Getting Back to Life as a Scuba Bum

My brief foray back into my old life was difficult. I think it always is difficult when someone you know dies unexpectedly, and obviously way too soon. But I was thousands of miles away from it all, living in Utila and expecting a friend to arrive on the 25th.

It was probably just what I needed, to keep me from  getting lost in the misery of Mike's death and everything that goes with a line of duty death in law enforcement. My Facebook feed was filled with it.

Greg was scheduled to arrive on the 25th, a Saturday. He is in the process of buying a house here and this trip was originally scheduled in hopes the house would be his. Doesn't really work that way here, there could be a thousand things that slow up the process including the speed of the government to do much of anything. So instead it appeared this would be mostly a vacation for him and a chance for me to dive and hang out with one of my best friends.

I had told him I'd get a Tuk-Tuk to the airport to pick him up, he was scheduled to arrive at about 3:30 p.m. Weather had come in, keeping the ferry from coming in and word was the airport in La Ceiba was closed. But I knew he had a flight directly to the island from San Pedro Sula and it was looking better. Greg and I both have US phones that neither of us uses as a regular phone when in Honduras, that just gets way too expensive. We also both have Honduran phones so that we can at the very least text each other.

I went to the airport but when I got there almost everything was shut down. A woman who works there told me that no more planes would be coming in, that the airport in Ceiba was closed. I said he was coming direct from San Pedro Sula and she told me that flight was scheduled to come in the next morning.

As I've probably mentioned in several of my other posts about getting to and from the island, there are not daily flights here so her saying a flight would arrive Sunday morning sounded unlikely to me, they don't fly here on Sundays. I was concerned because I had received word from Greg that he had gotten to San Pedro Sula but no text or anything saying he was not getting to Utila on Saturday. I returned to the hotel and finally got a message that indeed the airline had agreed to make the flight on Sunday morning. I reminded Greg that I never seem to get anywhere in one day. Clearly there would be no diving on Sunday morning and we'd have to see if there was an afternoon boat.

Early Sunday morning I got to the airport and the Tuk Tuk driver and I waited. I'm not very patient. As the minutes ticked by past the time he was scheduled to arrive, I wondered if he had yet again had a flight cancelled. When you only plan a week for vacation getting a day or two taken off your vacation can be really annoying. He finally arrived about 30 minutes later than scheduled.

We chose to skip any dive on Sunday and instead made plans for diving Monday morning. Besides his own recreational diving, Greg had agreed to teach Laurent, one of the instructors at Captain Morgan's, side mount diving.

It was a lovely week, diving four days, Greg taught side mount, we killed several lion fish which we then cooked up right there at the restaurant/bar at the hotel and shared with anyone who wanted to try some. I killed my first lion fish during this week, and my second kill was pretty cool, came close to breaking the record for size. But alas, close only counts in what horseshoes? But it was fun none-the-less.

First the diving ...

Greg with one of his lion fish kills.

Spotted Moray Eel

Crab .... a huge crab.

Queen Trigger Fish

Toadfish

And then the side mount training ...

Laurent sharing air with Greg

Greg sharing air with Laurent

Getting through some smaller spaces

Lots of options for getting through difficult spaces.

Thursday night of his stay was Greg's birthday. I think it made him feel pretty great to be greeted by so many good wishes and a cake especially for him.

All in all a great week. Good friends, good diving, good food and good drink. Greg left Saturday the 1st to head back to Nashville. He was returning for the Thanksgiving holiday with our friend Sandra. I would be gone as I was visiting the US for the holiday.

Note: I'm certain I mentioned my bad luck (or stupidity) when I had flooded both of my strobes. I was lucky, Greg delivered to me a new strobe so at least I had one. But it is still a challenge to get things right with either none or only one strobe. But I won't complain because I at least had the one.

So now it is a bit more diving then preparing for another trip to the states. Wonder how this one will go? That is in the next post.