Honduras is known for being one of the best (and cheapest) places to scuba dive in Central America. I had previously gained my Open water PADI diving licence in Turkey, so couldn’t wait to get to Utila, an island off the coast of Honduras, to complete my Advanced open water course. All we had to do was travel through San Pedro Sula, known as ‘the murder capital of the world’…Great….Thankfully we were travelling as a group of 7 now, and found the journey through the city to be safe, and uneventful, so don’t let its fearsome reputation put you off!

Utila
The easiest way to get to Utila is by ferry from La Ceiba if coming from the mainland. This takes about one hour and runs directly to Utila. There are lots of diving centres to choose from on the island, but we chose ‘Utila Dive Centre’, a fully licenced, professional company, who even put us up in free accommodation at ‘The Mango Inn’ for booking through them.

The diving on Utila is incredible! We practiced drift dives, peak performance dives, navigation dives, night dives, and even a deep dive down 30 metres to a ship wreck!

Sandy Cay
Next up was an ‘Am i dreaming? moment’. We rented our own private island! We had been using ‘The lonely planet guide to Central America’ as our main travel guide, and happened to come across an advert to hire an island through Air BnB. Between 7 of us this worked out to be about £12 per night, cheaper than some hostels! I definitely can’t recommend this enough!!

We spent 4 days and 3 nights on the island, swimming, sunbathing, fishing, chilling out, and being completely cut off from the outside world, heaven!

I could have stayed on Sandy Cay forever! But, it was time to hit the road again, and on to our next stop, Nicaragua!