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Published: November 24th 2008
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UDC
The best dive shop in the world...or so we´re told After spending an uneventful night in La Ceiba, we made our way to the dock to catch the boat to Utila, one of Honduras' Bay Islands. Not knowing the departure times, we were forced to wait 4 hours for the boat. Little did we know, due to a hurricane, this would be the last boat to Utila for over a week. We were fortunate!
The smallest of the Bay Islands, Utila is one of the most popular places in the world to learn how to scuba dive. There is only one town and at least 12 dive shops, making it one of the cheapest places to dive and popular with back-packers. It's got a very Caribbean flavour to it and the accent of the locals is an interesting combination of Spanish and English with a Jamaican twang
We arrived on Sunday and we stayed at a place called the Mango Inn because it was attached to our dive school, the Utila Dive Centre, arguably the best dive centre in the world! Our classes began on Monday, the only sunny day of our stay on the island, and we met our instructors, Frank and Chris and their lackies, Charles and
Diving Boat
There´s Vicki setting up her gear Alex. There were 4 of us in the class, two of which were Israelis who brought new meaning to the words laid back! After some boring DVDs and classes, probably because they noticed our unquestionable ability in all things aquatic, our instructors decided to skip the teaching session in the pool and took us right to that little place called the ocean! We began our "skills" in about 5 feet of water. These included taking off and putting back on our masks under water, taking off our tanks, showing our competence with the equipment
I immediately had some difficulty descending to deeper water (i.e. anything past 10 feet) and some intense pressure in my head was cause for some alarm. I initially thought that this was a result of increasing brain mass and thus a higher level of intelligence due to our recent studies on aquatic life. Unfortunately it was not to be. It´s all part of the fun! Victoria also had some difficulty breathing through her mouth and consumed copious amounts of sea-water, resulting in a frantic panic illustrated by a flailing of the arms and ascent to the surface. After about the third time doing this, one
Scuba lads
Some of the instructors before one of our dives of the instructors refused to let her go to the surface and from there began a beautiful relationship. While Vicki was playing "Paper, Rock, Scissors" with an instructor underwater and taken off look for sea-horses, the rest of us mugs were left to choke on sea water and burn our eyes as we were repeatedly asked to remove our masks. The audacity of the instructors was further compounded when we got to the surface as Vicki complained about a cramp in her leg and one of the instructors rushed to her aid, massaging the pain away with his wedding band glimmering in the sun-light...the swine! After the first few dives it soon became clear who was the teacher's pet. We are now fully certified in Open Water and can safely dive to a depth of 40 feet
We spent most of our time on the south part of the island and although there wasn't a great number of large sea dwelling beasts there was plenty to see. Along with a turtle and a moray eel, we came across sea-wrecks, various types of coral and all sorts of brightly coloured dinky little fish. On our last dive we went to
Ever the professional
Quick pose and then back to work the north side of the island and the fish were in greater numbers and much bigger in size. We saw barricuda which, I don't mind saying, scared the pants off me and Vicki mistook for sharks. We also saw a big fish called a Grouper. Imagine a massive black goldfish looking fish. Big!
Aside from diving there wasn't a whole lot we could do because it rained and rained during our 8 days on the island. We can't complain though because we got what we went there for and we had great craic along the way. We went to various pubs on the island, one of which was Treetanic, a huge landscaped garden covered in ceramics, jewels and stones leading to bridges, pathways, arches and shelters all leading to a bar in a tree. A really cool bar in which the drink went down rather easily
The food was also a great experience. On a personal note, when I order food, not knowing what something is on a menu is reason enough to order it. We have had some great and not so great meals to date but the food on Utila was quite unique. Some of the sea
Give it a rest!
Stop the messin food on the island was fantastic and the names were quite memorable - Mahi Mahi, Wahoo and Red Snapper. It was all fairly cheap as well which was nice
One of our mates from Guatemala, Jeff, was there at the same time as us and he took up an unpaid post as bartender in a Mexican restaurant on the island, which suited us nicely because it meant easy access to booze. For a total of 5 nights he made the equivalent of 4 Euro. The owner was really upset to see him go but such are the demands of a traveller
When the time came to leave the shores of Utila the weather had taken its toll and there were serious doubts as to whether the boat would sail from the island. This meant that there was a possibility we would miss our flight out of Central America. This was not a risk we were willing to take so we opted to fly. This was a unique experience. There was room for 9 people on this glorified remote controlled toy and every inch of it was taken. We were fortunate enough to be joined by a husky and
Success!
Well yea it works on land... barrel-chested German go-getter who engulfed two seats and must have lost both mine and Victoria´s body weight in perspiration. As soon as the plane was in the air we were coming back down again, such was the length of the flight and we couldn´t have reached any higher than a few feet but it was good craic
The next few days were spent in transit between La Ceiba and San Pedro Sula in Honduras to begin the South American leg of our trip. It was by no means an easy decision to decide to skip the rest of Central America because we had heard and read so many good things. However with time and money against us we thought it was in our interests to leave and make our way to pastures new
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