anyway

hey :)

so that was the end of the river rapids trip...

next stop was just the part where i got mugged. it seemed like such a non-event that i forgot to tell my family about it until about a week later!

i was just walking down the street, minding my own business when some guy crossed from the other side and walked right up to me, put a knife against the right side of my stomach and said 'dinero'
i threw my money into his hand and continued 'celular?' and i said 'no tengo'

he pulled the blade back and continued down the road like nothing happened.

and that was the end of it! the amount of money taken was 5Lempiras, or 15p, or 25cents.

HAHAHAHA, oh dear.

that was a couple of days before my friend laura was to leave. after the event i walked a block further and she opened the door to let me into my house in such a panic, i'd obviously sounded a little stressed by the way i'd said 'Laura, open the door please'... she looked at me, my knees and hands were shaking and i was a little panicky, and she asked me what happened....away out to the road she ran, to see what was going on but the guy was nowhere to be seen. thank goodness, i didnt really want to see him again!

a few days later we were leaving to go to belize, to renew our visas...my especially (it was over a month out of date...typical.)

Laura was leaving a couple of days into our trip, so we were going to miss the last day of her time in cofradia...she'd been here for well over a year. the night before we left, Laura and i stayed up and talked and just hung out before she left. i was really sad to be losing her, she was a big part of my life here in cofradia :( so we all sprinted up to the park at about 4am, and i didnt sleep that night so i had my packing done for the time when we were leaving. a little late...perhaps, but I PROMISE i'm working on it :) we all wandered, zombiefied by sleep, to the park... Laura's house was a cutoff road, one block down from the park. she left us to go to hers...our bus arrived, and we stood there, kevin ringing her, and she yelled 'im coming' so then there was the epic arrival/farewell scenario where laura comes up to our stop and we all get to hug her and say bye and do all the crappy emotional stuff, and then our bus came, again. we squished onto the back, and waved bye to her. that was the last time i saw her in cofradia, and honestly i dont expect it to be the last time i ever see her, i intend to fly to NYC party with her, as i always did :)

anyway, laura left, and here we were on our way to belize. i think it might be important to refer, again, to the fact that my visa was out of date. we headed to the northern border of honduras with guatemala. i crossed that border undetected, and we headed out to the other side. there was a building to our left which was just CALLING my name...and we walked over. of course they noticed that it was over a month out of date...
let's just say that with a good bit of co-operative acting by Kevin, Ian and myself, i managed to squash the fine down to the lowest charge... 2,750Lempiras... 134 dollars or thereabouts. its was better than the next charge up which waas over $200!
i paid, relieved and yet again a little poor, in Guatemala. we took a boat from guatemala to punta gorda, Belize. kevin and i had a shot of driving the boat, it was awesome! our captain was super cool, he drove me to the visa office on his motorbike hahah! when i say captain, the boat could have no more than about 16 people in it at any one time... but it was cool :) super speedboat type thing.

arrived in punta gorda, where LO AND BEHOLD, ian's bank card stopped working. I couldnt check my bank balance without the internet and here i was with guatemalan Quetsalez (or something), Honduran Lempiras, but no belizian dollars. blast.

kev used the internet, i checked my balance and luckily, i managed to lift a fair amount to carry me through the trip. relieeeeffffff. we took a bus from punta gorda up to dangriga, another garifuna town. there was also a large population of chinese people which we weren't expecting! their food was awesomely good though :D

we stayed in a REALLY creepy hostel kinda place, owned by some old woman who looked like the Hunchback of notradame, only fatter. she was really weird and spoke english in a french accent. she wanted to charge us a mint, i tried to get her to lower her amount but NO, she didnt want to. so i was like pffft i dont like this place and she was like 'well go somewhere else then' and i was like aw crap. i just got owned by her! the other places were even worse! so we ended up in this room, with a triple bed, a double bed and a single bed.
we slotted the beds together and ended up with some MASSSSSSIIIIVVEEEE bed. seriously we were totally on like our own double bed within this massive bed! teach her a lesson....pah.

