Wow, 94 page views in 1 day, I'm a lucky girl! Although Sharkboy wasn't overly impressed with the pen name...tough nuts babe! Now after a day like today, all I wanted to do was drift away to happier times, so here is an excerpt from an email note I started writing when first went to Utila in 2007. Enjoy, and there will be more to come.
Hello everybody!!! Well, I'm here!! My nightmare 3 days travelling to the US, and then to San Pedro Sula, and then Utila in a propeller plane is over!!! The propeller plane was incredibly hairy, particularly when our intrepid Capitan Carlos decided to fly one-handed with his elbow out of the window...until the window fell off...
Landed safely though, thank God, and had a bumpy ride down to the dive centre. Everyone here drives either golf carts, motorbikes, quad bikes or bicycles, but it's easiest just to walk. The island is so small, you could probably walk it in under an hour. However, this also means that everyone knows everyone's business, so it's just like being back at boarding school again, just with less bitching and more piss-taking!
So, the good news as follows - the sandflies and mosquitos have taken an instant liking to me and are happily feasting away, and no amount of Deet, baby oil, mosquito repellent or citronella will keep them away. I'm hoping they'll get bored of me fairly soon. Perhaps wishful thinking! Everyone on the island is lovely, and speaks perfect English with a Spanish/Caribbean accent, which is quite amusing. My diving instructor, Dom, is lovely, as is his girlfriend, and comes from Sutton, so we have lots of talk about. I'm living in a big called La Mansion about 15mins away from the dive shop, so the walking is doing me good and sweating out all of my English puppy fat!! At least, that's what I'm telling myself. I'm living with 2 girls and 2 guys, all very nice, all marine biologists working for the dolphin and whale shark conservation centre. The girls are in their 30s/40s and the guys are younger, and very funny. I've been spending a lot of time with them. Chris is Austrian and a business reporter doing volunteer work over here, but is bored with everyone talking about the same thing, so has started asking everyone what their favourite sexual position is, and Alex is from Brighton studying for a Masters, and his favourite party trick is setting his wooden leg on fire and lighting cigarettes from it!! Oh, and I have finished the first part of my course, EFR, the first aid, so I am part way there!
The bad news - well, yesterday, when completing my first aid course, I caught my big toe nail in the floorboards and ripped it 90% off. Much pain and blood, lucky we were doing first aid. Dom took me to the doctors on a motorbike, which with the state of the roads here didn't really help my toe. I was seen by Dr John who is clinically insane and advocates building a crack house on the island to keep people out of trouble, who has told me no water for a week. How gutted am I?! This not only means that I have to spent the entire week studying rather than diving, but that I'm probably going to miss my instructor course which is scheduled for August 8th. So, right now, the options are to finish what I can, and potentially come back in a couple of months or do it somewhere else, or stay on for 4 more weeks, which is looking unlikely as it would mean covering rent, etc, and explaining myself to work, which I don't think they would take very well.
So, now I am known as Nat the Nail, as I said everyone on the island knows everything....I hobble along quite happily, and I've now got to go and speak to the course director in an attempt to sort my life out - wish me luck!!!!
Saturday 14th
JUST GET ME IN THAT WATER!!!!!! ARGH!!!!! Only 4 more days to wait, I can do it, and at least I'm getting all of my classroom work out of the way in the meantime, which is great because I can then just jump straight into the water as soon as I'm healed. Crazy Dr John is whipping out the last bit of toenail, bleurgh, on Monday, then hopefully Wednesday I should be diver-fit! Can't wait!! Another guy on my Rescue Course saw a 6ft nurse shark and an eagle ray a couple of days ago, and the guy from the Centre for Marine Ecology has been seeing signs of whale sharks, out of season, so fingers crossed!!!!
Last night I had the experience of a Utila pub quiz, which was surprisingly difficult, mostly american questions, but luckily we had Shelby and Dave on our team who are from the US, and Dom was no help at all, even on the diving questions, which was slightly worrying, but we still rose from the bottom to come 2nd. Our team name was, I don't shave my balls. I'm still not sure why, and I had no say over the name! I was up for Team Nails, but nobody was impressed with that one...We won a Scorpion Bowl, which is basically half of a huge melon carved out and filled with ice and every conceivable liquor you could imagine - rum, obviously, vodka, grenadine, lemonade, whiskey, banana rum, and anything else they could find on the top shelf. There were 4 of us drinking it, and it did go down surprisingly easily, which led to a bit of a lock in in the local cafe for me, Becci and Dom, but all good!
