BAY ISLANDS

NOTE: we would have brought you awesome underwater pictures of fish and coral but our shit OLYMPUS TOUGH underwater camera broke in Cambodia and the equally shit on-line retailer SIMPLY ELECTRONICS failed to get it repaired in time for Julie's parents to bring it over to us in Costa Rica.

Roatan, Honduras, worth putting on your holiday destination lists.

WHERE: ROATAN, BAY ISLANDS
WHERE (less detailed): three small Honduran islands off the Caribbean coast of the country
WHEN: t-50 till -46
WEATHER: before we arrived we checked the 7-day forecast and were told there was a 60pc chance of thunderstorms. Fortunately for us we enjoyed beautiful sunshine most days with only a single cloudy day

the view from our sun-downer bar

FOOD IS: a sore point. For some reason while scuba diving is obscenely cheap (￡20 a dive) food was extorbitantly expensive with a cheap lunch costing the same as a dive. We did find an awesome sushi place but their Caribbean attitude towards opening hours - whenever they felt like it - meant our much-anticipated final night sushi fell through.
PEOPLE ARE: all western divers enjoying the easy life
TEMPERATURE: mid-30's. Paul's gotten so used to wearing singlets and board shorts that he referred to another pair of shorts and a cotton t-shirt as "dressing up"

us, still in the sun-downer

HIGHLIGHTS/LOWLIGHTS: the scuba diving would have been a clear, hands-down winner were it not for the breathtaking happy hour Mojitos at the sundowner, oceanfront bar that faced our hotel... we happily concede that sitting on a bar decking, drinking amazing Mojitos while watching the sun-set is holidaying and in now way traveling ... Happy hour being 4pm-6pm meant that our nights tended to end early...

two minutes from our new hotel

 ...the diving was superb and far better than Thailand ... amazingly the reefs lie within 200m of the beach so travel time to them is a matter of minutes ... Even the snorkeling is amazing, you can wade out to waist high crystal clear water and see thousands of colorful fish... Paul turns green with envy as Rhaani snorkels with the dolphins "one of the best things ever!" is Rhaani's review ... learning its not always better to plan ahead ...

Rhaani makes a new friend at the dolphin show

... our $40 a night, tripadvisor and lonely-planet recommended hotel room is pretty disappointing being a fair walk away from the beach. Later that day an oceanside dive shop offers us a nicer room, with cable tv (Wimbledon) for $20. Paul gets the job of canceling our x5 night booking ... Wasting hours trying to track down the Haye v Klitchko fight ...

with a few fancy tricks

THINGS LOST/STOLEN: nothing more to add.
UP NEXT: a two day bus/bus/bus/boat/bus/bus/bus/bus ride to famed GUATEMALAN ruins TIKAL

LEON/GRENADA

as close to a convent school as Rhaani ever got

WHERE: Leon and Granada
WHERE (less detailed): two colonial towns in Nicaragua
DAYS: 55-50 days to go
PEOPLE ARE: more American than previous cities in Central American. Large groups of teenage Americans seem to be present learning Spanish, doing charity work or just drinking beer and being loud.

"I was hoping for something a lot younger, but this gringo will have to do" thinks Bozo the Nicaraguan child molester

 WEATHER IS: rain, rain, rain, with some sweltering, humid heat  between downpours. You look in envy at the amazing array of vegetation and greenery around but then when the downpour starts you realise it's a high price to pay for some shrubbery.

pretty blue buildings

TEMPERATURE: 36-42 degrees
FOOD IS: Rhaani's salad longings are finally met. Paul didn't fare do well. Having not had to take malaria tablets for well over a month Paul forgot how inadvisible it is to take one on an empty stomach. Despite chowing down a hearty breakfast he was back to having an empty stomach a few moments later. The American influence meant local dishes were the exception on menus.

always look on the bright side of death

HIGHLIGHTS/LOWLIGHTS: our plan had been to spend a day on Nicaragua's twin-volcano-boasting Island Ometepe, unfortunately heavy cloud coverage meant we could barely  see roadside trees so we abandoned the plan and headed to Leon, where Rhaani eases her disappointment with a massage - her first since leaving Thailand in March ... for the first time in Latin America we experience Indian-style in bus dining as locals jump aboard to sell their baked and fried goodies....

some cool Nicaraguan street art

 ... small bags of water replacing bottles... Kayaking around Grenada's Las Islatas until the rain started and we became wetter than if we'd capsized.... Rhaanni relives her "blue-light disco" days as the Grenada nightclubs seem to be inhabited by 17-year-olds... watching a grind and hump dance-off ... Sunday lunch at the beach ... experiencing some fantastic Nicaraguan hospitality when a local family insist on driving us back to our hotel rather letting us catching a bus ... laughing as Paul's broken Spanish is torn apart by a very chatty 9-year-old ... watching our friend Damon accidentally vandalise a piece of "non-interactive" modern art ...

