Partners..

For my second last blog in Honduras I thought I would say something about the person who I've lived and worked with for my (almost) 12 months here.

I met Mali, my Project Trust partner, for the first time in October 2011 for the selection week of project trust, we spoke about 4 times. We met again in July 2012, one week before we flew out to Honduras. I think we spoke 4 more times. My first impression of her was that she was outgoing and well, loud. I had a few reservations, as anyone would, about going to a foreign country and living with someone, who you have spoken  to a grand total of 8 times and who you barely know, for 12 months. So we met a Heathrow Airport on the 5th of August ready to fly out into the unknown. Again we didn't really talk that much. We spent a lot of the time talking to the other volunteers and just chattering excitedly to anyone that would listen about out excitement. It really was exciting.

As we arrived at our project in Trinidad, Santa Barbara and moved into our carboard box sized home, unpacked our things and surveyed our new home, I think we both realised that things were gonna be just fine. We seemed to click, had similar interests, humour, music taste (there are a few differences, artists that it's best not to mention/play..), we both LOVED food, and helped each other get through the first tough weeks without bacon. After a few days all my reservations had gone. And my first impressions, well, yes Mali is outgoing, but not loud. She's happy. And fun. And excitable. And hilarious.

Of all my friends and family, she's the person that knows me best, she knows when I'm sad (even if I'm trying to hide it) and she knows how to cheer me up. She knows when to leave me alone, and when I'm lonely. She's helped me through this year, through the go on ups and the downs. She kept me going when I wanted to give up and made me laugh when I've wanted to cry.

We've had our moments, you can't live with someone in such an intense way without disagreeing on some things. She hates it when I leave the bathroom floor wet after a shower, I hate it when she squeezes the toothpaste from the middle. But we've managed to work through it. As cheesy as it sounds, I think it's made our relationship stronger.

We've jumped, laughed, cried, skipped, ran and crawled our way through this year in Honduras. We've climbed volcanoes together, jumped off bridges, gone to the bottom of the ocean and dressed up as donkeys. And we made it out alive.

So, Mali, this is for you. And thanks for an awesome year.

An armed guard to the fair, at least we won't be pickpocketed....

It's been a busy month a Miqueas, I was back from my holiday and straight into the swing of things. This time although it was a little different. We had two volunteer groups visiting for two weeks. One from Atlanta, Georgia and the other from NYC. They were here to help out with various small projects that had been organised for them and to spend some time with the kids. The place was crazy. With twenty 16-24 year olds from New York and 6 teenage girls from Atlanta to keep an eye on, it was a busy time.

We spent the most time with the NYC kids (I probably shouldn't say kids cause most of them were a few years older than me and significantly taller.. What do they put in the water over there?!) hanging out, doing activities with the kids, late night swimming in their hotel pool, talking in accents, arguing -  the stupidity of them taking the letter 'u' out of words, that cookies are actually biscuits, that pants are actually the things that go under your trousers, that 'garbage' is in fact 'rubbish', that 'alu-min-um' is actually 'al-u-min-ium' and that rugby is definitely better than american football (a valid point argued by mali, 'Why is it football when they use their hands...?!'), and we spent time with them in Church, watching as they sang, danced and prayed with endless energy.

We also visited a state orphanage.  Now that was an experience. There were maybe 80 children there. All from the ages of 1 month to 12 years. All abandoned, orphaned or taken away from their parents. The orphanage is over populated and  understaffed. And although the nannies that work there do their best, they simply cannot look after the all children and do not have the healthcare support to keep these kids healthy. They children have open sores all over their bodies, head lice are endemic and some have other, more serious health problems that cannot be properly treated. Most of their meals are just rice and so a lot of the children have a bloated look about them at all times.

The orphanage is very sparse, with little furnishings and furniture. But over the past few years a group called Orphan Helpers has started to work in Honduras. Helping to improve life and the facilities in the state orphanages here. And according to Melody (our host here and one of the directors of Miqueas 6.8) they have been able to improve standards greatly, the kids have bed covers, the walls are painted, they get a few meals of variation, the options for healthcare have improved. This being the case, I would hate to see the orphanage the way it was before Orphan Helpers stepped in. They seem to really be working hard to improve the conditions of the orphans there and also to help the overworked nannies. It was an eye opener. And one I won't forget.

