Travelog part 5: Roatan
Sep. 1st, 2011 07:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ilanaramaTuesday, August 2: in which disaster (aka a Portuguese Man-Of-War) strikes
Oh, how nice to have our own kitchen and our own food, even if none of the brands are anything like what we are used to. We had fruit and yogurt and granola, and lots and lots of coffee, and then drove to West End to arrange for a "Discover Scuba" dive for Kristin and Rolfe, and a two-tank dive for us, for the next day. We spent most of the morning walking around the West End; Britt and I had spent a week there on our sailboat in May 2002, and we tried, mostly in vain, to spot landmarks and places we remembered. (Roatan has changed a lot. When we were there before, hardly anyone spoke Spanish. Now mainlander Hondurans have moved out en masse, looking for work; and there is a lot more Latin American tourism, as well.)
After lunch we headed out for a snorkel. Turtle Casa, our rental house, is right on the beach at Sandy Bay, with a dock and sea kayaks for use. For our first trip out, though, we decided to just swim out from the dock. The water was very warm and so I decided not to wear my wetsuit, just a swimsuit, and as a result I was very cautious not to brush any coral while we made our way through the reef to the outside, and when we came back in. I mean, I was actually thinking about how naked and vulnerable I was - and then all of a sudden, my back and right leg were on fire.
The thing with Portuguese Man-Of-Wars (Men-Of-War?) is that they drift on the surface with the wind, but their tentacles, which can extend OMG THIRTY FREAKIN' FEET, don't necessarily go straight down but hang in the current. I had seen nothing unusual directly ahead of or beside me, but I knew instantly what it was, because Britt had been stung by one of these in the Bahamas, and I recognized the symptoms: incredible pain, shortness of breath, muscle spasms, and a feeling of impending doom. (No kidding! That's what it says in the marine medicine book! I think it's a side effect of one of the neurotoxins in the stingers.) Kristin wasn't far away, and she saw it - she didn't know what it was, but she described its purple float perfectly.
Immediately I struck out for shore, but I had quite a way to go. Kristin got Britt's attention and he caught up and towed me in, which was a good thing, because man, I felt awful. I had grabbed at the tentacles which had wrapped my leg, as they were slapping against my skin in the current and stinging fresh areas, but of course that meant that my hands got zapped as well. It felt as though I was being repeatedly stung by hornets over most of my body. I was gasping and panting and utterly miserable.
I'm not going to inline the photos, because they are UGLY. But you can see my back, my leg, and (most interesting, IMHO) a closeup from the next day showing the individual stinger pricks.
They got me back to the house and washed off, and then we dithered for an hour or two trying to remember what you're supposed to do, and they called various dive shops for advice, and I moaned in pain a lot and went into shock (it was 86°F in the house, and I crawled into bed under all the blankets and shivered), and actually, I don't remember much of the evening.
Wednesday, August 3: in which we get on and in the water
The next morning I felt much better. Britt and I took Kristin and Rolfe down to the West End for the classroom studies they'd need to do their afternoon dive, then returned back to the house and took out one of the sea kayaks.
(Our house is the rightmost of the three similar ones, with the tan roof and wall in front.)
We met our friends for lunch back at the West End, and then went diving. They were doing a special supervised dive with their instructor, while we were on the regular second afternoon dive, but at least we rode together on the boat.
Our divemaster carried a pole spear, which brought back memories of our sailing days, when we fed ourselves from the sea. These waters are protected as a marine park, so you can't do that here. The one thing you're allowed - nay, encouraged - to spear are lionfish, which are a rapidly-spreading exotic species in the Caribbean, probably originally introduced as dumped aquarium fish. To combat them, divers are spearing them and feeding them to grouper, which will hopefully encourage grouper to go after them on their own. We did, in fact, see one small lionfish, which was duly shot and fed to a grouper who had been hanging around us, possibly for this exact reason.
We also saw crabs both huge (in a cave) and tiny (in a vase sponge - and I was the first to spot it!) and a variety of fishies, and a turtle, just as we were about to surface.
