Diving

Rolling back into the water from the dive boat and being engulfed in the ocean is one of my favorite moments of diving. The first splash of salt water on my face and the coolness that surrounds my body is a different type of refreshing. Descending in the water and seeing glimpses of what the aquatic life has in store for me today never gets old. As I hover in the water I am always amazed at how the underwater world functions. Tons of different schools of fish - large and small, fat and skinny, colorful and dull, some with pomp and circumstance and others that completely blend in. The coral and sponges - hard and soft, vibrate and unassuming, huge and tiny, filmy and furry and prickly. The current or back and forth motion of the waves making the topography dance to the rhythm of the earth is peaceful. I am careful to not disturb this whole world that is for-the-most-part untouched and unspoiled by us. (Let us forget about pollution and oil spills for the remainder of this post.)

Equally as amusing is swimming on my back so I can watch my bubbles drift all the way up to the surface of the sea. It never seems that I am 20, 30, 45, 68, 80, or even 120 feet underwater. The water clarity is unbelievable.  I could fall asleep counting bubbles and hovering horizontally in the deep blue sea. Sometimes I am too mesmerized by a sea turtle or other sea creature, but thank goodness for modern technology. The alarms on my dive computer beep if I start to go to deep or stay under water for too long. These safety measures keep me from following any aquatic life for an overextended amount of time or to unsafe depths.

There is so much to explore. What's under that ledge? Where does that swim through take you? Is this crevice or cannon big enough to safely travel through? What's in this hole? I laugh at myself as I pose that question here. I ask it a lot under the water…What's in this hole? As I begin to examine a hole too closely, a green moray (eel) comes swimming towards my face, so I back up to get out of its way. Sometimes, and lately, more often than not, it slivers completely out of its hole and free swims out in the open before retrieving back into another hole. Occasionally, we see spotted eagle rays that seem to know if we have cameras, because they put on a show by flapping and rolling their dorsal fins as they circle us. The squid have become fun to play with now that I know how interactive they are with divers. If you swim next to a squid, swim with your legs down if it's swimming with its appendages down. Swim with yours up, if its' appendages are up. It will keep changing the way it swims just to see if you do too. Then, it will come up pretty close to your mask to check you out as if you're an alien.  It's always neat to watch the fish inspect us.

Before you know it, someone is low on air and we must head back up to the surface because we do, after all, rely on air.

This is diving.

Amusement Park

Do you remember the feeling you got when you were a kid and you were about to go to an amusement park the next morning. It used to be Opryland or Six Flags, for us. We would get our clothes and swim suits ready. The only time in our lives that we would ever lay out clothes the night before. We would wake up super early - no alarm clocks were necessary. We were too excited to rollover and go back to sleep at the first crack of daylight. Sometimes, depending on where we lived, we even got up before the sun came up. We would be up and ready early. It was the only time our parents didn't have to remind us that we had to leave soon. We would eat cereal or toast and wait with excitement of what the day would hold. We gladly loaded up in the van with everyone else and continued with anticipation of the soon-to-be thrill of the roller-coasters, water rides and fun with our friends or siblings. On these mornings, there is no dread of getting out of bed or thinking about all the things you need to accomplish before the day is over. There is only anticipation of what new adventure lies ahead.

This is how I feel every day now. I do not use an alarm clock (at least regularly) to get up in the morning. When the sun rises, it shines in my bedroom - this is how I know it's time. I stretch while I check out the ocean through my open window. Is it calm or choppy, is there a strong breeze on this side of the island today? I always know it will most likely be the opposite conditions at work, since it's on the other side of the island.  I throw on shorts, a t-shirt and some deo, brush my teeth, grab a water bottle and my bag of granola or a bagel, slide on my flip-flops and head out the door. We walk to down the sandy path (some call it a road) along the beach up to the main road that runs through the narrow island. We say hello to our neighbors as we pass their houses. We say hello in Spanish and they say hello in English. Something about this delights me every morning.

When we make it to the road, we cross the street and wait for our ride. These early morning hours, standing by "the road", still makes me happy every day. Most days we ride to work with my great friend, and an awesome instructor, Giaco. (Other days, when he's not working, we catch a taxi and typically pay 50 lempiras (about $2.50) to Barefoot Divers, where we all work.) On the days Giaco picks us up, the whole family is in the back of the truck. Other instructors from our dive shop, divemaster interns and sometimes the boat captains. If you are standing on the side of the road when Giaco drives by, you join the clan in the back of the truck. (This excites me just as much as riding in the van to the amusement park.) We are always eagerly greeted by Giaco, "Good Morning, Family! How are you doing on this fantastic morning!" We climb up into the truck and squeeze into a spot for the ride in while exchanging "Good Morning" greetings with everyone in the back. As we pass by the rest of the island, I enjoy the breeze and the simple fact that I get to be in Roatan one more day. I watch as some islanders sweep off their porches, send their children to the road for school, workers congregating for breakfast belliados and waiting for their ride, cruise ships docking in Mahagony Bay, taxis getting ready to handle the influx of tourists, and the wonderful group of people in the back of the truck with me. This makes me happy.

