California baby!

In Hollywood :)

We landed in San Francisco, where the first thing we did was to sleep at the airport (becoming quite the habit it seems..). The following morning it didn't take us long to get down to Union Square using the easy public transportation, and finding a hostel called Globetrotters In. It was a clean hostel, and even though $20 is alot for budget-travellers used to $2 hostels in South and Central America, this was definetly one of the cheapest ones in SF, and it even included breakfast; the american style, toast with peanutbutter, and coffee. The second thing that happened was that we met Avior, Ido and Denny, 3 israelian guys that was on a spontaneus 1day trip to SF from LA, where Avior lived and studied. 5 minutes later we had arranged our first couchsurfing experience when we got to LA, saving us money for hostels, and making new friends.

Day 1 in San Francisco we shopped till we dropped; literally. (Tina fell asleep at 7pm.) We spent hours in stores, and spent well over our daily budget, so the couchsurfing couldn't have come at a better time. In the afternoon we went walking in Chinatown, and not being able to resist the temptation of a good laugh, we walked into a place where the sign read "psychic". Tina, according to her tarotcards, is going to have great success with both her career, and her lovelife. Exciting, huh? Marthe found out that she was born with 7 stars (whatever that means) but missed 4 of them, leaving only 3 surrounding her, disturbing.. She told her new card-reader (the first one got a call on his cell-phone and walked off), that what she was telling Marthe didn't match with what the other guy wrote, trying to confuse them, which ended in both of them being really offended, and more or less kicked us out. At least she didn't have to pay. Haha. After this we ate taco-salad at a mexican fast-food place, before we went back to the hostel, and fell asleep.

Day 2 we rented bikes down by Fisherman's wharf, and bicycled across the Golden Gate Bridge. We stopped at lot of places to talk to people, and take pictures, so when we finally made it across the bridge to Sausalito, the town you arrive in where most people take a ferry back to SF from, the ferries had stopped going back, leaving us to bicycle back to SF as well, in the cold wind. But it did give us some great pictures of the sunset, and we met a funny american guy hanging out with an enthusiastic german girl, so it was all worth it. :) After that we went to see Fast5 at the cinema. It was a really entertaining movie, and we had a lot of fun. A wonderful day.

The next day we bicycled back down to Fisherman's wharf to hand in our bikes. On our way we found a hairdresser, and met the sweetest hairdresser ever. His name was Trevor, and we were bestfriends by the time we left the salon; all pretty-looking. We had lunch at In'n'out burger, a delicious burgerplace, said to be where all the celebrities in california go when they want burgers. That night we met up with Amy, a lady that Tina and her family met 2 years ago in Greece. She took us to the "crookedest street", a really narrow street filled with so many turns it just looks like a spiral, and to the Coit Tower to watch the sunset.



Us at the Alcatraz with view over San Francisco :)



Our last day in San Francisco we went to the Alcatraz, the famous prison on "the rock". We both enjoyed the tour that took us through the prison where Al Capone, and many other famous criminals had once been locked up. That afternoon we went to the park with two guys from our hostel, and watched the sunset, and the evening lights over San Francisco. Tina played soccer with a bunch of short mexican guys, while Marthe taught Ray about Norway, before we both taught the coolest hippie ever to say "Du er pen, min lille smule", which means "you are pretty, my little crumb" and was the sentence he learned from each language, to say to the girls he met. The menu this evening was easy: it read Burger King, and beer with the guys at the hostel. However, the ultimate failure from Burger King occured when Marthe, starving, saw that her hamburger missed the essential; the burger. Who the hell forgets the burger, when they work at Burger King? That's what they do...



The hippie we met in the park :)



We went by Amtrack on the coastline going to LA, which took us almost 13 hours. It was a nice journey, where we saw whales playing in the ocean. Avior came and picked us up at the trainstation, and made spaghetti bolognese for dinner. The next day Ido took us sightseeing in Los Angeles while Avior was at school. We walked down The Walk of Fame and got a tour in Beverly Hills to see all the celebreties' houses. Later we went with Avior to the Observatory where we had a great view over LA and the Hollywood sign. In the evening we made dinner: real norwegian food for the guys, they loved it, but found it weird that we use jam on meat. Avior, Ido and an american friend of theirs, Matt, drove to Vegas that night. So now it was us and Aviors room mate, Aviv, left in the appartement. Since the public transport obviously suck in LA we decided to rent a car. Trying to find Universal Studios we spent 3 hours on and off the freeways, all lost. When we finally got there, the ticketsale was closed... But we still got to eat a good dinner and went to the cinema there to see Thor, which was really good! :)

