Honduras

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The next country of our journey was a country we had previous decided to not visit at all; Honduras. The primary reason we had decided to skip Honduras was the same reason a lot of people choose to. Honduras is statistically the most dangerous country on the planet with the highest per capita murder rate in the world. No other country comes even close to this troubled nation and, quite simply, the country didn’t seem to have a lot to offer that was of interest to us, except for the chance for some more Caribbean diving in the Bay Islands. Still, we had decided to not bother with Honduras, that was until Duncan booked a flight out to meet us and expressed an interest in learning to dive. I love it when anyone I want all my friends to learn to dive and, with Honduras being one of the cheapest places in the world to get certified, we decided to ignore the sketchy statistics and made plans to get to the islands.

We booked a shuttle to take us from Northern Guatemala across the west of Honduras and all the way to Rio Cangrejal, where we were planning on spending a night out in the jungle and a morning white water rafting. We booked the boat and minibus shuttle and left Guatemala before sunrise to begin the seven hour journey. The boat connection went without a hitch but when we got to the minibus we were told that the other two passengers had cancelled and, as there was only now the three of us, they would only take us as far as San Pedro Sula for the amount we had already paid and agreed on. San Pedro Sula is (you guessed it…) the most dangerous city in the world and somewhere we would rather pass straight through than stop off and search for onward transport. After a bit of haggling and perseverance, we shook on a slightly inflated cost per head and the driver thankfully agreed to take us all the way to La Ceiba, as originally planned.

Once in La Ceiba, we took a taxi across the city and headed down an endless dirt track to the Omega Lodge, a jungle retreat where we would be spending the night before the morning’s rafting trip. The following day, with breakfast consumed, disclaimers signed and a verbal crash course in rafting, we set off down the Rio Cangrejal and eagerly awaited the first set of rapids. We spent the next three hours paddling ferociously, clinging on, smashing heads together and trusting our guide’s knowledge of what lied below the surface as we leapt off boulders the size of houses. The scenery was spectacular. Turquoise foaming waters weaving through a towering waterfall-lined jungle. Although we had a great time, the rapids were not as exhilarating as we hoped they would have been and we ended the trip trying to decide whether to fork out another $80 on the afternoon’s grade 4 and 5 trip to the higher, more extreme, section of the river. As much as we would have loved to get in a full day of rafting, we eventually decided against it as we knew we were about to spank a lot of money on the Bay Islands. Ah well. You can’t do it all. After lunch, myself and Duncan headed back to the river to scale a few of the giant boulders we had rafted past, as any other lads would naturally feel the need to do. The boulders we had in mind turned out to be un-scalable but it wasn’t a worthless mission as we found an amazing yellow and black snake which happily posed for photographs. Sadly, all didn’t end well. We evidentially spooked the snake which, in response, attempted to cross the river right at the rapids. At first it appeared to be quite the swimmer, head well out of the water as it slivered across the surface. Moments later the poor chap hit the rapids and, after twenty seconds of struggle, disappeared and that was the last we saw of him. Minor guilt ensued.

A short, bumpy, vomit-inducing boat ride from La Ceiba City takes you to the Bay Islands. The reefs here are part of the second largest barrier reef in the world and the history of these three islands is very interesting. We headed to Utila where English is the most widely spoken language as the population is primarily made up of white descendants of early British settlers. Once again, another great opportunity to use the Spanish we were now slowly forgetting. Christopher Columbus arrived at Guanaja Island in the 1500s and enslaved many of the islanders. Some time later, British pirates used the islands as a base from which they attacked many of the Spanish vessels heading to the Americas. By the late 1700s the British dumped thousands of Black Caribs on Roatan who lived well and mixed with the natives, setting up new villages across the island. The British controlled the islands until 1859 when they were officially passed over to Honduras. On the islands, English is spoken with a strong Caribbean accent, and it’s not uncommon to see a white elderly couple that could easily be your grandparents sitting on their porch chatting in a thick, stereotypically Jamaican tone.

