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.