Birthdays and Bliss in the Bay Islands

After hitching a ride to the Honduras border from El Salvador, it took a few hours for another vehicle to come through going our way. Finally a nice pickup pulled up and the customs officials arranged for us to drive with them to the next big city, about 3 hours away. Once we were in the truck we noticed a suspicious amount of guns. Not only were all four men toting pistols, but one of them stood seemingly on guard in the box holding a rifle. Apart from Britt being convinced we were in a drug smuggling truck, the Hondurans were very friendly to us as well as soccer obsessed. About 30 minutes in, the driver picked up two Honduran soldiers, each armed with a machine gun and pistol, making this the most heavily armed space we have ever been in. The good news, we figured, is that whatever was up, at least the army was on our side.

The following day we bused for many hours and swore we´d prefer anything at that point but being on another bus. However, 15 minutes of being on the ferry to the Bay Islands quickly changed our minds. The realization of what all those plastic bags they were handing out were for quickly dawned on us, along with a great desire not to have to use them. A very rolling 1h30min later we were on still ground in Utila, the smaller and cheaper of the three Bay Islands.

After shopping around at all the different dive shops we finally chose Captain Morgan´s dive shop because it was found on a nearby, quieter caye (Jewel Caye), away from all the crazy golf cart and scooter drivers on Utila.

Our week on Jewel Caye was wonderful. We dove everyday, sometime twice a day and did a fair bit of snorkling as well. Britt got the best deal around by ending up being the only one in her PADI Open Water class, so had one-on-one instruction the whole week. Andrew completed his PADI Advanced certification and enjoyed his dives as well. One dive was made especially memorable when the instructors of our two groups secretly arranged to have our groups intersect underwater and held up a slate with ¨Happy Birthday¨ for Britt and took birthday pictures of the two of us under water. Apparently the first rule in diving (never, ever hold your breath) doesn´t apply when taking pictures. They kept having us retake the pic as the bubble were ¨getting in the way.¨

Our week of spotting beautiful underwater ocean life, almost seeing a whale shark (so close!!), sampling the local cuisine flew by and we were quickly on the bus again on our way to Nicaragua.

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