Honduras and the Bay Island of Utila: Are you for Scuba?
The bus stop in Leon is actually more like the pavement at the local Shell petrol station. I arrived there and met Neil and Emma, a recently married couple on their honeymoon. There were a few nervous jitters when the bus was 30 minutes late but it soon arrived after that and we were on our way.
Again it was a Tica bus so I was prepared with my hoodie for the ice-cold air conditioning. Passing through the border was easy and we spent another 10 hours driving through beautiful vivid green countryside. When we arrived in San Pedro Sula, the industrial and business capital of Honduras, I was expecting to have to spend the night over there, however luckily the last bus to La Ceiba was scheduled to leave in 30 minutes. This was the executive class Hedman Alas bus which although a lot more pricey ($18) than the standard option ($8), it was infinitely more comfortable and I got free drinks and snacks.
A quick 3 hours later and I arrived in La Ceiba which is supposedly the party town of Honduras. There is a saying that Hondurans govern in Tegucigalpa (the capital), work in San Pedro Sula and party in La Ceiba. I was tired and had no interest in partying so I booked into a small hostel with some friendly people and took an easy night. Early the next morning we were off to the harbor and booked the tickets onto the catamaran to Utila... the backpackers island. Roatan is the biggest island followed by Guanaja (the most exclusive island catering for luxury vacations) and Utila which is the closest to the mainland.
I met a local dive instructor called Tyler on the ferry and upon arrival on the island I went to check out his dive centre called Alton's Dive Centre. I had been recommended the place by others and after a bit of shopping around I decided to stay there and do my advanced diving course. The small town is fairly similar to Bocas del Toro, with a very long main street and cramped up shops and hotels. Diving is the main interest of people coming to the island, followed I think by partying. Alton's provide certifications for PADI (who I got my open water licence with) and NAUI. The main difference between the two is that NAUI gives an extra training dive and also allows you to dive deeper after certification than PADI would. This saves time and money on doing an extra PADI course. In addition, NAUI uses most of its revenue to educate divers and preserve the environment whereas PADI is run more like a global corporation with most money spent on mass media marketing. I decided to go with NAUI as the two courses are both internationally recognized and I was keen to be able to dive to 40m!
Walking along the main (and just about only) street in Utila town
Alton´s dive centre. I took this shot from the jetty
Alton´s from the other side
I relaxed most of the day on the hammocks at Alton's and met quite a few of the people there including a South African called Rian who had just finished his dive master training. That evening, the centre was providing a Bando stew which is a local Utilan specialty. Some local dudes spent most of the day preparing the vegetables and fish in a massive steel pot and when we finally got served it was well worth the wait. The island is a mixed bag when it comes to the inhabitants. The "local" people are of Caribbean descent and speak English fluently with a really cool West Indian twang. There are a lot of Spanish speaking Hondurans who have moved to the island to work and then most of the dive centre owners and instructors are from all over the globe such as USA, England and Australia. Many white people have lived there for several generations so it was quite interesting to hear them speaking in the same way as West Indians.
As Rian and another guy had just completed their dive master certifications they had to go through the snorkel initiation where a large amount of alcohol is poured down into a snorkel and mask funnel. Very amusing to watch! Later we also visited the famous Treetanic bar which has a very unique design. It is built like a tree house with winding bridges and lofts and walls made of mortar and colourful bottles. It is almost like a maze when you walk around.
Rian getting his divemaster initiation... 2 litres of lethal cocktail through a snorkel!
Bando Stew... amazing
Martin and Mathieu (in Honduras shirt)
The jetty at Alton's is a veritable dive site itself and I spent a while exploring underneath. There were lots of barracuda and large fish relaxing right there. They even had moray eels living in the rocks! I got some nice macro shots of freaky looking spider crabs and some starfish. I also discovered a great cheap meal called the Super Baleada... a sort of flour tortilla stuffed with egg, tomato and beans. Awesome for breakfast lunch or dinner!
There was a resident Moray eel at the centre!
Coming out for a snack left for it
Spider crab thingie with anemone in the background
My first dive on my course was a night dive. At 5:30pm we arranged all our gear and after a short briefing from my instructor, Neal, we got on the boat and made our way to the dive site as the sun was setting.
