Hot in Honduras and Whale Sharks

After Chichi we found a chickenbus (an aptly named local bus as they allow all and sundry aboard even the chickens, in reality they are the american school buses no longer required in the states transported south and then sprayed bright colours and lots of chrome and as the seats are designed for yanks the 4 seat benches will actually take 6 people) to Chimaltanengo a town roughly heading back to Antigua. The conductor who impressively understood our ropey spanish threw us off the bus here and pointed us in the right direction for catching another chickenbus for the remainder of the journey. We holed up for the night in Antigua and after a little excitement finding out and then rejecting a boat in Belize we crashed out early for a bus going to Honduras. We had to be up at 4am to catch a minibus that was going to Copan in Honduras. The journey was long but comfortable and crossing the border was such a breeze compared to Africa. Once in Copan, the site of some impressive Mayan ruins which we had to miss, we found another bus that was going to San Pedro Sula a large transport hub of a town on the way to La Ceiba our destination. Once in San Pedro Sula we swapped straight to another bus and finally arrived in La Ceiba on the Caribbean coast of Honduras around 5 in the evening after 13hrs on buses. La Ceiba is the busiest, not the biggest, sea port of Honduras mainly due to the tourist traffic making their way to the Bay Islands. The city itself is pleasant enough, lots of the usual city delights like Wendy's, our favourite fast food joint and a supermarket where we stocked up on food and booze as we heard the islands are expensive. Somehow we managed to find the ropiest hotel in the city a first class dive, but our appearance matched the hotels at this point. The door had obviously been kicked in a few times, the beds made your skin crawl, the 'shower' consisted of a cold tap on a wall and the cockroaches were out in force, yet despite this we slept like babies. In the morning we were found by a taxi, no need to go looking in a gringo city like this, and made our way to the ferry port a few k's out of town where we caught the GalaxyII to our first Island, Roatan. Roatan is a gorgeous tropical island in the caribbean, clear blue seas, white sands and a real laid back atmposphere. The people are a mix of Garifuna, a slave population who settled on the Island who speak a form of patois and Hispanic settlers who speak spanish. The mixed accents can be tricky to understand as the patois is very heavy and the spanish has a slow jamaican twang to it, but luckily most speak english well enough. The Island is seriously high on the laid back scale where spending your day in a hammock could be seen as overdoing it, and the islands (including Utila) are world renowned for the diving. The ferry dropped us off at Coxen Hole, named after a famous pirate John Coxen, one of many places named after bucaneers and pirates. The islands were a hideaway for the pirates as the spanish fleets found the islands hard to approach through the coral reefs. The obvious rumours of hidden treasure are still alive. We made our way from Coxen Hole to West End a small village on the, you guessed it, west end of the island where the roads run out and the main thoroughfare is the beach. We found a room in a lodge and prepared for some hard core island chillin'. As i had a cold, quite impressive since I am in the tropics we were unable to dive, for those non-divers out there it means i can't breath through my ears and hence will be unable to go very deep. So instead for the first few days we enjoyed the amazing white coral beach fading into the blues seas. Jo ended up relaxing a little too far and spent one day in her room unable to get out of bed. This could be the copious amount of cocktails she imbibed the night before on a bar jetting out on the sea which had a live band. A few tactical chunders in the night and waking up on the kitchen floor had not had the desired affect and hence she felt unable to move for another 24hrs. My cold was still persisting so the next day we decided to hire a motorbike, not a wussy moped, and explore the island with Joey riding pillion. Seeing as there is only one road through the island, navigation was a breeze. One particular highlight, actually a lowlight was the Iguana farm. We rode down to the house and saw various large and small Iguana's lounging in the midday sun. So we respectfully paid our $5 entrance fee to see the rest of the place to be told this was it. We had seen it. So feeling a little ripped off we headed further east along the island. The villages all have the feel of incoming money. Many americans are starting to retire here now, mainly due to the arrival a few years back of cruiseships. The arrival of cruiseships has drastically altered the island, 11 years ago Jo visited this island and this time round she could not recognise where she had stayed. The island has built up massively in the intervening years. I had a chat with a local who said since the cruisliners from the states arrived accompanied by the dollars, thousand of mainland hondurans have come to the island seeking their slice, this has meant more hotels, bars, restaurants and other tourist traps. This has also inadvertantly impacted the coral reefs off the island, as the cruiseships bring thousands of snorkellers and amateur divers each week who have systematically damaged the reef and hence the fish populations. He did not hold much hope for the reef in the following year. Its quite sad really, once the big bucks arrive. Hondurans have now been priced out of their favourite holiday spot, the environment IS seen as a money maker but is not looked after. What made this island wonderful is being destroyed and once this happens the big bucks will eventually go away as well. Later in the week my cold disappeared and I was able to go diving, yay! We signed up with the cheapest shop in west end at only $20 a dive! We decided to go cheap as we had heard the diving on Utila was better and hence we saved our diving budget for there. Although there were signs of damage to the reef, it was still spectacular, lots of soft and hard coral and colourfull fishies. Joey did manage to find the old bar and lookout that she rememebered from 11 years ago, but they are old and derelict now, hidden away beside spotless new complexes. After