We met Faygon, the boats owner early Friday morning and arranged to be taken by boat by one of his friends to a little town close by to clear immigration, while Faygon picked up the boat we would be taking to Belize. We waited for this friend for a while, who didn't show, so Faygon arranged for one of the guys who was milling around the dock we where waiting at to take us. The doc by the way was a boat petrol station. When we got to immmigration the officer didn't agree with what we were trying to do without some official paper work, so we had to get the boat captain on the phone to explain the situation. After a small wait we were all stamped out and ready to go (we took the captain's passport with us as well and got him stamped out without being there - never in Australia).
We got back to the pier just after 10am, ready with all our luggage and some beers and supplies for the nice, calm, two and a half hour boat ride. And we waited...and waited...and waited...We thought he was going to be there by 11 by the latest. Faygon is native to Belize and speaks mostly Creole, Spanish and some very hard to understand English. He has the best intentions but prefers to stretch the truth a little if he didn't do what he said he would. We ended up waiting until nearly 2pm before he finally arrived! We were all quite agitated when he turned up (that is being nice), after being 3 hours late and also we could see him from a distance mucking around with the boat one doc down for about an hour which didn't help. He finally turns up with the Captain and they begin to explain that the weather had turned and that if we left that afternoon we would face 8-10 foot swell in a boat that was clearly not built to handle it. After some heated discussion, and some actual non fiction, we found out that we were never going to leave early in the day as the company he works for had been using the boat all day! That would of been nice information earlier.... We decided not to risk the bad weather and he promised we would leave at 7am the next day. We tentitively agreed and spent a little while trying to work an alternataive route over a warm beer or two, but at 2pm there was no way we were going to get anywhere near where we needed to be by the next morning to catch a different ferry from a different port - we had missed the once weekly ferry from Placencia while waiting on the doc. Another thing we were a little concerned about was the fact we had been stamped out of the country in our passport and didn't leave that day. We worked out later we had 24 hours to leave the country - we were pretty sure we would be leaving the next morning, kind of.
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| The "building" (ok, shack) on the right is the immigration office..... |
To describe the psyche that is Faygon a little more he had turned up in a glow in the dark t-shirt with a skull and cross bones wearing a pirate hat and the slogan "Instant Pirate - Just add rum"...classic choice of attire. We packed the boat and headed for a little village called Big Creek to clear customs with some offical paperwork for the boat. We imagined Faygon must of had to do some fast talking as they didn't reappear for almost an hour, finally we were on our way.
For the first part of the trip the ride was ROUGH as hell. The waves were all broken up by the reef. Just imagine, bounding from one wave to the next, we would pick up some speed, stop dead (everyone would brace themselves), be airbourne for a few seconds before CRASHING onto the next wave...over and over, wave after wave....... It took an hour or so to get past the first reef, and were told the ride would be a little more comfortable for a while. He was right - all was going well, not quite so jarring, the ride was quite enjoyable.
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| The first toilet break after we got to the end of the barrier reef. The sea here was peaceful |
With the wind picking up and us starting to get a little wetter and a little colder the captain told us we were about to head into some rain for "10 minutes or so"....10 minutes - huh!
The storm was terrible.... We had so much salt on our faces and the rain was so hard it actually hurt when it hit your face. We got absolutely soaked. Luckily we had a tarp in the boat so none of the luggage got very wet....I felt a little stupid for wearing shorts and a t-shirt at this point after teasing Steph for bringing a raincoat. During one of the many toilet breaks (standing at the end of the boat and holding on, hoping you didnt fall in!) the captain told us that what we had been going through was nothing. He said the sea had been so big one day that the same trip had taken him 16 hours in a catamaran.Which was hard to believe as we were being thrown around in a washing machine, but still releaving at the same time. On we went, for another hour or so until we finally spotted some land! The mainland of Honduras. Everyone was quite happy to see that one - except for Faygon and the captain as it meant we had moved a little off course during the storm. After some puzzled looks into the handheld GPS we continued on, and on, and on, until we found a few islands on both sides of us. Geez we were happy to see these islands, for the last 5 hours or so we were a little less than convinced that we were going to make it in one piece. Not long after we sight Utila; the captain was visibly excited and I think somewhat relieved. We pulled into the main doc of Utila shortly after 5pm. We went straight to immigration which was closed of course- it was 5pm Saturday afternoon! So we were told to come back Monday to be stamped in and offically enter the country. We jumped back into the boat and took a little while to find the doc of the dive shop/school that the four guys we were travelling with had made arrangements to stay at.THANK GOD WE MADE IT!!!
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| "The Hotsteppa", to the left are the dive boats we take out everyday |
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| Faygon & Junior in the Hottsteppa |
