(NK) We settled in for a mammoth road trip
from Lake Atitlan to Honduras. Don’t let the relatively short distance on a map
deceive you. The roads are unpredictable in many ways. Police checkpoints,
speed hump riddled villages, crater sized potholes, truck drivers driving like
today is their last – the usual Latin American nonsense that makes every
journey interesting.
We had another attempt at getting around
Guatemala City without it pulling us in, which we failed at, but were soon on
open country roads. We hadn’t bargained on a two-hour wait in a traffic jam,
which we presumed was another accelerator happy lorry driver who’d overturned
his load.
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| Traffic, what ya gaan do!? |
After seeing many police cars shoot past,
we arrived at the scene expecting to survey the carnage but instead found an
unusual situation. Everyone in the village was out but there appeared to be
some kind of stand off going on. Sticks were the weapons off choice for most
participants, except the police who were armed with their usual shotgun and
hand grenade combo. We didn’t stay to see what happened, so that’s where the
story ends really. The point is, that we were very bloody late getting to the
border. So late it was now dark and we were driving in Central America, which
is a big, no-no for gringos like us.
We weren’t sure what the rules on driving
AND crossing a border in the dark were. So we just did it.
The crossing was surprisingly easy. You
hear stories about touts trying to make money and photocopy hell with documents,
but the Guatemalan officials at El Florido just made it really easy and
everyone hanging around the border just wanted to be helpful. Again, the guide
done by the guys at Life Remotely proved invaluable. Thank you Guat and goodbye
– probably our favourite country so far!
Honduras got off to a shaky start. The
customs woman who was sorting our passports and tourist cards had Celine Dion’s
Heart Will Go On Titanic song blasting on the stereo. Fi started to sing along
- I hate to say - fairly badly, and got a filthy look from Mrs Immigration, who
then turned to me and pulled a face. A face that said - where’d you find her?
Importing Trisha, Fi had much better luck.
The customs guy clearly fancied her and kept asking about her name and where it
was from, why was she called that?
He’d then wistfully look into his computer
screen repeating it ‘Fee ownAAA, Fi (pause) O nA.’ Before asking for the third
time if we were married or just friends. If it ‘d been North Africa I’d be
writing this alongside my new camels.
We hit the highway (in darkness) fully
expecting corrupt police or the elusive bandits that we’re yet to see anywhere.
Luckily an overnight stop in Copan was quite close so no dramas.
On arrival in the town the first three
place we tried were booked up. Usually after a 12 hour drive not without it’s
stresses, arriving in a town you don’t know in the dark, hungry, tired and
being without accommodation, would be a trial to say the least. Three months
ago we’d be in all kinds of panic. This night we calmly went about our business
with our evolving Spanish and eventually found a little place that even had
somewhere safe for Trisha to sleep.
The next day on the road to La Ceiba for
our ferry to the Bay Islands we practiced a new technique called ‘the smile and
wave’. Along with being the murder capital of the world, Honduras has a
reputation for police that will always find a way to extort money. As we’d
learnt, reputation precedes these Latin American countries and the reality is
often much more sedate. We had also been through too much to be worried about
corrupt police – the game was on!
The first technique for checkpoint
avoidance was to hug the car in front concealing our US plates that can
sometimes make us a target. By avoiding eye contact you can sail through quite
easily. If there’s no car to hug and the police official puts his hand up for
you to stop, this is when you employ ‘the smile and wave.’
You simply grin like an idiot, wave right
back and drive straight past, pausing only to look in your mirrors at an irate
official kicking the dirt. We managed to get all the way to La Ceiba port
without being stopped once. It is of course all about timing and technique. Too
obvious and they may come after you but this is Latin America after all, so I
don’t think they can be bothered.
The port has a secure car park so we were
happy to leave Trish for a few days and jumped on the ferry for our pleasure
cruise across the Caribbean that unfortunately for us, turned into a scene from
The Perfect Storm.
As the boat rocked and rolled against the
increasingly large swells, the chundering began all around us. Fi and I talked
very little and just kept staring at the horizion while we tried to keep our
stomachs in check.
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| Stormy waters |
(FK) I actually felt okay for once as the
fear of capsizing overpowered the seasickness. However, the ferry ride proved
to set the tone for further boat excursions and my continual feeling of being
on a boat permanently for the next week.
We were pleased to arrive in Utila and
Utila Dive Centre, the dive school we were diving with, met us at the dock and
took us to where we’d be staying. We were doing our advanced course, which cost
$299 but included four nights accommodation and two extra dives. A pretty good
deal no matter where you are.
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| Utila town |
It felt so good to know we were getting
back to the ocean. After a couple of fun dives we got stuck into our Advanced
course – five dives consisting of buoyancy, navigation, night dive, deep dive
combined with a wreck and drift combined with naturalist – they sure do give
you value for money on Utila. The proceeding storms had left the sea conditions
pretty rough so we were fortunately/unfortunately confined to the bay with
pretty straightforward dives but challenging surface conditions and near life
and death experiences of trying to haul our arses back on to the boat. Perhaps
not the type of exhilaration we were after but fun never the less and helped us
notch up our 40th dive.
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| The Haliburton wreck |
We were comfortably settling into island
life having booked into a $10 a night guesthouse with plans to do more diving.
