Diving with Maya and Scuba Steve

5:40 a.m. came bright and early and we groggily set to packing our bags, perhaps slightly regretting trading hours of shuteye for more drinks at the bar.  The sun was peaking out from the dark clouds over the Caribbean in a brilliant display.  We loaded our bags into a boat and headed to Puerto Barrios.

So early, but the view was so beautiful in the Livingston harbor.

After an hour in the boat, we arrived and transferred our bags to a van.  I happened to be sitting next all the bags in the front and I handed my friend’s bags up to them on the dock, but apparently everyone, even people I had never met before, expected that special treatment from me.  As a result of my dockhand duties, I was the last one to get into the van and had the very last pick of seats.  I had to sit up front in the middle next to the driver on a hard seat with minimal legroom for the seven-hour ride to Ceiba, Honduras.

By the end of the ride it felt like my sore tailbone and the rock hard seat were in direct contact—no seat cushion, no body tissue, no anything separating them—and I was so glad to never see that seat again.  We bought a ticket for the last ferry to Utila at 4 p.m. and were disappointed that the price $23, was more than our travel guides suggested it would be.  Since it was only 2 p.m. when we arrived, we had to wait around for two hours.

After a one-hour ride through the bucking waves to Utila we finally arrived.  As usual, we were overwhelmed by hotel representatives at the end of the dock.  Everyone wanted us to stay with them and dive with their shop.  They were offering us free stays while we scuba dived, help with our luggage, and complimentary cold beers.

We narrowed it down to two choices.  One was $279 and the other was $269, but when the more expensive one offered to put us up in our own private cottage and drive us to it in a van so we didn’t have to hassle with our luggage we were sold.  To top it off, their dive shop, Utila Dive Center, was also the biggest and most respected on the island.

The crew enjoys the porch of our posh cottage.

We’ve been happy ever since making that decision.  Our cottage is amazing—the key features include the air conditioning, the kitchen and the porch with hammock.  Our dive instructor Maya is perfect.  She is a Dane who decided she didn’t want to work in an office in Copenhagen so she came to Utila five years and now makes a living diving.  Fittingly she is blond haired.  Maya speaks English with a bit of a British accent and curses frequently, a combination that is disarmingly attractive.

Several other dive instructors assist Maya since our group is so large.  Among them is Steve, a middle aged Canadian.  Steve is a goon.  Steve takes the beer rule a little too seriously.  The beer rule says that if an instructor sees that a student has left their scuba tank standing up and unattended to, then that student owes the instructor a beer.  Since the air is under high pressure in the tanks it makes sense to not leave then standing up in danger of tipping over, because the nozzle could break and send the tank flying like a rocket.  A fair rule, but Steve tries a little too hard to catch people.  Today he called Kate out on it even though she was only a few feet away from her tank.

The beer rule applies just the same for students who put their masks on their forehead inadvertently because for scuba divers this is a signal for distress.  When we where getting out of the water he called me out for the mask rule too and said I owed him a beer.  I don’t plan to pay up, because, in my book, we’re even because I deserve a beer for putting up with him all day.  Steve also tries to act cooler than he is and is always flashing the Hawaiian hang loose symbol.  Our relationship was rough from the start because when I met him, I said “Oh your name is Steve, like Scuba Steve” (the action figure in Big Daddy), but he didn’t look amused and said “Like I haven’t heard that one before.”

As big of a goon as he is, Scuba Steve hasn’t ruined by scuba diving experience and we have been enjoying ourselves.

Of course we have been doing more than just diving and studying here.  Wednesday, we went to the Tree Tanic, a sprawling bar that is a cross between tree house and modern art museum.  It was ranked the number one bar in the world on Lonely Planet Web site.

This afternoon we are doing our first real dive after doing three days of training in shallow water and watching cheesy PADI videos.