Getting wee'd on is all part of the day...

It's crazy to think that I'm nearing my tenth month here in Honduras and that I will be home in 2 months, I'm also coming up to my fith week here at the new project Miqueas, but it feels like it's been so much longer. It's been a great 5 weeks, I will even say that it's been the best five weeks of my year so far. At first I thought it would take a while to get settled into things here, with the project being so different to what I had been doing before, and also that I really didn't have that much experience working in a social care enviroment other than babysitting a few nights for parents friends, and that was for 2 or 3 children. Here I am responsible for up to 15 children, aged 1 1/2 to 4 at a time with the help of two other nannies (or tias as they are called here), that, for anyone who couldn't quite manage the math, is 5 children each. Which is challenging and demanding. The kids want your attention at all times, and you have to be cleaning up pee (we're going through a potty training stage at the moment), watching they don't eat objects like crayons or bugs, making sure they eat their food and not throw it across the room or to the monster under the table, keep them from making a bid for freedom through an open door/window, changing nappies, washing hands, keeping an eye on the mischevious few who like to cause all sorts of trouble and, of course, keeping these wonderful children entertained and happy. Because they are, they are all wonderful children. And I know that might sound a bit soppy, but I don't care. They are actually some if the nicest, funniest and friendly children I've ever met. And there's a lot of them. There are so many little characters among them, from Jessler, who likes to sit on your knee and fart, whisper 'gassssss' and shoot this cheeky little grin, to Juan Jose who always greats me with an HOLA, and then at night when I put him to bed he whispers in my ear, 'hasta manana!', to Jefferson, the most mischevious of all, who when caught doing something wrong he drops everything, puts his hand behind his back and looks at you like the most guilty person in the world trying to act innocent and then there's Carmencita, with her anglelic looks and curly hair, who loves to sing 'Incy wincy spider' about 100 times everyday, she's so cute, you don't even mind singing one song with her for a whole afternoon.

So two weeks ago was a week of firsts, I attended my first Baby Shower, my first Bridal Shower and my first Honduran wedding. All here at Miqueas 6.8. So the first Baby Shower was for on of the tias, Tia Ruby, who was leaving to have her second child, a wee baby boy. We had a chinese for lunch, drank lots of fresca (coke), watched as she recieved her gifts and wished her well, and she was off. Here in Honduras woman have a month before the birth and then 40 days after the birth. All unpaid maternity leave. It's not a lot, and so lots of women have no choice but to return to work very, very soon after they have had their child. A lot of them will barely take the 40 days because they simply cannot afford it.

The second first was the bridal shower. Another of the Tias, Tia Bertha, was getting married that weekend, so we threw a surprise bridal shower, with dinner (fried chicken, fries and rice!), games (make a wedding dress out of toilet roll) and goodbyes. Bertha who was the mission's first nanny, was leaving altogether. Her husband-to-be lives about 6 hours from La Colorada and that's just way too much of a commute! After much hilarity with the toilet roll dresses, there was a more sombre moment as the goodbyes were said, all of them were very touching, and you could see that Bertha was a tia that was well respected and going to be greatly missed. One of the girls, Madison, said a very sweet goodbye to her, she started crying and very soon after the whole room was too!

The third, and final, first was the Honduran Wedding. The wedding was taking place at the Miqueas Misson as Tia Bertha wanted all the children to be able to attend, imagine trying to take 38, 2-14 year olds to a wedding, and keep them surpervised and (semi) out of trouble, and try to enjoy the wedding. IMPOSSIBLE. So Bertha decided to have it here, in the big upstairs hall. I had the job of organising outfits for all the children and so I spent the week before, sweating it out in the upstairs bodega, rummaging through all the boxes of donated clothes to find outfits for the 38 children. The girls were relatively simple, early into the rummage I found a box full of party style dresses of various colours, shapes and sizes. All I needed to do was find enough of the various sizes and make sure they fitted. After that it was onto the boys, I needed shirts, trousers for all, and then ties and waistcoats for others, finding all this stuff, and then sorting them into wearable/matching outfits was a challenge. I spent a good few hours trying to figure all this out. For the younger kids it didn't really matter, but the older ones have suddenly become fashion concious, and wanted to look just right.. So as the time for getting ready approached, I had all the outfits on hangers in the various rooms. Trying to remember which was for which child was the biggest challenge, having 38 outfits and 38 children of all different sizes, trying to remember exactly which was for what child took a lot of thinking. The girls went smoothly, and they headed off to get their hair done by some other volunteers, and then came the boys. After theit showers they were sent to me. underwear had to be found, socks put on and then finally thier clothes. 'I want this one, I want that shirt, but these pants.. I don't like this colour.' was heard a lot. After many changing, and mixing and matching the boys were ready to go. Almost. They still had to get the lathings of hair gell and the spray of aftershave. Then they were really ready. This gave me approximiately 5 minutes to get a shower, and change out of my sweaty, minging leggings in time for the wedding. A rapid shower and a qucik change and I too was ready to roll.

