SCUBA Anyone?

While we were traveling around Guatemala, Tadd & I were reminded, by a random poster in a random backpackers hostel, that we had considered becoming PADI scuba instructors when we had finished our Divemaster in 2009...

So fate or whatever kicked in, and we found out that we had just enough time to whizz off to the island of Utila off the north coast of Honduras, and do just that.

We grabbed up our backpack and all our diver gear and jumped in the first collectivo headed the right direction...

I took this while we still had room to take pictures

After crossing the border to Honduras, without much formality, we avoided the enticement of the taxi drivers and packed onto another ex-school bus headed to Puerto Cortez

We jumped off that bus, ran across the road and onto the next bus for San Pedro Sula

And after yet another bus, we made it to La Ceiba... but sadly not it time for the 4pm ferry to Utila... so we had a night to enjoy the "delights" of this coastal town.

Utila's a great island, just 18 miles north of La Ceiba... full of backpackers and divers

With some interesting buildings

We spent most of the next two weeks either in the classroom, pool or shallow open water learning the ins and outs of safely teaching people to dive... and then we were ready for the two days of evaluations...

By this stage we were almost done and all very confident that we were going to pass.... Yay!

Tadd with our instructor Matt Awty

And me with our other instructor Rich Astley

We graduated amidst a great bunch of people at BICD... all-in-all a great bunch of people and fabulous instructors!!

There was quite a celebration with all our new instructor colleagues!

But before we knew it, it was time to make the slog back to Guatemala... our first mode of transport of the day... 

and Tadd's first Tuc-Tuc ride

It's amazing what comes aboard the ferry with you sometimes!

We thought we were pros on the overland travel thing... until we discovered that heavy rains had washed out one of the bridges just on the Guatemalan side of the border... so the resourceful locals had set up lancha trips for a small fee

All part of the adventure!!

So we made it safely back to Rio Dulce, Guatemala and to our boat... just in time to pack up and head north.