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adventures / photo / Tuesday / video — Comments Off
16
Jul 19

Dolphins, dolphins, dolphins

On the last day of our now long-gone vacation, indeed, the last thing we did before catching the shuttle that took us to the airport, was to play with dolphins.

The resort is on an island and there are two little cays off the key. One of the cays has most of the guest quarters. The other has the dolphin enclosure and a few beaches.

At the enclosure, there are a pod of dolphins living in a nice safe little environment. The dolphins could come and go as they please, which is easy to see when you can study the entire structure. But, the dolphins are living the good life. Food comes to them. Predators can’t bother them. In fact, our local dive master is a regular visitor to this resort and he told us that at least once the dolphins have noticed and pointed out a problem with the enclosure to the animal scientists.

Hey, over here. See that? Could you fix that? And bring more fish. Thanks.

So there’s a dedicated staff that cares for the dolphins, and the behaviorists work with specific ones in terms of their care, socializing them for human interaction and showing off some tricks, but these are very much still wild creatures. These dolphins aren’t domesticated.

We got to hang out with a three-year-old female, still very much a child.

She was often being interrupted by a slightly older male dolphin, at least until the momma dolphin stopped by. Go figure.

They did some tricks and showed off some cool dolphin facts. And then, we got to snorkel with the pod for about 45 minutes. They swim alongside you, check you out, take reeds of long sea grass from you, and otherwise let you watch them do the aquatic swimming things dolphins do all day.

It was a nice way to wind down our visit. When our time with the dolphins was up we caught the ferry back to our room, hastily rinsed off, made sure the last of our things were backed and then caught the ferry back to the island. The shuttle was waiting on us. Everyone was waiting on us. We’re important like that.

Then the airport, checking in, security, customs a two-hour wait for our flight, the trip to Atlanta, sitting on the tarmac in Atlanta (great to be home!) because Delta and/or their contractors (depending on which proffered explanation you liked) couldn’t get their act together. Fortunately we had a long layover at Hartsfield. Instead of spending it in a lounge, we spent it on our first plane before just making it to another terminal, grabbing a sandwich and getting on the flight to Indianapolis. We arrived there on time, drove back in the darkness and got in around midnight, started laundry, went to bed, wandering how we’d spent a whole day like that and dreaming already of taking another trip.

adventures / friends / memories / Monday / photo / video — Comments Off
15
Jul 19

Don’t call me Zippy

Since we couldn’t dive that Friday afternoon, we went into the tree tops. The Yankee and I and a couple from our boat and two people we’d made friends with over the course of the week. We’d taken a shore dive with them, had a few dinners together and commiserated about that one bratty kid that was intent on ruining everyone’s trip. Anyway,

Eight of us from the resort went to this particular zip line experience. I think The Yankee and I were the only one who had never done this before. And, of course, she was great at it immediately, looking like Indiana Jones up there:

But don’t take my word for it. Here’s a brief video clip:

They had us pulling down on that cable to slow down, and depending on the line you were on and the distance and speed you covered, you were supposed to start the slow down at different times. I wasn’t always clear on when that time was. And, also, I kept over-rotating somehow. It was all great fun.

We did something like 13 zip lines on our way from one of the island’s high points down to sea level. And when we were all safely on the ground we met a new friend:

That evening we had dinner with our New Mexico friends above and most of the survivors from our dive boat. Someone there had the coolest idea among all of the long-shot “Let’s all get together and do this again one day” notions. They brought along postcards to share contact information. I have to remember to do that, otherwise, it’s business cards a-plenty, and who needs that? The last thing you’re trying to do on vacation is remind yourself of overcooked job titles. We just need emails for Box folders and a postcard gives you all that extra space for a personalized message, and dive jokes, too.

And, yes, I think I can get another two or three days worth of photos out of our trip. Tomorrow, we’ll talk about dolphins!

adventures / Friday / photo / Roatan / SCUBA / video — Comments Off
12
Jul 19

Our final dives in Roatan

We had our last two dives of the trip last Friday. While every other day had been three or four dives, the last day is on a bit of a clock. Again, because of the chemistry going on in your bloodstream, you’re not supposed to dive within 18 or 24 hours of your flight. So we had two dives on Friday afternoon and other activities until it was time to leave.

So our last two Our last two dives featured El Aguila, or The Eagle, is regarded as one of the best diving sites around the island. El Aguila is a 230-foot long freighter. It was hauling concrete and bound for Haiti when it wrecked. It stayed where it stopped for a long while and had quite the adventure as a former freighter before being purchased, cleaned and put at this final spot, sunk at 110 feet in 1997. It sat upright for about a year, and then Hurricane Mitch blew through in late 1998 and snapped the weakened ship into three pieces.

We also saw plenty of fish and groupers, plenty of garden eels and a very curious green moray eel. You can see some of that in this video:

Here we are, diving off down the bow of The Eagle:

Doesn’t it look spooky and cool?

Here’s The Eagle amidships:

Count your coral while you can:

I certainly was:

It’s just so pretty:

Thanks for following along this week with last week’s diving adventures. Next week we’ll show off a few other things from this trip and, eventually, get back to normal.

I guess. If we must.

adventures / photo / Roatan / SCUBA / Thursday / video — Comments Off
11
Jul 19

More dives from the depths of Roatan

Last Thursday was our last four-dive day of that trip. The Fourth, when you watched fireworks, I watched fish. While you looked up into the night sky, I looked up into the ocean on a rapid ascent trying to avoid jellyfish. While you ooohed and aaahed big percussive explosive, I enjoyed the quiet of a starry Caribbean night. There is nothing wrong with the July Fourth celebration, but there’s nothing wrong with trying something different, either.

