Relaxing at the Lake

After I last posted yesterday, I ran into an old guy, Ernie, that I had met that morning on the van ride to the lake. We talked for a while and I decided to go on a 2 hour horse riding trip with him the next morning. He had met some greek guy a couple weeks ago and managed to find the house of the horse owner by memory from the recalled directions. I couldn´t have found the place even if I had a map... it was down a lot of twisting garden paths with at least a dozen turns. I agreed to meet him early in the morning so I headed back to my hotel to get dressed for the town´s nightlife. I met a couple of Canadians (Greg and Brendan) who are next door to me. Btw, that´s a picture from my hotel room´s balcony. The cost of the room is $4 per night but I got talked into paying $6 so I´m a sucker ;P

I hung out with them for the rest of the day/night... they work on repairing ships at drydock up in Victoria and they decided to take off 4 months to travel. One of them has spent a bit of time in Central America already and lived in my current town, San Pedro, for a month so he knows all the places to hang out here. We went off to some restaurant that he liked and indeed I thought it was pretty swell too. It has a largist courtyard with table scattered about under thatched umbrellas with candles and ther was an open campfire in the middle of it all. They played the sountrack to Trainspotting before going on a Beetles binge as we knocked back many many beers. The guy who was here before has also spent a month on this tiny (2 acres) island in Belize called Tobbacco Caye that Erika and I also spent a few days on. He spent his time spearfishing, conche diving, drinking of course, and paying 8 doallars a day total. I´m wicked jealous.

We headed home at 2 when the bars closed, a couple hours after is legally permitted, and I definitely missed my 8:45 rendevouz with Ernie and the horses. I left a note on his hotel door appologising and maybe I´ll run into him later. He likes it so much here that he´s staying for a week. That´s pretty much the opinion of everyone that i´ve met but I´m going to start heading towards Honduras tomorrow. I´ve been mapping out how many days I´ll take in each place in my head, and I´ve got around 7 days that I haven´t got much of a plan for yet. Maybe I´ll stay in some beach town and try to get my open-water scuba license that´s required to take any kind of scuba tour that´s available. It takes several days and I´ve never had the time on any other trip to do it. Here´s a pic of some cafe I havent tried yet next to the water. Despite the ratty pictures that I´ve put up of this town, its not so shabby and I rather like it.