Back on our island home and unpacking our backpacks...

Hello friends and family! I know - it has been a while since I’ve updated my blog and it’s been two whole months since we arrived back on our beautiful island home in the Caribbean - but after a fabulous but exhausting four months travelling around Asia I really felt the need to unwind and settle down and unpack my backpack.

Trav and I are happy to be back on our Caribbean island home of Utila

Happily, it didn’t take us long to slide back into the laid back Caribbean lifestyle here. Trav is diving and I’m trying to perfect the art of balancing fun, relaxation, and work – yes work - I actually have to do some because my next novel won’t write itself and my travel features all have deadlines!

This is our fourth extended stay on the island of Utila and our time spent here now adds up to a full year - but the time passes so quickly – and I can’t actually believe we are now into May 2016.

During our first week back on the island it was my birthday. I celebrated with drinks on the dock bar at Ecomarine dive centre and was thrilled to catch up with so many dear friends. Later we all went out to dinner to the Foo King Wok Restaurant. It was a fun night and I didn’t mind one bit that I got a year older. My present this year was a bicycle. I haven’t owned a bicycle since I was about 12 years old but it is a fun and fast way to get around the island. I love it – and now have a shopping basket fixed onto the front too!

My fun and delicious birthday dinner at Foo King Wok Restaurant

Birthday drinks at Ecomarine Dive Center bar with my lovely friend Tara

My birthday present - I love it!

The rest of March whizzed by - filled with sun and fun and diving and snorkelling and boat trips and picnics and BBQ’s over on Water Cay – one of the small islands off Utila and a favourite spot for spending time on the beach and catching up with friends.

On the 1st April we were so excited because two of our sons, Ben and Iain, were arriving from Edinburgh UK with their lovely girlfriends, Hayley and Brogan. They were to spend two weeks on the island with us and they were looking forward to lots of sunshine and fun and diving.

Ben and Hayley and Brogan and Iain

We had a great time introducing them to the island and to all our lovely friends. We went on a rum-crawl taking in all the infamous bars on the island like Rehab and Skid Row (and getting the t-shirts) and we had fun horse riding and swiming and paddleboarding and jumping and swinging off the dock into the sea as well as spending quite a few days out on the dive boat with Ecomarine.

Ben and Iain are already qualified dive instructors and the girls wanted to do their Discover Scuba Diving courses. One of those days out on the boat turned out to be very special indeed because we spotted and swam with a whale shark and, not one, but two pods of dolphins. It is such a joy to swim so close to these beautiful and wild creatures. Thanks to David Thatcher for the great photos taken on the day of my first whale shark and dolphin close encounter!

During their stay it was Iain’s 23^rd birthday and we celebrated with a day at Coral Beach and with lunch and cocktails and birthday cake at Neptune’s Bar and Grill.

Meanwhile on the other side of the world in South Korea, our middle son, James, who also has a birthday in April, was soon to celebrate his 25th birthday. We sent him our love and wished him a happy birthday from afar. This was his birthday photo - and he looks like he's having a good one!

Over the weekend during the 'kid's' stay we all rented a private island in the Cays – a small island called Little Cay – and although we did spent a considerable time lazing about in the sun, drinking cocktails and eating BBQ food, my husband Trav and son Iain also spent a lot of time in the crystal clear and warm water of the house reef teaching Brogan her Open Water Diver certificate!

Little Cay - one of the tiny private islands off Utila that you can rent and have all to yourselves...

Congratulations to Brogan who is now a qualified Open Water Scuba Diver!

The two weeks with Ben and Hayley and Iain and Brogan went by far too quickly and soon it was time to wave our loved ones off at the airstrip on Utila. I can't even begin to tell you what it meant to Trav and I to have two of our sons with us on the island and we hated to say goodbye. We hope to see them again somewhere in the world maybe later in the year, but they have busy lives and demanding careers, and so if things don't work out it could actually be a long time before we see them again. I try not to dwell on that because I miss our sons so much and I'm so happy to have shared these fun times with them and their lovely ladies.

