Author: sunnyspot2009

This last week has been great.  We finished up our dive master training and started working on a couple specialty certifications that allegedly give us more experience and information about certain areas of diving.  Truly it is a pyramid scheme to pay more $$$ to a nameless North American scuba diving association, but the fact is the certs mean something when we go other places and dive with unfamiliar shops.

We did have the opportunity to dive with some of our favorite people this last week, and even had a chance encounter with a huge pod of dolphins.

It is absolutely surreal to be immersed in the deep blue water with a pod of dolphins chattering and squeaking around you.  They frolick and play all around you.  They obviously are bonded to one another, it is mating season, but play is still paramount on their minds.  Maybe we aren’t the more highly evolved of the mammals, because dolphins and porpoises seem so content to swim and jump in the bow wave of a boat, or twist and dive around you as you swim among them. Mankind seems so bent on destruction and misery that maybe the more evolved life form doesn’t walk on two legs.

We ran into the pod on two different days this week.  It was probably the moment that I realized that all the planning, stress, and working from a third-world country internet connection was worth it.  The peace and serenity of seeing and experiencing something so foreign to the desert of Nevada was simply amazing.

Anyways, two of our new friends leave today for a trip to Belize and then to meet us in BVI.  We will miss them for the next week, but look forward to our next adventure and fun together.  Still a few days of diving for us.  Some loose ends to tie up and packing to do.  Hard to believe that our time in Utila is coming to an end.  We will definitely be back, maybe regularly.

Sorry I’ve been radio silent.  Roger has been reminding me that I’m due to make a post for days now, and so many things have happened that it has become impossible to put them all in one place.  We have swum with dolphins, conquered the famous Guiffity challenge, and almost completed our DMT course.  Our time in Utila is almost over. When we first got here, I was worried that it would be an awful mistake.  We have been here for nearly six weeks; none of the dirt, giant spiders, open gutters, or trash has gone away, but the absolutely incredible people have changed the whole picture.

Roger mentioned that we had almost 60 Canadian students between the ages of 15 and 17 diving with us last week. The staff at the dive shop had the logistical challenges you can imagine coordinating training dives, rental equipment, and environmental lectures.  For those of you who have also worked in theater, imagine hell week, but the cast is all participating in an activity that could kill them if they screw it up and they’ve never rehearsed.  Roger had a student who would spit out his regulator (the part of SCUBA equipment with which a diver breathes) every time he panicked, and it appeared he panicked when he put his face in the water (an essential aspect of diving).  I had a student who bolted to the surface because he felt a little pressure in his ears, saying he thought the instructor had told him to perform a CESA – a technique used to surface only in the extremely unlikely event that you run out of air and are not close enough to your buddy to use their back-up.  It was a comedy of errors, to be sure.

Despite the hilarious calamities, it was amazing introducing people to the underwater world that I love.  I think that’s one of the principles on which Operation Wallacea – the program that brought the kids to Utila – operates.  They pair graduate students conducting marine research with high school kids interested in science; the graduate students get research funding and provide educational lectures while the students learn about reef ecosystems while diving on them every day.  Since working with them, I have learned to identify countless forms of coral, scout out bearded fire worms and Pederson cleaner shrimp, and coach a scared diver into the water.  The best thing I learned, however, is what makes me love diving in the first place: it makes me feel like a kid again.  I’m curious about everything that is going on, excited about every creature I find, and thrilled to share each discovery.  I guess I should really take more pictures for all of you.

For now, you’ll have to be satisfied with a photo of this graduating class of divers.  Yes, that’s me in the back trying to avoid being in the picture.

For five weeks we have lived monk like. Up at 530, bike riding back and forth to Coral View, yoga, and eating our vegetables. All it took to derail those significant lifestyle changes were 59 teenagers learning scuba diving for a week. More precisely it was the introduction to Utila nightlife by a couple locals as “recovery” from the privilege of teaching students to dive. Long story short, you drink a lot of rum, vodka, Guiffity, Sambuca, or whatever else the attractive young DM/bartenders pour into your glass. Because of the libations, the music and the cocophany of accents, the hours fly by without realization. You can stop by one of the local bars, pulled in by the “Norm” style cheer as you bike by, and before you know it; the sun has set, dinner was ordered and multiple rounds of shots were ingested. You try to keep time by the bartender shifts, the island has fewer clocks than a Vegas casino; but the young pretty blonde bartenders (everyone turns blonde within a few weeks, but the females do attract more customers) all start to look the same. At the end of the day, you start counting backwards from your next dive and make a judgment call weighing safety versus that next really cheap drink. More often than not, the wrong decision is made.

