We have been working hard on our Divemaster Training in Roatan, Honduras.  Our Instructors have been great and the diving spectacular! Diving has it's hazards and dangers however. You can get stung by fish that will send you to the hospital writhing in pain. You can get gnawed on by a shark or a Morey Eel. The coral is pretty sharp and cut you if you rub up against a coral wall by accident. There are jellyfish with their nematocysts and fire coral with its fine hair-like projections that gives "pins and needles sensation" a whole new meaning. But for some odd reason, there has been a sudden outbreak of skin boils.

Lancing Boils

In the medical world, we know this as "spider bites", maybe that has a better ring than staphylococcus?  Long story short... Shelly and I have been lancing quite a few boils being the nurses and all.  Some on the back of the legs, some on the toes, some on arm pits, and other body parts.  The pictures  show the story of Alex. She's an instructor at West End Divers where we did our Divemaster and her toe needed to be lanced to release the pressure due to a boil she had developed. She was given a bottle of vodka from the ever-helpful Brendan (blue shirt). The whole shop was taking pictures and gathered around while I (one of the only medically trained people) lanced the boil. Alex handled it like a champ. She didn't whine at all, even when she cried. We bandaged her up, and she stayed out of the water for few days and it healed up fine.

Divemaster Training

We are finishing up our DMT (Divemaster Training Program) we should be done in a couple weeks.  It's bittersweet.  We are enjoying our time on Roatan, and would love to stay and work, however the jobs here in the approaching off-season, don't support two Divemasters.  Roatan doesn't use as many as other places in the world.  Between Utila and Roatan, Divemasters are a dime a dozen.  Most dive leading is done by Instructors here.  So either we shell out another few thousand dollars to become instructors or try and get some experience and make money somewhere else. 

The Divemaster Program at West End Divers was good.  We feel we learned what we needed to become good dive leaders and also had a lot of experience helping the instructors teach courses.  We logged over 150 dives each and can effectively lead a dive and keep people organized underwater.  Our program consisted of practical training sessions with our mentors and bookwork.  We had to return skills as if we were instructors by showing that we knew the basic skills taught in an Open Water.  This requires that you do everything in an exaggerated slow motion underwater. 

The Skills Circuit

Some of the skills we had to return with "demonstration quality"(high enough quality to demonstrate to a student) were; all the underwater mask removal/ replace skills, the controlled emergency ascent, no mask swim, regulator retrieval, hover skills, equipment removal and replace, etc.  All the skills in an open water we had to pass with "demonstration quality" of an instructor in a skills circuit.  We also had to do an emergency plan, map a divesite and pass the test and a bunch of other things I won't bore you with now.  We only have a few more skills to return and the divesite mapping left to do.  We are trying to eek out as much time as we can, but we can tell they are trying to push us on and finish it. 

Going Home Party

Autumn's going away. She is another instructor here who has been working as a Divemaster/ Instructor for years. She was also Shelly's "mentor" in the DMT program. Autumn is going back to the UK for a while then going to India 0r maybe Indonesia. She is traveling with her partner Dorien who is an instructor as well. They are travelers much like us and sometimes their plans change abruptly due to one thing or another. When traveling, you have to roll with the punches, and figure things out on the fly.

The Next Step For Us

They came here last year from Koh Tao, Thailand. We were sad to see Autumn go although when you are traveling, saying goodbye is the norm.  She got us thinking about what we were going to do once we finished our Divemaster. The jobs in Roatan and Utila are there for a divemaster but the market is better in Koh Tao. Autumn told us we can make a great wage, and the island is cheap in comparison to other parts of Thailand.

We started checking things out, and decided to fore-go going to Panama or Costa Rica at this time (which don't have a large scuba destination profile) and go to Koh Tao to seek work as Divemasters and possibly get our Instructor Cert.Our plan is to go to LA and take care of some tax stuff, and see our friends in California, and then head out to Bangkok on the 17th of May. Then on to Koh Tao, Thailand.

Change In Perspective

We are used to saying goodbye to people.  You learn while traveling that it's all temporary.  You make such good friends that they become your family on the road.  Saying goodbye gets easier and easier.  You know from the beginning that its only a temporary engagement and that you will be separating soon.  Its a strange sensation and one that we are getting more used to.  Soon we will be saying goodbye to Roatan and all of our friends here.  Maybe what makes that easier is knowing that our next step will be full of new friends and experiences to replace the ones we have here.