We have just finished a very intensive week of diving on the Carribean island of Utila. Populated by the descendents of famous pirates, they all have the surnames Jackson and Morgan! Supposedly the cheapest place to learn to dive and visit, possibly because of the annoying plague of sandflies! You can feel them nibbling on you but by then its too late...

We basically spent the week eating and sleeping diving! We set out to do an Openwater course and got persuaded to then do an Advanced course that allows us to go to 30m and dive at night. It was definately worth doing the extra coruse as it allowed us to go to the good dive sights on the island like the Halliburton Wrec and, do a deep dive along a huge wall of coral. We also saw so many cool things, barracuda, octopus, seahorse, sea cucumber (looks a bit like a spiky caterpillar), lizard fish, angelfish, porcupine fish (huge head and eyes-looks a bit like a baby alien), flamingo tongue (bizarre) and we got to swim with a turtule which was amazing. Even after 14 dives, the first breath as you go under is a really weird experience but you soon get used to it, its really strange at first but its surprising how little time it takes you to feel comfortable under water. Night diving was also a really cool experience, going down at night just with a torch to see. On both our night dives at the end we sat at the bottom, turned all our torches off and waved our arms to see phosphorescence from exciting the plankton. It was like loads of tiny fireflies springing off our arms and floating up towards the surface.

In the end though, we were running out of funds for more diving and despite islanders saying no one every escapes the island (The most common lie on the island is "I´m leaving tomorrow"), we mananged to make a break and get the ferry back to mainland and head to Nicaragua.