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 ~

View of First Bight and the Caribbean from our apartment in the Bay Islands.

Subway Watersports, our diving home and school for most of the 2 months we spent on Roatan.

Ellen assists Merritt in the training of Paul & Melody, two 'Discover Scuba' students.

A garden of sponge and coral; daytime home to the squirrelfish trying to hide.

Jeffrey's sailboat, geared up to go sail and dive near the island of Barbaretta

Gratuitous shot of the mast of Jeffrey's sailboat, the Venus Rising.

Annie, the dive shop dog, who loved to hang around the shop and fight with Bear.

Our social calendar was pretty full during our stay on Roatan. Here, Gill and Merritt celebrate Gill's birthday.

Another Story

Zurück zu Gäste erzählen

Zurück nach oben