Summing up our time in Honduras is fairly easy… we spent three and a half months in Utila, Honduras (and the neighbouring Jewel Cay).  The only other cities we visited (La Ceiba and San Pedro Sula) were required stays to get in and out of Utila.

Honduras Statistics:

Length of Stay: 107 days
Average Cost per Day for Two People including ALL of our scuba diving courses: $52.97 CAD
Average Cost per Day for Two People NOT including scuba diving:  $25.28 CAD
Cities/Towns Visited: 5
Distance Traveled: 997 km  in 3 automobiles and 18 boats
Days Sick:  4 for Ashley, 0 for Mike
Number of Items Lost: 0
Biggest Tourist Traps: none
Exchange Rate: $1 CAD = 19 lempiras

For more great travel statistics, check out our stats page!

Good bye Jewel Cay!

Our Route:

Puerto Cortes – La Ceiba – Utila/Jewel Cay/Little Cay – La Ceiba – San Pedro Sula – Nicaraguan border (through Tegucigulpa)

Highlights:

• DIVING!!!  We came for a week and stayed for three and a half months, need I say more?
• The people.   Staying in one place for three and a half months really allowed us to get to know some fabulous people that we now miss dearly.
• Swimming with Whale Sharks
• The abundance of cheap and delicious baked goods on Jewel and Pigeon Cays.
• Having a place to call home (with an oven!!!)

Great friends and good baking!

Lowlights:

• Getting fat from the abundance of cheap baked goods.
• The principle language on Utila is English.  Which, incidentally, is not the best way to cement in your mind the six weeks of Spanish lessons you just took.
• Living on the tiny island of Jewel Cay meant that our muscles forgot how to walk.
• The safety factor.  Honduras is the most dangerous country in Central America and San Pedro Sula is the violence capital of the world.  We didn’t experience much of this since we were on the tiny island of Utila, rather than mainland Honduras.  We did, however, feel that our personal safety was threatened for the first time in over seven months of travel on a bus from La Ceiba to San Pedro Sula.  There was a very drunk (likely more than drunk) man sitting across the aisle from us who told us, through a combination of Spanish and English, that a lot of people die all the time in Honduras.  Luckily for us, he said, we were gringos and he likes gringos so he wouldn’t kill us.  In fact, we were his brother and sister, so we should blow off our prearranged transport to our hostel and go home with him.  He refused to take no for an answer, and just kept yelling louder and louder.  After about an hour and a half of this, and several complaints to the driver from other passengers, security settled him down at one of the bus stops.  Happily, they forced him off the bus on the outskirts of San Pedro Sula, before the terminal we would exit at.

A wonderland created with glass at Treetanic Bar in Utila, Honduras

Surprises:

• I think we always expected that we’d like diving, but we had no idea how quickly we fall completely in love with it.
• Even though we loved what we had to do each day, we were surprised by how difficult it was to wake to an alarm each morning.  It didn’t seem to matter that it was diving, or that the alarm was going off the same time we had been waking up for most of the trip… having to get up at a set time is exhausting.
• All the expensive toys we bought ourselves for Christmas… after being hard-core budgeters for so long, we spent a small fortune on a second laptop (turns out we don’t share well), a dive computer, and an underwater camera enclosure.

I got to experience a tarantula in my mouth in Tikal, so Mike wanted to one-up me in Utila

Lessons Learned:

• You can make anywhere home.
• The quiet, laid-back vibe is the right vibe for us.

Honduras Journal – Where Did We Spend Our Time?

La Ceiba – 2 nights
What we did here:  Nada.  We waited for the ferry to Utila to start running again (bad weather kept it from going).  It was pouring rain so we mostly just hung out in our hostel.

Utila – 16 nights
What we did here:  We researched dive shops, and killed some time until Talon (from 1 Dad, 1 Kid) was free to teach us our first courses.  We hiked to a crashed drug plane.  And we also crashed at a few friend’s houses here (thanks Lisa, Shell, and Talon!).