As for the wedding, I didn't really see too much of it. We were sitting at the back with the children, and as it was one of the Tias getting married all the other Tias wanted to see what was going on. Which, after all, is fair enough. I didn't mind letting them watch their friend and collegue get married while I was clambered upon and chasing misbehaving children. The bride did look beautiful in her, extremely frilly, white dress, the hall was very nicely done up in a red and cream design and all the guests looked lovely.

It was a busy introduction to a Honduran wedding, but a nice one.

So now, we are two nannies down. I have become a replacement for one of them in the afternoons, which means that from 2pm until 7pm I am with the toddlers. Feeding, playing, changing, telling them off, bathing and putting them to bed. It's hard work. 15 toddlers and three nannies, and boy do these kids wear you out. But I love it. They never fail to make me laugh at least once every 5 minutes, they endless changing (kids just seem to attract dirt and food to their clothes) becomes a game, dinner becomes a lesson in not to through food at people, and bedtime is a time for hugs, kisses and 'hasta mananas'. I have been working as the replacement nanny for about 2 weeks now, and I've been peed on a least 6 times. It happens when you least expect it. And it's usually just after you've asked them if the need to go 'pee pee'. There's a vigorous shake of the head, and then, you feel a warm, wet patch on whichever part of your body the are sitting on, be it your knee, leg, hip.. And you know, you're going to have to change yourself and the child. There are a few repeat offenders here, but unfortunately they seem to be the two cutest children in the world. And so you can't help but to pick them up, and eventually get wee'd on. I suppose it comes with the territory. And hopefully they will be perfectly potty trained, by the time I leave.....

I have yet to be poo'd on, although I know it's only a matter of time. I had a close shave the other day, I lifted up the youngest of the children, a boy called Olvin, put my hand on his nappy and was about to place him on my hip, when 'splatttt' poo just flew out EVERYWHERE from the sides of his nappy. All over the floor, all over his shorts, but thankfully it managed to miss me comepletly. Lucky escape. Very lucky.

Juan Jose, Jessler and Carmencita

Bridal Shower!

Bridal Shower!

Marvin and Jessler

Wilma

Alejandro

Anderson

Tia Bertha and Juan Miqueas

Miqueas 6.8

Miqueas 6.8 is a childrens home located in the department of Yoro in Honduras, and this will be my home and volunteer work for the next three months. And after 4 days, I couldn't be more settled and happy. I am no longer teaching, I am to put it simply, playing with children. But there's a difference, a majority of these children have grown up in enviroments where they have  been seriously negelcted, with many of their parents having drug and alcohol addictions or even just through simple, but devastaing, poverty. And so, 'playing' with these children is actually a way of teaching them basic and more complex social skills that they have not been able to learn in the enviroment  that they grew up in.

The home opened up about 3 years ago and now has 38 children from 1 to 14 years old. Miqueas has stopped taking in children now and the plan is to have these children grow up as part of this BIG family until they are ready to leave and start their own lives after finishing school. The children of school age go to a mixture of private spanish schools and Bilingual schools and the toddlers stay at home with local nannies and volunteers. There is a variety of activities that go on here, and me and Mali's job is to organise and keep the kids occupied while developing their learning.

A normal day here for me would be to get up around 8 and work with two of the older children with special needs for about two and a half hours, we play a variety of memory games, coordination games and drawing. Then it's time for the little toddlers, I help Mali, who has been working with them all morning, until it's time for  the 'pequenos' lunch. We eat lunch with them and then head to the house for a siesta, and to do any planning for the next day. Around 2 I head to the toddlers, they've just woken up from their nap and are ready to play, I spend about an hour and half playing, singing and just having fun with them. After that I go and work with a 2 year old boy called Pedro,who is blind and still learning to walk. I spend a bit of time, doing some physio exercises with him, leg exercises and giving him support as he walks around. We also work together with developing his touch senses by making a book filled with different materials and also tubs filled with rice, pasta and dried foods. It's good fun and very interesting to see his reactions, sometimes he doesn't like to touch at all and others he can't stop touching the object.

