The Baby Tour Begins... with the best!! WARNING lots of baby pics!!

Next stop San Francisco... well Berkeley to start with.

We had found a place to stay on my new favourite website airbnb.com (check it out!) And ended up with a lovely room in a local's house. We were free to come and go as we pleased and had use of the kitchen... and all for a bargain compared the options for hotels in the area.

Tadd relaxing in the front room of our "B n' B"

The main reason for the trip was to visit my brother and sister-in-law and meet my new, baby nephews... soooo cute!!

This was actually taken long before we got there... but I love this pic... Robbie & Will were so tiny that they had them sleeping in a tub.

Mummy Sheena with Robbie

A rather sleeping-looking Will

Robbie

Ian looking very proficient feeding Will

Robbie & Will in the double buggie that gets so much attention!!

Tammie with "her favourite!" (Whichever boy she's holding is her favourite!)

Super cute sepia pic Ian took of Robbie & Will

We did get a chance to go play in San Francisco... we opted against the bike tours this time and for the Muni day pass that gets you on all the buses, streetcars, cablecars... very fun!

There was some interesting art on the BART

... notice the design of the backpack!

Cable car

Of course, we stopped to eat in Chinatown!

Nice abstract of downtown SF

Down the dock in San Fran

Alcatraz with a race team practicing & the ferry

Just a cool plaque among the many in the streets of Berkeley

We managed to fit in time to have lunch with my friend Elsie

In fact, we had a lot of great food in SF... of course!! This was a fab burger joint in Berkeley

But it's not surprising there's such good food when they have so much amazing produce!!! And this is just in the everyday supermarket!! Eat your heart out East Coasters!!

Me, Tadd & Sheena enjoying our Provencal lunch... Yum!!

Ian & Paul

Family First

We spent a lovely few days down in Monticello, Indiana just chilling at Tadd's old house, where his parents, Joe & Linda, now live.

Monticello is out amid the farmlands of Indiana, about 2 hours south of Chicago

It's a lovely little town... I love this sculpture in the town square

Tadd's mum decided our visit was the perfect opportunity to get some of her family together for a bit of a reunion. His brother Brent & family came up from Bedford. There was quite a turnout if you ask me... but then again the Erb's are quite a large family compared to my own!!

A few more days of relaxing surrounded by the corn fields, it was time to head back to the airport and head off on the next leg of the trip...

Around the world... well not quite!

Tadd & I got back from the diving fun in Utila, and had just a day to get packed up and ready for us to head off to the US & UK.

Tadd trying out our Belizean mask

And so on September 7th, after much planning, we jumped on a plane and landed in Chicago. After a late arrival and a night's stay at a cheapy hotel near the airport, we headed into the city for a pleasant couple of days - it's the first time in years that I have been to Chicago in summer... how pleasant not to be blown down the streets and bundled from nose to toes!

Cool statue over the door of Tiffany's

The streets by night

The view from our fabulous hotel - the Holiday Inn Express... great deal via Hotels.com!!!

The river... we did a bunch of wandering around

And then it was off on the train to Indiana to visit Tadd's family.

SCUBA Anyone?

While we were traveling around Guatemala, Tadd & I were reminded, by a random poster in a random backpackers hostel, that we had considered becoming PADI scuba instructors when we had finished our Divemaster in 2009...

So fate or whatever kicked in, and we found out that we had just enough time to whizz off to the island of Utila off the north coast of Honduras, and do just that.

We grabbed up our backpack and all our diver gear and jumped in the first collectivo headed the right direction...

I took this while we still had room to take pictures

After crossing the border to Honduras, without much formality, we avoided the enticement of the taxi drivers and packed onto another ex-school bus headed to Puerto Cortez

We jumped off that bus, ran across the road and onto the next bus for San Pedro Sula

And after yet another bus, we made it to La Ceiba... but sadly not it time for the 4pm ferry to Utila... so we had a night to enjoy the "delights" of this coastal town.

Utila's a great island, just 18 miles north of La Ceiba... full of backpackers and divers

With some interesting buildings

We spent most of the next two weeks either in the classroom, pool or shallow open water learning the ins and outs of safely teaching people to dive... and then we were ready for the two days of evaluations...

By this stage we were almost done and all very confident that we were going to pass.... Yay!

Tadd with our instructor Matt Awty

And me with our other instructor Rich Astley

We graduated amidst a great bunch of people at BICD... all-in-all a great bunch of people and fabulous instructors!!

There was quite a celebration with all our new instructor colleagues!

But before we knew it, it was time to make the slog back to Guatemala... our first mode of transport of the day... 

and Tadd's first Tuc-Tuc ride

It's amazing what comes aboard the ferry with you sometimes!

We thought we were pros on the overland travel thing... until we discovered that heavy rains had washed out one of the bridges just on the Guatemalan side of the border... so the resourceful locals had set up lancha trips for a small fee

All part of the adventure!!

So we made it safely back to Rio Dulce, Guatemala and to our boat... just in time to pack up and head north.