Kahlia had wanted to see the town and Mayan ruins on the border of Honduras and Guatemala at Copan Ruinas. The town is a beautiful colonial town set on a hill. The cobbled stone streets are perched on a hillside and the town square has been rejuvenated with a number of faux colonial hotels.

The ruins themselves were good but after having been to Ankor Watt in Cambodia everything else seems a little second rate. The highlight were the scarlet Macaws that have been introduced into the compound. Our first sighting of this rare and amazing (both in general and in size) parrot.

On our last day during our surface interval we motored around off the island like always looking for whale sharks. Everyone had been saying they had left and I had even forgotten why we were driving around. Then the captained swung the boat around and headed for a flock of birds feeding. Disappointment set in again after a few minutes of nothing but congregating birds and we turned towards home. Just as we swung around some yelled out, the water was boiling with fish movements. As the boat changed course yet again a great fin emerged from the water.

We all waited eagerly at the boats rear, snorkels and fins one, ready to dive in. The captain slowed the boat and we began to see a gigantic shadow emerging from the depths. We had to wait for a positive id, previously people have jumped in with a gigantic man-eating shark instead of the friendly giant they were hoping for. Ours was id as a whale shark and we hopped in.

This Whale Shark was a female of approximately 12-14 metres, 2 metres longer than the boat. Upon entering the water the shark turned to us to investigate… and kept coming and kept coming. It’s uncomfortable, to say the least, having a mouth, even without teeth, longer than you are heading towards you. In my hurry to move out of it’s path my fin came of and rested on it’s head! I plucked it off as it swam by and had to fight not to get swamped by the tail. (I tried to follow the “Whale Shark Encounter” guidelines but it seems no one told the whale shark about them.

It circled us twice before diving back to the depths giving us about 3-4 minutes to view it. The excitement and adrenalin of being in the water with such a huge creature prevented us from really taking it all in. Rather than sating our desire to see them it has only made it stronger. It’s one of my greatest animal encounters yet!

We are advanced divers! I’ll start this by saying PADI courses are a joke. After 70+ dives, we have done deep dives, night dives, gained control over our buoyancy… but still we need to pay $250 to prove it so people will let us dive with them.

We dove with Utila Watersports (everyone is roughly $250, Paradise Resort is the cheapest by far $230, we stayed there but didn’t dive with them as the bigger boats and better gear was worth the difference) who have the edge of offering 4 free dives after your course. Our instructor was fun and good and we flew through the course leaving time to just dive. The diving was average, we saw the good things from the boat! We encountered a pod of Pilot Whales and Spinner Dolphins and a Whale Shark!

Utila is small and not worth visiting if your not diving. No real beaches, some snorkelling and not much else. The islanders are hilarious with their Caribbean English (so difficult to understand we tended to speak Spanish to them) and “island ways”. Restaurants were usually opened 3-4 days a week, if your lucky they’ll post which days and nothing is opened before 8am (a lot of hungry morning divers). It was a relaxed break from Asia where if there is a  dollar to be made, 10 people are out trying to make it.

We left Granada behind us at an ungodly hour to make a run for the border and into Honduras’s capital, Tegucigalpa, before dark. The border crossing was uneventful. Although Kahlia was sure we had been sold down the river as you are only issued a piece of paper saying you paid the $3 entry. The Nicaraguan passport stamp is good for Honduras and Guatemala as well.

Our 5 year old travel guide, which we acquired for the princely sum of $2, has been doing really well until Honduras. Honduran buses are all independently run and each company has it’s own terminal, often nowhere near the next. This makes shopping around and transferring difficult without prior knowledge of the times, prices and locations, something our guide lacks. We made it across the  border and to the capital of Honduras, Tegucigalpa. But had no idea where we dropped or where we needed to go to catch the next bus in the morning.

After some aimless walking about we got a cab to the neighbourhood with the largest concentration of bus companies ( 5 years ago). The guidebook says it’s also a place not to venture into at night. We found a hotel, ate at a street barbeque (it was awesome) and chatted to some locals (who also were very worried we were here at night), before finding our bus company for the morning and retiring after a long day.