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Second
descanso and I was headed off to Honduras to go scuba diving just off Utila in the Bay Islands. We thought it was a shorter trip but ended up taking us about 2 days due to a pretty poor infrastructure along the coast. So we ended up stopping off in San Pedro Sula, which was nothing really to talk about, had a pizza from Pizza Hut and head on to La Ceiba in the morning to catch the ferry to Utila.
The main reason I went was because Kelly has a phobia of water and decided she wanted to face her fear and go scuba diving, so of course being the gentleman that I am, I thought I should come along and laugh at her. We arrived in Utila and headed straight for a dive centre we were recommended that also gave free accomodation if you dived with them, Cross Creek Dive Centre. We arrived and were told, as we kind of expected, that you need to do a course and get a license to scuba dive, so since we were in the cheapest place in the world to do so, we signed up.
Classes started the next
afternoon and we'd be in the water the day after. With a total of 8 dives, including two "confined water" dives where we just went into about 3-5 metres of water for up to 90 mins and practised skills like flooding your mask and emptying it underwater, using your buddies secondary oxygen tube, etc.. After that were 4 "open water" dives of up to 45-50 mins of diving with the instructor and dive masters and following them about different spots on the coral reef. Oh I forgot to mention didn't I, it's the second biggest coral reef in the world, after the Great Barrier of course. These dives were amazing, we got to see tonnes of coral and coral fish, loads of schools of larger fish, 2 sea turtles (one of which was feeding on some sponges right in front of us), and a huge Spotted Eagle Ray which swam within about 5 metres of us. Finally we got 2 free fun dives after the course so we went down with a Scottish lad who was also a dive master there and he took us along some cool routes and pointed out loads of strange coral and creatures living in
them and on them, also went down to an old ship wreck which was pretty cool, and of course loads more fish of all shapes, sizes and colours.
All in all I have to say that this was probably the single most amazing experience of my life and I'm so glad I did it. It's like another world when your 18m below the sea, must be something like being in space only 10 times more interesting. It seriously feels like your flying because you just forget about the water after a while. So I'm now qualified to scuba dive up to 18 metres anywhere in the world, hope your not too jealous.
Outside of the diving course, which literally had us busy all day, we didn't get much time to do anything apart from eat and drink, and we were that tired by the end of the day we never lasted long drinking. From what we did see of the island though it was beautiful, great food every where and good night life. The only bad thing about it was the amount of gringos, it really didn't feel like we were in Central America any more. I would
definitly go back though if I had the money, or maybe even to work in a dive centre, it would be some life I tell ya.
So the course finished and we headed back to Guatemala for another 3 weeks of fun and games. Sorry about the lack of a blog for April at Casa Guatemala, just haven't got the chance to get online. Been busy working on some stuff for the uni as well so all's going smoothly. I'll try make up for it next time and fill you in on whats been happening back at the
casa. Summed up quickly it involved a water park, a castle, loads of leaving parties, a few new arrivals (including 3 Dublin girls), a birthday (mine!), and of course lots of kids and childsplay. Take care peoples, chat soon.
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Bas
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Amazing
Quality stuff m8. Hitting Sharm el Sheikh myself in 2 weeks.