Utila

Getting There

We got the Utila Dream Ferry for 575L or 25USD. It leaves twice a day at 9am and 4:40pm. To get to the ferry dock you'll need a taxi, it's about a 15 minute taxi ride and 45 minutes on the ferry.

Top Tips

• Get to the dock about 20 minutes before the boat leaves to avoid stress!
• You can stay for cheap at many of the diving places, so if you plan on diving it's the way to go. You'll need to book directly through the dive shop.

Things to do

• Diving - Utila is a diving hot spot, the reef is right by the island and it's cheap. That said, it's not a whole lot cheaper than everywhere else, and the diving itself was by no means the best I've done.
• Whale Sharks - Again, we weren't lucky enough to see them but there are whale shark sightings frequently around the island.
• Chepes & Bando Beach - There's a public and private (70L) beach to choose from at either end of the main town.
• Baleadas - Hondurian food of cheese and beans inside a large tortilla, delicious and cheap!
• Drink - Utila has plenty of bars to keep you going and doing a diving course often introduces you to a group of like minded people who are likely to want to drink too - though maybe avoid mixing drinking and diving if you can....

Where we Stayed

We stayed and did our diving with Parrot diving. The best thing about diving on Utila is you get your accommodation for free on the days that you dive. The other days are extremely cheap.

That said, Parrot Diving's accommodation was nothing short of terrible. It was a dirty room that stayed at about 40 degrees at all times. The place was loud and the beds were really, really uncomfortable. The diving at Parrots was OK, though some of the staff didn't seem to be having a great day..

If we were to go again we'd try Captain Morgans or Underwater Vision, just from other peoples recommendations.

Food and Drink

• Mango Inn Bar & Grill - Great pizza, though a little expensive
• RJs - Most popular place on the island, and for good reason. Take cash, get some grilled fish.
• Munchies - The breakfast was odd, but the smoothies were incredible.
• Rehab - Great bar on the beach, perfect place to chill after a day of diving.

Journal

Day 1

The journey over to Utila from La Ceiba is another infamous trip due to the unfavourable water conditions. It was nothing compared to the trip from Belize as the boat is a more stable catamaran, about ten times the size, and it was only a third of the time. That said, it was still pretty rocky! The boat was also pretty busy as it was the Utila Carnival on that week with the main parade happening that day. People were coming from all over the country for it. We were worried the ferry was going to be fully booked but it seemed to be big enough to hold everyone comfortably.

When we got to the Utila the streets were decorated with bunting and it looked like they were gearing up for a big party. Our Diving Hostel was about a hundred metres up the road from the dock so we went and checked in straight away. The staff member we met first was Jose who was really friendly and laid back, he gave us a tour and then showed us to our rooms which were across the street and above a few shops.

Utila was decorated ready for the Carnival

We'd asked for a private room but they seemed to only have a room with three single beds in. It seemed clean at a glance but we didn't really have much choice. The rooms were crazily hot, at first we thought it was just because it was a hot day, we later found out it was just how the rooms were. They were like a sauna, and were at least a few degrees hotter than outside and the corridor at all times. Though it did have a very nice view from the communal balcony.

We were very hungry by this point so we went straight to a cafe we'd seen on the way from the dock called Munchies. It was on the expensive side but the breakfast looked like it would be good so we went for it. We both got the English breakfast as it came with bacon and sausages, something we hadn't had much of recently. The breakfast we got certainly wasn't the English breakfast I was used to, and strangely all the ingredients arranged very neatly with no ingredient touching another. That actual food was good, though perhaps it was over priced.

Once we'd satisfied our hunger we went an finished our registration at the dive centre and signed up for the Monday fun dive. We were talked through what we'd be doing and it we could immediately see the difference between where we'd dived before in Mexico and Belize to here. You're expected to do a lot more of the setup for you equipment including all the washing at the end. It was a lot more like when I'd done my diving certification in Koh Tao, Thailand, but for Kate it was all new.

When that was all done we walked down the island to the public beach. There are two main beaches on the South side of the island, one public and the other private (but you can pay 70L to enter it). We set up at the beach and had a little swim. The beach was a little dirty and you could tell that a lot of the locals didn't seem against littering. At one point I saw a woman pick up a plastic bag and swing it as far as she could in to the sea. Later on I was walking in the sea and stepped on something, on closer inspection it was broken beer bottle. Luckily I hadn't cut myself, I removed the bottle and put it in to the overflowing bin to save someone else a worse fate.

