Greetings from beautiful Lagoon Marina in La Ceiba, Honduras! We got here a couple of days ago from Puerto Escondido. After waiting for a light wind day, we motored like crazy to make the 53 miles eastward. The beginning and end were a little bumpy, but the middle part of the trip was fine. The mountains that you see all over as you head along the coast are really beautiful.

We were having such a good time hiking on a few trails at Puerto Escondido's park but on the second day, after coming back to our dinghy, we found that someone had gone through all of our belongings in our dinghy and took nearly everything that wasn't locked down. It amounted to petty theft, but it still creeped us out and left us disgusted as well. They took our lifejackets, all of our new outboard repair tools (we sort of need these), our sunscreen, a waterproof flashlight that we hunted all over to find in the US, our bug repellent (trying not to get malaria!) and even our bailer! It's just that getting these things replaced here will be nearly impossible and also expensive. You're supposed to carry things in your dinghy for safety and then we get all this stuff to have in it and it gets stolen. UHHH! Needless to say, we were panicked about the big boat where there is much more valuable stuff to steal and rushed back to find everything in place. We never left the boat again; instead we spent the next day doing some boat projects like varnishing and engine maintenance. While in Placencia, our outboard motor lift broke and our new outboard motor went plummeting down 25 feet into the salt water! Jon spent a lot of time recovering, purging the salt water and then oiling the engine to help prevent damage. Even though it still looks like brand new, it isn't running as good as it was before this happened! We're still working on getting it running better as its essentially our car. So, all hasn't been perfect in "paradise"!

We're SO glad to be in this marina! It is up a river, filled with shrimp boats and mountain scenery. The owners are German and somehow maintain park-like grounds with extensive landscaping. There's a preety pool, great showers, wifi, and nice docks. The mornings are hot with the sun beaming right down onto the boat, but in the afternoon, the sun goes behind the trees and the afternoon breeze picks up and makes it very pleasant. The marina gives free rides into the town of La Ceiba and there are lots of tour opportunities here. Yesterday, we went into town to check it out, walk around and have lunch. The town is centered around the Dole Fruit Company. The company was originally called Standard Fruit. Because of their presence, there is beautiful landscaping in spots with trees that are so immense and colorful that you can't believe your eyes. I want to visit a botanical garden so I can learn what these plants are. This one tree wasn't very large around, but it was very high and the bark was perfectly smooth, striped with green, red, brown and tan- never seen anything like it! There are old train tracks from the days when they transported the fruit by train, but now almost all of it is done by truck. The streets are wider than most Central American towns and there seems to be more money here, so the city is prettier than most. We're really enjoying the scenery after so many weeks in Belize, where the water was nice, but the land features weren't that exciting.

We're headed out today to the Jungle River Lodge to do some touring. If you do two tours, you get to stay overnight for free at the lodge. We plan to do a canopy zip-line tour today, then white water rafting tomorrow. Another cruising couple told us the rafting was really "white" and vigorous- we'll see!