Unfortunately, the shuttle service wasn't all that great. I took an Adrenalina Tours shuttle to Panajachel, which was great, because I saw an agency there that offered another shuttle direct to La Ceiba (the start-off point for the Bay Islands) for quite cheap. When I got to Panajachel, I was told by Plus Travel Guate, which I now know is the worst travel agency in Central America, that there were four daily shuttles to La Ceiba. When I showed up, there were none, and couldn't guarantee there would be one the next day. Perfect! I settled on another shuttle to Antigua, where I could try my luck again. Once there, the same agency told me that they didn't have anything leaving for La Ceiba and didn't know when they would. I finally found an agency that had their act together, and got things organized to get where I had to go.
We had a layover in Copan Ruinas, right after the Honduras border crossing, where I hit the ruins with Jeremy, a new friend from London who runs an internship website called Global Nomadic. The ruins, although not as impressive in scale as most of the others I have seen, have incredible stelae and carvings throughout the entire site, which is the main draw. The craftsmanship uis amazing, especially when you consider how long they have been around and all of the stuff that they have been through.
The entrance to the ruins was a steep $15, which would have been twice as much if we had opted to buy entrance to the tunnels as well. Instead, we found the back door to the tunnels, played dumb when a restoration worker asked to see our tunnel entrance tickets, and paid him $5 between the two of us to show us around and watch out for the other guards. Sometimes corruption works your way in Central America.
After Copan, we made our way to San Pedro Sula, where we immediately stepped off of one bus and onto another headed to La Ceiba. That worked with me, as the only stories I had heard about San Pedro Sula at that point had been from a guy working in northern Guatemala who, on two seperate occasions, saw someone get shot point blank there. Once was in a restaurant, where two friends got into a dispute at the table, and one put a bullet in the other. Life is cheap there, apparently.
On the long bus journey, the topic of hamburgers came up. Jeremy had never had a Wendy's burger before, which I couldn't believe, especially since he's been travelling the world a handful of times already. We joked that we would find a Wendy's in La Ceiba, which seemed unprobably because a) we were getting in at about 10pm, and b) we were in Honduras. Of course, as soon as we got off of the bus and into a taxi, Jeremy asked the driver if the town had a Wendy's, and after renegotiating our fare, we were soon ordering double-cheeseburgers to go. Win.
The next morning we took the ferry to Utila, the backpacker headquarters in Honduras' Bay Islands for anyone that wants to learn to scuba dive for cheap. After talking to about 6 dive shops (there have to be about 15 on the island), we decided on Alton's. From everyone that we talked to, they had the perfect mix of being chilled-out and professional all at the same time, plus they had a great dock set-up with hammocks and a bar serving breakfast, lunch, and drinks. Jeremy had already done his scuba training, so I was on my own, and settled in with my PADI manual to start learning about to wonderful world of scuba.
The next day I met the crew that I would do my dive training with. Two Aussies and one girl from Ottawa, all of who now work in Whistler, living the dream of working and partying by night and snowboarding all day everyday. We began open water certification with some really corny PADI movies made in the 80s, and confined water training where we did stuff like removing water from your mask and taking off/putting on your BCD in the water. By the second day, we were ready to begin our open water drills (further out in the ocean as opposed to off the side of the dock), which made things a little more interesting. All in all though, when I finished the course I still wasn't all that impressed with scuba diving. Sure it was cool, and underwater everything becomes a new world, but it didn't live up to the standards I had set for the experience. I was planning on taking off after my course, but the other three from my group were sticking around for the advanced course, and I finally decided to do the same after having made such a detour to learn to dive. In the end, it was the best decision I could have made.
We opted for NAUI certification instead of PADI for the advanced course, namely because you get an extra dive and you are certified to dive to 40 metres instead of 30 metres. We hardly had to do any classroom work, as everything was dive briefs rather than watching boring movies and reading thick textbooks. The first dive we did was a buoyancy dive, which consisting of mastering (to the best of our novice abilities) floating underwater by controlling only your breathing. We hovered rightside-up, upside-down, and everywhich way, swimming through hoops and going through obstacle courses. The second dive was a navigation dive, where we used a compass and buddy teams to swim a big square, and then used natural landmarks and find our way back to the boat. Ash and I got lost on that one, but backtracked and eventually found the group, to the relief of our instructor. The next day was a big one, with three dives planned. The first was a deep dive, where we swam down to 125 feet, stayed there for a few minutes to see if we would get nitrogen narcosis or not, and slowly started an ascent, with two deep stops and a third safety stop at 5 metres. After a long surface interval to let all of the nitrogen out of our systems, we jumped back in for a fun-dive, where we just checked out the reef and found moray eels, lobsters, crabs, and a ton of coral and fish. We headed back to the dive shop and did a dive brief on hat would be the third and final dive of the day - a night dive.
