Scuba Diving in Utilla (Jan 2nd 2008)

Time to leave Shaun the cat and South America behind and go and do some diving in the Caribbean, at last some water action.

Leaving South America

We are to fly out of Santiago (Chile), so have to nip across the Andes to get there. The geology is pure madness.

Here’s some of it….

Had an army guy’s pelvis and gun leaning against the side of my backrest for 2 hours of the journey, thank you sir, all part of the exerience!

Later we had to ditch our precious herbs and black pepper at customs, they had a sniffer dog walk along the table to check out each bag, I just couldn’t take the heat.

The obsessive documenters have a forced break as the camera runs out of battery power, wrong adaptor issues this time. We also seem to have lost the other camera, not very clever.

Blear and loathing at the airport

Deciding to spend the night at the Airport, always seems like a good idea at the time and ends up being desperately tedious.
No internet at all, hmmm! so Dave nips to the holiday inn to print our e-tickets & we settle into the monotonous waiting game.

In the early hours I’m drawing diamond eyed characters on my napkin and hallucinating the people below -(I can see flashes of in my peripheral vision) are a pack of wild dogs.

A Chico is playing slalom with his girlfriend in a trolley down the empty lanes. We are thankful for this diversion from the banality of what to order next to prolong ownership of our precious snack booth..

Great place to work has just flashed on the screen; is it????? #^**(*(_+}{""""?

The spots have started moving around on the dominoes.

random artwork that seemed to make sense at the time

stolen from the highly talented Leo Duranona, timelapse

www.raggedclaws.com/home/category/comics/

A man sits at the cling wrap station playing with his phone while the demo plastic clad suitcase beside him continuously rotates. It’s a twisted music box like a giant spiders supper.

18 hours loom before our flight to Lima ( Peru), then we have to hang around before flying to Honduras; and hang around again for a flight to San Pedro. After a stop over there we’ll get the ferry over to Utila (our final deatination), should separate our wheat from its chaff.

Most was a blur but in a nutshell a kid kicked the back of my seat for the whole of the first flight, second flight was dominated by a tedious guy from the states who didn’t know when to CAN IT!! The third was a crappy plane, lots of turbulence and a descent that was way too steep, fast and seemed to go on forever.
Its raining and dark when we arrive, after a very fast cab ride though some shady parts of town, somewhere in Honduras “Menos rapido por fa vore!!!!!” we finally sink into a bed, “Just.. have... to…..UGGG!”



The next morning we scare ourselves as the town we need to get the ferry from is all over the first 3 pages of the local rag, due to storm damage and a collapsed Pier. We find out its not so bad after Dave spends the morning painstakingly translating the article.

At the bus station buying tickets we get frisked by security packing sawn off shotguns, welcome to Central America!
It's a vibrant and bustling neighbourhood though from what we see of it. In a market theres about 15 stalls with girls just making the daily batches of tortillas. Patting the dough into small rounds, tossing them on the hotplate like cards, turning half cooked ones and flicking them off in one smooth motion, it sounds like a huge massage parlour. We eat plantain soup, rice & tortillas - cheap and delicious and served by a large jolly man, what more could you want. Its only 11am but this is lunchtime here, the locals rise at sunup to work before it gets too hot to move.

We’re off again, its a pleasant bus journey through the wonderfully lush tropical forested countryside of Honduras, we drink in its greenness. Suddenly its dark at 5.30 though, 2 days ago in Mendoza it was10pm, brains confussed.

The lovely la Ceiba

Spend the night by accident in the same hotel Dave stayed in when he passed though 8 years ago, he recognizes the big key! La Ceiba is a dive but has character, and lots of very large people as the only food outlets seem to be Wendy's, burger king and pizza hut. The latter we steam into for their super thin pepperoni pizzas. We see the fattest man possible in there, he has to turn sideways to get in the door, very sad, he was the size of Daniel lambert.

Theres a family in from the good old US of A, the mother of whom insists the children eat wraps & pizza with “their fork and knife” it would have been better if someone had taught her and consequently her children to eat with their mouths closed though.