Jewel Cay – 86 nights
What we did here:  Dive, dive, and dive.  We also managed the dive shop’s hotel in conjunction with another DMT for about a month and half.  And don’t forget swimming with whale sharks!!!

Little Cay – 1 night
What we did here:  What better way to say goodbye and celebrate our completion of the divemaster program than to rent a private island with our best buds? (Complete with a shore dive, of course)

San Pedro Sula – 2 nights
What we did here: Waited for a spot to open up on the Tica bus to Nicaragua.  Met Carlo & Geneva from the TravelBudgetCouple at our hostel and joined them for some Hondurian Chinese food and reverse culture shock at the city mall.

We miss you Miss Kary!

Sunset on Little Cay

If you want to check out some of our Honduras photos, check out our photo gallery.

Coral

Bluebell Tunicates

Mooring Line

Coral

Pilot Whale Skeleton

Divers at Halliburton Wreck

Coral

Great view

Bike at the Wreck

Sand

Coral

Coral

Divers at the wreck

Butterflyfish

Horse-eye Jacks & Barracuda

Burrfish

Flamingo Tongue

Hermit Crab

Coral

Lizardfish

Banded Coral Shrimp

Green Moray Eel

Feather Dusters

Sea Urchin

We’ve been going on and on about how we decided to become divemasters in Utila, but it’s come to my attention that most people outside of the diving world don’t really know what a divemaster does.  So let’s change that, shall we?

We, as divemasters, can not teach you, our lovely friends and family, how to scuba dive.  We would have to become instructors for that, another course that comes with a hefty price tag.

What we can do is lead certified divers.  That means that once you get your open water certification, we can take you out, let you know what to expect on the dive, point out some interesting aquatic life, and get you back to the boat with plenty of air to spare.  That’s what divemasters are for… they take the stress of navigating out of the equation and they know where to look to see the cool stuff.  A good divemaster makes the dives smoother and more enjoyable for everyone.

Find the boat may not always be easy, but it doesn’t feel like magic anymore

Divemasters can do a few more things too.  They can refresh your diving skills if you haven’t dove in a while.  They can certify skin divers (snorkelers).  They can also teach a few specialities, given the appropriate additional certifications and take out discover scuba divers (someone that is not certified) after an instructor has taken them out at least once before.

There are several stages of training between landlubber and PADI divemaster.

First, you need your open water diver certification.  In Utila, this is typically a three day course.  The first day is spent in confined water (a pool or off-dock pool-like environment) learning the skills, and then four open water dives are done over two days from the boat.  There are five knowledge reviews and a final exam to complete.  Once certified, you can dive with a buddy to a depth of 18 m.

Then, you need your advanced open water certification.  This course is much less rigid than the open water course.  You need to complete five adventure dives, typically over 2-3 days.  These dives must include a deep dive (between 18 and 30 m) and a navigation dive.  The other three are up to you!  We chose to do a wreck dive, night dive, and peak performance buoyancy.  There are five knowledge reviews to complete, but no final exam.  Once certified, you can dive with a buddy to a depth of 30 m.

The last step before the divemaster program is to become a rescue diver.  Before you can become a rescue diver, you need to have a valid EFR certification (emergency first response/CPR and first aid), taken within the past 24 months.  If you don’t already have it, it will be an extra afternoon of instruction and practice, a couple of knowledge reviews, and an exam.  The rescue course typically takes about three days and involves a lengthy confined water section and then two scenarios and a dive from hell off the boat.  You learn how to deal with all kinds of problems and emergencies in and out of the water, including how to respond to panicked, tired, and unresponsive divers underwater and at the surface.

