The next morning we were still tired. The whole night it had been noisy outside. Roosters, chickens, motorcycles, boat engines, loud music kept us awake for a good portion of the night The alarm went of around 5.30am. We got up, packed our bags and then headed to the boat that was going to bring us to Puerto Barrios, the port town of Guatemala.
The boat ride took about 30 minutes. Upon arrival we were greeted by a guy who was waiting for us to bring us to Honduras with a shuttle bus. He was waiting for more people to arrive, but they didn’t show up. Jannik and I had our own private shuttle to Guatemala. I could tell by the driver’s face he wasn’t happy, but he departed anyway.
Two hours later we arrived at the border. We got off to get our passports stamped, but meanwhile our driver started to offload our luggage from the shuttle. I asked him what he was doing and he told us he couldn’t bring us all the way to Honduras as we were only two people, he said he needed a minimum of four. I told him we understood, but that he should have told us before doing so. We got on to antoher shuttle that was already quite full of people.
The driver of the next shuttle promised he would make some room in the back so I could fit in the bus. I ended up having one of the bst seats on the shuttle which was good. Migration at the Honduras border took a while and included getting our finger prints scanned. Once we all had our stamps the ride continued.
Half way we stopped at a Texaco gas station. The gas station was heavily guarded, far more than anywhere else we had seen so far. Even the banks in Guatemala were not this well protected. There were about four guards with shotguns protecting the station. The gas station itself was the best we had seen so far, looking even more luxurous than the gas stations at home. We had some food and then continued on to La Ceiba, the town where the ferries depart from to the Bay Islands.
We arrived at La Ceiba around 3pm, about an hour before the last ferrry was going to depart to Utila, the island we were headed to. Once we got to the ferry we were told the ferry wasn’t running today. When we asked why they told us the ferry was broken. We asked whether we could get the ferry tomorrow, but the guy at the office said ‘maybe’, which didn’t sound very confident.
We didn’t feel like staying in La Ceiba with the chance of having to wait there for days before the ferry was going to run again. We found a guy who wanted to bring us to the island with his private boat for 10 USD more than the price of the ferry. We were with a group of eight people and we all agreed this would be a better option. We waited for about an hour and then he told us to grab the taxi’s that he arranged. We had to pay for those taxi’s too for a set price which seemed too high, but we had no much other choice.
The taxi’s drove us to the other side of the port where a small speed boat was waiting for us. We got onto the silly small boat and waited there for another half an hour. More backpackers started to arrive and get onto the boat. It was clear the guy with the speed boat was trying to earn as much as he could with this boat ride. Finally we left around 16.00.
The boat ride was anything but pleasant. The guy already told us we would get soaking wet, even though he assured our bags would stay dry. The bags were wrapped in a piece of plastic wrap in the front of the boat. Once we left and got onto the open sea, we noticed what he meant. Waves were hitting the boat from the front like crazy and the warm salt water was hitting our faces over and over again. Thankfully we were wearing life vests, cause I wasn’t sure at that point whether this boat was going to make it to the island.
According to the boat guy it was going to take about 90 minutes to get to island. He also assured us the waves would get smaller after a while. Both statements turned out to be a lie. The waves kept hitting the boat and the ride took two hours and fifteen minutes. We finally arrived at Utila, soaking wet, when the sun was already setting. Most people on the island couldn’t believe we came on this small boat all the way from the main land, but at least we made it.
Once we got off the boat I found out that my backpack was quite wet. Thankfully my small bag was still fairly dry, which was a bonus. We grabbed our bags and before doing anything else we sat down and had a beer at the bar. Afterwards we walked over to a dive shop that was recomended to us where we checked in and got a bed. Afterwards we had some food at an Italian restaurant. The food was decent and tasted really good after this crazy day of traveling. We went back to the hostel and had a good nights sleep.
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