Honduras 2009

Well, Jen has been here for a week now, and it sure has been an eventful week. We have been diving quite a lot, and the wind has died down, which means more sandflies, but absolutely pristine diving weather. The visibility has been absolutely stellar, and the ocean is flat as glass. We dove Black Hills and Janet’s Mount yesterday, which were two of the best dives I have done here. At Janet’s Mount, I found a bicolour damsel with an isopod on the side… so cool!

Talia has finished up her DMT, and I am going to be finished by later today. The shop is having a barbeque to celebrate, and we are doing our snorkel tests on the rooftop bar. Now, the snorkel test is the most prestigious and difficult of all the divemaster tests. Basically, the divemaster graduates will don a snorkel and mask. However, the snorkel is slightly modified: there is half a water bottle taped to the top to form a funnel. Then, as much alcohol as you can handle is poured down the snorkel. It may sound ridiculous, but the snorkel test is performed by new DMs and instructors all over the world.

In other news, there is a new member of the dive shop family. It all started a few days ago, when Talia mentioned to me that Anna, her friend from Ecomarine, had found a stray kitten that needed a home. Talia made the mistake of telling me about this, and from that point on, I was convinced that I should help this kitten. When we got back from the morning dives, I called Anna, only to find out that she had already found a home for the cat. So, I returned to the shop, and told my story to Jeisa. She has tons (and I mean TONS) of connections on the island, so she decided that even though that kitten had already found a home, there were tons of other cats on the island that I could adopt. So, she picked up the phone, called one of her friends, and said (I quote): “We need a cat. Now!” So, within an hour and a half, a little white and orange kitten was brought into the shop. However, the guy that got it had actually stolen it from his neighbour, who had a litter of kittens he was trying to get rid of. But the neighbour wasn’t home, so he broke into the house, stole a cat, and delivered it to the shop. Since then, she has been named Tila (for Utila) and she has been staying in the shop during the day, and in our apartment during the night. She sleeps on my bed with me, most of the time on my stomach. She has taken to the litterbox really well, which is awesome considering there is no litter in it, just paper towels. Everyone at the shop loves her, and she is really sweet natured. She loves being held, and playing with string and plastic bags. She is also really good at catching cockroaches, and will spend hours pouncing on them. I am going to take her to the vet on Tuesday to get all her shots, and I am going to look into the cost of bringing her back to Canada.

We caught the morning ferry to La Ceiba with no issues, although we did have to leave our hotel without paying, since we did not have enough money to pay and to get home. (But we paid later, don’t worry!) We managed to get on the Utila Princess to get home, which was quite a feat considering how many people were trying to get to Utila for Sunjam. We were back home by 10:15, and headed to the shop, where I was greeted with many relieved faces. I was also told by Lisa that she thought that I was coming in on the afternoon ferry, and she had made a welcome back sign and had balloons and everything, so she wanted me to go back to La Ceiba and come back again, just so she could greet me at the ferry.

We stuck around the shop for a while, and I emailed my ECGs to my Mom, who wanted to show them to some cardiologists back in Canada. After I had sent them, she informed me that it appeared that the doctors here had overreacted, and that I have a sinus arrhythmia, which is not too serious, and that I could continue to dive. Needless to say, this was really good news, and I signed up for a dive the next day.

Talia and I went home for a while, showered, and began to feel human again. After that, we hung out in the shop for a while, and then headed down for the 5:15 ferry to meet Jennifer, who is here to visit for two weeks.

Once we had met up, I gave Jen the grand tour of the shop, and then we brought all her stuff up to the apartment. She showered, and then we went to cheap beer night for a while. I could see that she was fading fast, so we grabbed a pizza at Coco Loco, and then sat in Tranquila Bar for a while. But Jen had a long day of travelling, so we headed back home so she could get an early night.

