Utila, Honduras

Finally arriving on Utila, we set out to find a dive shop to hook up with. Now on Utila there is about 50 different dive shops and I´m not good at making decision... Luckily Joram has already emailed someone about a place called Deep Blue Divers. That sounds like a winner to me. We head off down the street looking for the place. Utila has a long history starting with indeginous people inhabiting it and was documented on Christopher Columbus´s voyages. Over the years it was used by pirates, slave traders, treasure seekers, and others. It changed hands between the Spanish and British over the years before finally being given back to Honduras in mid 19th century. It has retained a different culture than mainland Honduras for sure. The people range from really light skin to African decent, but they all speak some kind of crazy mix of English, Spanish, and Creole. Now it seems the locals are few and far between as tourists and foreigners are everywhere. Most of the tourist and dive shops are all along one bay. The island has about 60 really good dive spots around the island and is famous for being able to see Whale Sharks. Also it is the cheapest place in the world to do the PADI open water scuba diving course. Deep Blue turns out to be a good enough place. I don´t know if all the dive shops are mostly run by British people, but Deep Blue is. We get 5 nights in a room with 3 beds with a shared bathroom, kitchen, and living room area. A bunch of other people are staying in the house too doing diving and it´s cool to meet and hear their stories. Most shops include a free stay when you sign up to do the dive course. For $270 per person we get free place to stay and diving. That´s a pretty good deal. Usually there is only 4 people per instructor, but we´re going to have 5 in our group. Cramer, Joram, me and two dready looking guys from California Raphael and Louis. They happen to be on the island for a big party called SunJam, which is a 24 hour rave type thing happening on one of the small little islands near Utila and starts in about 5 days. (Right after our dive course is over). Everyone asks us if we´re going, but since we´re running out of time and I want to save the few remaining brain cells I have it´s probably not going to happen. Our instructor is Zoe, who is a little blond british lady probably around 30 or so. She seems very good: energetic and thorough. We start by watching some videos the first day and do some book work (worksheets). This trip I´ve done more studying then I did when I was in college. But its really fun. I totally enjoyed taking Spanish lessons in Antigua (even though I´ve forgotten it all already...) and am looking forward to this as well. There is only so much eating and drinking a person can do in a day, so having something to do each day provides a nice focus. Taking classes and doing tours and stuff like that definitely make the trip alot more enjoyable. The first night Cramer, Joram and I walk down a long ways off the beated track and end up at a small oceanside bar called Rehab. It´s owned by a Canadian guy whose lived in New Orleans for a long time and his girlfriend. There is also some crazy Swedish guy working behind the bar too. These guys are quite entertaining as they bicker back and forth and pour us free tequila shots... After a few hours we head back to our room, to get ready to get into the water the following day at 1pm. One lesson here is never get really bombed if you have to dive early in the morning. Thank goodness we didn´t have to dive until after 1pm. I´m quite woozy all morning. Plus I don´t know if I´ve said this before but since there is no AC we´re usually up at 6:30 or 7. At 1:30 Zoe brings us out on the dock and introduces us to all the equipment. It is pretty funny because here are 5 big guys staring at Zoe telling us about all the diving equipment as she stands there in her tiny bikini. The instructors are certainly a different breed. They seem the have that adventurous party spirit with a little pirate thrown in, but all the ones at Deep Blue take the instruction extremely serious. Zoe finally gets us in the water and goes through a bunch of skills with us. Changing the regulator, breathing out of your buddies regulator, learning how to blow the water out of your mask, etc. She´s doing a bunch of hand signals and Cramer and I have no clue what she means half the time. When we come up from the water a bunch of people are on the dock telling us there are dolphins in the bay. I guess this is pretty rare since Zoe´s freaking out. She´s been here for months and only seen them once or something. We throw our gear on the dock and snorkel out into the bay to see them. After swimming furiously after them, we get to see a handful of them swimming around us. Not a bad way to begin the first day. Later that night we see the British people that have been doing the same trip as us, Chris and Simon, and the other couple Duncan and Steph. They´re all staying at the dive shop next door called Alton´s, another good place. The next day we´re in the water in the morning early to do more skills and by the afternoon we´re going out for our first dive. They take us to two different dive spots and we´ll be able to finally see some fish and coral. We´re all set and our equipment is good and we do our buddy checks and splosh we´re in the water. After a few more skills we