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Published: February 14th 2006
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DON'T BE FOOLED!
Utila in the 2 minutes of sunshine the whole time we were there. Beautiful but the island is just a tease... “Is that rain?”
Who ever thought that three small words could usher in a more, err, colourful period of travel adventure? Waking in beautiful, spectacular La Ceiba early, we aimed to get to the terminal ASAP so we were certain to make the ferry to Utila. Utila is an island off the coast of mainland Honduras that was used as a hideout by pirates who would plunder Spanish ships that were carrying bounty the Spanish had plundered from South American Indians. The population of the pirates in these parts grew to 5000 or so until the authorities killed or enslaved the mauraudering bunch. Nice. Nearly as nice as the weather that bucketed down and filled the streets of La Ceiba with floating refuse.
We aimed to create our own pirate ship while in Honduras. We had arranged to stay on a sailboat while in Utila and do some dives around the Honduran reef. After a few days of idyllic diving our boat crew (consisting of two Spanish marine biologists - cum welfare rorters) were to sail us to Guatemala where we would continue our journey north. We caught a taxi to the ferry Terminal only to discover that the
What a hand!
The only luck any of us had in good old Honduras... ferries weren’t running because of bad seas and worse weather. Our quick thinking taxi driver suggested we try flying out of La Ceiba to Utila. We hastily agreed. He stopped to fill his tank on cab with petrol on the way to the airport. He explained that because the murder and robbery of taxi drivers was so common in this city it was only safe to drive near on empty. That way if he was murdered for his cab the bastard robbers wouldn’t get very far. A god plan - I didn’t have the heart to ask if he had considered the possibility that the bandits could use his takings to buy fuel and continue their escape.
Arriving at the airport at 8 AM we were greeted by the unsmiling, stony face of Honduran customer service. After a good four hours of discussion that would rival any Iranian nuclear weapons negotiations for intensity we discovered that: there was a plane to Utila, We may or may not be allowed on it, the plane may or may not take off before the airport closed that night and we were not to approach the service desk again.
After ten hours
The soviet trash can
The dark skies don't accurately represent our happiness at making it to exotic Utila. at the airport playing UNO and watching the rain fall we finally piled into a tiny, leaky plane. Julian, a QANTAS pilot, only added to my dread as he proclaimed that he had “no clue” as to what type of plane it was. One thing was certain - it had been Russian at some point in its long, long life. Warning signs in Cyrillic only heightened my nervousness. Unidentifiable ex-Soviet planes could not be so reliable, could they? I probably should have just asked the pilot as my knees were pushed into his back, but he was too busy opening the front windscreen (!) and sticking his head out to check whether there had been any abatement in the rain.
W took off… and about 8 minutes later we landed. After 11 hours of waiting we had finally traversed the 20 kilometres between the mainland and Utilia. The terminal in Utila was something to behold (see photos) and after grabbing our bags from the back of the plane we happily piled into a bus to take us into town.
The weather forced us to play two games over the next few days - UNO (of course) and the
The terminal at Utila
A few days later in a fit of boredom we went exploring and came across the airport terminal. Kingsford Smith eat your heart out. waiting game both of which are more fun if you weren’t electrocuted by a faulty power socket on your firs night in Utila. So we waited and waited and enjoyed the delightful intrigues that Utila had to offer. The main intrigue being the version of English they speak on the island. Almost a mix between Creole and a Jamaican drawl this treacley lingo is so amazing to hear spoken. When a couple of local are talking together you would swear they were speaking and entirely different language.
A few days in we finally managed to get on the boat and go diving - well, almost everybody. I was struck down with a very alluring Honduran bug that took me out of action for a day or two. However, once we got on the boat it was plain sailing and on our second day we managed to squeeze in a dive before the seas turned and yours truly got sea sick. Between the fish and me one of us had a full stomach that afternoon.
The only thing more gut churning than the nasty weather was the continued overt drug references that our captain and crew made. As though
Whose bright idea was it to come here?
Always fun blaming Linda. We´re sitting at a bar over the water enjoying a few. making as many stupid “smoke” or “ciggie” double entendres during any conversation would make us think it was cool to engage in drug smuggling across international borders. Don’t get me wrong, I’m no prude, but stashing a good kilo of marijuana in your boat and sailing between Honduras and Guatemala is not an action that, in my view, can be swept aside with “Ah, it’s OK, we’ve done it before.” For once the atrocious weather was a saviour and we cancelled the trip back to Guatemala because of wind and rain rather than the fact that we didn’t want to appear on the front page of the Sydney Morning Herald labelled as the “Guatemalan 5”.
But don’t get me wrong. Utila and Honduras are great places - if the weather is fine and the diving good. However, my favourite memory of my time in Honduras came not from a Honduran but from, who else but a French Canadian. Ubiquitous in any diving location is a “kerazy” bar that holds “kerazy” competitions to entice divers to drink at its establishment. For Utila the bar was aptly named “Coco Loco” (the “Kerazy” Coconut) and every Tuesday hordes of divers would compete
FC in a bandana.
Not a great photo but I had to include one of the guy. Context is everything, no? in teams in sculling competitions. The only thing special about this competition was its host - the “kerazy” French Canadian. True to form, this guy’s English was as bad as most FC’s - verging on non-existent and at the very best atrocious. But he had been selected from all the English speakers in the bar to host the competition - in English. From beginning to the bitter end of the beer sloshing we were treated to him screaming the 3 English phrases he knew: “WATCH OUT!”, “I wan ya to make two budiful lines” and (my personal favourite) “Everypeople are you ready to party!?!”
I wont fall into my usual rant of how odd it is that FC’s are so proud they don’t speak English but let me just note for the record that I was about as pleased to have him hosting as I was when someone decided it would be OH SO COOL to do some fire twirling later that night. The members of UNSW Circusoc have a LOT to answer for.
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DGIDDY
non-member comment
hmmmm..
thank god we're not privy to the photos of Patrick losing Strip UNO later in the evening