Today is our last full day on Utila, and tomorrow we start the long journey home. We can’t dive, because you need a surface interval of 24 hours between diving and flying. So snorkeling it will be, except after our errands, of course.
We needed to get a few things done, namely grabbing some cash from the ATM, getting a half-size baguette for lunch, and grabbing a few things for gifts.
It hasn’t rained in many days, and the morning was hot and sunny. Around 10:30 we started walking into town.
It takes about 35 minutes of deliberate walking to get to the other side of town where the dive shop is. We aren’t going that far today, and we aren’t that focused.
We arrived at the bank probably around 11 am. At the cabana, we wondered how long it would take for the bank to refill the ATM since it had run out the night before. 10 am seemed to be a safe bet.
So imagine our surprise when not only was the ATM not refilled, it wasn’t even in the wall anymore. There was a bucket of supplies on the floor of the ATM vestibule, and there was a man visible through the hole where the machine should be.
The man in the hole said it would be back in service mañana, however, the man we spoke to across the street said Viernes (Thursday). Either way, neither of those days was gonna work out.
Luckily for us, the small town has another ATM, a stand-alone one, not attached to a bank. I’m not sure Nathan was aware of this, but I had seen it. We just hadn’t used it yet.
So, at the second ATM, I went into the vestibule alone. My first struggle was how to put the card into the machine. Most ATMs take the card on the narrow end, chip first. This machine of course was different. It takes the card sideways, on the long side, magnetic strip first. The only other time I’ve seen that was last year in Roatan, so it wasn’t a complete surprise. But of course, I’m navigating all these shenanigans in Spanish on the screen. The language option came up, oh thank god, and it asked dolares or lempiras. Huh. Well, we definitely want Honduran lempiras, so I select that option. Pin, done, and then it asks inquiry or withdrawal, again in Spanish. I’ve done enough ATMs in Spanish that I could fumble through. The next series of words however stumped me. I called Nathan in with his phone to help me translate. Not fast enough, however, and the ATM assumes we’re finished.
Ok, start over, and again we do it several times. Instead of lempiras, we finally select dolares, and presto, English. Pin in, and then withdrawal, checking account, and there we go. Lempiras in our hands.
We exit the ATM, and thankfully no line has formed, and we head to the bakery for our baguette. Bread in hand, we walk just a smidge further to photograph a map of the island and its dive sites, before we turn around to buy our gifts and a sack of chips for the afternoon. It’s hot and the water is calling.
We make it home by 11:45, make a sandwich out of our remaining ham and cheese, enjoy the last of our pineapple, and sit on our breezy porch. The breeze is decidedly more windy than breezy, but we decided to go out snorkeling anyway.
I didn’t make it very far, swimming against the wind and waves. I left Nathan to duke it out with the sea and I turned around towards the house. Nathan continued on, and it was my easy swim with the waves and wind in my favor that I had an idea. We could grab our snorkel gear, walk to the public beach, and do an easy snorkel float home, with the wind and waves pushing us all the way there.
How to communicate that to Nathan, who by this time is so far out there? I contemplated just grabbing the dry bag, heading out, and meeting Nathan, but that seemed pretty foolish. I’d just have to wait.
I tried flagging him down, whistling, but he heard and saw none of it and just came in on his own. I pitched my idea, and we toyed with going the other direction to Coral View because the walk home would be paved, but in the end, we wore our water shoes on the unpaved road to Chepes beach, put our shoes in the combo dry bag and surface marker, and floated home from Chepes. We saw two creatures we’d not yet seen on this trip. A large cushion sea star, and a chain moray in the grass.
After snorkeling, we showered, packed, watched the sunset, and had a pizza delivered from Pizza Nut for dinner. Tomorrow’s an early day, and Chover will be picking us up for the airport at 6:20 for our long trip home.