Finally, the divemaster program.  To begin the program, you need to have 40 logged dives under your belt (all of the previous course dives count as logged dives).  If you don’t have 40 dives, don’t worry… in Utila, you don’t have to pay for them once you’ve signed up for the divemaster program.  The actual course can take anywhere from two and a half to eight weeks, depending on your schedule.  The course includes:  nine knowledge reviews, a final exam, a skills circuit assessment (of your ability to demonstrate the open water skills), a swimming skills assessment (400 m timed swim, 800 m timed snorkel, 100 m timed tired diver tow, 15 float/tread), an underwater equipment exchange, dive site mapping project, deep dive scenario, search & recovery scenario, dive briefing assessment, dive site & boat set up assessment, five workshops where instructors, divemasters, and DMTs act as your divers (discover local diving, skin diving, discover scuba diving confined water, discover scuba diving additional dive, and scuba tune-up), and four actual scenarios (assist on confined dives for open water course, assist on open water dives of open water course, assist on a continuing education course, and lead certified divers).  You also need a total of 60 logged dives to finish the program (this is no problem by the time you’ve met all the other requirements).

So You Think You Might Want to Become a Divemaster? (and tips for choosing a dive shop)

Choosing a dive shop is always an important factor for any certification, but because of the time involved it is especially important with the divemaster program.  One of the instructors at the shop will be your personal mentor.  Depending on the set up, they may also be the person you do all of your skills with during the course (we got the opportunity to work with several instructors while completing our divemaster program, which I would highly recommend).

The best way to choose a dive shop in a place like Utila (which has something like 14 different shops) is to spend a day walking around and talking to them all.  Obviously, you need to ask the cost of the program (remember, these are often negotiable, especially if it’s low season).  Also find out if the cost includes any extras… Are the dives required to start the program included?  Does this include reef fees?

Related to the question of price – what are the perks? Do you offer free/discounted accommodation?  If so, for how long?  Do you offer any free/discounted specialty courses to divemasters-in-training?  We managed to get our nitrox, wreck, and deep specialties for the cost of the certification.  Do you get free diving for life after you’re done the course?

Also, if you’re planning to stick around and work as a divemaster, ask about the possibility of continuing on with the shop – some shops guarantee work for their graduates (though the amount of work might be sparse).  If you’re interested in making a few bucks back, ask if you can work in the shop while you’re completing your course.

Probably the most important factor in choosing a dive shop is the people.  The prices are usually pretty close from shop to shop and you can walk around checking out equipment, but it’ll probably be similar as well.  When you chat with the shops about prices and get tours of the facility, note the vibe of the place… is it a party place?  Is it quiet and laidback?  Does everyone seem to get along well?  Are there experienced instructors around for everyone to benefit from?  Is there an instructor that you can have a good mentor/mentee relationship with?  Do you get to choose your mentor or will they be assigned to you?  Can you set your own schedule, or do you need to follow theirs?  If at all possible, make sure you get out on the dive boat at least once before committing to any shop.

Ultimately, we didn’t choose the cheapest shop (I know, I know… how out of character for us), we chose to pay a little more for a shop that fit our schedule, and our vibe.  All in all, the time we spent picking our shop was well worth the effort.

Hanging out in front of our dive shop

We thought we had already done the swimming with whale sharks thing.   July.  Isla Holbox, Mexico.  $70 bucks a person.  Two jumps in.  Two minutes a jump.  And we thought it was amazing!

One of the whale sharks we saw in Utila… this time we took photos!

But when whale sharks were spotted by dive boats around Utila, we started getting antsy. And when our dive boat started spotting them and taking divers to snorkel with them, and we weren’t on the boat (because there was no room for us), we started getting really antsy. Okay, maybe antsy doesn’t cut it. Bitter is a little more like it.

So when one of our friends, Bogdan, suggested we hire a boat and go out searching for them one afternoon, we were in. The boat captain, Alex, was his good friend of his, so we only had to pay the cost of gas… roughly $10/person.

Captain Alex

Bogdan, Jutta (another good friend of ours from Austria), Mike, and I took off at about 3:00 in the afternoon, hoping to get lucky. Everyone on board knew that there were no guarantees, but we were all brimming with excitement. We went to the north side of Utila and, within minutes of searching, saw our first “boil.” I was so excited I nearly peed my pants.

