I did three more dives today, Emily joined the boat to go snorkeling for the first two then took some free time on dry land in the afternoon.

The water was a little cloudy, there’s a lot of wind here but Emily thinks it’s windier this year. The wind churns some stuff up and may influence the currents. Sounds like the Sahara dust we had along with the fires last year is on it’s way.

I play follow the leader while diving and today we did a swim through. It was pretty narrow, there’s was a wider one on the left but I went through. It’s hard to know what my actual space is as I don’t usually have all the equipment on.

They aren’t sending us out in separate boats from the group divers this year. It’s a little disappointing. We end up diving relatively close together and we cross paths at times with other groups as well. Today there was a guy that started following us and then he was passed off to the other group from Splash Inn and the DM there got him reoriented to his group.

Even though we dive close we all don’t see the same things. I don’t worry about what I see on any given dive, if I don’t see something maybe I’ll see it on the next dive.

While we were at dinner tonight Nelson was walking by and he said that he is starting his own tour business down by the Roundabout. He was hoping to get us to tour with him, he is a good sales guy and has a big personality. Hopefully he does well, I’m sure he will give it a good effort! We already committed to going with Kevin’s tour company on Thursday so we weren’t able to do anything with him but maybe next year. It just depends on where we go and if we have time for extra excursions. We’ll probably have to split them up since they’ve both been good to us.

Be safe!

Hello!! Vacation is going well. We are keeping busy in the water like normal. I have 8 dives done, 5 more scheduled and I am waiting on enough people to do a night dive in the next couple of days. I’m done diving Wednesday, we will probably snorkel on Thursday. I need an off day before flying.

We went down to the dive shop this morning and discussed my private dive master option. Fred was available and he should be with me for the rest of my dives. He seems pretty laidback. I don’t think he understood why I selected the private dive master option, he seemed to question if I still wanted him to go with me. We talked to him after we had dinner, I just explained last year it was mostly about my time I went through a tank but this year it was more about not being crowded with other divers. There is a gal that probably should have chosen the private dive master option for her skill level. I think I heard her mention it had been 10 years since she dived. I don’t know if she took a refresher or if the guy who is with her is just trying to teach her. She has had some issues, she didn’t dive yesterday and this morning she was having trouble staying down during the safety stop and he was trying to pull her down from what I seen. Listening to her ask about how much air she had and saying 2000 or 4000 and him tell her 2800 is worrisome.

With my own dive master I have a better DM to diver ratio. 1:1 they had 1:6-7, I think they can go to 1:9. If we keep coming here I will always choose that option and anytime it’s available.

Sounds like the sales guy at our favorite tour company has moved on to another company, he was entertaining to interact with, but Kevin is still there, he sort of has to be, he owns the place! They do like to make deals on the excursions this time of year if anyone is interested in coming to Roatan for a vacation. It’s the slow season before it picks up again in July. The West End is very walkable, plenty of restaurants and shops. It’s interesting that a lot of the places operate like it’s a normal day even when there’s not a huge crowd of tourists. Good time of year if you like water, dining out, drinking and buying souvenirs. There are some land tours, there’s a sloth sanctuary for those into that.

At dinner we watched a dog having a good time swimming back and forth between the Splash inn dock and West End diver’s dock where his friend was doing body weight squats.

We had a super fun day of snorkeling! My free diving skills are really helping, so I’m very excited that I decided to take that class. I’m still on the fence about getting some fins and a weight belt. I’ll probably see if Splash Inn will loan me a pair of fins tomorrow.

Bill’s dive master is from Washington state but he and his wife retired early and now they spent part of the year in Washington, part of the year at their house in Baja Mexico and part of the year at their house here in Roatan. I need to ask what kind of jobs they had to have this kind of life.

We have three dive/snorkeling trips tomorrow so our blog will probably be pretty repetitive.

Last night I ordered king crab for supper. It was huge and super rich. It was also expensive, but we are cooking a lot of our food so I don’t feel so bad about splurging once in a while. King crabs shells are much harder than the crab legs you get at HyVee. It came with a hammer that we had to use!

