Utila 2006

The lodge has 8 guest rooms, two dive boats, a bar, and restaurant situated on the main harbor on the south side. We enjoyed a package that included our hotel, 3 boat dives per day including night dives, and 3 buffet style meals per day. Coffee is served to your room if you wish.

The town of Utila at the harbor can be pretty noisy at night with the bars opening at 10:00 PM. There is no reef in the harbor but the water is warm and clear and good to swim in. Tarpon and needle fish would feed on the small bait fish hanging around the piers.

The divemaster sets up your gear and rinses it for you every day if you want. You could choose if you wanted a guided or unguided dive. The reef diving on the south side was fantastic. The reef is in very good condition with healthy staghorn, finger, and elkhorn corals on top, basket sponges, black coral and multi-colored encrusting sponges on the walls. Water temperature was 87F and visibility was from 50 to 100 feet. Most dives had no current and water was warm enough to use a "skin" or just a t-shirt. We saw the usual turtles, rays, eels, tropical fish, and corals. Some unusual things seen were toad fish, pipe fish, upside-down jelly fish, tunicates, and eagle rays.

And whale sharks. This is a once in a lifetime event. In between dives, we would look for the "boils" in the water caused by the larger fish feeding on the smaller fish that collect near the surface near a whale shark. A whale shark is a shark called whale because of it’s immense size. It is not really a whale but a shark that feeds on plankton near the top of the water column using it’s gills as a filter. It has small teeth but uses them only for mating. Whale sharks can reach lengths of 35 feet and weigh 555 pounds.

We would take the boat around to the north side for a dive, and then during our surface interval search for the boils. We saw whale sharks on 2 days. A research center called Whale Shark & Ocean Research Center www.wsorc.com was located around the corner from the lodge and gave a free presentation on the preservation of whale sharks, coral reefs and the waters surrounding Utila. The center hosts scientists from around the world and shares collected data on the habits and migration of the sharks.

We also saw large pods of dolphins and even a sailfish in between dives. Never a dull moment.

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IMG_7036 Staghorn, pillar coral, elkhorn all in good condition	IMG_7039	IMG_7047
IMG_7058 have not seen tunicates like here for a very long time. They were all over	IMG_7064	IMG_7073
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IMG_7141 Perterson cleaning shrimp, and oh yea, a grouper	IMG_7158	IMG_7165
IMG_7189 Pompano	IMG_7191	IMG_7197 Carl N
IMG_7199 Judy	IMG_7202	IMG_7211
IMG_7231	IMG_7233	IMG_7248
IMG_7258 haha. da little black fish from da cave. haha	IMG_7286	IMG_7297
IMG_7299	IMG_7306	IMG_7315
IMG_7317	IMG_7329	IMG_7340 Shutter speed: 1/125.00 F-stop: 32.0 ISO speed: 200 Focal length: 50.0000
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IMG_7356	IMG_7363	IMG_7378
IMG_7379	IMG_7389 upsidedown jelly	IMG_7402
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IMG_7457	IMG_7465	IMG_7488
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IMG_7511	IMG_7528	IMG_7539
IMG_7553	IMG_7565	IMG_7596
IMG_7613	IMG_7645	IMG_7649
IMG_7675	IMG_7684 whale shark date/time: 2006:10:26 11:43:59	IMG_7687
IMG_7689	IMG_7690	IMG_7692
IMG_7693	IMG_7699	IMG_7748
IMG_7753	IMG_7754	IMG_7755
IMG_7756	IMG_7773	IMG_7781
IMG_7948 Utila Fire Dept	IMG_7954	IMG_7958 Utila Cadilac
IMG_7971 Our dive sites	IMG_7973	IMG_7979 TV lounge area
IMG_7980 buffet	IMG_7983 airport waiting room	IMG_7992 Albert / divemaster / baggage handler / limo driver / wearing my cheap sunglasses :-)