After a very early start, hot buses and screaming children I eventually arrived in paradise. Getting to the dive shop was like coming home again. Ecomarine Dive shop is like one big family, the instructors, Tara and Daddy-o (the owners) and their kids, and the guests. As I started off my week with a nice swim and a BBQ. I could tell I was in for a great week.
My course was starting on the Monday so the next day I headed out on the dive boat with the divers and did some snorkeling around the North side of the island. It was so good to get back into the crystal clear water and swim, watching all the sea life and from then on I was even more psyched to get into the water as a scuba diver! After the two dives we head to the Cays, a beautiful group of small islands with white sand beaches and good food. After stopping for food, a swim, some rest for seasick members of the group and of course some more time to chill. We made our back to the dive shop for some more chilling and music.
The next day I was up early and ready to do my Confined water part of the dive course. As I had done all my theory back in December I had time to relax and admire the beauty of the place before we did our equipment setup and got into the water. For those who are not familiar with scuba diving I'll give you a quick run down of the equipment. The most basic are your fins, mask and snorkel, after that you have your weight belt and weights, (the amount of weights you have completely depends on you and how heavy you are and sometimes it can take a while for you to get them sorted so you're comfortable in the water) after this you have you're BCD with which you control your buoyancy under and on the surface of the water, your BCD has your air tank attached to it and attached to your tank is your regulator, which has your regulator, your alternate regulator, a low pressure inflator hose which attaches to your BCD to inflate it, and your gauge consul, to check your air pressure. Once you have all this set up, you check it all works, going through all the parts, checking the regulators, air flow, pressure and smell, BCD inflation/deflation and the you gear up. Get into the water and do your buddy checks. Now you're ready to dive.
At first you start in water that you can stand up in and see how you are breathing underwater, your instructor watches you, making sure you don't hold your breath. The most important rule of scuba diving is not to hold your breath. After that you go through a few exercises, taking out your regulator and finding it again, clearing your mask of water, using your buddy's alternate air source, removing your goggles and swimming without them, putting them back on again, and various buoyancy exercises. Once you've done all this you're ready to head out into the Open Water. This was the bit I was most excited about.
And it was awesome. First dive you go down to 12m, and just swim around, slowly and just admiring the beauty of being in this underwater environment. After the next dive you go through all your skills you practised in confined water but this time much deeper. My buoyancy finally felt right and i was able to swim and move in the ways I wanted to. It was so much better than I had expected.
With the course you get two fun dives and we went out the next day to two great dive sites, Black Hill and Airport Caves. First stop was Black Hill, a massive underwater hill covered in coral and all sorts of sea life. We swam round it, there was a pretty strong current and the visibility wasn't perfect but that didn't take away from the fact I was 18m under the ocean swimming with the fishes. The next dive was even better. Airport caves is some of the instructors favourite dive site, It has some impressive caves and a wall along the reef that you can follow, the visibility was amazing, and we saw an eagle ray, giant lobsters, a family of squid, a MASSIVE moray eel and a porcupine fish. This was what I came to see. It was at this moment I truly fell in love with diving. So much so I'm going back to do my advanced course in June. And who knows in the future I might become a full time Dive Instructor in the Caribbean.
We had some pretty good times outside of the diving. One beautiful day we got the boat Captain to take us out to the Cays for some swimming, snorkeling and a bit of party. That day turned out to be one of the best days of the trip. It's such a beautiful place and I can easily see how people go there for a few weeks and are still there 6 months later, or even living there indefinitely.
I also got to swim with dolphins. None of that paying a silly amount of money to hug a dolphin held in a captivity in a swimming pool. But actually swimming with a wild, free pod of dolphins. And that was fantastic. They're much bigger than you imagine, and so graceful. Their clicks and sounds fill your ears under the water and you struggle to keep up with them. If they wanted to they would just disappear into the depths but they stay and play with you. They're curious and gentle. And wow. It was incredible.
Utila take 2 was a week I'll never forget. I fell in love with the island, with it's beauty, atmosphere and the people. It's a place I will most certainly be returning to in the near future and possibly many more times throughout my life.
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Map of Utila and the Dive sites.          |
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