Jason Harley's Corner of the Web

It had not been in our plans to visit Honduras but people we've met have raved about it and a change to our plans in the USA meant that we could take a bit longer in Central America. We left Guatemala and arrived in Honduras at the small town of Copan, famous for its Mayan Ruins. Our initial intention was to visit Copan then move on to the caribean island of Utilia but the biggest festival in Central America meant that the island would be over-ran with hippies. Our hostel in Copan, The ViaVia Hostel, (www.viaviacafe.com) is one of the trendiest places we've stayed so far and doubles up not only as a great place to stay but the local meeting point and a fantastic resturant. Ran by a Belgium team, Gerardo, the main guy is a source of fantatstic information giving us advice to give Utilia a wide birth this weekend and head for the larger island of Roatan, he even helped us book a hostel on the island. Great hostel, great food, great music and great people.

Copan is one of the hottest places we've visited so far and the pace of life is slow. With 5 people from our Spanish school, we headed off to the ruins at Copan which date back to 1000BC and are set in beautiful forest with temples and other structures poking through the trees. Macaws and thousands of butterflies circulate with the tourists and ancient ruins.

Roatan 8th - 15th August 2004

Roatan is the largest of the 3 bay islands and was our base for a week as we relaxed a little and did a PADI open water scuba diving course.

There 3 things you need to know about the Honduran Bay Islands and that is that they are the least discovered Caribbean islands, secondly they are the cheapest place in the world to learn how to scuba dive and finally you should plan to go now as they offer everything from world class resorts (Roatan is the venue for Sky TVs 'Temptation Island') to $10 a night beach side rooms. Obviously our budget permitted the lower end of the scale fighting off the mosquitoes and sand flies but to think that we would ever come to such a place when we arranged our trip was beyond belief.

To check out more about Roatan click here www.roatanonline.com or here www.roatanet.com .

Padi Open Water Diving Course 10th -14th August 2004

At only $165 Roatan provides the cheapest place in the world to learn to dive and we opted for the entry level Open Water course with Ocean-Connections Dive Centre which means we can dive anywhere in the world up to depths of 30m (40m with additional training). The course was 4 days and involved lots of reading, lots of DVD watching, lots of knowledge review tests, lots of skills assessed above and below the waves and a final exam. The books you have to read are huge and loads of information but after a few hours of feeling like we were back at school, we were dressed in full gear in the water undertaking the first of our 8 dives to demonstrate skills.

Our instructor, Chantal, was fantastic her patience and enthusiasm meant that skills that looked impossible on the first day became second nature by day 3. The most difficult skills included the CESA emergency accent and swimming for 1 minute without a mask at a depth of 12 meters, but she had us clearing our masks and floating motionless above the reef with ease. She is a true star, but as a marine biologist trained to dive by the US navy she’s packing in teaching to go back to her career ?we both thought we were really lucky to be taught by her.

We both passed the final exam with flying colors and our last training dive was a chance to enjoy the fantastic reef, seeing 3ft barracuda, turtles, blue tangs, stingrays and too many other species of fish to list. Since passing we have done one dive but the talk from both of us is about now going places that we can dive and extend our skills in this new hobby.

A few nights out with other divers and our instructors (yes the social scene is great with diving) it was time to leave the Bay Islands and head for the mainland on the 6am boat. Two buses later we were in Puerto Cortes, an unremarkable post town but giving us access to Belize in 3 hours by speed boat, and avoiding another boarder crossing through Guatemala.