Mrs H would love it right here

Final day on Utila. It really is a lovely place - not that I've made much effort to explore the whole island. Philippa has at least cycled around. But that's the trouble with staying somewhere swanky. No other spot on the island can top the views from our room and balcony - so why bother. That's why it will be so great * untruthful face* to get back to $15/ night rooms. We'll have much more motivation to explore the surrounding area then.

Anyway so back to what I have seen of Utila - essentially it's a one street island. The named this street Main Street - clever islanders. Main street has a beautiful little bakery, restaurants like the wonderful Big Mamma's cafe and RJ's ( lobster costs £7 - get in!). It has a cute cinema ' Reef cinema' which shows terrible movies.

On weekends the island men have big games of dominoes in the street. The game I watched for a bit looked pretty tense - the men had consumed a fair bit of flor de Cana ( that Nicaraguan rum) and I think there was money involved.

What's so lovely about the place - is there are also lots of random hand written signs advertising food or boat trips from people's homes. It feels really undeveloped - not at all like other parts of the Caribbean I've been to.

What has taken me a bit by surprise is how people sound. The island has a lot of White descendants of the early British settlers ( the islands were under British control until 1859), and English is the dominant language on the islands. But man it's an unusual dialect with a very broad carribean accent. Really unusual and lovely to listen to.

Anyway back to the hammock then, only one thing would make it more perfect, and that one thing would be sharing a G&T with my beautiful mum's. She'd love spotting the fish down below, and I suspect I could talk her into a lobster for dinner........£7 right - rude not to.

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