Viaje a Paraíso (Part I)

Well thus far my vacation on Utila has been one of the most relaxing and enjoyable things that I have done in Honduras. I took a series of busses and a ferry on Sunday with David and Cody (we met up with Cody’s mom and brother along the way) and got into Utila late on Sunday evening. On Monday we spent the whole day exploring on bikes, walking around, and just getting our bearings on the island. The most confusing thing on the island is not direction, but what language to speak! I’ve heard that people speak English here, but I have yet to hear people speak real English to each other. I’ve heard Spanish and some crazy almost English but not quite language. Some people don’t speak any English, some people don’t speak any Spanish. I don’t know how people cope on this island! It’s so confusing. I try to stay in English, but then sometimes I have to break out Spanish. For example...
This gentleman is walking down the road while we are sitting in our rented golf cart (to explore the island) and he’s singing a famous Cuban song, “Guantanamera.” He asks us in English if we like the song and we all say yes. Cody and I both know the song quite well and were chuckling that he was singing it. The gentleman then turns to his friend and says in Spanish, “A ellos no les gusta esta canción como son gringos.” Or in other words, “These guys don’t like this song cause they’re gringos.” I got super defensive right away and switched into Spanish semi-yelling, “Bien! Me la sé y me gusta.” (Heck yes! I know it and I like it!) The gentleman was shocked, said something to his friend that I don’t remember and is friend laughed and said, “sí, habla español.”
My other adventure thus far has been snorkeling. I don’t know which of you out there were as blessed (as I was thinking) enough to never have to go snorkeling. I was apprehensive about it all day as everybody wanted to go snorkeling in our group. I’m not the greatest swimmer in the world and I’ve never been a big fan of swimming in oceans. The vastness of it astounds me and intimidates me like few other things. So we get snorkel equipment rented and start to make our way out from in front of our house. it’s a long wade out to the coral part of the ocean and we’re probably about 50 meters from the shore by the time we really hit anything that would be interesting for snorkeling. I’ve never been snorkeling before (and I’ve never even swam with flippers on) and my first reaction while I am in between “snorkels” is to tread water for a while to rest. I was so tired in a matter of minutes and felt like snorkeling was probably the biggest waste of time. All I could think about was how far from the shore I was and how I’ve never been that far out to sea without a boat or life-vest and I couldn’t tread water for more than a couple minutes in those dumb flippers. Well I started to head back to shore and call it quits. Then on my way back I had to put my head back down to figure out the path back through the coral in order to not scrape against it or run into it. Before I knew what was happening I’d gone like a minute straight with snorkeling and I was starting to enjoy seeing the things under the water. Instead of going all the way back I started to practice in the shallow parts to not be so intimidated by the drop off. It goes from about 8 or 10 feet deep to something like 20 or 30 feet deep in a matter of seconds. I started to see all sorts of fish, coral, plants, etc. under the ocean that I’d never seen before! I was one of the last people in our group to come back in as I was enjoying it so much. The whole time all I could think of was “Finding Nemo” as I was thinking about the anemones, algae, schools of fish, stingrays (which I didn’t see), the drop-off, touching the “butt,” and a variety of Nemo things. I’m probably going to have to watch that movie pretty soon....such a classic.:)