Utila
They bused Honduras to get here. The diving was the point.
Logan
Utila is the cheapest place in the world to get certified, and it is. Two hundred and fifty dollars at Bay Islands College of Diving: the course, five dives, four nights. The advanced course was about the same again. Shipwrecks, thirty meters, night dives.
Breathing underwater is the strangest thing I have done. The sea is no place for us, and that is the gift. Animals who enter our world have to use our rules. Down there we use theirs. Eat or be eaten, sleep or wake, swim or drift, breathe or don't. Cheating with the tank, and still it feels free. The air runs out, so you stay in the instant. Thoreau had walking. This is swimming.
Two eagle rays in the blue, flying slowly and gracefully, and the only signal is a finger to the mask and a point. You catch them and fly their pace, and the question is what you ever did to deserve it. A peak. The sublime. Lionfish, lobsters, morays, anemones, starfish, sea turtles, manatees, barracuda, grouper. Wrecks, night, a hundred feet. Weeks earlier I could barely snorkel. The adjustment is the point. It is humbling, and it is powerful.