The next day, we awoke to rain. Lots of rain. And unfortunately, it was Sunjam that day! So, I got dressed (in jeans… it was cold! Well, about 25 degrees. That’s cold for here.) and trudged down to the shop. The rain began to clear by about 11:00, but all of us at the shop were not having any burning desire to go to Sunjam. There was a small group going out on the afternoon dive boat, so we loaded the tanks and such, and headed out.

The first dive was at Labyrinth, but I did not dive that one, since I was only supposed to do one dive on my first day back in the water. Jen dove with Raz (a freelance instructor) and Alayne (pronounced Elaine, like from Seinfeld.) Apparently they saw two eagle rays, which would have been pretty sweet. The second dive was at Black Coral Wall. We did a fairly shallow dive, just in case I had any problems. The dive was very average, until the end. We did see a big green moray, but nothing else too exciting. However, at the end of the dive, I felt a bite on my leg. Looking behind me, I saw a big remora (sharksucker) trying to hitch a ride on me. He started swimming all around me, playing with me and trying to suck onto me. I tried to get everyone’s attention, but no one could hear me. So, I took out my dive knife to bang on my tank. As I finished banging, the remora started to bite the handle of my knife, and I tried to shake him away. Unfortunately, it was at this exact moment that everyone else chose to turn around. So, they see me, brandishing a knife at the remora, which was not exactly the impression that I wanted to give. But I put my knife back, and the remora started to play with all of us. He particularly liked biting my hair, which kind of hurt, but was pretty entertaining. At one point, he went up to Raz, and bit his ear, which now has little tiny teeth marks on it. It was so cool!

After the dive, we all went back to the shop, waited for Katherine to wrap up her course, and then ten of us headed out for dinner at Dave’s. Sunjam had been in full swing since noon, and you could hear the music all over the island. All of us debated going, since it is quite a big deal, but in the end we decided that US$40 was a lot of money, and that we would rather just go to bed. (Yeah, yeah, I know we’re lame.) Talia, Jen, Lisa and I headed back to our apartment for a bit, but we all got to bed pretty quickly, with the thud-thud-thud of Sunjam lulling us to sleep.

Once again, I am sorry for the lack of updates in the past while. But, unlike past times, I actually have an excuse this time.

The beginning of my week started out fabulous. I was diving every day, and having the time of my life. I did four dives on Tuesday, and then another four on Wednesday. However, for the dives on Wednesday, we had bad air in the tanks. Normally, this is simply a cosmetic issue. The air tastes and smells bad, but it safe to breathe. So, for the two morning dives, I had two tanks of rancid smelling/tasting air, but there were no immediate noticeable side effects.

The fourth dive of the day on Wednesday went great, until the end. The dive was at moon hole, but we swam over to Ron’s Wreck (the next dive site over) and saw two turtles, which was awesome. When we got back to Moon Hole to finish the dive, we ascended to 15 feet for our three minute safety stop. I remember looking at Emma and Talia and signalling for our safety stop to start, and then checking my depth gauge. From this point on, things become kind of hazy for me.

Apparently, about a minute into the safety stop, I signalled to Emma that something was wrong. Immediately after that, I passed out, floated to the surface, and my regulator fell out of my mouth. Luckily, Emma saw the whole thing, and managed to get up to me and turn me over before I inhaled any water.

Emma was an absolute hero, she quickly dropped my weight belt and inflated my BCD (rescue diver training kicks in!) and towed me back to the boat. I have vague memories of that, and then by the time we got to the boat, everyone was on board, I climbed up the ladder, lied down, got up to puke, lied down again, and was given oxygen. Everyone dealt with the situation amazingly, and Nord got the boat back to the boat back extremely quickly. When we arrived at the dock, there were a bunch of people waiting for us. Nord and Seth carried/dragged me to the chamber, where Jungle examined me and informed me that I was going to have to be flown to the hyperbaric chamber in Roatan, since the compressor for out chamber was out of order. Of course the immediate concern was that I had DCS (decompression sickness) which is basically an excess of nitrogen in the body, a condition that can result from diving.

