Diving
After chatting with some peeps on the ferry to Utila, Alan (a Belgian guy I recognized from the hostel in San Pedro Sula) and I followed the advice that I received from my Tela drinking companions – we put our heads down and walked straight through the swarms of dive shop reps trying to recruit from most of the 20 or so shops on the island; we were signing up at Ecomarine/Gunter’s dive shop. Didn’t take too long to get there as Utila is the smaller of the three Bay Islands of Honduras. There are two main roads on which very few actual cars drive – scooters and golf carts are the principal mode of transport…and feet of course.
As opposed to Roatan and Guanja, people go to Utila for mainly one thing: cheap diving. The fact that Utila alledgedly has the 2nd largest coral reef in the world and is famous for whale sharks (though I JUST missed the season!), oh, and is just really, really, chilled out and relaxed, doesn’t hurt its appeal to backpacking gringos. Most of the peeps I met had planned to spend a few weeks and have stayed for 3 months, 1 year, 5 years on and off…etc. you get my drift – its such an easy existence people just don’t want to go back to the bussing, spanish-speaking, backpack lugging way of living.
So I signed up to do my Advanced Open Water – a bit nervous as, apart from doing my open water off of Stanley Bridge at the end of September in the freezing, rainy weather, I had only dove once since, in Florida – over 2 years ago. But Ecomarine is not one of the ‘the’ dive shops that see 20 people signing up for its classes…its quite a bit quieter at this end of the island. As in I was the only one taking the Advanced course when I was there – which was great because I had my instructor plus a dive master in training patiently guiding me through my various bumblings. Headed out most mornings for 7 AM for a 2 tank dive and usually again after lunch. Not a bad life eh?
My favourite, favourite dive was the wreck – the Haliburton. A few years back, the dive shops all got together and sank the ship in order to, well, offer a wreck dive. The day that we went the visibility was AMAZING and descending towards it, with the sun rays breaking through the water…it was something out of a movie…absolutely stunning. Then, because this was to be my ‘deep’ dive, Cuda (my instructor) wanted us to find out whether or not I got narcosis – basically an effect similar to being drunk underwater. In order to do this I got to put together a Mr. Potatoe Head (yes, you read that right!) at 100 feet underwater…very funny – would have been even more so had I had narcosis…After that ‘test’ we explored the wreck and saw lots of fish and a massive moray eel. Very good day indeed.
Hit the town one night that I was in Utila – headed to Jade’s Seahorse. A really cool tree-house with some very ecclectic decorating, beautiful gardens, and, well its really hard to explain how stunning this place is – some pics would be best…(http://www.jadeseahorse.com/). Then it was off to the
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