Night dives as you might expect are done in the dark so you need to use a flashlight. Luckily the moon was almost full so there was some natural light too. We took the dive down to about 18 metres and explored the Black Coral Wall site. We moved along a steep coral wall and shone our torches amongst the nooks and holes, spotting a lot of lobster (looks exactly like the crayfish from SA) and crabs and some sleepy fish. Night diving is an entirely different experience and it took a while to adjust to the spooky surroundings. Fan corals would cast shadows in strange ways depending on the angle you shone your torch. As I was checking out a small shrimpy thing I noticed out the side of my eye a flash light shaking left to right which is an indication that I must pay attention. As I turned around, I had a split second to realize a large Hawksbill turtle was gliding straight for me. Frozen more out of fear than any sense of calm, I watched it move straight over my head, less than 20 cm from my face. I was really tempted to reach out and touch it! As it moved on and melded with the dark, we carried on with our dive, spotting a large grouper and even more lobster. We tried to get some phosphorescence going but it seems there wasn´t any about where we were.
My only picture, post-dive on the boat
I emerged from the water fairly thrilled with my experience. I had never seen a turtle before and the whole night experience was slightly surreal. I had an early start the next morning with some more diving so I went to RJ's for an amazing Mahi Mahi (Dorado) fish barbeque, a few drinks at Treetanic with Polly and Olivia (both English) and then scuttled off to bed. Even with a fan going full blast in my direction I struggled to sleep in the heat.
Polly and Olivia from Bath in England
Geckos showing their nasty side! Here they have caught a large dragonfly and are preparing to dismember it
The morning dives were once again training oriented. Dive 1 was at Duppy Waters on the north side of the island. Alex (Eng gap year student) and myself were on our navigation training where we needed to use a compass to travel around the site in a square and a triangle. No problem! The water clarity was pretty good so even though I don't think I was spot on with my bearings, I still managed to make the correct turns.
Prepping on the boat
Neal from North Carolina USA was our NAUI instructor
This type of tree coral was fairly typical
Dive 2 was at the Aquarium site. Our instructors, Lauren and Neal, setup a small underwater acrobatics and obstacle course for us to improve our underwater buoyancy and control. They sat us down on a large sandy patch about 12 metres down and demonstrated all the actions we were required to perform. I might have felt a bit like a circus animal when I was instructed to go through hoops (it seemed the fish even came quite close to curiously observe) but it was fun so I never minded too much.
A Parrotfish chomping on some coral
Back at the centre everybody was prepping for a booze cruise. At 5pm we hopped on the boat along with many other revelers and circled the bay whilst drinking beer and listening to Reggae beats. The night carried on at CocoLoco on the seafront. The party was cool but if you sat still for even a second you would get bitten by hordes of voracious sandflies!
Luckily I didn't have a dive on Sunday morning meaning that the hangover could be nursed until midday. I was quite excited though as we were scheduled to visit the Halliburton wreck site. This wreck is actually artificially created as it was intentionally sunk for the purpose of diver training. After gearing up we got into the water and made our descent. The first sign of the boat was the bow. 2 large spotted grouper eyed us as we moved in on their territory. The wreck has a few weird things on it including an old bicycle and a lot of white mannequin heads. We cruised from bow to stern and made a swim through at the navigation deck. Along with the usual mix of colourful fish, I saw one huge snapper that had made its home on the fore deck cabin.
Hangovers were best spent in hammocks
I am ready for Scuba!
The Haliburton wreck had some great corals growing on all sorts of things such as metal posts pictured here
Spotted Grouper guarding its territory
A bicycle and attached mannequin head
This is all growing on the metal hull of the ship
Large Angelfish
The next dive was a simple "fun" dive meaning that there was no training involved for it. However we encountered problems when our boat wouldn't start so we called in for help and got the other boat from Alton's to tow us to our site! Thankfully this didn´t take too long although the captain was resorting to smashing the engine solenoid to get results! The dive itself was more of a shallow water affair as we had been down to 30m at the wreck. We didn't see anything too spectacular except for a cowfish.
A well camouflaged flounder
Goatfish
Little shrimp
Lobster (aka Crayfish)
Cowfish
Trumpetfish
I had dinner with some French Canadians and English that evening. One chap called Mathieu (Can) was getting fully drunk and provided us with some hilarious entertainment. I had a tuna kebab which was massive and I almost failed in finishing it! Even though it was a Sunday there was still a party going on! I exercised some restraint and took it easy. That evening the island experienced a mild earthquake but I was fast asleep and never felt a thing!
Kayak races
8am was the start for our next 2 dives. First dive was our scheduled Deep Dive. We sank down to 36m along a vertical coral wall. At that depth it becomes fairly cold and dark and breathing becomes noticeably harder. We spent a short while down there to get a feeling for what it is like before we slowly ascended again.