But alas our intrepid hero will prevail. I will extricate myself from the cycle of sunny days diving and starlit nights on dock bars. Ah, hell; maybe tomorrow night. Another round of rumonades (rum & lemonade) has been delivered by the bartender smelling of pot and cocoa butter.

Quick update.  I’m out of diving for a couple days for something silly.  Sliced a nickel sized chunk out of the pad of my big toe.  Nothing life threatening, just need to keep it dry for a couple days.  So, I get to sit in the hammock and drink beer while K finishes up with the 59 Canadian student divers.

 

The upside, visit to the community clinic and prescription antibiotics = $18.00.  Another testimony to the absurd healthcare system we have in America.

It is hard to believe that we have been gone from Reno nearly a month.  Come Sunday it will be.  Time has just flown by.  The days seem shorter than at home, despite our normal routine of getting up at 545.  Maybe it is because we are generally in bed by 1030, about the time all the backpacker kids and locals begin to party downtown.  We have tried to make it deep into the night twice, and failed both times.  All the diving, sun, early mornings and 10-15 years of age difference tend to have us yawning and ready for bed, no matter how much rum there is left to drink.  Most of the bars have a nightly drink special.  There are about five really popular spots, including Rehab, one of our personal favorites.  Can you guess why?

What’s important to know about each of the bars is that if you don’t like the drink special at one, wander down to the next one.  You are guaranteed to find tequila, rum, vodka drinks for $1, beer for $1, and sometimes mixed shots for $1 at one, if not all the bars on any given night.  Needless to say, $1 drinks + 500 21-25 year-olds + no law enforcement = serious fun and sometimes mayhem.  Alas, no matter how many Scandinavian blondes you pack into a bar in the tropics, I am generally too old (and married) to make it past 1030 PM.

As I noted, time is flying by; this past week in particular.  We both assisted an instructor teaching brand new divers to learn to scuba dive.  Three very fun guys, including the creator of www.wheresgeorge.com, were our students.  It was a shake down for next week, when 59 high school students from New England descend upon our little dive shop and all want to be scuba divers in a week’s time. We have been doing 7am-4pm at the shop for the past week, next week it will be 6am-6pm, diving four times a day, at least.  We dive five days out of seven, generally twice a day, sometimes three times.

But, at the end of each day, my lovely wife detours from our bike ride through downtown (working on some usable video of that trip) to a dock bar called Tranquila.  Personally, one of my favorites, because the rum is always cheap and poured in a very tall bottle glass (they take bottles, cut the tops off them, then roll them around in saltwater and sand for a week to smooth them down).  But we really stop for the sunsets.

After a drink or two, we meander home on the bikes, make some dinner, get some “real work” done and generally head to bed.

This place is a little hypnotic.  The days pass by quickly, no one really cares what day it is (1/2 the town closes on Saturday, the other half on Sunday), the new faces get off the ferry, folks realize that a break from diving and drinking may be necessary and barter a way off the island to another destination.  It is an interesting and charming place.  Not sold yet on permanent relocation, but definitely a place to think about 6-8 weeks a year to recharge the batteries and feel young again, or old, depending on the night. LOL

But the real reason everyone comes is the diving.  This past week hasn’t been great diving.  The students and class are fine, but the easterly tradewinds have been howling at 15-20 knots all day and night.  It causes the south side of the island to get 3-6 foot waves and churns up the sand and bottom of the sea floor, killing visibility and reducing the amount of marine life activity.  Now, this is all relative, because the water is still 80 degrees, you can generally still see 40-60 feet, and once below 15 feet, the surge/waves are minimal.  But it isn’t the optimal diving that everyone expects.  Spoiled, even in paradise.  Below is a little video of part of a dive from this morning (click on the picture, will open in Youtube).  I promised some fish pictures, still working out the kinks on lighting and filters.  Should be better each time forward.  Enjoy.  We are off to yoga.

Our last few days have been a little strange. On Wednesday, we officially started our dive master training.  I’m grateful that we did the parts I was most dreading, swim skills, first.