Searching for boils, while Bogdan demonstrates the family friendly sign for whale shark

A boil, if you are wondering, is how you spot the feeding whale sharks near the surface. The whale sharks are always accompanied by a swarm of other plankton feeders which attract the attention of larger predator fish like tuna. All this movement near the surface makes the water look like it is literally boiling. Birds are also attracted by the action and the easiest way to spot a boil from a distance is to watch for swooping birds.

We jumped in, swam a little ways and there it was… a magnificent, massive whale shark. This guy was about 6-7 m long and when I first spotted him he was vertical, head up, feeding on the plankton. In no time at all, he lowered his huge body and started swimming away.

When you watch videos of these guys, it looks like they are swimming nice and slow, but they’re not. Because of their size and power, these guys motor and you have to swim your heart out to try and keep up.

 

Video courtesy of our friend Bogdan of Duppy Waters Productions (this is one of the whale sharks we saw)

In Mexico, we swam along beside the head of the whale shark and couldn’t even see the tail when we turned back. This is not because of the animal’s size, it was because of the poor visibility. In Utila, the visibility was excellent in comparison, and we could see the entire whale shark from a good distance underwater.

Snorkeling with the largest fish in the world

Once the tail faded out of sight, we returned to the boat and pulled ourselves up into the skiff in what could only be described as an incredibly ungraceful manner (in fact, I was left with so many bruises from this that friends were wondering about spousal abuse). We flopped down happy and satisfied and immediately spotted two more boils. The rest of our afternoon followed the same pattern… spot a boil, chase it down with the boat, jump in, try and keep up, flop into the boat, repeat. All in all, we jumped in about ten times. Personally, I saw five whalesharks. Okay, I actually only saw one of two different whalesharks (one was 6-7 m long, the other 9-10 m) on five separate occasions. And I was elated!

Check out the smile on my face!

Comparing my experience with those of my friends on the dive boat (including Jutta who had just been on the boat that morning when they spotted whale sharks), we had the perfect set up. Instead of twenty people fighting to get in the water, there were just four of us. No one jumped in on top of our heads. We knew what we were doing, so we slipped gently into the water instead of crashing in and scaring the whale shark away. We could also spread ourselves out so we saw more than just the bubbles of someone’s kicking fins in front of us.

On the boat ride back to our home on little Jewel Cay, we were treated with some spectacular views lit by the setting sun.

Paradise

This whale shark experience totally blew our previous one out of the water (and, at a fraction of the cost, how can you go wrong?). The only words I could use to describe it when I got back was “f***ing brilliant” and I could not wipe the smile off my face for days.

Jutta and I… seriously just loving life!

If you ever get the chance to swim with these mammoth creatures, don’t think twice. Do it. The experience is magical and phenomenal and something you will never EVER forget.

 

If you would have told me seven months ago that I would become a divemaster on this journey, I would have laughed and called you crazy.  I come from landlocked Saskatchewan.  I didn’t even see the ocean until I was nineteen years old.  And I’ve always had a love/hate relationship with water.  I love to be in and around it, but have never been a strong swimmer.  I tried taking my open water scuba diving certification back in Saskatchewan, and quit halfway through because I hated the cold, nearly zero visibility lake dives.

Nevertheless, I thought that since Utila, Honduras was the cheapest place in the world to get certified as a diver and since we were passing right by anyways, we should stop and try diving in the ocean at least once.  Just to see what there is to see.  After the certification and a few fun dives each, we would move on.  Ha!

After only five minutes in the water, I was totally and completely in love.  It turns out diving is a lot like travelling… if you take the time to get below the surface, there is a whole new world to explore.  The closer you look at something, the more vibrant life you see.  And snorkelling doesn’t even compare… even with short free dives, it seems very two-dimensional.  Scuba adds the exciting third dimension to it all.

A Whole Different World

So I had to do something to keep diving.  And the divemaster program was just that.  In addition to improving your basic skills, developing your underwater navigation skills (finding the boat doesn’t seem like magic anymore), and increasing your overall comfort level in the water, the divemaster course had another huge draw… free diving for life!   We signed up with only 13 dives under our belts, and haven’t had to pay for another since.