It took me an extra day, but I passed my free diving class today. Yesterday was a little rough. It was windy and the water was choppy when we went out to do the free diving class. I did several pretty successful dives, but toward the end of class, I started to feel sea sick. My instructor also waited until the end of class to have me do the rescue portion of the class. To pass Level 1, you have to be able to rescue another free diver who has blacked out under water. You have to dive below them, put your hands under their chin and on the back of their head, and push them up through the water. At the surface, you have to hold their head in a certain way, take off their mask, blow on their face, tap their cheek and tell them to breath. It takes an enormous amount of energy to push someone else to the surface. By the time I got to the surface, I was gasping for air, my technique was bad and I kept forgetting steps. We should have done that at the beginning of class before I was exhausted and sea sick. We finally gave up, and I agreed to come back today to finish that part of the class and one other part.

Today went much better. My dives were really good. I had some time to consider techniques for the rescue part of the class, and I just passed on the third try. I’m not sure how many more times I could have tried. It takes a ton of energy and is stressful. No one should depend on me to save them under water, it’s probably unrealistic to expect a level 1 free diver to perform rescue operations anyway.

I dove 20 meters (65 ft) without too much trouble. My equalization technique is really good. One of the guys who took the class with me couldn’t equalize at all and had to give up and the other one struggled but managed to do it if he went feet first. Apparently, it’s harder for some people to equalize if they swim facing down. My breath-holding isn’t great but not terrible either. To finish the class, I had to do a static breath-hold for 1.5 minutes and swim 30 meters without surfacing. Neither were too difficult, but I can’t hold my breath for much more than 1 min 30 sec. I’m surprised they don’t start the class with that. There is a sport where you put your head in the water and see how long you can hold your breath. That does not seem like a worthwhile activity to me.

I’m happy to have the free diving class finished so now I can use what I learned to snorkel more effectively. I should get to try tomorrow. I bought a new bright pink rash guard that works great at prevent my arms and shoulders from burning. It fits nicely and will be easily visible to any boats where I might be snorkeling. Bill rented a jet ski today while I was free diving and he managed to find me in the water from quite a distance because of the rash guard. I’m considering buying some fins at the Cressi shop, but I’m on the fence about that.

This is a good place for both doing activities but also having plenty of down time to read or nap. For the last 2 days, after spending 2 taxing hours in the water, I’ve come home exhausted and needed to sleep for a while. I’ve spent enough time in the water, that I constantly feel like I’m moving. It’s a weird feeling. I’m laying in bed but I feel like I’m floating on a raft.

That’s it for tonight.

Today Emily went and finished her Free diving class and I went jet skiing for almost two hours. It went back about 10 minutes early because I wasn’t sure of the time and I was feeling pretty done by then.

After lunch I had a 2:00 dive, it was okay. I’m supposed to have a private dive master but I didn’t get one. I still went and really missed my private dive master. I will have to ask about that tomorrow morning. We did a drift dive where you go with the current and then the boat comes and gets you. I have done that a fair amount in Costa Rica. Most of the dives here have been swim out from the boat and then back to the boat after exploring the reef. Not as much stuff to see as my dive yesterday when I forgot my camera, but I did get some pictures.

I have at least two dives tomorrow, Emily is up for snorkeling at least one of those. We will see how things go in the morning.

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Be safe!

Howdy readers!!

So short post tonight, I forgot my camera this morning until I was on the boat. Normally I don’t take much but today I had a bag because I needed to log my dives. Also I had my camera in my mask pouch yesterday but I took it out last night to get the pictures for last night’s post and left it on the table. So when I looked in the pouch it wasn’t there.

My first dive today was the deep dive!! I went down to 102 feet. I wasn’t there for very long as your bottom time is shorter due to the possibility of gas bubbles forming in your body and then you end up with problems. There wasn’t much there anyway. There was however at between 40-50 feet quite a bit today, there was a very large crab, a few lobsters and a small eel bed with a lot of little eels. Of course plenty of fish. For sea life it was a good dive and I didn’t get the bends.

My second dive was a naturalist specialization, which we were looking at corals mostly but also got to see some eagle rays and a turtle. I was informed it is mating season for the rays and they start to bunch up.

After my second dive my class was complete and I am now advanced open water certified. I suppose if there is a time or place where deeper water is where everything is to see I can go. I don’t think it will be very often but I have it.

