The bus picked us up at 2am from the hostel in Leon. It was a small minibus, with eight passengers in total. It was not comfortable, with no headrests or reclining seats, or any of the comforts you would want from an overnight bus. The journey was 690km, and we expected to arrive in La Ceiba at 3pm, in time for the ferry to Utila at 4pm.

We quickly tried to get comfortable . Jayna lay on the floor while Ken lay on the small seat. It actually wasn't too bad like that, until our first stop, the border crossing to Honduras.

Trying to do maths at 4am was very hard. We had to pay an exit fee from Nicaragua of 120 cordobas, then we wanted to exchange the remainder of our cordobas to Honduran lempiras. Throw in our remaining Costa Rican colons, knowing the exchange rate for some currencies to the dollar and others to the British pound, and trying to avoid a bad exchange rate from a money changer, and it was a whole world of confusing brain ache. At the Nicaraguan side of the border, we didn't even have to go into the office. Our passports were taken, with the money, and returned to us with no exit stamp. We questioned this and were told it was fine.

The next office on the Honduran side took significantly longer. We had to pay 90 lempiras, or 4 US dollars each - more than we'd been told we needed. This meant that we didn't have enough lempiras or change in dollars, potentially a problem. We were finger printed, all digits and thumbs, photographed, and stamps were administered. The whole thing took an hour and we got a combination of change in lempiras and dollars. At least there were no forms to fill in, and no customs searches. It turned out that we were charged 4 dollars (or equivalent) rather than what we were supposed to be charged to enter Honduras because the office "had stayed open for us" . Hating border crossings, at 5am, we were on our way again.

Until 6am, when we were stopped by the police who wanted to check our passports. And then at 6.30am, for a toilet stop and change of driver. The next driver was much less smooth, or possibly the roads in Honduras were less well maintained. Either way, it was a bumpy ride. We stopped for breakfast at 8.30am but weren't given time to eat it, and the next stop was at midday for snacks to sustain us. In the meantime, we had another driver, and three films on a tiny TV screen to entertain us. We also got to know our fellow passengers a little. Despite everything, this was by no means our worst bus journey, and we managed to snatch some occasional bits of sleep.

We were meant to arrive at 3pm, but arrived spot on 4pm when the ferry was due to leave. Luckily, it was another case of 'hurry up and wait' and we were told to go and buy our tickets quickly quickly quickly, then we didn't leave port for another half an hour anyway. The crossing to Utila was spectacularly rough, with people being sick left, right, centre and front and rear. Thankfully, we were okay, possibly due to the lack of food. It was also incredibly hot inside the cabin, which didn't help, and waves crashing over the back of the boat kept many people away from the fresh air outdoors. We've had better boat crossings.

Some of our fellow bus passengers, Jess and Todd, Max and Agnes, Miriam and a French-Canadian woman whose name we couldn't quite catch, knew each other already, and had organised a deal with a dive shop called Parrots which they invited us to take part in . We'd done no research and were only too happy to see what was on offer. What followed was a tired and slightly confusing run down of options, discounts, hostels, packages, extras, and free t-shirts. In the end, we agreed to a 6 fun dive package each, with a discounted hostel a few minutes down the road near the beach, with some stuff thrown in. We drank rum, filled out paperwork and were driven around on a quad bike. We joined our fellow passengers later for a drink, before heading off for food before the dive shop's 'hog roast' was served. We'd smelt pizza earlier and therefore wanted that, so headed to the pizza place. Something had clearly gone wrong with our order as the staff kept apologising, and it arrived 50 minutes late. After a long, long day, this was not what we needed. Food knocked us out and we went back to the hostel for a long sleep.

Utila is one of the Bay Islands of Honduras. It is a 'backpackers paradise', combining diving, snorkelling, beach time, island life, with drinking, drinking and some more drinking . It was the most backpacker orientated place we'd been. We'd wanted to go for some diving time (and just a little of the drinking). The island had mostly english speakers, not spanish speakers, as apparently many people on the island are descended from people from England and Wales. This change in language took a little adjustment!

On Friday 3rd, we woke up late, had a late breakfast in a chaotic cafe, and got organised, booking our dives. We were having a cash access issue with the banks, for which Ken braved the queue for over an hour. This was frustrating but resolved the issue. In the afternoon, we went further along the coast to where there was coral and snorkelling spots. We got in and tried to snorkel, but weren't very successful. The coral was exceptionally shallow, so we navigated around the edge, coming across strong currents and waves which served to push us into or towards the coral. Not good and not safe. The wind picked up even more when we were snorkelling, making large waves and poor visibility . What we saw was very nice, pretty coral and some fish, but we couldn't stay in for long for our safety.

