A long way to Utila

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Utila was the next stop for us. Cheap dive courses and somewhere to spend the christmas holidays and, as it turned out, new years eve.

The busride from San Pedro Sula to La Ceiba took around 4 hours. We heard it had been raining solid for 3 days before we got there and no ferries left to the islands, so all the hotels were overflowing. The taxi driver recommended Hotel Caribe to us which looked a bit dodgy but was cheap enough and thank god we only had to stay one night. We later found out that Alan and Lara stayed in the same hotel but had a really manky round room, no windows and a porn channel...they were only delighted.

Thankfully the ferry left the next day and we settled in the Mango Inn for one night to check out a few dive shops the following day.

We ended up with Underwater Vision in the end and had a nice double room with private bathroom.
We started our Open Water course the next day and it was quite exciting. It just doesn't feel right to be breathing under water. It is pretty cool to be floating around the water and seeing all the fish but also weird at the same time. The course was pretty good and our instructor was very good too. The only complaint I have with Underwater Vision is, that their equipment is in quite an appaling state and the boat is a bit dodgy. Nothing to hold on to when you try and gear up or worse when coming out of the water. If we could choose again, we´d go for a different dive school. Unfortunately I had a bit of trouble with my right ear(aparently I "sqeezed" it) after the 3rd dive and didn't do any more dives after we had finished with our fundives. Yvonne couldn't really do any more diving either because she was quite sick just after Christmas.

On Christmas eve we went out for dinner with Alan, Lara, Cathal and some New Yorkers (Lindsey,Clay, Merissa and Kaitlin).We had good BBQd food at Evelyns although as usual Alan´s food took a long time to come. (he seems to be cursed in that way, weird) That night we treated ourselves to some fancy fireworks. The local kids were happy about this but that didn´t stop them throwing fircrackers at us while we tried to light the rockets, rascals!We spent Christmas day on the beach and did some snorkelling. It was great, we say nearly all the fish you can see when diving; stingray, barracouda, a big turtle, green morey eels, star fish etc. By that stage the hearing in my right ear was getting worse and on top of this yvonne was sick so we decided to stay for new years. We partied in Coco Locos, one of the bars/nightclubs on the island. There were fireworks being let off at the docks and a great firework display just off the beach. After new years the weather changed and we got strandeddue to the rough seas. Luckily we weren´t the only ones who were stranded so we drowned our sorrows for a couple of days.

We had a good time in utila but 2 weeks was more than enough and we were happy to be moving on again...next stop Nicaragua

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Comments

[Warren (&Cynthia)]

Egads, you are behind....
Hi Guys... Hope all is well after we parted in San Juan Del Sur. I just got back to the USA today. My trip is over, but looking forward to the Nicaragua entry. Maybe we'll see it in the next few months ;O)