Click here to explore a map of the Utila’s dive sites! Now you can explore the dive sites around Utila too! During my last vacation to Roatan’s sister island, I took the time to document the island’s dive sites in the TIREngine database. The result? A beautiful, Google Maps-powered interactive map. Zoom in on high resolution satellite imagery of the dive sites surrounding Utila. Click on any site to learn more information, or use the drop-down box above the pull up a full dive site description. Thanks to Alton’s Dive Center in Utila for helping me name and locate the dive sites! To other Utila dive shops and instructors: am I missing some dive sites? Do you have more information » read more «

…is apparently also a lie on Utila. I arrived on Roatan’s sister island via Captain Verne’s catamaran ($100 round trip Half Moon Bay, Roatan to Utila Town, Utila) on Tuesday. The plan? Hang out for a two nights, do a little skin diving, and return to the “real world” of Roatan on Thursday. Yeah, so about that plan… It’s Friday afternoon and I’m once again telling the lie, “Seriously guys, I’m leaving tomorrow.” This time, though, I mean it. Honestly. When I get back to Roatan’s blazing fast internet (think year-2000 speeds, as opposed to Utila’s 1994 speeds), expect deliciously debaucherous updates about my time here. I didn’t think an island could be more ridiculously bizarre than Roatan, but this » read more «

In case you haven’t heard, a massive 7.1 earthquake rattled Honduras Thursday morning, destroying properties across the mainland and causing at least six fatalities. The epicenter of the quake was directly beneath my beloved island of Roatan. You can read more about the massive quake here: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090528/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/lt_honduras_earthquake I would love to breathlessly recount the terror of being awoken at 2:30 in the morning by the cacophony of howling dogs and buckling earth, but unfortunately for my readers (but fortunately for me) I am in the States at this time attending my little sister’s wedding. I have no stories to share. Thankfully, word is that no one in West End was seriously hurt and properties damages were minimal. Business and life » read more «

Well this is pretty crazy… The thought floats to the surface of my consciousness as my bubbles cascade against the gnarled ceiling just inches above my head, slipping through invisible porous slivers in the ironshore and cascading through a impossibly interwoven stream of eons-old coral fossils to escape, unnoticed, on the surface twenty feet above my head. Twenty vertical feet, I remind myself. I am wedged forty feet inside a tiny fissure in the fore reef at Hole in the Wall dive site near West End, Roatan, Honduras. An ominous hallway of unexplored darkness looms before me, beckoning me to shed my dive light deeper into the cave. The last inklings of Caribbean sunlight illuminate my hands as I loop » read more «