On Saturday 4th, we had a relaxed morning and prepared ourselves for diving in the afternoon. We had two dives on the south side of the island, both to 18 metres, and though they were close together, they were very different experiences. The first dive was from Eagle Ray Alley to Ron's Hole, lasted 52 minutes, and had strong currents, good visibility, and beautiful coral. We saw a hawksbill turtle which was awesome, plus a goliath grouper, queen angelfish, queen parrotfish and hogfish. The second dive was in Slumberland, lasted 42 minutes, had no current, less good visibility, and the coral looked completely different. We saw very little life at the deepest part of the dive, but a lot more nearer the surface. This included caribbean spiny lobsters, trunkfish, scrawled cowfish, french angelfish and atlantic spadefish. This spot was very close to where we had attempted to snorkel the previous day . We did both dives with Max and Agnes, which was nice.

On Sunday 5th, we woke up super early to get prepared for our dives. The first spot was on the north side of the island, called Spotted Bay and we saw three nurse sharks, as well as lots of caribbean spiny lobsters, jackfish, spotted drum fish, pufferfish, black derges, a huge tarpon, squirrelfish, parrotfish and a baby lionfish. The nurse sharks were particularly cool, one would swim close to us and seemed genuinely curious. He would also follow us along the reef, so occasionally we'd turn around and he'd be bringing up the rear, or would surprise us by swimming underneath us. The coral was beautiful and we dived along a wall, at 18 metres, with the dive lasting 61 minutes. The second dive was at Diamond Cay and we saw a juvenile hawksbill turtle, plus a huge green moray eel swimming along below us. We also saw drumfish, queen angelfish, cowfish, french angelfish and trumpetfish. Again, the coral was pristine and we dived for 48 minutes . We dived with Jess and Todd which was nice again. On the way back to Utila town, we stopped into one of the island's cays and had a veggie burger - which was actually a cheese roll, but it was very welcomed after the two dives! The boat back to Utila from the cay was rough, we were pleased to make it back to Parrots.

When we arrived, after dealing with our kit, we took a snorkel off the dock at the back of Parrots. We'd been told there were seahorses and we saw two! They were hanging around the base of the pier struts. The first was red and quite visible, the second was much better camouflaged. We hung around them for a while; the second one didn't seem to mind us being there.

We went back to our hostel for showers and creams for our ailments - during the course of the dives and snorkelling we managed to obtain several scrapes, rubs and cuts, with Ken taking off a chunk of one of his toenails. Ouch. We needed some down time so chilled out on the hostel's veranda for a while, watching the gentle waves roll in and the many tuk-tuks pass us by .

On Monday 6th, we did our final two dives in Utila, again with Jess and Todd. We had been scheduled to go to the north side of the island again, but due to the weather and currents, we'd been put back to the south side. The location of where we were diving also kept changing. The first dive was at Stingray Point, at 18 metres for 44 minutes. Here we saw a barracuda, looking mean, sergeant majors, brittle starfish, trunkfish, cowfish, lot of jellyfish including some which stung, butterflyfish, shoals of blue tangs, and of course parrotfish. The coral was nice with lots of fans underwater. The visibility wasn't fantastic, and there was quite a strong current which we initially swam into.

Our second dive of the day, and final one in Utila, was at a location called Big Rock, where we dived between two big rocks. We went to 16 metres and dived for 47 minutes. Here we saw spotted drumfish, cleaner shrimp, lizardfish, lots more jellyfish, a huge tarpon, parrotfish, hamletfish, squirrelfish, fairy bassets, honeycomb cowfish, and trunkfish . The visibility was better here, and the coral was lush. We could take our time a bit more to look at things, without being pushed around by the currents.

All in all, our diving experience at Utila was amazing. The coral was beautiful, the dive instructors were incredibly friendly and took good care of us. Parrots dive centre gave us a good deal, and diving was only marginally more expensive than in Taganga in Colombia. What let it down was the substandard and old equipment that Parrots uses. Pretty much everything that could go wrong or be damaged was - we had tanks half filled, regulators letting water in and air leaking out, leaking octopuses, leaking tank and leaking BCD. We had depth gauges which didn't work, snorkels with no mouth pieces, completely fogged masks, weight belts which kept coming undone, ill-fitting wetsuits and broken fins. Most of these things we dealt with, swapped, or fixed, but it was a pain every day getting new equipment and working out what we could trust and what was going to cause us hassle. This was a real let down and we were surprised by how bad the state of the equipment was.

As the new underwater camera could only be taken to 10 metres, we don't have many photos to share of our diving experiences. This was a shame but couldn't be helped without a significant technical upgrade! We hope you enjoy the pictures of the seahorses though. It was also a shame that we didn't see any whale sharks! But we can't have everything I suppose...

In the afternoon of Monday 6th, we napped a little, drank coffee, and congratulated ourselves on time well spent in Utila. We also got organised for our onward transport to the next stop - Copan!