After the dive, we headed back to shore. Rolfe and Kristin decided to sign up for the certification course, which would take them two more full days. Then we wandered down to the bar everyone had recommended, where the bartender recognized the logo on Rolfe's hat as being from Ska, a local microbrewery - he used to live in Durango! We had a few drinks, then went back to the house and started putting dinner together.
Unfortunately, I was not completely over the previous day's mishap. I don't know if it was the compressed air, the activity, or the alcohol, but suddenly I felt awful. I opted out of dinner and went to bed.
Thursday, August 4th: in which I am a total slug
Rolfe and Kristin went to West End for their diving class. Britt took a sea kayak out and snorkeled. I took my book out to the hammock at the end of the dock and read for a while, then took a nap. Then I went back in the house and read for a while which wore me out so much I had to take another nap. I finally started feeling human by dinner, the first meal I'd had all day. Boring, huh? Here, have a pretty sunset, as seen from our deck!
Friday, August 5th: in which we go diving again
Rolfe and Kristen had their last day of diving class, and Britt and I went for a two-tank dive. The first was to a site called Texas, which was right at the southwest point of the island, where the currents met and swept off to the west. The interesting thing about this dive was that there were lots of Sargassum Triggerfish, an uncommon species we'd not seen before. The second dive was not far from there, off West Bay, where we saw several more turtles (including two that had remoras attached) and some very tame grouper.
Saturday, August 6th: in which I play at being a mermaid
In the morning, we took the kayaks out to Spooky channel to go snorkeling before the wind picked up (and before the dive boats came out). It was awesome! At its narrowest, the channel was only a few feet wide, with the coral coming up to within a foot of the surface in places to each side. In the middle it plunged to 30 or more feet. The channel walls were riddled with crevices and side-channels and tunnels, all sorts of interesting formations to dive down to and swim through.
We returned to the house for breakfast and some quality loafing, then drove to West Bay, a fancy resort beach surrounded by mega-mansions of wealthy gringo expats, for lunch on the beach and more snorkeling. We returned to the house for one last dinner, fabricated from as much of the groceries we had leftover as we could possibly put together, and then sat out on the deck watching the sunset. This wasn't just for scenic reasons; sometime that afternoon, the air conditioner broke, and it was a lot more pleasant on the deck than in the house! We turned on the fans and opened the windows, but it was pretty tough to sleep that night, in the heat - it got up to 90°F - and humidity. Fortunately, the next morning it was time to pack up and get on a plane for the dry coolness (relatively speaking) of Durango.
Way more pictures (42 of 'em, mostly underwater photos) at Flickr
Thus ends my vacation travelog, finally! You can see all four parts of the Ecuador section by viewing my Ecuador tag. You can see all 80 photos and one video from Ecuador at Flickr by viewing my Ecuador photoset.
Oh, how nice to have our own kitchen and our own food, even if none of the brands are anything like what we are used to. We had fruit and yogurt and granola, and lots and lots of coffee, and then drove to West End to arrange for a "Discover Scuba" dive for Kristin and Rolfe, and a two-tank dive for us, for the next day. We spent most of the morning walking around the West End; Britt and I had spent a week there on our sailboat in May 2002, and we tried, mostly in vain, to spot landmarks and places we remembered. (Roatan has changed a lot. When we were there before, hardly anyone spoke Spanish. Now mainlander Hondurans have moved out en masse, looking for work; and there is a lot more Latin American tourism, as well.)
After lunch we headed out for a snorkel. Turtle Casa, our rental house, is right on the beach at Sandy Bay, with a dock and sea kayaks for use. For our first trip out, though, we decided to just swim out from the dock. The water was very warm and so I decided not to wear my wetsuit, just a swimsuit, and as a result I was very cautious not to brush any coral while we made our way through the reef to the outside, and when we came back in. I mean, I was actually thinking about how naked and vulnerable I was - and then all of a sudden, my back and right leg were on fire.