I also went to the fair. Under armed guard.. It's not often you can say that you were escorted under armed guard to Burger King, and then onwards to the fair. Well, it happened. The National Transport police have a connection with Miqueas and they like to do nice things with the kids from time to time. So this time, it was a trip to the annual San Pedro Sula fair. The bus arrived in the morning with a few police officers carrying deadly looking BIG guns and a few other pretty deadly small guns. After loading all the kids on the bus (every child from Miqueas minus the 15 toddlers) made a large group to keep an eye on. But with 6 adults and so far 2 armed police officers, I was sure we'd be fine. No one was gonna mess with us. We arrived at Burger King, and the kids went stright for the play area. The man (BIG boss police guy) who had organised this had been called into a meeting and unfortunately couldn't come, and he was the one bringing the food, so hence the reason we ended up at Burger King. After clogging up my arteries with some sort of burger king burger with fries and the biggest cup of soda I've ever seen, we left this wonderful fast food establishment and by this time I was blue from the air con inside and needed some serious time warming up outside (I'm going to miss being able to go outside to warm up...). We headed off, to the fair! With all our groups sorted out, and everyone knowing who's hand to hold at all times, we were ready to hit the fair. With one extra police officer added to our group, no one was ever, ever gonna approach us, let alone try to pickpocket us. And we wouldn't be losing any children. As the number of kids in my group was odd, I had paired up with one of the girls, and she wanted me to come on every ride with her. We went on ferris wheels,, spinny round things spinny round up and down things, spinny round side to side things and finally a spinny round up and down AND side to side thing. I was sufficiently dizzy by the end of the day, but I think I enjoyed it just as much as the kids. And they had a blast. We ate candyfloss, too much candyfloss. We ate milk cake and drank soda. Too much milk cake and soda. At the end of the day we were all feeling very full, a little bit sick , knackered and content. A brilliant family day out. With armed police guards.

Back Again...

Returning to Utila is almost  like going home (but the food isn't as good...). It's a place that is close to my heart. It keeps on drawing you back, again and again, with it's charm culture, the friendliness of the people and their willingness to show your their island, the endless opportunities for excellent diving, the rhythm of the constant reggae music, the impromptu parties, the beauty of the scenery around you, the way people live their lives on this island - relaxed, uncomplicated, chilled and simple. Everything combines together in just the right way to make it one of those places that you find very, very hard to leave. And that's what happens. People come here for a holiday and are still living here 15 years later, with a husband/wife, a family, a business. That's the story of most of the 'tourists' on Utila. Even the people who do leave, they come back, 1, 2 or 5 years after. They come back.

As did I, not 1, 2 or 3 years later, but a month after I had last visited the island. I was back to continue scuba diving, and to do my advanced diving course. Which is the next step for most divers who enjoy their Open Water experience. So there I was, back in Utila, with a group of volunteers from Project Trust and a few people we met along the way. Back at Ecomarine, the dive shop where my love affair with diving started, I was ready.

The advanced diver course consists of 5 dives, and for the most part you choose which ones you want to do. They suggest you do the deep dive, Peak Performance Buoyancy and a navigation dive. The other two are really your choice. So I chose a night dive and a drift dive. My first was the deep dive, this is where you go down to 30m or 100ft and at this depth you can sometimes start to feel the effects of Nitrogen narcosis, which makes you go a bit crazy and can't think straight. People describe it as a feeling of being drunk, but seeing as I've never experienced it, I couldn't tell you. Heading out on the boat I was excited, we were doing our deep dive on a wreck called the Halibourton, at 100ft long it was an impressive sight looming out of the depths as we descended. Settling on the bottom for some exercises to check if the depth and potential narcosis was having any effect on us, I was feeling good and very relaxed. After doing some timed counting and maths exercises we were off to explore the wreck. The Halibourton was purposely sunk at exactly 30m in May 1998, so it now has a large ecosystem on and around it. Circling around and through the wreck was cool, and while the visibility wasn't great and we didn't see any jaw dropping sealife, I was still back diving, and enjoying looking at all the intricacies of the coral and the organisms that come with it.

My Peak performance buoyancy and navigation dives went smoothly. With PPB you have to do sommersaults through hoops, knock over weights with your regulator and have neutral buoyancy while floating in various bizarre positions. The navigation was easy, you were given a compass and a bearing and you had to swim in various shapes for various lengths of time while always returning to the same point. Just pay attention to your compass, depth gauge and surroundings and things will go grand!