getting too used to the island lifestyle we changed islands. We caught the ferry back to La Ceiba and from here caught the Utila Princess to Utila. Utila is completely different. Its a much smaller island and has only one populated part called Utila. This town has again only one road and you can literally walk from oneside of town to the other in 15mins. Joey continues ... Here the locals mix more with the gringos as everyone lives in the same place. They usually only drive mopeds and bikes amd golf carts which makes for a much less stressful wander through town compared to in West End where the taxis from Coxen Hole would beep at you every time they crawled up behind you, and there are a lot of them, so it got blimin irritating quite quickly. Dave says Roatan was very chilled, and it was away from the really busy parts, but you got the feeling the gringo bar workers and dive masters were just trying a bit too hard to be cool and chilled. In Utila, everyone actually is chilled. Because the cruise ships don't come here there are only a couple of 'posh' places to stay outside the town on the only beach. The rest of the accommodation are in the local style houses, wooden, usually on stilts and colourfully painted. Rubi's Inn where we are is built on a small 'spit' of land so we have views over the water from the both sides of the room, lovely. There's a wooden jetty on the end of the spit that I went snorkelling off and saw a big sting ray. I chased it for a while but it was getting dark so I lost it amongst the eel grass. We've been diving on two mornings, waking up naturally about 6am, and heading off to the boat about 6.45. The first dive of each day is on the north side of the island, weather permitting as it's more exposed and deeper, on the reef's drop off. The diving here easily equals if not beats the memories of the best diving I have from Belize in 1995. The coral is wonderful, big, colourful with lots and lots of fish. On one site, a mound of coral in the middle of a deep bit, detached from the rest of the reef so it's a magnet for pelagics, marine life that lives in the open water rather than on the coral or sea bed. As soon as we'd entered the water we saw a turtle gliding up the side of the sloping coral, slowly all the way to the surface for air, magic. Dave spotted a wee baby turtle later on munching away on the coral. The current was getting quite strong at this point but we managed to stay with him for a while. Up on the top of the mound of reef we hung aroung for a while finding lobster and huge crabs hidden in crevices, big shoals of jacks and loads of gorgeous parrot fish and trigger fish and a barracuda. We've been early to bed and early to rise so not much to report on the Utilan night scene, definitely not as thumping as Roatan though. Today, 7th, has been another great day. We booked a place with the Whale shark research organisation here to go out on their boat searching for whale sharks. We needed to maximise our chances of seeing one as hadn't while out diving, although just before our very first dive we found a 'boil' where the bait fish and snappers are leaping out of the sea and birds are picking off the stunned fish. Quite a commotion it was and we were told to get our mask, snorkel and fins on and get ready to go in. I was SO excited, my heart was racing like mad, but we had to wait for the snorkellers on another dive boat to get out first. This is because the research unit are trying to put into practice a method used in Australia to try not to stress the whale sharks out. It meant that as they were getting out the whale shark dived so we didn't get to see it. Luckily the dives that day were wonderful so we got over the dissapointment. So off we went this morning, on an extremely hot day, with no shade on the boat, wizzing around the island for 4 hours and no sighting. We attended a very informative whale shark presentation last night given by Darcy who manages the project, and he reminded us of key features, ways to identify males and females, how close we should get to not upset the shark and maximise our encounter time. In our last hour Willy our captain, spotted a boil. Unfortunately another boat had seen it first so we had to wait our turn. But then another was spotted to we headed for it and kitted up to go in. Dave slid in right over the top of the shark and was in temporary shock at the sight of the huge fish. The sudden realisation that he was staring down into more than 2000 feet of ocean didn't help. I saw it but it had already started to dive and looked quite small, well still the biggest fish I've ever see, but not as big as I expected. We could see that it's dorsal fin was all mangled, likely to have been caused by an overzealous boat, that's why these one at a time guidelines are so important. So we climbed back into the boat, Dave all excited and me a little dissapointed, to learn that the boat we'd waited for by another shark had whizzed over to us and dropped all it's snorkellers in with us and that had scared the shark off. Their skipper was from a Utila dive operation too. Darcy's going to have a word later. It's easy to imagine lots of boats doing the same in the heat of the excitement. We waited to see another boil to realise the shark was back, so in we went and this time it was heading straight for me! We'd heard that if you're right in front of it it can't see you as the eyes are on the side of the head so I was trying to swim round to the side, while trying to stay 3 metres away. It was an incredible sight and this time looked it's enormous 10 metres. I could see all the white spotty markings really clearly and the remora fish swimming along attached to it, keeping it clean. Apart form the German with his camera cutting me right up and nearly getting a fin in the face as he tried to get his photo, it was great! The shark dived again and disappeared remarkably quickly as it's markings camouflaged it really well against the deep blue water. We are now tired and sun kissed but happy with our experience. We have also exhausted our diving budget for Utila so tomorrow may be spent walking along to the beach and snorkelling, reading in hammocks, drinking earl grey in a cool cafe that is always closed when we get back from diving! And on Sunday we catch the Utila Princess back to La Ceiba and head up to Puerto Cortes to catch a boat to Belize, our eleventh and final country.