Once we had hit the surface we were told that there was a possible whale shark sighting nearby. We cruised around in search for it for a while but had no luck. A bit disappointing as I would have loved to swim with one!
Dive 2 was a drift dive meaning we just jumped in and let the current take us along. Nice and relaxing was my cup of tea. This dive was great as we saw several interesting things such as a stingray, porcupine fish, squid, large snapper and a barracuda. This was my last scheduled training dive so technically I was a certified NAUI Advanced Scuba Diver. Boooya!!!
Some small private offshore islands. You can see the Honduran mainland in the far distance
I think this is a rabbit fish but I am still pretty stoked about this shot
Black Triggerfish
Squid
Huge Snapper
Porcupine fish
Remora
Zorro with some of his catch, including a very large shark!!!
We visited CocoLoco again which was very quiet so Mathieu decided to host an impromptu speed dating session amongst everybody gathered there. Amazingly enough people actually listened to his instructions so I met several cool (and weird) people by the simple process of Mathieu shoving me in their direction with the words: "You... go speak to her. And You... go there...." etc etc.
Our last day was spent idly in hammocks, swimming and reading. I was informed that there were seahorses under one of the nearby jetties so I swam over and had a look. Our fisherman reliably turned up again and we bought several black tail tuna from him for dinner. The tuna was also delicious and we all knew we would miss freshly caught fish that only cost about $1 per person. We went out again to the Treetanic bar and hung out with some German friends, Lea and Julie. Our ferry back the mainland was at 6:30am in the morning so there were a lot of bleary-eyed backpackers getting onboard and not much was said the entire 1 hour ride back to La Ceiba.
Sea urchin under the dock
My first sea-horse spotting!
Don´t mess with the chef preparing you amazing tuna steaks!
We needed to get to Copan, near the Honduran and Guatemalan border so this meant another visit to San Pedro Sula and then the direct bus to Copan. We all spent much of the trip snoozing and arrived in good time as the sun was setting over the very pretty town of Copan.
Again it was a Tica bus so I was prepared with my hoodie for the ice-cold air conditioning. Passing through the border was easy and we spent another 10 hours driving through beautiful vivid green countryside. When we arrived in San Pedro Sula, the industrial and business capital of Honduras, I was expecting to have to spend the night over there, however luckily the last bus to La Ceiba was scheduled to leave in 30 minutes. This was the executive class Hedman Alas bus which although a lot more pricey ($18) than the standard option ($8), it was infinitely more comfortable and I got free drinks and snacks.
A quick 3 hours later and I arrived in La Ceiba which is supposedly the party town of Honduras. There is a saying that Hondurans govern in Tegucigalpa (the capital), work in San Pedro Sula and party in La Ceiba. I was tired and had no interest in partying so I booked into a small hostel with some friendly people and took an easy night. Early the next morning we were off to the harbor and booked the tickets onto the catamaran to Utila... the backpackers island. Roatan is the biggest island followed by Guanaja (the most exclusive island catering for luxury vacations) and Utila which is the closest to the mainland.
I met a local dive instructor called Tyler on the ferry and upon arrival on the island I went to check out his dive centre called Alton's Dive Centre. I had been recommended the place by others and after a bit of shopping around I decided to stay there and do my advanced diving course. The small town is fairly similar to Bocas del Toro, with a very long main street and cramped up shops and hotels. Diving is the main interest of people coming to the island, followed I think by partying. Alton's provide certifications for PADI (who I got my open water licence with) and NAUI. The main difference between the two is that NAUI gives an extra training dive and also allows you to dive deeper after certification than PADI would. This saves time and money on doing an extra PADI course. In addition, NAUI uses most of its revenue to educate divers and preserve the environment whereas PADI is run more like a global corporation with most money spent on mass media marketing. I decided to go with NAUI as the two courses are both internationally recognized and I was keen to be able to dive to 40m!
Walking along the main (and just about only) street in Utila town
Alton´s dive centre. I took this shot from the jetty
Alton´s from the other sideI relaxed most of the day on the hammocks at Alton's and met quite a few of the people there including a South African called Rian who had just finished his dive master training. That evening, the centre was providing a Bando stew which is a local Utilan specialty. Some local dudes spent most of the day preparing the vegetables and fish in a massive steel pot and when we finally got served it was well worth the wait. The island is a mixed bag when it comes to the inhabitants. The "local" people are of Caribbean descent and speak English fluently with a really cool West Indian twang. There are a lot of Spanish speaking Hondurans who have moved to the island to work and then most of the dive centre owners and instructors are from all over the globe such as USA, England and Australia. Many white people have lived there for several generations so it was quite interesting to hear them speaking in the same way as West Indians.
