It’s been a while again but hopefully it shouldn’t be too long as our days recently have been quite similar!
We eventually made it to La Ceiba, after our 9 hour wait at the airport. Whoever invented playing cards should be made a saint in our eyes. Who knows what we’d have done without them. We also managed to eat/drink in 4 different places, which must be some kind of a record. (Chris – Sarah had some problems getting through the metal detectors at San Pedro airport and after emptying her pockets, taking her shoes off and being waved with the magic wand, they finally realized it was her hairclip setting them off. The plane was quite cool and we felt a bit like celebs having to walk out across the runway to the small set of steps up to the little plane along with the 7 other passengers on the flight. Sarah – for SiF people, think VLM to Antwerp planes!) When we got to La Ceiba, we got a taxi to our hotel, slept and then got a taxi to the dock the next morning to make our way to Utila.
The boat took about an hour to get there and on the way, we met a diving instructor called Degs who was from a dive shop called Gunter’s (also known as Ecomarine). He offered to give us a lift on his skiff (that’s a small boat for anyone wondering…) to Gunter’s for us to have a look around and said that we could leave our bags there to have a look around the island and find somewhere to stay etc. The Finns that we met in Bolivia had recommended a different dive school but we thought we’d go and check them out. Anyway, to cut a long story short, they seemed to be a really friendly but professional bunch so I booked with them to take my PADI Open Water diver’s course, starting the next day (Monday). We found a little apartment that was a bit army issue but had a TV with cable, which was what Chris was after, seeing as he was going to be spending a lot of time by himself. (Chris – It was a bargain too at only $10 a night so long as you aren’t put off by the occasional spider, cockroach or beetle!)
I actually started the course that afternoon, with my dive course buddies – Nolan, a Canadian guy and Tom, a Belgian – as we watched the first couple of videos. This meant that we had a lie-in the next morning and didn’t have to be at Gunter’s until 10:30 – yay! So, the next day, the diving began. Degs was our instructor, which was good as he was a really nice guy (English of course!) and a very good teacher. Firstly just in very shallow water where we breathed underwater for the first time, flooded and emptied masks etc., nothing too taxing. We then went over our homework (yes, we had homework to do!) and that was day one done.
To be honest, I can’t remember exactly what we did day by day as they all sort of merged into one another so I’ll just give you a brief overview of the whole diving experience. To start with, it was a bit strange and I had a few problems with not sinking, meaning that I had to be given extra weight. During the Open Water course, we had to do the confined water training (as above) and then 4 dive sessions. During these sessions we practised various skills such as clearing our masks, learning to swap our regulator (the thing you breath through) for our buddy’s alternate regulator for if we ran out of air, how to ascend and descend safely, even if we didn’t have any air left (never, ever hold your breath while diving – it can be very dangerous so if you have to ascend without a regulator, you have to make an ‘aaahhh’ sound on the way up, which I had problems with as I didn’t have enough breath!) and fin pivoting, which is where you lie on the bottom and then use the air in the BCD (the jacket thing you wear – buoyancy control device) and your breathing to go up and down but keeping the tip of your fins on the floor. We also got to swim around and look at fish a bit as well of course. During all of this, I couldn’t really decide whether diving was for me. I think it was partly because of the exercises that we had to do – not as fun as the looking at fish bit! After we’d completed the dives and our homeworks, we had to take a quick exam, which wasn’t particularly taxing and we all passed no problem.
Nolan and I then decided that we wanted to go on and do the Advanced Open Water course, which consisted of five more dives – a deep dive (to 30m – those people qualified to Open Water standard can only dive to 18m) and a navigation dive (eeek – we had to use a compass!!) were obligatory and then we had to choose three more so we did a peak performance buoyancy dive (good for me as my buoyancy i.e. the ability to stay quite still in the water and ‘hover’ wasn’t great), where we had to swim through hoops and things and then did a karate session where we took off our fins and pretend kicked each other and rolled around and things, which was quite fun. Then we did a night dive, which was a bit scary – right at the beginning, my buddy and I lost the others as I couldn’t sink again (luckily my buddy was Harald, a German divemaster in training and so quite experienced) but we found them quite quickly. After that though, I was so intent on staying close to Harald that I didn’t pay that much attention to the dive! When we surfaced, it was also really rough and getting back onto a smallish boat which is crashing up and down in the water was fun! Our final choice was a photography dive, which isn’t as easy as it sounds – you’re moving, the fish are moving…anyway, I got a couple of OK shots, which you can see in the picture section. And that was it. We were qualified Advanced Open Water divers! (No exam for this one).
