Cayos Cochinos...otherwise known as yet another fantastic tropical paradise vacation taken on a long weekend. Man, do I love my life here!

There are many things that one has to get used to when living in a different country. Language, cultural differences, public transportation, extreme poverty, etc. But one of those things that I do not think I will ever quite get used to are the awesome weekend trips that my friends and I are able to take. Recently, we were given an extra day off school in celebration of Columbus discovering the Americas, and on our three day weekend we lived in up, once again, and traveled to La Ceiba and the Cayos Cochinos (a group of islands in the Caribbean) for what I believe to be the best ever 3-day weekend.

We first started our adventure by once again riding horses from our hotel to these fantastic natural hotsprings where we were able to completely relax under the hot waterfall in the middle of a tropical jungle.

The rest of these pictures are taken from the Cayos Cochinos, which are part of the island chain that form Roatan and Utila as well. But unlike Roatan and Utila, these islands are almost completely uninhabited, which in turn for us means that we were able to play around in our own tropical beach islands without seeing another tourist or having to pay tourist prices. How much did this all cost you may ask? For chartering our own private boat to take us to islands 1 hour off the coast, go island hopping, and have a great fresh grilled fish and plantain meal on the beach, we each paid about $25. We were literally there all day, and the boat picked us up and dropped us off in front of the hotel.

The island where we ate our delicious meal is inhabited by the Garifuna, which are Afro-Caribes who have managed to keep a lot of their heritage. They speak a form of Creole that is a combination of Spanish, English, and native languages. Resources are limited on the island, but remarkably they did have electrical wires that reached the island.

Enjoy these pictures!

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