Diving in Utila

Utila is a Caribbean island off the coast of Honduras. The attraction to this island is the world class diving. The cost to become certified is less than in other locations, perhaps the cheapest in the world. Ami came here in November 2003, became certified, and raved...and raved....and raved about diving ever since. Well, since we are in Central America, and again Utila offers the best deals to become certified, we decided to head to Utila.

Utila is a tourist island, with businesses established to cater to the thousands of divers who come annually. Unfortunately, due to the tourist atmosphere, English is the dominant language. There are numerous dive schools, and because of the business they bring, numerous restaurants and bars. But, not to bore you with the island, I am going to jump to the obvious reason we went to Utila...The Diving!

Dive School Shopping: We didn´t spend much time shopping for a dive school. We went to Alton´s Dive Shop, the dive school Ami attended in 2003. The school is right on the Bay, with a sundeck extended over the Bay to relax on, and accommodations for divers with great views of the Bay.

The Course: The Open Water Dive Course lasts three and a half days. The course includes classroom time, as well as time in the shallow waters to learn skills. By day three, we are heading to sea to dive. Days 3 and 4 are dive days, but they are not very focused on what you see, but rather doing more skills and getting comfortable in deeper waters. The first level of a diving certification only allows a dive as deep as 60 feet. Plently deep for now!

Experience: When you get in the water, a whole new prespective opens up. The first time you go down deeper and deeper, I was thinking this is crazy. This place is for fish and other sea animals! My first impression of diving was how different could it be from snorkeling. Well, it is entirely different. Not only do you have tons of gear on, but the deeper you go, the more you see and the more angles you have. You swim alongside schools of fish, alongside the reef, you touch the sandy surface, you swim below fish.....just crazy! Swimming and exploring is very effortless, and definitely worth it!

There are at least 60 dive sites in Utila, and we only scratched the surface by visiting 6. But along the way we lucked out. We had the opportunity to see a whale shark. The way the process works is if one boat sees a whale shark, the capitan informs another, and the word spreads. The capitans have years of experience watching the surface of the sea to see where the whale shark is swimming. So, how do we leverage that experience? We line up on the boat, and when he gives the word, we gently slide into the water. Jumping in scares the shark(s) away. Well, the word is more like ´Go, go, go...now, now, now,´with his arms waving us on. We slid into the water, and going directly beneath us and our boat was a whale shark. It wasn´t a huge whale shark by any means, these sharks definitley can be massive, but nonetheless, we saw and swam with a whale shark!