A faint whisper of wind nudged at the curls on his Ginger hair. The smell of tulips and fresh grass lingered tantalisingly in the air, small droplets of moisture clingling to the blades of grass that brushed at his feet refusing to bow to the warmth of the rising sun. The morning had begun wonderfully, with the gentle crowing of a distant cockeral, the playful chirping of the younglings waiting for their morning feed, the mooing of a cow awaiting his morning milking. The meadow was alive with song and......

´PHIL!? PHIL!?? ARE YOU IN THERE!?????? PH IIIIILLLLLLL??´ A violent rapping on the door brought Phil shuddering back into the real world....ignrorant of the lengthening drool that had been dangling from his mouth he quickly recalled his predicament prior to his happy slumber. With his shorts around his ankles, and his face implanted upon a cushioned part of the wall, Phil detached his right cheek from the heavenly andrex extra smooth and once again with a heavy sigh reflected on his tour of Central American..................WCs. All aboard the gravy train! choo chooo haha ahem. Sorry Mum.

ANYhow...so to our travels! :) I thought I would give you all a quick taste of what our travel life has been like so far.

Backpacking by its very nature is a mobile endeavour. Ready to move at a few hours notice, our entire lives are packed into four trusty bags. Two backpacks and two daypacks. We carry the backpacks to new destinations and explore with our considerably smaller and lighter daypacks. We are in week 3 now of a 4.5 month trip and let me tell you we´re both becoming VERY efficient with space usage. Yvette has now got packing her backpack down to a tee such that she´s sometimes packed and ready to go before me! I use ´sometimes´with a pinch of salt of course!,)haha just kidding.

As you will know we have been on group tours so far. The first comprised just eight of us. This one has a full complement of 16 people with whom we have been for nearly 2 weeks now. It has been a new concept for Yvette who was very sad to leave the first group as she hates goodbyes...something we are both pretty familiar with unfortunately. But, after a few days we got back into the swing of things with the new group.

Accommodation wise we have been staying in hotels every night so far and I have been very pleased that Yvette´s comments have been no worse than ´not so bad´ which I´m sure a few of you will know is high praise indeed when it comes to hotels. haha I´ve had a barrel of laughs watching her turn into some genocidal insect hunter in every new hotel room we´ve entered. No bug escapes the wrath of the Sanchez!whoa hahaa Every square inch is inspected and inspected again and when a creepy crawly is discovered the peaceful silence is suddenly and shockingly ruptured by piercing shrieks of DIE! DIE!! Accompanied by the most fierce explosion of shoe bashing mankind will ever witness...no I exaggerate(or do I?hmmm) a nervous twitch has definitely NOT developed in my left eye and neck at the very mention of my name, oh no! ;)

Yvette´s most definitely embraced the travel spirit and really been a focal point of both groups so far with her jovial nature and humerous Christmas Cracker Jokes in particular!:) she also has a massive advantage over everyone with her language skills too of course and has also been embraced by locals everywhere we have been (which annoyingly has meant i have not been able to say caliente burro as much as i would have liked to)and has had several moments of glory as a stand-in tour guide

As far as food is concerned we've generally played it safe so far with more and more forays into the unknown of local delicacies. This following hot on the heels of 'stomach adjustments' shall we say. Even Yvette has held off on the hot sauce of late. We have both noticed that there is ALOT of fried food in Central America and that EVERYone drinks Coke! We are becoming ever braver by the day but the food has already noticeably become more Western in Costa Rica. Other noticeable quirks include the small cheap bags of drinking water that a lot of Central Americans drink and a lot of corn..tamales type foods.

Travelling has been a mixed bag. We have had our fair share of nightmare bus journies on this trip already with the roads appalling in Honduras meaning 10mile an hour pot hole infused ´ball bearing in a tin can´ type journey. Some with no air conditioning in sweltering heat but by and large we have been pleasantly surprised with our private transport that has been air conditioned. Air Conditioning is certainly something I think both of us would jump to say if asked what the one luxury we would want on such a trip would be. The other would probably be loo roll. haha

It is important to stress however that the benefits far outweigh any hardships we may endure once in a while. The wildlife in particular has been spectacular. Crossing through rainforest we have been privileged to see many different types of parrots in the wild, along with my favorite the Toucan!:) Howler monkeys, Spider monkeys have added noise to the forest, spiders the size of your fist and armies of huge ants have also drawn our attention over the weeks we have been travelling. Not to mention the pesky mosquito....we are both being eaten alive! It is a joy to see so many animals simply roam free in Central America...Horses live next door to Pigs, Donkeys, Dogs, Cats, Chickens and innumerable cattle in a seemingly blissful environment. Amusingly the locals patiently accept cows,pigs and horses wandering along the highway and simply go around them. Yvette has enjoyed seeing all the very different and often small types of dogs just chilling in the sun...of course she misses a certain Charlemagne very much.