One set of tasks to become a dive master requires you to be able to demonstrate certain swim skills: a 400 yard timed swim, a 800 yard timed swim with snorkel and fins, and a fifteen minute float\tread water with your hands out of the water for the last two minutes.  I had been worrying about a 400 yard swim for weeks, to the point that I took swim lessons thinking it would help.  It didn’t.  We did the swim in the ocean in front of the dive shop. There was about two feet of chop and a 15 knot wind, but we survived and completed the skill.  Phew. Roger got the highest possible score and I got the second.  Once I got my mask and fins, the 800 yard snorkel was just fun. I won that race.

Then Thursday, we spent three hours in a pool practicing demonstrating skills. This was my first indication that this Scuba thing could be as hard as real work.  It’s cold and tiring and we have to do it again next week.  As Roger said, more yoga.

Yoga Utila is maybe my favorite place on the island so far.  I’ve never had such a challenging and rewarding yoga workout. The classes are run by a wonderful woman from Glasgow (imagine that accent directin your downward dog) that allows you to push or relax as much as sweating through 90 minutes of yoga in 85 degrees allows. After yoga Friday, we headed to a local bar called La Cueva (its cave-like appearance no doubt lends it the name) for pub quiz. We won and made new friends by using our prize money to buy shots for the bar.

Today, I was the dive master in training on two dives for actual paying customers.  Rog is assisting an instructor with a new open water student.  He had four hours in the pool yesterday and got sunburned, but had two great dives today, including seeing three spotted eagle rays.

Now, demonstrating just how weird and fantastic Utila is, we are eating dinner in a dive called Skidrow, known for late night drunken debauchery, before heading to the beach for a concert and laser light show.  I’ll try to add video to this post later.  Dive master training might be challenging, but sunshine, saltwater, cheap rum, and laser light shows make every day a good one.

I took video of the laser light show at the beach, but it wasn’t easy to see what was happening.  We then attended the laser light show at the events center, the guys we were instructing were putting it on, so I got some better video there.  It was early in the night, see R’s post about our bedtimes, so there are very few people dancing.  But the lights were cool.  Link to Youtube video here.

Yesterday, we finished the PADI Rescue Diver course. It was frustrating and rewarding. The course required a handful of dives ending with a scenerio in which everything that can go wrong on or under the water, does go wrong.  We survived, Kerry actually kicked butt following the course guidelines, I was too practical and logical.  Alas, one of my flaws is finding/applying the real world situation even in training situations.  They passed me anyways.

So, today was an off day. What to do? Get up with the sunrise, go for a 40 minute swim in the endless pool lagoon, attend a yoga class, then grab a couple tanks and go for a dive. A purely fun dive along the house reef wall. Sneaked up on some lobsters, watched the parrot fish and angel fish swim around. It was very pleasurable to dive without any agenda or training. Then a cold beer on the dock overlooking the harbor.  Not bad…for an off day.

Last night the homeowner cut open a coconut to feed the hermit crabs. These little guys wander all over the island all night long. I grabbed the camera to get some video of these funny little creatures.

Hard to believe we have been gone from Reno more than two weeks. Time both flies by and slows to a crawl for perfect postcard moments like this one as I write this:

 

We begin Dive master training in earnest tomorrow. By next week we will likely be assisting new divers in Open Water courses.  I heard a rumor of 45 school kids on spring break coming for scuba class the following week.  I’ll focus on the beautiful place, wonderful people and warm water. And maybe take another yoga class :).

Yesterday was our day off of diving, we have officially completed our advanced course and today we started our rescue course. Here’s what the morning looked like:

Not very glamorous, huh? There is certainly some fun in the sun, but we also do a lot of studying. Today was a few hours in a classroom and a few hours in a saltwater “pool” practicing skills. We promise more pictures when our diving adventures get more interesting.

Anyway, since it was our day off yesterday, I thought I’d do a photographic house tour while I did laundry.

We have the downstairs of a two-story house. When you walk in our front door, you enter a very large great room that is divided into a few sections.

Of course, any respectable Caribbean house should have a bar.  On the right, you have our dining area.

And on the left, is our “living room.”

We aren’t using the tv much, but this corner also has the best wifi reception.  In this picture, Roger is hard at work on the phone with clients.  Our library is in the back left corner:

Our room is off to the right:

One full bathroom:

And a full kitchen.  So far our culinary experiments include red beans and rice (with chicken and chorizo) and quesadillas.  We’re still figuring out our limits.

Roger kindly hung my favorite spot in the whole house:

We have shade all afternoon and, in the evenings, get a great sea breeze (hence the name of the house). But most importantly, here is our guest room, just waiting for you!

