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Published: November 28th 2007
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Lychee´s on the bus
Sold through the bus window by a local woman. Utila is the cheaper of the Bay Islands. So we leave Tegucigalpa at 6am and get the bus to La Ceiba, then the hour ferry to Utila. We decide to have a few crazy nights for the weekend before signing up to dive, I haven't dived for 7 years so need a refresher!
Friday night we start at Treetanic, a mad bar up in a tree, it took years to build and is amazing to look at. I finally have a camera so am click happy. We then go to Bar in the Bush but I don't really remember it. I wake up the next morning to find neither of my room mates and Fay had my camera. Nicki gets back at 12 so we go to watch the Rugby final, I fall asleep half way through so find Fay and go back to bed.
Saturday is barbq night, Jeff is a great cook but there could have been more food! More rum and then we go to a party at La Pirata. Locals giving us evils and police firing shots into the air to break up violence.
Sunday, Fay and Nicki go to another small island to learn diving in
peace, so I am left on my own. A day on the beach and excellent snorkelling, although the swim out there is shallow so I get cut to pieces on rocks, no sharks out there today so I'm safe. Still no sign of the bloke who has my camera!
Monday I start my refresher class, bargain, 2 dives + 10 dollars and I get one to one help all day. The first dive in in a 6m deep sand patch where I practise my skills again, mask off, regulator replacement, removal of BCD and weights etc etc. Scary but not too bad. Except for a coughing fit at one point. Then the second dive is for fun. Loads of fish everywhere, I loved it. I realise though, that I´m well out of practise and am all over the place. I get back to shore an immediatelly sign up for the advanced course to improve. NAUI not PADI as it´s better and the same price, $240 bargain!!
Also on Monday I bump into a friend from home, Mike, small world, so go out for dinner with him and his tour group.
Tuesday is theory only so nice and relaxing, nervous about
the next day though as we have to go deep, 40m!!! (Only 30m on PADI) We get up at 7am after a night of storm and luckily the boat is not running as the wind is too strong. We have an hour nap but the weather hasn´t improved so we go to a cafe down the road to watch TV and play board games to shelter from the rain. We return at 12, still torrential rain but the plan is to go out anyway. We all take some sea sickness tablets and kit up. I am petrified as I don´t want narcosis which is common below 30m. We go down slowly and play "how many fingers do I have up?" on the bottom. It´s incredibly dark and for once I can´t see the surface. Surface to leaving the bottom is only 8minutes at that depth so we are soon on our way up with multiple safety stops. Survived! We need an hour surface interval for a dive that deep so are freezing on the boat in the rain.
Eventually we get back in for our buoyancy dive. This is the whole reason I am taking this course as I want
to dive properly. I am pretty useless at floating, but can manage it fine when upside down on my head, ridiculous. We dive through some hoops and then the emergency weather warning is signalled into the water. Time to go up. Once we´re all back on the boat we start motoring back but our captain Joe has no visibility and doesn´t want to hit a yacht so we have to moor up to a buoy and wait for a clearing. He also uses the VHF radio is every way I´ve been taught not to, ordering beers, insulting his mates etc... Finally back an hour later, all freezing but at least this kit doesn´t need cleaning due to the rain water.
The next day is another hit or miss weather day but we go out anyway, just slightly late. First is a wreck dive, 30m deep. Fantastic! And NAUI lets you swim through openings which PADI does not. We draw the boat for a while then resuface. The second dive is a fun dive due to the spot chosen by the captain but also has a wreck of a yacht. My buoyancy is well improved so no arms needed anymore and
I can float easily. We have the afternoon to take the very easy test and then prepare for the night dive. Even scarier than the deep dive and we sink into blackness. Amazing change is creaturs at night though and we see a rare spanish lady, red and white, slug. Another wreck is here just so can do 3 in one day! Tough dive for me as my snorkel fell off so I had to carry it along with my torch and my "buddy" can´t dive very well so is constantly flapping his arms around, grabbing at my regulator, not what you want when you have no free hands to put it back in!
Final day, our instructor is ill so we have the other NAUI instructor. We do a drift dive and navigation, navigation is the hardest as everything looks the same! At last though, I am NAUI Advanced certified!!!
Fay and Nicki are back on the island so more fun nights out in the same bars. The weather doesn´t improve so we have a few days to kill as the ferry isn´t running to take us back to the main land. Even the banks ran out of money!!!
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