Blogs from Utila, Bay Islands, Honduras, Central America Caribbean - page 10

It was an early morning with a 7:00am wake up. I got up feeling refreshed then headed for breakfast with James and Morris. The others grabbed random meals and started reading their advanced text. After some pancakes, we headed back to the dock where we lazed about. Matt, Jeff, and Justin jumped on the 1:30pm dive boat and headed out. Again the morning boat saw the whale sharks :/; it seems every boat we are not on. They did their bouyancy and fish knowledge dives which were interesting. In their bouyancy test they swam through hoops and raced along the bottom without fins. Matt won the race but they all were thankful for the course because it will help them with air control. James and I along with 5 friends had a very stressful day laying ... read more

After a long sleep we were all up by 8am and it looks like Justin has been passed the sickness Jeff and I had. James has recovered and will start his course again tomorrow I think. The morning dive boat got back without seeing the sharks. The rest of us debated doing our advanced but decided against it as it was another 270 usd. We spent the day laying on the dock in the sun. It was very hot and we decided to organize our route for after Utila. James wants to head to Roatan, another Honduran island while the rest of us are fairly undecided. I would like to head to El Salvador so this may be a splitting point in our trips. We will be on Utila until the 2nd of January but from ... read more

There is another pure blue sky as I wake up at 7:30am and head down for breakfast. A dive boat is leaving so our group will go on the noon boat. Time to just relax and swim in the sun. James is still sick so again he will miss out. The morning was spent on the dock laying in the sun and swimming with some friends. At 11 we start getting our gear and loading the dive boat. There are only 8 of us on this boat and as we leave another dive master tells Phil (our dive master) that there are whale sharks at a point. So scratch our earlier plans, we are going looking for them. Now we are Super excited because they were spotted on the morning dive and we are heading out. ... read more

Today we finally get to go to Utila. We all woke up early and caught cabs to the boat at 8:00am. Our breakfast consisted of fruit and random stuff from the market. We jump on the boat and it takes about an hour to get to the island as the crew hand out barf bags to many of the other passengers. We got in without a hitch and meet our diving company on the dock. It is quite a show as only locals are allowed on the dock to get customers for there companies. The girl that came to get us was white but had a Honduran citizenship so there was a huge issue with a differet dive shops local who was mad. He looked at her ID and told her never to come back to ... read more

On the morning of October 2nd, we took the ferry from La Ceiba to Utila, the westernmost Bay Island and the mecca of diving backpackers. Right off the ferry, we were accosted by many representatives from different dive shops handing us their flyers and telling us their specials. It would have been a bit overwhelming had we not had any idea of where to go. But luckily for us, George had been in communication with one of the dive centers, Underwater Vision, after being recommended by 2 separate individuals: Tony, the guy who we met at the guesthouse in La Ceiba, and Tanya, an Italian girl who we met on the shuttle from Antigua to Pana, and a former employee and divemaster who had loved diving so much that after taking her classes, she stayed there ... read more