So, now I’ve spent some time on my trip learning to both surf and dive.  The big question is obviously “Which was better?”  After all, they’re both on the beach, they both involve a sort of initiation into a larger group (or cult!) of people, and they both involve me getting a really bad sunburn.

It probably isn’t entirely fair for me to compare them, as I didn’t spend close to an equible amount of time and money on the two, so what follows are only my own opinions, etc etc etc.  Feel free to disagree!

 Surfing:  I went to El Salvador for three days to try and learn to surf.  I wanted to be able to rent a board later on in my travels and get by.  I failed utterly at this - perhaps because I choose a beach with quite difficult waves to learn on.  The learning curve for surfing is incredibly high.  Allow me to approximate my time spent surfing.

Paddle paddle paddle paddle, wave that pushes you back to where you started from, paddle paddle wave paddle paddle… arms falling off, board rubbing skin hurts, paddle paddle paddle wave…  repeat for fifteen to twenty minutes.

Past the break!  Wait for a good wave, avoid other surfers.  Wait wait wait.  Hmm, all these waves are starting to make me feel a bit seasick.  Wait wait wait.  OMG HUGE WAVE COMING… paddle paddle paddle.  Caught it!  Moving fast, try and stand up.

Crash.  Immediately.  Salt water in my mouth, pulled under the wave, board pulled in opposite direction, swallowing more water, can’t breath, push to surface.  Surface! Safe!  OMG HUGE WAVE… not on the board, pushed under water, board pulled away, swallow more water, can’t breath… surface, another wave, and so it goes until I manage to get out of the way.

Then repeat.

It wasn’t much fun. I actually decided to only do two days of surfing rather than the full three: my sunburn was hurting and I felt sick after two days from all the salt water I’d swallowed.  A general travel rule I’ve been trying to follow is that if something isn’t fun, if I dislike it, or if I don’t feel comfortable… then I don’t do it.  And I definitely don’t pay for it.  So, I ended early, relaxed the third day, and set off to the Bay Islands to learn how to scuba dive.

 Diving:  There are two main options for where to stay and learn to dive on the Bay Islands - Utila and Roatan.  Utila is a bit of a younger, cheaper crowd whereas Roatan is more upscale.  I decided to stay on Utila, but looking back, I think I would have prefered Roatan - a slightly older crowd (I met almost no one over 25 in Utila) and an island with things to actually do besides dive!  That being said, Utila was still a nice place and the wide variety of delicious food options was a welcome break from weeks of beans and rice.

And the diving!  I loved it!  I started off with a four day Open Water course - two days of classroom videos and pool activities and two days of actual ocean diving.  Even just sitting in the pool with a mask was amazingly fun - much moreso than I imagined.  It’s hard to describe why sitting in two meters of water practicing taking a snorkel mask off or removing the regulator was actually fun.  I think it had something to do with the weightlessness, with the feel of breathing under water or the buoyancy - whatever it was, I liked it!  Going diving in open water was even better - watching turtles glide by, doing somersaults and watching fish from upside-down, listening to the steady thub thub thub of breathing and watching the bubbles glide upwards…

After my Open Water course I decided to stick around for the Advanced Course, where I did a drift dive, a deep dive to a wreck, a Bouyancy dive where we swam through hoops, a navigation dive, and a night dive.  I definitely plan on continuing diving throughout the trip.  The major downsides are of course the price and the giant cuts I got on my feet from the flippers that refused to  heal.

So, for me, it was pretty obvious which I prefered. I think if I had put more effort into surfing and actually managed to stand up and ride a wave I might have liked it, but the breaks at the particular beach I was at made it difficult.  I might try again in the future, but at the moment I much prefer diving!

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   Oh yes, the candy.  El Salvador seems to be the center of candy mass production in Central America - much of the factory produced candy in the region came from there - or China or the United States of course!  I’ll have another entry about that, but as for the locally produced candy, in El Salvador I found some sweet, very sticky taffies colored with a sugar syrup.  I don’t know the name, but they are pictured to the right.  Honduras had a lot of boiled candy (lollipops, little delicious colored balls of sugar, and shell shaped sweets.)  These candies were a bit grainy and more chalky than I was expecting.  They crumbled in the mouth.  The different colors didn’t correspond to any different flavors, alas!

I enjoyed the traditional candy in these countries, but it was much harder to find than in Mexico or Guatemala.  It appears that as the indigenous influence lessons, the variety and preponderance of dulces typicos decreases as well.  Fortunately, there was some interesting modern factory produced candy to take its place - to be discussed in the next entry!