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).
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| It's so hot that even the dogs need icewater :) |
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| Our kitchen/livingroom |
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| The door |
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| View from our door |
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| Bathroom is clean enough and water comes with pressure. These are not obvious things always. |
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| Our bedroom. |
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| Getting ready for dive trip |
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| Assembling the dive gear is fun :) |
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| They eat these here. Apparently tastes like squid. |
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| The flora is quite interesting here |
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| Some sort of a snail, I suppose |
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| Home of small cleaning crab |
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| Olli is enjoying the dive |
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| This jellyfish was upside down. I turned it around, but it wanted to just chelax and returned to this position. |
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| You see these all around the world, but I don't know what kind of fish it is. |
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| Maija is all good |
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| Blue fish |
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| This crab was BIG. About half a meter with legs. |
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| Spotted eagle ray without the tail. We saw this fella on two different days/dives. |
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| Some kind of interesting flora. |
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| You don't really need the wetsuit in 29C water.... |
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| Umm... a fish of some kind :) |
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| Street food.... ooohhhh sooo gooooddd |
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| Two girls just hanging out on the streets. |
