A very long day travelling of a boat, one bus, another bus stopping at Guatemala and Honduras borders, and hour wait at San Pedro (most dangerous city in the world’s tenth most dangerous country) for another bus followed by a short taxi ride and twelve hours later I was in the coastal town of La Ceiba Honduras and without question the worst hostal of my eight month trip. My room was more a corridor, and the place stank….but maybe a tad better than the brothel my folks had accidentally checked into in the same time town thirty-three years ago!

By ten the following morning following a fairly bouncy ferry ride I was in another island paradise of Utila. I was here like most other people for one reason….diving. Utila is one of, if not the cheapest place in the world to dive and do dive courses. I was here to do my PADI open water, which I starred that afternoon with some video watching at the dive centre. There was just two other Dutch girls on my course, and it was great to be small group. That night we went to the dive centre for the weekly pub quiz, the girls had been talking about malaria and tetanus and were worried about some if the aspects diving so our called our team the hypochondriacs, we did a little bit better than the worst. The second day we were in the water by the afternoon in the shallows for the first of the skills. It was pretty nice being able to go straight into effectively open water without having to use a swimming pool. In theory the first day was all the hard stuff off getting used to breathing with the regulator, taking your mask off and on and clearing it under water etc. I found all of this stuff dead easy, and was the best student of three of us. The next day we finished the skills in the water and the other video and theory. We finished a bit early and had pretty much the only free few hours that day to hit the beach. After which I stopped by the dive centre to complete the theory exam which we had the option of doing whenever.

That evening was a BBQ at the dive centre, and as we didn’t have to start till midday the next day we had geared ourselves up for a bit of a night. But we were all totally useless and after a few drinks, some food and watching the newly graduated dive masters have to compete in a drinking game involving snorkel and mask we ashamedly left early by 10pm! Day four we were just due to do the first two of four open water dives. The first dive went fine for me, Leonie had some equalising problems, and then unfortunately Lisa got really sea sick between the two dives so we had to call it a day. This just meant jigging our itinerary a bit for the next days. Day five we then completed the last three open water dives of the course, again I had no problems at all, and we were beginning so see some pretty cool fish and reefs on these dives. Lisa who’d suffered with seasickness had woken with a very strange rash and funny pains in her hands and feet but battled through it. Leonie had more troubles with equalising and couldn’t complete the final dive. So at the end of day five Lisa and I had passed the course, and were just planning our two free fun dives the following morning, and Leonie would finish the fourth dive to pass the course. My first night I was in a dorm room on my own, but the second night I moved into a twin with AC and bathroom to share with one if the girls I’d met in rio dulce who was a day behind me. That AC I’d enjoyed so much I blame for a cold which I awoke with on day six. Lisa and I headed out for our two free fun dives and immediately I knew I was going to have problems with equalising from my cold and we couldn’t go to the full intended depth. It was still a really cool dive and we saw a turtle among other things, but having enjoyed zero problems all week diving with the cold was not so fun. The second dive I opted out as I felt I’d already tried to blow my nose to hard tying to clear my ears, also if we went down and then I wanted to come out that would stop the dive for Lisa too. But I still got to snorkel over the same area and that was brilliant anyway. We returned to the dive centre and Leonie had managed to complete her course. Somehow with all our minor maladies after aptly pub quiz team the hypochondriacs we all three passed! Our instructor did tell me afterwards that he thought I was a natural and in the top five percent of students of come through. I think I’m just happy mucking about in water whatever that is. I’m hopeful I’ll be able to get some more diving done over the next few months of my trip….think this could be a new favourite hobby!

So we’d had five nights and six days on the island, but other than a few hours at the beach and couple of drinks on the dock watching the sun go down we’d really not had a chance to explore, we’d walked the same street about twenty times and that was it. We had an hour to quickly pack to get the 2pm ferry to the mainland before taking a bus back San Pedro. Luckily all of us were staying a night there, so we shared a taxi to a hostal. It was so unbelievably hot there, no breeze! It was Sunday night and coming up to nine pm. The hostal said there was only one restaurant that would be open, they walked us there, (150metres) and after dinner the owner drove us back! This was in a fairly residential area, it didn’t appear to be that dangerous to me, but I guess the locals know best. When we got back they had turned the AC on in the dorm room which I was so relieved of, but as soon as we were all in bed they turned it off! I woke up at 1am…stifling wasn’t the word. I was glad to have to check out at 4am to get a 13 hour bus across Honduras to Nicaragua!…..