Hi/bye for now...

Well, for anyone who's been checking I'm sorry to have left it so long, mum. A lot has happened since I last posted, but I got rather disheartened after the trouble with the bike in Guatemala and getting it fixed. Paying Fritz the mechanic turned out to be quite a bit of bother, I got some weird lurgi which knocked me sideways for a day and the upshot was that yet another must see bit of Guatemala got missed. I felt so churned up about it that I almost ground my teeth and nearly cried with the frustration of it all. And that made me feel like a spoilt brat. I'm so privileged to be on this trip. I was just wishing very fervently indeed that it didn't have to end so soon and that I didn't have to rush through. Anyway. A lot has happened since then. *SURPRISE* we are currently all the way down in Costa Rica. missed all the stuff when we went to Antigua, Guatemala. An old Spanish colonial city, once capital of Guate. Cobbled streets and delapidated grandeur. Big highlight for a lot of people travelling around Guatemala, heaving with Gringos. Only had an afternoon and an evening there before Charlie and I embarked on a long ride out of G, heading for Honduras. This was last Sunday. We hostelled ourselves in the town of Copan Ruinas, home of one of the major sets of Mayan ruins in Central America, the next morning to set off early and check em out. I have now seen some Mayan ruins and will shut up about it v shortly. We saw some Mayan ruins. There are photos and some video footage. I got quite excited about it. I'm entering skool diary mode: Then. we. went. back. to. the. town. and. got. ready. to. leave. Honduras. New and exotic. But by now we were on a mission to get to Nicaragua where my friend James had a surf school, so I thought. Anyway. It turned out not to be a surf school or shack, but more on that in a minute. We had to get to Southern Nicaragua and we were in a hurry about it. So we crossed the whole of Honduras and half of Nica in a day. But not before we'd got stuck with Charlie's token motorbike problem which I'm sure he was only doing to make me feel ok about the troubles with mine. I think it's a dud battery. Anyway, we now travel with a charger. But for one day we didn't know how it would be with Charlie's bike and we wanted to cover about 400 miles so we set off at 7am and rode until 6pm and got bloody miles. All the way thru H and well into N. Not quite to James' place but to the old Spanish colonial city of Granada. James met us in Granada, about 60 miles from his place and he took our heavy boxes and luggage with him, leaving us with luxury of lithe, (relatively) lightweight bikes and we rode like banshees along dirt tracks in the insane heat of Nicaragua, eventually to find ourselves at James' house. It was lovely, we stayed for 4 days, we were looked after with the kindest of hospitality, we swum in his pool a lot. We played with the kids, all hung out, went surfing. We tried to surf. I did not achieve my goal of catching a wave and riding down the face of it and turning at the bottom. That turned out to be a tall order but I'm getting there. I will surf more. But the waves were HUMUNGOUS and really intimidating. I have no photos. That was a lovely 4 days. We went to a double volcano island on a boat. There are a couple of photos. I'm fitting a lot in here as you may have sensed. Now we are in Costa Rica. There is other stuff that I have neglected of course, but that's because it's been two weeks since I posted anything. See below for stuff about last two weeks up until now. X