Rhaani takes to the high seas

THINGS LOST/STOLEN: just the usual, with possibly a couple more travel locks thrown in for good measure. Oh the clasp on the waiststrap of Paul's backpack disappeared in Panama forcing him to rely on the "knot" school of fastening.
UP NEXT: a straight dash through Honduras and up to the Bay Islands for some scuba diving and beach time.

SAN JUAN del SUR

what the 6km hike out of Costa Rica was for

WHERE: San Juan del Sur
WHERE (less detailed): small surf town in southern Nicaragua
WHEN: t-60 to t-55
WHY: so Paul can have another chance to try and become at least a bad surfer

Rhaani and Damo (a fellow London-based Aussie) test out the Mango Daquiris

PEOPLE ARE: old friends, met up with a friend from our San Blas crossing and made new friends at Casa Olas. The hotel owner was in a constant state of war with the loud hostel next door and police reports, broken pipes and angry phone exchanges were a daily source of entertainment.
FOOD IS: the beachfront taco stand may actually have lived up to it's boast of serving the worlds best fish tacos. Our hotels breakfast pancakes were pretty terrific too.
WEATHER IS: beautiful sunshine, and unlike Costa Rica thunderstorms pass in a few minutes.

sure he's friendly, try getting that food out of his hand and see just how friendly he is

HIGHLIGHTS/LOWLIGHTS: fish tacos at the surf-shack .... Paul finally rides the green waves ...the hotel bars honour system which saw Rhaani effortlessly adjust her family's traditional beer'o'clock time from 5pm to 1pm ... a proper infinity pool with a beautiful view ... watching local kids use sticks to poke a massively hungover friend as he lay groaning in a beachside hammock ... watching fellow guests misjudge the friendliness of Buzz, our hotels "cuddly" monkey ... watching a 50-year old mother have a drunken shit-fit/breakdown in a moving vehicle ... Paul massively misjudges the distance between the surf spot and the hotel as he decides to walk home foam the surf, two hours later he arrives home
UP NEXT: Grenada & Leon

MONTEVERDE/ARENAL VOLCANO

she's gonna blow...

WHERE: Monteverde/Volcan Arenal
WHERE (less detailed): a cloud forest (like a rainforest only with clouds providing the moisture rather than rain) and a big volcano

everything going swell inside the cloud forest

DAYS: about 9 weeks until we have to go home
PEOPLE ARE: spoiled by the Yankee dollar. The prices for everything are out of wack because far too many wealthy Americans come into town for 2-weeks and pay $5 for a soda

Until Rhaani took a spill, maybe swell wasn't the best choice of words

WEATHER IS: mainly raining, not cold British rain but continual, torrential, bounce up to your ankles, rain.
TEMPERATURE: 30-33 degrees
FOOD IS: nice enough, but again expensive. Rhaani decides to be adventerous and has a Platos Tipicos (typical local dish) which is just rice, beans and some deep-fried plantain. Nice enough but nothing too exciting. Apart from that it was your usual Westernised fare.

very pretty, but hardly sloths, frogs and monkeys

HIGHLIGHTS/LOWLIGHTS: our cloud forest trek which yielded 0 sloths, 0 monkeys, 0 frogs and 0 toucans would have gone down as a lowlight only the guide was so enthusiastic that we don´t have the heart to criticise. The daily fog that hides Volcan Arenal and the 9hr afternoon downpour that soaks you to your bones has no such saviour. The 3hr hike to the volcanic lake would be a highlight if it wasn´t such a hard climb. Rhaani falling and spraining her ankle on the cloud forest trail was definitely a low point ... however, without a shadow of doubt the biggest pain in our collective arses was the surprise 6km walk into Nicaragua

so much for high-tailing it out of Costa Rica

. ...we are still unsure if it was due to a lorry strike or just the slowest moving customs checkpoint ever, but 6km away from the border our bus grinds to a halt and the driver announces he can take us no further and that we will have to carry our backpacks the rest of the way. 20kg backpacks, mid-day sun and an uphill walk to not make for happy bedfellows. A shitty border control guard who refused to accept x3 of our dollar notes, forcing us to leave the queue and find a nearby ATM, didn't help matters.

