GREAT SHARK DIVES
AT UTILA LODGE

Utila Lodge is located on a wharf on Utila Island one of the Bay Islands off the coast of Honduras. Rooms are basic but fine, the food is good, and the management and staff is there to please. One of the staff is Willie Waterhouse, a boat captain who is a authentic waterman and a real hoot. In the 1600's he would have been a buccaneer. It is almost worth going there to meet Willie.

One of the main reasons a lot of people go to Utila and Utila Lodge is for the whale sharks but there is some other fine diving there in addition to searching for the worlds largest fishes. Others visit Utila (not Utila Lodge) for the cheap diving packages and certifications. It is a temporary home for droves of European backpackers and more dive shops per acre than anywhere on the planet. The price wars for certification and diving got so bad that the government actually set minimum rates.

Getting there is not much harder than getting to Roatan and just as much of an adventure. (Adventure defined as a pain in the posterior) The best way is to fly to Mainland Honduras and board a small plane to Utila. Our plane was built in Russia and all of the controls are marked in Cyrillic....the pilot spoke Spanish. The more adventurous can take a ferry from the mainland but it is not encouraged as kidnapping is a source of easy money in poverty struck Honduras. The safest bet is to stick to the airways and airports.

Speaking of safety there is a decompression chamber on the island. The water at the resort is safe to drink, the divemasters careful, and the dive boat we used was in excellent shape. One night we were watching TV at the bar when to our horror we learned of the American couple left on the Great Barrier Reef. We certainly did not have these concerns with the operation at Utila Lodge.

Tony Eggleston and I went to Utila in the winter of '98 and had one of the most exciting hour and a half in diving's grand slam. In that period we were in the water with 6 whale sharks (saw numerous others), three manta rays, and a pod of dolphins....just why we went there.



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