It's completely different work here than at New Sunrise. I am no longer a teacher and while I enjoyed my time teaching (well most of it!) I am happy to have a change and this work is so rewarding and just good fun! There are so many little characters here and to work with them and help them learn, not just academicly, but in everyday life is awesome.

So we had a lovely surprise when we were taken to our new accomodation, we  live in a volunteer house with Meldoy and Jacob and any other volunteers that decide to come and help out here. When we walked in we couldn't help but notice the washing machine, cautiously asking Melody if that was a washing machine, she said, yes of course, and you guys can use it! We couldn't beleive it. A washing machine!? Walking into the kitchen we saw an oven, a toaster, a coffee machine. What more delights could this house offer? We foudn out later. Wifi AND an occasionally warm shower! So after living for 9 months in a house with a two hob electric stove, a freezing cold shower and hand washing our clothes, we were amazed and seriously excited. A washing machine, an oven, a toaster, a coffee machine, wifi AND a warm shower. This place is like heaven!! Even though we live in a very small, dirt road aldea, just 20 minutes down the road we have a shopping mall, with a proper supermarket that sells cheese and bacon and jam and everything, and a cinema! A cinema, like a proper cinema that plays english movies. So me and Mali treated ourselves and went to see Iron Man 3. Which, by the way, is a brilliant film. I recommend that you go see it.

There are two other long term, american, volunteers working here. They are both around 26 years old, and enjoy asking me and Mali the randomest questions about where we come from. They find that me being Scottish a good talking point and like to ask if about our 'interesting' culture and about the sterotypes. One even said to me, that if I hadn't said that I was Scottish he would never have thought it cause I wasn't ginger and pale. I considered telling him that a large majority of the Scottish population ran around in kilts drinking whisky and chasing haggis on a regular basis, but I figured that he wouldn't know what haggis was.. I then explained accents, Highland games, bagpipes, haggis, black pudding and ceilidhs. Which was a MAMMOTH effort on my part. But I made it, and there is now one more American in this world who has a wealth of knowledge  about Scottish traditions. And also what not to say to Scottish people..

Here is the link to the Miqueas website so you can have a look at their programme and also some photos!
http://www.miqueas68.org/

BIG changes.

Packing up a house that you've lived in for 9 months into one rucksack is a serious challenge. You gather so many things, that are not even that important, but you feel the need to keep them. And SHOES. I don't even want to count how may pairs of shoes I've accumulated over the past 9 months. And I swear that my clothes in the wardrobe have doubled in quantity since moving here. It's like magic or something. Good job I'm starting a week before I leave, this process could take a long time!

I suppose I should mention why I'm packing up the house 3 months before I fly home, I'm not that organised! It's because, this Saturday, me and my Project Partner, Mali, are moving away from our teaching voluntary work in New Sunrise School, Trinidad to another project, elsewhere in Honduras, where we will be working more in a scoial care aspect of volunteer work. We are going to be working in an orphanage with children who have grown up with drug and alcohol abuse early in their lives and who have lost their parents.With 38 children in the orphanage, a mixture of boys and girls from 1 to 14 year olds. We'll be organising activities for the toddlers of the orphanage in the morning and then tutoring and helping with the homework of the older children in the evenings. 

I guess you're wondering why this move is happening, and happening so suddenly. During the past few weeks there have been some issues with the school that we've been working in. Issues that I will not go into, but after discussion with Project Trust it was decided that we would be moved to another Project for the duration of our stay in Honduras. 

And so a new chapter of my story in Honduras will be starting very soon! 

Our last weekend in Trinidad, wasn't really spent in Trinidad. Unfortunately we had to go to do a visa run to Guatemala, which involves getting many buses, crossing the boarder, staying the night and then hoping that they'll stamp your passport for another month or three months if you're lucky..

So we made a nice little trip to Guatemala for the ngiht and sucessfully got our passprots stamped for another three months!

The next day we decided to go to, what we think is, the best comedor in Honduras. It serves grilled chicken, beef, pork all served with avocado, refried beans, cheese, rice, pickeled onion and tortillas, grilled fresh fish with tajadas and beans, or Seafood soup with rice. All this for only $5 or £3. And the food, wow, it's delicious. After you've filled yourself to bursting, you can then walk down to the river for a relaxing swim or less relaxing, but definitely more exciting cliff jumping into the river. And that's exactly what we did, chilling by the river, jumping swimming and having a good laugh! It was a lovely last weekend in Trinidad and to top it off, parcels from home arrived. 

