Diving in Roatan

 Ok, so we took this trip to Roatan, Honduras with the local dive shop, Adventure Sports. Great place, I highly recommend it if you're in the area and want to learn how to dive. Anyway, the point of the trip was to see some great stuff and we did! 

This would be me. 

and this would be Capt. 

First, the experience all around was lovely. We were at The Mayan Princess resort (all inclusive...just go to the bar and tell them what you want, reservations were necessary for the restaurants), and there was a dive shop affiliated. Our captain, Clyde, and divemaster, Mark, were competent and attentive. WE DIDN'T HAVE TO SET UP OUR OWN GEAR. Let me tell you, schlepping giant tanks and weights and BCD's and all the bells and whistles can be a pain in the ass, and having someone else do it, all we had to do was show up and step on the boat...that was the height of luxury. Bowls of fruit, fresh water, cookies...lovely. Diving is hungry work.

I can't tell you the names of all the places we dove but I'll describe them. We did a couple of reefs quite near the resort to start out. They were...ok. They'd suffered something called White Band Disease so there was a lot of dead staghorn-type coral and the other corals weren't super healthy looking. Later in the week we took a boat ride to the east, away from the populated areas and the reefs were much nicer- more populated with fish, and the corals were more plentiful.

Did you know sponges come in blue?

One thing I didn't see, and this puzzled me, were bait balls. Bait balls are these enormous schools of millions of little sardine/minnow sized fish. They're toward the bottom of the food chain, an necessary for a healthy ecosystem. I also didn't see larger predatory fish like barracuda, but I could have just been in the wrong place. 

Pretty blue fish

There were turtles (joy!) and spotted eagle rays, parrotfish, queen angels, and blue herring. The water was delightfully warm at about 80F and for the most part, quite clear. Capt spent time working with me on balancing in the water (not as easy as you'd think) and we did our own thing apart from the group mostly. There was a "swim through" that actually qualified as a "cave dive" because much of the swim was completely covered over by...well...cave. I was kind of intrigued by it, though there wasn't much to see. I played with some jellyfish (the non-stinging kind), pointed at sea urchins and discussed a sea cucumber with other members of the group. Mutual consensus decided it looked like an enormous turd.

A sea turtle, taking a nap under some coral

The night dive was amazing. A.MAZE.ING. Tiny little fish came out, and they glowed blue in my UV flashlight. Little jellyfish had rows of blinking orange lights up the middle of their bodies. Brain corals glow like something out of a New York City Rave. And an octopus put on a show! I don't know if he was trying to intimidate us, or knew we were excited to see him so he (she? I didn't ask)spread out and wiggled the tips of his tentacles at us. She (he?) was a solid 3 feet across. Capt and I kind of went off on our own, and he discovered another, smaller octopus who was shy and not the exhibitionist like the first one.

I wildly enjoyed the trip. Traveling is something I've always loved. Even the "inconveniences" of airports...I mean, seriously. inconvenienced? How long would it take to ride a horse to Roatan, not to mention having to go through Mexico, etc. Hopping on a plane after standing in line for an overpriced cup of weak coffee ain't no thang.

Next: Bocas Del Toro, Panama. We're taking a few weeks to stay home and maybe tidy up a bit, work on figuring things out, see what's what.