As I mentioned earlier, the Bay Islands are one of the cheapest places in the world to get certified so it made sense for us to spend a few days on Utila while Duncan got his PADI open water certification. Some weeks before I also discovered that Utila is home to a free diving school, something that has intrigued me for a fair while. Free diving, for those who are unfamiliar with it, is diving to depth with nothing but a mask and fins i.e. no breathing apparatus. The concept interested me as I have always thought that nothing could feel as free as diving without relying on anything but the strength of your mind and the techniques you had learned. The free diving centre claimed that after a two day course you would be capable of diving down to 21m/70ft on a single breath. I planned on doing a couple of scuba dives before trying out the free diving course. Once we arrived on the island we headed straight to Alton’s Dive Centre who we had chosen to dive with after doing some research. Within ten minutes of being shown around the dive centre, the double-decked chill out dock and bar, all plans to learn to free dive faded away. I love scuba diving. Why would I want to spend money on free diving that I could be spending on scuba diving?!

As Duncan cracked on with his open water course we dived on alternate days and chilled out on the days in between. Before we knew it, our five days on Utila were soon coming to a close. A blurry mix of bubbles, sunshine, baliadas (cheese, beans, egg and whatever else you fancied, wrapped in a pancake-like tortilla), cheap rum and bar crawls. As Duncan made plans to head back to Belize City for his flight home, we made plans to cross the entire country to reach Nicaragua ASAP. After five days of diving and bumming about, the thought of a 14 hour + minibus journey across Honduras didn’t fill us with excitement and we considered staying a few more days, treating ourselves to a few more dives. And then Kate offered a suggestion… why not stay and become divemasters? Although becoming a divemaster has been a fantasy of mine since I first learned to dive back in 2006, I have rarely given it any serious consideration and the few times I have I decided not to due to the cost, time involved and the dreaded snorkel test (more about the snorkel test a little later). After two days of debating over whether this was the best or worst idea ever, we sat down and worked out whether it was actually a possibility. We eventually grabbed a pen and paper and worked out how much the course, accommodation, food, and four weeks of Utila living would cost us and compared that to the amount we expected to spend over the next month on the road. Unexpectedly, it turned out to only be a difference of a few hundred quid each. Everything was suggesting we just go for it. The dive centre was great, the staff were good fun, the owner was awesome, the location was prime and the island was somewhere we could happily spend a month or so. Our decision was made. We coughed up, signed on the dotted line and found ourselves a nice little apartment right on the ocean for just $300 a month.

Before our divemaster training began we had to first become certified Emergency First Responders and certified Rescue Divers. The former course took a day and the latter two days, ending with what is commonly known as the Hell Dive. Three of the trainee divemasters (DMTs), the lovely Heidi, Fran and Tim, joined us five meters underwater where they had ten minutes to make our lives hell. They dramatically acted out panicked diver situations i.e. massive freak outs. They threw off their masks, ditched their air supply, fins or whole kit. They attempted to take our masks, fins and air supply, sometimes two people ganging up on one of us. The only rule was they weren’t allowed to turn off our tanks. It was the most intense ten minutes I have and will probably ever experience underwater but we pulled it off and weeks later got to pass on the hell when we were DMTs assisting new students going through their Rescue Diver course. Those two days of training were probably the most useful two days of diver training I will ever have and it was a massive confidence booster to now know how to better look after myself and others underwater, should things ever go tits up.

As DMTs we received unlimited diving (hangover permitting). Any day we fancied diving we just had to help out with the tanks, prepare the boats, kit out the customers and help run things on the boat when we were out at sea. You could potentially make four, sometimes five dives a day, although diving zaps your energy so days like that knock you for six. Upon settling our bill, we received a goodie bag that I liked to think of as a sack of freebies when in reality it was all paid for out of the $1000 we handed over. In our very swish PADI backpack we found an electronic dive planner, a PADI PRO dive log and folder, a divemaster and instructor manual (i.e. the Bible) and The Encyclopaedia of Recreational Diving (i.e. the Holy Grail); a $50 wedge of a book that tells you everything you would ever need to know about diving. All DMTs are appointed a mentor, an instructor who they turn to for guidance and hassle when they need to get things done. We were appointed a splendid Canadian fellow that went by (and still goes by) the name of Shaun. Never have I known a man to put away two litres of neat rum in a single afternoon and still make it home. Never have I known a man to fall out of a hammock and be forced to take a week off diving because it left a tendon sticking out of his elbow. He set a great example. A fine specimen.

