Honduras: Part Five

On our last full day in Utila, we could not dive so we spent the day wandering around the island looking for adventure. We packed up our snorkel gear and our very empty can of bug spray, fired up the golf cart and set out to get lost...on another really freakin' hot day. Along the way we stopped for some supply at the local "7-11" - well it says so on Samantha's sign! No slurpees...which is probably a good thing because I would have been tempted to get in it. We toyed with the idea of buying another can of bug spray...but after all we were leaving in less than 24 hours so why bother. That's a "here's your sign" moment. This would be the day I captured most of my 101 mosquito bites. Luuuucky me.


We found a whole grove of these goofy trees that I couldn't resist belloring "stop! stop! i need to take a picture". Most of the island is covered in untouched jungle and while our adventure was fun, I was glad to not run into any monstrous spiders that usually live in untouched jungle. :)


OK. So, I need to digress a couple days. In the middle of the week, our golf cart died on the side of the road as we were racing to our morning dive. We had well over a mile to go and all of our scuba gear was with us...there was no way were going to make it. Thankfully our neighbors (the Americans from the boat over) came wizzing by on their golf cart and we thumbed a ride. Once we got to the dock we called Anuk (the dive master that also worked with our groundskeeper, Angel...i told you it's a small island) and she worked her Espaniol magic and told Angel where to find our dead ride. By the time we got back that day it was fixed and waiting for us...but in need of fuel. Our neighbors informed us where to find the petrol guy. Fast forward back to Friday. We went in search of said petrol guy. Now. There are no gas stations on the island so you just have to find this guy (hopefully he's home) and barter up some fuel. Gas there is held in any kind of container that will hold it. It's common to see kids riding their bikes with Coke two liters full of gas to take home, etc.. When we figured out we had only enough to buy 1/2 gallon out came our order...in a really big rum bottle. He whipped out a funnel and glug, glug, glug - viola petrol. Turns out the golf cart was leaking gas so our golf cart took us all over the island and finally died here...reeeeally far from town. With snorkel gear. And no bug spray. Let the walking commence...


We saw the developing side of the island at a nice leisurely pace (our house was at the extreme opposite end of the island at this point). We came across some American residents out front of their mansions and I tried to work my charm and charisma in order to thumb another ride but it only got us about 1/2 mile closer to town because that's as far as their house was. When it's 100 degrees outside, a 1/2 mile ride is a God send. So a couple miles later we were nearly there...at least we were able to dump our gear at the dive shop in town. Welcome to hotville.


Just one of the sites as we neared home base...it's not uncommon to find piles of rejected stuff in random places.


Some of the interesting shoreline we found on the east side of the island...shortly before getting stuck.


This is the public beach on the way back to our place. It was rather sparsely populated all week which was surprising because it's a really great beach far enough outside of town to be nice and private. There was a small straw hut bar across the way only open at night and that was about it. I think we saw at most 10 people there all week.


After finally getting the cart back and all settled back at the beach house the napping commenced. We were too pooped to even go out to dinner that night so we had leftovers and breakfast bars for dinner and got some last good snorkeling in. As per usual the sun set on our final day as a spectacular storm rolled in...

Honduras: Part Four

Every morning we came out to Pigeon Cay to pick up the students at Captain Morgan's. It was nice to hang out in the hammocks on the dock and while we waited for the boat to head back to Utila we did some snorkeling out around the hotel in this area. It was a toss up as to whether it was to get out of the heat or away from the bugs.


More of Pigeon Cay.


As we pulled up to Pigeon Cay this small dot of an island was just off the coast of Pigeon Cay. You can't see it very well but that rundown shack is a family home. It has all of two windows and two doors. I think the family laid claim the whole island which was about an acre. I'm pretty sure if a stiff wind came by it would be a shackless island. Gives a whole new meaning to the word rustic. We saw some of the kids that lived there paddle over to the Cay, pick up some more kids, and proceed to sink the boat - bail it out - then re-sink it. Now that's better than kids parked in front of the TV any day. :)


Some days the boat was more full than others. This was one of our last dives of the week and we had quite the crowd with us. Australia, Canada, France, Uruguay, Honduras - it was quite the collection of people - but it turned out to be one of our best dive days there.