Our plan for primary transportation was the two bicycles we “rented/bought” from the owners of the home we are renting.  First, remember that we are in a Central American country, and then we are living on a island.  Every thing is 2nd/3rd rate quality, think Huffy rejects; and then it all rusts, a lot.  So, the bikes were a little suspect, but we are the proud owners of an inexpensive mountain bike for me, and a cruiser with a basket for K.  Sunday, we actually rode to the closest dive shop to try them out.  We had a couple of really nice dives with the shop, but we had a recommendation for another shop to try….on the other end of the road from our house…literally.

There is one major road that runs from our house in the East along the coast through “town” to the West end of the beach where it ends.  About 3.75 miles long, and the dive shop is situated exactly at the western end. Monday morning we headed out to the dive shop bright and early on our trusty steeds.  We pedaled leisurely through the early risers and kids heading to parochial school studies in uniforms.  Carrying about 30 lbs of scuba gear with us, we cruised past the end of the paved road, marked by the dock bar aptly named Rehab (there are 12 steps from the land to the dock bar entrance); and out the dirt road to the dive shop.  At approximately 3.7 miles from the house, my bike cassette falls off the hub and jams against the bottom rail.  The bike has become instantaneously useless.  I walk/push the bike the final 100 yards to the dive shop.

We have two glorious dives with an energetic little Brazilian dive master.  But the pressing problem of having no transportation put a damper on the end of the trip.  Kerry took off on her bike, I shoved the bike and me and dive gear into the back of a tuk-tuk with the wheels hanging over the sides left and right.  Remember those 10′ wide roadways with traffic and pedestrians?  It was an interesting ride back to the house.  I grabbed the homeowner, he scratched his head and said to give him a day to investigate.

Tuesday was a regroup day. Late wake up, finish unpacking, sorting, reevaluate the living space and storage. I know Kerry likes to be unpacked immediately, but some things take precedence, such as getting on a boat and jumping into the water.  So Tuesday we regrouped and got ahead of our chores.  Also allowed me to work a bit and keep some clients happy.

However, I did take time for some exercise. And honestly, it was the coolest form of exercise ever.  We have 150 yard long lagoon in front of our beach.  The east end has a little reef which curves south to some exposed rocks(baby islands) with vegetation and critters.  The west end is another shallow reef. In between is about 125 yards of 3-6 foot deep water.  It is constantly fed by the push of water and waves over the eastern reef by the tradewinds; and exiting out the western reef. The result is a nice channel full of coral heads, fish, plants and current.  Seriously, a salt water endless pool over a coral reef.  The velocity depends on where in the channel you are, slower on the edges, a good 50 sec/50 yard hard pull in the middle.  I found that swimming against the current for 100 yards, then floating back down current to gaze at the wildlife, to repeat at the bottom of the lagoon was a great hour workout of swimming. Kerry caught some video below

 

 

Tuesday night I got the bike back, fully repaired.  I guess bike parts are insanely cheap on this island, mainly because they break ALL THE TIME.  We are now all ready to head out on Wednesday morning to the dive shop at the other end of the road to begin our Advanced Open Water class.  The class consists of five dives over two days, all specialties or fine tuning dive skills like buoyancy.  I will let Kerry explain the dives in more detail.  I bring it up because on the way home from the dives on Wednesday afternoon, the rear tire went flat…about 200 yards from our home. So, I walked/pushed the bike for a second time.  At that point we had yet to make it to and from the dive shop we like on the bikes.  We cannot walk the distance or pay for tuk-tuk rides each day.  Luckily, I found bike tubes to be cheap at the local hardware store and was able to repair the tire at the dive shop before our night dive Wednesday night.  Our instructor was kind enough to load all three of us on his quad for a ride two-thirds of the way home resulting in a short walk in the night air, under a carpet of stars.

Today, Thursday, we take our bikes out to the end of the road one more time to finish up day two of the Advanced Open Water class.  I am happy to report that the bike, tires, and rider all made it out to the end of the road AND home in one piece and working order.  Maybe, just maybe this will work out.  As long as you accept the likely breakdowns, flat tires, dodging kids, dogs and tuk-tuks, and rough as $#@* dirt roads, we may make it there on island time…but with a sore ass.  Did I forget to mention the bikes are rigid frame steel with paper-thin seats?  Still, the best $50 we have ever spent, because walking nearly eight miles a day in flipflops kills my feet.

Luckily I have a warm salt warm “pool” out front to soak my sore body in.