Divemaster trainees

We decided to start the dive master course so we are going to stay here in the Utila next 4-6 weeks. We are going to dive almost every day and of course we had to do all kinds of water and diving skills exercises, read a manual, do exams etc. We also have to assist an instructor in the open water and advance open water course and train to lead dives and help to load the boat for dives. We don't have any plans to work as a dive master at the moment but it will be an option of course after the course.  The course is a cheap way to dive as much as possible and get more comfortable while diving. On the other hand it is a little bit fun that we pay money for "assisting" at the dive shop :)

-Maija

Olli is practicing for swimming kills.

Little bit reading...

Maija has everything ok on the top of the wreck.

At the Haliburton wreck.

Fish

No idea...

This is oxygen, it will help you. May I give it to you?

We are certified Rescue Divers now. We finished our three days course today.  The course was quite exhausting. We started course with PADI-video, reading book and doing 10 pages of knowledge reviews. On the second day we did rescue skills training at the dock (2m deep water). That included all kind of skills how to help tired, paniked or non-responding diver. We trained for example towing, rescue breathing and also underwater training. It took about 6 hours to do all this (there was 4 of us in the course). So our foreheads are quite burned... ;) 

Today we did two boat dives where we had practical emergency scenarios. There were an instructor and two dive master trainers we had to rescue all the time. They jumped off from the boat, panicked, went out of air, took our regulators off, tried to ascend too quickly, vomited on Olli etc... There was also missing diver scenario. I found him first from the bottom (7m). He was non-responding so I had to take him to the surface and tow him to the boat while doing rescue breaths thought a pocket mask and taking both's equipment off same time. On the boat I gave him oxygen and did CPR until he came responding.

It is surprising how hard rescuing is. Only towing on the surface is hard and when you have to give rescue breathing same time it's even harder. All other students and DM-trainers were men so they were all bigger than me so that make it even harder for me of course. 

After boat dives we did the final exam. It went well, I got 46 / 50 and Olli 48 / 50 points. And now we are certified rescue divers.

The reason why we did the course is basically now we are able to do dive master course if we want. And of course we learnt good skills which make scuba diving more safe and comfortable to ourself. And of course if something happens while we are doing fun dives (which we will do lots during our trip) we know how to help. It is important to know how to help in a safe way. Safe for the victim AND yourself.

Let's see what's happening here next...

-Maija

We had to read a couple of books and do 10 pages of knowledge reviews.

You can buy 100% coconut water in the bottle. It's good to have a bottle of it available while doing knowledge reviews.

Just graduated Rescue divers with instructor Ashley.

Our new home + some diving pics

We decided to stay in Utila a bit longer so we rented a one-bedroom, kitchen, bathroom apartment from the same hotel we were staying for the first three nights. The place costs 700USD for a month but it includes electricity which is fairly expensive here. We have A/C in bedroom and very slow wifi... but the best part is that the 29C Caribbean sea is just five steps from our front door!

In Asia we never pay extra for A/C because we find it unnecessary, but here the temperature is a few degrees more with same humidity so A/C is actually pretty good to have. We have the A/C on whole night in bedroom only and the temperature is still 26C, other room is 31C during night.

We have breakfast in our apartment, but rest of the meals, which sometimes is only dinner, we eat out. We have found many good places to eat. Some reasonably cheap restaurants with nice steak and fish and so forth, but also excellent and inexpensive local street food. Today we had lunch for less than three USD including a baleada, two pastelitos/empanadas and a coke. The steaks and fish dishes in restaurants are generally 120-160 Lempiras which is about 6-8USD.

So far we have done six fun dives here in Utila and are currently doing a Rescue Diver course. More about that later. Yesterday we did Emergency First Response course which took all day and was pretty exhausting. It was really american style course with videos (for retarded people, it seemed) and a lot of emphasis in making sure you don't do jack shit before you ask the victim if you may help them... In fact this is what we are supposed to say before doing anything: "Hi, my name is Olli. I'm an emergency responder. May I help you?".... we were practicing to say that all day long. Before each and every excersise.  And even after you say that you don't touch the victim yet but put all kinds of barriers on like gloves, eye-shields(!!), face mask etc.... what a load of crap... Oh well, had to do this before the Rescue Diver course, so be it.

