So it was Anna's birthday on February 9th (the big 1-9) and we celebrated with a very adventurous weekend. On Saturday we headed into town for a cake and liquado breakfast, before spending the morning relaxing on the beach under the shade of the palm trees, unable to resist buying all of the food the local women were selling from their head baskets! Which leads me to a much anticipated, long awaited for…..bread update:

We recently discovered a new kind of bread, turns out the Hondurans have endless ways of making carbs, called Yani Cakes. It is the densest, most coconutty bread roll ever created, and straight from the oven it is truly heavenly!!

When the clock hit 12 o'clock we decided it would be an acceptable time to have a birthday cocktail and so headed to a beach front restaurant for strawberry daiquiris. Yum! While enjoying our cocktails I had my hair braided into many, many tiny plaits by a lovely Caribbean woman, and I am now rocking a true traveller hairstyle…although I'm still not sure if I like it or not. For lunch we went to Luces del Norte, our favourite restaurant, where I had a delicious fried fish that looked like it had been held by the tail and dipped head first into the deep fryer. We then caught the bus home, full to bursting and ready for a relaxing evening at home, only to be invited round to Miss Paula's house for baleadas, for dinner. We greatfully accepted, hoping they wouldn't notice if we only pretended to eat. We ended up having a lovely evening eating baleadas (very slowly), playing A LOT of "monkey in the middle" with Paulita (9) and Valery (5), and watching Ratatouille in Spanish. By the time we got home, at about 8:30, we collapsed into bed and passed out…who knew kids could be so tiring! :P

Okay so here comes the adventurous bit:

On Sunday the alarm was set for 6:30, ready for our day of kayaking through the mangroves of Punto Izopo, a local national park. We started the day with pineapple liquados, and then boarded the "4 x 4" (very bouncy, squeaky minibus) to collect the other adventure goers from their fancy hotels, we felt like true tourists!! The kayaking was soooo much fun, Anna and I were fairly co-ordinated in our double kayak as we glided across the lagoon and meandered through the mangroves (how cool does that sound)! On the way back to the shore, sneaking quietly along next to the bank we were lucky enough to see a baby crocodile…yes, a real life, wild crocodile!!! We also heard the not too distant cries of howler monkeys, but unfortunately didn't get to see them. After returning to dry land and packing everything away our Honduran guide (who spoke good English) apologised that we didn't get to see many wild, dangerous animals and casually asked "would you like to see a snake, I carry one in my back pack"!! Now when people say "I carry a snake in my bag" they tend to be joking...but this is Honduras,anda whole different set of rules apply!! He went off to the bus and came back with his pet snake which he keeps in his back pack, apparently the snake gets very excited every time it sees the back pack as it knows that it is going on a day trip!! After this very unusual life experience our guide announced it was time for lunch, we got back into the squeaky bus and went the short distance to Triunfo de la Cruz where I had delicious grilled shrimp the size of chicken wings, I didn't know shrimp could taste so good!! :D

And so that concludes our adventurous weekend in the Honduran wild! :P

An almost final note, don't hate me too much, the rainy season is finally over on the North coast of Honduras and most days we are getting temperatures around 28-30°c!!

Also, I have now officially passed the half way mark and it is almost exactly 24 weeks till I land back in Heathrow at 10 o'clock on the morning of the 31st July!!

Lots of Love

xox