I had an excellent weekend, we hitched to a place called Lake Yojoa which (unsurprisingly) has a huge lake. We stayed in a hotel right on the lakeside with a view across the 4km of water to the distant mountains. We were in the pool enjoying the sunshine and watched a storm over the mountains with lightning flashing in the clouds etc. Very cool, then it started to come towards us so we left the pool and went and sat in hammocks under a coconut-leaf shelter whilst the storm passed over, it was the closest loudest thunder I've ever heard 'cos this lake is still at quite a high altitude we were close to the clouds.

Then the storm stopped and it was tropical sunshine again so we went back to the pool.

We had a delicious tea of fish caught in the lake and spent the evening in the bar - I beat Stu at pool, he was not impressed because I'd said (totally honestly) that I'd only played about 5 games ever.

Then the bar closed at 9:30 for some reason so we went for a walk around the lake and wasted some time making our shadows look like we had legomen hands. Quality stuff!

On Sunday we went to a place called Pulhapanzak which has a huge waterfall, we paid a guide to take us behind the water, it was mad, none of this English tourism pathways and handrails crap, we were jumping into pools and climbing up rocks and going single file across slippery paths with tons of water pouring onto our heads from 150 metres up! I couldn't see, breathe or hear anything over the roar of the water, it was pulling us everywhere - totally excellent.

The guide also took us to the top of the waterfall, well worth it, again there was no safety consideration at all, we were stood right close to the edge at the top of the waterfall with the water tugging at our ankles, it was quite scary really but cool.
Then we jumped into the river from a high rock. I wasn't sure 'cos I'm a bit chicken about going underwater but I agreed to do it if the others did, I said I'd just go for it and I don't think they believed me 'cos when I just walked up to the edge and jumped right off they were all well impressed, everyone else had to take a minute tó prepare themselves! It was well worth it.

After being given a delicious lunch in a church, we were just walking past and they dragged us in and fed us! we got the last bus back and rode in luxury - well, some of us did, Richard and Stuart decided to race us back hitching. All very good in theory and they were only about 15 minutes behind but about 2 minutes after we got on the bus it started to rain! we had the whole back half of the bus to ourselves and there were no chickens on board so it was a cool ride home.

I'll introduce you to some of the other people I went with - Have I told you about Derek? I must have, he is the oldest person in our group at 55 and he's lovely. He does have an unfortunate habit of wandering off and taking 10 minutes to get ready to do anything though. He's a good laugh though, I was feeling a bity self-conscious about climbing about over rocks in a swimsuit until Derek emerged from behind a rock in zebra print speedos!! what a guy!

Georgina has been here for 4 months already, she is English and a couple of years younger than me, she's quiet and quite reserved, we're the only 2 that don't drink much so we kindof gravitated together. She's really nice.

Helena has been here for 5 months, she's really cool, for a start she's only 21 and is totally drop-dead gorgeous. 6ft tall, white blonde hair, size 10 and really tanned. She's a really good laugh, has all the local boys totally in love with her and is our official translator as she speaks good spanish. We were talking for hours the other day, she's very open about her past psychiatric problems, her arms and legs are literally covered in scars from where she used to cut herself and she's been in and out of psychiatric hospitals all through her teenage years until 3 years ago when she just stopped, it's totally amazing that she is here and doing this.

Andy is from somewhere around Bolton and is really funny, he's about my age and we can reminisce about programmes we watched before Stu was even born which really pisses Stu off!

Well, they are just a few of the characters here.

I was supposed to have a day off school tomorrow for a bank holiday but apparently some peole from Save the Children in England are coming to visit so we're going to have the day off on Friday.

I actually had a day off yesterday, but it wasn't much fun, I got bitten on the ankle in Pulhapanzak, they weren't really itchy but yesterday I got up and my ankle had swollen up and the bites look like big blood-bruises. I'ts gone back to normal size today but I couldn't fit my boots on yesterday!

and yes mum, I am taking the malaria tablets still.

well, that's about it... oh yeah, I found out that everyone feels the same way as Richard, it's not just me being an irritable cow! Helena came close to pushing him off the waterfall!

WEll, better go get my dinner now, Olga has asked me to cook her Shepherds Pie one day so I'm going to check out what we have in the kitchen. All the families are like this, the first volunteers they had cooked them something and now they think that's the only traditional dish there is in England!