Within a few minutes, I was in a van, being driven to the airport. Talia came with me, as well as Marjorie, who is a nurse that works in the Utila chamber.

When we arrived at the airport, there was already a plane waiting for us. We all hopped on the five seater plane and took off for Roatan. The flight was only about 15 minutes, and when we got to Roatan there was a taxi waiting for us. The taxi driver drove like a maniac to the Anthony Key chamber, where Paul, the doctor was waiting. He examined me, and determined that I did not have DCS, which was a relief. However, he did not find an immediate cause of what triggered the blackout. He took quite a while listening to my heart, and then he hooked my up to an ECG (electrocardiogram) to measure my heartbeat. After the ECG printed out, he announced that it had confirmed his suspicions – my heartbeat was somewhat irregular. At this point, he said, I needed to see a specialist, who needed to be flown in from La Ceiba, so he would not be on Roatan until 4:00 PM the next day. So, Talia, Marjorie and I found a hotel on the West end for the night, grabbed some food (which was really expensive… I missed Utila already!) and settled in for the night.

We headed off to the chamber to give them my ‘samples’ and give a blood sample at 9:00 the next morning. We then headed into town for an X-Ray. The X-Ray tech did not speak English very well, so Marjorie came into the room to translate. Once it was printed out, he looked at it and said that everything looked normal to him, but I had to give it to the specialist later in the day. Since it was only about 10:30 by this time, we grabbed some cheap breakfast and grabbed a taxi back to the West End. On the way to our hotel, a salon sign caught our eye, and the three of us decided to go and get pedicures (it had been a stressful day!) Talia and I totally nerd-ed out and got dive flags on our toes, and got a massage as well. Marjorie got her toes done, and also got acrylic nails put on. When we finally got back to our hotel (which was called Lost Paradise) we went swimming, saw a little itty bitty barracuda, and a zillion fried egg jellyfish, and then lazed in the sun for a while.

We taxied back to the Anthony Key chamber a little before 4:00, and met up with the specialist. He looked at the results of all the tests from earlier in the day, and decided to do another ECG. Once it had printed out, he looked at it and then informed me that I would not be able to dive for the rest of my trip, and that I would potentially never dive again. At the risk of sounding over dramatic, this felt like my world was collapsing before my eyes, and resulted in more than a few tears.

After that, we waited for several hours for Dr Paul to finish the medical report, during which time Talia and I may have taken an enormous amount of ridiculous pictures in the lobby and the chamber.

By the time Paul had finished up the report, it was already getting late. So, we stopped at the Shark Cafe for pizza, and took them back to our hotel and ate on the porch. Soon after, we all crawled into bed, since we had to get up at about 5:30 to catch the ferry to La Ceiba.

Well, first and foremost, I have to apologize for the lack of updates the last week and a bit. I have been out of the water for another week with another ear infection, so life on Utila has been rather uneventful. However, I will breeze through the highlights for those of you who would like to know.

Last week, through a series of connections, I managed to get a job at La Champa, which is a Thai & Vietnamese restaurant right on the beach. I worked my first shift on Sunday, and everything went really well. There is only a kitchen staff of two (one of whom is the owner) and then me, who is responsible for bartending, serving, and cleaning. The restaurant is right on the beach, with the ocean to one side and the lagoon on the other. I must say that it is really not a bad place to work, the views were spectacular, and Richard (the owner) is really nice. It was kind of fun, and Sundays are La Champa’s busiest days, so I made a decent amount in tips – But keep in mind that by saying a ‘decent amount’ I am comparing to the average Utilian standards. So, but decent money, I mean that I made 590 lempiras, which is about 31 dollars. For 10 hours of work. Not exactly as much as I would have liked, but it is better than nothing.