My best dive for sure was the night dive, this dive I got to do at night (obviously) and on a wreck. The same wreck that we did the deep dive on. I thought that the wreck would be eerie. And it appeared so at first, again looming out of the gloom in the light of my torch. But once you got closer, the colours appeared. They were much more vibrant than during the day and so much more beautiful. I was mesmerised by the colours. The wreck was covered in hundreds of arrow crabs, with their spindly legs and short bodies, crawling everywhere and flinching from the light of the torch. As we started our ascent, the colours disappeared, and we covered the lights of the torches, moving my hands in the water I discovered the bio luminesence, the organisms that glow a green at night when you move your hands through the water. I was mesmerised by this too, and as I was ascending the light of the moon on the dark sea made a beautiful light and a great ending to an awesome dive.

During my underwater time on Utila, I saw a turtle (!!!!!!), an eagle ray, a batfish, a remora tried to attach itself to me, thinking I was a fish and I got chased by an 8ft Green Moray eel. And of course, I completed my advanced diver course!

During my time on dry land on Utila, I chilled, slept, laughed, cried with laughter,  partied on a boat (although I'm not sure that counts as dry land...), went to a reggae concert, climbed a water tower to see the sunset, got eaten alive by sand flies and had a blast!

My last week in Utila until some time in the far future. And my last week of holidays for this year. And I'm very glad I spent it there. With under a month left here, I'm making the most of what's left of my time volunteering here at Miqueas, and I should hopefully have a blog up about my goings on here early next week, but for now! ENJOY!

Photos of the Moray Eel, Eagle Ray and Arrow Crab all courtesy of Shaun Doyle (Dive Instructor and photographer at Ecomarine Dive Shop).

Green Moray

Arrow Crab

Eagle Ray

Getting wee'd on is all part of the day...

It's crazy to think that I'm nearing my tenth month here in Honduras and that I will be home in 2 months, I'm also coming up to my fith week here at the new project Miqueas, but it feels like it's been so much longer. It's been a great 5 weeks, I will even say that it's been the best five weeks of my year so far. At first I thought it would take a while to get settled into things here, with the project being so different to what I had been doing before, and also that I really didn't have that much experience working in a social care enviroment other than babysitting a few nights for parents friends, and that was for 2 or 3 children. Here I am responsible for up to 15 children, aged 1 1/2 to 4 at a time with the help of two other nannies (or tias as they are called here), that, for anyone who couldn't quite manage the math, is 5 children each. Which is challenging and demanding. The kids want your attention at all times, and you have to be cleaning up pee (we're going through a potty training stage at the moment), watching they don't eat objects like crayons or bugs, making sure they eat their food and not throw it across the room or to the monster under the table, keep them from making a bid for freedom through an open door/window, changing nappies, washing hands, keeping an eye on the mischevious few who like to cause all sorts of trouble and, of course, keeping these wonderful children entertained and happy. Because they are, they are all wonderful children. And I know that might sound a bit soppy, but I don't care. They are actually some if the nicest, funniest and friendly children I've ever met. And there's a lot of them. There are so many little characters among them, from Jessler, who likes to sit on your knee and fart, whisper 'gassssss' and shoot this cheeky little grin, to Juan Jose who always greats me with an HOLA, and then at night when I put him to bed he whispers in my ear, 'hasta manana!', to Jefferson, the most mischevious of all, who when caught doing something wrong he drops everything, puts his hand behind his back and looks at you like the most guilty person in the world trying to act innocent and then there's Carmencita, with her anglelic looks and curly hair, who loves to sing 'Incy wincy spider' about 100 times everyday, she's so cute, you don't even mind singing one song with her for a whole afternoon.

So two weeks ago was a week of firsts, I attended my first Baby Shower, my first Bridal Shower and my first Honduran wedding. All here at Miqueas 6.8. So the first Baby Shower was for on of the tias, Tia Ruby, who was leaving to have her second child, a wee baby boy. We had a chinese for lunch, drank lots of fresca (coke), watched as she recieved her gifts and wished her well, and she was off. Here in Honduras woman have a month before the birth and then 40 days after the birth. All unpaid maternity leave. It's not a lot, and so lots of women have no choice but to return to work very, very soon after they have had their child. A lot of them will barely take the 40 days because they simply cannot afford it.

