Well more than just tanning really. We were on a school expedition with Operation Wallacea who are working in Honduras at the moment to try and conserve the remaining cloudforests (high altitude rainforests) in the country. The Hotel We made it back to civilisation in the end, if only for one day. Basically everyone who wasn't already nauseous and bedridden was by the end of the night (which with a 5 am wake up call is no fun) but everyone really needed to let off steam because the week had been tough on everyone, physically and mentally. This course of action however was later regretted by most people after their one solitary hour of sleep (including me). Day 9
 | | The Honduran Flag |
So at 5 am sharpish, we packed back onto the school buses to get to the Marina for our "luxury" Honduran navy escorted cruise to government restricted island Cayos Cochinos. We all squeezed onto a speedboat, give or take ten of us, who presumably rowed across the time it took them and set off over the sea. We made it to the island around 7 am, got a quick tour from Ben, one of the dive instructors, a bite to eat for breakfast and a shock! Because Cayos Cochinos had real milk not condensed like the mainland camps which boosted morale considerably. So all the qualified divers met up in the afternoon to sign up for the reef ecology course and of course, it went without a hitch apart from my sudden bout of vomiting, most likely due to last night. Well I recovered in plenty of time for the check dive later that day. It went fine and soon everyone had one question on their minds.
 | | A Scuba Diver |
What was the food like? Well surprisingly, it was good! We had things like sausage, chicken and other notable absent food from Buenos Aires. Day 10 - 14 So then we got into the swing of things and into the strict schedule of the island. 2 dives a day in the morning and reef eco lecture after each of them. It was like school! With diving... But we all managed to get on with it for the week. My highlight of the week's diving had to be the night dive that I signed up for. It was the second night dive I had done and we saw so much that you just don't see in the daytime like stingrays, octopi and barracudas. Unfortunately, we met some jellyfish as well which meant my hands stung and smelt of vinegar for the rest of the night in my effort to stop said stinging. And the briefing for the dive in the dry lab was not fun when a snake had just regurgitated an iguana in there. We had a great divemaster for the week, Marie, who helped us with the dive centres kiting up rules and got us on the dive boat sharpish. How did I do in reef ecology do you say? Well I passed invertebrates! I failed the other three parts, mind. Going Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ So alas, it was all over and at 3 am Tuesday morning, we awoke to the sound of last minute packing and tidying. Packed up and ready to go we met at the pier to load our stuff and us onto the boat. This was the most miserable part of the trip home as with no prior warning we were soaked in saltwater in our specially kept clean clothes for travelling in and our only set left! So after a quite damp one and a half hours, we were back at the marina where we got a couple of minutes to dry off as much as we could and grab a breakfast sandwich (Ham and Cheese?) and left for San Pedro Sula which soon became everyone falling asleep for 3 hours on the bus and me almost losing my passport! But we made it to the airport nonetheless and checked in...very slowly. We made our way to the sole four gate departure lounge of the airport, paid our exit tax and I got 10 lempira back, just for being nice I guess. The lounge was sparse with three duty free shops and a sandwich stall (apparently ham and cheese is the national sandwich of Honduras, it's everywhere!) We waited for an hour commenting on the huge size of Honduran apples until we boarded the plane and took off for Houston. We got to Houston safely and there was one word that sprang to mind, queue. The passport control queue stretched out of the room. In fact, our spacious 4 hour stopover became running in bare feet to the plane to make the boarding time holding a sub sandwich in one hand and my ticket in the other. Of course we made the plane and got back to Gatwick in no time, well eight hours actually, minus a couple of bags of course which got left behind in Houston. So after that minor trauma we climbed on board another coach for the long journey back to Kendal. And there we were, we had made it home. Our Honduran adventure was over, luckily Fran, my girlfriend, grabbed me as I got off the bus and made me tell all which reminded me of all as I had lost my notes to the beautiful briny sea on the crossing over. Next stop, Bramham Park | 