Since then, there has been nothing super interesting going on. Talia has managed to acquire a rather nasty brown recluse spider bite, which has consequently infected all her other bites and caused her foot to swell up so that she couldn’t even fit her flip flop on. Luckily, we went into Dr John’s on Thursday to get some antibiotics, and it seems to be clearing up.

On Friday, I was (finally) able to get back in the water, so I celebrated by assisting Lisa with an Open Water course. The class consists of two girls, and they are really quite good. It is nice to be assisting on a course where the students are not struggling with every single skill. Because they were zipping through their confined sessions, we decided to go on the afternoon dives for their first two open water dives. We went to Ted’s Point and Moon Hole for the two dives, which are two very average sites, but we managed to have some really good dives. At Ted’s Point, we saw a balloonfish, which is always nice.

However, near the end of the dive, we ran into the other dive group, who was clustering around a small coral shelf. When they saw us, they all began pointing excitedly at what appeared to be part of the rock. Upon closer inspection, I realized that it was a fish. But not just any fish. A TOADFISH. A toadfish that was completely out in the open, so we could see all of it. It was AMAZING. Toadfish are really difficult to find, since they have very effective camouflage, and since they almost always hide their bodies in crevasses. Sue, who was leading the other group, has over 700 dives, and she was absolutely giddy about seeing it. The two Open Water students did not really understand how cool it really was, but we explained it to them at the surface, and they were quite pleased, especially since it was their first dive. The second dive was less eventful, since we had to do skills, but I did find some flounders and a good sized squid. It got kind of agitated when I got too close, and spread out all its tentacles and changed colours rapidly. It was really neat.

I have also finally made it up to TreeTanic, which is one of the most popular bars on the island. It has been closed a lot for the past few weeks because of curfew, so I have not had the chance to go. The bar is built on the same property as the Jade Seahorse. The bar section is all built treehouse style, and it is beautiful. The walls are made out of shells, beer bottles, and other strange things, and the bar is lit with coloured twinkle lights and such. When I was in Utila five years ago, I remember going to the Jade Seahorse with my family, but the place is virtually unrecognizable now. I thought that it was amazing then, but the owner/designer has put a tremendous amount of work into it, and the result is stunning.

Other than that, everything is routine down here. Now that I am back in the water, I’m sure that I will have more exciting stories over the next few days.

I awoke in the morning with nervous jitters. As part of my DMT, I have to lead certified divers for an entire dive, and today was the day. We loaded up the boat and were off by 7:30.

As we pulled up to the first site, Little Bight, Talia and I were in charge of mooring the boat. Talia grabbed the buoy and fed the line through, then passed it to me. I was supposed to walk up to the bow and tie the line on. However, the water was really rough, and the rope got stuck. As I tried to pull it in, another huge wave pulled the line and I toppled headfirst into the water. It was apparently quite a spectacular fall, although I was kind of humiliated. The worst of it all was that I was wearing my pair of jean shorts that I just got washed yesterday!

So, immediately after my little spill into the ocean, we scuba suited up and jumped in for the dive. Little Bight is a prime site for seeing seahorses, but I was not able to find any. (In my defense, they are really hard to find.) We did see a little moray eel, a few skates, a big hermit crab, and lots of arrow crabs. But, most importantly, I found the boat! I was really nervous that I would end up getting lost, but everything went well. And I have to say that my nerves were justified: I was leading Martin (my instructor,) Lisa (an instructor,) Katherine (an instructor,) and Talia (a DMT.) So it’s not like they wouldn’t have noticed if I was lost!

The second dive was at Black Coral Wall, which I have dived several times already. I found two really small cute filefish, which was neat. But again, I found the boat, which was the most exciting thing. Back at the shop, when we were unloading the boat, Martin was moving a tank off the boat and ended up falling between the dock and the boat, still holding the tank. Luckily, he was okay. There has been a strange amount of falling/injuries lately, but at least I am not the only one!

