Utila, Honduras

Hello from Guatemala!  Or should we say hola? Sorry for the delay in this much anticipated posting of our trip!  Nearly two weeks in, here are some of the highlights:

June 18-24 -- San Pedro Sula; Utila, Honduras

We flew out of D.C. two Mondays ago, pretty much prepared for the worst. Highest per-capita murder rate in the world? Check. Peace-corps pulling out due to concerns over safety? Check. Recent DEA action in rural Honduras? Check. As you can tell, Honduras has a pretty shady reputation, but we decided to hell with that, we were going to make up our own minds.  We had done our homework in contacting the places we were going to stay, and read numerous success stories of our planned itinerary, and decided that we would be extra careful. Our plane arrived in San Pedro Sula's tiny little airport at about 9:10pm, where we had arranged a pick-up from the local hotel. This pretty much went exactly to plan and got to La Posada without a hitch.  There we drank some Honduran beer (Salva Vida, which is actually pretty decent, and Borena, which is reminiscent of Bud Light only terrible).  The manager of our hotel told us that all the foreigners like Salva Vida the best, but in Hondurans think its the cheap, crappy beer that only poor people drink.

The next morning, we woke up to a wonderful breakfast of baleadas, which is simply homemade tortillas, refried beans, some eggs, and cheese. I think its safe to say that baleadas are pretty much the national dish of Honduras, because they're everywhere, and usually pretty cheap. After breakfast, we boarded the hotel's van and headed to the bus station. From there we caught a really nice bus to La Ceiba, where we took a taxi to the docks in order to catch a 4pm ferry to Utila. While on the ferry, we met some other travellers, as well as our future dive instructor Sandy, who was coming back from visitng her family. A friend had previously recommended Cross Creek, and Sandy pretty much sealed the deal. We decided to check out a few of the other options in the area, but in the end we were still sold on Cross Creek.

Unlike most the dive shops on Utila, Cross Creek isn't directly on the ocean but instead is on a connecting lagoon-swamp.  Everything at the shop is located in the same area, however, so if you had a morning dive, you simply walked about 40 feet to get your gear, and another 40 feet from there to the boat. Its awesome! Beyond just that, the people CrossCreek seems to attract are really cool too. There were four of us total in our class:  Phil, Steph, a Swede named Johhny and a German named Yogi.

Our class began on Wednesday the 20th with some light reading about the equipment and diving in general (the power was out, so besides the fact that it was sweltering hot, we had to read the first three chapters intead of just watching the videos, ugh). After lunch Sandy went over the lesson with some practical demonstrations about how to put our gear together, and then we got on the boat to go on our first two dives. The first day of class! The first dive was a "confined" water session, which means we were in water about 3 feet deep.  There we learned and practiced various skills, like clearing your mask, taking out your regulator, etc. After this session, we moved on and went on our first real dive to about 12 meters, or about 30 feet.  Sandy told us that CrossCreek gets you into the water right away, at a really safe depth, so you get the feel of diving right away.  We totally agree.

On our second day (Thursday), we got up and had a teaching session with Sandy, learning more about diving techniques and whatnot. Later that afternoon, we got on the boat again and had another confined water session, this time slightly deeper, where we praticed more skills. Then we had another open water dive to about 12 meters, where we saw a mini-shipwreck and lots of marine life. We spent the evening watching chapters 4 and 5 and answering questions.

Day three of our course (Friday) was our final day, and so we got up early for the morning dive.  The morning dives usually go out a bit farther, to the north coast of the island. We're not really sure if its that much better up there, but we seemed to have some pretty good luck there.  The two dives we did this time were both 18 meter dives (60 feet, the limit of our certification) and lasted about 40 minutes each.  It was AMAZING!  A few highlights we saw included Moray eels, spotted sting rays, barracuda, and a sea turtle.  After finishing our dives for the day, we only had to finish up our test and then we were PADI certified Open Water Divers!

Days four and five on the island were pretty straightforward:  get up in the morning, go on two dives, relax in the afternoon.  Its a pretty sweet life, if you ask us. The dives were all pretty cool, including some drift diving and seeing some lobsters, but we never got to see any sharks (Phil was dissappointed).  We did, however, get the opportunity (twice) to swim with dolphins!!  Once was during our dive certification, where we pretty much only caught glimpses of the dolphins while snorkling.  The second time, only Steph and this Japanese dude got in the water, but there were LOADS of dolphins, probably 30+, and she said they swam right under her. Overall, diving is a pretty fucking awesome thing to be doing, and both of us can't wait to get back in the water in Belize.

Now would probably be a good time to talk about some of the food and other fun we had on the island. We had a lot of baleadas (of multiple kinds, including a conch and shrimp one, among others), a lot of fish (including baracuda, our favorite, but also snapper, king fish, etc.), some lobster pasta, and various versions of grilled chicken and pork. The island itself is pretty Carribean in feel, nothing like the mainland Honduras we would soon encounter. There is an island dialect of english there that sounds vaguely Jamaican, but is really its own thing. We met a lot of cool people on the island, played a few games of Asshole, and in general had a pretty kickass time.  It was really hard to leave, and hopefully we will be back one day for some more diving, and maybe, just maybe, catch a glimpse of the ever ellusive whaleshark.