The Land of the Lotus Eaters

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We're now in sleepy Livingstone, home to the Garifuna commmunity, the only Black-Caribbean inhabitants of Guatemala. They qre descendents of runaway slaves who mixed with indigenous peoples in the Caribbean. In the eighteenth century they were then forcibly moved to Roatan, off Honduras, by the British, before fanning out over the next two hundred years to the coasts of Honduras, Guatemala and Belize. Complicated. Livingstone is pretty chilled and perhaps a little shabby but I do rather like it, it's at the mouth of a large river, only accesible by boat and you can watch pelicans hunting from the hammocks in our little hostel's garden.

We have just come from an island just next to Roatan, Utila, home to more Garifuna but also a more recent colonist- lunatics. To put it in context, Utila is a tiny island of about 3000 people and home to some excellent diving, it is part of a reef system second only the Great Barrier Reef in Australia. It is also a party island with thousands going for a heady cocktail of deep sea diving and equally heavy drinking. It was pretty slow when we were there so no vomiting in our mouthpieces for us, but we did meet some of the island's more interesting characters.

Nobody stays on Utila for as long as they planned, including us; 3 days easily became 5. However, for our instructor, a week became four years. The causal relationship between his personality and his move to the island remains unclear, but I'm taking it as a warning never ever to move to a small and confined community. We arrived at our hostel fully intending to stay there and sign up for courses, having had it recommended to us. Nevertheless we received the full sales pitch, the strategy of which appeared to be to so exhaust us with details of the course that we would surrender and flop into bed at the hostel. His blow-by-blow account, however, ran the serious risk that by the end of his introduction, actually completing the course would be unnecessary. After a 30 minute account of the beginners course, it was with a heavy heart that I told him I'd need the advanced one; like divers plunging beneath the waves, we took our last look at daylight before being submerged once again by his unstoppable words. If this was an outline of a course, the Sistine Chapel was a doodle.

Underwater he was an excellent instuctor, clear and inspiring of confidence, which was just as well as I'd basically forgotten how to dive and was starting on a deep (30m) dive. However, I think it took the pressure of the ocean to contain his personality and squash it into normal proportions, above the surface he was quite mad, giggling a high pitched squeal, tickling and generally sketchy all round. Perhaps more alarming was 'the doctor'. No, not a nickname of a local eccentric, but the medical professional, in whose hands, if you got decompression sickness, broke your leg or got attacked by a shark, your life would rest. Beer-bellied, 50ish and American, we met him at about 11 in the bar dressed only in board shorts, old-fashioned motocycling goggles and a heavy, padlocked chain around his neck ("for protection"). He lqughingly demonstrated this 'protection' by whacking the table in front of us with the huge padlock. He will be out the latest and party the hardest of anyone there, without even the brake of having to dive the next day! He is also apparently very liberal with prescriptions, certain of which are far more stimulating and significantly less legal than anything one might expect at home.

Of course there's more to the island than its local weirdos; we met some really nice and fun people, the diving was great and when not underwater we chilled on hammocks over the Caribbean or visited TreeTanic, a bar that has been transformed into a Gaudi-esque Fantasia by another slightly odd character, a Californian I met there one evening. A series of treetop walkways integrated with a landscaped garden covered, mostly in ceramics, but also all manner of paraphenalia; old circuit boards, marbles, toy soldiers, walls of old bottles, to create the most beautiful bar I've ever seen. After a heavy last night it was a shame to part with our new travel buddies; who were heading off to Nicaragua, Belize or elsewhere in Honduras.

We had some excellent fish, although we also followed a local recommendation for burgers; a mistake, it was essentially a bad rendition of McDonald's. We've found actually that the mantra of eating where locals eat only works in countries like Thailand or Italy where you can rely on local tastes to be a guide. Here, in spite of having occassional gems (like the coconut and fish based Garifuna food or some lovely grilled meat in the market at Copan), local people seem to ignore the wonderful fish, fruit and vegetables around them and settle for anything fried or covered in cheap processed sauces. Aspirational resturants seem to be American fast food places and where sugar can be added to things it is. The wonderful sliced mango and lychees on sale seem mostly to be for the benefit of tourists, rather than locals. Having said this, as I write my bloggy grumbles, my tummy rumbles for the pizza that our American hostel owner is making us- it's bloody lovely.

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Photos

Trouble in Paradise
180° sea view from our hammocks

Irony
One of Utila's four churches

Garifuna Cooking Class
These cute dancing children obviously don't impress Wilfried