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

Another American road trip

We arrived to LAX last Friday and spent the weekend in Irvine with Philip, Amber and Delphine (thanks again, Perea's!). We just relaxed, had a great time together, played some board games and watched Curiosity landing to Mars. It was fun watching it with two physicists.

On Monday we drove to Las Vegas, we were staying at MGM Grand this time. We did basic Vegas things: ate too much in the buffet, gambling and went to see a show which this time was a Penn and Tellers Magic Show (crazy stuff there....). Vegas was as amazing as it is always.

After Vegas we drove to Arizona to see Antelope canyons. Well it wasn't so easy. We drove whole day to small city called Page and found out that all 18 motels were booked or overpriced or had only smoking rooms left. And of course the access to the canyons was closed already. So we decided to continue driving to Flagstaff. Fortunately we saw a sunset in Horse Shoe Bend which was a spectacular place.

Today we saw a beautiful mountain views all day long. We went walking to the Red Rock national park and went to see Cathedral Rock. It was very hot, today 115 Fahrenheit, 46 degrees in celsius...
At the moment we are near downtown Phoenix. We will go back to Irvine on Sunday.

-Maija

Ps. Now it's easier to leave a comments to us (no need to register anymore).

Big cacti  (Hawaii)

Olli is winning the game ;)

Olli in Las Vegas

Maija in Paris...

I went all in

We went to see Penn&Teller show

Maija & Teller (He's taller than I thought..)

Penn Jillette & Olli (He's taller than I thought...)

Nice view in Arizona

At Horse shoe bend, Arizona

Horse shoe bend, Arizona

Red Rock park, Arizona

Cathedral rock (remember to have water with you, it's hot in there)

Mauna Kea and diving with Manta rays and a dolphin

On sunday (29.7.) we drove to Mauna Kea wich is the highest peek in Pacific (13796 ft/ 4,2 km). We drove to the top of the mountain by car (once again, this is America ;)).
There was a visitor center (9000 ft) where they do stargazing every nights (it's above the clouds). It starts 6 pm and it's free. So we did that too. They had huge telescopes you could look at the stars and moon. It was so cool! Unfortunately there was almost full moon shining so we couldn't see as much stars as it's possible. Anyway they say it's the best place in the world to do stargazing.

Now we have been the last couple of days in Kona. We rented a nice room from Kona Islander Inn. This is little bit like hotel, they have reception but all units are privately owned. We have a kitchenette facilities, huge balcon and free wifi in our condo. This is the best value for your money so far, I'd highly recommend this.

Yesterday afternoon (1.8.) we spent our 15th anniversary doing scuba diving. We had booked two tanks dive including a sunset dive and a night dive with Manta Rays. Both of the dives were in same place called Garden Eel Cove, it's located near Kona airport.
First dive was just ok, normal nice dive nothing we haven't seen before but the second was something special. We basically went down to 8 meters with diving torches and laid down in the bottom heading our torches up toward surface. On the surface there was snorkeler and their torches were heading down. This is because Manta Rays eat plancton and lights attracts plancton. Then we just waited couple of minutes and then the huge Manta Ray just game and started to spin above us eating plancton. It came were close to us, it was so amazing. The cherry on top of the cake was that one huge bottle-nose dolphin came to check what is going on here. We have seen dolphins from the boat and had been swimming with them but this was first time we saw a wild dolphin while scuba diving.
Diving itself was really easy there but the waves were very heavy in the surface so going back to the boat was hard.

Hawaii TOP-3:
1. Diving with a dolphin and Manta rays
2. Stargazing in Mauna Kea
3. Walking in the Hawai'i Volcanoes National Park

Today our trip continues back to LAX, we are going to spend a weekend with Philip, Amber and baby-Delphine. And then we will do a road trip and of course, once again, Las Vegas is included ;)

Aloha
-Maija & Olli

They call this a salad

Akaka falls

Waipi'o valley lookout

Make up your own mind about this sign...

Hi'ilawe falls

Waipi'o valley beach

Above the clouds at Mauna Kea

On the top of Mauna Kea

Maija looking at Saturnus

Somebody got a big fish