The crossing to Ultila Bay Island was rough, the boat rocked massively giving us a serious soaking for several hours. Looks like Ulila is to be the first backpacker mecca we’ve stumbled on, judging from the amount of traveller types on the ferry.

Utilla (Caribbean Bay Island)

On land we instantly get mobbed by dive shop reps (nice ones though, Dave meets Julie he remembers from 8 years ago). I just want to put my bags down and get out of these wet jeans, so of course we do no end of faffing before I get to do that. The mango Inn (our home for the evening) is surrounded by tropical planting with wooden decking round the pool and a good restaurant. We have a drink next to a humming bird feeder, at night the bats use it and they fly back and forth just above our heads while we quaff our beer, very cute!

Dinner is served at the fish restaurant that’s so busy they stick us in the souvenier shop next door surrounded by fishy trinkets. I have conch in coconut, Dave tuna. One of our new friends Andrew (a deer stalker from the highlands of Scotland) explains to us all about how he goes out alone for hours watching the herd to single out the old or lame that wont make it through the winter. He tells us about the government sticking its oar in (people don’t like cute animals to be shot) and blindly calling a halt to the culling, resulting in deer that are so populous the forests are decimated. Then they panic and to save loosing face get the quickest and cheapest free lancers in to cover up their governments fuck up. They don’t know what they are doing and kill and mame thousands of healthy animals indiscriminately . Sounds pretty much like a textbook case for how governments operate in every field. Get off the podium Jonesy….

The next day its time to find a dive shop and check out our home for the next 3 months. There are over 20 to choose from incredibly, they line the main street like shoe shops in camden. Gunters (Daves dive shop of 8 years ago) looks to have gone downhill so we check out the biggest company (utilla dive shop) and get a very professional low down from one of the instructors. Its temping, if you do a Divemaster course here you get free diving for life!!!!.Plus the reputation of this shop is world renowned & Padi endorsed, great if you want to work in the industry anywhere, which we think we do.
Free diving for life! we almost don’t visit Altons to see what Daves friend Julie has to offer. But we do go and the atmosphere is so much more chilled and the dock looks like a fine place to live and hang out, heres the digs….

Fish live below the walkway on a mini reef

Altons also teach both Padi and Naui qualifications. Naui is an older and more thorough course recognized in different parts of the world.

Errrrr, free diving for life? No? Oh well, more relaxing and fun? yes, where do we sign?

Afterwards Julie tells us they call the Ultila Dive Center the rubber duck factory and it transpires we’ve had a lucky escape from a production line and you only get to dive for free by working for no pay where as Altons will take you on as a paid Divemaster as soon as you qualify.

We move into number 7 on the dock and relax- eh- voo.

This is Utilas main street. Most locals get around on golf carts or bikes. The real locals are decen

dants of English ginger haired pirates and talk with the strangest southern drawl mixed with Caribbean, sounds a little like old Greg from the Mighty Boosh. Theres little Spanish spoken here and a lot of inbreeding. Almost stayed in a sweet hostel over the sea, the owner who showed us the spot in the yard where he was born. But he turned out to be a racist who wouldn’t allow blacks in his fine upstanding establishment so we hastely took our leave. Have a feeling their may have been many back yard births here.

We have scuba tune up dives, as its been 10 years since Ive been diving & 8 for Dave. Great to be breathing underwater again.
I have trouble equalizing and my buoyancy aint the best but things improve after a one to one dive. Ears are a little bruised and the nurse gives me white vinegar to sooth.

Eagle Ray (source: reef fish of the south pacific)

Then we have 2 days to chill before our courses begins in earnest. At the end of the island past the mangrove swamp we snorkel. It’s a perfectly still, sunny Caribbean day. Underwater we avoid the spiky black urchins and meet a super baby eagle ray with the longest tail and some rather coy puffer fish.


The rest of the time we spend laying in hammocks on the end of the pier swatting up on diving and getting to know the Altons possie.
Below are some of them at the snack shack, our dock bar.

Magnuss, Mitch & Jeff and Sophie

Heres Magnuss who would later test Dave to the limit on the Rescue Diver course. And Jeff who was the loudest American we’ve ever met, he was like a cartoon super hero philosopher, had some good booming chats with him.


