Hilto
Registered
My girlfriend and I just back from a week at Utila Lodge, logging 17 dives between 5/30/04 and 6/4/04. While not perfect, it was pretty glorious its always glorious being away from the office, underwater, in the Caribbean.
The lodge: We booked pretty late and got a great deal (7 nights, 6 days, $699), and that fact notwithstanding pretty much had the place to ourselves (two family groups left after our first day of diving, one couple arrived to dive our last day, and one other guy pretty much spent the week getting certified so we didnt see much of him). Even when its full, it must be pretty sweet because there are only 8 rooms. The most we had on our boat was 10, and that included the DM and the captain.
The boat: Their usual boat is being repaired, so we were on the Tiburon all week a venerable old workhorse that sits pretty steady in the water because of its weight. That turned out to be a good thing during the week we were there. It also has side exits, so youre never very far from a point of egress. The captain, Willie, is an umpteenth generation islander and is said to be one of the most skilled whale shark spotters in the business. Our DM was from England, but had been on the island for a year so knew the place pretty well.
The diving: Diving is a crapshoot, as we all know, and our luck was not the best. It was very windy the week we were there (people we met in the airport returning from other dive holidays in the western Caribbean reported the same thing), so that kept us from going to the east side to look for the really big critters. Our DM and her partner reckoned it was the windiest they had seen it during their year on the island. People had seen whale sharks the week before we arrived, and another boat saw one our first day out, but they eluded our boat. We did most of our diving along the south coast of the island. The wind made the water pretty rough and the visibility suffered a bit, too. A couple of dive sites on a couple of days had 60 to 80 foot viz, but for the most part it was around 40 feet. The reef on the west end seemed much livelier than on the south side. There were many of what you know and love down there Creole wrasses, damselfish, parrotfish, etc. My eagle-eyed girlfriend found a nice spotted scorpion fish, and I came across striped burrfish which sat graciously for a long time and let me peer into its remarkable green eyes. Many trumpetfishes, including one that was, I swear, a full yard long. And on the subject of big, we saw a stingray burrowing down into a sandy patch that looked like it had a good 5 foot wingspan. The package also included two night dives (again the wind kept us from straying far), each of which included a nice octopus sighting, but neither of which seemed quite as opulent as the night dive we had from the Inn of Last Resort (Roatan) last year at the same time.
Utila Lodge is right next door to the Bay Islands College of Diving, so it is very easy to do dive courses. We did our Nitrox certification in the course of the week, and got it for a good price.
So, bottom line: great facility (clean, nice staff, good and plentiful food, highly recommended), great week (even if wind conditions kept it from being perfect), and Im sitting at my desk writing this, wishing I were back there.
The lodge: We booked pretty late and got a great deal (7 nights, 6 days, $699), and that fact notwithstanding pretty much had the place to ourselves (two family groups left after our first day of diving, one couple arrived to dive our last day, and one other guy pretty much spent the week getting certified so we didnt see much of him). Even when its full, it must be pretty sweet because there are only 8 rooms. The most we had on our boat was 10, and that included the DM and the captain.
The boat: Their usual boat is being repaired, so we were on the Tiburon all week a venerable old workhorse that sits pretty steady in the water because of its weight. That turned out to be a good thing during the week we were there. It also has side exits, so youre never very far from a point of egress. The captain, Willie, is an umpteenth generation islander and is said to be one of the most skilled whale shark spotters in the business. Our DM was from England, but had been on the island for a year so knew the place pretty well.
The diving: Diving is a crapshoot, as we all know, and our luck was not the best. It was very windy the week we were there (people we met in the airport returning from other dive holidays in the western Caribbean reported the same thing), so that kept us from going to the east side to look for the really big critters. Our DM and her partner reckoned it was the windiest they had seen it during their year on the island. People had seen whale sharks the week before we arrived, and another boat saw one our first day out, but they eluded our boat. We did most of our diving along the south coast of the island. The wind made the water pretty rough and the visibility suffered a bit, too. A couple of dive sites on a couple of days had 60 to 80 foot viz, but for the most part it was around 40 feet. The reef on the west end seemed much livelier than on the south side. There were many of what you know and love down there Creole wrasses, damselfish, parrotfish, etc. My eagle-eyed girlfriend found a nice spotted scorpion fish, and I came across striped burrfish which sat graciously for a long time and let me peer into its remarkable green eyes. Many trumpetfishes, including one that was, I swear, a full yard long. And on the subject of big, we saw a stingray burrowing down into a sandy patch that looked like it had a good 5 foot wingspan. The package also included two night dives (again the wind kept us from straying far), each of which included a nice octopus sighting, but neither of which seemed quite as opulent as the night dive we had from the Inn of Last Resort (Roatan) last year at the same time.
Utila Lodge is right next door to the Bay Islands College of Diving, so it is very easy to do dive courses. We did our Nitrox certification in the course of the week, and got it for a good price.
So, bottom line: great facility (clean, nice staff, good and plentiful food, highly recommended), great week (even if wind conditions kept it from being perfect), and Im sitting at my desk writing this, wishing I were back there.
