South America and South Africa

Utila is a small island (approx. 8 miles long, approx.  2.5 miles wide) in the Caribbean Sea about 18 miles off the Hondurian mainland. It is best known for its very affordable dive operations in a tropical setting. This is actually why I found the destination in the www as I wanted to integrate some scuba diving in my trip without paying a fortune. As the prices are comparatively low there are about 90 % backpackers and 10 % “normal” tourists, mainly Americans.The majority of both groups is involved in some kind of scuba-diving activity. Utila has about 2,500 inhabitants and 17 (!) dive shops, i.e. operations offering scuba diving courses or trips. It praises itself for not accomodating any hotel chains and I consider the size of the hotels and guesthouses as still small. The main road on which at least 95 % of the hotels and eateries are located is about two miles long. The bigger part of the island is not accessible and I am guessing that the paved roads on which motorbikes, golf-carts, apes (motorized tricycles) and bicycles are riding are totaling six miles. (I am 100 % sure that this will remain the one-off instance of my life that I had a car pick-up service on the apron of an airfield after a commercial flight (not quite a limousine though).)

According to my mind it often happens that tropical islands are first discovered and conquered by backpackers (“Backpacker Stage 1”) and then by “normal” tourists accompanied by the big international hotel and fastfood chains (“Marriott Stage 2”). Then at the latest the characteristics of these places are altered and they are look alikes of the other places suffering the same destiny. (Several times I was asked whether I have been to Central America which I erroneously always denied. This is actually not true as I was in Playa del Carmen in Yucatan/Mexico in 2007 but obviously I consider this rather as a Northern American vacation than a Central American. And without ever been to the Ballearic Islands or for instance Gran Canaria, both islands belonging to Spain, I reckon it is not very different there.) The infrastructure will be (re-)created or  substantially improved, the overall revenues generated on the islands will rocket whilst the income of the islanders might slightly increase and their culture will be changed forever.

The idea of getting wealthy without working too hard and having too much at stake is to buy prime location property in “Backpacker Stage 1” when the prices are still low and sell in “Marriott Stage 2” to the developers, when the big investments are under way. As Utila seems so be still in the first half of that cycle it might be worthwhile to put some money on the table, still limited risk, and see how the investment develops in ten years or so. One might feel slightly uncomfortable and unsure whether this is really the side someone wants to be on but, hey, “if I don’t do it, someone else will do it” and pecunia non olet.

Why is Utila not the Next Big Thing?

The island is well known for its migration grounds for whale sharks and the first dive centre was set up 20 years ago in 1991. There was ample of time to develop it from an insiders tipp to a major dive destination which it is not despite all the tourists who are all here only because of diving.

My dive buddy Ralph, a gentleman from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, who has seen the world on numerous business trips and now on plenty dive trips is still looking for a place where he can buy a house and do scuba-diving whenever he likes. We both agreed (he could form his opinion based on the experience gained in more than 1,000 dives, I only based on my prejudices, but this is a different story) that this won’t be Utila, as the diving was not so great, notwithstanding the beautiful reef and the variety of corals. The simple reason is that the marine life was not so lively and colourful as expected as there were hardly any (big) fishes (only in the marine park on the northern side, which is protected and therefore fishing is not permitted).

Today in the afternoon when I was at the beach a guy came out of the water holding a syringe and showing his disgust when throwing it into a garbage bin. Obviously he just found it and hadn’t used it to shoot some drugs.

You might find that the photos I shot (see under the tab “photos”) look actually quite nice and I agree because otherwise I wouldn’t have published them. However, if I had pointed the lense of the camera (sometimes only slightly) in a different direction without even changing my position or if I hadn’t zoomed in you would have seen for instance the morass filled with junk, the shelter in decay, the gutter filled with a disgusting liquid and garbage, the cobweb alike electric installation, the backside of the beach covered with scrab metal on any of those photos.

Does it matter?

Maybe not, because it is authentic. An islands in the Carribean Sea is not a manicured golf course. It is imperfect and it is supposed to be. The reason for traveling lies in the differences and not in the similarities. If you ask me rather an Utila than a Playa del Carmen.

As Ralph said: THERE IS MORE IN LIFE THAN MAKING LIFE FAST

Today I did something I read about 20ish years ago when it was rumored that loony Michael Jackson bought a saltwater tank in which he lies completely sheltered from sounds and light. (I know, it is silly to waste precious brain capacity with saving such useless no-no-information.)  It sounded to me and I guess it was intended that finding your refuge in such a tank is a coffin-like-experience and people doing that are not very, ahhm, trustworthy.

Just a few words to the concept: a water tank about twice the size of a person is floated with water about one foot deep. An enormous amount of salt is diluted so that the solution has a salt-concentration similar to the Dead Sea and is fully saturated. Any additonal salt wouldn’t be absorbed by the water but would sink to the bottom of that tank. Bacteria and viruses are killed by the salt and also an UV treatment so that the level of disgust is kept accetably low. However, the result is that the person in the tank is completely buoyant and doesn’t feel any force of gravity. And since there are also no sounds and, if someone wishes so, no light it feels like floating in the big nothingness.

I had to take a shower, wash my hair (something I just did 30 minutes earlier but as the facilities were well maintained and very clean I complied with the procedure) and then had to go into the water just wearing my birthday suit. (Even swim-gear would provide too much buoyancy so that  the free-float experience would be disturbed.) The body-warm water actually felt somewhat slippery, almost slimy, like over-concentrated dishsoap. Well, I managed to lay down without doing the slapstick thing I used to do and then did what I can do best, namely nothing. I relaxed my muscles, floated, controled my breathing and tried to control my impatience. After about 5/6 of the time in my legs and lower back tensions loosened I didn’t even know that they existed (the tensions not the legs and back). Music set in when the hour had passed and it was time to re-enter the world. I am sure I had a big smile on my face when I was floating to pay the 30 bucks for the 60 minutes, at least it felt so. (http://www.floatutila.com)

There are similar tanks in London, Manhattan and many other cities and it is highly recommended to try it out if you have the opportunity as long as the price is still reasonable (USD 30 was actually a special price, normally they ask for USD 55).

http://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/mensch/0,1518,447811,00.html