This was until we spotted a poster for free diving and a two-day course. There
are mixed views in the diving community on this sport, those who seem to be
anti and never done it and those who have and are converted. Whatever side you
sit on, the thought of diving to 20 metres without a tank on and just a breath
of air had us shit scared, so we signed up. Gulp.
Tex (yes from Texas) was our tutor for the
course and owner of Apnea Total Utila. His opening gambit to the course was “free
divers have created a mystic around the sport, encouraging people to think it
is dangerous and that only the few are capable of doing it. Making it an elite
club to be part of. Well, I’m here to prove it’s totally safe and a sport for
anyone to do and you will be able to go to a depth of up to 20 metres by your
second day.”
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| Tex AKA Poseidon |
I was somewhat skeptical, having only just
got the hang of going under water with my snorkel a few weeks previously. After
a classroom session on physiology, yoga like breathing techniques and watching
some awesome freediving videos, we went home to practice our ‘breath-up’. The
next day I was half hoping that the sea would be too rough to go out on but low
and behold, it was like a millpond, so off we went. We arrived at the Haliburton
wreck, one of the 30metre scuba dives we had done a few days previously. We
both managed to get to 12 metres by the end of the two-hour session and could
clearly see the top of the wreck and scuba divers watching us with interest. Tex then went down to 30m and had a little swim around the wreck. Everything
in your mind is telling you that you need to breath, your body is giving you
signals but the reality is that your breathe up creates the right conditions to
do this and you have more than enough oxygen in your body to stay underwater a
lot longer.
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| What it looks like underwater |
Although I was pleased with what I had managed
to accomplish, it was not reached comfortably and I confessed to Neil
afterwards that I didn’t think free diving was that enjoyable or really for me.
What I actually meant was – that really mentally pushed me like nothing else, I
was totally out of my comfort zone and I don’t have the confidence to go any
deeper. You see, free diving makes you face your fears head on. There is
nowhere to hide and only yourself to trust in – my head was scrambled.
(NK) I must say at this point that I have
rarely been prouder of Fi. Free diving is a very mental sport and in all sports
it is often the mental part that is the toughest. It’s not just about being
focused but learning to handle one of your most instinctive fears, the fear of
drowning. Your brain and your body, work together to send signals in an attempt
to scare you back to the surface. They want to keep you alive. Your
capabilities and mammalian dive reflex, however, are able to push you deeper
and for longer than you often realise – if of course, you can stare the fear
down and say no to the signals.
Not an easy thing to do 40ft below the
surface when you’re convinced you have no air. It reminded me of the fears you
face before a fight. The signals that make you go weak and increase your heart
rate. All the things you don’t want to happen if you’re to perform well. Your
body and mind basically try to betray you. They create physiological impulses
to make you flee the situation and push fear and doubts to the forefront to
convince you that it’s a bad idea.
It’s extremely hard to be confident in
these situations and extremely easy to back down and run or make excuses.
That’s why I felt proud. I was very scared myself and felt the signals, but
have been through them before fights, so they now have a familiarity. It made
me very happy to see Fi going through that same battle with herself and
winning.
That night it was my birthday and we’d been
invited round to dinner by Ella and Pablo, an English girl and a Guatemalan guy
who were living on Utila while Pablo became a scuba instructor. We kept bumping
into them and Fiona had decided in her head that we would be friends after the
first time we’d seen them.
They cooked us a great birthday dinner and
a few beers and a bottle of Flor De Cana later we’d become firm friends. Their
toddler Bo even came out to join the party before we left in the early hours of
the morning. Our mentor, Tex, had luckily given us a get out card as it was my
birthday and had kindly offered to move our next session by a day to
accommodate our hangovers.
Tex knew exactly what was going through our
minds on the second dive, I think he is actually part Jedi.
“I bet you’re thinking there’s no way you
can possibly go deeper than 12m, but you will.”
This time Lisa, another free dive
instructor came along and we benefited from both of them coaching us. I learnt
that even at 10m and with two wetsuits on, I’m negatively buoyant as I let go
of the line to see if I would sink or rise. I sank.
We also worked to improve the way we moved
in the water in terms of efficiency. After doing some more dives Fiona reached
a record 16m. Then it was time for fun as we practiced black outs and how to
treat a free diver that has a surface blackout. We were also shown how to do
the Jesus Christ. Instead of pulling or swimming back to the surface you simply
lie back and stretch out your arms in a cross. The water and air in your lungs
does the rest.
(FK) After overcoming my fears, the second
day of diving left me absolutely buzzed but also very calm. I can see why this
sport becomes very addictive. I learnt so much more than just how to dive deeper
in water on only one breath. I learnt a lot about myself, my capabilities, how
to face my fears and overcome them.
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| All done |
(NK) A great day of diving and Fi’s depth
record was capped off by a yoga session with Lisa, making us feel very
mind/body connected. It’s rare to meet special people like Tex and Lisa and
privileged is the best word I can think of. We left them feeling better
versions of ourselves with another new appreciation and perspective on life.
A reoccurring theme that keeps cropping up
on this trip is appreciation. When you stop thinking about the things you want
or don’t have and focus on the amazing things you do have. Yourself, your
health, each other, family, friends, the world around you. They’re all that
much better when you give them the appreciation they deserve.
