Tuesday, May 27, 2008

Honduras



We went to HOnduras in April (2-12). Our purpose was to go to Utila during the whale shark season to see the whale sharks. But guess what, we didn't see any!
We spent the first night at Bannarama dive resort. It was a pretty basic, inexpensive room. Comfortable for what we paid. The diving was good but we only got 2 dives in. The highlight was the huge & very curious black sea bass that I saw. On the morning, we dove a site called Spooky channel- basically it is what the name implies- "Spooky channel"! Yes, narrow crevass & so-so visibility makes for one spooky channel.



The dive trip to Honduras is my first time diving with UW camera & strobe. I've discovered the photos are even more beautiful that what you see UW with your naked eye. The strobe brings out colors that get lost in the ocean. It's a little disappointing to realize that UW photos you may see in a magazine may not really represent what you may see when you dive. The strobe brings a little piece of sunshine into the ocean. Writing about the underwater beauty of Utila is pointless. You have to see the photos:



A word about Deep Blue. I wouldn't stay there again. The rooms were clean ,comfortable and aircon was powerful. BUT... the food was sometimes unpalatable, esp at dinner time. The hostess Jasmine was very moody and very self righteous. She went on a long rant about how we should not eat lobster because lobster is being overfished. The divemasters were nice enough, but not always considerate. For instance, we were taken to the same not so exciting dive site Little Bight twice. There are so many dive sites in Utila, there was no excuse for them to take the same group of people to the same site twice. Apparently, one person asked to have the site repeated but the dive masters did not bother to ask the rest of us if that was acceptable. Secondly, even though we had 2 divemasters diving with a group of 14, both dive masters would be at the front of a dive. On one drift dive, I was last in the group and got left behind. I lost sight of everybody, had to to a drifting saftey stop by myself and to surface by myself to find the boat. The divemasters did not even realize I was missing.

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