There is an accumulative effect, even at a recreational dive depths, of the pressure on the oxygen in your blood stream. By day five, which is what last Thursday was, most people are really starting to feel it. Nitrogen buildup makes you feel rather tired, they say. Plus it is a tiny bit more physical than you’d realize. But mostly it is the chemistry.

I didn’t feel that, but by Thursday my ears and sinuses — delicate little features, to be sure — were wearing down. I have to clear my sinuses at least twice every atmosphere, like clockwork. If I can keep count I don’t have to even look at my depth gauge, I just usually know. And somewhere between dives 14 and 18 last Thursday they were beginning to voice their displeasure.

But the diving continued to be great. The weather was pleasant. That big storm system brewing in the Gulf of Mexico kept the temperatures nice and mild for us. We had the roughest seas of our trip last Thursday on our morning dive and the water was barely moving. The whole week was like that, perfectly designed, pleasantly enjoyed.

We did our last night dive of the trip, but there’s no footage of that. We do, however, have more terrific footage taken from the first three dives of the day, and plenty of neat pictures below. (If this whole professorial thing doesn’t work out The Yankee might consider a career in the media.)

(See that joke is funny because … hang on. ‘What’s that, hon? Yeah, you’re probably right. They probably know.‘ Sorry. Anyway, yeah, that joke is funny.)

To the video! And yes, there are more turtles to be seen here and below …

It never stops feeling like an other-worldly adventure, if you ask me.

Do you see what I mean?

In these next four I’m being an explorer, bravely exploring things which ought to be explored:

Here’s one of our delightful little turtle friends now:

They are always a big hit:

No, the reefs never stop being fascinating:

We’re trying to come up with the right human shot. It’s an ongoing experiment. I think we’re getting sort of close. What do you think?

Nailed it!

At the end of each dive you have to do a safety stop. Again, this is about the pressure and chemistry. On some of the dives here we’ve been situated in such a way that we can play around with overhead photos and video, like this one:

Of course there are still plenty of things to see, even at these somewhat more shallow depths:

This is the best photo of the trip and having brought a GoPro was worth every little bit of effort for it. The thing shoots better video than photos, we have come to realize. And you’re just sort of guessing on the older models. It is a wide angle lens, but there’s definitely a point and hope methodology to this camera. This one was supposed to be another overhead, full-body shot, but it didn’t work out that way and, in fact, it works out better this way, I think. Oh, the laughs we had when we were reviewing these at the end of the night.

A version of that, and several other dive photographs, will become banners on the site before too long.

I took this one at a safety stop, whereas The Yankee shot pretty much everything that she isn’t in. There was just something about this little outcropping I enjoyed. Shape and light, and size and wonder, I suppose. It is a tiny little reef mound in the scheme of things, and doing quite well considering the number of humans that stop by it.

Even for this shot, I had to wait for people to get out of the way. That’s always worth it, though.

Tomorrow’s update will feature our last dives of the trip, but I’ve got enough material left over after that to stretch this vacation out until next week. That’s what you should do, anyway, right? Even when you’ve come back home, after you’ve dragged luggage, enjoyed the pleasant Customs experience, sat in the car on the way to the house late at night thinking “The coral looked better than the silhouettes of these trees,” and then found your way to your pillow, you should stay on vacation, right?

That’s what we’re working with over here.

adventures / photo / Roatan / SCUBA / video / Wednesday — Comments Off
10
Jul 19

Wednesday was another four-dive day

I’m still writing about last week as if it was today, because I’m still on island time.

Anyway, we added a shore dive to our regularly scheduled boat dives last Wednesday. When we came back to the surface we’d marked dives 10 through 14 for the week. Below is a video of the boat diving we did that day:

The resort offers unlimited shore diving, but unlimited in this context has some limitations. There’s only so much time in the day, after all, and there is some chemistry to consider. You can only dive so many times because of the nitrogen build up (Note to self: Get a nitrox certification so this isn’t a problem.) and there are a few other events going on at the resort as well. Just give me a tank and let me sit on the bottom.

But the shore dive is a little more involved than that. You pick up a tank, wade out over stone and sand and who knows what all has moved into the neighborhood. Then you snorkel out through really shallow water, over sea grass until you find and follow this famous rope down through the shore-breaking reefs. Before too long it dumps out to about 40 feet and there’s just the ocean in front of you and you can choose going down the reefs to the left or the right. Six of us — four people from our dive boat and two other new friends — went to the left. I would have just flattened out on the bottom there at the rope if anyone asked, but they didn’t ask me.

That was fine, too. It was a pleasant little dive in the early evening’s dusk. It would be easy to be poetic about such things. The sun was at an angle low enough in the sky that the bottom where we swam was turning gray. When we returned to the surface over that famous rope, it was still the light of day.

Here are some photographs from the day’s diving. There are plenty of fish to see in this wonderful wildlife preserve:

And you get some time with turtles, too:

As ever, the coral is always a fascinatingly complex backdrop:

And, look! I found a mermaid!

We’re swimming over entire ecosystems, tourists in a landscape that is a gift, ever reminded of the vital and fragile link this represents for us all:

Never mind that guy, though:

And on our shore dive, we saw two lion fish hanging out together. They’re an invasive species, and becoming a favored island cuisine, if for nothing else than an attempt to try to culture a fish that shouldn’t be there:

We should be here. We should be diving all the time. Observing, caring for, enjoying and remembering long forgotten tales about the power and the majesty of places like this. Let’s do it again tomorrow.