Roatan

I had an absolutely amazing week on Roatan. The diving was typical Caribbean, lots of fish and beautiful coral. Not as impressive as the Red Sea, but definitely enjoyable. Met tons of people, some of whom are already new facebook friends. One of the people staying in the dorm with me was a guy named Peter from Stockholm. He and I hung out quite a bit.. diving, eating, and of course drinking. He even talked me into going on a shark feed dive. I hesitated because of the cost, and the fact that I just did one a few months ago. But it was worth it, better than the one I did in the Bahamas. The dive master brought down a pail with a few fish in it and some holes in the bottom. That brought in about a dozen grey reef sharks. They circled around, close enough to touch, for a good 25 minutes before he opened the pail and let them devour the fish in a matter of seconds. I took half an hour of video so hopefully have some good footage!

Some other Roatan highlights:

• midnight swimming my first night on the island
• after dive beers on the porch of Coconut Tree Divers
• the crabs on the beach at night (yikes!)
• one night of vomiting due to bad baleadas
• meeting Alex, Sarah and Martin, and of course Alex´s bear Kevin (fab folks from England)
• the bugs! (from the sand flies on the beach to the giant beetle thing I found in the dorm one night, to the ants that somehow made their way into my leftover wrap in the fridge)
• the pizza and wrap restaurant
• the burritos at the rotisserie chicken place
• Sundowners, then the Purple Turtle (for more drinks and socializing island style!)
• the dive shop´s neíghbours´ house being robbed by two gunmen... shots were fired (this was 3 minutes up the road from where I was staying)
• faking my way through the tourism bureau´s survey (couldn´t understand half of it!)
• watching the snorkel tests for three newly qualified dive masters (it is just like it sounds.. drinks poured into a container and then drank through a snorkel)

It was such a chilled out place, the kind of place that people come to and never leave. I had conversations with several people in bars that came to Roatan 5 or 15 years ago and just stayed. Most of the dive shop staff are the same way... were wandering through, stopped and did their open water training and then stayed on to do their dive master and/or instructor. It´s easy to see how a person could get stuck in Roatan.