Having survived my brush with the 'dangerous' cities of Managua and San Pedro Sula in Honduras, I finally arrived at Utila, in the Bay Islands of Honduras.
Utila is one of three Bay Islands - Roatan, Utila and Guanaja - off the coast of Honduras and famed for having the second largest barrier reef in the world after Australia's Great Barrier Reef. The Bay Islands remained mostly in the hands of the British until 1859, and English remains the most commonly spoken language whlie the population comprises African, Carib and European ancestry.
The Bay Islands are also one of the cheapest places in the world to dive, so I signed up to do my PADI Open Water Diving qualification at the Utila Dive Centre. This consisted of 4.5 days, with quite a lot of theory and an exam (I didn't quite grasp the concept of a 'course') followed by 2 confined water dives (off the docks) and 4 open water dives out at sea, followed by 2 more fun dives at sea. The UDC is reputed to have trained more divers worldwide than any other centre, and were an amazingly professional and friendly bunch of people. My first lesson of the course was hard learnt - don't dive hungover. This is definitely easier said than done in Utila, which is a great place for partying. Aside from that early mishap, I really enjoyed the course and the open water dives were incredible, swimming under towering coral, amongst shoals of fish, seahorses, eels and rays.
Utila has a transient population but as most people come to learn to dive or to get their professional diving qualifications, people tend to stay on the island anywhere from a week to 3 months. I met up with Amber, a family friend who lives on Utila, and ended up renting a property right on the water for a few days with some Kiwi and South African friends. It was pretty heavenly apart from the Siege of the Sandflies.
After 9 days in Utila, it was finally time to move on and I faced another long bus day to get to Copan, a pretty colonial town with cobblestone streets and terracotta rooftops, situated next to the famous Mayan ruins. While not the grandest or the largest of the Mayan ruins (I'm still getting to those!), the Copan Ruins are famous for its intricate sculptures and hieroglyphics, so much so that it has been dubbed the 'Paris' of the Maya world (according to Lonely Planet). From AD250-900, the city at Copan Ruins dominated the region, and the royal dynasty has been catalogued through the ages on the Hieroglyphic Stairway.
This part of Honduras is absolutely beautiful, with green fields and lush vegetation, horses and cows everywhere, blue skies and gurgling rivers. The ruins were very impressive - I can hardly wait for the 'better' ruins! Tomorrow I move on to Antigua in Guatemala. I have 6 weeks left of this trip and Guatemala, Belize and Mexico are calling!
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