The training started with a fair whack of studying. Learning about the role of a divemaster and supervising diving activities, awareness of the dive environment, specialised skills like mapping and search and recovery and why you should work towards becoming an instructor and give PADI more money. Then came the studying that felt like hard work - dive theory. Learning about heat, light, sound and water, pressure, gas volume and density, gases underwater, responses to nitrogen, thermal changes, pressure changes on body air spaces and decompression theory. Following the studying there were two exams but once all the theory and tests were out of the way, everything else was in the water and super fun. One of the most rewarding parts of the course was assisting instructors with students on their first few dives and seeing how much they progress from day to day, some overcoming huge fears and hurdles.

Alongside assisting courses, a divemaster’s primary role is to lead customers on dives, finding them interesting things underwater, ensuring everyone is diving safely, being there to deal with any problems or emergencies and getting them all back to the boat. It has always baffled me how divemasters manage to find their way back to the boat after a 45 minute to hour-long dive. Through a mixture of trial and error and some strong advice, I discovered the following.. Sometimes they know the site well. Sometimes they are good at selecting and remembering landmarks and standout features. Sometimes they’re diving along a wall and simply head back the other way after half the dive. Sometimes they actually know how to use a compass. Sometimes it’s just a fluke. I can confirm that all of these methods work, especially the last one.

While training as DMs at Alton’s we were also given the opportunity to do speciality courses at certification-only price. We took advantage of this and got our Deep Diver speciality which certifies us to recreationally dive to 40m/120ft. The course was basically six fun dives at depth practising navigation skills and testing ourselves for gas narcosis. For those who don’t know, when you dive nitrogen dissolves into your blood and reaches your nervous system and, at depths over 30m, can create a euphoric, anaesthetic effect commonly called nitrogen narcosis. The effects slow down your problem solving and motor skills and can seriously impair your judgement. In severe cases it can also cause visual and auditory hallucinations, although most of the time you just feel a bit stupid and kind of tipsy. Some people have been known to take the regulator out of their mouth and attempt to give it to fishes so they can breathe too. I have only ever experienced gas narcosis once before when I was diving at a shipwreck in Malta and could hear people calling out my name… underwater. To test our tolerance we took a number board test on the surface and again at 45m. Needless to say, we all took a little longer but nobody tried to give a fish their regulator so it could breathe too.

One of the greatest things about sticking around in Utila, and diving with Alton’s, was the hunt for whale sharks. In Utila whale sharks can be found most months of the year. During the surface intervals between dives Capitan Erik, when the conditions were right, would take us out into the deep blue in search of the biggest fish in the ocean. In Mexico we swam with whale sharks at a cost of $120, and now we were getting to swim with them for free on a weekly basis. Alton’s had the highest success rate of finding whale sharks on the island, even higher than the whale shark research centre, and we were sure to taunt the other dive shops as we sailed back into the bay after every encounter, sounding the fog horn and throwing the international signal for shark in their direction. Y porque no?!

Upon ticking all the boxes and completing the course, you are not officially a divemaster until you give PADI all of your money take the dreaded snorkel test. The snorkel test involves public humiliation and lots of alcohol. To ensure I was less likely to care about the public humiliation and more likely to stomach the excessive drinking with which I was to be burdened, I made the most of the free bar I was receiving for DJing at a boat party prior to the evening’s main event. Thankfully, there were six of us graduating that week and so the attention, and humiliation, was shared amongst many. Kate, Heidi, Tobias, Melissa, Mike and myself lined up along the bar at the dive shop and attempted to answer the questions fired by our mentors as a 30-strong crowd counted us down, pretty much making it impossible to find the answers. We then had to act out diver training skills ‘but sexy’ before clearing a mask full of beer; through our nostrils. And then came the snorkel test itself – an undisclosed concoction of alcohol (and whatever else) poured down a funnel into a snorkel which one must attempt to consume while trying not to be wasteful. It was the sort of challenge I would have volunteered to take maybe ten or fifteen years ago but now I was being forced into it and paying $1000 for the privilege. Not wanting to be a bad sport, I gave it my best shot, as the photos may or may not prove.

Our unplanned journey to becoming divemasters was most definitely one of the highlights of our trip. We couldn’t have chosen a better dive centre to take the plunge with and Alton and everybody else there treated us like family from day one. We made some great friends, spent many great days diving and many great nights out drinking responsibly. We were sad to leave Alton’s and Utila and it would have been very, VERY easy to get stuck there (check out the music video for ‘If You Come To Utila’ on youtube) but we are meant to be travelling and so travelling we must do.

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Photos

Some of our crew
From left to right - Alton, Leo, John, Marcus, me, Kate, Shaun and Sadie.