So to where we have been -

Roatan Island

First of all, allow me to put on my American Accent and communicate with all y´all in homespeak....OHH MYYYY GAAWWWDDDDDD!

Ok - back to Brit. :) We thought Caye Caulker was Paradise. That seemed like 50th in the world rankings compared with this place. Quite simply the most stunning beaches. The whole island has been shaped as a result of tectonic activity which split the island in two and created various sink holes around it, a divers paradise. It is located VERY close to the second largest Barrier reef in the world, which we saw up in Belize (and now we are in Honduras so that gives you a feel for how big this momma is).

SOO, after some pretty treacherous travelling to get there on what can only be described as the VOMIT COMET ferry...over some pretty dicey waves(Force 6-8 at times) for 2 hours at breakneck speed, me and Yvette were very glad to welcome the opportunity to relax on beaches for a couple of days. In fact we were the only people on that ferry out of our group that stayed downstairs within one of the hulls of the catamaran. Everyone else was upstairs and as we exited all we could smell was THAT delightful aroma. Very testing journey.

The island was very picturesque and we have some great pics of us relaxing in the carribean style restaurants and in the glistening Turquoise waters and very white sands with a beer in hand(cocktail in Yvette's case) and background reggae music complimenting the restful sounds of the ocean lapping against the shore and filling the sizzling air.. Yvette was more than happy (and still is!) with her purchase of a brand new snorkel and on the one afternoon when we took a water taxi to the best beach in the area, she was like a born again dolphin!

However, after the massive high of Roatan Island, which by the way I would recommend for anyone looking for a diving trip (it has its own airport and you can fly in from Miami and Houston I believe - Sis take note), we were unfortunately to hit the low point of our trip.

A 22 hour journey beginning at 5am in the morning saw us take the vomit comet back to dry land, and begin what can only be described as the most arduous bus journey either of us had ever taken. See Honduras is essentially a developing nation and is much poorer than its neighbours so it seems. The roads are not developed, full of pot holes, and political tensions can spill over at any time. Well, that unfortunately is what happened. 20 plus protestors basically blocked the main highway across to Nicaragua where we were heading and stuck in the middle of mayhem, our driver decided that he wasnt prepared to wait until midday (when the protestors would go for lunch and the convoy could continue haha) so we took the scenic route through the hills over WORSE roads. Anyhow, not to dwell on that, we passed through some stunning terrain. The whole of Honduras, Nicaragua and parts of Guatemala are blessed with some huge rolling heavily forrested mountains which make for some breathtaking views. It was also reassuring and sometimes slightly unnerving to see so many checkpoints by the army and police who are ever vigilant. It is also quite common for banks and local stores to hire armed guards to stand outside with shotguns. Everybody seems to have shotguns in Honduras. For me it was quite a sight and Yvette quite rightly pointed out that it´s just not an English thing but can be quite a common sight across the Americas and should not be the basis by which to judge a country.

Eventually, after having spent 45 mins at the border with Nicaragua where we stood around like zombies and had to stamp out with Honduras and pay them, before stamping in with Nicaragua and paying THEM and work out excange rates with local dealers in the middle of the night(lots of fingers were involved)....we rolled into Granada, Nicaragua at 4am(!) absolutely shattered!! Everybody slept but me as I was paranoid that Mr Fernando Alonso racing bus driver was going to nod off or that I would have to shout if he even remotely lost concentration since he had been driving since 5am too. Unbelievable feat. Was quite amusing when we suggestively shoved a packet of biscuits through his driver window at 2am at the petrol station. haha

However, every cloud has a silver lining and Granada was a delight to behold.