9am and already the fog is drifting in

On the plus side we met some wonderful fellow travellers in Costa Rica - Dave and Beth take a bow - who took the sting out of our sufferings with their great company.
THINGS LOST/STOLEN: still a sore point.

UP NEXT: NICARAGUA, supposedly a danger hotspot. I just hope would-be muggers will be happy with a haul that consists mainly of dirty underwear and brightly coloured tableclothes.

SANTA TERESA

that bloody window

WHERE: Santa Teresa/Mal Pais
WHERE (less detailed): a sleepy surf town on the Pacific coastline of Costa Rica
DAYS: t-70 to t-63

Supposedly the world's 10th best beach

PEOPLE ARE: thieving bastards!!!
WEATHER IS: hot and sticky, frequent thunder storms at night and sunshine during the day.
TEMPERATURE: 36-42 degrees
FOOD IS: homecooked so even Paul's basic pasta dishes taste amazing. Since we are putting down roots for 7-nights - a record length of time not moving in South America - we decide to treat ourselves and stay in a cabin with its own kitchen. As a result we cook for ourselves for most days and enjoy a well-earned rest from the much used restaurant phrase "Este, pero sin..." (this, but without any ..."

so far Paul looks like he knows what he's doing

HIGHLIGHTS/LOWLIGHTS: Having stolen our laptop, back-up external memory drive with all our photos on it, paul's iPod, some cash and our camera memory card with ALL our South American photos on it is a definite lowlight. As does spending our last day at the police station filling a crime report.. despite the fact the bastard thieves forced a window open and used a 4ft pole/device to reach through iron bars and perform a 90 degree turn and unplug the laptop and grab our other valuables we still feel like the village idiots for not burying our valuables six foot underground, padlocking the hole and putting armed sentries around it (Paul fears that as a result of this experience he will follow his Dad's lead and hide jam jars and coke cans in the loft whenever he goes on holiday)....

not so sure now

... worryingly unpacking our backpacks and putting clothes on shelves amounts to a highlight .... as does being able to eat vegetables for Rhaani ... the prices of things at the local supermarkets is extortionate - ￡3 for a jar of pesto, soya sauce for ￡2, strangely Canadian Dry Ginger beer is pretty cheap... depending on the waves caught to cycles in the ocean washing machine ratio surfing is either a highlight or lowlight for Paul. The surf is big and choppy in Santa Teresa and some days the ocean turns itself into the largest paddling treadmill... the patient and easygoing Santa Teresa police who painstakingly translated our list of stolen items into a crime report, on a Sunday afternoon.

THINGS LOST/STOLEN: where to start? So our full 10 months on the road lost list amounts to: Rhaani's teva sandals, our computer lock chain, paul's sleeping bag, paul's sunglasses, Rhaani's sunglasses, Rhaani's hiking boots, a laptop, external hard drive, iPhone, cash, camera.
On the upside we do have a lot of Aztec tableclothes.

farewell to Hoolie, whose various states of sunburn was a constant state of entertainment

ALSO: Hoolie's big1 adventure draws to a close as she heads up to Tamarindo to meet her family for 2-weeks of pampering in a 4 star hotel. Many thanks to Jules for being a wonderful traveling companion - apart from the snoring.
UP NEXT: MONTEVERDE, home to a cloud forest whatever that means

PANAMA CITY

Blending in at the Panama Canal

WHERE: PANAMA CITY
WHERE (less detailed): capital of Panama

the best thing about having no expectations is that you're always pleasantly surprised

WEATHER IS: humid with violent rain followed by sunshine. Muggy and hot throughout.
DAYS: t-74 to 72.

even just by ordinary streets

FOOD IS: while the lobster and shrimps served above the local fish market was a real let-down we turned things around with some outstanding sushi in the old town.
PEOPLE ARE: the locals are friendly but still unwilling to look at maps. At night we enjoyed the company of our heavy drinking fellow sailors from the San Blas Islands catamaran trip.

or not so ordinary buildings

DID YOU KNOW: the average price paid by boats to sail through the canal is $30,000. The smallest amount was $0.36 paid by American swimmer Richard Halliburton to swim through it.

