Utila

Utila, Honduras

Feb 25- March 6

Monday Feb 25

We took the ferry from La Ceiba to Utila, it's a small island not too far off the eastern coast of Honduras and is part of the Bay Islands. It’s also pretty close to Roatan which is a major tourist destination. Utila is known throughout the world as being an awesome place for cheap diving, which is why we're here, and for being a part of the 2nd biggest corral reef in the world. We spent 10 days getting certified and had such an awesome time!

The island is full of so many dive shops that the second you get off the ferry you are literally being pulled on and yelled at by 10 different people wanting you to listen to their spill. It was so overwhelming at one point I was seriously looking around for something to poke my eye out with so I could end the torture! :) We finally narrowed it down and checked out two different shops and decided on a place called Parrot’s Dive Center. It's owned by a local guy and his wife, Tatiana, who was originally from Chile. We paid $500 to get our Open Water and Advanced Diving certification. All the dive shops are so desperate to get people there they offer free accommodation or a credit towards your diving if you stay somewhere else. We ended up finding this awesome little house and paid $135 total for the 10 nights we were there!

The day after we arrived we started our Open Water class. We had quite a bit of book work to do as well as going out in shallow water and proving our skills before they would put us on the boat. Our first 3 days on the island had been absolutely miserable with heat, I was seriously considering a nudist lifestyle during that time. :) So, it was seriously shocking when the next 3 days were the coldest the island has seen all winter with rain and no sun whatsoever! Those of course were the days we started our diving first thing in the morning. Every time out on the boat we would do two different dives, so the time in between the dives and heading back were so cold. We were wishing for that miserable heat like crazy! It took 4 1/2 days to complete our Open Water certification which allowed us to go down to 18 meters and right after we started our Advanced Open Water Course. This would allow us to now go to 30 meters (just over 100 feet), plus with the course we got to do a night dive (which included an underwater dance party where we all turned our lights off and danced around, something about all of the movement made the algae react and glow in the dark, it was awesome!) and a ship wreck dive at 30 meters! It was crazy being so far under water and being so reliant on a little tank strapped to your back. In total after getting our certification and doing some fun dives I dove 11 times in 5 days and McKay did 13 in 6 days (I opted out of the last two, I think I was suffering from a little thing called pussitis from the cold weather)!! We were able to see lots of awesome fish, eels, and manta rays and the coral was beautiful. We are practically pros now and can dive anywhere we want in the world! :) It was also nice having a little structure back in our lives, we would typically dive in the morning and do book work in the afternoon or vice versa. It kept us busy and it was shocking how exhausted we were everyday after diving!

This is our cute house, we had access to a washing machine and it even had TV with regular ESPN, McKay was in heaven! The one down side to the house was we had to pay all our own electricity because everything on the island is powered by diesel fuel, which means it is expensive! We paid about $.50 per kilowatt. I’ve never been so paranoid of conserving power in my whole, we would eat dinner in the dark, unplug the TV when we weren’t using it, and only use the AC if conditions were absolutely dire! :)

This is where the magic happens! Do you know how nice it is to have your own fridge and stove? I never thought I’d be so excited to cook. :) We made Macaroni and Cheese no less than 5 times and lived on Peanut Butter and Honey rolls the rest of the time!

I wish we had a better picture of this, but where we stayed had about 5 houses that were all closed in together and had a pretty big grassy area that was filled with iguanas. At night we would hear them climbing all over the roof. When we first looked at the house the lady told us the owner likes the iguanas more than people....

So this is what 30,000 feels like?… Too bad it’s only in Lempiras!

We had the afternoon off from class one of the days and rented bikes and rode them around the whole island. This even included a tour past the local power station and through more mosquito infested jungle than I need to do again. This was on a bridge overlooking the bay!

On our bike ride we found this picturesque bay! This is where all the foreigners and rich locals live, so we fit right in...

If you look closely you can see the sad site that used to be my legs. This place has sand flies like nobody's business and at one point I had over 60 bites on one leg alone. We practically bathed in insect repellent but nothing seemed to work. I think if it hadn't been for those pesky bugs we both could have stayed there for the rest of the trip! 

Beach time!!

Watching the sunset on the bay side! There were some pelicans we were watching from here that were flying all over and then diving in to the water and coming out with a fish in their mouth, it was pretty awesome to see!

Getting ready for our first legit dive, naturally we nailed it!

This is the main road on the island. It's so narrow, there are no real cars. Everyone has 4 wheelers, golf carts, or those 4 wheel Razors.

Sorry I look so hard core swimming in the water with all my gear on...

Getting out. Behind me is our instructor Mark, he was kind of a spazz and drank more Dr. Pepper than anyone I've ever met, but we had a lot of fun with him and he loved calling everyone sweetie and dear! On one of our first dives we saw a big crab that McKay had been super impressed with (and by super impressed I mean seriously he told everyone we saw for the rest of the day about this crab and no one even thought it was that cool), Mark thought that was so funny and kept teasing him about it the rest of our time there.

On the boat heading back after a dive, McKay was playing hide and seek with the camera in this one.

Gladys burger! This place consists of this tiny shack with a kitchen and one table out front. Gladys herself does all the cooking! At $2.50 for a legit 1/4 pounder, we ate here a couple times. One day we stopped by to grab something and the missionaries walked by so we bought them lunch as well. Too bad their mission doesn't let them drink Coke, but that didn't stop us from downing it in front of them...

We are so tough we're going diving as the sun goes down! Night diving was so amazing and by far my highlight for Utila. Being down there in the dark with only a flashlight just made everything look so different and somehow more captivating. At the very end of our dive we were doing a 3 minute safety stop to let our bodies get regulated before going to the surface, let me preface this by telling you, sitting around for 3 minutes under water is boring and even more so when you're in the dark. Naturally I was off in my own world during that time probably thinking about eating Mac N Cheese when we got up. Once the 3 minutes were done Mark told us to head up, but right at that moment someone spotted a 4 foot Nurse shark right by us! It was awesome! Well it would have been had I seen it... Instead I was too zoned out in my own world to notice the deadly ocean predator lurking right behind me and headed for the surface just like the good student that I am. I remember at the time thinking, 'why isn't everyone following us up, oh well.' Haha Apparently everyone except Mark and I were checking out this shark putting their lights all over it, but somehow we missed it.  Even though I didn't get to see it I'm so glad Mckay did, if only so he would stop talking about that crab... :)

Doesn't McKay look cute underwater? :) Haha just kidding, this isn't actually McKay although the resemblance is quite uncanny. I just found this picture of the actual dive we did on google and plugged it in as our own... Oops! This is from inside the cargo bay.

My poor little toes after so much diving! I made the mistake of not wearing socks on our first dive and my feet were rubbed raw at the end. I wore socks from then on but the damage had been done and I'd come home with bigger and deeper sores every day!

The Crew! Mike, Gabe, and Brandon in the back and Danielle in the front! We did our Open and Advanced Water courses with Gabe and Brandon and Danielle was Gabe's girlfriend, we had a lot of fun getting to know them! This is at a BBQ place called RJ's it's only open 3 days a week and had steak and seafood. You can't be in a hurry here, because the owner sits out back cooking everything up while drinking a beer and taking his sweet time, it was definitely worth the wait though and the steak and shrimp were awesome!

This is what Parrot's Dive Center looks like at 5:30 in the morning, it's almost the same as any other time of the day....

One last look at Utila as we were getting on the ferry to head back, goodbye sweet island, don't forget us!