Scuba and Gardening

I finished my scuba course on Wednesday with an amazing dive out on the North side of the island. The reef there is more diverse and populated with more fish species. It was beautiful. Then the boat captain got word of a whale shark sighting just a bit further north, so we took off to find it! The  best clue of a whale shark is a school of tuna feeding on plankton near the surface. This was cool to watch in itself. After 30 minutes of (nausiatingly) slow navigating around the feeding frenzy finally the captain started yelling at us to jump in the water. I jumped in with my fins, mask, and snorkel and when I opened my eyes the whale shark was directly below me! Probably about 15 meters or so, so not very close, but it is really hard to determine distances in the open water where you have no points of reference. Shortly after the whale shark appeared, it disappeared into the depths. But I am super psyched that I got to see it! 

After the dive I had to get my stuff together and make my way to the farm I am volunteering on. Well its not really a farm. And I haven't been doing much even in the way of gardening. I am working for and staying with an American couple, about 40 years old I would guess, who have been on this little (1/4 acre) of land in Utila behind the airport for 4 years. They built 3 mandala gardens, round gardens with pie-shaped segments, and planted some trees. The goal is to make it into a forest garden, but it looks to me like they are moving pretty slowly on getting other plants. Of course, its difficult to buy plants here, but still. So the main 'farm' project is building the soil up with organic matter, or compost. So every day I go out on the trails around the farm (there are no roads here) and collect several wheelbarrows full of fallen leaves. These I bring back and dump on one of the pie-shaped garden plots. I have also done a bit of weeding and a lot of carrying water. They do not have running water because they do not have electricity, so I have to go fill jugs with water from a nearby well. This is not water to drink, but for watering the plants and showering and washing dishes and such. 

I really like the couple. What they lack in acreage the make up for in enthusiasm and idealism. They have big plans to spead permaculture around the island, then around Honduras, then Central America. Utila is a beautiful place for it, apparently the island used to supply the mainland with lots of its food. And then the United Fruit Company did its banana research here, I have been told. It would be great to see the island embrace permaculture and become food secure, because the veggies you can buy in town that come in on boats are pretty sad looking. Anyway its just not clear to me if the two of them really have a plan to achieve their dream. They have lots of ideas, but not much in the way of implementation. I understand that they don't have much and whatever they need is hard to come by on the island, there is no Home Depot after all. But I just thought in 4 years they would be farther along. Their website implies that the operation is a bit more established than it is, www.fincatresanillos.com

I was originally going to stay here 2 weeks but I have decided to move on after just 1 week. I will be heading west, first going to the ruins at Copan and then onward to Nicaragua!