Utila- last day diving!

Hard to believe I'm writing this more than a week later.. but I am- desperately trying to get caught back up on at least this trip before I head out to South Africa... so here goes:

Thursday in Utila. We wake up, not certain if we're diving today or the next. Although originally scheduled for Thursday afternoon, we somehow got switched to Friday.. which would be okay except we were really hoping to leave Utila Friday am to do something else Friday/Saturday morning... Luckily a trip to the dive shop pays off and we get scheduled to dive that afternoon.. excellent! Even better, we will be headed out to the Hallibourton wreck- a 100 ft long ship sunk around 15 years ago to add to the coral life (how adding huge metal structures helps the reef life I'm not sure but okay). With that good news we have breakfast and not only big mamma's, but at big mamma's with walnut raisin rolls in hand from the bakery. It's a bit of a gorge fest, especially as we've also bought banana bread for the boat ride.. as if we could be hungry after mexican omelets, coffee, tropical fruit, and fresh baked breads.

My memory fades again about what passed between breakfast and diving- probably not much more than jumping across gaps in the 'under construction' main street in utila, hitting up bush's supermarket for cokes, attempting to extract lempiras from one of the 2 atms on the island, snagging some internet along with free coconuts from the one room no-AC shop, and swimming in the straight-to-the-bottom clear water just off the docks at UDC. But certainly around 12:30pm we got all of our dive gear together and boarded the boat for the last time. Jeff finally done with his advanced scuba class is accompanying me and pete on 2 fun dives out to wrecks. I'm very excited as I've never done a wreck dive and Pete assures us this is a good one.

We head out to sea and it's all sunshine and water and waves. soon enough we're at the dive site. Again good ol' Tony is our dive master. Only change is that Jeff is my dive buddy instead of pete. so pete gets paired with some random, and we do some checks and then hit the water and start to descend.

the wreck is about 100 feet down so this is definitely a deep dive. we're going down along a rope attached to the boat and although i've already been back down pretty deep since the panic attack, i'm still not feeling 100% confident especially since there's no reef to orient ourselves with- just the very very faint mirage of a huge boat down below. and the water is thick and the visibility not too far. you could see how you could get disoriented (which by the way, you can always reorient yourself by watching in which direction your air bubbles rise). unfortunately pete can't get his ears to clear, so tony has to ascend a bit to help him and his buddy out. jeff and i are instructed to hang tight at maybe 30 or 40 feet. now we see how thick the water really is because suddenly tony disappears and it's just me and jeff and again this faint boat below us. it feels creepy so i'm glad to stick to jeff and keep him in my sight even though he's kind of doing his own thing (some buddy...) apart from giving me a high five and doing some rather funny arrested development-esque Gob chicken dance. it's a not too fun 2 minutes, and then luckily tony comes back into sight along with pete and buddy #2. ear issues resolved, we all descend down to the ship.

and a massive ship it is- 100 feet long, 40 feet high and covered with coral. we swim around slowly at the sea bed- hanging out below where the ship meets the sand are yellow snapper and a tiger grouper along with probably much else that is hard to see without a flashlight. we ascend a bit and hang out around on the 'deck' or at least where it used to be. there's a bicycle chained to the railing at one bit- it looks like it could be 30 years old, but pete heard that it's only been down there about a year- apparently some guy got a snazzy new bike and went flashing it around utila- only to have it stolen a week later. then he goes diving at the wreck one day and what does he find, but his new bike, chained to the deck of the ship. pretty hilarious. we continue on, circling up into the captain's deck where a huge 2 meter long nassau grouper is circling ominously inside. seriously it was creepy- peering into this hollowed out captain's cabin with dark outlines of the reef protuding out from long dead windows- you already have no idea what's in there, then suddenly you think you see something massive pass by within out of the corner of your eye. you look again and there's nothing and you think it must have just been a fish, then you catch it again and it's a monstrous grey grouper shadowed in black and only just briefly passing into the hazy light so you can reassure yourself that really it's there and your mind isn't playing tricks on you.... big scary toothy grouper aside, we saw some nice star urchins and tons of oysters, even covering the rope marking the dive site. we weren't down there for long due to the depth, and though it felt longer, after about 30 minutes we must have ascended to make our safety stop at 5 meters. there, with a few minutes to kill and no reef to look at, we had to entertain ourselves. which meant a lot of somersaults, inversions, floating around on our backs etc. which even got old after awhile, so i was glad to head back to sea level. and especially happy to find that i had zero tooth squeeze- definitely a nice surprise!

