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Circumstance, Coincidence and
Lizard’s Thicket
In Thailand, we met a young woman who had gotten her PADI Divemaster
certification in Utila, one of the Bay Islands of Honduras. Her name was
Laura, and she told us all about how inexpensive it is to take dive courses
on Utila, and about how wonderful the diving, the island and its residents
are. Through a series of circumstances not in our control (as usual) we
decided to pursue our Divemaster certification in the Bay Islands on Laura’s
recommendation, except we chose Roatan rather than Utila. We also opted
(again, more by necessity than anything else) to stay on the south side of
the island, close to French Harbour and several miles away from the West
End, where the majority of tourists and dive shops are located. Our research
into dive shops in the area left us with basically two choices. We could
stay and dive at the Coco View Dive Resort,
a very nice all-inclusive vacation spot, or we could dive with
Subway Water Sports, in the
Roatan Dive and Yacht Club, and find our
own accommodations in the area. Due to the length of our stay, we opted for
the latter.
Through another series of
coincidences, accommodations were fairly easy to secure. We shopped for
hotels via the Internet, and joined a Roatan discussion group through
Yahoo.com. On only our second day of getting the ‘RoatanNet’ discussion
list, I saw a posting for a woman who rents out three apartments located
downstairs from her waterfront home. We checked out her website, contacted
her via email, and instantly agreed to stay in one of her apartments for one
month. The woman’s name is Lucy Joyce, and if you’re going to hang your hat
in Roatan for any length of time, consider renting one of her apartments at
Lizard’s Thicket – it was well worth it.
The pictures on the web made it look very nice, and we were even more
impressed when we arrived and got to enjoy the view in person.
The apartments are spacious,
and renting at Lucy’s also gives you access to her beautiful swimming pool,
overlooking both the Caribbean and First Bight, a pretty bay. She also has a
workout room, and a nice boat dock. The neighborhood is private and
peaceful, and Lucy is a wonderful hostess, and has terrific stories about
her days as a New York actress and model. Lucy also kindly gave us lots of
information about the area, including steering us toward Subway Watersports
for diving.
Dive In!
Roatan has lots of dive shops, and they all offer classes. So everywhere you
go on the island, you see tourists with PADI manuals, busy studying to
become a diver, or an Advanced diver, or a Rescue diver, or a Divemaster.
Because we chose to dive away from the majority of the tourists, we were
treated to the luxury of establishing our own pace, at a great dive shop on
the south side of Roatan – a five-minute boat ride to the best dive sites on
the island. Gillian Notton, formerly of England, and Patrick Zingg, formerly
of Switzerland, own Subway Watersports. The Coconut Telegraph (residents
communication network) on Roatan works very quickly, so when we arrived at
Subway for the first time, we were already expected. From Gillian’s first
greeting “You must be Lucy’s guests” to our last farewell drink on Roatan,
what we didn’t count on was also a consequence of our lodging and dive shop
decisions. From Gillian to Lucy to everyone we met as a result of our
associations with them, we made good friends.
Our dive education began
rather humbly. We were PADI Open Water Divers when we arrived on Roatan,
with about 54 logged dives each. Which put us a long way from our goal of
becoming Divemasters. Patrick, our instructor for most of our two-month
stay, wisely sent us back to Lucy’s that first day with a ‘Scuba Tune-Up’
workbook, just to make sure we remembered the essentials before proceeding.
Our plan of action included taking the Advanced Open Water Diver course,
following that up with a Medic-First Aid course to learn CPR and Artificial
Respiration, and then finally working to become a PADI Divemaster.
