was used for consuming copious amounts of the best rum in Central America, Flor de Cana and coke or Fresca. It was a really nice place to just chill.
Our first day spent in San Juan consisted of chilling on the beach, swimming and playing loads of frisby, followed by a night in town at a place called Iguanas. Iguanas however wad too packed so we headed to a place called the Black Whale which was a lot cooler, less packed, pool tables and good music. It was a good night and the perfect warm up for New Years.
The following day we did pretty much exactly the same, however during this day we all experienced the largest burgers known to man, they were literally like pizzas, I kid you not. Hod knows how we managed to eat it all I don't know, Pitty the brute of all of us was the only one who didn't manage all of his .................p**** :)
Megan barely ever hung around with us, she is a bit of a solitary creature, happy in her own company. We weren't overly fussed, I think that she just wanted a group to travel with, which is completely understandable.
After a days chilling and getting over our food hang over caused by that mammoth burger we set about our plans for new years. The girls joined us on our veranda and we just sat, talked and drank until about 23:00pm, which was really cool. After this we headed to The Black Whale bar to celebrate the count down and watched a cool fireworks display on the beach.
Following this we all headed to a massive beach party at a huge place constructed purely for New Years. It was a one off entry fee and all you can drink when you were in, it was crazy, but so so good, undoubtedly the best New Years I've ever experienced. We were the last ones at the party, dancing past sunrise until about 07:00am...................good times.
Quaylo was leaving for home unfortunately on the 3rd so we hung around San Juan until then. New Years day was spent chilling on the beach followed by a quiet night. The following day (Quaylo's last) we all (including Megan) went on a fishing trip, which was really cool, we caught loads of red snapper (I say we i was crap, everyone else caught the majority) and cooked it up for one of the best meals of the trip thus far. Myself, Pitty, Spinksy and Quaylo went out for Quaylo's last night with us.
All the boys know each other from uni in Melbourne and are a really awesome set of lads, it has been great meeting them.
Quaylo's last night started off very civilized, but soon turned messy as we all went on the pull :), myself and Quaylo were battling it out for this hot Nicaraguan/Columbian girl, Pitty was hooking up with a hot girl from Norway and Spinksy was with a hot girl from the Netherlands, at least I think that is where she was from. We were all successful apart from Quaylo unfortunately, I won our little battle and hooked up with that girl, he wasn't best pleased and I did feel super guilty as it was his last night, but all is fair in love and war I suppose :).
We left for Ometepe the following day after seeing off Quaylo, which was a sad goodbye. We managed to make it to Ometepe on the same day. Ometepe is an island on the middle of a huge lake in Nicaragua. It is formed from 2 huge Volcanoes - very cool. We stayed in a really nice place our first night called Hotel Ometepe. We arranged to climb Conception, the largest Volcano on the island sitting at approximately 1600m. We were up at 06:00am for the climb and collected our pack lunches from the Cornerhouse cafe, the best place to eat on the island, owned by a English guy called Gary. They do amazing steak sandwiches and even better carrot cake (moist).
The climb up Conception was really tough, it probably didn't help that I am probably a bit out of shape after nearly 4.5 months out of the gym and drinking copious amounts of alcohol :). I'll get back on that as soon as I get back home.
Anyway the climb was super tough, a real challenge, which I love. We climbed 1000m through forest and vegetation to a viewing point. Unfortunately we happened to choose probably the only day thus far in the year that has been cloudy :(. We thought that as we weren't going to see any of the spectacular views over the lake we may as well make it to the crater, so we climbed to next 600m up near vertical rock face to the craters edge. I won't lie it was a little scary at times, the craters edge was unbelievably windy, I have never experienced anything like it before in my life. There was an almost vertical drop on one side and a crater full of lava the other, we were hanging on to the rock face for dear life, it was awesome to have done it though.
The descent probably took even longer as it usually does in those circumstances, we were dealing with loose rock and stuff and didn't want to be falling anytime soon as that could be the end for us. It was relief to make it down, everyone was pretty shattered as you can expect, but we were all glad that we had made it to the summit.
That night we had planned to stay at a place called Little Morgans, a cool hostel on the other side of the island run by an Irish guy. Unfortunately everyone seemed to have followed the same route as us following Christmas and everywhere was packed, including Little Morgans, which only has 16 beds.
We drove around for ages before finding a nice little place run by a really nice old guy. Pitty, Spinksy and I trekked about 5km to Little Morgans because we wanted to have a drink there and see what it was like.............good warm down after the climb. I managed to stub the same toe again (which still hadn't healed from the first time) walking along pitch black crappy roads in flip flops - probably not the best idea, I had blood pouring out of my foot, my flip flops looked a state.
Little Morgans was great, we all wished that we had managed to get a place there for the night, but it's just too popular. They were playing quality British tunes, the best music that I have listened to this whole trip whilst out. The whole place played Killer pool as well, which was really cool.
We probably left at about midnight, after a few beers, it was a nice chilled night with the boys, nothing too hectic after non stop partying in San Juan. We needed to detox for at least a couple of days :)
We also spent the following day in Ometepe, this time however we stayed at a cool coffee farm in the hills - this is where Megan wanted us to stay. It was a really nice place actually, if a little far from anywhere. After we arrived there and got settled, myself, Pitty and Spinksy decided to head into
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