SCUBA Diving and more SCUBA Diving in Honduras

Well, this is our first time getting to the internet in awhile, but, alas, we are safe and sound and very happy in Honduras. After a total of 11 hours on a bus and a one day stopover in Copan to visit the ruins outside of town, we made it to the island of Utila in one piece. After a dingy motel stay across the water in La Ceiba and finding a private boat to get us (and some other stranded tourists) here when the ferry went down the day we were to come over. We made it though as about 30 of us had to get over and were on the first boat of 10… so we were lucky. We found a great dive center upon our arrival called Utila Watersports, with cool staff members and not a lot of students, so it just so happened that both Britt and I are one on one with our instructors. We also got our course, four extra fun dives each, and a private oceanside house (small) for 250 dollars each which is a great deal. Britt was a little weary in the water at first but after a total of 5 dives she is a Certified Open Water Diver. All she has to do now is use up her four free fun dives, hopefully on a few trips to the northside of the island in search of whale sharks. Toby's first dive was a little rough, being his first in about two years, but the second dive was much better as his skills came back to him. Just the other day, Toby and his instructor dove to a wreck at 100 feet (anything more than 60 feet is advanced only) where they saw some big tarpon, a huge grouper, and a giant spotted eagle ray that was very cool. Toby has since done 5 additional dives and wrapped up his advanced certification. After Britt planted the idea in Toby's head, they have decided to stick around on the island a little longer, enjoying the oceanfront house while Toby does one additional course to become a Rescue Diver. This course dives (no pun intended) into a skillset that focuses on rescuing struggling divers and diver specific first aid. With one on one instruction and a discounted price, the opportunity was hard to pass up. In general, Honduras is HOT, as we only get down to about 83 at night and it is constantly humid. It is much better when the wind picks up but still, hot. We have jettisoned a sweatshirt or two and a pair of pants each along the way to cut weight. I think we are looking forward to Oregon as much as we are looking forward to the rest of our time here in C. America. So far nothing is as good as Guatemala in our eyes, but we will see. I think we will like Nica a lot. Prior to the island we visited some ruins as mentioned earlier where giant macaw birds (the big red and blue parrot like things) were flying around wild which was cool. The above picture is of some dolphins following the dive boat. We would later jump in and swim with about 20 of them for a minute before some other dumb divers scared them off.