Fishes, fishes and more fishes. We saw some amazing coral formations and giant towers that started near the surface and continued out of sight below us - just walls and corals and fishes quite literally as far as the eye can see. We saw eels, a frog fish, gads of parrot fish, a couple of lobsters, an octopus and a zillion other swimming, crawling and crazy things. It was fabulous. This particular school of fish reminded me so much of Findin g Nemo I figured they deserved a spot on the blog.


Oh yeah, and did I mention shark? This was the second one we saw that day and it was awesome. We were a lot closer to this shark that it seems in the photo. I think he thought he was out of sight because he hid his head under the coral outcropping. I would say it was the coolest thing that day but oh boy it wasn't...


One big draw to Utila is that there is a great chance to see and swim with a whale shark. (Get your google on if you haven't seen one before.) The best chance is in the late winter/early spring, but occasionally you'll get lucky in September. As we were racing out to our next dive location, our captain spied a dive boat about a mile north of the island (that would be waaaaay out in the middle of the ocean, read: really freakin' deep.). All week we had been watching for whale shark signs (birds flocking and diving at the ocean far from land - feeding on the sharks "boil" of fish and such that he kicks up) and came close once but it turned out to be a big sailfish (looks like a Marlin)...still cool. It was September 25th and the last sighting had been in early September so there wasn't much hope. The dive boat was hanging out there for quite awhile and we decided to investigate. They won't talk about whale sharks on the radio because then all the dive shops will come out and scare the shark off. So your only choice is to potentially miss your afternoon dive and chance it. The yellow boat in the photo is the original boat that found the shark and that splash off to the right would be indeed a whale shark. You cannot wear your dive gear in the water with one of these so you have to snorkel it and slide into the water because a lot of splash will scare it away. Oh how I wish this had been a day with only four of us on the boat. We waited around to get the best position near the shark and then blammo...


Said whale shark. It was not a full grown one but still it was amazing to be in the water with something so large and graceful. This one even had a remora (cleaner) fish stuck to the bottom of it. Then after it swims away, it takes only a moment to realize that you're in really deep, vast water and talk about feeling very small in relation to the world. Yeoow. Talk about perspective. Awesome is definitely a word I would use.


There is something sad about a boat full of empty tanks, but dang, what a day. We only had one more dive left because you're not supposed to dive and fly in the same 24 hours. That night we went on a night dive to a place called moon hole. The only thing that makes me more nervous than really deep water with no bottom...is dark water. As a thunderstorm approached around us we leaped into the dark water and descended to the bottom. Now descending and ascending in pitch black water was scary stuff but I was glad I did it. We had big dive lights and set off exploring the bottom of this giant coral 'hole'. We saw an active octopus loping around (the one we had found earlier was hiding in a coral tree) and wow was all I could say. We cornered a squid that freaked out, inked and then shot off to get away from us...directly hitting our guide in the head. You can't laugh with a regulator but that is one time it was hard to hold it in. My favorite was the little shrimp that look like hundreds of little pink lights on the fringe of your dive light ring. It was a great ending to a great week of diving.

Honduras: Part Three

I figured everyone just needed to see color in the middle of January - this was from our front garden.


Downtown Utila


Our place was just outside of town through this grove-y beach. The whole area is for sale if you were thinking you had some spare cash that you were just dying in throw into a remote tropical island. At night, gads of large blue crabs would be in this road snapping devilishly at us as we zoomed by on our golf cart. They're very cute but made my bare toes nervous.


On our way out to dive every morning stopped to pick up Anuk and her best friend. I've never seen a dog so in love with riding on boats. Anuk was one of our dive masters that was from reeeealllly northern Canada. She told us she had been in Utila for almost three years but was going back home in November. I gave her my best shocked look because I'm pretty sure she was crazy for moving from 110 degree Utila to northern Canada at that time of year. She claims to have missed the seasons...I wonder if she still thinks that today in January.