Then it was time for Trav to get back to diving and for me to get back to work. I’m working on a new novel right now and it’s had a few stops and starts over the past few months, what with with all the travelling and fun and adventures we’ve been having. So it’s time I got down to some serious writing...... but then it was Captain Steve’s birthday...... and we were invited out to a beach BBQ and party. So the fun goes on - and the new novel is getting written - but slowly. You can see my problem here!

Now we are into May and to Trav and I that means two things – it is time for a visa run and it’s also our 33rd wedding anniversary. Both those things together means a trip off the island and a reason to celebrate.

Where to? Well, we have made plans to go over to the USA for a few weeks.

You might remember that this time last year we planned to visit Miami and the Florida Keys from Key Largo down to Key West (which we did by Greyhound Bus). We then decided to go onto New Orleans and extend our trip further by spending almost a month in the Bahamas.

The entire trip was a fabulous a bucket list dream. You can read more about that particular trip by clicking on the highlighted text for my blog post on Florida and on the Bahamas or you can go and read my travel guide to New Orleans and The Florida Keys published online with award winning LLm lifestyle magazine.

We are not sure of our entire travel itinerary this time around - which in my opinion makes a trip more flexible, spontaneous and fun - but we do know that we will have to head first over to the Honduran mainland so that we can take an international flight to Houston Texas. Then, after an overnight in Houston, we will fly onto Las Vegas!

We have not been to Sin City before - so it’s another fabulous bucket list destination – and we are SO excited about that.

So do please come back here and join me soon for an update on the trip!

Love, Janice xx

Leaving Utila - our island paradise in the Caribbean Sea

Having finally caught up with posts on this blog - and after three months of being here on our island paradise, Trav and I are preparing to leave once more!

Our bags are packed...

Our 90 day entry visa has almost expired and the rainy season has begun so we are flying back to Glasgow Scotland - for a period of just less than 48 hours in order to catch up with our family - and then we are taking a flight from Edinburgh to Bangkok Thailand.

We plan to follow the sunshine and do some island hopping down the Andaman Sea on the south-west coast of Thailand all the way down to Malaysia and from there we hope to fly on from Kuala Lumpur to the Philippines. This will be a four month trip and our most ambitious to date.

Here on the island of Utila it is still incredibly hot - around 30 deg C most days - but the rain and the increased humidity makes it hard to be outside as the damp weather brings out all the biting mosquitoes and sandflies - and if the electric supply goes off as it did this morning then not having the fans whirling overhead makes it hard to be inside too.

So we are flying away and plan to return to Utila directly from South East Asia at the end of February. When we get back here we will be given another 90 day entry visa. It is possible to get an extra month extension on the island - but most people who call Utila their adopted home leave to do a ‘visa run’ to the USA, Mexico, the nearby Cayman Islands, Guatemala or Belize and then come back in again to claim another 90 day entry. We'll plan to do a visa-run ourselves in 2016 as we hope to spend most of the summer season on the island, right through until mid-September when we hope to return to Scotland for a few weeks to catch up with family and friends.

This trip was our third visit to Utila and we have now spent a full nine months here on the island. This year we were here for the months of March, April and May and then we returned for August, September and October. Last year, in 2014, we spent three months on the island during July August and September. Utila now feels familiar and like home to us.

Utila - an aerial view

Back on Utila and on the dock at our beloved Gunter's Ecomarine Dive Shop

We have made lots of friends here from all over the world. Trav dives at a fabulous and fun PADI dive shop called Gunter’s Ecomarine in the Sandy Bay area. We absolutely love the laid-back, no-shoes, island-time lifestyle and we have at last, after trying out four different rental properties, found a ‘casa’ that perfectly suits us and that we can rent long term.

I have blogged extensively about the island of Utila and how much fun we have had here but you might wonder what it is – when Trav and I have travelled to so many other islands all over the world –what makes this small island so extra special?