The thing with Portuguese Man-Of-Wars (Men-Of-War?) is that they drift on the surface with the wind, but their tentacles, which can extend OMG THIRTY FREAKIN' FEET, don't necessarily go straight down but hang in the current. I had seen nothing unusual directly ahead of or beside me, but I knew instantly what it was, because Britt had been stung by one of these in the Bahamas, and I recognized the symptoms: incredible pain, shortness of breath, muscle spasms, and a feeling of impending doom. (No kidding! That's what it says in the marine medicine book! I think it's a side effect of one of the neurotoxins in the stingers.) Kristin wasn't far away, and she saw it - she didn't know what it was, but she described its purple float perfectly.
Immediately I struck out for shore, but I had quite a way to go. Kristin got Britt's attention and he caught up and towed me in, which was a good thing, because man, I felt awful. I had grabbed at the tentacles which had wrapped my leg, as they were slapping against my skin in the current and stinging fresh areas, but of course that meant that my hands got zapped as well. It felt as though I was being repeatedly stung by hornets over most of my body. I was gasping and panting and utterly miserable.
I'm not going to inline the photos, because they are UGLY. But you can see my back, my leg, and (most interesting, IMHO) a closeup from the next day showing the individual stinger pricks.
They got me back to the house and washed off, and then we dithered for an hour or two trying to remember what you're supposed to do, and they called various dive shops for advice, and I moaned in pain a lot and went into shock (it was 86°F in the house, and I crawled into bed under all the blankets and shivered), and actually, I don't remember much of the evening.
Wednesday, August 3: in which we get on and in the water
The next morning I felt much better. Britt and I took Kristin and Rolfe down to the West End for the classroom studies they'd need to do their afternoon dive, then returned back to the house and took out one of the sea kayaks.
(Our house is the rightmost of the three similar ones, with the tan roof and wall in front.)
We met our friends for lunch back at the West End, and then went diving. They were doing a special supervised dive with their instructor, while we were on the regular second afternoon dive, but at least we rode together on the boat.
Our divemaster carried a pole spear, which brought back memories of our sailing days, when we fed ourselves from the sea. These waters are protected as a marine park, so you can't do that here. The one thing you're allowed - nay, encouraged - to spear are lionfish, which are a rapidly-spreading exotic species in the Caribbean, probably originally introduced as dumped aquarium fish. To combat them, divers are spearing them and feeding them to grouper, which will hopefully encourage grouper to go after them on their own. We did, in fact, see one small lionfish, which was duly shot and fed to a grouper who had been hanging around us, possibly for this exact reason.
We also saw crabs both huge (in a cave) and tiny (in a vase sponge - and I was the first to spot it!) and a variety of fishies, and a turtle, just as we were about to surface.
After the dive, we headed back to shore. Rolfe and Kristin decided to sign up for the certification course, which would take them two more full days. Then we wandered down to the bar everyone had recommended, where the bartender recognized the logo on Rolfe's hat as being from Ska, a local microbrewery - he used to live in Durango! We had a few drinks, then went back to the house and started putting dinner together.
Unfortunately, I was not completely over the previous day's mishap. I don't know if it was the compressed air, the activity, or the alcohol, but suddenly I felt awful. I opted out of dinner and went to bed.
Thursday, August 4th: in which I am a total slug
Rolfe and Kristin went to West End for their diving class. Britt took a sea kayak out and snorkeled. I took my book out to the hammock at the end of the dock and read for a while, then took a nap. Then I went back in the house and read for a while which wore me out so much I had to take another nap. I finally started feeling human by dinner, the first meal I'd had all day. Boring, huh? Here, have a pretty sunset, as seen from our deck!
Friday, August 5th: in which we go diving again
Rolfe and Kristen had their last day of diving class, and Britt and I went for a two-tank dive. The first was to a site called Texas, which was right at the southwest point of the island, where the currents met and swept off to the west. The interesting thing about this dive was that there were lots of Sargassum Triggerfish, an uncommon species we'd not seen before. The second dive was not far from there, off West Bay, where we saw several more turtles (including two that had remoras attached) and some very tame grouper.