As Rian and another guy had just completed their dive master certifications they had to go through the snorkel initiation where a large amount of alcohol is poured down into a snorkel and mask funnel. Very amusing to watch! Later we also visited the famous Treetanic bar which has a very unique design. It is built like a tree house with winding bridges and lofts and walls made of mortar and colourful bottles. It is almost like a maze when you walk around.
Rian getting his divemaster initiation... 2 litres of lethal cocktail through a snorkel!
Bando Stew... amazing
Martin and Mathieu (in Honduras shirt)The jetty at Alton's is a veritable dive site itself and I spent a while exploring underneath. There were lots of barracuda and large fish relaxing right there. They even had moray eels living in the rocks! I got some nice macro shots of freaky looking spider crabs and some starfish. I also discovered a great cheap meal called the Super Baleada... a sort of flour tortilla stuffed with egg, tomato and beans. Awesome for breakfast lunch or dinner!
There was a resident Moray eel at the centre!
Coming out for a snack left for it
Spider crab thingie with anemone in the background
Night dives as you might expect are done in the dark so you need to use a flashlight. Luckily the moon was almost full so there was some natural light too. We took the dive down to about 18 metres and explored the Black Coral Wall site. We moved along a steep coral wall and shone our torches amongst the nooks and holes, spotting a lot of lobster (looks exactly like the crayfish from SA) and crabs and some sleepy fish. Night diving is an entirely different experience and it took a while to adjust to the spooky surroundings. Fan corals would cast shadows in strange ways depending on the angle you shone your torch. As I was checking out a small shrimpy thing I noticed out the side of my eye a flash light shaking left to right which is an indication that I must pay attention. As I turned around, I had a split second to realize a large Hawksbill turtle was gliding straight for me. Frozen more out of fear than any sense of calm, I watched it move straight over my head, less than 20 cm from my face. I was really tempted to reach out and touch it! As it moved on and melded with the dark, we carried on with our dive, spotting a large grouper and even more lobster. We tried to get some phosphorescence going but it seems there wasn´t any about where we were.
My only picture, post-dive on the boatI emerged from the water fairly thrilled with my experience. I had never seen a turtle before and the whole night experience was slightly surreal. I had an early start the next morning with some more diving so I went to RJ's for an amazing Mahi Mahi (Dorado) fish barbeque, a few drinks at Treetanic with Polly and Olivia (both English) and then scuttled off to bed. Even with a fan going full blast in my direction I struggled to sleep in the heat.
Polly and Olivia from Bath in England
Geckos showing their nasty side! Here they have caught a large dragonfly and are preparing to dismember itThe morning dives were once again training oriented. Dive 1 was at Duppy Waters on the north side of the island. Alex (Eng gap year student) and myself were on our navigation training where we needed to use a compass to travel around the site in a square and a triangle. No problem! The water clarity was pretty good so even though I don't think I was spot on with my bearings, I still managed to make the correct turns.
Prepping on the boat
Neal from North Carolina USA was our NAUI instructor
This type of tree coral was fairly typicalDive 2 was at the Aquarium site. Our instructors, Lauren and Neal, setup a small underwater acrobatics and obstacle course for us to improve our underwater buoyancy and control. They sat us down on a large sandy patch about 12 metres down and demonstrated all the actions we were required to perform. I might have felt a bit like a circus animal when I was instructed to go through hoops (it seemed the fish even came quite close to curiously observe) but it was fun so I never minded too much.
A Parrotfish chomping on some coralBack at the centre everybody was prepping for a booze cruise. At 5pm we hopped on the boat along with many other revelers and circled the bay whilst drinking beer and listening to Reggae beats. The night carried on at CocoLoco on the seafront. The party was cool but if you sat still for even a second you would get bitten by hordes of voracious sandflies!
Luckily I didn't have a dive on Sunday morning meaning that the hangover could be nursed until midday. I was quite excited though as we were scheduled to visit the Halliburton wreck site. This wreck is actually artificially created as it was intentionally sunk for the purpose of diver training. After gearing up we got into the water and made our descent. The first sign of the boat was the bow. 2 large spotted grouper eyed us as we moved in on their territory. The wreck has a few weird things on it including an old bicycle and a lot of white mannequin heads. We cruised from bow to stern and made a swim through at the navigation deck. Along with the usual mix of colourful fish, I saw one huge snapper that had made its home on the fore deck cabin.