I got two parcels from my lovely Granos and one from my parents. They were filled with easter treats, somewhat squashed and melted, but a few hours in the fridge sorted all that out and the were just as good. An array of eggs were sent, Cadbury caramel, mini eggs, cream eggs, choclately eggs, and galaxy eggs. And cute little bunny rabbits. Me and Mali were in HEAVEN. Along with the choclately treats Granos also sent DARJEELING TEA and MINI CHEDDARS. The darjeeling was the first cupof tea I've had in the 9 months I've been here, and I seriosly appreciated that first cup of tea, so much that I had serveral more throughout the course of the day! And the mini cheddars, a stroke of genius from dear Granos, a blast from the past and one of my favourite snacks to have. I'm savouring every packet of them! I also got an array of Scottish memoribilia, a keyring, a tartan ribbon (which is now tying up my hair), a Proud to be Scottish sticker and a few other things. To top off my Scottish weekend, I watched Brave. And I loved it. to anyone who is Scottish and lives abroad I would highly recommend watching it. It reminded me so much of home, but never made me cry, it had laughs around every corner and the Scottish accents we're terrible. Mostly beacuse the people in it are actually Scottish! Shock horror. I would actually recommend anyone who like a good cartoon movie to watch it. Although I did have to translate some parts of it for my English friend.

So ends my time in Trinidad, with darjeeling tea, mini cheddars and a scottish movie. 

I've really enjoyed livng in this little town, and the experience in the school has taught me a lot and has been unforgettable, but now it's time to start a new experience and a new chapter in my time in Honduras. With just over three months left there will be plenty of stories to tell and experiences to be had. And I look forward to sharing them with y'all. 

A week in Paradise..

I have just returned from, what I can only describe as, one of the best weeks of my life. It was the Easter holidays and everyone was looking forward to a little time to relax and chill out. Mali was heading off to Cancun with some friends for 'Spring Break' and I was off to Utila, an Island on the Caribbean coast of Honduras to complete my dive course.

After a very early start, hot buses and screaming children I eventually arrived in paradise. Getting to the dive shop was like coming home again. Ecomarine Dive shop is like one big family, the instructors, Tara and Daddy-o (the owners) and their kids, and the guests. As I started off my week with a nice swim and a BBQ. I could tell I was in for a great week.

My course was starting on the Monday so the next day I headed out on the dive boat with the divers and did some snorkeling around the North side of the island. It was so good to get back into the crystal clear water and swim, watching all the sea life and from then on I was even more psyched to get into the water as a scuba diver! After the two dives we head to the Cays, a beautiful group of small islands with white sand beaches and good food. After stopping for food, a swim, some rest for seasick members of the group and of course some more time to chill. We made our back to the dive shop for some more chilling and music.

The next day I was up early and ready to do my Confined water part of the dive course. As I had done all my theory back in December I had time to relax and admire the beauty of the place before we did our equipment setup and got into the water. For those who are not familiar with scuba diving I'll give you a quick run down of the equipment. The most basic are your fins, mask and snorkel, after that you have your weight belt and weights, (the amount of weights you have completely depends on you and how heavy you are and sometimes it can take a while for you to get them sorted so you're comfortable in the water) after this you have you're BCD with which you control your buoyancy under and on the surface of the water, your BCD has your air tank attached to it and attached to your tank is your regulator, which has your regulator, your alternate regulator, a low pressure inflator hose which attaches to your BCD to inflate it, and your gauge consul, to check your air pressure. Once you have all this set up, you check it all works, going through all the parts, checking the regulators, air flow, pressure and smell, BCD inflation/deflation and the you gear up. Get into the water and do your buddy checks. Now you're ready to dive. 

At first you start in water that you can stand up in and see how you are breathing underwater, your instructor watches you, making sure you don't hold your breath. The most important rule of scuba diving is not to hold your breath. After that you go through a few exercises, taking out your regulator and finding it again, clearing your mask of water, using your buddy's alternate air source, removing your goggles and swimming without them, putting them back on again, and various buoyancy exercises. Once you've done all this you're ready to head out into the Open Water. This was the bit I was most excited about. 

And it was awesome. First dive you go down to 12m, and just swim around, slowly and just admiring the beauty of being in this underwater environment. After the next dive you go through all your skills you practised in confined water but this time much deeper. My buoyancy finally felt right and i was able to swim and move in the ways I wanted to. It was so much better than I had expected. 