The second first was the bridal shower. Another of the Tias, Tia Bertha, was getting married that weekend, so we threw a surprise bridal shower, with dinner (fried chicken, fries and rice!), games (make a wedding dress out of toilet roll) and goodbyes. Bertha who was the mission's first nanny, was leaving altogether. Her husband-to-be lives about 6 hours from La Colorada and that's just way too much of a commute! After much hilarity with the toilet roll dresses, there was a more sombre moment as the goodbyes were said, all of them were very touching, and you could see that Bertha was a tia that was well respected and going to be greatly missed. One of the girls, Madison, said a very sweet goodbye to her, she started crying and very soon after the whole room was too!

The third, and final, first was the Honduran Wedding. The wedding was taking place at the Miqueas Misson as Tia Bertha wanted all the children to be able to attend, imagine trying to take 38, 2-14 year olds to a wedding, and keep them surpervised and (semi) out of trouble, and try to enjoy the wedding. IMPOSSIBLE. So Bertha decided to have it here, in the big upstairs hall. I had the job of organising outfits for all the children and so I spent the week before, sweating it out in the upstairs bodega, rummaging through all the boxes of donated clothes to find outfits for the 38 children. The girls were relatively simple, early into the rummage I found a box full of party style dresses of various colours, shapes and sizes. All I needed to do was find enough of the various sizes and make sure they fitted. After that it was onto the boys, I needed shirts, trousers for all, and then ties and waistcoats for others, finding all this stuff, and then sorting them into wearable/matching outfits was a challenge. I spent a good few hours trying to figure all this out. For the younger kids it didn't really matter, but the older ones have suddenly become fashion concious, and wanted to look just right.. So as the time for getting ready approached, I had all the outfits on hangers in the various rooms. Trying to remember which was for which child was the biggest challenge, having 38 outfits and 38 children of all different sizes, trying to remember exactly which was for what child took a lot of thinking. The girls went smoothly, and they headed off to get their hair done by some other volunteers, and then came the boys. After theit showers they were sent to me. underwear had to be found, socks put on and then finally thier clothes. 'I want this one, I want that shirt, but these pants.. I don't like this colour.' was heard a lot. After many changing, and mixing and matching the boys were ready to go. Almost. They still had to get the lathings of hair gell and the spray of aftershave. Then they were really ready. This gave me approximiately 5 minutes to get a shower, and change out of my sweaty, minging leggings in time for the wedding. A rapid shower and a qucik change and I too was ready to roll.

As for the wedding, I didn't really see too much of it. We were sitting at the back with the children, and as it was one of the Tias getting married all the other Tias wanted to see what was going on. Which, after all, is fair enough. I didn't mind letting them watch their friend and collegue get married while I was clambered upon and chasing misbehaving children. The bride did look beautiful in her, extremely frilly, white dress, the hall was very nicely done up in a red and cream design and all the guests looked lovely.

It was a busy introduction to a Honduran wedding, but a nice one.

So now, we are two nannies down. I have become a replacement for one of them in the afternoons, which means that from 2pm until 7pm I am with the toddlers. Feeding, playing, changing, telling them off, bathing and putting them to bed. It's hard work. 15 toddlers and three nannies, and boy do these kids wear you out. But I love it. They never fail to make me laugh at least once every 5 minutes, they endless changing (kids just seem to attract dirt and food to their clothes) becomes a game, dinner becomes a lesson in not to through food at people, and bedtime is a time for hugs, kisses and 'hasta mananas'. I have been working as the replacement nanny for about 2 weeks now, and I've been peed on a least 6 times. It happens when you least expect it. And it's usually just after you've asked them if the need to go 'pee pee'. There's a vigorous shake of the head, and then, you feel a warm, wet patch on whichever part of your body the are sitting on, be it your knee, leg, hip.. And you know, you're going to have to change yourself and the child. There are a few repeat offenders here, but unfortunately they seem to be the two cutest children in the world. And so you can't help but to pick them up, and eventually get wee'd on. I suppose it comes with the territory. And hopefully they will be perfectly potty trained, by the time I leave.....

I have yet to be poo'd on, although I know it's only a matter of time. I had a close shave the other day, I lifted up the youngest of the children, a boy called Olvin, put my hand on his nappy and was about to place him on my hip, when 'splatttt' poo just flew out EVERYWHERE from the sides of his nappy. All over the floor, all over his shorts, but thankfully it managed to miss me comepletly. Lucky escape. Very lucky.