Well, I'm off to go and sink another cold beer, oops, I mean Fanta, before class starts again at 1.30pm, maybe have some fresh olive bread and sit on the dock at the diving shop and feed Barry the Barracuda (my new pet, he lives under the resort boat!).
 |
| The wonderful Dr John...what a legend |
Landed safely though, thank God, and had a bumpy ride down to the dive centre. Everyone here drives either golf carts, motorbikes, quad bikes or bicycles, but it's easiest just to walk. The island is so small, you could probably walk it in under an hour. However, this also means that everyone knows everyone's business, so it's just like being back at boarding school again, just with less bitching and more piss-taking!
So, the good news as follows - the sandflies and mosquitos have taken an instant liking to me and are happily feasting away, and no amount of Deet, baby oil, mosquito repellent or citronella will keep them away. I'm hoping they'll get bored of me fairly soon. Perhaps wishful thinking! Everyone on the island is lovely, and speaks perfect English with a Spanish/Caribbean accent, which is quite amusing. My diving instructor, Dom, is lovely, as is his girlfriend, and comes from Sutton, so we have lots of talk about. I'm living in a big called La Mansion about 15mins away from the dive shop, so the walking is doing me good and sweating out all of my English puppy fat!! At least, that's what I'm telling myself. I'm living with 2 girls and 2 guys, all very nice, all marine biologists working for the dolphin and whale shark conservation centre. The girls are in their 30s/40s and the guys are younger, and very funny. I've been spending a lot of time with them. Chris is Austrian and a business reporter doing volunteer work over here, but is bored with everyone talking about the same thing, so has started asking everyone what their favourite sexual position is, and Alex is from Brighton studying for a Masters, and his favourite party trick is setting his wooden leg on fire and lighting cigarettes from it!! Oh, and I have finished the first part of my course, EFR, the first aid, so I am part way there!
The bad news - well, yesterday, when completing my first aid course, I caught my big toe nail in the floorboards and ripped it 90% off. Much pain and blood, lucky we were doing first aid. Dom took me to the doctors on a motorbike, which with the state of the roads here didn't really help my toe. I was seen by Dr John who is clinically insane and advocates building a crack house on the island to keep people out of trouble, who has told me no water for a week. How gutted am I?! This not only means that I have to spent the entire week studying rather than diving, but that I'm probably going to miss my instructor course which is scheduled for August 8th. So, right now, the options are to finish what I can, and potentially come back in a couple of months or do it somewhere else, or stay on for 4 more weeks, which is looking unlikely as it would mean covering rent, etc, and explaining myself to work, which I don't think they would take very well.
So, now I am known as Nat the Nail, as I said everyone on the island knows everything....I hobble along quite happily, and I've now got to go and speak to the course director in an attempt to sort my life out - wish me luck!!!!
Saturday 14th
JUST GET ME IN THAT WATER!!!!!! ARGH!!!!! Only 4 more days to wait, I can do it, and at least I'm getting all of my classroom work out of the way in the meantime, which is great because I can then just jump straight into the water as soon as I'm healed. Crazy Dr John is whipping out the last bit of toenail, bleurgh, on Monday, then hopefully Wednesday I should be diver-fit! Can't wait!! Another guy on my Rescue Course saw a 6ft nurse shark and an eagle ray a couple of days ago, and the guy from the Centre for Marine Ecology has been seeing signs of whale sharks, out of season, so fingers crossed!!!!
Last night I had the experience of a Utila pub quiz, which was surprisingly difficult, mostly american questions, but luckily we had Shelby and Dave on our team who are from the US, and Dom was no help at all, even on the diving questions, which was slightly worrying, but we still rose from the bottom to come 2nd. Our team name was, I don't shave my balls. I'm still not sure why, and I had no say over the name! I was up for Team Nails, but nobody was impressed with that one...We won a Scorpion Bowl, which is basically half of a huge melon carved out and filled with ice and every conceivable liquor you could imagine - rum, obviously, vodka, grenadine, lemonade, whiskey, banana rum, and anything else they could find on the top shelf. There were 4 of us drinking it, and it did go down surprisingly easily, which led to a bit of a lock in in the local cafe for me, Becci and Dom, but all good!
Well, I'm off to go and sink another cold beer, oops, I mean Fanta, before class starts again at 1.30pm, maybe have some fresh olive bread and sit on the dock at the diving shop and feed Barry the Barracuda (my new pet, he lives under the resort boat!).
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