Hi All!
Well, it is difficult to not dive after a week of pure diving! Sorry I missed you Chedder chick and scubatexastony. It was fun shouting hello and waving to you as MarkFM and I were going under
. MarkFM saw your caution tape once, and then later remembered it was your scubabboard ID.:shakehead I brought my antlers, but it stayed in my luggage :turkey:.
It was a great week, good diving.
We arrived on Friday afternoon. Zahner saw MarkFM and me at the airport waiting for our luggage and introduced himself and his wife. It was nice-saw them a few times during the week at Habitat-(and even roomed with them when we were stuck in Miami! See what can happen when you meet fellow scubaboarders!)
We met up with the dive group that had organized the trip for us, then MarkFM and I did a night dive -more like getting used to diving again for me-on Friday night. Didn't stay in long. The dive set up at Habitat is very convenient as everyone has mentioned. The tanks are available 24/7. There are lockers available for your gear.
It is a short walk down the pier to the water. MarkFM always did a giant stride in although you have to be careful I think, you can touch bottom. I always made my way down the steps.There is a line from the pier going to the reef. Very nice. MarkFM and I did many day and night dives from here. If you like many different types of eels, pufferfish, octopus, scorpionfish, peacock flounder, slipper lobster etc, all were seen diving the house reef, including tiny things, cleaner shrimp etc.
I love night dives, and observing an octopus feeding, with MarkFM and friends is one om favorite memories. Pointing to peacock flounders to MarkFM, and seeing the flounder camouflage as Mark turns to look at it.
He did take some cool photos eventually. Also, seeing a slipper lobster scurrying was a hoot. MarkFM and I saw a slipper lobster that was huge -and prehistoric looking in Roatan, barely moving-so seeing this one move so quickly was impressive. I brought all my Humann ID books and referenced what I saw with friends.
We did a total of 3 half days of boat dives, 2 dives each outing.The most fun was going to the Mushroom forest and Port Marie the same trip. In between, we did a surface interval snorkeling to a cave/cavern? within a cliff.
We rented a car for 2 days towards the middle of the week, went to Cas Abo (lots of sea urchins) and Port Marie for shore diving. Cas Abo was fun, nice simple snack area. Port Marie is close to Habitat-very nice shore diving for a small fee for chairs and beach entry- a woman walks up and down the beach collecting fees. Showers are available for rinsing. There is a double reef. MarkFM saw a large lobster fending off fishes in the daytime, and a school of barracuda! I was under the weather-and sat out the day of diving here
. My friends saw an eagle ray here.
Never did manage to wake up early for a dawn dive-other divers made this a ritual-swore by all the critters they saw.
The water was cooler than I expected. I was chilly towards the end of 50 minutes in a 3 mm microprene. MarkFM dove in a lycra and was fine. Water was much warmer towards the end of the week.
The food at the restaurant ranged from very good (most of the time) to very bad (just once). Stick with hamburgers with the works, pineapple, bacon, fried onions, cheese, about $10.00, pasta was decent, especially spagetti bolonese. The last night, service was off, food (steaks) were cold-was not representative of the week. We did not travel to other restaurants except for Daniels. Food was good, service very slow because we had a huge group, larger than our reservation. Our friends went another night, and the service was fine.
We spent one afternoon in Willemstad-couldn't dive -flight next day. Cute, walked across the moving bridge, did some souvenir shopping. They had stands where women are selling paintings on canvas-landscape etc,probably printed/mass produced?-some are very nice-look hard-prices dependent on size-ranged from $20.00 to hundreds. Bargaining is expected, and can go down by 40-50% for the more expensive prints! MarkFM brought a pretty painting for me that I love because it shows the moving bridge and houses in Curacao.:10:
Now where to go next? Galapagos Aggressor?
GF
