Today was an early start, I had to be at the dive shop around 7:00am to catch my boat over to the Cayes. Specifically the Jewel Cay, where I am apparently staying and start off my diving experience. This morning I was taking the “Discover Dive” with Captain Morgans and is essentially a crash course in how to dive.
The boat ride to the Jewel Cay was really beautiful. While I don’t have any photos, I will say that the sunbeams poking through the rain clouds was impressive. Especially considering the immensity of the storm clouds themselves. By the time we got to the Cay I had just enough time to drop my crap off in the room and head to pick up my gear. My dive instructor is Juju and her assistant instructor is Shane; these guys will be showing me the ropes today. My partner in crime was Dave, the newbies together to attempt diving.
Together Dave and I learned some key skills like partial mask fill, recovery of your regulator, and more fun/terrifying things. Then we were able to embark on an actual dive. I definitely felt a bit like I was in Finding Nemo as I cruised past the reef walls, minus the location and clown fish. But I saw a lot of fish, some really impressive coral, and just getting over the novelty of being able to breath underwater. Overall, I had an absolutely wonderful first experience and was quite sad to get out of the water.
With a significant lack of clean clothes and no bathing suit I opted to return to Utila in order to rectify these errors. Unfortunately my laundry wasn’t ready yet, so I had to meander around for a bit. I managed to find a bathing suit shop which had a bathing suit that not only looked great, but was a decent price. And just because I could, I bought an interesting handmade necklace which featured a natural stone and a coin with sanskrit on it. The owner also happened to be from Victoria, Canada and has been living down there for the past four years. She was incredibly friendly and even had some vegetarian restaurant places to recommend. One of which was the Indian Wok.
As I was about 20 feet from the restaurant I ran into a Barbara, a former student from Antigua. We ended up not having a proper goodbye the first time so I was very glad to run into her. Although at first we both almost failed to recognize each other, but after long and almost awkward eye contact, we figured it out. We had a good laugh and started swapping stories of our travels during the weeks apart. Including the fun gossip about the people we knew in Antigua. In particular I was able to discuss to her the man who reached infamous status in Antigua. We both discovered we were headed in the same direction (Nicaragua) and we decided to stay in touch and see if we could be travel buddies for a while.
To get back to the Cay, I ended up catching a ride with the marine guards. Victor was the one I chatted with the most and told me about their job. Apparently they parole the waters to prevent fishing in protected areas and other illegal activities. He also told me about the biggest problem on Utila which is overpopulation and unemployment. Victor believes though that tourists are still good for the Island because at least it creates jobs.
For dinner tonight we all headed to a local restaurant and ended up having an entirely wonderful conversation with Yolanda. We talked about the things which I love the most: veganism, the environment, corporate and political corruption, and finally books. This conversation continued when we got back from the restaurant and thus I ended up not getting my homework done. Oh well, there is always tomorrow!
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