Yo no quiero agua, Yo quiero bebida

How an Iguana celebrates Easter.

If you're a backpacker and you happen to be on the isthmus during Semana Santa (Easter) you'll probably make a beeline for the solemn, purple robed processions of Antigua, at the very least you'll probably head to the nearest village with a pretty catholic church and join in with their festivities.

If you're Honduran however you'll probably head to Utila, and if you're a backpacker who just so happens to be stuck on the island for a month you're probably going to have to join in.
So this week past my fellow iguana people and I experienced Semana Santa the young, middle class, Honduran way. Overnight it seemed the island's population had trebled in size and the usually peaceful dynamic between the Utilians and the divers was swamped by young Hondurans in tiny skirts and dresses and even tinier bikinis. Whoever said Honduras was a conservative country obviously never met any Hondurans.

Suddenly our usually tranquil Tranquilla Bar was full, the standard soundtrack of last year's hits were thrown out in favour of the Honduran Top 40 and instead of my mad Belgian Diving Instructor dancing like a lunatic to Rihanna we had cool, self possessed Honduran couples dancing the Salsa to anything with the right beat or wildly chanting their battle cry 'Yo no quiero agua, yo quiero bebida'.

In the queue for the loo, instead of chatting to Aussies and Canadians I was having discussions with boys from Tela about Honduras's best beaches. For one week Utila didn't feel like a solitary outpost in the Caribbean but the very heart of Honduras.

And then over the weekend they all went home, back to their processions and six hour church services, leaving Utila shell shocked and eerily silent.


Idyllic Water Caye



After all these people the residents of the Iguana station decided we all needed some peace and quiet and luckily Utila was willing to provide. Early Sunday morning we jumped in to the good ship 'Lady Fanny' with our captain Bobby and set sail for Water Caye.

Off the Southwest coast of Utila, still in sight of the mainland, are a collection of tiny islands known as The Cayes. Only one is properly inhabited, boasting on its tiny strip of land a dive school, cafe's, plenty of houses and even a school. However we motored past Pigeon Caye to our own private island, Water Caye.

Shut your eyes, imagine a desert island and you've pictured Water Caye. Ridiculously pretty we spent the day snorkeling in the shallows, watching the Caye's resident pelicans fish, swimming in crystal clear waters and flopping down, shaded by palm trees, exhausted by the sheer cliché of it all.

An Easter barbecue was all we need to round off a not very Holy but uniquely Utilian Holy Week.

Darling it's better, down where it's wetter, take it from me...

Shortly after anyone arrives at the Iguana station, once the where are you froms and where have you beens are out of the way, the next question is inevitably, 'Are you going to dive?' Followed by 'When?' and 'Who with?'.

You see whilst we all pretend to make the nauseous boat ride over (they actually hand out sick bags when you get on) for the sake of the iguanas, the islands biggest draw is its diving.
Slap bang in the Mesoamerican Barrier Reef Utila is supposedly the cheapest place in the world to do your PADI courses and you get to see some pretty awesome fish at the same time.

So it was on Friday that myself and three other 'iguana people' donned out wetsuits and prepared for the Open Water.

Except they don't let you dive in just like that.

First we had to sit through three and a half hours of possibly the world's cheesiest instruction video, followed by a cold afternoon in the pool, followed by a second cold afternoon in the shallows off the dock.

But finally on Sunday we suited up, jumped in the boat and then jumped off it again. I'll spare you rhapsodical descriptions of the underwater world but suffice to say it's pretty cool. Even when you're not seeing much in terms of fish (barracudas, angel fish, spotted drum fish etc.) the coral formations are enough to keep you open jawed. My favourite site was one nicknamed 'The Labyrinth' which looks somewhat like an underwater canyon with several swimthroughs and tight valleys which required our newly acquired and excellent buoyancy control. When all you can see for 360 degrees is fish and coral it's hard to think anything other than the hackneyed 'awesome'.

If anyone's heading out to Utila at anytime I can't recommend my dive schhool Bay Islands College of Diving, not only the cheapest place on the island but one of the most professional and bang next door to the hyperbaric chamber. My instructor Nick was everything you need when you're descending 18m in to the deep blue sea, meticulous, reassuring and Belgian.

The advanced course is next so stay tuned for tales of night dives, wreck dives and being 'drunk' underwater.

Rice and Peas - The Island of Utila

Apologies for not having written since I arrived but two planes, an intolerable five hour layover, a bus and a boat later I arrived on the Honduran island of Utila.

Utila is a bizarre place. Years of being a stop off for pirates and smugglers has left the island with a culture quite unlike the Honduran mainlanders. The ethic mix of the island is diverse. There are the white utilans decended from Pirates who have strong Caribbean (rice and peas) accents. Then there are the black and hispanic utilans with the same strong accents. Then there are the most recent arrivals, honduran mainlanders who get accused of everything from stealing schools' computers to eating all the fish and all the iguanas.

It's the iguanas I am here to protect. Despite not knowing anything about the reptiles before I left I have become quite knowledgeable about the 'Swamper' Utila's endemic species of Iguana. For instance did you know iguanas have two penises? Or that, like a shark, once they bite in to something (a nice squishy finger) their jaws won't release until they want them to!

Current estimates have it that there are 10,000 swampers on the island but the people I'm working with would put it closer to 3,000 which is why this last week has been a haze of iguana feeding, catching and cage building with the odd sunbathe on the beach and the occasional beach party.

Life on a Caribbean island is good.

Apologies that are no photos, they will follow shortly