The whole course would probably have been worth it if all we had done was the night dive. What an experience. You hop into the water with a flashlight, and everything beneath you is pitch black. As you descend with your light searching downwards, the coral bottom slowly emerges from the darkness, and you're in a new world. The creatures that usually hide out all day are on full display, and every turn of the flashlight brings something new and exciting. There's definitely an adrenaline aspect to it as well, because well, you're in the ocean and you can't see anything, but you know there's lots of stuff that can see you. We saw bioluminescence (James Cameron jacked that for Avatar) and a load of jellyfish, which of course we were greeted with as we ascended to the surface at the end of our dive. Jason got stung on the lip, of all places, which was ironic because he was wearing a full wetsuit and I had on nothing but a pair of boardies and a rashguard. All in all the nightdive was amazing, and pretty much got me the most stoked on diving as a whole at that point.
On the last day, we had a wreck dive, where we mapped out the Halliburton, and then a specialty dive. Most of us opted for photography, so we swam around for 40 minutes taking pictures of stuff. I will post some of them once I get copies from Ash, but there are a couple good ones of green moray eels and some big lobsters. Ash and I wandered off for a bit, and weren't really checking our depth gauges... The next day we both felt like we were still on a boat, rocking around, and after checking our dive tables realized there was a good chance we passed the no decompression limits for our dive plan... Oops. Luckily it was all good, and more than 48 hours later neither of us have passed out from nitrogren bubbling up inside our bodies. Win.
Because I spent most of the week underwater, and my camera is only rated to 10 feet, I don't have many pictures from Utila. However, we did take part in a booze cruise, so I grabbed a few snaps there.
Before I end this entry, I have somewhat of an online-bone to pick. Before heading to Utila, I read a blog entry basically giving the reasons why Utila is the worst island in the world. Now I'm all about personal opinions, and find it totally acceptable that this individual thought this way, but I had a completely different experience and figured I would share it by doing a comparison of Utila and Caye Caulker, which the same blogger was quite fond of.
To begin with, I will address the issue of sand and beaches. Caye Caulker does indeed have small sand beaches, whereas Utila only has two and you need to pay to use them. However, Caye Caulker does not, as stated, have streets of sand, but rather sandy streets. There is a difference. Plus, the beaches on Caye Caulker aren't that clean, and the only reason that the main one stays clean is because they bring in new sand everyday. A second point: if anyone has visited the back (and less walked down) section of Caye Caulker, than they would know that it is pretty much a disgusting landfill. Utila was nowhere near as bad as Caye Caulker in terms of garbage.
Next issue: bugs. Yes, Utila is covered in sand flies that you can hardly see and give you bites that make you want to scratch your skin off for weeks later. However, I will take an island full of sand flies over one full of bed bugs any day. Although my experience with bugs in Caye Caulker may not be the experience of every backpacker there, it was still mine. Sand flies will not hitch a ride in your backpack for over a month, only to jump out in another country and yell "SURPRISE!".
On the issue of food, I do admit that Caye Caulker wins hands down. Tastier, cheaper, and more options. Touche.
In terms of the cost to get to the island, it does indeed suck that it costs $20 to get to Utila, but it's almost as expensive to get to Caye Caulker. At the end of the day, unless you want to swim there (or pay double to fly there), you don't have much of another option. Plus, contrary to what I read in the blog, nobody spewed on the ferry over to Utila, and there was a pregnant woman on board.
Addressing my own personal points of comparison, I think the locals on Utila are way friendlier than those of Caye Caulker. Say what you want about laid-back rastas, my experience there involved a ton of locals harassing me about not being interested in their hotel recommendations, or trying to sell me $5 coconuts.
I can't compare the divingand snorkelling, because I wasn't certified when I was in Belize, and I spent all my time diving in Utila so I didn't do any snorkelling. However, I think that Caye Caulker probably wins out, at least on snorkelling. They also have the Blue Hole, a diver mecca I am told.
All in all, Utila definitely isn't an island paradise. If you're not there to dive, you'll probably get bored really quick. And if you're not careful, you probably will get run over by an over-entusiastic local on a motorcycle. But the locals don't harass you, the diving is cheap and professional, and I didn't end up with little red bugs infesting all of my belongings. Whether one is better than the other isn't really the point, but I definitely think that it is a bit of an exaggeration to give Utila the title of "worst island in the world". I'm sure there's a little plot of sand somewhere off the coast of some godforsaken country that can claim that title.
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