Fun with Nitrogen
The Advanced Course was a lot of fun. You read five chapters in a textbook
on five different kinds of diving that interest you, then you go out and do
a dive in each of the five categories you selected. For our deep dive,
Patrick timed us at the surface putting together a children’s puzzle. For
those non-divers out there, as you descend to 100 feet beneath the surface,
you may be subject to the effects of nitrogen narcosis, a condition where
the symptoms resemble being drunk. So then he timed us again doing the same
puzzle underwater. Both of us were just a few seconds slower than at the
surface. About a month later, we did a deep dive during our Divemaster
course with Merritt, who was our instructor for the water portions of the
course. It was our intention to have Merritt complete the puzzle underwater.
This time, we were both affected by nitrogen narcosis, and were unable to
even open the bag holding the puzzle.
Fausto, Subway’s boat captain
and a Roatan native, was always entertaining, telling divers to “get off my
boat” when they were taking too much time (in his opinion) putting on their
gear. The constant flow of divers through the shop gave us a great
opportunity to meet interesting people from around the world, and make a few
friends in the process. We got to see many of the beautiful dive sites on
both the north and south sides of Roatan, and learned how to find the boat
again after a dive (a little stressful the first couple of times you do it).
One of our favorite dive sites was called Doc’s Dive, on the south side of
Roatan. Doc’s is a wall dive, with beautiful huge sea fans and purple
sponges big enough for a full-grown diver to hide in. Our first eagle ray
sighting on Roatan was at Docs, when the ray silently flew by over the reef
and over the top of us – cool! On one of our many dives at Doc’s, we came
upon a stone marker. Inscribed on it were the name and dates of a former
diver who apparently loved Doc’s Dive as much as we did. We found out later,
via the Coconut Telegraph, that our diver, Mr. Michener, was a frequent
guest of Coco View Resort.
Residents, Visitors and Dogs.
Lots of Dogs
When we weren’t diving, or studying, our social calendar was filled with fun
engagements, like dinner at a local couples home. They used to own a
full-time restaurant, but decided to offer dinner just one night per week to
a few locals at their home instead. Dinner was wonderful, and so was meeting
more Roatan residents. We were invited to parties – I think Gillian was
thrown at least 3 different birthday parties – and invited out for dinners
and barbeques and celebrations on a regular basis. We met residents who were
originally from the US, South Africa, Zimbabwe, various European countries,
and Canada. There were even a few who were actually from Central America.
We also met visitors to
Roatan, like Jeffrey, originally from California and New York, who was out
sailing his boat, the Venus Rising, around the islands. He even invited us
out for a two-day sailing adventure. We took some tanks and did a couple of
dives along the way. We sailed to the island of Barbaretta, a privately
owned island to the north east of Roatan. Sailing is a lot of work – at
least, it was for Jeffrey. We were fairly useless, but we did what he told
us and tried to be helpful. We mixed a good rum drink, anyway. And we did
enjoy the scenery and the sea, and saw a huge sea turtle surface around the
Pigeon Cayes, just off the coast of Barbaretta. From its size, we estimated
the Hawksbill must have been an least 80 years old.
It seemed everyone on the
island had at least one pet dog, and we made friends with them as well.
Jeffrey told us once that he judges the character of an island by the
character of their dogs – all the dogs we encountered on Roatan were very
friendly. Lucy’s dogs, Cleo and Buffy, became fast friends, as did Subway’s
resident dive dog Annie (although she had an annoying habit of trying to
bite people in the crotch) and Gillian’s adorable puppy Bear. After just a
few weeks, we began to feel very much at home, thanks to the warm people
(and the puppies) we had the chance to get to know.
School Days
Our Rescue Diver course included a lot of reading about taking care of dive
emergencies and potential problems. We did exercises where we rescued a
diver who was panicked, one that was lost, one that was unconscious
underwater, at the surface, etc… The more practice you get at doing this,
the more prepared you are in the event of an actual situation. Our first
effort at finding and rescuing an unconscious diver was horrendous. For the
exercise, Patrick enlisted the help of another diver who pretended to be
unconscious and missing at the end of the dive. It was a comedy of errors.
Jim jumped into the water to begin the rescue – without his fins or weights.