During the fun dives we have seen a couple big spotted eagle rays (one had no tail for some reason), a turtle, moray eels and so on. The fish is much less abundant here than in all the other places we have dove, but the soft fan corals are massive and there are so many of them. I would say the diving is really easy here and it seems it is not that high season atm since not that many customers. For two dives we were the only ones to go with our dive master.

-Olli & Maija, Emergency Responders

Ps. Here is a link to youtube video about a weird fish. You would think that this blogger platform would allow you easily to embed a video and you would be right, but not an unlisted youtube video if it is not yours (meaning the username we use here instead of where I uploaded the video).

It's so hot that even the dogs need icewater :)

Our kitchen/livingroom

The door

View from our door

Bathroom is clean enough and water comes with pressure. These are not obvious things always.

Our bedroom.

Getting ready for dive trip

Assembling the dive gear is fun :)

They eat these here. Apparently tastes like squid.

The flora is quite interesting here

Some sort of a snail, I suppose

Home of small cleaning crab

Olli is enjoying the dive

This jellyfish was upside down. I turned it around, but it wanted to just chelax and returned to this position.

You see these all around the world, but I don't know what kind of fish it is.

Maija is all good

Blue fish

This crab was BIG. About half a meter with legs.

Spotted eagle ray without the tail. We saw this fella on two different days/dives.

Some kind of interesting flora.

You don't really need the wetsuit in 29C water....

Umm... a fish of some kind :)

Street food.... ooohhhh sooo gooooddd

Two girls just hanging out on the streets.

First greetings from the island of Utila

We left San Pedro Sula at Tuesday morning. We took a private taxi straight from hotel to La Ceiba which is the place the ferry goes to Utila (and also Roatan, the biggest of Bay islands). Driving took about three hours and ferry about one hour so it was at 5 pm we were in Utila.

We had booked a room from Bay view hotel for the first week. It's a very basic, small room with a double bed and fan, but it's clean enough and has wifi and a private bathroom with hot water though we haven't found it yet ;) Not that we need it since it's about 30 degrees during night and even 36 during the day. The room is about 20 USD per night so it's not bad although we have planned to find even cheaper accommodation later this week. Our hotel has a very nice location just in the front of Caribbean sea. It's just about five meters from our door to water. The hotel is very quit too, maybe one other person is staying here at the moment.

First day we just relaxed, did some swimming and went to the cinema (yes, there is a small "cinema" in the island) cause by change they had a finnish movie there (first time in their history). It was a movie called "Hulluna Saraan". It was ok, very finnish movie spoken mostly in finnish and little bit in english also but they had subtitels in english. There was owner and two other people in the cinema also (all americans) and they seemed to laugh in the right places of the movie. So maybe it worked also in english ;)

Today we had our first two dives here. There are many dive shops in the island and we decided to try a couple of them first and maybe later to dive with same shop if some of them seems to be the better than the rest. We left dive shop at 8 AM and took a half hour boat drive to the north side of the island. We did two almost an hour dives there. The places were really nice and water was warm, 29 degrees celsius. We didn't take camera under the water this time but we will take some diving pics later also and add them here.

So everything is great here, I really love the island so far and I'm so excited to do more diving. If diving is good we maybe staying here even two months, we'll see, our plans are very flexible at the moment. (This is the one of the cheapest place to dive in the world.)

-Maija

Maija found her favorite petrol station ;) There was many of them in mainland Honduras.

At the ferry to Utila.

There is a cat in the house also.

First local beer in Utila

Checking water temperature after arriving to the island (it's warm)

Do they really have a finnish movie here? 

Getting lazy in our sea front "garden".

One more episode of Breaking bad

We had some fish barbecue (super delicious)

Having "comido tipica" for lunch after diving.

There are crabs everywhere on the ground.

Our room.

We have also private bathroom.

The Caribbean sea is just couple of steps from our door.

Olli was exhausted after diving and lunch. 

Destination Honduras

We are on our way to Honduras. Our plan is to spend one night in San Pedro Sula and then head to the island of Utila for scuba diving. We don't know how internet connection will be on the island but we try to update the blog if it's possible.

-Maija & Olli

Having small snack in five guys

Having small picnic in symphony concert