We stayed at the beach for a while before we decided to explore a bit more, we had a look into "The Venue" which is another hostel type place, they offer free kayaks and lots of activities which sounded really good. After that we went and grabbed a drink from Rehab - which is one of the beach bars - and used their wifi.

Kate being very committed to her Instagram photos

At the point it was about three in the afternoon and we decided to head back to shower and get ourselves ready for the Carnival which had supposed already started. The Carnival makes it's way from the private beach to the public beach and is supposed to be from around two-ish and lasts a few hours, with all the floats making their way slowly along the island.

View of Chepes beach from Rehab bar

We walked back to our accommodation and saw the first float coming down the road just in front of us. We grabbed a bottle of rum, some sprite and some limes to drink for the Carnival and went up to our floor which had a balcony and therefore great views of the Carnival. Quite a few people were already up there so we showered quickly and got changed before heading to join everyone on the balcony.

The Carnival was good fun and everyone else on the balcony was in great spirits (maybe because of the rum!). A lot of the dive shops had their own floats though most of the floats were just a load of drunk people on a pick-up. Though some had been done up a little to look like whales are other aquatic animals. After all the floats had passed everyone followed them to have a celebration at the public beach. We followed down too and had a few more drinks there before our tummies started grumbling. We hadn't really had any dinner so we went in search of food. We found a little place selling something called Baleadas. It's a typical Honduran fast food which is basically beans and cheese in a large folded tortilla. They were super cheap at about 30L each which is about 2 AUD so we ended up ordering quite a few.

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When we returned to the beach we found most people had moved in to the bars and clubs and it was this point we'd decided we had more than enough rum and it was time for bed. We went back to our accommodation and sweated ourselves to sleep.

Day 2

We didn't sleep particularly well that night as the room was so astronomically hot. They had to oscillating fans which were great for the brief period they rested on you however the quickly moved round and fanned the rest of the unoccupied room. Kate had found reviews of a place called the Mango Inn that apparently did another good breakfast, it was about a fifteen minute walk along some very pretty streets.

The food was again, OK, and a little expensive. From the look of the restaurant it would do a good pizza though so we made a mental note. While eating we saw jealously that the Mango Inn had a very nice pool, we were considering going to the private beach for the day but decided to ask if we could use the pool and how much it would be. We were told that because we'd eaten that we were more than welcome to use to pool! Great news! We rushed back to our room to grab our things and were shortly setting up by the side of the very inviting pool. We stayed there for a good few hours getting our full moneys worth. It wasn't too busy but every now and then a couple of people would take a dip.



We left around 3ish and headed back to our accommodation (I'm calling it accommodation because it wasn't a hostel, or a hotel it was literally just a room in a hallway!)  We were pretty pecking so we stopped off at Munchies and grabbed a very, very nice smoothie before deciding to walk up towards the private beach along the way we also grabbed another couple of baleadas to keep us going.

Grabbing a Baleadas - the food of Honduras

A very nice smoothie from Munchies

It's about a forty minute walk up to the area where the private beach is located, however it's a little secluded and you can't see it from the main road. We decided that as it was late it might not be worth paying to enter and decided to head back along the main street and see about booking our transport for getting from Honduras to Nicaragua. We were pretty behind schedule and we'd realised that staying one night anywhere is just adding time getting on and off buses and finding places to stay. That time really does all add up. We booked through the supermarket that looked like the most legitimate place, however they just contacted the same agent as everyone else called "Ronees". It was 65USD per person for the journey to Leon, Nicaragua. It would be about 16 hours. We didn't relish the thought so we didn't discuss it much further!

For dinner we headed to RJ's; It's a grilled fish place that is one of the most popular on the island. We had a little trouble as we hadn't realised it was cash only, though once we got some cash out we managed to order and take our seats. The place is pretty chaotic and finding a seat was difficult. We ended up sharing a table with another group and waiting for our grilled barracuda. It took a while to be served, but when it did arrive it was a large plate with lots of sides and a very, very tasty fish indeed. It was pretty late by this point so we rushed back to our sauna room to get a nights sleep before the dive early the next morning. I'd done some fiddling with the ceiling fan earlier in the day and and taken apart the oscillating mechanism to stop it turning. I'd then strung some of our washing line twine to the fan and directed the fan by anchoring the string to the bed. The result was a fan that was entirely positioned on to us for the night. Bliss. (apart from the very uncomfortable beds!)

