The actual last of Utila
No-one’s getting scurvy on my watch: the irresistible pull of Utila
After getting back to the mainland port of La Ceiba I realised that something was amiss. It felt like decompression sickness of sorts, like I had come out far too quickly and before I was really ready, and so had to return to the island. Both Sarah and I felt that we needed some time apart from each other, and as she was off to her language school in Guatemala and so would be busy for a fortnight anyway, I decided to stay in La Ceiba, let her go ahead to Guatemala and we will reunite in a fortnight. I felt incredibly guilty that she would have to face the 17 hour coach ride on her own, followed by a night in a strange city and then another short bus ride, but figured that if I could travel for 7 months on my own she can manage 2 days.
So I spent an extra night in the hostel in La Ceiba, a strange affair of just a room with single beds in it and a fridge outside. There was a big American style shopping mall a short walk away where I spent quite a lot of time: soaking up the air-con and avoiding the persistent monsoon of thunder and lightning outside. I met a couple of nice people in the hostel as well: a Scottish boy, hilariously named Scott, who had just returned from Utila after actually getting real decompression sickness (the second tourist ever apparently) and so leaving Utila with 3 weeks of fond memories of life inside the decompression chamber and the crazy local doctor’s house; an American/Mexican boy Michael, and an Aussie girl Bronnie. On the second night I spent there Bronnie, Michael and I went to the nice bar/restaurant that Sarah and I visited on our stop on the way to Utila, via a bizarre dash through the storm and literally wading through the 10 inch deep puddles. One of the wonderful things about travelling is meeting people one moment and finding yourself in a bar with them the next, sharing stories (the tale of Cancun), travel tips (where to find the best magic mushrooms in Central America), tales of forging official documents to obtain local passports, laughing like you have known the person forever and talking about mutual friends you have made in the next.
So I found myself on the boat (Vomit Comet) back to Utila, after having to explain to someone I knew getting off the boat before I boarded why the heck I was getting back on, which frankly I struggled to do. I arrived back armed with fruit and vegetable supplies for people there though, and a litre of £2.30 vodka. No-one’s gets scurvy on my watch. I was only planning to spend another two nights here, but of course ended up staying longer, although I am actually going to leave again this time. Promise.
Good-bye Utila?
After deciding that I was bored of Utila and more than ready to move on, now it actually comes down to it of course I don’t want to go. This may have more to do with treating myself to a wonderful different room (but in the same place) with an en suite, air conditioning much fewer ants and a comfier bed too. Pricy compared to the previous $5 a night dorm but definitely worth it. Of course with the amount of nightly partying that goes on, I don’t usually see much of the bed, but for day time naps and cooling off after being outside it is wonderful. Unsurprisingly Sarah has only spent one night in her dive school room, after her roommate bet her that she wouldn’t stay there at all.
Sarah did her open water dive course this week at one of the neighbouring dive schools where I have been meeting people and with whom I went on another trip to Water Caye, the island that I visited last week. This time around it was about as awesome as a day can be, spent sunbathing, drinking in the sea, a swim/crawl/hop around the rocks in the shallow water to the neighbouring island and well overloading the boat which we took back.
Yesterday I went on a couple of dives with Sarah which were awesome because they were dives and I was trying not to laugh at half of the (probably not PADI approved) hand signals Sarah was directing at me. The best parts of the dives were seeing a sting ray and lying on the top of the boat in the surface interval between the dives with our new posse of boys.
Saying good byes last night was tough having made so many new friends, done some crazy things and laughed so much in the last 4 weeks. I walked around the other day taking photos of lots of the weird and wonderful signs around the Main Street and also Treetanic bar, which is the most amazing place ever. It is a labyrinth of steps, ladders, tree houses, swings and walkways, decorated entirely in tiles, broken china, marbles, wooden seahorses and coloured glass. Just like the Little Chapel really but on a whole new level. The Lonely Planet (aka big green Bible) named it the 4th best bar in the world not long ago.
Things I will not miss about Utila: the ridiculous prices compared to the mainland, being constantly bitten to death by sandflies and mosquitoes, the lack of sleep, the unbearable heat and the ubiquitous smell of rotting mangoes. Things I will miss: everything else.
The whale shark is ON CRACK! - Random crazy signs and sights of Utila
Half the world’s biomass of ants in my bed
Life in Utila goes on, with little changing and the same routine falling into place every day. Having said that, I did spend a day on a proper desert island, called Water Caye, followed by a house party in a treehouse. It really was amazing although I couldn’t work out for the life of me how they got furniture to the first floor as there weren’t stairs, you just had to climb the tree. Everyone was crowded on a platform at the top of the tree which felt worryingly over strained!
The two clubs on the island (Cocos and the ironically named Tranquilas) are literally next door to each other and pretty much identically laid out with decks over the sea at the back. A favourite activity which I can never watch people doing is jumping off the raised platform at the back of one into the (very shallow) sea, swimming across and attempting to climb out of the water again. On Friday there was a different party in each place, one for the Cinco de Mayo (a Central American independence day I think) and one for the full moon. Before that we went on a boat trip party too, which was pretty awesome, climbing around, drinks in hand and sitting on the bow of the boat, watching the so called super-moon, which was meant to be 20% bigger than normal.
