Utila
HONDURAS
The Island
By LYNDI
Thursday, April 3, 2008
I’m not sure what changed, but I’m sure glad it did. Aaron and I had fully planned on beginning our trip on the big island off Honduras called Roatan, doing lots of diving there, getting certified, etc. But the day before we were going to catch the ferry to Roatan, we both sorta decided not to go, and instead took the ferry to Utila.
Utila (You-TILL-uh) has been described as what Roatan was 10 years ago, before the cruise boats and mass tourism took over. The island is literally a one-town island – and by “town”, I do mean a little ocean front place with two roads. Nothing moves very quickly around here, no one seems to know what day it is, and there’s about 3 cars on the whole island for transporting big items to the little stores. For the most part everyone just gets around on motorized scooters or bikes. The main road in town is lined with little bars, restaurants, and dive shops are everywhere. If I had to guess, I’d say there’s about 50 little businesses along the main street, and probably 15 of them are dive shops. But we’ll get to the diving later.
We caught our ferry from La Ceiba on Friday afternoon for the one hour ride to Utila. Our Lonely Planet told us it should be about $10, so we were less than impressed when it was actually $21. I know you can’t trust Lonely Planet, but that author was way off. Aaron and I thought it would be really nice to sit in the front of the boat so we could watch as we approached the island. For some reason, most people hurried to the back where there is a protected room with windows for viewing. Ha – how foolish of them. They’ll miss the pretty ride…
This was the first in what will probably be many lessons in “watching what the locals do and following suit”. The entire hour ride over, I felt like I was on the Log Ride at Six Flags. Not only was our little ferry keeling over some pretty big waves, but the water was shooting into the front of the boat soaking everything up there. Within about 10 minutes we were absolutely drenched, salt water was stinging our eyes, and every item in the front of the boat was being thrown around… including us. The first 30 minutes or so, it was actually pretty comical – with coolers trying to fly across the boat, wave after wave piling down on us – but then it got pretty old. And we were only halfway there.
When we did pull up into little Utila town, we were ambushed by dive shops handing out fliers and helping escort us to their dive shop. Aaron and I checked out just a few that we’d heard good things about, and settled on Utila Watersports – and we couldn’t be happier with our choice. They had run out of the normal rooms that they rent to divers, so instead they had to put us in a waterfront room – for $7 a night! Our place is awesome, there’s a large front porch that overlooks the bay, a hammock to swing in, and a full kitchen so we can cook meals. The first couple nights we were there, we shared our accommodation with a couple Canadian girls and they told us the best places in town to get drinks, food, etc. It didn’t take us long to find our way to the best bar on the island – TreeTanic. Apparently it took the guy 7 years to build this bar up in the trees – it really does just look like a little tree house. We also found the best tacos in town at Seven Seas Restaurant. For $1.15 you get two pretty big bean tacos – or you can buck up and pay $2.30 for a monster taco.
o our daily itinerary while we’ve been here has been something like “wake up, eat breakfast, go scuba diving, take a siesta, eat tacos, kayak, read, make dinner, have Salva Vida (best beer in the country – and it’s a buck) on the front porch as the sun sets, hit a few other bars, call it a night”. And then repeat. Can’t say I have any complaints. We did have a little issue where they kept turning off our water. I’m not really sure why, but they keep shutting it off, so we keep going over to the dive shop and having them turn it back on. It’s especially fun when you’re in the shower with conditioner in your hair and one leg shaved. But, I guess for $7 a night, I’ll deal with it. Aaron and I will be here for at least another week since he’s awaiting his bank card to be mailed to him at the dive shop (the locals told him he’ll be lucky if he gets it by December). But then again, I honestly can’t think of a better place to pass the time…