On the website Utila Guide.com the island is described as ‘the Caribbean as it used to be’ and ‘Key West of 20 years ago’ and I feel this is a true description as it certainly feels retro and timeless here. But I’m sure that it is only a matter of time before the rest of the world will discover Utila or Utila will catch up with modern commercialism and it will change. There are already cruise ships visiting the neighbouring and larger bay island of Roatan.

Happy to be back on Utila celebrating with our island friends

Where is Utila? Utila is the smallest of the three Bay Islands situated in the Caribbean Sea just off the coast of Honduras in Central America. Utila is unique, quaint and unspoiled, some may call it basic, with no chain stores or fast food businesses. There are reportedly less than twenty cars on the island and people get around on foot (bare or flip-flopped) or on a scooter or golf cart.

The infrastructure on the island, electric and internet, is patchy at best and fresh water is a precious commodity. We buy our drinking water every other day in five gallon drums. Fruit and vegetables are brought to the island by boat from the mainland (Honduras) on a Tuesday and a Friday and shops sell out quickly so the advice is to buy a good-looking vegetable as soon as you see it or it will be gone in the blink of an eye. There are limited health care facilities on the island; there is a clinic and a pharmacy but anyone needing hospital is taken to the mainland by boat or plane. There is opportunistic crime here, just like anywhere else, so you have to be aware of it without letting it make you edgy. The one small bank on Utila is visibly guarded by armed police both inside and out but half of the time, just like the electric supply, the banking systems are down and you can’t use your plastic to withdraw money. Things happen. Things don’t happen. It’s all part of island life. One thing, of which I am sure, is that there is nowhere in the whole world quite like this beautiful crazy laid-back piece of paradise.

Laid back... no shoes...

It is said that once you have experienced life on Utila you may not ever want to leave. Sure, there are nuisances, like mosquitoes and sand flies and power outages, but none of that stuff can ever blight the bliss of truly living in the moment, of waking up to sunshine every day, of not having to wear many clothes or worry about fashion or hair styles. Erm… maybe that’s just me?! The scuba diving here is the best in the world (Trav says so!) and there are many dive centers on the island. But if you don’t dive then the snorkeling is fantastic because the water is warm and clear.

The snorkeling and diving is fantastic... as is my new full face snorkel mask!

There are lots of activities to get involved with on land too. Sun worshiping on the island and particularly on The Cays (tiny tropical islands just off the coast of Utila) and relaxing in a hammock with a good book are favourite pastimes of mine and so is yoga practice, which I discovered here for the first time last year. There are also social groups that welcome people to help with animal welfare, nature and wildlife conservation and beach clean-ups, etc.

On Utila, the days pass effortlessly into evening but do be warned (see the uTube videos I’ve suggested you might watch at the end of this post!) that Utila has a bit of a party reputation with the young diver/backpackers that come here and so Utila by night can be a noisy affair, as there are lots of bars selling very cheap alcohol and playing music. But it doesn’t have to be ‘party island’ - if you prefer to watch the sun going down from a quiet chair with sea-view and with a rum in your hand - you can certainly do that too!

Our last few days on the island are about saying ‘bye for now’ to all the lovely people who make island life here so special – until we return for the new season in 2016.

I’ve picked out a few YouTube videos you might be interested in viewing as they show off this special island of Utila from the fun stuff to the amazing stuff.

Fun video on why 'I Love Utila'

Dancing happy peeps on 'Happy Utila!'

Tiny tropical islands off the coast of Utila 'Utila Cays'

Craziness in this now famous Marty and Ginsky video! 'Come To Utila'

Take a look at Revolutionary diving with Gunter's Ecomarine Dive Shop - 'Revolution'

Fabulous Whale Sharks of Utila video by Dave Thatcher - starring Trav!

Gunter's EcoMarine Facebook Page

Do pop back again soon and do please consider leaving a comment as I love to hear from you. Let me know if you watched the videos and what you thought of them? I promise to reply as soon as I get an internet connection. I'll leave you with our 'take off' and 'goodbye Utila' videos!

Love, Janice xx