Honduras

Arrived into Copan after crossing the Honduran border without a hitch despite the military coup. Got a nice hotel with TV, hot shower, towels, free purified water, two room fans and free wi-fi all for £6 a night. Caught the England drubbing of Croatia on the BBC website while listening to CNN on the telly as a plane was hijacked and eventually released at Mexico Airport.

Had cocktails in the evening and watched Mexico v Honduras with the locals. The whole town appeared to be wearing their country's football strip. Unfortunately they lost 0-1.

Next morning we went to visit the Mayan ruins which this whole place is named after 'Copan Ruinas'. The wildlife was almost impressive as the ruins with Macaws, little furry things (even Dave didn't know what they were!!), spiders, lizards and more furry things. The ruins were spectacular and we had them almost all to ourselves, despite this being Honduras' second most visited tourist site; maybe the coup is having an effect after all!

Headed to a small local restaurant for dinner of Pupusas - corn tortillas stuffed with various ingredients. One of the ones I chose was filled with Chicharron; I had no idea what it was ,but thought it sounded rather tasty so what the heck. On later inspection of our little latin america phrase book I found out that I scoffed a tortilla stuffed with fried pork fat - gahhhh!

Still based in Copan, the next day we decided that some lounging in hot springs might be nice; but getting to the Lunar Jaguar springs did not seem to be such a simple matter. Our first port of call was the local buses, but after several bits of conflicting information we ended up lingering on a street corner wondering if one would ever turn up. Right on cue our Honduran 'fixer' then appeared; he's a little bloke who seems to pop up whenever we are in need of something - breakfast, hotels, lifts to hot springs. He said that his mate would take us up there in the back of his pick up truck, wait there for us and then bring us back. We took him up on his offer.

The next 50 minutes were a bumpy journey up into the hills surrounding Copan. Great fun and a brilliant way to see the surrounding countryside and local villages. On arriving at the springs we were rather disappointed to find two grimy looking pools; although the hot spring water which was pouring in to them was nice to splash around in.

A river runs along side the springs and we made our way down to cool off in there. There is a hot waterfall that cascades into the cool river. Sounds Idyllic, it would have been had there not been the rotting carcass of a stray dog at the bottom of the waterfall...nice.

After Copan it was time to head to the coast and a ferry across to the Bay Islands. We chose to head to Utila, the smallest of the group.

The main purpose of this small excursion is to dive and chill out. Very easy to do when the temperature is in excess of 40oC in the shade! We both had a "dive tune up" to refresh ourselves as I had not been diving for 5 years and Kate hadn't been for 8. We passed with flying colours and for the next few days we are alternating between hammock, boat, deep blue sea and the bars. Heaven!