After the courses, we had 4 free fun dives and to start with, I was going to give them a miss as I had had quite a stiff neck and didn’t want to make it any worse. However, Chris persuaded me that I should do them and I’m very glad he did as they proved to me that I do enjoy diving (I was still having some doubts). On the second dive of the first day (you do two dives on each outing), we saw some really cool stuff, including a turtle that we swam along with for a while, a lobster and a green moray eel that was about 1.5m long (oh, to have had the camera that day!). On the way out on the second day of my fun dives, we saw a school of dolphins, which was amazing. Unfortunately, by the time we got in the water to swim with them, they’d swum off – they were more interested in finding boats to play with. That was an interesting day because we went down for our first dive, only to surface again 15 minutes later as Tex, the guy leading the dive, was disoriented and wanted to relocate. So, the boat came over to pick us up, took us back to the buoy and took us back where we went down again. Then, on the way to our second dive site, there was a rumour of a whaleshark nearby so we went looking for that. We didn’t find it, but the boat did break down on the way back to the second dive site. Luckily, it wasn’t anything major and we got to the second site soon enough. Again, we saw some quite cool stuff, including a longlure frogfish (believe me, it was a big deal!) and a spotted moray eel. Some of the other people diving also saw an octopus but I didn’t…To sum up, it’s beautiful down there! Some of the coral is really pretty, with beautiful purples and reds and there are also some very pretty fish of course. Lots of lovely blues, yellows and reds. So, that’s about the end of my diving adventures. I did end up really enjoying it and hopefully, I’ll be able to fit a little bit more in in Mexico :0)
Chris – Utila is really cool. It was a bit strange at first as most people speak English although with a thick Caribbean accent (think Jamaicans) which can be quite hard to understand although there are some (mostly people who’ve moved across from the mainland) who only speak Spanish. Everyone drives around in golf buggies or on quad bikes, you do see the occasional car but usually only one a day or so, or else people cycle or walk. There are also lots of lizards and iguanas on the island, we had a resident gecko in our room who was very small but very noisy in the mornings. The beaches were lovely – sand and clear blue water, exactly what you’d imagine for a Caribbean island although I found it a bit strange that there weren’t any waves. I spent most of my time reading down by the beach (got through The Da Vinci Code and half of Caribbean), getting some jobs done which was no mean feat on Utila where the post office never had any stamps, the bank always had a big queue and the lady from the lavanderia was always at a neighbour’s house and watching football on TV (still in shock at Liverpool reaching the final of the Champions League!). I also sampled some of the local beer, Salva Vida (rather too much after the first leg and spent the rest of the afternoon sleeping it off) and some of the milkshakes which were delicious. It was really really hot, too hot to explore anywhere really so I also hung out at the dive shop which, with the cooling sea breeze, was one of the coolest places on the island. We also did a pub quiz one night although our team of me, Sarah, Nolan and Tom didn’t stand much of a chance when they started asking questions about island diving history and current events (I had enough trouble keeping up with the snooker!)
We left Utila on Wednesday morning, bright and early at 6:20, back to La Ceiba. From there, we got a bus to San Pedro Sula and then to Copan Ruinas, which is where we are now. We haven’t really done that much since we’ve been here…we were supposed to go to see the Maya ruins that are nearby today but my tummy started playing up again :0( so hopefully we’ll be able to do that tomorrow. We went to the museum here in town yesterday, which was quite interesting and explained a bit about the stelae, which are columns that the Maya built to commemorate leaders and events etc, and a bit about the history of the Maya occupation of Copan. There are a few other bits and pieces to do here and then we’ll be moving on to Antigua in Guatemala on Monday. Oh, and one final thing…there are far too many mosquitoes around everywhere! They seem to think that my legs are some sort of open buffet…not looking at all attractive!
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