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We have gotten a little behind as neither of us has wanted to write this blog.. theres just no way to put into words how much we enjoyed our time on Utila.
We had always decided that we were going to do our PADI Open Water qualification while we were on our 'big holiday', and after a bit of research we found out that Utila in Honduras is one of the cheapest places in the world to dive - and we love being thrifty!!
After deliberations and muchas muchas research we decided to go with Utila Dive Centre, the biggest and oldest dive outfit on the island. We had a pretty rocky ferry ride over (on what the locals nickname the vomit comet) and were greeted at the port by Maddy who took us to the Mango inn, our home for the next few days. Together with Lucy and Katie, sisters we had met back in Leon and bumped into the night before, we all ditched our bags in our rooms and headed to the dive shop for a tour. I'm going to try and stop myself from rambling on about how awesome they are, as I could talk for ages about how fantastic it was and just say this- all the people at the school make the place like a second home.
We ended up in a class of five - myself, Steve, Lucy, Natalie (another British girl) and Derek the Canadian. After struggling through a day and a half of cheesy 80s PADI instructional videos, complete with awesome wardrobe choices and patronising fun facts ( e.g. "Scuba is spelt S-C-U-B-A" and "Divers have more fun than regular people!" - No joke, actual quotes from the videos!!), we donned our scuba gear and made our first splash in the water.
We were all varying levels of confidence ranging from someone who wanted to conquer a fear of the water to Steve the WaterBaby who should have been born a merman. I can't speak highly enough of our instructor Karina - from sorting out any equipment issues above or under water to her infinite patience guiding us through our first few wobbly dives, she's such a natural scuba teacher and put us all at ease. For the first few confined dives which took place just off the school's dock, we struggled through the difficult parts of letting your brain adjust to the fact you CAN breathe underwater and demonstrating the necessary skills to prove you can deal with minor problems. On our third day, having passed our exams and completed our text book work, we were ready to head out into the open water.
W-O-W. All the difficulties of dealing with learning to scuba is totally worth it. The first dive was just a simple swim around some coral - nothing spectacular to a seasoned diver but to us, it was our first encounter with the real habitat of fish and coral. Being sat on the sea bed and having fish swim between us, seemingly undisturbed with us being around, was incredible. When we surfaced 40 minutes later, none of us could help the goofy grin on our faces. The second dive of the day was to a different site and when we asked Karina what to expect of this next dive she smiled and said "You'll see!" We were happily swimming along taking in the new views and colourful fish, when a figure came into view, unlike coral or rocks... of a shipwreck! It was a relatively small wreck, but again… to newbies, it was like something out of a pirate movie! It's called Ron's wreck and was sunk after a dispute between Ron and another fisherman over who owned it. The logic being, "if I can't have it, no one can!"
Right, I've rambled enough. More highlights included:
- Completing our advanced certification in diving!! Woo!
- Doing a night dive, which was awesome in itself but ending by floating in the water with a completely clear sky, looking up at the stars.
- Doing matrix kicks and jumps underwater during an exercise to demonstrate how we can control our buoyancy, but really just goofing around with our instructor, Karina :D
- Karina trying to show us how colour and pressure changes during a deeper dive by breaking eggs underwater but being beaten to the punch by hungry fish who bit her finger trying to get to the spoils!
- Diving a big tanker wreck
- More awesome aquatic life, such as the Christmas Tree Worms, swimming with barracudas and eagle rays, and my new favourite, the juvenile drum fish which is like a little piece of ribbon floating in the water. Check the pic: http://wildimagesphotography.com/articles/colombia07/3138.jpg
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