coast 2 coast world - here we come.

it was a 4am departure from Antigua, followed by a very cramped 6 hour ride in a mini van. Central Americans have no sense of personal space, and just when you think they can’t possible fit another person in a mini van, on a bus, in a taxi, they do. Kim and I were squashed onto different seats in this tiny van that would carry perhaps eight at a stretch in Australia, yet was holding 15 backpackers with their backpacks, which can really be considered half a person themselves. We eventually arrived at our connecting bus station, only to be told we had missed the connecting bus and would have to wait 5 hours for the next one. We were lucky as another Australian couple were also heading to our destination, Utila, an island in Honduras, and we passed the time playing cards and chatting with who were soon to become good friends, Doug and Monique from Melbourne. We eventually arrived at our destination, Le Ceiba, and dorm found accommodation with Doug and Monique, heading to bed early before rising early the next morning to head to the ferry terminal to catch the ferry to Utila. Having been told to arrive at least 30 mins before departure time, so 8am, we were shattered to discover that the ferry would not actually be leaving until that afternoon, possibly 4pm, as with rising petrol prices, they wanted a full ferry before departing. &*()&%^*. So, it was another day of waiting and we were thankful we weren’t in a hurry. Kim and I put the hammock we purchased in Mexico to use, after an American man lent us some rope, and I chilled happily with my book for the entire morning and early afternoon (it was a mini hammock and wouldn’t hold Kim – bugger!). Doug and Kim decided, as boys tend to when bored, that there was a desperate need for beer. They headed off, leaving Monique and I without money or any clue as to where they had actually gone. After 3 hours we did start to get a little worried – not to mention hungry and thirsty - and then it was time for the ferry to leave, yet we had no boys to take with us. Panic ensured and I ran off, in the pouring rain, desperately asking every Honduran I cam across where the nearest bar was. Talk about coming across as a desperate alcoholic. I came across them ambling back and screamed some abuse, to their amusement, before they realized we might actually miss the ferry. Thankfully we didn’t, and as punishment the boys were made to sit outside in the wet on the hour ride across to Utila. Monique and I were accosted by a scuba instructor on the way across, who told us all about his dive school Utila Dive Centre, free dorm accommodation for those taking their Open Water and so on. When we picked up the Lonely Planet after he left, it said UDC was the biggest school on the island but that it also made the hardest sell ``you are likely to have information on UDC with minutes of stepping off the ferry’’ – we had ours while still on the bloody ferry! Still, it seemed a good deal and we figured taking a night of cheap accommodation while we looked around couldn’t hurt. Our room, $8 a night, was clean, stinky hot and with shared bathrooms that were cleaned twice daily – cheap, basic and clean – perfecto. We were taken to the dive centre and introduced to Johan, who would be our instructor should we sign up and given the hard sell. We liked our Mohawk touting and Utila local instructor Johan immediately, and as I was somewhat nervous about diving I loved the fact there would be just 5 of us in the class, and 6 instructors – some in training – and the equipment all seemed fairly new, so we signed up, parting with just over $500 for both of us to undertake the 4 day course – Honduras is one of the cheapest, and best, places in the world to dive. We shared dinner that night with Johan at his house – UDC operates by bringing its students into the UDC `family’ while they are diving at the school – with a Swiss girl who would be in our class and had been living in Australia the last few years, her Australian boyfriend and his friend who were both experienced divers. Rum is a huuuge part of Central American drinking culture and much was drunk while we talked about home, diving and life before heading out to a jetty bar. I headed home earlier than Kim, who later stumbled in to find the BIGGEST spider he had ever seen sitting on the shelf in our room. Smarty pants didn’t wake me because he knew I would demand it be removed, and the next day I was not impressed when he showed me a picture of the creature I just knew was hiding somewhere in our room. It was three days later that we located it living under Kim’s bag. Utila is a beautiful island with just two main streets, one main street running along the water front, and another up the hill. The main strip was dive schools with their jetties jutting out into the water, and there were two beaches, one of which you had to pay $3 to use. Lots of mangroves and water as well. We lived up the hill, yet walked each day to the dive shop which was about 8 mins away. Food was so cheap, so we tended to eat out rather than cook, having two meals each day. Our favourite place was Bundu Café and it served an amazing seafood soup as a special one day, complete with a massive lobster tail, prawns, conch, fish – it was mouthwatering delicious. We praised it to each person we knew and they all demanded it so it was eventually put on the menu and we enjoyed it many times. Mango Inn, the nicest hotel on Utila, had a wood fired oven and we also had a awesome