All there is to do here is dive and drink, so if you're not diving....?

The volcano was amazing, and so hot and cold at the same time. It was chilly with the wind because we were so high, but the HOT MOLTEN LAVA 5 feet away from us was about as hot as you can imagine it would be. which is very.

Next we boarded a bus at 4 am on our way to Copan, Honduras. We visited the Mayan ruins there, which were beautiful and incredible. thousands of intricate heiroglyphics on stairs and sacrificial altars. I accidentally climbed on a spot i wasnt supposed to, though, and had to be told to get down. that was awkward.

After Copan we headed up to Utila, a Bay Island in the Caribbean. Most backpackers go there to get their diving certification, but I was terrified of it and also couldnt really afford it, so we decided not to. We instead spent the four days lounging on the beach, snorkeling, and yes, drinking. Every time we met someone, they would say, ¨are you diving?'' and we would say ''no'' and they were always SO SHOCKED. It was my first time snorkeling, though, and it was incredible. I was pretty worried that I would be freaked out doing it, because of my intense fears of both water and fish, but I really loved it. So now we are making plans to return to Utila next year and dive. Come with me! We got lots of tips about which schools there hire instructors that wont show up hungover to class in the morning. valuable advice.

A ferry and two bus rides later, we found ourselves at Lago de Yojoa, at a hostel and brewery run by a guy named bob from Oregon. ''halfway between portland and astoria,'' is what he told me. We drank delicious beers (that we have not been able to find anywhere since we started this trip) including ales and porters, ate hashbrowns for breakfast and burgers for lunch, floated down a river, rode in the back of two different trucks, found an amazing view of the lake, performed a lot of ''hammok maintenance,'' as bob calls it, and met an amazin woman who has just survived breast cancer and encouraged us to keep traveling. She traveled for all of her 20s, just working jobs in between trips to pay for the trips. She got cancer at 35 and told us that if she had died, she would have died happy because she chose to live her life how she wanted, not how society told her to, which is to get a job and work towards retirement. We loved Dana.

We are leaving for Nicaragua tomorrow after meeting a friend from Seattle at the airport in Tegucigalpa. She is a friend of Kristen and Ashley's, but sounds great so i'm excited to meet her.

i'll put up more pictures soon! go to http://www.flickr.com/photos/cookieredd/collections/72157607804936111/ to see pictures that all three of us have taken. Most of the pictures are from Mexico, but hopefully we'll get Central America up there before we change continents.