Day 3

For the dives at Parrots you need to be up and ready to set up at 7am, so it was another very early start. We had breakfast at the little cafe that is part of Parrots which is pretty cheap for a grilled cheese sandwich, we had a coffee to share. Then, we headed to the diving area to get setup with all our things.

Getting breakfast before our dive at Parrots Diving Centre

We got given our BCDs, fins, wetsuits etc, and had to organise them in a nice pack. To me it seemed a bit over the top, but it's nice to have structure especially when there are so many divers. We had to setup our own equipment which I hadn't done in years and Kate hadn't done at all by herself. The divemasters were almost insultingly incredulous about this, however we assured them that we'd been doing far more complicated dives and that previously our dive instructors had done the equipment for us. For me I'm happy to do it both ways, but the equipment part is super boring, so I'd much rather get my money's worth and get someone more experienced to do it! We always smell the air, check our regulators etc, and stay as safe as possible. That said, if I was running my own dive shop I would certainly make sure everyone did their own setup, it makes for a better diver in the long run and it adds another safety element.

Eventually we were all setup and on the boat ready to go. We thought we would be on the boat for a while as the most recent dives we'd been doing it was at least forty minutes to the first dive spot, at the blue hole it was two hours! In Utila however the reef is right by the island, so it was about five minutes before we were getting ready to jump in. Because the boat was so small, and the sea so rough where we stopped we had to put our equipment on while in the water, this was another thing Kate and I hadn't done before so we were a little apprehensive! We were told to hold on to a buoy and put on our BCD and tank etc, this was one of those situations where we couldn't put on our things without letting go of the buoy, which we weren't allowed to do. Mostly the crew just shouted at us to hold on to the buoy which we thought was strange as the other ten people on the boat weren't holding on to the buoy, and with good reason. You can't put your equipment on and then do a buddy check while holding on the buoy and getting hit in the face by waves. Kate didn't even have a snorkel which would have only made things harder.

After a while we were all ready and we descended to where the water was a lot calmer. The dive on the whole was good, there was a good drop off and we saw a turtle though that was about it, we'd heard that Utila was such a diving haven that we assumed that we'd see something completely different, however it was pretty much the same as Mexico and Belize so it didn't really make up for the conditions and the attitude of the staff which we weren't particularly impressed with. The only really interesting thing about the dive site was that apparently there had been a plane crash (luckily with no one injured) the previous day where a plane hadn't made it to the island and had to make an emergency landing. The plane had flown very close to the dive boat and almost crashed into it, the driver of the boat was saying he had been getting ready to jump in to the water when it happened. The divers came up to find a very shaken captain and a plane above them. The second dive sight was also good though some of it was so shallow I would have probably enjoyed snorkelling more.

We arrived back from the dives by 11am, which is definitely one of the reasons Utila is great to dive at, it definitely cuts the diving commute. Once we had washed all our things and tied everything up as per the diving shops standards we were able to go and check-in at the Whale Shark Research Centre. Utila is another place that is great for seeing whale sharks, after we didn't see them at Isla Holbox in Mexico we were hoping for some more luck in Utila. We asked if they had any trips planned on the day, unfortunately they only go out a couple of times a month so they told us to try the supermarket down the road where we had booked our shuttle to Nicaragua. We went and asked there and were disappointed to find they weren't going out that day due to high winds. Maybe next time.

Dragging our feet a little we headed back up to the public beach and then to Rehab bar for a drink. We grabbed some of the chicken wings to keep us going which we very nice and somehow by this time the sun was going down.

For dinner we made it back to Mango Inn for a pizza which were indeed very nice. We shared a medium and the special to keep the cost down and then as we felt so good about keeping the cost down we ordered a sundae to share too. It was still cheaper than one of the other pizzas that weren't on special so we were very pleased with ourselves. We had to be up early to head to Leon, Nicaragua the next day so it was an early night!

Great pizza at Mango Inn

Day 4

We got up early to shower and pack, before heading down for breakfast at the cafe next to Parrots. I didn't want to have another situation where we were rushing for tickets so we headed to the ticket office 20 minutes before to get the tickets and put our luggage on to board. Unlike the way over the ticket office closes with about 10 minutes to spare so make sure you get there early. There were several people getting to the door as it was closing who had to plead with the security guard, luckily the guard was easily swayed and with a smile let them through. Soon we were on the boat in the air-conditioned section. After forty minutes we were rather cold and glad to be off the boat, which was a bit rocky again. Now to head to Nicaragua!