My boy ready for the next dive. He gave up on the wetsuit early on in the week. Even though the water was 89 degrees I wasn't fully willing to give mine up. We got a few laughs shocking our guides when we told them my first dive was in water that got down to 38 degrees. After diving in the Carribean, it will be hard to get back into the Great Lakes.


Again, such a terrible camera! If anyone wants to donate a high-end digital underwater to me, I'll take it. Once again, I am a bad underwater identifier of fish and coral...but I liked this stuff. This photo was taken just out front of our house where we went snorkeling throughout the week. This was an area that they were making a valiant effort at regrowing the reefs and we could definitely tell. We saw some of the best sea life snorkeling here as we did diving out deeper.


The one ray I caught on film. So about that digital camera....


Our boat captain just kept calling this guy "Afrikkan!" as he was the guy from South Africa. All of those tattoos, piercings and scarrings were all tribal accomplishments from his tribe at home he assured us. He and Tony got into a discussion about how bad those scarrings are and his reply was "yeah, I know there's always a few people that die from the infection gone wrong." Doh. He was a cool guy and we enjoyed hanging out with him.


This is Bubbles the angelfish. He loved to play in divers bubbles and would hang out with us as long as we hung out with him.


Chilling out on the way back from diving.


Another night we watched a storm front come over the ocean. This night we came up from snorkeling in time to see a huge waterspout from this storm just off the other end of Utila. It was amazing and of course at the time we saw it I only had the crappy underwater camera that didn't pick it up on film. ARRRGH!

And the rest of the story - Honduras...

Believe it or not I actually waded through my projects and came to some semblance of the 'end'. I went through the endless photos and I officially give you...the rest of Utila.

Day two....
A dive shop helped us find a taxi the night before so we decided to just dive with them so we headed for the Captain Morgan’s boat at 7 a.m. This dive shop operates out of one of Utila’s Cays so the day begins by heading out 30 minutes to Jewel Cay to pick up any dive students that have been in class out there. Captain Morgan’s has their own “hotel” that most of the divers stay at and I was glad we weren’t one of them. It’s a little shady and when the potty doesn’t work so everyone “pees out back” (the ocean is out back). Sometimes the water works, sometimes it doesn’t…sometimes the waves crack the pipe against the rocks thus cutting them off from fresh water for however long. Remember, Utila is mainly a backpacker hangout so if you want fancier, resort places you should head to Roatan (the island next door) although Utila does have a few swank resorts. Our boat picked up students from Uruguay and France, a couple other fun divers and we headed out to the popular north shore for our first two dives of 11. Our divemaster was a nice guy from Minnesota named Brian. Turns out Brian’s parents moved to about an hour from Midland so his dad could head up a community college. How’s that for small world? When he mentioned where his father lived I almost choked (my parents cottage is about eight miles from where they live).

Don’t get me wrong, the diving was great but Utila is in a very tough spot right now. Imagine the most glorious coral formations and underwater terrain you can…now picture it 80 percent dead. Utila has a severe pollution problem combined with the fact that the fishermen have overfished the reefs. I would have loved to have seen this place 15 years ago. They are just now catching on that one of their greatest natural resources may be unrepairable. There are reefs that are being reconstructed – right out in front of our house was one of them and it is showing great signs of rebirth. Unfortunately for Utila, the mainlaind has a river that empties out into the ocean and heads right for them – so when the rains and winds come all the garbage from the mainland heads directly to Utila’s waters. The north shore waters are fairly clean - it really depends on the weather from the day before. Utila is not faultless however, one person told us the locals just don’t see it as an issue to just chuck out their garbage into the streets or the ocean – she said once someone told her “the tourists will pick it up”. Many of the dive shops seem to be catching on and there are now some major cleanups happening here and there.