With the course you get two fun dives and we went out the next day to two great dive sites, Black Hill and Airport Caves. First stop was Black Hill, a massive underwater hill covered in coral and all sorts of sea life. We swam round it, there was a pretty strong current  and the visibility wasn't perfect but that didn't take away from the fact I was 18m under the ocean swimming with the fishes. The next dive was even better. Airport caves is some of the instructors favourite dive site, It has some impressive caves and a wall along the reef that you can follow, the visibility was amazing, and we saw an eagle ray, giant lobsters, a family of squid, a MASSIVE moray eel and a porcupine fish. This was what I came to see. It was at this moment I truly fell in love with diving. So much so I'm going back to do my advanced course in June. And who knows in the future I might become a full time Dive Instructor in the Caribbean. 

We had some pretty good times outside of the diving. One beautiful day we got the boat Captain to take us out to the Cays for some swimming, snorkeling and a bit of party. That day turned out to be one of the best days of the trip. It's such a beautiful place and I can easily see how people go there for a few weeks and are still there 6 months later, or even living there indefinitely. 

I also got to swim with dolphins. None of that paying a silly amount of money to hug a dolphin held in a captivity in a swimming pool. But actually swimming with a wild, free pod of dolphins. And that was fantastic. They're much bigger than you imagine, and so graceful. Their clicks and sounds fill your ears under the water and you  struggle to keep up with them. If they wanted to they would just disappear into the depths but they stay and play with you. They're curious and gentle. And wow. It was incredible. 

Utila take 2 was a week I'll never forget. I fell in love with the island, with it's beauty, atmosphere and the people. It's a place I will most certainly be returning to in the near future and possibly many more times throughout my life. 

Water Cay

Map of Utila and the Dive sites.

Add caption

A bacon roll. If only.

So after being out of Honduras for 2 weeks me and Mali were seriously missing some Baleada action. Now let me explain what Baleadas actually are. They are flour tortillas, much like the ones you have with fajitas, but these are handmade. And it is something else to see the women make these. they literally spin it out of a tiny bit of dough into this perfect circle, with a perfect thickness. It almost like pizza base throwing in its art.Once you have the tortilla base you then add the home made, freshly prepared refried beans, sour cream and salty cheese. This may not sound wholly appealing to everyone but there's just something about it that makes you come back for more, and more and even more. You can get a variety of different fillings to you Baleada. Egg, onion, chimol, meat, hot sauce, spicy veg. It really depends on where you buy them.Here in Trinidad we have an abundance of street vendors who sell they're Baleadas and they're all different. One lady does particulary good ones with spicy veg and hot sauce, another with a nice bit of pork and another who does baleadas sencilla (simply beans, cheese and cream). We have so many to choose from we spend our weekends eating the Baleadas from the different street vendors.  Anyway, to get to the point of why we were missing them so much.. It seems to be that only in Honduras can you get Baleadas. If you try to ask in any other country you simply get laughed at, or given an incredulous look and asked 'what are they?'. So for the two weeks that we were in Nicaragua, while the food there was amazing (I had some of the best street food ever in Leon. Definitely going to make a trip back there someday!), we couldn't stop thinking about Baleadas. So the moment we stepped foot back into Honduras we went in search of Baleadas. For the next two or three days I think we had Baleadas for lunch and dinner, and it was brilliant. We definitely satisfied our craving. 

After having sutffed ourselves full on Baleadas it was time to get back to work. We arrived in school to find we had been nominated to paint the classrooms and so began a week of painting. I seached out my scruffiest clothes, my already paint covered barcelona shorts and a dye covered top (washing done wrong... ). The outfit was topped off with a blue headscarf to protect my hair from paint, where it's an absolute nightmare to get out. Safe to say I looked ridiculous. I looked even more ridiculous at the end of the day when we walked home, covered from head to toe in white paint. No matter how hard I tried I never managed to keep my body paint free. Our first day was interesting.. There were two young guys from the college painting the outside of the school and Tato arranged for them to show us how to paint. I've done a bit of painting before, but it was amusing to watch him demostrate as though we were the idiots we looked like. Our lesson consisted of showing us how to pour the paint, get the paint on the rollers and actually put the paint on the wall. 'Suave, suave' was repeated over and over again. Meaning smooth or smoothly. After a week of painting 'suave' and coming home looking like a ghost we finally finished. And man I was glad to have finished. I think I consumed enough paint fumes that week to last me a lifetime!

Getting our classes for next year was a good moment for me. I've been given Science class for grades 3,4,5 and 6.  I love Science and I love teaching science, and I feel that I can put much more enthusiasm into it!

And this makes my classes and the actual teaching more fun. To be honest I was getting pretty sick of the grammar and phonics teaching... So far it's been great and I haven't had too many problems with awkward quiestions. Although I do start teaching human reproduction next week to 5th grade so any hints or tips are very welcome.