so we stayed there, got up the following day and headed to the dock to travel to one of the TINIEST islands ever, called tobacco quay. it was soooo small. walk for 5 minutes from shore to shore in every direction! we took the ferry to this little island, crawled off and explored. we hired a tiny little cottage hanging over the shore. it was so picture skew (picturesque...)
we hired $5 snorkelling gear and headed out. it was so beautiful, and this was the first time i had snorkelled since i was really young! and in the middle of the caribbean, i was in for such a treat! :D
saw all kinds of fish, angel fish, butterfly fish, DORY fish haha, starfish... and a barracuda which opened its toothy jawz if i got too close... :P

we headed back to shore, got showered and sat around with some bacardi, and a little of ians vodka :) we drank merrily and danced like loonies to all the songs we remember from the UK (yes, ian lived there for a while just recently, he knew allll the same song as us!) and we had such a good evening, i met a few girls from the US who were on their last night after about 3 weeks of marine biology study... so cool!

the following day, we headed back home. it was a short but sweet trip!

that night we arrived at the border crossing between guatemal and honduras...about 8 oclock...

of course, there were no buses, and taxis were RIDICULOUSLY expensive, in UK prices! we were told that there is a little town just beyond the border with a couple of cheap hotels. we watched the sky get darker and darker, so quickly as we were surrounded by mountains, and headed out into the night :)
we started walking down the cutoff road (after walking for about 20 minutes up and down the main road, we forgot to take the turnoff...) and it was literally PITCH BLACK. i couldnt see my hand infront of my face it was so bad, no moonlight whatsoever.
i spotted a little house to our right. i headed to the door, knocked and called in spanish. a man called out WHO and i replied...' ehh, jennifer?? we're afraid of the dark! hahaha...' and he called out to wait and we waited. he arrived and he offered to walk us up to the town, he was heading up there anyway. i chatted to him about hotel prices, english, whether he's scared of living where he does, how long he's been there...all that jazz..in spanish! :) very proud times in my life.
we headed to the hotel, i negotiated with the man...in his lounge/house/office. he said they had no rooms and we could sleep on the floor. it was cheap. he would bring us matresses...
i was a little on the short side for money, so i said fine. the boys said they'd see! he brought out all the stuff, i stood my ground and said i'd stay. he put the matress on the floor of the office. i still said FINE and stayed. eventually a pile of 20something honduran guys came in and filed about 6 each into the 3 rooms around me. i got up and the boys were like GET OUT ahhaha and so we all left and said sorry we didn't want to stay anymore!

we walked out and wandered through the town towards the otherr hotels we'd heard of...everyone was full :| like, EVERYONE. we were standing infront of someone's open style house/bar thing, and headed over to get some light. there were about 4 old men who were totally wasted and downing shots like noones business. (shots of guaro, its like 'alcohol' in general, and shots are like dixie cup sized! these men were taking like 3 gulps per shot. i thought i was no lightweight but seriously, this would put SCOTLAND to shame...almost) ;)
we spotted a younger guy, he started talking to us in english with an american twang, though his vocab wasnt that great, we could understand him pretty clearly. we stayed at the bar chatting to these people for about half an hour, waiting for a taxi to come and take us into the main town with more hotels. yeah, the car never came.
Michael was the boy's name. he invited us to stay at his house on the ACTUAL borderline, there was noone but him staying there. he bought us all a beer (apart from ian who was sleeping in the hammock at the bar hahaa...) and kev and i talked with him. we agreed to stay at his, and thanked him.

we traipsed up to the crossing in town, his pal came along with a truck and we sped up to the border on the back of his pickup :)
we passed the police, crossed the border and took a small turnoff to a tiny little newly built house. we walked in, there was a double bed and a single on the floor, Michael said he'd sleep on the couch. so me and ian ended up crashing on the double, kev on the floor (ian definitely doesn't fancy me. he's gay) :)
we woke up the next morning and headed out, michael was already tending some horses, and then we marched back along the border, got the bus, and arrived back home in cofradia!

that will do for now. more to come shortly :)

love yaaaaaaaazz xxx