Once the boat was unloaded, Talia and I went for a quick swim in the pool, and then we started making arrangements for a boat to take us to Water Cay. There were tons of people heading to the cay for an all night reggae party. It took some effort, but we found a captain who was willing to take a full boat of us over. The party was really fun, and it was quite an experience hanging out on an uninhabited Caribbean island. There was a lot of wind, so no boats were leaving the cay until the morning, so we ended up staying on the island all night. At about 5:00AM (just as it started to get light out) it started to rain. Since no one lives on the island, there was nothing to cover ourselves with, so everyone was soaked to the skin within 5 minutes. So, making the best of it, everyone just started dancing and jumping in the massive newly formed mud puddles.

At about 6:30, the boats started to arrive to pick everyone up. Talia and I got back home at about 7:10 and were asleep by about 7:13. We dragged ourselves out of bed and into the dive shop at 2:00.

Since then, I have started assisting on an Open Water course for a couple from the States. From the very beginning, there have been some problems, and things only seem to be getting worse as we go on. The wife in particular is terrified of the very idea of diving. Lisa and I spent four hours in a confined session with them, and got one skill accomplished. It was extremely frustrating.

I went for a dive on Tuesday morning, since it was going to be Martin’s last dive before he goes home. However, I started having equalization problems with anything below 40 feet, so I had to abort the dive and head back to the boat. I did not get back into the water for the second dive, since I don’t really want to mess with my ear. (The ear that I was unable to equalize is also the ear that I had the infection in.) After getting back from the dive, I jumped into the pool with Lisa and the American couple to continue the confined session. We continued on, and made some progress, but it is clear that the woman is not comfortable at all with diving. On more than one occasion she had a full blown panic attack, flailing at the surface with her regulator out and mask off, and not inflating her BCD. And this is when we are in the pool. After our lunch break, Lisa, Katherine and I sat the couple down and said, basically, that we were not willing to certify the woman at the Open Water level at this time. However, we decided to split the couple up, and Katherine and I are going to work with the wife, and try to get her up to the Scuba Diver level (which is half of the Open Water course – it certifies you to dive, but only with a PADI professional.) I have my doubts whether she will be able to complete that much, but I guess we’ll see!

After the second long day of confined sessions with the couple, we headed to the rooftop bar (which has now been named the Sexy Diver Bar) for Martin’s goodbye barbeque. There were quite a few people there, and everyone had a good time. I left fairly early, since I had to be up at the shop early to assist.

Today was Friday, the 10th of July. But, more importantly, it was the first day that I was allowed back in the water after my ear infection! Needless to say, I took full advantage of this. Talia and I started off bright and early, getting to the shop at 6:20 to load the boat. In an amazing display of grace and agility, I somehow managed to step between the edge of the dock and a thin plank of wood, while holding a tank. So my leg rammed in between two pieces of wood, which has now formed two lovely bruises around my thigh. So I lay crumpled on the dock, cradling a tank in my arms, just grateful that I did not drop the tank in the water. Everyone gathered around, and I was instructed to sit and not move until we got some ice. I think that the fall looked way worse than it was, but in retrospect, I was really lucky that I did not seriously injure myself. But no harm, no foul. La la la la life goes on.

Talia and I were both assisting on two dives for Kim’s rescue diver course. For those of you who don’t know, Rescue Diver is known to be one of the most challenging of the PADI courses, and for good reason. Instructors teaching the rescue course are notorious for planning surprise ‘accidents’ just when you least expect it. The fun part about this rescue course was that I was no longer the rescuer – I got to play the victim.

The first dive was at Ted’s Point, which I am attempting to map for my mapping project. I spend a lot of the dive marking down depths on a slate and counting kick cycles to measure distance. About 40 minutes into the dive, Talia began to play out the ‘injured diver’ scenario. While Kim was occupied with saving her, I snuck off and joined the other dive group for the rest of the dive. When we surfaced, I waited for the super secret signal, and then I began to act the tired diver at the surface scenario. All of the scenarios are set, but the students don’t know what they are, or when are they going to happen. As she approached me, I became panicked, spitting out my regulator, deflating my BCD, pushing my mask onto my forehead, and flailing around erratically. I attempted to climb on top of her (as a panicked diver would do) but Kim did really well, gaining control of the situation and swimming me back to the boat.