Hangovers were best spent in hammocks
I am ready for Scuba!
The Haliburton wreck had some great corals growing on all sorts of things such as metal posts pictured here
Spotted Grouper guarding its territory
A bicycle and attached mannequin head
This is all growing on the metal hull of the ship
Large Angelfish
The next dive was a simple "fun" dive meaning that there was no training involved for it. However we encountered problems when our boat wouldn't start so we called in for help and got the other boat from Alton's to tow us to our site! Thankfully this didn´t take too long although the captain was resorting to smashing the engine solenoid to get results! The dive itself was more of a shallow water affair as we had been down to 30m at the wreck. We didn't see anything too spectacular except for a cowfish.
A well camouflaged flounder
Goatfish
Little shrimp
Lobster (aka Crayfish)
Cowfish
TrumpetfishI had dinner with some French Canadians and English that evening. One chap called Mathieu (Can) was getting fully drunk and provided us with some hilarious entertainment. I had a tuna kebab which was massive and I almost failed in finishing it! Even though it was a Sunday there was still a party going on! I exercised some restraint and took it easy. That evening the island experienced a mild earthquake but I was fast asleep and never felt a thing!
Kayak races8am was the start for our next 2 dives. First dive was our scheduled Deep Dive. We sank down to 36m along a vertical coral wall. At that depth it becomes fairly cold and dark and breathing becomes noticeably harder. We spent a short while down there to get a feeling for what it is like before we slowly ascended again.
Once we had hit the surface we were told that there was a possible whale shark sighting nearby. We cruised around in search for it for a while but had no luck. A bit disappointing as I would have loved to swim with one!
Dive 2 was a drift dive meaning we just jumped in and let the current take us along. Nice and relaxing was my cup of tea. This dive was great as we saw several interesting things such as a stingray, porcupine fish, squid, large snapper and a barracuda. This was my last scheduled training dive so technically I was a certified NAUI Advanced Scuba Diver. Boooya!!!
Some small private offshore islands. You can see the Honduran mainland in the far distance
I think this is a rabbit fish but I am still pretty stoked about this shot
Black Triggerfish 
Squid
Huge Snapper
Porcupine fish
RemoraThat evening we visited the Tranquila bar for some drinks. On my way back to Alton's, I was jumped by a local Honduran with a 3 foot machete right on the main street. He demanded my money which I quickly handed over. As I did this, I subtley pulled my camera out of my left pocket and tossed it into the bushes on the side of the road. Thankfully he seemed happy enough with the money and let me move on. I rushed back to Alton's and got some guys together to go back and help me look for my camera. After a short while of searching it was miraculously recovered!!! I was so relieved. The whole incident cost me around $30 USD so it is not too bad, all things considered.
I had to go file a police report in the morning. The police station sits on the corner of the local football field and seems more like a sports clubhouse than any kind of municipal building. The officer on duty was lounging in his chair watching a Spanish soap on TV with his girlfriend. After a bit of confusing dialogue I managed to get the message through about what happened and he drew up a report for me. Later the afternoon, Mathieu, Martin and some other people at the hostel were interested in getting some fresh fish off a local fisherman called Zorro. We bought a huge barracuda for 150 Lempiras ($8 USD and enough fish for over 8 people) and cooked it up that evening with some mashed potato. It was amazing!
Zorro with some of his catch, including a very large shark!!!We visited CocoLoco again which was very quiet so Mathieu decided to host an impromptu speed dating session amongst everybody gathered there. Amazingly enough people actually listened to his instructions so I met several cool (and weird) people by the simple process of Mathieu shoving me in their direction with the words: "You... go speak to her. And You... go there...." etc etc.
Our last day was spent idly in hammocks, swimming and reading. I was informed that there were seahorses under one of the nearby jetties so I swam over and had a look. Our fisherman reliably turned up again and we bought several black tail tuna from him for dinner. The tuna was also delicious and we all knew we would miss freshly caught fish that only cost about $1 per person. We went out again to the Treetanic bar and hung out with some German friends, Lea and Julie. Our ferry back the mainland was at 6:30am in the morning so there were a lot of bleary-eyed backpackers getting onboard and not much was said the entire 1 hour ride back to La Ceiba.
Sea urchin under the dock
My first sea-horse spotting!
Don´t mess with the chef preparing you amazing tuna steaks!We needed to get to Copan, near the Honduran and Guatemalan border so this meant another visit to San Pedro Sula and then the direct bus to Copan. We all spent much of the trip snoozing and arrived in good time as the sun was setting over the very pretty town of Copan.
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