Once back on the island from diving (about 1 p.m.), many places close from 12-2 p.m. so we had to find a grocery store open to stock up on some supplies. It seems like every 'store' here sells everything – you don’t go to one place for this or one place for that, everyone just seems to have a little of everything. Some of the places seem to just be someone's residence that they just put out some items and call open for business. If you need fast food, there are ladies that come out and sell food stuffs on the corners – everything from fruit to bringing out a roaster filled with whatever Baleada filling they want to sell that day. Baleadas are similar to a tortilla and filled with just about any kind of filling you can dream up. Our adventure continued that day as I had discovered a prescription I needed was not with me. Bad news. Remember, Honduras is a third world country. Insert long story here...ending hours later, two clinics, lots of no English later, finding something similar at the "medical store" that was open...oh whenever they felt like it. I was very relieved and we headed back to the supermarket to shop for a couple other things…only to find the prescription I was looking for was there in the supermarket “pharmacy” section. It was parked next to all kinds of other drugs that you need a prescription for at home – and in Hondo it cost me $1, in the states, it costs $53. Nice.

Let the photos begin!

Sunrise through our patio doors. Now that's a rough day when you have to get up and look out at the ocean and blue sky calling you to dive.


We stayed in a really nice place. If you're looking for a cheap place to go and have adventure in you, I have recommendations...


This is the shop that greets you when you get off the ferry to the island. We ended up diving with them after the first night being stuck in their shop waiting for a ride. We had a good discussion about diving and thought what the heck we wanted to go out as soon as possible and they were leaving at 7 a.m.


On the boat out to Cay that Capt. Morgans classrooms are on - these two guys were two of our dive masters. One was from South Africa and the other from Australia. All of our dive masters were pretty cool people from all over the world. This was our first day at 7 a.m. on the boat...the fact that it was already about 85 degrees should have given us a big clue that Utila was not going to have a lack of heat. With humidity it was about 110 on average.


Utila is spotted with an odd compilation of high end homes and extremely low end homes. This is a water view of where we stayed. I asked one of the dive guys who generally owns these houses and he said "rich Americans". Ok. Well there you have it. Turns out you can build a really snazzy place and be lost off the face of the earth here for about $250,000. Talk about a logistical nightmare, but you could do it. Many of the homes are extremely isolated and have to provide their own power and water. Oh yeah, and you can't get to them from the town...you'd have to own a really nice boat while you're at it. :)


Our boat captain was a local Utilian named Luis - turns out he is very adept at driving a boat with his feet. He was a fun guy that always keep us rockin' with the local rock station while we waited in between dives.




Sam was our guide from Australia. Before every dive they gave us the briefing of what we were going to see, the path we were going to take and how long we could expect to be down there. We saw some cool stuff thanks to these guys.


It still hurts to look at these pictures because I love my camera and having to use a disposable underwater camera nearly killed me. Alas, they suck but here are my favorite fish...blue with bright blue neon polka dots. And I'm terrible at fish ID's so I don't remember their names.




Hello Mr. Lobster.


Back from diving...what're you going to do? Ok sit out front, look at the ocean, drink beer. OK. Fine. Be that way.


Every night the storms came rolling over the horizon. We watched this one light up the night and the mainland for a long time. Best part of thunderstorms...they bring wind...sweet and cool - not hot as hell...wind.

Ella and the big 0-4

My fellow December birthday girl rolled into another year older. There was lots of fun, good food and good times. It's hard to believe these kids are growing up so fast!! Sheesh!


My idea of the perfect outfit....tongue out and all. :)

Indy at Christmas

On Christmas Day, Tony and I headed to see his family in Indianapolis and took the girls into downtown to see the sights at Christmastime. Indy really is a cool town and if you haven't been there - you should go to sometime. On a freak nearly 70 degree day we went for a walk along the canal near downtown and just enjoyed the day with Tony's mama.


You would think he would be used to dating a photographer and take a nice picture with his mama, but nooooo....


Hannah is a shorty, but not just everyone can hold her in the palm of their hand. :)





Now I didn't teach her how to make faces in pictures so don't blame me. She was hanging around in her new Forks High School sweatshirt (that's the high school Bella and Edward go to in the Twilight books...DUH!).



This is downtown at "the Circle".....