More wholesomely I did go for a really long walk and found a spot on the other side of the island where I sat and had the thought that although I am on a different continent, half way around the world, the granite turned into bits of coral, the gorse and ferns into mangroves and palm trees, the washed up cider cans into Salva Vida bottles, and the temperature raised about 20 degrees, it really is a lot like home here, the same greeny blue waves battering the shingle shore.
I have been quite homesick actually this week again, mostly because I am so sick of the tiny room I am sharing with 3 other people and half the world’s biomass of ants, and the horrendous bathrooms here. Am tempted to upgrade to a private room with en suite and air-con for the last few days seeing as at the moment sleep is impossible (depending on the largeness of the previous night) in the 35 degree room, and I don’t like waking up at 4.30 am. As surprising as that may be.
Utila life. Which hammock to choose!?
Diving finished even more awesomely than it started, the highlights including seeing several jellyfish, two turtles, a pair of spotted eagle rays dancing gracefully around each other as they were swimming along, an angry looking moray eel, huge schools of fish and as if all that wasn’t enough, being surrounded by the other people in my group of beautiful boys. On the last day of the course we saw a big shipwreck and went on a night-dive, which was very bizarre, bewildering and more than a little confusing trying not to bump into coral when swimming along with the torches out. I could easily have grabbed hold of the instructor if I got scared though, who I couldn’t quite decide if he was just very friendly or a sex-pest.
There has been a short film completion on another Bay Island (Roatan) which some people from the dive school had been making a zombie film for. Before we got here they got a lot of the population of the island to act in this 3 minute epic about divers who surface to find the zombies have taken over, and so I was quite surprised when it turned out that they still needed to film a couple more scenes and did I want to be a zombie? Hell to the yes! So I spent most of an afternoon, pasted in flour and water body paint (yum), a mouth full of ketchup (yuck) and some ghoulish make-up. At the end of the film I attack a diver shortly before they explode all of the zombies and jump into the water, as bits of zombie fly up in the air and rain down on them (I also had a job on the team throwing the mashed up ketchupy bread and bloody mincemeat into the water – I am assured there aren’t sharks around here). It was a great afternoon although I felt a complete fool and horribly self-conscious running around in nothing but a bikini and white goo. Especially when the aforementioned instructor was running after me with his dive knife trying to cut off the bikini.
Sadly the course is over now and I have been abandoned slightly at the dive school where I am still staying, but I have acquired my new posse: the boys that Sarah had been working with at the conservation project, who are hilarious and brilliant fun. Life on Utila is very chilled and no-one is in too much of a rush to do anything, apart from when Tequila Tuesdays are involved or to dash to a 7am diving session. I’m not sure what I am going to do with myself for the next few weeks until Sarah has finished working here. I am still considering helping out there too, but for this weekend at least, deciding which hammock is the least scratchy and which part of beach has the least sea urchins is my priority.
Nemo. FOUND!
To get from Belize to Honduras without having to travel through Guatemala, we succeeded in catching the once weekly ferry from Placencia to Puerto Cortez. This was a very long journey, mostly taken up by having to stop at immigration, disembark, climb across a building site, walk miles through a desert-like industrial estate, queue forever and then trek back. The boat was fairly choppy and the state of Sarah’s hangover and the varying shades of green that she turned was the on-board entertainment.
We spent the night in an amazing and cheap hotel with a beautiful pool in Puerto Cortez, seeing as to quote the Bible [aka Lonely Planet] “there are lots of places to stay here, although few nice ones”! The next day we got a remarkably alright bus to San Pedro Sula [there are hundreds of places here called San Pedro] and then on to La Ceiba, and after a night there took the ferry to Utila, where we are going to spend the next few weeks. Utila is one of the Bay Islands off the north coast of Honduras, reached by a ferry from La Ceiba, nicknamed the Vomit Comet and it certainly lived up to its reputation.
Whilst Sarah is working in with the Bay Islands Conservation Association [Bica] for a few weeks, I am learning to dive. There are hundreds of dive shops on the island, and on arrival we were stampeded by reps trying to get our custom. I went to one in the end which our friends [who arrived here a few weeks ago] said was where they had been hanging out and where a lovely boy who we met on the boat said that he was heading.
So. Diving: Utila is supposed to be the cheapest place in the whole world to learn, and having wanted to have a crack at it in Oz and looking for something to do whilst Sarah is saving the world one turtle at a time I couldn’t let the opportunity pass. After an awful 2 hour video session [narrated by an American with the most gratingly patronising voice ever] and a textbook in the same condescending language, we hit the water. First for a ‘float test’ (ironically two of the boys in the class couldn’t swim), then an enclosed dive [although it was in the sea] and finally we hit the depths of 12 and up to 18 meters. And…I love it. I know it is a sport, but apart from the technical set up at the start which is tricky, and the terrifying moment of taking a blind step into the water wearing several kilos of tank and a weight belt, as soon as you put your head under the water you feel almost weightless and in awe of the multitude of fish and different types of coral. There is a whole landscape down there, not just the seaweed, rock and sand you get at home, but nothing but transparent blue water, giant brain coral [my personal favourite], half the animal kingdom, and bubbles. I am already signed up to the advanced course, during which I get to do a wreck dive and a night dive. And all surrounded by the 3 other gorgeous boys in the class.
Apart from a few blips along the way, including one massive disaster which I hope is mostly rectified now, a spot of unequalised pressure related earache and the pretty crappy accommodation here, life is good.
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