Ultimately, we are leaving Utila with 105 dives each (in case you’re wondering, we totally followed tradition for dive #100), 74 1/2 hours underwater, and the following certifications:  open water diver, advanced open water diver, rescue diver, EFR (emergency first response), deep diver (allows you to go 40 m), wreck divers (allows you to penetrate wrecks), and nitrox (allows you to breathe enriched air with a higher oxygen content, increasing your maximum bottom time).

Inside the Halliburton Wreck

And all of this (courses, certifications, course materials, reef fees and everything else) cost us an average of $13/dive per person.  Not too shabby, eh?

Mike hovering and looking like a chill divemaster

I have no doubt that we will return to Utila to dive with Captain Morgan’s Dive Centre again (with free diving, we’d be crazy not to).  We’re just not sure when… near future or distant future?

I definitely know that, now that I’m Divemaster Ash, I want to keep diving.  A lot.  I may even start wearing a robe tied with a rope and saying things like “In order to dive, one must first enter the water” (okay, Josh, I totally stole your joke here).  We won’t make a fortune as divemasters (at our shop they earn $2/hour in the shop and $2.50/diver per dive when they lead dives), but it’s one way to keep diving for cheap.

We still don’t know how becoming divemasters will fit into our future travel plans.  Likely, we will spend more time on the coasts, in places where the diving is good.  We may even stop somewhere and get jobs.  Who knows… maybe we’ll even become instructors?

Ascending into the light

Diving at the wreck

 

Divemaster Mike

Divemaster Ash chilling in the wreck

The Blue

Divemaster Mike

Jewel Cay, Honduras (just off the coast of Utila) has truly become home for us over the past three months.  We have our own apartment, friends, neighbours, and landlords that have become our adopted family.

In two short weeks, we will be saying goodbye to it all, dusting off our backpacks, and continuing our journey with a trip to Nicaragua to meet up with my mom.  I’ll be sad to go, but I can’t begin to describe how excited I am to see my momafter nearly 7 months away from our family.

At first, for Mike and I, the most exciting part of renting our one bedroom apartment on Jewel Cay was finally having an oven (see the pictures below to see just how excited Mike was… if it wasn’t so hot, he probably would have been hugging it!).  After months of hostel kitchens with one pot, one pan, and no oven, we were thrilled to be able to bake things again… so thrilled that we consumed something like 5 pounds of flour, 3 sticks of butter, and who knows how much sugar in the first week alone!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We have made bread, biscuits, cinnamon buns, ham and cheese buns, perogies, shepherd’s pie, borscht, and many of the other goodies we miss from home.  In a moment of homesick weakness, we even enjoyed a classy meal of KD (Kraft Dinner {mac and cheese}) and hotdogs.

The real beauty in having an apartment, though, is that settling in immediately gave us a feeling of home… a private space where we could unpack our things and hang out whenever we feel like it.

We even have a cat that hangs around the hotel where we go to use the internet.  His name is Balls, Scuba, or Slobber… depending who you ask.  He makes us miss our cat, Pi, a little bit less… or is it a little bit more?

Renting an apartment has really made a positive impact on our budget, too.  We pay $200 USD a month, which includes power (something that’s really expensive here) and water.  Our only other expenses are gas and food.  Propane for the stove costs about $15 for a tank, which probably lasts a few months (we wouldn’t know since our first tank was stolen and our second slowly leaked out its contents in about two weeks) and we spend an average of about $10 a day on food.  We can buy just about anything we want in any quantity we want… spices, mustard, mayonnaise and vanilla are sold by the spoonful, bread is sold by the slice, cabbage comes in heads, half heads, and quarter heads, and so on.

All in all, we’re spending a total of about $500-600 CAD per month.  Even though we’re still diving nearly everyday, it no longer costs us anything, so it’s a really affordable lifestyle.

Our only question now is… do we return to Utila after Nicaragua?  or move on with our travels?