Saturday, August 6th: in which I play at being a mermaid
In the morning, we took the kayaks out to Spooky channel to go snorkeling before the wind picked up (and before the dive boats came out). It was awesome! At its narrowest, the channel was only a few feet wide, with the coral coming up to within a foot of the surface in places to each side. In the middle it plunged to 30 or more feet. The channel walls were riddled with crevices and side-channels and tunnels, all sorts of interesting formations to dive down to and swim through.
We returned to the house for breakfast and some quality loafing, then drove to West Bay, a fancy resort beach surrounded by mega-mansions of wealthy gringo expats, for lunch on the beach and more snorkeling. We returned to the house for one last dinner, fabricated from as much of the groceries we had leftover as we could possibly put together, and then sat out on the deck watching the sunset. This wasn't just for scenic reasons; sometime that afternoon, the air conditioner broke, and it was a lot more pleasant on the deck than in the house! We turned on the fans and opened the windows, but it was pretty tough to sleep that night, in the heat - it got up to 90°F - and humidity. Fortunately, the next morning it was time to pack up and get on a plane for the dry coolness (relatively speaking) of Durango.
Way more pictures (42 of 'em, mostly underwater photos) at Flickr
Thus ends my vacation travelog, finally! You can see all four parts of the Ecuador section by viewing my Ecuador tag. You can see all 80 photos and one video from Ecuador at Flickr by viewing my Ecuador photoset.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2011-09-02 02:15 am (UTC)And SO FREAKING TERRIFYING about the P-MOW. Ack ack ack, no no no, ouch ouch ouch!!!
(no subject)
Date: 2011-09-02 02:57 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-09-02 02:18 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-09-02 02:57 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-09-02 02:43 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-09-02 02:58 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-09-02 05:35 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-09-02 05:39 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-09-02 10:31 am (UTC)I recently had a lunch-room discussion about these animals with a colleague, who insisted the different parts of this colonial organism were genetically unrelated. Which I thought was unlikely, because evolutionarily you're not likely to sacrifice your reproductive ability and volunteer to be, say, the tentacles and let some unrelated individual be the reproductive organs. It turned out I was right, which gave me unholy glee, since the guy I was arguing with is kind of an obnoxious know-it-all and is always correcting people about things. *g*
Anyway, it seems like you had a pretty cool trip!
(no subject)
Date: 2011-09-02 05:40 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-09-02 10:49 am (UTC)I got stung by a man-o'-war once, but they must be less vicious by the time they get here, because it wasn't nearly as terrifying as your experience.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-09-02 01:44 pm (UTC)Sorry this happened to you! And thanks for the vicarious excitement. Sounds like a wonderful trip, jellyfish aside.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-09-02 08:01 pm (UTC)I did have mild pain and felt kind of out of it for maybe 10 days. My sting marks are nearly gone - a few odd-looking scars - but Britt still has itchy rashes.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-09-02 05:40 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-09-02 01:47 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-09-02 08:02 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-09-02 08:52 pm (UTC)You take beautiful pictures, but your sunsets are just breathtaking. WOW!
(no subject)
Date: 2011-09-02 11:04 pm (UTC)I am glad I didn't die, too!
(no subject)
Date: 2011-09-03 06:59 am (UTC)Incredible pictures - I especially love the spindly crab in the vase sponge!
(no subject)
Date: 2011-09-03 02:06 pm (UTC)It was so neat to be on the dive and floating past the sponges, then look in and see the arrow crab. I had to wave everyone else down so they could see it!
(no subject)
Date: 2011-09-04 07:44 am (UTC)Your run-in with the Man O'War sounds terrible! But I am fascinated at the sting mark with all the little stingers.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-09-07 05:58 pm (UTC)You are getting your summer soon! You will be able to go swimming!
(no subject)
Date: 2011-09-10 02:52 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-09-12 02:32 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-09-16 05:37 am (UTC)Amazing dive photos, Ilana. And the dinner on a deck sounds great- even with heat and humidity
(no subject)
Date: 2011-09-20 02:12 am (UTC)