Island life, reef expeditions and a hurricane…

It seems like I blinked and three months went by...

After our last visa run to the US and Mexico (which you can read about HERE) we returned once more to the island of Utila, the smaller of the Bay Islands off Honduras for our fifth three-month-long stay on this beautiful Caribbean island since we first came here in 2014.

On our way back to Utila, Bay Islands, Honduras

Feeling excited to be back to our island home of Utila 

Flying over Ecomarine Dive Centre!

During our previous three months on the island in March, April, and May of this year, my husband Trav completed a PADI Staff Instructor course at Coral View Dive Centre. This time around, we were returning to Utila so that he could take up a voluntary position teaching scuba diving to students on a reef conservation management expedition at Coral View Dive Centre. 

Trav’s internship over a period of eight weeks during the summer was a fantastic opportunity for him to gain valuable experience working and teaching scuba diving as a PADI Staff Instructor.

When the expedition project was over, Trav also completed his IYT Powerboat Captain Course. I’m so proud of him - what a busy year in which he has achieved so much!

While Trav was busy teaching scuba diving, I was busy too working on my next novel entitled ‘Island in the Sun’ which I hope to publish later in 2016. During that time, when I was researching and writing about a hurricane in the story, we actually had a hurricane warning for our part of the eastern Caribbean Sea!

Hurricane Earl had started out as a tropical wave and, during my research watching the National Hurricane Centre website, I watched it progress to a tropical storm and then become a hurricane. Trav accused me of conjuring it up!

Hurricane Earl

Everyone on the island began to prepare for Earl’s arrival in earnest by cutting down trees that might fall on power lines or properties, moving items like diving equipment away from the dockside, battening up beachfront properties, taking boats to the safety of the lagoon, and of course planning hurricane parties and mixing hurricane cocktails.

With only a few hours to go before Earl was expected to hit our island, the hurricane changed course - and we got a day of wet windy weather instead. But of course other places were not so lucky and our friends in Belize reported quite a lot of damage to palm trees and property but thankfully no-one hurt.

Our last few weeks on the island were spent at a more leisurely pace, riding our bicycles around the island, getting a couple of new tattoos (me) and spending time on the dock with our lovely friends at Ecomarine Dive Centre – our home from home on Utila. We also had lots of parties on the beach and BBQ's and movie nights on the dock and we had lots of fun at carnival time. Once, I even got to swim in the sea close up to a pilot whale and her baby and several times I got to catch tarantulas in our house and put them back outside on the porch. All part of the amazing aspect of island life on Utila!

Our bikes parked outside Rehab Bar

Steve 'Daddio's' birthday beach party on Utila:
Photo by Dave Thatcher

Ecomarine dinner at Mango Tango Restaurant Utila

Trav and Steve at Ecomarine Dive Centre

Having a drink on the dock of the bay at Mango Tango

A tarantula spider in our house on Utila

With my friend Giselle on Carnival Day

Happy days out on the Salva Vida with Trav and Ecomarine

My new tattoos came about because a guest tattooist called Jeff Dott from the USA came to Utila and, after seeing his work, I decided to finally get my 'mermaid and diver' tattoo done on my thigh and, to cover the scar on my foot, a 'marine' montage with a shell, a starfish, a sand dollar and a sea turtle.

Getting my new tattoos - no pain no gain...

Leaving Honduras for the USA in late August

We left Utila in late August when our three month visa once again expired and we flew to the US. We stayed for a week in Florida on the east coast at Lauderdale by the Sea – a quiet little seaside town that is a bit of a throwback to the 1950’s. We rented a little self-catering apartment opposite the beach and we chilled out for the whole week.

On the beach in Lauderdale by the Sea, Florida

Our small rental and pool in Lauderdale by the Sea

The small town of Lauderdale by the Sea Florida

It was such a treat to go to a big US supermarket and to see the huge variety of foods available. After our long stay on a small Caribbean island that only got supplies by boat twice a week, we could hardly believe our eyes. We bought steaks and sausages and cheese and vegetables and lots of other fresh yummy foods.

It was such a treat to buy a variety of fresh foods in the US!

Trav at the BBQ

We enjoyed shopping for food and cooking for ourselves in the BBQ back at our apartment. We did eat out a couple of times however and we took walks on the beach and lazed around in the sun at the pool and we slept - we did a lot of sleeping to make up for the sleep loss on Utila - where we were woken every morning by our natural alarm clock of ear-piercingly loud cockerels crowing outside our bedroom window at around 4.30am!

A view of the beach from Aruba restaurant

Having beers and burgers and enjoying live music at Whisky Tango Bar in Fort Lauderdale

Revived and refreshed, we set off on our next adventure by flying from Fort Lauderdale to Vancouver Canada, where we were to stay with family for the next two weeks. My Uncle Ed (my mum’s brother) and his wife Dawn have, over the years, often invited us over to stay with them at their home in Hope, British Columbia, so we thought we’d take them up on their kind offer at long last and visit.

Canoedling in British Columbia Canada

So do pop back soon to catch up with our exciting first ever trip to Canada!

Janice xx

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