The second dive went just as well. Talia and I jumped off the boat first, and then headed east for the nearest sand patch. When we found it, I lay down in the sand, and Talia surfaced, and announced that she had lost her dive buddy. The visibility was pretty good, so Kim did not take long to find me. She carried me to the surface, and towed me to the boat, performing rescue breaths all the while. As we approached the boat, Nord made a huge dramatic scene, screaming: “Meghan! What has happened to you? Meghan, don’t die! DON’T FOLLOW THE LIGHT!” This resulted in us laughing and snorting a fair amount of seawater up our noses. Kim got me to the boat, and then she and Nord dragged me on. Kim continued rescue breaths, and started CPR. At this point, we told her that was all, and her scenarios were over. Well, we were lying.

We jumped back into the water for a 30 minute dive at Ron’s Wreck. Everything went normally, until we surfaced. Kim was at the ladder and had already handed her fins to Nord when Lisa pointed at Talia, who was lying face down, motionless in the water. Kim grabbed her fins, swam out to Talia, and brought her back to the boat. We did not make her drag her on though, so the scenario stopped when they got to the boat. Then we told Kim that the scenarios were over for real. We were lying again.

We were almost home, entering the harbour when we put the plan into action. While Kim wasn’t looking, Talia jumped off the moving boat. We got about 200 metres away from her before Nord shouted “Man overboard!” Kim, who had already changed into dry clothes, looked like she was going to have a heart attack. But she dealt with it really well, and jumped straight into the water and started swimming. By this point, Talia was quite a distance from the boat. Thinking that the swim was a bit far, we yelled to Talia: Talia! Drown closer! Needless to say, that did not really help.
Right after the dives, we dropped off some laundry to be washed, which I must say was a really, really big deal. We have not washed anything since we have gotten here, so it was literally getting to the point that everything was dirty, so we just had to pick the things that smelled the least bad.

Once we got back to BICD, Talia and I jumped into the pool for about an hour with Eveny, who is Hae Sa’s adorable 9 year old daughter. After a while, we decided to go for a dive off the dock. We donned all our gear, and took Ebony out for a snorkel. When she was done, we descended, practiced some skills, and then went for a swim under the docks. No joke, there are literally MILLIONS of fish under there. We were underwater for about 45 minutes, just awed by the sheer number of fish. After, we dragged ourselves out of the ocean and sat on the dock for a while, enjoying the sun.

By the time we got back to the shop, all of us were starving. So Lisa, Martin, Talia and I headed back to our place to make some homemade American-style mac and cheese. Once we had eaten, we headed down for cheap beer night (We could never miss it!)

It was a fantastic day, for sure. Clearly, life is much better when you are diving.

Despite all of the stress and confusion over current Honduran politics, I must say that it is really interesting to actually be living in a country in a time of crisis. For example, being on Utila has given me a firsthand view of a previously healthy economy literally falling apart and melting before my eyes. There was another demonstration march in Utila today, and every single person in it was pro coup, anti Zelaya. The past four months have not been kind to Utilan tourism. First, there was a major cocaine bust, about four months ago. Then there was a 7.2 earthquake. Then along came swine flu. And now, this. The summer is the time of year when dive shops on the island make the vast majority of their money. There are less and less tourists getting off the ferry every day, and therefore fewer divers on the island. The dive shops are suffering, and many of the restaurants have closed indefinitely, due to lack of business. Most divemasters here have two jobs – and they aren’t making any money at either of them.

Besides politics, the past few days have been rather uneventful. Since both Talia and I have ear infections, we have not been able to dive. We have been just hanging around the shop. Since Talia is just starting her DMT, she has lots of theory to do. I am almost done, so I only had one theory lesson left – Decompression Theory and The Recreational Dive Planner. WOO HOO! Well, not really. But it’s done and over, so I am done all of the theory!

