Epic fail Honduras

It was such a great idea. After our diving nirvana in the cenotes we decided to dive at least one more time on our trip. It would be a sin not to, being so close to the world's second largest coral reef! Belize seemed too expensive for our budget, so we opted for Honduras and one of its Bay Islands - Utila. A warning - this is a loooong story.

Another early bus took us all the way to the border, and soon we arrived to San Pedro Sula, presumably one of the most dangerous cities in Honduras. As it was early, we didn't see why we shouldn't go on, and took another bus to the Honduran coast. I don't think that I've been so scared for our lives before... The ride to and from Palenque seemed like a pleasant stroll compared to this ride. First we got stopped by the military and all the men had to step out of the bus to be searched, women stayed inside. Nothing but a regular check but it didn't feel too right. But the true fun began after. The sky went from sunny to dark black in less then ten minutes and we entered a huge tropical storm that raged all around and over us for almost three hours. That would have been scary anywhere but being on Honduran roads on an old bus with a driver that was overtaking like a mad F1 pilot, well, all that made us sit quietly in our seats, hold hands and think that we're about to die after having been married for less then a month!

I am not sure how, but we survived. We even survived looking for a hotel in La Ceiba, another dangerous place, after dark. And when on the next morning we were finally taking the ferry for Utila Island, we thought everything would go smooth from then on. Oh ha ha.

La Ceiba pier

We toured the island main (and almost only) road, talked to all the diving schools and in the end decided to do our advanced open water diving course with one that offered good free accommodation and had the newest gear of all.

This really is the main street of Utila

Our dive shop

The lovely apartment

Everything looks perfect

Happy with our choice, we found an ATM, tried to get money and... it gave us nothing! A girl entered after us and got her cash, so I didn't know any better than try with my card and... no money again. We checked our accounts and 280 euros gone! The bank was closed already, so we'd have to wait for the next day to try to solve it. Our troubles have started.

The next morning we started our dives, not the course, just fun dives for now. And the first one already didn't go well. D got dizzy, had problems with his ears, and almost fainted when back on the boat, so he decided to skip the second dive and to head back. Afterwards we visited the bank and were told that they couldn't give us any cash. We'll have to contact our banks and they will solve it with us. I don't want to be a pessimist but I'd say the odds of getting our money back are close to zero.

We discussed a lot what to do, as D was not feeling well yet and I didn't want to dive without him. But since we wasted two days of travels and quite a lot of money to get here, we agreed I'd do the 2 day course to make all this effort worth. As the night before we were lying exhausted from the heat in our room, when the beds started shaking. What the..? The entire room was shaking, so we picked up our stuff and went down to the street to see what was happening. An earthquake? Nobody was panicking outside and it was as if we had dreamt it all, except we didn't. That same night another huge storm hit the island, moving the antenna tower dangerously close to our window, so we didn't get any sleep at all.

Since we were afraid of using the ATM again, we offered to pay the bill with a credit card. Lady in the office tried one card, another, another one... And NONE of our cards seemed to be working! Could it have been the storm we passed through on the way to La Ceiba? Did it magnetize all our cards? Suddenly we had no cards and no way to get cash. We went up to our room to figure out what to do next and met a cleaning lady rushing out of our bedroom. We were going to check how much money we had left, but when I opened my money belt, I could see right away I was missing euros, some dollars and also Honduran lempiras. After 7 months of traveling the inevitable happened, we got robbed.

After freaking out a bit, we talked to the manager who luckily for us handled everything very professionally, paid us what was missing from our room, fired the cleaning lady and didn't make us pay for anything, not even the dives we already did. At this point we just wanted to go away and leave this island. What a shame! We were so looking forward to diving here, and the few fun dives we did showed us that Utila has a magnificent underwater world. I saw a baby turtle and another group saw octopus and sea horses! But here we were, with little cash, no credit cards, dead from the heat and the terrible sandflies, scared by the mini earthquake and mega storm, robbed twice, once in our room, once by the ATM. We had enough.

We had to wait until the next morning for the ferry, and there was one more thing to suffer through before escaping the island's bad luck - the sea was incredibly rough and we were definitely glad we had no breakfast before, as the boat was rocking hard amongst the waves. But once on shore we felt relieved, and headed towards the Honduran-Guatemalan border, to the old Maya town of Copán. How will we get some money?

Going away! The sea looked deceivingly calm