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.
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| On our way back to Utila, Bay Islands, Honduras |
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| Feeling excited to be back to our island home of Utila |
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| 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!
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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.
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| A tarantula spider in our house on Utila |
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| With my friend Giselle on Carnival Day |
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| 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.
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| Getting my new tattoos - no pain no gain... |
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| Leaving Honduras for the USA in late August |
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.
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| It was such a treat to buy a variety of fresh foods in the US! |
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| 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!
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| A view of the beach from Aruba restaurant |
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| 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.
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| Canoedling in British Columbia Canada |
So
do pop back soon to catch up with our exciting first ever trip to Canada!
Janice xx
