Week two of my last hurrah before I start my surgery rotation in Dec finds me on the island of Caye Caulker in Belize. I am sending this e-mail from someone in town's account who rents it out, so don't reply back; because I won't get the message. Lots has happened and I am getting charged by the 15 min, so I'll get to it.

Two Saturdays ago, my roommate, Joel, and I landed in Guatemala City to start our one and only vacation for the rest of this year. Randomly, another guy from our rotation, Vik, was on the flight. Vik's luggage never arrived, so we accompanied him to Antigua, the old capital and current backpacker HQ, to get him set up. The next day, we caught the Antigua vs. Universidad (Guat City's team) soccer game that was exciting and rowdy before catching a minivan to Panajachel on Lake Atitlan where we bought Vik a bunch of Guatemalan clothes to wear for the rest of his trip and a cheap backpack to put it in. Just like the Visa commercial! Then we caught a boat to San Pedro, a totally laid back community on the other side of the lake. There, I had myself a custom made pair of huarache sandals made by Mr. Man and we bought Vik the only kind of underwear they sold in town, undersized argyle bikini briefs! After a day of mellowness, Joel and I jammed back to Antigua and made arrangements for a minibus to take us the next morning to the ruins of Copan in Honduras, near the border w/ Guat, and then drop us off on the south Caribbean side of Guat in Rio Dulce from which we would hire a boat to take us downriver to the Garifuna (former slaves) community of Livingston. Copan was incredible and worth a rough ride to get there. The ruins you can see are built on top of something like 13 former cities, since each new king would bury the old one's city and rebuild on top of it. From Livingston, we took a boat over to the southern tip of Belize at Punto Gordo from which we took another rough bus ride up to Belize City where we spent the night. The next day we caught a launch to Caye Caulker where we have been soaking up the tropical rays and mindset for the past 4 days. Caye Caulker is the backpacker's version of Caye Ambergis whose city, San Pedro, is sung about in Madonna's song "Spanish Lullaby" ("I dreamt last night of San Pedro..."). Our second day here, we took a snorkeling tour that took us to swim with bat rays and nurse sharks and through all kinds of coral gardens and it also dropped us off for lunch on Caye Ambergis. Snorkeling having renewed my passion for diving, I talked one of the dive operators into letting me go on the most epic SCUBA diving trip the offer here, the Blue Hole, despite the fact that I don't have my diving license with me. They say they checked my license on the internet. The next morning I was on a boat at 7 am heading two hours out to sea to the Blue Hole in the center of Lighthouse Reef. The Blue Hole is a natural phenomenon that is somewhat famous in the diving community. It is a 422' deep x 100 m diameter hole surrounded by a very shallow reef on all sides where an island caved in on itself a long time ago. I was a little nervous about the Blue Hole being the first dive since I hadn't dove in 6 years, the equipment was a different brand than I was used to, and the dive is a very technical deep water dive going to 135' (my deepest before that was a 100' wreck dive outside of Avalon on Santa Catalina Island). We had also boated through some stormy rain to get there so it was kind of dark, grey, and ominous overhead as well as in the hole. The assistant dive master was assigned to by my buddy, since I didn't have one. I waited to go down last with him and got settled on a 35' shelf over the abyss as the others started descending into it. Unfortunately, another diver had trouble clearing his ears, so the assistant dive master/my buddy had to go up and help him leaving me to have to catch up with the other 8 divers with the main divemaster below. It was kind of like a reverse fear of heights, where the deeper you go the more you say to yourself, "Don't look up!" The trail of bubbles was endless rising up to the still visible surface above. At 120', I was still 15 feet above the group who were now entering some cave-like overhangs and disappearing in and out from underneath. Just then, I saw an 8' bull shark cruising about 30' below and an anaesthetic tingle overtook my entire body. It got stronger and stronger and more and more disorienting until I realized I was intoxicated with nitrogen narcosis. I rose back up to 100' and it got milder and hovered above until the group came back up to me. The other two dives were wall dives where you would peer over the wall and look over a 2000' ledge into darkness. We say spotted eagle rays, lobsters, morays, and lots of other stuff. My time is up now, but I will be back on Friday after seeing Tikal and a volcano back by Antigua. Hope all is well and love y'all lots.

Peace,
Chris Elliott