In ht eprocess of teaching my 6th grdae class about evoluntion and our ancestors, I've come accross a few interesting answers and I'd like to share one of them with you:

An answer from one of my students to the question 'How are people different to animals?'

'Mainly because the Holy Spirit inhabits their heart. Humans through the Holy Spirit know the differnece between right and wrong/good and evil. Humans are able to share the love of god with one another. Humans have a never ending desire to seek out and know god better.'

This answer highlights, to me, the difference that religion has had on these children's beliefs compared to what it had on my upbringing and this in turn highlights the complete difference in culture between these two countries.

Of course everyone is entitled to their own beliefs and this is a challenge I have to deal with when teaching a class of 12 who believe that God created the world in 7 days. I had an interesting discussion with this very same class about beliefs and cultures in different countries. I was explaining that there are many religions across the world and there are also people who did not believe in a God. They then asked the obvious question that was 'do you believe in God Miss?' My reply was honest and I said no. They looked shocked. One girl pointed outside at a tree and asked me, 'well then Miss, who made the trees?'. This conversation continued as I tried to explain my view that the world evolved through science. And the best thing about the conclusion of this lesson was that they didn't disregard this point of view. It helped them understand that there are many beliefs in the world and everyone should be entilted to their own point of view.

Unfortunately for the past 3 days I've been laid up in bed with a pounding head, body aches, joint pain and a fever. And to top it off I lost my appetite. After day 2 of lying in bed with a scarf over my head trying to sleep and wishing the horrible pain away I was sent to the doctor. After a thorough examination and lots of questions (all in spanish, my medical spanish is getting better!). He was concerned I might have dengue fever. Dengue fever is a viral infection that is transmitted by mosquitoes, is particularly nasty in those under 15 and just generally not nice. It causes flu like symptoms and there is no treatment apart from painkillers and lots and lots of fluids and time. Severe cases can result in hospitalisation. Unfortunately dengue is a big problem in my area, so this was a logical conclusion to my illness and my symptoms fitted. As a precaustion I was given painkillers and rehyration fluid and told to go home drink lots of fluids and rest. And to call the doctor if I got worse. If I wasn't on the mend by the next day he wanted to send me for a blood test to see if I did have dengue. After an absolutely terrible nights sleep. Where I slept for about an hour, uncomfortably trying to ignore the pain in my body, tossing and turning with a fever. I woke with a reduced headache, my body didn't ache quite so much and I didn't have a fever. I was on the mend! So now today, I am completely back to normal, no headache, body ache or fever. I am dengue free, rehydrated and starving. Craving a nice bacon roll. If only.

'If you fall, let go of the board and protect your face. Remember, protect your face!'

And so to Nicaragua. Leaving Utila at 4am, after two days, eleven buses, two nights in less than plesant hotels and three 4am starts, we arrived in the beach town of San Juan del Sur. Right at the bottom of Nicaragua, very near to the Costa Rican border. I was exhausted. the only thing for it, the beach and a cold beer.
San Juan is a surfer town. It's full of gringos, cheap eats and great people. I planned on staying for four or five days. Eventually I left after two weeks. Staying in this awesome hostel called "the Surfing Donkey" nobody wanted to leave. It was cheap, clean, had a kitchen, there was a film room and a pool, morning cannonballs were mandatory, and the staff were cool. And just the name made you want to stay there. 

The best surfing beaches were around a 30 minute drive from San Juan, so after getting a briefing from some of the backpackers about the 'stingray shuffle' (I'll come back to that), we jumped on the truck. At first there was about 10 people, then 12, then 16, and so on until there was 26 people squeezed onto this truck. Now this truck was an open backed standard truck with metal bars on the cab and over the back for surfboards and other gear. To fit everyone in, 6 lucky people were chosen by the driver to sit ontop of the metal bars of the cab. And one of those lucky people was me. I was in for an interesting journey. Now for those of you who are thinking, what on earth?! Should rightly thinl that. The worst danger was being decapitated by unruly tree branches and power lines.. After surviving the journey to Playa Hermosa, I was ready to hit the waves.
Back to the stingray shuffle. Basically, at this time of year stingrays are abundant along the Pacific coast of Nicaragua and Costa Rica. These things are extremely painful if you get stung and the pain has been compared to that of a severely broken leg. According to the surf instructors the best remedy is to take two shots of rum, place your foot in the hottest water you can stand and then curl up on a hammock with a cold beer and wait out the pain. Luckily I didn't have to try this because I did the stingray shuffle, which involves shuffling your feet accross the sand to ensure you don't stand directly ontop of a stingray cause it will then sting you, and I was lucky. Unfortunately a guy who was with us on the beach got stung and man, he was in pain!
I tried a bit of surfing. And was utterly useless. I could not for the life of me get the pop up. So, I switched to body boarding and had a blast! but fear not, I have not given up on surfing. Machrihanish here I come! By the time I return to Central America next year I'll be pro.....
That brings me to some good news. For a while I've been thinking about taking another year off from studying and travelling some more. And so I decided to defer my entry to University to do just that. And I'm happy to say that I was accepted into Glasgow university to study economics and german starting in 2014. So next year I'll be returning to Central America and carrying on South, finishing up somewhere like Chile or Argentina hopefully.