I have officially registered (read: paid) for my IDC, which was rather painful, as the bill came to just over USD$1800. I got the Instructor Crew Pack, which has a PADI backpack, and two HUMUNGOS binders that I presumably have to have memorized within two months. Better get cracking!

Today was the 4th of July. Now, I am no patriotic American, but I must say that any holiday that involves beer and hotdogs starting at 2:00 in the afternoon cannot really be a bad thing. We closed the shop up at 2, headed up to the rooftop bar, started up the barbeque, and cracked open the beer. There was also some rum-filled watermelon for everyone to enjoy. We sat on the rooftop, talking, drinking, and just generally enjoying ourselves until it got dark. Due to the political situation, there is still a curfew on the island, so we headed over to Tranquila before the time ran out. Once more than enough only a little bit of rum had been consumed (since we are very responsible) we headed home. On the way, we ran into Lisa, who came over for a bit. We then drank more ate leafy green vegetables, since we care deeply about our health. Then we went to bed at a reasonable hour. Not at 4AM. What a day.

Before I launch into the most recent events, I have to share a small story. On the evening of Canada Day, we were at Tranquila bar, sitting on the upper level, which is on stilts above the ocean. We were looking at the eagle rays off the dock, when I noticed a red flip flop in the water. “Aw, that sucks for whoever’s flip flop that is,” I said. Then it dawned on me. It was MINE! Amidst much cheering and encouragement, I ran down the stairs, jumped in the dingy that was tied to the dock, and started paddling towards the floating shoe. After some struggling, I managed to use an oar to grab it, much to the delight of the spectators. And now, somewhere on the internet, there is a picture of a very triumphant Meghan, standing in a dingy, holding a red flip flop with a maple leaf on it.

Since then, however, it seems that not much is going my way.

When I woke up this morning, I knew that I was too congested to dive, once again. There has also been a suspicious pain and a ringing in my left ear, which is a bit disconcerting. I arrived at the dive shop at 6:30 anyways, just to help set up the boat. Unfortunately, it has been really windy the past few days, and it was far too choppy this morning for the boat to go out. I hung out at the shop until 9:45, when I decided to finally get my sinuses and ears checked out by Dr John.

After waiting for almost two hours, I finally got in. Dr John took one look in my ear, and then announced that I have an infection in my ear canal. Fortunately, this is the lesser of the evils of ear infections. Unfortunately, it still means that I cannot be in the water for a whole week. I paid the massive 1160 lempira bill, and then trudged to the dive shop to deliver the news.

For those of you who don’t know, I was planning on doing both my Divemasters (DMT) and Instructors (IDC) courses while I am down here. The IDC runs on a set schedule, once a month. This month’s IDC starts on the 9th, which is 6 days from now. I still have several in water things that I have to do for my DMT, and since I cannot get my ear wet for 7 days, I will be unable to finish the DMT before the IDC course starts. At first, this seemed to be a disaster. But, after some thinking (and skype-ing with the parents) I have decided that the best plan of action is to extend my stay by just under three weeks, so I can complete the IDC in August. This means that I will be getting home by about September 2nd. Luckily, classes start a bit later this year, so I won’t be missing any school. And I guess that an extended stay on a tropical island is nothing to complain about!

Let me paint a picture for you. You’re sitting on a rooftop bar, which is built on stilts over the ocean. There is a delicious rum and pineapple juice drink in your hand, and there is a warm breeze coming off the ocean. The moon is about three quarters full, and its reflection is shining off the water. There are millions of stars in the sky, and a magnificent lightning storm decorates the horizon. Lights under the dock beam into the water, and there are two eagle rays gliding in and out of the shadows. There is music playing, and you are surrounded by laughing friends. It must be paradise. Or, it’s what I did last night.