For both me and Yvette Granada was one of the highlights of the trip so far. Whilst geographically Nicaragua is similar to Honduras, everything changed as soon as we crossed the border. The roads for a start are all smooth tarmac and very professionally done. I can´t tell you how much of a difference that made after hours of bracing with one hand on the roof and one hand on the seat in front. How people slept I do not know. Nicaragua was also noticable for its friendly people. Everyone would smile and say hello, and strangers wave at each other.

We had our orientation walk and then enjoyed a few beers in the sun in the afternoon in a beautiful central boulevard when before you could say whoopsadaisy or in the time it took me to get acquainted with yet another toilet seat :), the heavens decided to open above us and to call it torrential rain doesn´t do it justice. I literally couldn´t get outside to get to Yvette who was scrambling to get her jacket on. This was our first proper introduction to the rainforest unpredictable interchangeable weather patterns. That day we went on a walking tour of the City and learnt alot about its history being the oldest city in the Americas and took some nice pictures from the bell tower overlooking the city with the Volanoes in the distance. p.s. Cemeteries here are like works of art - large structures of every description. That night we had a pretty legendary booze up in an Irish pub (we felt we needed it after such an epic journey) and ended up in Karaoke where I was literally forced by one of our group to sing ´Can you feel the love tonight´ to an audience of emotional(drunk) Nicaraguans and one particularly vocally supportive Tequila ´sipping´ girlfriend...:) Just kidding - we all had a memorable(I think?)time.

The next day we took in Lake Nicaragua (the largest lake in Central America), and embarked upon an incredible tour of the islands that lie off it, and a fortress overlooking the city, which was used for persecution of all those who opposed Spanish rule or who were against the government. Yvette was pretty freaked out by the bats in there as it was pitch black and clung to me like a limpet. I took great interest in how much torchlight would make them fly...and fly they did...centimeters above our heads. That place was spooky and we were both pleased to get above ground again for the best panoramic views in the entire region.We were both impressed by the knowledge and humour of our clearly very passionate and patriotic tour guide who made our experience a memorable one..

From Granada we headed to yet another island - Ometepe. The place that I shall curse for ever more!

Home to a HUUGGEE active Volcano I decided it was time for a hiking challenge. Me and two other guys signed up for one of the most challenging hikes I have every undertaken. It was also to be the first day that I left Yvette :/ who went with the other guys on a tour of Ometepe Island. Setting off at 6.30am it was to take us 3 hours hiking at 30 degrees through thick forest and volcanic rocks higher up before we got to within 200m of the top (in the clouds) when we had to stop. Our guide had a call from the Police who told him that there was a significant risk following an Earthquake in Costa Rica that a landslide or eruption could occur at Mount Conception (the volcano) and that we were to return immediately. This was following our experience earlier in the forest of the Earthquake tremors when all three of us thought we were dehydrating and had something wrong with us as the whole world literally shook under us. I grabbed a tree and could not for the life of me figure out why I was feeling dizzy. We later learned that a large earthquake had caused significant damage in Costa Rica, where we were headed in a couple of days, and that its effects were felt across the whole of central america. These apparently happen up to 7times per year and sometimes result in an eruption so we understood a bit more the urgency to get us off the volcano upon our return.

The way down for me was far harder than the way up and I was literally ready to drop at the end of it because as soon as we reached the bottom of the volcano we had a 2 mile hike over uneven rocky cattle tracks. Needless to say I slept well that night but kept having back spasms throughout the night due to the exertion of a gruelling 6 hour hike. I said following that that I would not ever hike another volcano unless there was a chance of seeing lava.

Yvette also had a tough day with a 3 hour hike that unfortunately she didn´t get on too well with, and a hot spring that was nothing like hot...more like freezing cold or as Yvette put it ´like frickin Antarctica!´. Anyhow - if you see the picture of her rope swinging into it it looks like they had a lot of fun regardless :) That night as we sat in rocking chairs on our balcony overlooking the lake the most violent storm moved in and Yvette was amusingly on Tsunami alert as one had been issued earlier in the day. Lightning and thunder as we'd never seen before passed overhead and made for one hell of a show by mother nature in all her glory. We did however have a nice meal that night and an early night for the next day of travelling on to the action packed fun filled land of Costa Rica!!

Hope everyone´s doing well at home - we´ve literally applied a blanket news and fb ban so that we can enjoy our travels to the max so no idea what´s going on but please do leave us a message or email us...we´d love to hear from you. Having a blast!! Onwards we go...!

Phil and Yvette

xx