I saw one of the divers in our group floating at the surface, face down, and
assumed it was the ‘missing’ diver. I was wrong. She was just enjoying the
beautiful warm water, watching the fish swim by below. Luckily, I only
harassed her once or twice before I realized she was not our victim. We
finally found the young man and got him safely on board the boat, but in the
process learned that we absolutely needed to practice!
During our rescue practice, we
were diving on the north side of Roatan. The weather had been a bit windy to
the south, and Patrick and Gillian decided it was time for a road trip. So
for several days in a row, we got to play in the dive sites most visitors to
Roatan experience. Our favorite was the Bear’s Den, a maze of canyons and
swim-throughs that’s awesome for underwater photography. One of the swim-throughs
is 50 feet long. We also liked Lighthouse Reef, where the sea turtles roam
and in our case, so did the scrawled Filefish, a very cool looking creature!
After we finished our Rescue
Diver exam, Patrick went over the requirements for becoming a PADI
Divemaster, just to give us the chance to back out, I think. There are 8
exams on a variety of subjects, including fun ones like physics, dive theory
and physiology. Each candidate must score at least 75% on each of the 8.
There are 4 water stamina tests, such as an 800-meter swim in mask, snorkel
and fins without lifting your head from the water or using your arms. You
must practice 18 dive-related skills, such as removing your mask underwater,
replacing it and clearing the water from it. The goal is to be able to
perform each skill so well that you can demonstrate it slowly for students,
making it look easy. You must create an emergency assistance plan, and make
a map of a dive site. Then there’s an internship, during which you assist
instructors teaching students, lead divers, work in the dive shop, etc… Our
first reaction to this list of requirements was to book a second month at
Lucy’s apartment; this was going to take a while to accomplish!
We did our map of one of our
favorite sites – Doc’s Dive, and completed our water skill assessment in a
cool little inlet between Little French Cay and Big French Cay. The water
there is fairly shallow and very warm, and in addition to our ‘work’ we also
saw a lobster hiding out in some rocks, pretending he couldn’t see us and
hoping we couldn’t see him. One of the dives we led during our internship
was to Mary’s Place, one of Roatan’s most famous dive sites. A large crevass
about 100 feet deep between two coral-filled walls, Mary’s Place requires
divers to swim spaced apart so as not to bump into either side. It’s filled
with schools of jack, crabs, barracuda, and Merritt claims to have seen a
seahorse there. Awesome! We also did a few dives at the Prince Albert wreck,
just offshore at Coco View Resort. Our friend Rob was at Coco View for a
week, and tested out his new underwater camera housing on the Prince Albert.
He got some pretty good shots for a novice
underwater photographer!
Gradually, all the Divemaster
requirements somehow got completed. We had the help of Merritt, a wonderful
person and PADI instructor working with Subway who guided us through the
internship and water-related portions of the course. One of our favorite
underwater tasks was a problem-solving exercise, where our goal was to
exchange all our equipment underwater. My mask, fins, scuba unit – each one
had to be removed and switched out with Jim’s gear underwater. This is
difficult enough, but Divemaster candidates have the added challenge of
doing all this while sharing air from a single regulator – fun! Divemasters
in Training, or DITs as Merritt’s husband Ron, manager of the Roatan Dive
and Yacht Club, cheerfully called us, are also called upon to perform lots
of fun logistical tasks during their training, such as schlepping tanks back
and forth to the boat, getting ice for the cooler, etc... Patrick helped us
with the academics, and we now know more about the structure of the ear and
the partial pressure of nitrogen at depth than we ever would have believed
possible.
Time To Go Already?
Finally, the day came when we had everything signed off on our applications,
and it was time to start thinking about leaving Roatan. We stuck around and
continued to dive with Subway for another couple of weeks, then headed out
to parts unknown. For information about all the fun places to visit on
Roatan, check out our “Hanging Out in Roatan” story.
Jim
& Ellen
~ The End ~ |
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