We pull into Barefoot and everyone hops out of the back of the truck, thanking our mate, Giaco for yet another ride. He usually responds with, "No problem, I love you family." Yep, he's kinda corny like that, but we love it. We unlock the dive shop and everyone gets to work. The rinse tanks are filled, all the doors are opened, and we all congregate around "the board" with the list of divers and activities for the day. This is very similar to standing around the Six Flags map once you get to the amusement park to make a plan of action for which rides are priority and in who will do what. We stand around the board in the same way - divvying out who will do what for the day. The excitement is still building. Once we decide who is leading which boat and teaching which course, we decide what dive sites we'll be visiting.

Loading the boats up with tanks and gear is no different than waiting in line for a ride. It doesn't really seem like work. It's just a means to an end - the ride. Guests start showing up and we delight in conversation learning more about them as we prepare for our first adventure of the day. The boats head out, we're all suited up for the ride.

The anticipation has not subsided, the excitement is full throttle…this is my every day.  

Shark Dive

There is a place just off of the island, Cara a Cara, where a few avid divers have been baiting sharks for several years. They consistently take food out to this ledge in the reef for sharks. Over time, more and more sharks frequent this area because there may be easy food. This almost guarantees at least a few sharks will be present at this particular sight at any given time. Because of this, we call it a shark dive. We have the chance of seeing at least of couple of sharks and often times as many as a dozen or so. It is a fairly safe way of diving with sharks in the wild (wink wink).

The reef ledge itself is about 70 to 80 feet underwater. There is a little sandy bed where divers can stand or kneel right in front of a small reef block so that the sharks cannot easily approach you from behind. Sharks typically only attack when they know they have the advantage (like attacking you from behind). This is also a reason why divers would make a circle with their backs together if surrounded by sharks in the open water.

So the idea is that we go down to this ledge, bring some bait and we get to watch as the sharks swim around waiting for food, attack the food and swim around waiting to see if there's more food. Part of the time, we watch from the "safety" of the sandy bed a few feet away, while the rest of the time, we swim amongst the sharks.

Just a few days ago, I got to go on another shark dive. It is still surreal to be within a few feet from a massive shark. When it swims towards you and looks you in the eye, there is this keen awareness and understanding between you and the shark. It is bigger and stronger and I am in its territory only because it allows me to be. Even though it is a major adrenaline rush, it is also somehow very peaceful and calm. Staring into a sharks eye keeps me in the moment well after the dive is over. 

Roatan vs. Kentucky

On my ride into work the other day, it occurred to me that there are some striking resemblances living on the island of Roatan to living in the state of Kentucky. (Remember this is all in good fun).

TOP 10 SIMILARITIES:

10. Most everyone rides to work in the back of a truck (including me)

9. We still sell sodas in glass bottles.

8. Not all houses have doors

7. Around age 16, females are expected to start breeding.

6. Everyone knows everyone and most people are related (sometimes twice)

5. Old school country music is the local favorite

4. Not everyone has teeth

3. If it's a Wednesday night, all the locals are at the same place - church.

2. You can still purchase candy for as little as 5 cents.

1.  No one wears shoes

Our New Home

So we moved into our new place last week. I absolutely love it. It is a small neighborhood of beach houses. The neighborhood consists of mostly one large family and us. They have welcomed us and given us great advice for living in this neighborhood, concerning safety and conserving electricity and water.

It is a pinkish-peachish color house right on the beach. Literally, there is sand all the way around the house and straight out into the ocean. We have a little gazebo in front of the house that overlooks the ocean, where I'm sitting right now, typing. There seems to be a breeze here all the time. I am most appreciative of the concrete and dry walls with caulking and tile floors. This means there are no bugs! At least in the house there are none. We are finished camping out in the jungle. Though I enjoyed parts of it, I am happy to not see bugs again for a while. Except geckos - they can hang out as long as they want.

