Honduras is considered the cheapest place for diving in the world. Adjacent to Belize, they share the world number two reef, only next to Australia reef.
Utila is a small island in the north coast. You can take a ferry from Le Ceiba to reach Utila, or you can fly in. The ferry is not cheap...it costed me 25 USD for one way.
You can imagine there would be many diving centers in Utila, so severe competition. They usually will not charge you what you see on the price board, do negotiate. They all provide packages which include three night free accommodation, for PADI open water or advance license courses; I registered with Parrots Dive Center. The official price for advance course is 279 USD, but they charge me only 250.
I actually don't know how to swim, so tend to be nervous in the water. The instructors are very nice and patient, always let me take time to stabilize myself during training. I found the advance is actually easier than open water, as it just highlights some skills under certain circumstances. So all we do is just diving and diving, learn from practice.
Unlike open water license, no tests required for advance license, so no worry to memorize the details in the manual.
For advance license, you need to do five dives, deep dive and dive navigation are mandatory, and you can choose the rest three from wreck dive, fish identification, night dive, etc. All dive centers offer two free fun dives after the courses, so total seven dives for 250 USD. Most importantly, all seven dives are boat dives.
The first day, we did wreck dive and dive navigation. It is a 40 meter long wreck laid 30 meter deep in the sea. The wreck has became a "hotel" for the underwater species. The entire wreck is covered with seaweed and even reef.
As you can go deeper with advance license, so you get to see things usually can't be seen in more shallow wster, wrecks is one good example and also many big sea species. We first moved along the wreck, then we penetrated the wreck from different angles.
In the two days courses, I saw hundreds of sea snakes swinging, a very big sea turtle and numerous fishes and also played with jelly fishes. My instructor killed a lion fish and fed it to a snake-shaped big fish. I witnessed the fish slowly swallowed the lion fish.... Lion fish is considered pesticide for other sea spices, so you can kill it. Night dive is another good experience, thousand of small fishes clustered to my flash light. When we all turned off the flash lights, they became like fireflies all over us. Really spectacular.
Every restaurant here has a poster regarding what fish can be ate , or what can be ate with special condition and what can't be. I love sea food do much and it is cheap here.
I like diving because under the sea, you feel like you are roaming on the moon, you don't feel anything but your breathing.When I first did diving last year, I thought it is a very good activity for people who work too hard, and want to feel stressless. Hope I can continue to explore more under the sea.
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