Juan Jose, Jessler and Carmencita

Bridal Shower!

Bridal Shower!

Marvin and Jessler

Wilma

Alejandro

Anderson

Tia Bertha and Juan Miqueas

Miqueas 6.8

Miqueas 6.8 is a childrens home located in the department of Yoro in Honduras, and this will be my home and volunteer work for the next three months. And after 4 days, I couldn't be more settled and happy. I am no longer teaching, I am to put it simply, playing with children. But there's a difference, a majority of these children have grown up in enviroments where they have  been seriously negelcted, with many of their parents having drug and alcohol addictions or even just through simple, but devastaing, poverty. And so, 'playing' with these children is actually a way of teaching them basic and more complex social skills that they have not been able to learn in the enviroment  that they grew up in.

The home opened up about 3 years ago and now has 38 children from 1 to 14 years old. Miqueas has stopped taking in children now and the plan is to have these children grow up as part of this BIG family until they are ready to leave and start their own lives after finishing school. The children of school age go to a mixture of private spanish schools and Bilingual schools and the toddlers stay at home with local nannies and volunteers. There is a variety of activities that go on here, and me and Mali's job is to organise and keep the kids occupied while developing their learning.

A normal day here for me would be to get up around 8 and work with two of the older children with special needs for about two and a half hours, we play a variety of memory games, coordination games and drawing. Then it's time for the little toddlers, I help Mali, who has been working with them all morning, until it's time for  the 'pequenos' lunch. We eat lunch with them and then head to the house for a siesta, and to do any planning for the next day. Around 2 I head to the toddlers, they've just woken up from their nap and are ready to play, I spend about an hour and half playing, singing and just having fun with them. After that I go and work with a 2 year old boy called Pedro,who is blind and still learning to walk. I spend a bit of time, doing some physio exercises with him, leg exercises and giving him support as he walks around. We also work together with developing his touch senses by making a book filled with different materials and also tubs filled with rice, pasta and dried foods. It's good fun and very interesting to see his reactions, sometimes he doesn't like to touch at all and others he can't stop touching the object.

It's completely different work here than at New Sunrise. I am no longer a teacher and while I enjoyed my time teaching (well most of it!) I am happy to have a change and this work is so rewarding and just good fun! There are so many little characters here and to work with them and help them learn, not just academicly, but in everyday life is awesome.

So we had a lovely surprise when we were taken to our new accomodation, we  live in a volunteer house with Meldoy and Jacob and any other volunteers that decide to come and help out here. When we walked in we couldn't help but notice the washing machine, cautiously asking Melody if that was a washing machine, she said, yes of course, and you guys can use it! We couldn't beleive it. A washing machine!? Walking into the kitchen we saw an oven, a toaster, a coffee machine. What more delights could this house offer? We foudn out later. Wifi AND an occasionally warm shower! So after living for 9 months in a house with a two hob electric stove, a freezing cold shower and hand washing our clothes, we were amazed and seriously excited. A washing machine, an oven, a toaster, a coffee machine, wifi AND a warm shower. This place is like heaven!! Even though we live in a very small, dirt road aldea, just 20 minutes down the road we have a shopping mall, with a proper supermarket that sells cheese and bacon and jam and everything, and a cinema! A cinema, like a proper cinema that plays english movies. So me and Mali treated ourselves and went to see Iron Man 3. Which, by the way, is a brilliant film. I recommend that you go see it.

There are two other long term, american, volunteers working here. They are both around 26 years old, and enjoy asking me and Mali the randomest questions about where we come from. They find that me being Scottish a good talking point and like to ask if about our 'interesting' culture and about the sterotypes. One even said to me, that if I hadn't said that I was Scottish he would never have thought it cause I wasn't ginger and pale. I considered telling him that a large majority of the Scottish population ran around in kilts drinking whisky and chasing haggis on a regular basis, but I figured that he wouldn't know what haggis was.. I then explained accents, Highland games, bagpipes, haggis, black pudding and ceilidhs. Which was a MAMMOTH effort on my part. But I made it, and there is now one more American in this world who has a wealth of knowledge  about Scottish traditions. And also what not to say to Scottish people..

Here is the link to the Miqueas website so you can have a look at their programme and also some photos!
http://www.miqueas68.org/

BIG changes.