During my time in San Juan I finally decided to get rid of my beloved braids. This was going to be no easy task, so I enlisted a few friends to help out. Unbraiding my hair with the extensions in it took hours. And as we continued taking them out, we dicovered that dredlocks had started forming. Not good. My whole hair was like this. I had three choices; dread the rest of my hair, shave it all off or try and comb them out. I went for the last option, as I idnt particulary want dreadlocks and shaving off all my hair was a little drastic. Although I had no shortage of volunteers offering to shave my head. Eventually after 2 days of on and off combing, and what felt like half my hair falling out I was dreadlock free and back to normal. I miss my braids but I definitely don't want to have to go through that again...

The time in San Juan went by in a blur of beaches, swimming, cannonballs, bbq's, good food, sunsets and chilling. I made some brilliant new friends and I'll be returning to this idylic spot on the Pacific coast of Nicaragua next year for sure. And when I finally left. Two weeks after I arrived. I was sad to go. It truely was the best stop on the trip.

From there we headed north, through the capital, Managua, not the safest place to take a taxi and onwards to the town of Leon. A large town of 150,000 people in the north west Leon is home to Volcano Boarding. This is the sport where you surf the regions most active volcano on contraption made of metal and wood. As this is exactly why I went to Leon. I was ready to surf Cerro Negro.

We all piled into the truck, signed the disclaimer and off we went. This was another interesting truck journey. The roads were terrible and we were flying along them at wht felt like 100km an hour. Bouncing all over the place, beer in hand, listening to music. The views were beautiful and the atmosphere brimmed with excitement and fear. I, for one, was stoked. I couldn't wait to fly down this volcano. We were told that the fastest recorded descent was 91km/hr. Which is crazy!! I never thought I'd be able to beat that but I wanted to go as fast as I could. Cerro Negro is a large, looming mass of black volcanic rock. We were given our orange boiler suits, goggles and boards. The boards were heavy and extremely awkward to carry. Hauling them up the steep, crumbling rocks in the intense heat was challenging. The volcanic rock acts a bit like sand, it's extremely difficult to walk on and every step you take you slide backwards. On-top of this there was a forceful, gusting wind which caught your board and almost blew you off the volcano. But, if you put your board behind you, it acted like a sail and blew you up the volcano. Handy. Eventually at the top, we stopped to admire the view. You could see directly into the crater of the volcano, it was a large one, filled with yellow patches of sulphur and gas leaking out of the cracks in the crater. Looking out over the plain you could more volcanoes in the distance and a beautiful mountain range behind us.

Once we got our breaths back, it was time for business. On went the orange boiler suits, the goggles and then came the breifing. How to sit on the board, how to stop, turn and what to do if you fell off. The slope was pretty steep, 45 degrees was mentioned, and the ground was nothing like sand. It was rocks. From tiy little pebbles to stones the size of your fist. I would not like to fall off at hih speed on that. The advice was, let go of the board, and cover your face, remember to cover your face. This, would be very important for me, as I would find out later.

We all lined up. There were two runs about 30m apart. I was in the second one. The adrenaline started flowing as I saw the slope I was about to throw myself down on this wooden sled. After the 5th person I was up. The guide shout go and off I went. Sitting myself down on the board, putting my feet on and I was off. Slowly. The start was very slow and then gradually, gradually I started getting faster and faster. Until I was flying. Or I felt like it. The bottom was getting closer and closer and I was steering myself gently and then BAM. Wipeout. My board tipped over. And I was rolling, bouncing, rolling, bouncing down this volcano. All that was going through my head was 'protect your face, protect your face!'. I must have rolled 10/15m because when I opened my eyes and uncovered my face I was at the bottom. And greeted by a round of applause. Apparently my wipeout was a pretty decent one. And I can away with only minor injuries. A few bruises and cuts on the face. Adrenaline pumping through my body, I chucked off the goggles and  went to get my speed. A respectable 47km/hr. Not bad. Getting rid of the boiler suit I sat back and watched the carnage. Some people flew down, others went rather more cautiously almost crawling down the mountain, I wittnessed a few more spectacular wipeouts, but still mine remained top. The top speed from that day was an impressive 70km/hr from a retired american teacher, followed closely by a young, german guy who was miffed someone 40 years older than him did better.