Nice guy Chris and Art the swat rescue a baby.

Toby

Adam does a fish talk once a week and Mitch (the owner) puts on a free pork fry. Adams funny & gangly delivery is famed across the island. We learn to identify fish by their shape and how they swim rather than colour that changes with age and depth. And find out the fish groups and quirks of breeds. For example Damsel fish are the farmers of the sea and grow algae to prove they can feed a females young. They are brave little fishes that chase much bigger fish off if they come near their patch. Problem is they are such good gardeners that if their natural predators (the groupers and snappers) are overfished (as they are here), the algae chokes the reef and the coral dies. He gives us the lowdown on what is overfished on the reef that we shouldn’t be eating, I wish I’d known earlier, no more conch for me.

Adam (fish man) & Martin having a lovely fag (rescue diver instructor)

Adams fav fish lives in the sand and impresses the females by unlocking its jaw and dancing around showing off how big his mouth is, the lubberfish male incubates the eggs in his mouth see, oh the weird and wonderful world under the sea. Adams does a fine impression of the fish as Mick Jagger.

Gave up smoking in November by the way, thats it, no going back this time :), this trip has saved me.

Sundowners become the norm on the dock but you have to get covered in deet as the sand flies are vicious invisible enemies and my legs are getting peppered. "another Rum'an'ade please!"



I do my advanced scuba course, (the fun one where you get a taster of many types of diving). I do a Deep dive, Wreck, Drift, Bouyancy, Navigation and Night dive. My instructor knows his stuff but isn’t big on any actual instruction sadly, its mostly great apart from the parts that go wrong due to conflicting ideas about what we were supposed to be doing. Cant imagine getting to Divemaster at the moment I must admit, its all a little scary.

During the Wreck dive I came face to face with a 2 foot porcupine puffer fish he looked straight at me with his big doughy eyes for a minute before swimming slowly away. They are pretty common around these parts, we like em, heres one from the fish book…

During my first night dive we find an octopus and shine a light on a rock to attact red fleas then the octopus smothers the rock and sucks them all up. We do this over and over till he’s had enough then he swims off, a very good trick.

Dave has done his Advanced so relaxes and does a couple of fun dives while I catch up. I finally get to buddy up with him on the drift dive and we hang at the back and have a gay old time pointing out fish.

Don’t have a great variation in photos but Sunsets here are pretty special so heres some …..

Frigate birds are the most common sky life, plus the odd pelican sitting on a post preening or diving most ungracefully after fishes.

Its flood lit under the end of the dock at night so we can watch the shouls of small snappers and mullets milling around. Turquoise Needle fish swim about in the day, the boat captin feeds them & the crabs (& the odd sting ray) with fish heads to make them like it here.

Adam metioned cleaner fish and cleaning stations. If you see a fish at a 45 degree angle with its head in the air its likely its having a clean from some smaller fellows. Now he’s told us what to look for we see them everywhere.

One of the divemasters Ivan has a birthday, Nicolas and Angela throw a party. We all buy gifts to stuff into a pinata, Dave and I add fire crackers. He almost falls down the steep front yard with his violent swings and misses of the target. Good game, good game!

Up at dawn to get fresh cinnamon rolls before diving, not a soul up apart from a green humming bird.


Breakfast and comedy shop keeper.

Normally we cook in the shared kitchen (shared with divers and ants equally).

Morning shadow of bouncy youth

Before our rescue diving course we do one day of first aid in the class room and have to act out emergency scenarios around the dock. It was pretty funny, Dave threw 2 scuba tanks into the water to save someone, quite dangerous in itself but they do float. I in my panicked wisdom decide to put my fins on before running down the entire length of the dock much to the amusement of all gathered. I have to talk the boys out of rolling someone completely over as they are already actually in the recovery position. And Megan (the siren) gave a very embarassed Adam sassy rescue breaths. Apart from all that we were quite brilliant.



The next day the stress begins in ernest : Rescue course and house hunting combined.

The 3 day course is all about making you capable of dealing with distressed or injured divers under or at the surface of the water. Its serious stuff and at the end of each day we are physically and emotionally shattered. Helping panicked or unconscious divers on the surface was hard work but do-able and fun. Under the water, well I was only just not a paniced diver myself really.