cruise around checking out the reef. I feel like I´m in a little submarine or something swimming through a fish tank. It´s a strange feeling, but totally awesome. The next day is the last day of our training. We finish watching the last 2 videos and studying up on the worksheets. We get in the water in the morning for our final skills, then jump on the afternoon boat for our last 2 training dives. The first dive is in a place called Black Hills and is the best dive of the whole trip. There are huge schools of fish everywhere and some of them are pretty big. Other divers from the dive shop are out trying to spear Lionfish, which are an invasive species to the area. We finish up with some open water surface skills which suck, since its pretty rough out in the open water. I love being underwater, but being at the surface with all the equipment on is not fun. Every day after getting back from the diving I feel the walls of our room and the shower continue to sway and rock. That night we take the final written exam. It is pretty easy since we took quizzes already which had most of the same stuff on it. We pass with flying colors. Ever since the first night we´ve been only having a beer or two per night. This is no exception since our last two fun dives will be early the next morning. The morning boat leaves at 7:30am sharp. We hop aboard for our last two dives. Unfortunately Zoe isn´t on the last dive since we have now passed the class. It doesn´t seem right without her. We head to the north side of the island to a place called Ragged Cay and get in the water. For some reason the water clarity if not very good. The dive is ok, but not anything special. I´m following Raphael whose in front of me because he´s the only one I can see. I hope he knows where he´s going or we could be out to sea! Now Cookie, a big black dude who is the ship captain, is driving around trying to see if we can see a whale shark. Usually you can spot them because there are fish jumping out of the water and birds flying over head. This time we can´t spot one and head over to our next dive spot. On the way we do spot a huge school of dolphins and Cookie drives out by them. The dolphins are cruising right along side the boat and in the front, jumping out of the water and doing little spins. Cookie parks the boat infront of the dolphins and we all jump in with our fins and snorkels. Hundreds of dolphins cruise by only a few feet from us. Pretty amazing stuff. The last dive is a drift dive where they drop us off and let us drift down the reef and then pick us up in a new location. Everyone is starting to get the hang of the buoyancy thing and the visability is much better here too. For the last dive there is about 9 of us going along and its a little crowded. Plus everytime think I found a good space, Louis from our group is kicking me in the head with a flipper of something. Louis is hilarious, he´s a tall skinny Honduran rasta looking guy who lives in LA. But when he´s diving he´s in his own world. He´s spinning around twirling, then he´s upside down, then he´s at the bottom taking abunch of pictures, then suddenly he´s above you, then next to you. The dive is good and we head back to shore for our last night on Utila. We go to a place called RJ´s for dinner which is right across the street. It´s only open 3 nights a week, so it gets pretty crowded. We go over with some other people from the dive shop, Lindsey and Aaron. They live in Florida and Aaron´s been all over the world, doing work for a charity. Duncan and Steph, the Brits, stop by as well. I order the chicken dinner and proceed to wait about an hour. Cramer gets his Lemon fish right away, and I over hear a guy next to me saying he didn´t order the chicken but would eat it any way. Well looks like the waitress gave my dinner to someone else, who thought it was no big deal to eat a different dinner. Now the place is packed and they run out of chicken. Now I guess I have to have the tuna, finally mine arrives after about an hour. It´s a dog eat dog world over here or in this case a man eat another man´s dinner type of world. We then go out for a few beers to a place called Treetanica part of a bigger place called the Jade Seahorse, which is a crazy bar/art museum. The owner must be an incredible artist, because the place is huge, it sprawls out in a bunch of directions, but the bar and the area around the bar is full of glass and tile and different seating areas and structures. Imagine a bar built by an imaginative artist on acid. I wish I would have seen it during the day, but it´s still impressive at night. Check out this site for a virtual tour: http://www.jadeseahorse.com/tour/
After a few beers we say farewell to our fellow travelers and hit the sack. Most of us are leaving at 6am back to La Cieba on the ferry. The next morning we´re packed and ready to go jump on the boat back to La Cieba. The water is a lot smoother this time and the boat pulls back onto the mainland about 45 minutes later. We jump into a taxi to the bus station. Joram is going back to Guatemala City and we´re heading all the way down to Tegucigulpa or further if possible so we can get into Nicaragua. We wish him well and tell him we expect a place to stay if we´re ever in the Netherlands. We board the bus to Tegucigulpa with... you guessed it the Brits! Chris, Simon, Duncan, and Steph. They´re trying to get to Nicaragua too.