Packing up a house that you've lived in for 9 months into one rucksack is a serious challenge. You gather so many things, that are not even that important, but you feel the need to keep them. And SHOES. I don't even want to count how may pairs of shoes I've accumulated over the past 9 months. And I swear that my clothes in the wardrobe have doubled in quantity since moving here. It's like magic or something. Good job I'm starting a week before I leave, this process could take a long time!

I suppose I should mention why I'm packing up the house 3 months before I fly home, I'm not that organised! It's because, this Saturday, me and my Project Partner, Mali, are moving away from our teaching voluntary work in New Sunrise School, Trinidad to another project, elsewhere in Honduras, where we will be working more in a scoial care aspect of volunteer work. We are going to be working in an orphanage with children who have grown up with drug and alcohol abuse early in their lives and who have lost their parents.With 38 children in the orphanage, a mixture of boys and girls from 1 to 14 year olds. We'll be organising activities for the toddlers of the orphanage in the morning and then tutoring and helping with the homework of the older children in the evenings. 

I guess you're wondering why this move is happening, and happening so suddenly. During the past few weeks there have been some issues with the school that we've been working in. Issues that I will not go into, but after discussion with Project Trust it was decided that we would be moved to another Project for the duration of our stay in Honduras. 

And so a new chapter of my story in Honduras will be starting very soon! 

Our last weekend in Trinidad, wasn't really spent in Trinidad. Unfortunately we had to go to do a visa run to Guatemala, which involves getting many buses, crossing the boarder, staying the night and then hoping that they'll stamp your passport for another month or three months if you're lucky..

So we made a nice little trip to Guatemala for the ngiht and sucessfully got our passprots stamped for another three months!

The next day we decided to go to, what we think is, the best comedor in Honduras. It serves grilled chicken, beef, pork all served with avocado, refried beans, cheese, rice, pickeled onion and tortillas, grilled fresh fish with tajadas and beans, or Seafood soup with rice. All this for only $5 or £3. And the food, wow, it's delicious. After you've filled yourself to bursting, you can then walk down to the river for a relaxing swim or less relaxing, but definitely more exciting cliff jumping into the river. And that's exactly what we did, chilling by the river, jumping swimming and having a good laugh! It was a lovely last weekend in Trinidad and to top it off, parcels from home arrived. 

I got two parcels from my lovely Granos and one from my parents. They were filled with easter treats, somewhat squashed and melted, but a few hours in the fridge sorted all that out and the were just as good. An array of eggs were sent, Cadbury caramel, mini eggs, cream eggs, choclately eggs, and galaxy eggs. And cute little bunny rabbits. Me and Mali were in HEAVEN. Along with the choclately treats Granos also sent DARJEELING TEA and MINI CHEDDARS. The darjeeling was the first cupof tea I've had in the 9 months I've been here, and I seriosly appreciated that first cup of tea, so much that I had serveral more throughout the course of the day! And the mini cheddars, a stroke of genius from dear Granos, a blast from the past and one of my favourite snacks to have. I'm savouring every packet of them! I also got an array of Scottish memoribilia, a keyring, a tartan ribbon (which is now tying up my hair), a Proud to be Scottish sticker and a few other things. To top off my Scottish weekend, I watched Brave. And I loved it. to anyone who is Scottish and lives abroad I would highly recommend watching it. It reminded me so much of home, but never made me cry, it had laughs around every corner and the Scottish accents we're terrible. Mostly beacuse the people in it are actually Scottish! Shock horror. I would actually recommend anyone who like a good cartoon movie to watch it. Although I did have to translate some parts of it for my English friend.

So ends my time in Trinidad, with darjeeling tea, mini cheddars and a scottish movie. 

I've really enjoyed livng in this little town, and the experience in the school has taught me a lot and has been unforgettable, but now it's time to start a new experience and a new chapter in my time in Honduras. With just over three months left there will be plenty of stories to tell and experiences to be had. And I look forward to sharing them with y'all. 

A week in Paradise..

I have just returned from, what I can only describe as, one of the best weeks of my life. It was the Easter holidays and everyone was looking forward to a little time to relax and chill out. Mali was heading off to Cancun with some friends for 'Spring Break' and I was off to Utila, an Island on the Caribbean coast of Honduras to complete my dive course.

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. 

Water Cay

Map of Utila and the Dive sites.

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