Utila

in theory a beautiful caribbean island with world class scuba diving and snorkeling is a piece of heaven, but theory sucks, and for me its been a load of medical bull crap. the first part was just being sick again, which is whatever, it comes with traveling. the second part, however, has been the real pain, which is that i´m trying to learn to dive but everyone is too concerned with my heart condition and wont let me. well they will, but they just need someone to sign the medical release, and the heart doctor at home doens´t know enough about scuba, and the scuba and heart guy at home doesn´t know enough about me, and its a very complicated mess and i just want to dive. the whole point of diving is not exerting yourself and just kicking slowly along, making the whole thing even more rediculous since i can play basketball and soccer with no real issue. but legal is legal and no one wants to be responsible for everything and it is frustrating as all hell. on the other hand, they let me go as far with the training as doing the shallow water practice, so even if it ends up that i cant go all the way, i at least got to breathe underwater which was pretty cool. but enough about that. before coming here i was the la ceiba for a couple nights. one of the days was very exciting, in which i went to a real modern mall which had no garbage on the ground, air conditioning, enormous tvs, a food court, and escalators! it was truly amazing being in a building like that again after all this time. after we left there, the day just got better when we went to an insect museum that a private collector set up basically in his house. but he had the worlds heaviest beetle (1/4 pound), biggest butterfly, butterfly w/ the longest proboscis (something like 3 feet), shiniest butterfly, beetle with the longest legs, and a walking stick that was a foot long. there were also frog beetles that looked like theyd taken steroids their back legs were so big. the really huge beetles look exactly like small tanks, all with these huge horns/antlers. i also held a live tarantula there. the owner described catching the huge beetles in the nearby forest, which involved going out with lights and netsat like 3 in the morning, which is when theyre active, and then just snagging them. apparently they aren´t too quick in the air. while we were there we also read a book that a guy had written on his experiences traveling the world trying all the bugs that people eat everywhere, which was fascinating. then we got hungry and got dinner. ive been feeling a little more homesick lately, although maybe its just because ive been moving around so much and haven´t really been settled for a while now. so im thinking about maybe finding some more volunteerwork to do. but at the same time theres so much left to see! dillema dillema. ill play it by ear as always.

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