April 25-May 2, 1998 

 On Saturday morning, April 25, Randy and I (Jack) met Mark (who had been there since 7am) at the Dayton airport.  Our flight was at 8:40am to Chicago and from there to Houston then, via TACA, to Roatan and finally to Utila on a third airline. The trip to Chicago was uneventful although at the Dayton airport the lady checking us in kept trying to send our bags all the way to Roatan. We won and picked them up in Houston where we met the last two of our Kittyhawk SCUBA Club members, Sharon and Tom. They chose to come to Houston non-stop from Columbus, Ohio.

Our TACA flight from Houston to Roatan, Honduras was an excellent flight. I started with a rum & coke (Randy had a bloody mary). About 3 minutes later, the food and a choice of red or white wine (I took the red with my beef) came by. Just as we finished lunch and the last of our first drinks, they came by asking if we wanted refills. The second rum & coke was as good as the first. Then they came around again and Randy and I had a cup of coffee and a separate glass of Ameretto on ice. It was delicious. When they came back down the aisle, I tried the Amaretto on ice again to see if it was like the rum & coke, just as good the second time. It was!

 Well we landed in Roatan and were met by representatives from Carribean Air & Seaway. They took our passports and $2 and told us to go find our baggage. A few minutes later they showed up with our passports and asked for our luggage claim checks since we were still waiting for the baggage. When we turned this over to them, they told us they would get our luggage and we should just go through customs. Customs didn't even stop us. After a 5 or 10 minute wait, we went to our last plane, saw our luggage being loaded and climbed aboard a 14-16 passenger Russian plane. We left a half hour early (I love island time) since they weren't expecting anyone else. Ten minutes later we landed on a dirt airstrip on Utila, our final destination, after 4 plane rides and 11 hours of being in airports.

Once we landed on Utila and de-planed, we were met by Dawn. We gathered our luggage, piled it into a pickup truck, got into or on the truck and in less than 10 minutes we were at Utila Lodge. We walked around, checked out our rooms and then met with Jenny who welcomed us and gave us an orientation. Essentially, breakfast was at 7am, the dive boat would leave at 8am for a two-tank morning dive, about 15-20 minutes after returning, the lunch bell would be rung. This would be between 11:45am to 1pm, depending on when we got back from the morning dive. The boat would leave at 2 or 2:30pm for the afternoon dive unless there was a scheduled night dive. There is no afternoon dive if there is a night dive. Night dives are scheduled for Monday and Wednesday. Dinner would be between 6 and 6:30pm, signaled by ringing the bell. At that moment the bell was rung and we sat down for dinner.

The food was very good, plentiful and diverse, served buffet style for all meals. Breakfast was bacon and some kind of small sausage links with pancakes or french toast (you could also get eggs done anyway you wanted), toast, a fresh fruit tray with pineapple, papya, watermellon, etc. plus juice and coffee. Lunch was a wide variety of things such as soft tortillas with steak or chicken, a different soup every day, the fruit tray, etc. Dinner was like lunch, varied and good. On Thursday, before we left on the morning dive, a man came to the dock in a small boat with a freshly caught Wahoo. After some dickering on price, he gutted it right there and they took it in to the kitchen. That was dinner that night and it was absolutely delicious! There was always iced tea and usually lemonade available all day, with ice.             

And yes, we did do diving. You could get 17 dives in during a week stay (only 2 dives the day before leaving). It was not the "do nothing but dive" diving we had at CoCo View on Roatan 3 years ago where you got 4 boat dives a day plus all the shore diving you wanted. But I think only Mark did all 17 dives. I had trouble the first two days with headaches but missed only Monday's night dive. Taking Sudafed (thank's Mark) starting Tuesday morning cleared everything up and I had no more headaches. Some of the more interesting dives included Black Hills Sea Mount (94',36 min), CJ's Drop Off (88', 47 min), Church Bank Sea Mount (80', 41 min), Tarpon Hole (46", 43 min) and Iron Shore (35', 57 min). The last one had huge swarms of thimble jellyfish so dense they blocked out all light . One swarm went from the surface to around 30-35 feet and was 15' in diameter. Even Albert, the Dive Master, said he never saw anything like it. At Iron Shore, one could jump from shore into about 30' of water. But the waves crashing against shore would crush you before you could get under. (See the far right picture, below). Luckily we got there off a boat.         

At the sea mounts we saw a turtle, a beautiful pair of spotted rays swiming together and lots of little stuff. Sea mounts are pinacles that come out from the deep, several hundered to several thousand feet deep around them. The ones we dove were in 40-50 feet of water at their top. At Tarpon Hole, we swam with dozens of Tarpon, some in the 5 foot size range. They didn't let us get too close but it was still a very nice experience.

After all the diving, and talking to the parrots (one says "Help! Help! I'm caught in the Kelp"), we packed-up and headed for home. The first leg was again on the Russion plane, with full airconditioning (they even supplied the "fans") for the short trip to Roatan. From there on TACA airlines to Houston and then back to Dayton via Chicago. We were up at 5:30am and got to Dayton around 11:30pm. Even with the 2 hour time change, it was a long trip. Not finding any whalesharks was a major disappointment. It changed the evaluation of the trip from an 8-9 out of 10 to around a 5.

Randy's list of Momentous Moments:

I'm not saying another word.