Tomorrow I will be jet skiing with Kevin’s tour company in the morning. Emily is doing more free diving. In the afternoon we are going out with Splash Inn, I will dive and Emily will snorkel and practice her free diving skills.

Hopefully everyone is doing well!!

Today Emily did the first day of her class and it sounds like it went well and she is happy with her success!

I did three dives today, first was the fish finder dive where I work on my skills identifying sea life. Most of what I seen was mostly the same fish. I didn’t get to see the shark the other divers doing a recreation dive did because we were off actively looking for stuff. I also didn’t see the turtles and eel on the last dive. I did see a baby angel fish and flounder.

I got a few pictures, I didn’t get to use my camera much.

My second dive was navigation. I got to do some drills in the water and then I led the way back to the boat, I over shot our turn because a lot of the reef looks the same and I didn’t know how far we had gone. It was okay though because my instructor knew where we were going. I knew the direction and if I could have gone over the reef I would have ran into the boat from my starting position. The reef was too shallow and she didn’t allow me to go in a straight line for where the boat was. There was enough water for swimming and being under but she said boats come through sometimes and the. The safety margin is too narrow.

My third dive was peak buoyancy control. I do fairly well with my buoyancy especially when swimming. Hovering is still a little bit of an issue. We may try me with less weight than the normal 12 pounds that I use. I have a delay when I breathe in before I start to rise. Exhaling and I go down fairly quickly. It’s odd. I had some skills to do for that dive as well. I had to swim through a hoop several times, sometimes flipping to face the surface. She said that skill is for cave diving, I told her that then won’t be something I need to be good at, I’m not going to be cave diving. I also did the knock a scuba weight over deal Karl had me doing in Curaçao when he worked with me on my buoyancy. I don’t do a lot of head down diving but I can see the use for looking under ledges at crabs and lobsters.

Tomorrow I will do my deep dive and a naturalist dive.

After diving I went down with Kevin from the tour shop and we talked to the billing gal and she literally said that they know the bills get marked up some because the insurance takes a long time to pay and then they don’t pay all of it sometimes. She did also say that normally it is around $400 and that $4500 is a lot. She took a copy of the bill to show her boss and they will be in contact. She did say they were no longer using that billing company ( not sure if that is true) and that they are looking at a rule where everyone that comes to Roatan has to have travel insurance and that would be the only insurance they would deal with. We get travel insurance and that would have been the next step if my insurance didn’t pay. I don’t know if going there will change anything but maybe it would help someone. I told Kevin to tell his clients going forward to not say they have health insurance and just pay the deposit then deal with any bill when they get home. Kevin said you can get a nice car for $5000 in Roatan, Nelson his number 2 said you can have somebody taken out for that kind of money here. I wonder if they would go out a take care of the sea urchins?

I did my first free diving class today, and it went great! I was concerned about how it would go, but I’m actually a decent free diver. I think my snorkeling background helped. I was most concerned about equalizing the pressure in my ears, which has limited how far I could dive in the past. There is a special technique that free divers use. It’s different than the scuba diving technique. It’s faster and works better at deeper depths. I had practiced some before I got here, and I found the technique fairly easy. I’m glad I practiced ahead of time though. I can dive to 39 ft without much trouble, and I think I was down to 49 ft once today.

We did two types of free diving today. In the first method, you pull yourself down with a rope attached to a weight. This was easiest for me. The second method involved swimming down with fins. I don’t have much experience using fins. I don’t like them so I don’t use them when I snorkel. I had a hard time controlling them, but to dive deep, you really have to use them so I need to start practicing with them.

There was one other guy who took the class with me today. He struggled with equalization and was pretty frustrated, but he’s going to take some Sudafed and see if that helps tomorrow. He’s 28 and recently quit his job and is planning to spent the next year or two traveling the world and blowing through most of his savings while he tries to decide what he really wants to do. One of the other free divers on the trip had done the same things when he was younger. He took 4 years to travel and live off savings. Both of them work in tech. My dive instructor was from Argentina.

