Some places are dis­con­cert­ing, and it’s hard to pin­point why.

I guess Utila is one of them.

From San Pedro de Sula, we took a bus to La Ceiba, three hours away. Ah, San Pedro… Great place but for the fact it’s boil­ing hot and that it’s not safe at all at night. When we woke up, before going to the bus sta­tion, we looked for some food because we were starv­ing. No luck. Not a panadería in sight. We bought a few cook­ies and a Coke at the bus station.

When we arrived in La Ceiba at 1:00 p.m., we real­ized the bus ter­mi­nal wasn’t much of a terminal—there wasn’t even a bath­room, much less some food around. We took a taxi to the boat ter­mi­nal. There, same story: it was in the mid­dle of nowhere and there was no food but for a small con­ve­nience store.

It was 2:00 p.m. and the boat to Utila wasn’t until 4:00 p.m. Trust me on that one, not the most inter­est­ing wait. It was extremely hot and we just sat around out­side with our back­packs. Hun­gry, on top of that.

The Princess II, the boat that trav­els twice a day between La Ceiba and Utila, is dubbed the “vomit comet”—no need to explain why. We were the last ones to board and I ended up seat­ing out­side, at the back of the boat.

I’m lucky to be very com­fort­able on boats and in the water in gen­eral but I can see why so many peo­ple get sea­sick. It was a tough hour-long ride, against the wind and against the waves and the boat, despite its size, wasn’t steady at all.

Before board­ing, we were a bit wor­ried because accom­mo­da­tion is quite lim­ited in Utila and that there seemed to be quite a few grin­gos going to the island. But we quickly under­stood that except for a hand­ful of back­pack­ers, the rest were for­eign­ers liv­ing in Utila. In fact, in the boat, peo­ple all seemed to know each other. We even left 30 min­utes late because a fam­ily called the cap­tain to delay the depar­ture until they arrived.

We found a hotel eas­ily on the Main Street and quickly real­ized that Utila may not be our par­adise. For a start, it was much more devel­oped than we thought it’d be. I guess in my mind, Utila was going to be like Caye Calker (a small island in Belize) or Ko Muk. Scratch that. Although not big in size, Main Street was jammed with golf carts and motor­bikes and a stroll turned into a “watch behind you” game. The num­ber of dive shops and the some­what aggres­sive mar­ket­ing reminded me of Ko Phi Phi. Finally, it didn’t feel like being in Honduras—or any­where in Cen­tral Amer­ica for that mat­ter. Span­ish isn’t the first lan­guage but Eng­lish is by default. I had expected a mix pop­u­la­tion of Latin and Black Caribbean—it turned out that Utila was mostly grin­gos own­ing businesses.

It felt strange. It felt like step­ping into a dorm where every­one has been liv­ing there for months. Peo­ple weren’t exactly warm and wel­com­ing. In a way, it reminded me of the movie “The Beach”: a bunch of grin­gos build­ing their com­mu­nity and pre­vent­ing other peo­ple from join­ing it. To add to the impres­sion, a lot of women looked like the crazy British girl in said movie.

On our first day, we decided to go to one of the two beaches—a log­i­cal and not-so-innovative idea on an island. We picked a side and started walk­ing until we found the beach. “Appar­ently you have to pay,” I told Feng when I read the sign at the entrance. We were con­fused and stepped in to have a look. Two min­utes later, a big fat guy called us out. “I need some money from you. 120 lem­pi­ras.” “Sorry, I’m con­fused,” I said. “Is that a pri­vate beach?” He didn’t even bother reply­ing and ges­tured us to get out. Which we did. I’m cer­tainly not pay­ing 120 lem­pi­ras ($6 but also the price of a good meal here) to go to the beach.

So we walked to the other side of the island, where we found a pub­lic beach. Well, kind of. A metre-width strip of sand, infested with sand flies. If you haven’t had the plea­sure to meet these lit­tle bas­tards, let me intro­duce you to them: sand flies are tiny crea­tures, barely big­ger than a grain of salt, but they bite like mos­qui­toes and leave red itchy marks on the skin.

So we ran to the sea to avoid sand flies. For­get about lying on the beach! The water was shal­low and amaz­ingly clear, and all kinds of fishes swam around us right at the shore. “It’s like being in a fish spa!” I joked.

Because there are a few upsides to Utila. I don’t want to be so neg­a­tive. While it’s not the par­adise I had expected, the sea is great and the water is very clear. You can spot all kinds of crea­tures, includ­ing huge crabs right by the side­walk at night. The sun­sets are amaz­ing. The guest­house where we are stay­ing has a small pier with a bench and a cou­ple of ham­mocks and I could spend my days there. I like the weather: it’s very hot but still breezy. Like in most islands, the dress code is lax and I just bum around in a light dress, sweat trick­ing from my fore­hand, my hair messy and tan­gled because of the humidity.

So Utila isn’t what we expected. It’s cer­tainly not the place where I’d overstay—I don’t like the vibe and I don’t like feel­ing like I’m an intruder (an impres­sion we’ve never felt in places like San Pedro for instance).

But we are trav­el­ers. I don’t regret com­ing here because that’s what trav­el­ing is all about: see­ing places first-hand, past the hype.

Utila isn’t par­adise. But maybe the next stop will. Who knows?

Beach in Utila

Beach in Utila

Sun­set in Utila

Sun­set in Utila

Wait­ing for the Boat in La Ceiba

Leav­ing the Mainland

Arriv­ing in Utila

On the Pier

Sun­set in Utila

Utila

First Beach (the pri­vate one!)

Clear Water

Pub­lic Beach

Fishes in Clear Water

Chepes Beach

Main Street

Wel­come to Utila

On the Pier

Sun­set in Utila

Sun­set in Utila

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