Right now I am in the middle of a bit of a dilemma. I am still in Utila, and have been diving everyday for the past 4 days. I love every second of it. Today I dove to my deepest depth at 30 meters to a ship wreck. It was the best dive I had had yet, until my next dive, where we swam within 10 meters of a Eagle Ray and followed a sea turtle for a few minutes. It was simply stunning. And that’s the problem…
Tomorrow I am supposed to leave Utila to head to Copan Ruinas. I am very interested in this quant colonial town and the ruins that are near it, but if I leave, I will leave Utila only two dives short of my Advanced Open Water dive certification. I’ve already cut a day from my time in Copan Ruinas and if I leave tomorrow I only have two nights. Prolonging it any more then that would make the stop useless due to the bus arrival and departure times. So basically, I am faced with the choice of either staying in Utila to finish my dives and live the easy life with a bunch of great people and then bussing straight back to Guatemala (to meet my girlfriend who is flying in) or leaving tomorrow with my advanced diving course unfinished but a chance to see more Mayan ruins and discover a new town for a couple nights. I see why so many people warned me about getting “stuck” in Utila.
I honestly have no idea what I am doing at this point and the ferry out of here leaves in less then 12 hours. I’ve got one more dive scheduled for this evening, a night dive that I am definitely looking forward too, and then I’ll be making my way to the closest bar and making this decision over a cold one.
Travis
Stay there its a no brainer, we saw Tikal which was great but i bet Copan is the same thing. Just stay there and look at your pictures from Tikal when you get done diving haha.
Adam Baird
What does the diving certification really get you and how hard would it be to get it some other time when you’re not going to see mayan ruins the next day?
Donna
I think you will regret it later if you don’t finish this dive class since you are so close to the end. You are enjoying yourself and the people you are with now. You may not have such a good deal if you move on. My advice is to stay where you are and fininsh up there. That’s one of the problems with traveling the world – so much to see so little time!
Matt
Well everyone. I decided to go to Copan Ruinas here on the boarder of Honduras and Guatemala. I am two dives away from the advanced class but if I had stayed today I would have just stayed until Tuesday and not seen anything new and probably been a bit bored for all of tonight and Monday. I can do those two dives whenever I want anywhere in the world and I will get the certification. I definitely made the right decision, it is amazing here, I even found some Americans to celebrate with tonight!
Honestly, the real reason I decided to leave was because my original goal of these 2 weeks by myself was to experience traveling by myself in a country where I don’t speak the language and see how much I enjoyed it for my future trips. Utila was basically an english speaking island with a bunch of Europeans and Americans and a few Hondurans here and there. Granted it was difficult at some points today, it all worked out great and now I’m in a beautiful new place.