Utila, Honduras

After the long trip, it was nice to get to Utila. I started my adventue here by walking, and sweating, as I looked for the perfect place to stay. Ubber important, right? I found my place at Underwater Visions Dive Center. The rooms are great and surrounded by a beach (with volleyball court), hammocks and the ever important, bar in the center. The staff is a bit spacey, but manageable. The bar music is awful, second only to the long wait for the attention of the bartender. The combination manages to even hases off the divemasters on occasion, and that´s a hard thing to do.

Most of the diving here reminds me of fall colors and small, water trees in the desert. It's nice and there are some beautiful corals and fish, but not a ton of fish life. I met up with two Danish sisters and we had a great time, diving and renting a golf cart to tour around the island. We visited the cave pools (caves with fresh water pools), the two beaches on the island, Doctor John (the local doctor who smokes cigarettes and purposely dresses in the ugliest clothes that anyone on the island can find and donate to him) as well as almost every restaurant on the island. Although extremely slow, slow as in I´m not sure were going to make it up this tiny hill, it was great fun. While slow, the cart was sturdy and we were able to do some off-roading on paths that would make an ATV cringe. One path lead us to a dead end. Well, not exactly a dead end because we were able to see a local cutting up one of 3 large iguanas for dinner. Yummy, lizard.

I left Utila on Sunday, making my way to Caye Caulker, Belize. I will get there Tuesday. Sunday I made it to Puerto Cortez. The town is not that great and after reading the bible, I kind of wished I would have opted to stay at Playa Travesia, just a few kilometers away. I went to Coca Cola beach. It´s not really a beach, but rather a sandy-grassy bayfront space the locals swim in. The beach was obviously sponsored by Coca Cola, as their signs are on all the refuse cans and their banners hang along the street. However, the restaurants only sell Pepsi. Looks like someone cut a deal at Pepsi to flip the bird at their main competitor, right in their backyard. I thought it was genuis. Monday I am taking a boat back to Placencia and head to Caye Caulker on Tuesday. I will be there for a week then head to Mexico. I booked my ticket home and am leaving from Cancun on July 18th. I think the US has the worst of the bird flu now, so I figure I should be safe to go back.