Marthe is making the meatballs :D

Avior - Our nice couchsurfing host :)

Our last day in LA we drove down to Santa Monica beach and spent the whole day there since our flight didn't leave until 11.30 pm. We went walking along the promenade, doing some gymnastics at the beach, taking a few rollercosters, listen to kids singing and watching hot guys playing volleyball. Later we met Matt, Hannah (a cute couple we met at the train from SF) and their friend Cody for dinner. We hung out with them till it was time to return the rentalcar, and go to the airport, flying to Fiji!!! :)

Cody, Matt, Hannah, Tina and Marthe. Our last night in California :)

Open water certificate & two nasty hotels!

After a long day by boat, bus and taxi we came to La Ceiba in Honduras, the city where you take the ferry out to Utila, the island we were heading for. Famous for cheap, and great diving. Because we arrived in La Ceiba late at night, the last ferry for the day had already gone, so we had to find somewhere to spend the night. We arrived here when it was semana santa (easter), and La Ceiba seemed like the place to be, because all the hotels were full, except one hostel. We checked in there to a tiny room, with faded wall painting, a broken toilet, a fan and a small tv. After an unpleasant shower we watched Pirates of the Caribbean in spanish and went to sleep. Waking up the next day we found loads of people sleeping at the balkony on mattresses and on the floor, there was vomit everywhere and some people were walking around and it looked like they hadn't gone to sleep yet.. Funny experience!

Arriving at Utila we went into the first Dive Centre we found: Captain Morgan's dive centre. They signed us up for starting at the same day and shipped us out to a little, nice island named Jewel Key. It was so relaxed and nice there. The hotel we stayed at had a sundeck with hammocks right outside, and to walk from one end to the other of the island took us 5 minutes.

Day 1 of the course we had to read a lot and watch some diving movies. Later that night we went to one of four restaurants on the island and had a fishplate for dinner. Day two of our course we learned how to pack and organize the diving equipment, and we did some training in shallow water just next to the sundeck. It was a strange but very cool experience to be able to breathe under water for the first time. Our diveinstuctor was a girl from Spain named Elena, she was a really sweet girl and a good teacher which we had a lot of fun with.

The hotel and the sundeck.

Marthe, Tina and Christopher.

Day 3 and 4 we went out with the diving boat and did some deep water diving, that was awesome!! We saw barracudas, morenes, a turtle, and loads of other amazing aquatic animals and plants. On our last dive we also saw a shipwrek, played with a torpedo and we danced the macarena under water! The whole team of dive instructors were really friendly and cool people. We also got to know a guy who lived on the Island, Cristopher, who sometimes joined as a captain on the diving boat. He was a really nice guy and taught us about the culture in Honduras and about the 7 (?) different churches that was on that little island.

On wednesday 27th of April we had our last day here, and before taking the ferry back to the mainland at 2pm we had two fundives that was included in the course. Since we had a flight from Belize City friday 29th April we didn't have much time to get there. So we took the ferry at 2pm to La Ceiba, hopped on a bus to San Pedro Sula, and another bus to Puerto Cortes where we had to stay for the night, still in Honduras. Here we found a hotel in the middle of nowhere, with no chance of searching for better options. So we took it, got to our room ready for a shower after a long day with dirty and hot busses. A shower however, seemed more dirty than skipping it, after we opened the showercurtains to display a used condom! On top of it all, we only had one pillow and there was a huge hole in the mattress.

The next day we hopped on the bus and got to the border of Guatemala, and took the bus again  to Puerto Barrios where we took a boat to Punta Gorda in Belize. From Punta Gorda we had a 6 hour bus trip in the so called chicken bus. The chicken buses are old american school buses, and the reason for the name is that the locals often bring chickens on it, which we didn't experience on this ride. We were thinking of just spending the night at the airport when we arrived to Belize City, to save some money. But since we had been traveling for two days and felt really dirty we decided to spend the night at a hostel. We found a hostel where it was actually cheaper than the one with the condom in the shower, it was breakfast included and our room was clean and looked like a proper hotelroom with a big, nice bathroom. We really appreciated to be able to take a nice and warm shower, and we were ready for California baby! :D