We have a washing machine at this house. So Val attempted laundry yesterday. We have lines by the house to air dry our clothes. Val discovered that the washing machine filled water slower than a faucet drip in winter. So she continued to fill jugs of water from the kitchen to pour into the washing machine. Once it was full of water, it seemed to run smoothly. Then when it hit the rinse cycle, she had to fill it up all over again. When the clothes were finally done washing, she hung the clothes on the line. Evidently those clothes pins are very important. She said she spent the entire day picking clothes up out of the sand and putting them back on the line or filling up jugs of water to keep the washing machine going. I was at work so I did not get to witness all this, but I am sure that it was pretty comical. I think at some point she gave up, because when I got home and walked into the bedroom, there were underwear and shorts and shirts hanging all over the room with fans on them. J

I think we'll have to attempt it again with only one load in a day. Clothes pins will help too. I will have to say that my clothes do smell like ocean breeze, and it's not from the detergent.

We've tried out several other locations, be it apartments, cabanas, studios, or backpack shacks. Though each one had its own charm or appeal, I believe we have found our new home here in Sandy Bay in this quiet little neighborhood. We have an extra bedroom so anyone who wants a nice simple island vacation, is welcome to come stay with us.  We would love to share our island with you!

Bucket List

There was this older British guy who visited a couple of weeks ago. I'm going to call him Brit for short. He shows up to the dive shop with his wife and requests to have a "scuba try." We call this a Discover Scuba Diving course. Anyone can try scuba out for the day to see if they want to take a full certification class. This type of private dive is always fun for the instructor to take people underwater for the first time.  So Brit insisted that we do this as soon as possible so he could get it over with already. Evidently his wife requested he try it with her. I thought it was admirable that he was doing this for his wife. When we were practicing a few skills with the scuba gear, he would ask, "Are you telling me to do this?" Of course, the non-pushy teacher in me responds, "Well I'm not saying you have to do this, but yes, it is the next step to going on our first dive." He would throw a few British curse words around and ramble about how bloody nonsense this whole diving thing was to him. So, I had definitely gathered he really didn't want to be there, but he kept right on going and continued through the introduction of scuba.

When we finally made it out on the dive boat, he was still complaining how diving was bullocks and rubbish. His wife continued to smile and remind him to choose to be happy today. Once we got in the water at the dive site, we were finally ready to head down the line towards the reef. On the way down, he looked completely amazed. In fact he looked so amazed that he wasn't responding to any of my hand motions asking if he was okay. We actually came back up out of the water. I told him that he had to respond to me under the water so I would know if he was okay or in shock or something. He said, "We'll bloody hell, of course, I'm in shock. Have you ever seen anything so beautiful?" I smiled. His wife seemed content about his response as well. After he promised to respond under the water, we headed back down again.  He responded better under the water that time, but he was still too overwhelmed to swim. So I ended up toting him around for the dive.

When we resurfaced at the end of the dive, he didn't say much which was a change to his constant rambling. He laid back in the water, his grey hairs floating around the sides of his face. The muscles in his face and neck relaxed. He looked calm for the first since I had met him.

Once we were back on the boat, his wife thanked me for helping them have a great experience. She told me he was sick and did not have much longer to live. They have been traveling around so that he could complete his bucket list. Scuba diving with his wife (one of her favorite past times) was one of the items on his list.

We said our goodbyes a bit later and he thanked me for the experience. I teased him saying, it wasn't so bad, was it? He told me it was one of the best experiences he has had in his entire life.

It was much later in the day when I actually processed everything and I felt the magnitude of the experience I had just had. I took part in someone's bucket list showing them a part of this world they had never experienced before. It reminded me of how blessed I am to be here in Roatan, experiencing God in a very serene way everyday.

Luna

I was waiting on the side of the road last week for my ride to work. Luna, this crazy old islander who lives across the street, was out mowing his yard. When I say mowing, I really mean he has a machete in one hand and a stick in the other and is swinging away with the machete to cut the grass. I watched him for several minutes and realized that he was able to cut the grass pretty evenly with this machete. It's not the first time I've seen this done. There are always guys using machetes along the road. It appeared they were always cutting down tall grass,  but Luna was trimming his grass. He likes it to stay around a "quarter" high. He actually carries around an American quarter and uses this on occasion to measure his grass. He says his quarter will be worth quite a bit one day. He talks about it so passionately, I almost believe him. Luna waits on the road in front of his house each morning to say hi to us. Even though I cannot understand most of the things he says to me, it always makes me smile to see him each morning.

Yesterday, when I arrived to the side of the road he offered me some bamboo. I told him I had already eaten breakfast (mostly as a joke), but he proceeded to eat it. When he saw the slightly surprised look on my face, he told me it was sugar cane. Of course I had to google it as soon as I got to work. Evidently it is in the same family of grass, however bamboo is too hard for us to eat with our teeth. Sugar cane, on the other hand, can be eaten right off the stalk. This has been his favorite food since he was a kid, unless he was in trouble. Then the sugar cane became a whip. He said that islanders grow up with sugar on their bottom and on their teeth. That is how you know if someone is from the island or not, he tells me. Today, I introduced him to Oreos.