back on the boat, i put up my equipment and suddenly felt exhausted and totally spent. i was scheduled to do another dive, but just didn't feel like it. i had already had enough good dives and why push it for one more. i also just didn't feel like being on the boat any longer, so when we found out that we were going back to the dive center to pick up more tanks before heading back out, I decided to just chill on shore. during our little down time eating banana bread (apparently there is room for more...) and sitting around the dive center, jeff learns that he didnt' complete his knowledge reviews for his advanced diving course. which he didn't even know he was supposed to do (so he claims...) and he's supposed to review everything with marie immediately upon returning from the next dive. except he hasn't done anything- not one of the 5 chapters and moreover his book in at the hotel. at this point jeff rather sheepishly asks if i will pick up the book... of course. and do some of the question... uh what? not wanting to be used (this goes back to high school with stupider kids trying to mooch off me in class) and not really wanting to do anything involving thinking i dont' reply right away... but i know he's actually in a bind, so we decide on a trade of dinner in exchange for dive book and some answers.

so jeff and pete get back on the boat, jeff to dive and pete to snorkel and i head back to the mango to do jeff's homework... grr. especially when upon arriving i realize that these chapter reviews are kind of time consuming. i do one chapter, and figure that jeff will have some time on land to do some more. i try and do somemore and kind of fall asleep in the sun for awhile (sorry jeff.. don't think I mentioned that at the time.. I was soooo tired!) and then woke up and realized crap I need to get moving. so i head back to the dive center and their boat is just getting back. i talk to jeff and he's obviously stressed- i ask when he needs to talk to marie and he says 'immediately'. crap. there are still at least 3 more chapters to do... i feel like i've let him down royally so i send him to rinse out his gear and i head up to the upper level of the dock to frantically fill in some answers for him. i manage to get at least one more chapter's worth before he comes up to join me, swearing at himself for not getting this done beforehand. he asks how many questions left and i tell him about 30. not a good answer. i help hold pages and look for quick answers as jeff writes them down in handwriting so bad that it looks like runes or something. but we get it done, miraculously, and maybe thanks to me and a kiss on the forehead and he runs off to review with marie. hopefully she doesn't mind piss poor answers to serious diving stuff and a strange amalgam of handwriting styles..

pete and i decide to have some very relaxed beers on the dock while jeff is stressing. afterwards we decide to pay. what a mess- cash or credit card? lempiras or dollars? you pay everything with credit card and I give you cash? how much do i owe you from yesterday? and so on and so on. 15 minutes and an annoyed account manager employee later, pete and i sort out splitting our 10-dive fun pack into 2 separate payments. good. it should be time to leave now, but we can't find jeff. did he miss us somehow while we were paying? pete tracks him down somewhere in some hidden classroom and lo and behold, 10 minutes he's done and ready to leave. which is about when it starts to rain. boo.

we try to wait it out for a while, but suddenly we're starving. then it's trouble pulling pete away from a tourism honduras book so we can eat. eventually we all get moving, resolute on eating at this cute little italian place called piccolo's that serves up homemade pasta and has 'island famous' walnut ravioli with gorgonzola.. lekker. we trek down there, about ready to eat a horse, and damned if it isn't closed. frankly i'm pissed off. i'm tired, i felt like i had a midterm, i'm hungry, and it's raining. and i really really wanted italian and red wine with jeff. i try not to mope as we go on to plan b which is cafe mariposa- a new place initially ruled out for being too expensive earlier in the trip. but i want real dinner and a real place and with wine. and this is our best shot. mariposa is cute and overlooking the water. unfortunatley there's no wine, but they do have a nice seafood menu so we stay. salva vidas and some flor de cana infused drinks are real salva vidas (life savers) and soon we're all in better spirits. especially when the chips with honduran bean dip appetizer arrives. unfortunatley the conversation migrates yet again to the scatalogical, which although quite funny at times, is getting a bit tiresome at this point... i probably was rude or over the top in my comments at several times, just trying to shut down/ derail the conversation, but doubtful that it worked. i also was in a bit of a snarky mood due to the unnecessarily bright lighting in mariposa. honestly, i have real issues with harsh lighting. mango inn had it too, hospital esque lights and i just can't stand it. anyway, i truck through and dinner comes- delicious shrimp really- and of course i'm super full so i have to give it away to jeff. he happily obliges. then i'm just tired. really there was a lot of stress going on in the trip with our interesting threesome and well all the stress that comes with long distances suddenly bridged together thrown under too much harsh lightening (i mean that figuratively and literally). jeff and pete pay, my share covered by the 2-3 chapters of diving questions answered, and we head back to mango to sleep. and sleep we eventually do although there is definitely too much talking in circles beforehand and things hastily said, and i'm just ready to leave leave leave as i have been at other points in the trip. the prospect of getting up at 5:30am to catch a 6:30am ferry is not helping the situation. nor is the propsect of leaving honduras in this mood. even rafting doesn't sound as appealing as it did earlier. i am certainly in a funk, and not one from which i can easily be extracted, and luckily jeff and i both give up and go to sleep, to arise hopefully to sunnier skies and moods.

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