We finished off the day with some volcano cookies, and after stuffing my pockets with Cerro Negro rocks we headed off on the bumpy journey home. What a last day of a holiday. The next day I was headed back to Honduras and back to work. It was a fun filled two months and a holiday I'll never forget!

Photos of San Juan to follow. technical difficulties. Again...

T

And so to the Carribean..

Having survived the end of the world, we packed up our things and headed to our next destination. The Carribean. More specifically, Utila, an island off the north coast of Honduras which is 'a backpackers paradise and the cheapest place in the world to learn how to dive'. This was where we were to spend our Christmas and New Year. All 16 of the project trust volunteers. Travelling on the 23rd of December is a crazy idea in most places, in Honduras it was a complete nightmare. The bus station was packed, the buses were full and people were running, elbows out, (in the old lady japanese style) to get a space on the bus. Eventually after much pushing, waiting, more pushing and a little running we found ourselves on a chicken bus bound for the port town of La Ceiba. After some crazy driving and close shaves we arrived in Ceiba and unloaded ourselves from the tangle of boxes, bags, children and chickens, ran to get a taxi to the ferry terminal, and after more crazy driving and close shaves arrived just in time to buy the last 16 tickets for the ferry to Utila.

We loaded ourselves and our luggage on the ferry, tried (unsucessfully) to find seats stood around for 10 minutes, to finally be told that we'd have to get off the ferry as they'd over filled it and the ferry was sitting too low in the water. So off we loaded ourselves. But not our luggage. That, they said, would be waiting at the terminal. So we trusted them.

All that was left to do was wait. They were sending another boat to pick us up. One that was nicknamed the vomit comet. A little ominous I thought. It'll be here in 20 minutes they said. An hour and a half later the 'vomit comet' appeared. It was much smaller than the previous ferry, sat lower in the water and seemed to be a lot less stable. Oh well I thought. It'll get us there. Hopefully....

We climbed aboard, and off we set. Immediately everyone found out exactly why it was called the vomit comet. It went ridiculously fast, and bounced around like no other boat I've been on. It rolled, listing one way and then the other. The attendant walked round handing out spew bags. Many of these were needed. Thnakfully I don't get seasick and actually quite enjoyed the journey, but I know a majority of people were extremely happy to get their feet back on dry land.

Grabbing our luggage and setting off to find the dive centre, I took in my surroundings. Utila is a small island with only one road running through the main town, it has a multitude of dive centres, bars and restaurants. Tuk tuks swarmed the streets and everywhere you looked were gringos. Arriving at the dive centre we were warmly welcomed and shown to our dorms. Tomorrow the diving would begin.

Waking the next morning in a coughing fit was not the best way to wake when about to start a dive course. Not being able to do anything that involved moving without coughing was even worse. I spoke to the dive instructor who said do your theory lessons first and then see how you're getting along. So, theory lessons completed and I'm still coughing my guts up. No diving for me. This put a bit of a downer on the week, as everyone else, bar one other volunteer, was diving. And loving it. But better safe than sorry and I made plans to return in my easter vacation to complete the course. I couldn't let this get me down and there was plenty other thinbgs to do, kayaking, snorkling,swimming, sampling the many eateries on the island and just chilling out. And that's what I did.

Christmas was approaching fast and the dive centre were having a Christmas dinner for all the students and guests. The one rule, bring a plate or a bottle. Turkey was to be provided. Everyone chipped in and made a dish, and Christmas dinner was brilliant! We even had yorkshire puddings and roasties. It was strange being away from my family and closest friends at Christmas but that night the other volunteers and friends at Ecomarine nmade it feel like a family occasion.

Suddenly it was Hogmanay (New Years Eve) and I wondered where the year had gone. It seems like only a month or two ago I said goodbye to eveyone and headed off on this adventure. It has infact been 6 months. Time really does fly. Hogmanay was a blast. We started off with a fireworks display from the dive centre owners 9 year old daughter (best fireworks display I've seen), played cardsl, listening to great music, at the bells lit more fireworks and of course sang Auld Lang Syne. It wasn't the best rendition I've ever heardbut it did the job. Then to the beach party. A much talked about beach party, the best place to celebrate New Year apparently. And it wasn't too shabby.

All in all a brilliant Christmas and New Year in the Carribean.