Leaving the jungle and diving in Utila

Back again dear readers and still woefully behind schedule. Do not worry, eventually the whole story of our travels will be told. 

At the end of our last blog we had just finished our time in the Osa peninsula, Costa Rica. Originally, our plan was to continue by land back the way we had come, travelling again through Nicaragua. Alas, the land route became impossible because of the political situation that had arisen. After a government policy change surrounding social security protests broke out all over Nicaragua. The government combated the peaceful protesters with violence and since the beginning of the situation over 300 people have been killed and President Ortega refuses to step down. It is a terribly sad situation for what is a beautiful country and people. We hope that the situation resolves and justice served where needed. 

The consequence for us was that we needed to make an important decision about our next move. Either, we would continue down to panama and maybe end our trip prematurely. This was the least desirable option. Instead we decided to fly from San Jose to Guatemala City (for the sake of price) and then double back to head for Honduras.

During our time in the jungle both Bryony and I had talked a lot about our plans for the rest of the trip and had decided that the opportunity of diving in Utila (at a very reasonable price) was too good to pass up. With that adventure pencilled in the calender, we also set about planning a slightly round about trip down from Guatemala, through some of the great sights of Honduras to then end up at the the island paradise of Utila.

We were picked up early by quadbike, and set off from Tamandu for the boat to the mainland. The boat ride from Drake to Sierpe was fast and fun, the sea being calmer than when we arrived, and the waves much smaller. We took a taxi and then a bus to Uvita where we had visited in April.

We decided to splurge a bit on our hostel for the next couple of nights and stayed at Flutterby House where our friends Ali and Jen were still volunteering. After spending a day or so relaxing and saving snakes from the store room, we hopped on a coach to San Jose. We stayed in San Jose before, and knowing that it was a pretty boring, uninspiring city, we decided to stay in Alajuela, a town next to the capital which also houses the airport and the university.

Our first impressions of Alajuela were better than San Jose; with a large student population, there was more life in the streets and many cafes and trendy restaurants. After checking into our hostel (a private room and free airport transfer for a reasonable price), we found some pizza and headed back for an early night.

The next morning, we got to the airport, checked in our bags and smoothly flew through security. We ate our first ever cinabuns and enjoyed a swift hour flight to Guatemala City. We got a taxi to our hostel and then went out to explore the city and buy a phone for Bryony.

The next day, we spent the day on buses to Copan in Honduras where we stopped off for a night before heading to D&D Brewery near Lake Yojoa. We spent a few days at D&D relaxing, eating good food and exploring the area, then set off again for Utila.

We got the extremely fast, bumpy and extortionately expensive catamaran over to Utila and were met by many people advertising dive schools, giving away free nights accommodation and free drinks. Having not booked anything, we decided to go with Utila College of Diving who offered us a free drink and an on-suite double room for a night free. We couldn’t turn down an offer like that so enjoyed a luxury night and set out to look for a diving school the next morning.

We checked out a few dive schools including some of the worst on the island and settled for Alton’s Dive School who were very professional and offered a good deal including 4 nights accommodation in a double room.

Our experience diving was fantastic however we did have to spend the first day doing a theory class which was pretty boring. Our instructor Liko made the process of learning easy and fun. He is also German which created some great World Cup banter. We made great friends with our class and with others in and around Alton’s which gave the place a family feel. In fact, we enjoyed ourselves so much we decided to go straight on to take our Advanced open water course which refined our skills and knowledge and allowed us to go down to 30m. -

Our open water course started with “confined” sessions, which took place in the shallow water beside the dock. It was great to learn in the sea rather than a pool as we were able to see puffer-fish and even a sea-horse while training. After several confined sessions, we were ready to start the open water sessions and spent several sessions at sites such as “moon hall” practising buoyancy control, clearing our masks and emergency drills. A good thing was that after we finished our training exercises, we spent the rest of our time exploring the reef and saw barracuda, sting ray and lots more fish. After the training sessions we finished as fully qualified open water divers.

For our advanced open water, all of our training sessions took place in the open water and covered subjects such as deep water diving, wrecks, advanced buoyancy control and night diving.

The night dive was an amazing experience. We saw many lobsters, sleeping parrot fish, jellyfish and bioluminescence! Towards the end of the dive we stopped on a sandy bottom, turned our torches off and waited for our eyes to adjust to the dark. We could see “string of pearls”, the mating display of ostracods (pea sized crustaceans), that emit a pulsing bioluminescence. When we moved about, bioluminescence was triggered and it seemed like we were swimming in a sea of tiny stars.

We had the opportunity to swim with dolphins twice. The boat captain gets tipped if we find dolphins, porpoise and whale sharks which gives him an incentive. Once dolphins are spotted, the boat speeds up to catch up and everyone lines up, then jumps in the water with a snorkel, swimming as fast as possible to catch up with dolphins. The first time we only spent a few brief moments with the dolphins, however, the second time, a group of dolphins doubled back and came up to look at us which was amazing!

During one of our training dives for Advanced Open Water, we had some time left over and went for an explore around the reef. We were swimming along the side of a drop off, when suddenly the unmistakable shape of a hammerhead shark loomed ahead of us. It came towards us, but then spotted us and turned away and swam off. We were ridiculously ecstatic, especially our instructor who had done over 4000 dives and this was his first hammerhead! Hammerheads are only spotted about 3 times a year around Utila so this was extremely rare occasion.

On a fun dive, we were swimming around a reef, when suddenly a 5ft nurse shark appeared swimming straight towards us. Greg had to swim upwards to avoid it, and I was sure it was going to nibble my fins! Thankfully, it swam directly underneath us and continued on its way. Luckily, that day I had brought my GoPro along and captured it all on film!

Nurse shark (featuring Gregs fins!)

We enjoyed our time diving so much that we hope to dive when back in the UK. Although the UK is much colder, there are still amazing wrecks and wildlife to see.

Hasta Luego!

Bryony & Greg