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Published: January 17th 2007
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Places Visited. Utila and Roatan
After Tela we headed to the bay Islands, famous for its cheap diving. There are two main islands to choose from Utila the backpacker’s favorite and Roatan the more up market American tourist destination. We decided to do both.
First was Utila as we wanted to be some where lively for New Year after our quiet Christmas. Most of the places on the island are geared up for diving so they offer cheap accommodation if you dive with them. We choose cross creek diving as they looked professional and the room was only $8 including air con so a real bargain! The air con was very much needed as it was very hot. Due to the cheap dives we decided to do our Advance diving certificate for $230 for the course and 2 fun dives, 7 dives in total. Not a bad deal. To get the certificate we had to do a few basic tests from diving with different weights, swim through hoops and hovering inches from the sand to help us control our buoyancy. There were a few other tests, a deep dive of 30m which we have done a few times already,
55m in Belize! So that was no problem. There was also a navigation test, to see if we were able to get from one point to another underwater, that was fun! And finally, a night dive, all very good, we both got a lot of tips to improve our diving skills too.
Utila was a good place to spend New Years, as it was heaving with fellow backpackers. We started the night at a place called Treetanic bar at the Jade Seahorse, www.jadeseahorse.com, a very strange but amazing place, I’ll try my best to explain and try and look at the site, the bar itself is like the name suggests, a tree house, with a large open bar area and lots of walkways leading off in various directions. The garden was like an Aladdin’s cave, lots of homemade art, someone must have taken lots of drugs or just have an amazing imagination, it was like something from a Roald Dahl book, lots of sculptures made from different colored glass bottles and trinkets. It was the perfect place to see in the New Year. Like I said before, with diving being the main focal point, there was also a drinking
game around this. You put a mask and snorkel on which had a make shift funnel attached to the top of it, your ‘friends’ then pour as much beer, rum and mixer and you would have to drink as much as you could before you either choked to death or vomited, whichever comes first! There was a group of girls who had recently passed their Dive master training and we watched them partake, we couldn’t believe how much they managed to drink, pure crazy! I can’t imagine the morning after was too good! After this we went to one of the main bars, Coco Locos, this place was cool, set out on a pier going 30m out into the water, good music, great setting and cheap booze, there was also a fire dancer to keep us entertained, all in all, a great night. I think we got in around 4.30am, who knows!?
Another great thing about Utila was the food, lots of great places to eat and very cheap for what you got, lots of the food was similar to Belize, spicy chicken/steak with mashed spuds and salad, yummy, I couldn’t get enough of it! The down side was
that there was no nice beach, not that I was too bothered, but Michelle was and that’s why we headed to Roatan. This was completely different to Utila, lots of white sandy beaches, exactly how you picture a Caribbean island.
Roatan was a hassle to get to, there’s no direct boat from Utila to Roatan so we had to go back to the mainland (1 hour), wait for another 2 hours before catching another boat to Roatan (2 hours). Just to get there which is only one hour direct from Utila? So five hours, instead of one, I think somebody needs to get thinking about that one and maybe launching a ferry service between the two!? There must be some money to make from that.
Once we got where we were going we noticed the difference in prices straight away, instead of $8 US we paid $30 US for the accommodation, but it was nice and worth it so I couldn’t complain. The food was the main expense, twice as much as Utila, so our budget was blown whilst here. Diving was still good value at $20 a dive; we did another 6 dives each here. My favourite
being a 35m wreck dive, El Aguila, a cargo ship that was deliberately sunk 10 years ago to create an artificial wreck dive site. It was cool as we descended, you got glimpses of the ship appearing from the deep, it looked very eerie, and we also got to do some exploring, in some of the rooms. A bit scary as it was quite dark inside and you never know what to expect! Unluckily there was nothing to spectacular, only a few fish and a huge moray eel, no sharks waiting to eat us! Michelle got a bit claustrophobic in the enclosed spaces but I love the adventure of it. Out of all the dives we have done, I think that I’ve enjoyed the wreck dives the most. Michelle is definitely more of a fish girl!
As well as the diving, the snorkeling was great too, I think this was a better way of getting up close to the fish as they’re used to seeing people on a more regular basis so don’t swim off as fast. I always see more fish snorkeling than diving. Roatan was great for this and we got to see some great fish, some
we’ve never seen before. The beaches were as Michelle had hoped, so she was more than happy, lounging around like a lizard on the golden sand!
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