wood fired pizza that would be on par with those at home. Good or even normal, basic cheese is not something people seem to understand in Central America, and to actually taste some good cheese after 4 months – heaven. The food on Utila was among the best yet, with items like coleslaw, potato salad, great sandwiches, baked potato, bbq chicken etc found on most menus – it was nice to eat things we would eat at home for a while. Diving began with the watching of several videos, the five of us – Kim and I, Martina – the Swiss girl who had been living in Australia – and Hannah and Jack, 18 and 19 from England, spent an afternoon and morning filling out quizzes and watching DVDs before it was time to hit the water. I was nervous, and so was Kim as he wasn’t sure how he would go with both his ears, he’d had problems with them getting infected for the last 6 weeks, and his asthma. Surreal is a good word to describe breathing underwater – especially as both Kim and I have spent so much time in the water, to actually be able to stay under was pretty insane! Our first lesson was a couple of hours in confines, where we basically got kitted up and were in water shallow enough for us to stand up in if we felt uncomfortable. I struggled with mask clearing, which involves filling your mask with water and then clearing it by blowing out your nose, unfortunately I kept breathing in through my nose, and choking on the water! No fun. Kept trying, but to no avail and I kept popping up on the surface, nearly in tears, until Johan told me we would work on it at the end of the lesson. I eventually got it, but wasn’t comfortable and therefore spent the entire afternoon and evening peaking out about our next dive, which was 3m deep. Kim loved every second of being underwater, although we did notice he went through his air much faster than anyone else, must be those big lungs. Our 3m dive went well, and after having practiced breathing just through my mouth for nearly 12 hours, harder than you might think, I finally got the mask clearing down pat. YAY! UDC had a fantastic set up, a cool double decker jetty, the top level perfect for lumping into the clear blue water, soaking up the Caribbean sun and chatting about travel adventures, and a bar selling cold cold beers, Heavenly. Our four following `proper’ dives were fabulous fun, as our group had so many instructors, we all got a pro buddy, which was fairly unheard of but helped with confidence levels. We saw heaps of cool things on our next four dives, the deepest to 18m. A coral covered wreck, spotted eagle ray, heaps of funky and bright fish, coral, seahorses, it was incredible. We nailed all our skills, which include taking your BCD off and on in the water, breathing through your buddy’s air supply, sharing your air, emergency ascents, mask clearing and navigating. After completing our exams, which I scored 100% on, our group headed out to celebrate, all being pretty good friends by now. We had a bbq tuna dinner, and then hit the rum and the Mango Tree bar, a funky bar that is built in a mango tree and wraps around and around with cool things to see at every turn, many nooks and crannys. The owner, a slightly crazy expat has spent years creating an exceptional paradise of mosaics, stone art, it was breathtaking. And the coolest bar we have ever been to, everytime a bell was rung it meant drinks on the bar and bottles were passed around from which everyone took shots, every 30 mins or so. Next stop was bar in the bush where we danced and sucked on helium balloons until the early hours! Kim came down with a new ear infection and so was forced to miss out on the free fun dives, so I headed out on my own for what turned out to be a pretty ordinary time. Paired up with a stranger as my buddy, the first dive everyone went down, and my bcd (jacket which holds on the tanks and breathing lines etc) wasn’t weighted enough so I didn’t actually sink, but everyone was already down under the surface. Eventually a trainee instructor came and gave me some of his weights but I still didn’t sink, so eventually I swam down to the bottom and spent the remainder of the dive trying to stay down off the surface, which wasn’t easy and as my tank got lighter, I kept floating up. When another instructor noticed my debacle he came and filled my pockets with more weights and noticed they dropped straight out – my BCD had holes in it! The next dive they weighted me, but as I had spent so much of the first dive floating up and down, my ears were really hurting and I couldn’t go down very deep as they kept hurting, so I didn’t really enjoy it much. A pity to finish the whole diving experience on a low note, but I focus on the highlights, of which there were many. My ears stayed blocked for several weeks. Both Kim and I were very tempted to take the advanced course and do a night dive, but we hadn’t budgeted for two courses. We stayed on Utila a couple of more days, which was actually the home of Robinson Crusoe and Man Friday back in their day, because Kim was fairly miserable thanks to his ear again getting infected. We finally were seen by a doctor who knew what he was talking about, and told us the medication Kim had been proscribed in Mexico had actually been banned in America for over 25 years. Nice. After Kim finally started to feel better we caught the ferry back to the mainland before jumping on a bus to Nicaragua, having completely forgotten most of our recently learnt Spanish, as no one on Utila actually spoke it! BUGGER.