I arrived back from Honduras less than a week ago and just now finished (re)packing my bags after the last 6 days of visiting with family in New Jersey and Connecticut. The last week seems like a whirlwind of memorial day barbeques, graduations, and driving back and forth—not quite the routine period of vegging out I normally have between trips, but I guess I didn't have much time to get bored. I'm headed down to Raleigh, North Carolina tomorrow morning for 10 days of Broadreach staff training for the trips I'll be leading in Costa Rica the next two months. I'll be leading a workshop or two, mentoring new staff, and of course seeing my old BR friends—Dora, Erin, Tatiana, and many more, all of which I'm really looking forward to despite the 12 hour + work days. I'm flying down to San Jose, Costa Rica on June 7^th. I'll have over a week to travel on my own before the first group arrives, and am hoping to get to travel to either Nicaragua or Panama during that time.

The remainder of my time in Honduras was excellent, except for one unfortunate incident. I was in bed in my apartment when two guys broke in and stole my backpack. Miraculously, I actually was awake when it happened and saw the guys in the living room through the door, which was halfway open. Half asleep and not quite sure what to do, I jumped out of bed and started shouting at the top of my lungs (I didn't really want to surprise or corner them). The guys bolted, and with the adrenaline rush I ended up chasing them halfway down the street with no shoes and only my underwear on, screaming bloody murder the whole way! I normally keep lots of valuables in that backpack (camera, wallet, sunglasses, etc etc) but in another extraordinary coincidence, the only thing of any value in it at the time was my MP3 player, as well as a lot of my personal things (dive log, book, sunblock). The most surprising thing of all, however, is that somehow the backpack ended up on my back door two days later with everything in tact except the MP3 player. There were lots of suspicious circumstances surrounding the whole event, I'm really relieved to only be down an MP3 player, but it kind of left a bad taste in my mouth and I wish I could know the whole story...

My dad and stepmother came down to visit for my last week in Utila. I had a nice time diving with them and actually got to lead them on every dive. It was great to be able to share a small slice of my lifestyle with my family, if only for a few days. We didn't see any more whale sharks (in the end I only saw that one with Angie) but did see more dolphins, and lots of other awesome sea creatures. They were only planning to dive 3 days initially, but in the end decided to dive all 4 days they were in Utila, and we got in 8 varied dives which were all really wonderful. On the last day we did two killer north side dives—Blackish point, which has awesome walls and overhangs, and Duppy waters, one of the best dives on the island. I'll never forget swimming along the sand channel when it narrows, then opens up and drops off to a vertical wall into the blue ocean. After the dive we continued all the way around the island and had lunch on Pigeon Cay.

From Utila we rented a car and drove across the country to the border with Guatemala and El Salvador where we visited the ancient Mayan ruins of Copan. It was a beautiful drive and we stopped in a few small towns on the way. The ruins themselves were quite impressive, complete with pyramids, tunnels, statues, and brightly colored Macaw parrots and cashew trees. We drove to the Guatemalan border and they let us cross in a few hundred feet on foot—we didn't get our passports stamped (just as well since mine is almost out of space and I'll probably need every page for the next few months), I'm still deciding if I'll claim Guatemala as a country I've been to (I don't think it counts) Nonetheless, in the end were all very satisfied after a great trip!