I have my second day of class tomorrow morning. I hope it’s less windy and the water is calmer. We were out for at least 2 hours today. The water was pretty choppy and I was starting to feel mildly seasick by the time we came in. My sunscreen didn’t work as well as usual and I have weird sunburn patches all over. They aren’t bad burns, but I’ll have a weird tan.

But, overall, I was really happy with how the day went. Bill and I ate at a good restaurant down the street. The food here overall, is really good. I’m thirsty a lot and the smoothies and lemonade are delicious!

Hello readers!! Hopefully everyone is ready for summer and has been getting along well!

We’re once again in Roatan, Emily’s post yesterday should have clued everyone in. Even with the Urgent Care visit and subsequent fallout from that (more on that later!) we did enjoy our time in Roatan and decided to comeback.

Emily is doing the hands on portion of her free diving course starting tomorrow and I will be finishing my Advanced Open Water course. I have four dives with skills to do for my hands on portion. This certification will allow me to dive to 130 feet though they recommend another course to dive at that level and suggest that 100 feet is recreational diving limit. As you dive deeper there is more things to consider and watch for. You get more dissolved gasses in your body and you can spend less time down. For the most part I just want the certification more so than to dive deeper all the time. I do find the 30-60 foot range to be where I usually get to dive anyway. Also your tanks last longer in shallower water. I would rather have as much time under than go deep.

Since we have been here before we are not sure what we will get for pictures. I don’t think there was a lot last time either. I should get some dive photos, if they let me during my certification dives.

So more on my Urgent Care visit, the billing company for Unimed submitted a bill for $4500 + and my insurance did come to an agreement with them for the majority of it. As for what was left I have no idea what they’re doing because I haven’t heard from them since the insurance company paid them. So for soaking my foot in cleaning closet vinegar and scratching at a couple spines with a needle someone got paid well. When we were at the Urgent Care they charged a $400 deposit and said that the bill was going to be around $400 and that’s why they charged that much for a deposit.

Today we stopped by the excursion place where we booked the snorkeling and tours last year and they took us down to Urgent Care and they were going to find out why it was so much. I have a feeling they don’t know what the billing company is doing but they may. Anyhow we have to go back tomorrow when there will be someone who is in charge of things like that. Kevin from the excursion company is going to take us. Sounds like he knows the person who runs it. So that should be interesting! Maybe we’ll find out if Unimed gets a cut of that insurance money or not.

Hello All! Bill and I arrived back in Roatan around 12:30pm today. We visited here last May too. We had to get up at 2:45am to make our 5am flight but overall, we had a smooth travel day. Flights lately have been terrible. A lot of them have 24 or 48 hour layovers somewhere or they are crazy early in the morning. We don’t know why.

We flew through Miami, which is my least favorite airport that we go through. The bathrooms are packed and there was a line, there isn’t enough seating, the food options aren’t great, and something is usually broken. Today it was the sky train. It’s also a really noisy airport.

The nice thing about Roatan is that its only about 2 hours from Miami so it’s one of the quicker places to get to and our apartment isn’t very far from the airport. We had a really nice taxi driver who I was able to practice Spanish with.

Our apartment is beautiful! It’s even nicer than last time. We have 2 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, a full kitchen and a living room. The living room has a nice love seat and a full sofa. It’s also beautifully built and decorated. The showers are huge and the bathrooms are tiled in a very pretty ocean-inspired tile. I have pictures below.

Bill took a nap after we got here and I read for a while. We were pretty tired and it was hot out. We left around 5pm to get food at a really nice restaurant down the street. Bill got half a roasted chicken and I had fish sticks. The fish sticks are good ones, they aren’t like the crappy ones that come out of a box at home. Overall, the food is good here. We also picked up a few groceries from a little store close to our apartment so we at least have breakfast food. We swam for a while in the pool after we got back. I’m running out of energy pretty fast now.

We don’t have anything planned for tomorrow, which is nice. Friday and Saturday, Bill is doing an advanced open water scuba class, and I’m taking a free diving class. We both need to go to our respective dive schools tomorrow and make sure everything is set up. We also have several days of diving and snorkeling booked. It’s the low season here right now and it’s pretty empty. That makes it easy to book things and we have the pool mostly to ourselves.

I’m done for tonight! Hope you are all doing well!