The Utila Experience

There is not enough time to do all the nothing we want to do.  -Bill Watterson

Gosh, where did I leave off?  It felt like time absolutely stopped this last week.  I made it as far as La Cieba on the northeastern coast of Honduras before holing up for the evening.  There are only two ferries a day going to my intended destination, so if you miss that 4pm, you’re SOL.

But that’s ok.  By then, I had discovered the baleada.  This national dish is made from a folded over tortilla with beans, cheese, sour cream and then anything else you could ever dream of putting into it.  I like them stuffed with eggs, salsa, avocados, maybe a little salad; I am a maniac for baleadas.  I am waiting on a baleada stand down the street from my hotel to open right now.  Anyway, the hotel in La Cieba made them, so I was placated.  Next morning, I caught the ferry in the rain to Utila Island.  I sat with three other backpackers on the boat, all of us heading to the same hostel, Underwater Visions, and we became friends almost immediately.  Arriving to the dock, I was greeted with a lovely surprise in the form of a familiar face.  If you’ve been paying attention, you might remember Carlos from the volcano boarding episode.  While I knew he was working now on the island, I was not expecting such a tailored and invigorating introduction to Utila from the get–I wasn’t even allowed to drop my bag at the hostel.  I was escorted directly to Skid Row, the diviest (yet hippest and boasting aaaaamazing calzones) of island bars, at 10 o’clock in the morning, to embark upon the Gufidy Challenge.

The Garifuna are descendants of the Arawak, Carib, and West African people, living in various parts of Central America, but there is a small, isolated population living on an island near Utila who have not really assimilated.  They are well known locally, however, for making a particularly strong and fragrant drink made of spice-infused rum called Gufidy.  I couldn’t possibly tell you what all the spices were, definitely cinnamon, coriander, eucalyptus leaves(?) some kind of bark and a bunch of others floating around.  It’s a complex brew, crafted and perfected over generations by a people with a dynamic history, representative of their unique culture and traditions, carefully procured now in Utila to coax 20-somethings from all over the world to take their shirts off and vomit their brains out.  From the depths of the bar is brought forth a “special blend” of Gufidy.  I don’t know what that means, but I take 4 shots.  That is the “challenge” which must be overcome if you want to reap the rewards.  Margret Atwood once sort of said, it’s “truly amazing what people will [drink], as long as there are a few [free t-shirts],” and she is probably right about that.  Actually, it wasn’t so bad.  And mercy was taken on me, allowing me to consume the 4 shots over an extended time period which I understand is now strictly against the rules.

Did I mention already that it was raining when I touched down?  Well it was.  I’d had some trouble packing in New York, because I needed clothes warm enough to get me from my house to the plane, but I didn’t want to cart around a bunch of winter gear on my tropical island paradise.  Unluckily or luckily, depending on how you look at it, it was raining and chilly on my tropical island paradise for the majority of my stay, so all of my warm clothes came in handy.  My swim/snorkel gear…not so much.  Instead, I passed many a pleasurable hour snuggled in bed, listening to the rain patter against the waves outside the window, and occasionally touching fiction again.

Most people come to the island for the scenic and cheap diving.  Some just passing through, others staying for months, completing advanced courses.  I find that the tourist vibe on islands around the world is generally very accepting, inclusive, and friendly, but here was especially so.  I don’t know whether it was the damp weather keeping us all sequestered in the same restaurant for breakfast and bars for dinner, but I felt like I was hanging out with old friends the whole week; people I’d known for ages, in an almost overly familiar place.  I also felt like I’d stepped back in time to some wild and debaucherous collegiate spring break I never actually took.  In other news, 30 continues to be weird.

Speaking of bars, there is an awesome one on Utila that definitely deserves a mention, called Treetanic.  Outdoors and multi-leveled, covered in rolling, intricate mosaics, this place would make Gaudi blush.  There will be pictures.

The weather was so poor, I didn’t even realize that my swimsuit was missing until the last day.  We were all sitting around at breakfast, considering the logistical feasibility of a game of mini-golf, when the sun miraculously…came out.  I went immediately back to the room, readied my snorkel gear, and then tore my bag and in fact the entire room upside down, unable to believe I had actually lost the most important component necessary for any island vacation.  Daunted but persistent, I put on a tank top and shorts and marched to the dock.  The water was cold.  And murky to the point of being virtually opaque.  I swam in about 30 feet before I freaked out about not being able to see beneath me and being too cold, and swam back, defeated.  I got the impression people thought I was a little nuts going out there like that in the first place; nobody comes to Utila to snorkel.  Snorkeling is for sissies.  People come to Utila to DIVE….and to get day-wasted.

After my snorkel fail, I rented a scooter and rode out around the island to a beach villa abandoned mid-construction.  The bleak grey, unpainted, and weather damaged stony facade was made austere by balustraded parapets and imposing roman columns framing a dramatic view of the sea crashing against the rocks below before being pulled back into the deep tranquil waters beyond.  Or more likely, the water just looked calm because it was so far away, because I wasn’t actively trying to navigate it.  It made for a profoundly lonely milieu invoking some foggy verse of Poe’s Annabel and her sepulcher by the sea.  I climbed the dark staircases all the way to the top, where, poking around on the balcony, I found incontrovertible evidence that someone had made one of it’s small, briny wind-soaked rooms into a home.  And that someone owned a giant machete.  Time to go.

Not far away, I’d spotted an islet set off from the land by water that didn’t look too deep.  I parked the bike under a palm tree and waded in.  I was wearing jeans, but the water was clear and for some reason I just didn’t care.  I transferred my shoulder bag to the top of my head and started across; I saw a man carry a goat across a river in India like this.  Once ashore, the place was less inviting.  Comprised completely of craggy, uneven juts of old, dead, sharp coral, the islet did not whisper but screamed gangrene.  I climbed around, enjoying the colorful barnacle community and cultivating my attention and balance, lest I should fall, impale a vital organ, and never be heard from again.  Sometimes, simply raising the stakes can make all the difference between an ok jaunt through a diverse snail habitat and zen single-mindedness.

To be continued…