Minnesota Mariners: Everything's better down where it's wetter, take it from me!

Friday, February 28, 2014

Everything's better down where it's wetter, take it from me!

First dive day on Roatan, today! At the recommendation of Sandra & Al, we did some research on Coconut Tree Divers in West End. Number one on Trip Advisor also counts for something, so we scheduled a 1-tank dive for this afternoon. For those of you who have followed us on other trips, you know that Andrew has troubles equalizing during descent and, often, has weeks of ear issues after we dive. We talked to our dive master (DM), Marco, about the issue in advance, and he promised to make it a smooth trip to the bottom.

On the boat getting ready to go under. Disregard the water drop on the camera.

True to his word, Marco (and Andrew) took their time on the way down. He also stayed right with Andrew and offered tips to help him equalize, which doesn't usually happen. We had a very small group - only four divers, plus Marco (the DM) and Sara who was certifying for her DM classification. There was another group on our boat doing their open water certification, but they were with a different DM.

The dive site was called "Bikini Bottom", and was relatively shallow (about 60 feet maximum) compared to Belize diving where we are often below 80 feet. This portion of reef was huge - you often couldn't see from side to the other. In addition to the beautiful coral and colorful fish that I don't know the names of, we also saw several parrot fish, a large spotted eagle ray, two turtles.

Andrew working his way down the line

Dive selfie!

Turtle in the middle...look closely!

Here's some video of the turtle. We also saw a big spotted eagle ray. My apologies, as the video isn't very good. I'm still learning how to use the GoPro properly and I inadvertently turned off the darn LCD screen about 3 minutes in to the dive. After that, I never quite knew what I was filming, so I'm pretty happy I got anything at all! Overall, it was a great dive! We were down just a minute or two shy of an hour, which was just fine. I was starting to get cold by about 40 minutes in, even though the water temp was about 80 degrees F. Next time (which will be on Monday, by the way), I'll add a shorty over top of my dive skin!

After the dive, we were hungry so we headed off in search of food. We found a little place by the beach. Andrew ordered Lion Fish, which I think may be about the same as eating rat or gopher. Lion Fish is a "pest" here in the Caribbean. To keep the population down it's hunted and, typically, fed to other fish. Apparently there's plenty, because this restaurant was serving it as fish & chips to the tourists. I have to admit, it was actually pretty good.