The first day we are in class. Art, the dedicated profeesional that he is had filled out all the answers in his textbook and has clearly spent too little time in the bar. Dave says you can't trust a man that shaves his sideburns so they are level with his eyebrows. Its all pretty logical stuff and we are in the water straight after lunch to get us some skills.

Martin is an excellent instructor (amazingly he'd only been running the course for 8 months, a natural) and by the end of the day we've come on leaps and bounds.

Day 2: more time in confined water practising buddy breathing, where you share air between 2 or more divers. Its quite tricky to get the rhythm right Dave and I rather like air and were constantly grabbing the regulator off each other. He almost drowned me!

The rest of the day was taken up with scenarios, a bit like watching casualty on TV, waiting for something awful to happen. All very hectic but lots of fun.

The last day was about testing the skills we had learnt and using them in openwater, it was brilliant. We went out on a regular diveboat with Magnus, Marcus and Toby who would be acting as divers in distress. On the first scenario we had to accompany them on a dive and look after them while they played at being panicked, cold, stupid, overbouyant, out of air or all of the above. They knew Dave was pretty competent so he had a slightly harder time of it. His mask and regulator were pulled off several times, air turned off twice and often he had to deal with Magnus who was pretty strong & thoroughly enjoyed being a right awkward bastard. Dave loved it, glad they were nicer to me.

At one point I had to be in charge of search and rescue of a missing diver and organize everyone into action as quickly as possible, brain damage occurs after 6 mins so timing is crucial. We decided on a search pattern, found him, brought him to the surface, got him onboard and worked out what treatment to give very well. Then we gave oxygen but unforntunatly all of us died in an explosion as we let Martin smoke near the oxygen tank, dope!

Dave had to untangle a trapped diver. Toby and Magnus had a fight onboard which totally fool

ed us. An actor by trade Toby was so convincing whilst complaining of headpains we really thought he wasn't well. On the way back to the dive shop 8 people jumped in and needed saving at once, bastards! It was non stop, but we all had a right laugh and managed to do really well at the same time. Martin was very pleased with us, on the way back he announced to all the divers aboard we had passed with flying colours.

Oh the sweet relief!!!!

Sadly it was short lived. When you rescue a diver you have to take your BCD off to get them aboard and its one of the divemasters jobs to collect them from the water. So we get back to shore and Mitch (the boss) gets on the boat and recives a radio call asking if we have a BCD missing as one has just washed up and they are about to start search and rescue procedures for real. It only turns out it was mine and it was lucky it wasn’t damaged on the reef and we realized pretty sharpish, everyone feels a bit stupid and responsible which was a shame because we had all worked darn hard, I think it managed to hide behind the other side of the boat in all the commotion of a rescue attempt.

photo nicked from Julies facebook of a booze cruse at Altons

Oh well! Everyone gets pissed at the snack shack and plays drunken games. One where you pick someones name out of a hat and try and get them to take something from you, If you succeed they are out and you get the name of the person they were supposed to kill. Dave finally gets Martin (the pro at this particularly mature pastime) in the morning by signing his divebook.

Before the Divemaster briefing we have to visit Doctor John, the hippy island doctor whos usually found pissed in Coco Loco's. We need a medical to get the all clear to do the course. We are lucky to see him as he spends most of his time writing poetry and sleeping (technically he's retired). Very likeable when we finally meet him.

We have concerns about Dave passing the medical as he has always had a breakbeat heart and his resting pulse was below 40 when we took it in the first aid course, like a superfit athlete. Unfortunately Doctor John says he can hear 3 different things happening with Daves heart and before you know it has him layed down, chest shaved with monitor pads all over it. The results made Dr John book Dave in to see a Chardiloogist on the mainland for a 24 hour monitor to have a better idea what was going on. He said he couldnt sign Dave off until the professionals in this field had a look.

This is worrying news.

We are booked in for the day after tomorrow so have to go back and explain to the dive shop whats happened.

We leave the next morning and pack as if we may not be coming back but are hoping for the best.