Honduras - Turns out, spending a week underwater is exhausting

I spent the last week at Barefoot Cay in Roatan, Honduras relaxing and SCUBA diving, lots of diving.

Getting to the resort was a bit of an adventure as I had to leave the company holiday party early (a decision I regret and wish I'd made better flight decisions), flew on TACA (a Central American airline, better than China Eastern, but still not very good) through San Salvador (not exactly a bustling airport hub) and got to Roatan on a puddle-jumper airplane.

Once we got to Roatan, the island had an interesting dichotomy of natural beauty and human poverty that seemed endemic for the locals, in direct contrast to the luxury of the tourist resorts. I couldn't shake that contrast, which sort of detracted from the vacation for me, forcing feelings of guilt. The resort was very well maintained and appointed, it felt very much like Hawaii, although there was almost nothing to do outside of the resort. Most of my time not spent diving was spent reading as I picked up the A Song of Fire and Ice series and made significant headway.

As for the diving, the best location was Mary's Place, a collection of cracks that happened to be right outside the shore break from our resort. It felt like underwater spelunking and at times reminded me of the X-wing trench run scene in A New Hope. Other diving highlights included a field of garden eels, a very bold and determined sea turtle and increasing my total bottom time past 12 hours (and not getting decompression sickness). The sea life was less vibrant than I expected it to be, however that assessment could have been a result of my exasperation of seeing the same things day in and day out for 10 dives. I also developed a new diving move called Top Gunning (you turn upside down and swim face to face with another diver without warning them first).

Hawaii - SCUBA Certification

I spent the week with my family on the Kona side of Hawaii getting SCUBA certified at Jack's Dive Locker in Kailua. It was a pretty good trip, although diving isn't the easiest thing to pick up initially, especially breath control, but I passed and got my Open Water Diver certification. Diving in the tropics is pretty nice as you don't need to wear nearly as thick a wet suit and the fish life is much more vibrant.

(This post was written well after the fact. I got my Advanced Open Water certification in August 2011 in Monterey, CA. The water was significantly colder, but not as cold as I expected. And I rather enjoyed diving in the kelp forests. I think cold water diving has much more interesting plant life whereas warm water diving has much more interesting fish life)