HIGHLIGHTS/LOWLIGHTS: simply being able to stand up on after spending 4hrs squashed in the boot seat of a 4x4 on our way to Panama City ... certainly not opening our backpacks to find the torrential rain during the drive had soaked all our clothes and nearly ruined two of Rhaanis favorite t-shirts... the unusual but still delicious Caesar Salad sushi served in a picturesque square in the old town ... the accompanying apple martini's and best bottle of Sav Blanc enjoyed in South America ... the Panama Canal and hearing how "thousands of workers valiantly gave their lives to ensure the success of the project" I thought China had a good line of propaganda ....

thousands died so that a ruddy big boat could take a short-cut

... watching a container vessel be lowered through the Miraflores lock part of the canal ... the surprisingly beautiful architecture of Panama old town. Arriving with next to no expectations we were delightfully surprised to see that old Panama City is a Havana-lite place ... The interesting architecture of modern Panama City's financial area ... certainly not Paul's fruitless search for an open Taco Bell restaurant ... the $1 a bottle of beer happy hour offer at Oldies bar with a classic 80s soundtrack.

certainly not the 137 to Oxford Street

UP NEXT: a 27hr bus/bus/ferry/bus journey that takes us on a whistlestop tour of San Jose, Costa Rica and lands us beachside for 7-days of surf and yoga.

COLOMUBIA to PANAMA

kippers for breakfast?

WHERE: the San Blas islands Catamaran tour
WHERE (less detailed): getting from Colombia (South America) to Panama (Central America)

our sturdy vessel and home for 4-days

WHY: because flying from Colombia to Panama or Costa Rica is obscenely expensive, £400-ish for a 2hr flight which often will swing down to Ecuador to pick up a few more passengers.
DAYS: t-78 to t-75

pirate of the Caribbean

WEATHER IS: fortunately for us near perfect. A few hours suffered from heavy rain while a few more suffered from overpowering sunshine. For Hoolie she just suffered after falling asleep on-deck within hours of boarding the boat she spent rest of the trip with a beetroot red face that would scare small children into sleeping with factor 40 sunblock on.

"Did you not think about putting some sun tan lotion on?" asks Rhaani in a classic Horse, door, stables, bolted moment.

"I reiterate, this trip is not just one big holiday, it's hard work at times, obviously just not this time."

FOOD IS: awful. Coming into the trip we had expectations of fresh fish every day and healthy vegetable based meals. Instead we were forced to witness first hand how it is possible to cram three different types of carbohydrates into one meal. The scrambled eggs for breakfast were nice though.

and admittedly this wasn't our toughest hour, but it's still hard work

DID YOU KNOW: their are 365 islands in the San Blas region.
PEOPLE ARE: having shared a hostel with our future shipmates we (i.e Paul) were concerned at their 20hrs drinking a day policy (Rhaani was more concerned about them being uncouth Aussie Okkers) ... Paul's concern proved warranted as they downed rum/vodka/beer, like water, while Rhaani's concern proved unwarranted ... Pauls survival plan of hiding in the bathroom for 4-days was undone by shared bathrooms and a 6hr passport delay that meant the opening drinking session started at 11am the first day and required an impromptu visit to a local supermarket to replenish supplies ... in the end thanks to light Colombian beer Paul was able to hang out with the rest of the group without destroying himself or his liver ... Rhaani and Julie demolish their 5 bottles of wine plus beer and vodka with alarming ease.

not a bad pic considering it was taken with a non-water resistant camera while Paul stood in four feet of water

HIGHLIGHTS/LOWLIGHTS: the morning of day3 when we woke up to the jaw-dropping view of tiny, white beached, palm tree swamped Caribbean islands... finally being allowed to jump off the Catamaran into the open water ... night4's, rum and vodka fresh fruit punch that put hairs on Rhaanis chest ... not being allowed to buy the boatful of lobsters and crabs offered to us by local fishermen after our captain declared they were caught out of season ... Sun-baking on deck with beer in hand as we cruised the Caribbean ... certainly not the news that all x3 of us would be sleeping in a cramped, air-less double bed cabin - Paul takes evasive action and sleeps on deck for the remainder of the trip ... Certainly not the news that we were expected to help out by taking a 1hr nocturnal look-out shift - Paul risks the wrath of Rhaani by sleeping through their shared 2-3am watch duty ... the general amusement at watching the alpha males depart with spear guns and fishing rods and returning empty handed for x5 days in a row ... certainly not the food.

Robinson Tweedale and girl Friday

UP NEXT: PANAMA CITY.